Miami Startup: RentJiffy Simplifies Life For Landlords INTERVIEW

RentJiffy,DC startup,Florida startup,Miami startup,startup,startups,Startup interview,startropicaContinuing with the series of features about each of the impressive Startups Incubate Miami 2012 has been able put together this year Startropica sat down with Jonathan Addison, Founder and CEO, ofRentJiffy, a real estate management platform that makes life easier for landlords and property managers. This is our interview with him:

How the thought of creating RentJiffy came about in the first place?

It came out of my own Real Estate practice. I am from Washington DC, one of the busiest, and one of the most legally complicated real estate cities in the country, the most obvious example of this is the license property owners need to have in order to be able to rent that specific property, that’s for every single property they own, with all the different regulations for each type of building of course. So RentJiffy was conceived in 2010 originally to make life easier for DC Landlords offering to facilitate this type of licensing. Basically they go to RentJiffy and hire us to process the license for them, but we are about to launch a host of additional features as well on a national level, that’s why we came here to Miami.

So Rentjiffy started by offseting a huge need in the DC Real Estate market, I am guessing it grew fast.

Thankfully yes it has been a success. Since January of 2010, we have doubled our revenue every year, that’s 3 years in a row. In 2011 we did $175.000 and to date we are approaching $300k in sales for 2012, enough to keep the team going and to help us put in place the next step which is to make RentJiffy a national platform

Continue reading at Startropica.com

Incubate Miami Startup: iCare Intelligence Optimizing Patient Information

iCare Inteligence,startups,startup,Miami startup,Startropica,startup news,Incubate MiamiiCare Intelligence, a highly promising innovative software company coming from Incubate Miami’s 2012 Class, is on the path to become one of the most important Health Care related startups emerging from South Florida in recent years. This is due to the magnitude of the problems it solves and the caliber of the team at its helm.

iCare intelligence is a data analytics and workflow collaboration cloud-based platform. The software increases the accuracy of the patient information while it changes hands between the government, insurance companies, and the doctors. The system optimizes profits and minimizes inefficiencies for every party involved in the health care value chain. iCare Intelligence data analytics work in coordination with Electronic Medical Record (EMR) systems, feeding key data to health care practitioners. The brainchild of iCare Intelligence is industry veteran John Suarez, with 11 years of domain expertise in the health care sector across the functional areas of information systems and operations.

John Suarez explains from his Incubate Miami workstation:  “There is an estimated 10-20% loss of revenue for both insurance companies and doctors due to inaccurate patient information. The current structure depends on human intervention and many important pieces of information are being lost along the way. Our platform brings real time data into this complex and fragmented exchange of information, to provide insurance companies with proactive solutions to costly compliance errors.  This thereby maximizes insurance company payouts and reduces their level of risk. As the entire fee for the service is paid for by the insurance companies and management service organizations, doctors will receive the benefits of the platform free of charge”.

Continue reading at Startropica.com

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It’s Tea Time At 500 Startups With Hawaiian Startup Tealet

Tealet,500startups,Hawaiian startup,startup,startups,startup interview, dave mcclureSubscription startups are blowing up these days. It seems there’s a subscription service or subscription box for just about anything (and everything). We’ve reported on, or interviewed, quite a few here at nibletz, including KlutchClub, Bulu Box, FlavrBox and hip hop artist Nas’ subscription startup 12 society.

Today we’ve got Hawaiian startup Tealet. Tealet is about sampling tea just as much as it is about discovering tea. Tealet co-founder Elyse Peterson told us in an interview “Tealet tells the stories of tea growers around the world and allows tea drinkers to explore these teas through a bi-monthly subscription service.”

After the customer gets their tea bi-monthly tea samples they can go back to the tealet website and order larger quantities of the teas they like.

Tealet isn’t about mass produced coffee house teas or even the teas that you can pick up at your local Whole Foods or Trader Joes. Through Peterson’s personal experience, connecting with actual tea growers around the world, Tealet members are getting access to the most interesting and best tasting farm grown teas in the world. Check out the interview below to read how Peterson fell in love with farm grown teas and the farmers who make it.

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Mississippi Startup YeHive Share & Attend Events Socially! Launches Today

Typically when we get an email or pitch that has the words “event” and “app” in the same pitch, we get skeptical. The event space is a crowded space and an extremely hard nut to crack. We were actually referred to YeHive by our lawyer who is one of the leads in the firms emerging technologies practice. In other words he sees a lot of startups. I told our lawyer of my ambivalence about “event startups” but he insisted we check it out.

So Thursday morning we got a walk through of YeHive from the startups co-founder Brad Fuller.

YeHive isn’t about event discovery, it’s about making events more social. YeHive combines photos, videos, comments and a timeline to any event. Users can easily create an impromptu event or participate in an ongoing event. When you log into your YeHive account and then an event on YeHive all of your photos and videos get uploaded to the event. You can comment on other users photos and videos and also comment on the events timeline.

YeHive then archives all of the photos, videos and timeline entries, right now “forever”, Fuller told us. If you’ve set up a YeHive for a wedding, birthday party or even a camping trip you’ll be able to go back and check out the memories. If you participated in a YeHive for a sporting event you’ll be able to replay all the action directly from YeHive anytime you want.

Fuller and his co-founders haven’t cut any corners in building out YeHive. The website is built and functioning and for mobile they are debuting in the Google Play store and the Apple iTunes App Store today, simultaneously insuring just about anyone who wants to try it, can.

We got a chance to interview Fuller, check out the interview below.

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Atlanta Startup Vir2o Sharing Everything In Real Time Improves In Person Relationships

Vir20,Atlanta startup,startup,startups,startup interviewAtlanta startup Vir2o, promises to be a whole new social experience. That’s quite a lofty statement, but after checking them out and talking with them, if executed correctly it will work.

Vir20 shares just about everything there is to share in real time, which improves actual in person relationships. You can go shopping with your friends on Vir2o. You can go to the movies with your friends on Vir2o. You can share photos with your friends on Vir2o. You can listen to and share music on Vir2o.

Anytime an entrepreneur wants to create a new social network or new social media outlet it’s immediately compared to Facebook. When Facebook burst onto the college scene and then opened up their doors to anyone over 13, no one believed they would overtake Myspace, but they did.

In an interview we did with Vir2o’s Founder,Kayode Aladesuyi, he mentioned sharing a lot. When we think of sharing and social media we naturally think of Facebook. Spaulding explains how Vir20 is different than Facebook “…doesn’t necessarily enhance social interaction between people, especially if there is physical distance between them. We wanted to bridge the gap between people who live in different parts of the world and provide them with a real-time interactive tool to bring them closer together”

Since Vir20 is all about live sharing, in real time, they consider themselves a “Live Community” versus a social network.

Check out the rest of our interview with Spaulding below.

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200 Startups Participate In Startup Maryland’s Pitch Across Maryland Bus Tour

Late this past summer Startup Maryland co-founders Mike Binko and Julie Lenzer Kirk announced that they would be holding a one of a kind bus tour across the state of Maryland in September. Binko and Lenzer Kirk were able to procure a giant tour bus, get it wrapped and outfitted with a video studio, work space and a place for startups to sit and talk as it caravaned across the state.

The trip began September 11th and ended on September 28th. The bus adventure started on Maryland’s eastern shore and continued all the way to the communities in Western Maryland.

“The Pitch Across Maryland tour, which ran from September 11 – 28, 2012, held celebration and promotional rallies at 25 stops throughout the state of Maryland,”  Lenzer Kirk, Startup Maryland Co-Chair said in a statement. “Culminating in the Last Stop, First Step party and celebration event at Merriweather Post Pavilion on September 28th this Tour has rightly placed the spotlight on the vitality in Maryland’s innovation economy.”

Both Lenzer Kirk and Binko are passionate about the startup community in the state of Maryland as is Howard County Executive and 2014 gubernatorial candidate Ken Ulman, who provided some financial backing for the trip.  When the bus tour was announced Binko was optimistic that 40-50 startups would use the onboard video studio to do pitch as part of a state wide contest. When all was said and done 168 startups actually did pitches. Maryland’s sitting Governor, Martin O’Malley also pitched on the bus. Binko told a group of Startup America regional champions in October that O’Malley had contacted the bus team and asked to come and take a tour. Admission to that tour was a pitch video.

“These videos are a testament to the strength, dedication and diversity of Maryland’s entrepreneurial community,” said Binko in a news release. “When we launched the Pitch Across Maryland tour we thought we might have 40-50 entrepreneurs join us on the Tour Bus and pitch, so 168 is phenomenal. Including all the rallies and events we held more than 200 startups actually participated in the tour.”

In addition to the 168 startups that pitched another 30 or so startups came out to the 25 stops that were on the bus trip. Some even volunteered to help.

All 168 pitches (not including the governors) are posted to YouTube where anyone can vote for their favorite pitch. A prize will be awarded to the entrepreneur with the most “view” votes after the voting closes on December 31st. Startup Maryland will announce 7 finalists next week on November 7th. Those finalists will have a chance to pitch during the entrepreneurial expo November 13th.

Members of the judging panel include serial entrepreneur peers as well as representatives from TEDCO, DBED, universities, incubators/accelerators and economic development agencies (EDAs).

Linkage:

Get warmed up for Tuesday and go vote for your favorite pitch here

Stay in tune with Startup Maryland here

Make sure you click this link and sign up for “everywhereelse.co” here

Miami Startup: Clearci Simplifies Competitive Intelligence

Competitive Intelligence, a critical part of corporate strategy, and also one of the most misunderstood, has evolved tremendously since it was officially inaugurated in the mid 80’s. Now,clearCi, a company based out of Fort Lauderdale, FL, arrived to transform it by making information simpler and more accessible than ever. The practice, innocently confused by many as ‘spying’, consists of collection, classification and distribution of information about the competition in order to facilitate better strategic decisions.

The Internet changed the form in which secondary intelligence was collected since instead of retrieving it from supermarket aisles, pamphlets, books, and TV commercials, now it’s available online, and for the most part, what Competitive Intelligence (CI) professionals need to do is surf the Internet to gather information from numerous websites; still a time consuming proposition. Recently, with the evolution of search crawlers, some companies simplified the task, but now clearCi is making a big push by simplifying the process to unprecedented levels thanks to patent-pending algorithms and technology.

When asked to explain what the cloud-based SaaS platform does Co-Founder Joe Levy is reluctant to offer complicated explanations, rightfully using one sentence: “We offer software tools that help you keep track of your competition.” How so? The marketing team breaks it down further by saying that the technology works as an automated CI informant hired to monitor any competitor webpage or data source related to products, industries, markets, customers, vendors and even key partners. The tool cuts through the clutter caused by Big Data, and only relevant information is gathered and stored into an online portal that organizes data into channels, sharable folders, and reports, making data more manageable across an entire footprint.

Continue reading at our partner site Startropica.com

Pittsburgh Startup Songwhale Born From Beowulf! INTERVIEW

Songwhale,Paywhale,Pittsburgh startup,Pennsylvania startup,startup,startups,startup interviewA Pittsburgh startup with a funny name is engaging customers from brands across multiple touch points. SongWhale specializes in taking customer engagement to a new level using the web, text, pay and direct solutions.

The unique company offers multiple products to drive engagement and even a pay product of their own called PayWhale which offers the ability to text a payment. Paying via text is very popular in emerging countries but no one in the US has really embraced the technology. It’s actually one of the easiest ways to pay.

While interactive engagement may not seem sexy some of the things SongWhale is doing are. Not only that but the story about how Songwhale came about is one of the most interesting ones we’ve heard.

Songwhale’s four core business areas, Web, Text, Pay and Direct can be summarized like this:

Web: Songwhale can get a companies brand or message through the web on any screen; smartphone, tablet, or computer all optimized for each size.

Text: Songwhale offers engaging SMS campaigns including games, and interactives.

Pay: Songwhale’s Paywhale product offers a text payment solution that is possibly the easiest form of mobile commerce and one wildly adopted in emerging countries.

Direct: Songwhale offers direct branding and engagement campaigns that encompass web, text and pay solutions.

We got a chance to interview Songwhale. Check out the interview below:

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Mother & Daughter DC Startup Dormify, Changing Dorm Rooms Everywhere

Dormify, Maryland startup,DC startup,startup,startups,startup interview What can you do with the limited space of a dorm room, or shared living space while you’re in college? Well unless you’re an interior designer for Ikea you may think your options are limited. That’s not the case thanks to the mother and daughter team of Karen Zuckerman (mom) and Amanda Zuckerman (daughter).

The Zuckerman’s have created a new Washington DC startup called Dormify that looks to serve those college age students with ideas, and tools to help transform their living space for their four years of college life. Everything from crafty ideas, to room furnishings, trinkets and even college flair can be found on the Dormify site.

Dormify gives college students everywhere the freedom to stop combing the aisles of Ikea and Target in hopes to find some idea that all the other students aren’t using.

Towels, pillows, home furnishings even stylish school supplies and sweets can be found on the Dormify website.

As you can imagine Dormify came about when Karen was helping Amanda move into her first dorm room at Washington University in St. Louis. Both Zuckerman women have been known for their creativity throughout their lives and the neon colored towels, matching trash cans, rug mats and computer chairs on sale at Target weren’t going to do the trick.

After shopping for Amanda’s dorm room at a variety of boutique shops in downtown St. Louis, a look Amanda could live with was born. The Zuckerman women realized that there is no centralized place to build looks like this, so they did what any entrepreneurs would do and built it themselves.

We got a chance to talk with Dormify’s employee #1, Nicole Gardner, who tells us more about Dormify, below:

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Who Are Smartphone Users More Likely To Vote For? Obama!

Election 2012, Obama, Romney, Smartphone owners,infographicMobile advertising firm Mojiva has released an interesting infographic after surveying American’s with smartphones. The infographic details which party smartphone owners favor, how they’ll use their smartphone on election day, who they are more likely to vote for, and even would smartphone users use their phone to vote if it was possible.

While we aren’t able to use our smartphones to vote in the 2012 election it’s likely that sometime in the next few presidential election cycles there will be some kind of way to vote with a smartphone and have each registered voter only able to vote one time.

82% of those surveyed said that they would vote this year. For the survey respondents that’s a whopping 82% which is nearly 30% higher than both the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections.

47% of respondents said that they vote democrat compared to just 28% that said they lean Republican. 25% indicated they lean independent or other.

Only two questions swayed in the Republicans favor. 53% of Republican respondents said they would use their smartphones to research candidates, whereas 50% of Democratic respondents said they would use their smartphones for that. The other category was “would they use their smartphone for election related activities leading up to the election”. 81% of Republican respondents said they would. 79% of Democratic respondents said that they would.

50% of respondents said that they would use their smartphones to contribute money to a political candidates campaign. Most respondents said they would use their smartphones to donate less than $25.

Check out the infographic below:

Linkage:

Source: Mashable

Infographic source: Mojiva

Do you have your ticket yet? What are you waiting for?

 

Miami Startup: Kipu Systems, Transforming The Substance Abuse Industry

Tobias Franoszek, the CTO and Co-Founder of KIPU Systems, a cloud-based records management system for the substance abuse industry, is no stranger to startups and technology. In the mid-nineties he achieved great success with CONCEPT!, a Frankfurt stock exchange digital  interactive agency, were as Client Services and Technical director he led the technological growth of the company from 4 to 250 employees. At the turn of the decade, Concept identified the growing Latin-American Tech Sector in Miami and he was delegated as the Managing Director for the Region. As history goes, not long after he began his tenure the burst of the dot come bubble occurred. He endured it after obvious adjustments, and then adopted Miami as his hometown transitioning into technological consulting and various other digital service offerings.

In the beginning of 2012 Tobias was contracted by The Right Place Residential Detox center to evaluate electronic medical records systems. After reviewing more than 30 vendors he couldn’t recommend any of the solutions evaluated and instead offered to create one – and so the journey to create KIPU SYSTEMS began.

KipuSystems,Kipu,Startropica,Miami,Incubate Miami,startup,startups Not surprisingly, Tobias witnessed huge inefficiencies while studying the procedures in place and it became a big motivating factor for him, as he says: “to begin with, the detox industry is not easy to manage because each patient is different and the procedures change according to the type of addiction, age, sex, consent of guardians, you name it, and it’s not easy for the caregivers to keep up with all the paperwork, so it became an opportunity to improve upon an antiquated system.” Today KIPU is completely functional at The Right Place Residential Detox center where it has proved that its implementation reduces Initial Evaluations, Patient Intake, and Doctor Review times by more than 50%.

And the reasons for this improvement can be seen at the center on a daily basis. Now caregivers use an iPad with the Kipu software to process sign-in information and every other procedure they implement on their daily routine, whereas before the norm was endless paper handling. But one of the most impressive achievements of the KIPU team is the transition from manual “bed boards” into “electronic bed boards” (this boards show the current census, bed assignments, and incoming and leaving patients, at any given moment). This means caregivers no longer have to write and erase information on whiteboards; instead the system creates the electronic version in real time. No wonder KIPU is the subject of adoration at the center.

Read more at our Miami content partner Startropica.com