After Multiple Startup Competition Wins, Charlotte’s WeRx Launches

WeRx,Charlotte startup,crowdsourcingOver the summer, when nibletz.com was in Charlotte for the Democratic National Convention, as part of our sneaker-strapped startup road trip, we got a chance to interview Amir Khoshnevis the founder of WeRx.org.

WeRx.org had just won the Startup Rockon pitch contest as part of the Startup America DNC festivities.

WeRx.org is an innovative crowdsourcing platform that would definitely be considered in the social entrepreneurship space. Khoshnevis and his co-founders discovered that people are paying way too much for their medication. Of course we’ve known this for years but what the WeRx team found was something that will blow most people’s minds away.

Take Lipitor for example. In it’s generic form the WeRx team found some pharmacies sold the drug for $11 and on the high end, $180 and that’s right in the Charlotte metro area. The unfortunate reality is that most people who require medication may do a limited cost comparison, and if they do they check the few pharmacies close by. If they can’t afford the cost of the medication close by they often decide to not take it. This can ultimately lead to death.

As another example Khoshnevis and the WeRx team found that in West Charlotte diabetes medications cost two to three times as much as they do in the Ballentine suburb of Charlotte. Why? Because the demographics skew more diabetic in West Charlotte.

Prior to their launch today, WeRX also won the Distilled Intelligence startup competition as well as the Reboot America competition in Washington DC.  Now all of their hard work is set to pay off as they’ve launched the platform to the world.

The official launch is a huge step toward connecting consumers to the prescription price information and savings they need,” Khoshnevis said. “We started this company after being doctors in the trenches for many years and watching patients suffer simply because they can’t afford their medications. This is one of the last industries where consumers have not had easy access to price comparison tools and we have changed that today.”

Kosnevis continued, “We have a lot of positive momentum and have been extremely pleased with the recognition but we are keeping our focus on solving the problem. 100 million Americans lack prescription coverage or are underinsured and are at risk of not being able to afford their medications. Our goal is to leverage the power of consumer choice to create a more fair, open and transparent system for prescription meds. We sincerely believe that by empowering consumers and doctors with pricing information, we can allow patients to stay on their medications and remain healthy.”

What the heck is a sneaker-strapped road trip?

sneakerupt

 

 

We Caught Up With Charlotte Startup Rawporter At The DNC 2012

While we were at the DNC 2012 we got the opportunity to crash at the Rawporter crib in Uptown Charlotte. Rawporter co-founder Kevin Davis, recently relocated to New York to help grow the citizen journalism startup. Rob Gaige, the other Rawporter co-founder remains in Charlotte to continue their grassroots efforts in their hometown.

For those of you who aren’t aware, or for those of you who hear the name Rawporter on our videos, Rawporter is a social e-commerece platform for citizen journalism.

On Tuesday evening in the thick of an enormous rain storm, and just before the evening session at the DNC where First Lady Michelle Obama brought the house down, I actually got to join Gaige and Davis for a meal at the Dandelion Market in Uptown Charlotte (that’s their downtown), which is the restaurant where Rawporter was born. It was while eating at Dandelion that Gaige and Davis witnessed a horrific car accident. Like any event like this in 2011, people quickly emerged from every establishment on the block with their smartphones, and immediately started shooting pictures and videos.

Davis and Gaige both noticed that it wasn’t until after the emergency personnel had left and the wreckage was almost cleared that the news trucks began to arrive. When the Rawporter duo got back home and watched the news, sure enough there were no pictures or videos of the actual wreckage.

Sure national cable networks like CNN and Fox News, encourage their viewers to send in videos, but there had to be a way for citizen journalists, and the average people to get their videos to news outlets. In effect there needed to be a crowdsourced video news platform. So Rawporter was born.  Davis and Gaige also decided to add another spin and make an e-commerce platform for the buying and selling of these videos and photos.

On the e-commerce side it was quickly discovered that Rawporter was a great way for bloggers with a small staff, or even newspapers and other media outlets with bare bones staff and bare bones budgets, to utilize the platform for great content.

Now news editors and the like can sift through and buy uploaded files, but what’s even better is they can commission a Rawporter user to actually do the work they need. For instance, if there is a convention or conference that the news outlet can’t get to, they can post an “assignment” with what they are willing to pay and the Rawporter community can bid for the assignment.  Rawporter even facilitates the transaction.

Naturally with the Democratic National Convention in their back yard, it was an excellent venue to show off their product.

The Rawporter team also pitched at DEMO this past spring and Chicago TechWeek back in July.

Check out our video interview below:

Linkage:

Check out Rawporter here

Here’s more of our DNC 2012 coverage

Nibletz is on a sneaker-strapped nationwide startup roadtrip and needs your support

Politico Hosts Energy & The Presidency Panel At DNC2012

Politico hosted a great panel for lunch today. The panel was called “Energy & The Presidency” and talked about clean energy, solar energy and wind energy which are cornerstones to President Obama’s energy plan for the next four years. The panel included: Kevin Book, the Managing Director at Clearview; Carol Browner, former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency; Congressman Ed Markley; Former New Mexico Governor and Former Secretary of Energy, Bill Richardson; and the Former Governor of Colorado Bill Ritter Jr.

As you can see Politico provided a powerful line up of speakers who carrier Obama’s message of finding other forms of cleaner, sustainable energy going forward. Conversely, as Congressman Markley pointed out, Mitt Romney’s campaign has just received $6 million dollars from big oil and his energy plan includes oil above all else.

The Republicans have taken to the airwaves to confuse the people when it comes to energy, the costs and the savings. Kevin Book mentioned that “It’s hard for people to see the monetary effects of these energy changes through ads”.

While education is always a big part of bringing home any initiative and the statistics under the current president include a 50% drop in the price of solar energy. Also, before the end of the year 15,000 more megawatts of power will be added to the grid this year and that will come from solar and wind energy exclusively.

If you’re a frequent reader to nibletz or our former site you may be very familiar with Congressman Markley. While Markley sits on the energy committee, and has since 1976, he is very active in the world of privacy and data and also a strong advocate for startups. In fact the entire state of Massachusetts is as well.

Former Secretary Of Energy Richardson pointed out that global energy demand is going to increase 47% over the next five years, so regardless of previous election cycles, energy is very important this year.

Not only is energy an important issue because we need it, it will also fuel jobs for many years to come. From the corporate world, cleaner energy companies will need to hire workers to build infrastructure, wind mills, solar panels etc. On the startup front, even the government is watching the great ideas that are coming from the CleanTech and green space.

Linkage:

More coverage of the DNC

Uber Hits Mega Capacity In Charlotte At The DNC 2012 And Issues Uber Users Credits

As our long time readers know Uber is the only Valley based startup that we cover on nibletz.com  we do this because they are building out their business across the country and around the world, and each new Uber city is treated as it’s own business. We’ve got great ties to Uber in Washington DC, and New York as well as in San Francisco.

So picture this, we were at the huge StartupRockon, Startup  America party last night featuring The Roots and Uber started tweeting away from their special Uber DNC Twitter account. Uber isn’t officially in Tampa or Charlotte but they’ve put together “pop up” Uber shops for both the DNC and the RNC (last week in Tampa).

Anyway, back to the story. I was standing in line and I was actually next for a Taxi when low and behold a small group of people runs out in the street and jumps my cab. When I confront the gentleman in the group about taking my cab he politely tells me to use Uber and gives me one of their “black cards” that we’ve come to know and love here. Well, ok I’ll take that $20 Uber trip and use it in DC or New York. As for tonight though, I found it alarmingly odd that the Uber team was getting in a yellow taxi.

As I had found out earlier in the day Uber was extremely backed up. Around 2pm on Monday afternoon I was able to get an Uber ride with minimal effort and a mild 40 minute wait. Last night though at midnight we started getting messages that Uber was way over capacity and they were sorry.

An email from Max arrived in my box with an additional credit for trying to use Uber last night and failing miserably.

Of course the story here is the great job, no make that phenomenal job Uber has done looking after their customers (except for jacking my taxi last night). It’s that same die hard enthusiasm for their customer base that has them fighting cities around the country so that they can deliver an uber good Uber experience.

As for getting Uber at the convention, it may be tough, but this morning I waited two hours for a cab so do whatever you can and stay hydrated.

Linkage:

More DNC 2012 coverage from Nibletz here

Follow Uber’s pop up shop here @uber_dnc2012

Here’s Uber’s DNC 2012 page

LiveBlog: Startup America Panel At The DNC 2012: How Government Can Foster Startups

1:22pm: Igor Jablokov: startups are becoming the R&D cauldron for big established businesses now. Rather than keeping in house R&D and upsetting Wall Street big companies are vetting startups that they could acquire with the new technologies they want/need

1:20pm: Chopra: Obama challenged America to double their exports. EdTech startups are having more  success overseas. Other countries are hungry for education and EdTech. “We are more accustomed to selling Boeing overseas rather than having entrepreneurs sell EdTech overseas”

1:15pm: What role does government play in demand: Polis: Sound economic stewardship, restoring our fiscal integrity, getting rid of the special interest loopholes, new trade policies

1:09PM Scott Case: Tells Chopra he is only the second elected official he has ever spoken to as the CEO of Startup America Partnership, that has said “why don’t we build our own companies” rather than “what factories can we get to come here”

 

1:06PM: Martinsville is going to invest in entrepreneurship locally stemming from Startup America. Chopra visited Martinsville, a community with double digit unemployment and found that entrepreneurship and talent is all about making a job just as much as it is about getting a job.

12:59pm: Dan Roselli: The stimulus act isn’t the government rolling up a dumpster full of cash. He and his business partner used the Stimulus Act to help buy and revitalize the building that now houses the PPL. When it’s not home to bloggers and online media for DNC 2012, Packard Place is the incubator for incubators and 5 floors of startups, entrepreneurs and founders.

12:56pm: Cowell on the innovation fund in North Carolina. Policies like founders tax credits can help founders and spur entrepreneurship. NC is the the 20th state in the US that is offering an “innovation” type fund. Government isnt typically good with these kinds of funds, so they want to outsource and have a public/private partnership. NC uses Credit Suisse as a third party officiant of their fund and gives them an “arms length” distance from the fund itself.

12:54pm: Scott Case question “Where do you see the line” in regards to where government is part of startups. Chopra is talking about policy barriers that make it harder for startups to break into markets. Healthcare data ecosystem counts over 200 new products or services that utilize health data.

Read More…

Video Interview With Charlotte Startup: WeRX Winners Of The StartupRockon Contest At The DNC

Just prior to the StartupRockon kickoff part at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte North Carolina we got to meet Amir Khoshnevis the Chief Strategist for Charlotte startup WeRx.org. They were one of the three finalists for the $5,000 StartupRockon grant contest. The winner was announced just before The Roots took the stage.

WeRx.org is an innovative crowdsourcing platform that would definitely be considered in the social entrepreneurship space. Khoshnevis and his co-founders discovered that people are paying way too much for their medication. Of course we’ve known this for years but what the WeRx team found was something that will blow most people’s minds away.

Take Lipitor for example. In it’s generic form the WeRX team found some pharmacies sold the drug for $11 and on the high end, $180 and that’s right in the Charlotte metro area. The unfortunate reality is that most people who require medication may do a limited cost comparison, and if they do they check the few pharmacies close by. If they can’t afford the cost of the medication close by they often decide to not take it. This can ultimately lead to death.

As another example Khoshnevis and the WeRx team found that in West Charlotte diabetes medications cost two to three times as much as they do in the Ballentine suburb of Charlotte. Why? Because the demographics skew more diabetic in West Charlotte.

So what did they do about this problem? They created WeRx which is a platform that allows people to crowdsource prescription prices. WeRx encourages those taking medications to input what they paid for it. Then then end users can geo-discover the best prescription prices and make the trip to  another pharmacy to get the best price.

Ultimately the idea is to build such a large platform that big pharmacy companies bring their pricing system back inline with each other.

WeRx gives those that report prices a feel good “pill heart” so they know they’ve done their part to help people find the medications they need and hopefully drive the cost of prescriptions down.

This idea was so good that the startup that launched just last week, won the $5,000 StartupRockon grant contest. There win was announced Monday evening at the StartupRockon party featuring The Roots.

An ecstatic Khoshnevis tracked me down by the bar so proud that such a socially important startup won the contest. They plan on putting the $5,000 right back into the company that they’ve been bootstrapping since inception.  Check out a video interview below with Khoshnevis just prior to the start of the party:

Linkage:

Check out WeRx here at werx.org

Here’s more DNC 2012 coverage brought to you by rawporter.com, and kiwi.ly

Nibletz is the voice of startups “everywhere else” and we’re on a sneaker strapped road trip “everywhere else” more info here.

StartupRockingon With StartupRockon At The DNC

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It’s been a festive night in Charlotte North Carolina. While many started partying like a democrat Friday evening, StartupRockon and StarutpAmerica along with MassChallenge have kicked off their presence at the StartupRockon party tonight featuring national recoding act The Roots.

The party has had some great people from startup ecosystems throughout the country, Luke Rafenstahl the Mayor of Pittsburgh is a huge startup advocate and he arrived early for the festivities.

Our awesome social media liaison for the StartupAmerica partnership Anna Eisenberg along with Kathleen Warner the COO of Startup America and the partnerships Communications Director, Chris Roche have been talking innovation all night.

The Publisher of Hypervocal, and founder of StartupRockon, Lee Brenner has done an exceptional job of organizing these events in a short amount of time. Brenner pointed out on stage this evening that this is just the startup of StartupRockon at the Democratic National Convention. More programming including panels with StartupAmerica CEO Scott Case and Huffington Post Publisher Arianna Huffington kick off tomorrow morning.

As for The Roots they’ve been tearing the roof off the mother sucka tonight kicking off the party with a tribute to The Beastie Boys MCA and the godfather of DC GoGo Chuck Brown. A Roots version of Paul Revere complete with vocals from MCA and a mad GoGo swing kicked off their set.

We’ll be here all week reporting all the startup goodness from the must attend political event of the last four years the Democratic National Convention.

Linkage:

More of our DNC 2012 Coverage Here

DNC2012: National Comedian Tone X Needs Help Getting Obama Tickets VIDEO

I remember the feeling like it was yesterday, standing in line at the Obama Inauguration freezing my butt off at 4am on K Street in DC. People everywhere were still looking for tickets to get up close and see Obama get sworn into office. Or perhaps you were looking for an Obama ticket 4 years ago at the DNC.

Well critically acclaimed national comedian ToneX turned to @startuptechguy and @nibletztweets to spread the word. He is a sharp dressed, articulate brother that wants to be in the house Thursday night to see Obama deliver his address to the delegates.

With a plea like this we’re sure if you know someone you’ll help him out. You can tweet to him at @tonexcomedy or just drop us a line at info@nibletz.com and we can get a message to Tone’s people.

ToneX brought the house down at the PPL headquarters at the Packard building downtown which is serving as our center of operations today for our DNC coverage. We’re headed to the big StartupRockon party next. It’s refreshing to be here. Here’s ToneX is message, and he approved it himself.

Linkage: 

More nibletz DNC coverage here

 

Nibletz Is At The DNC And We’re Using Nashville Startup: KiWi

The Obama Administration continued to pave the way for Startups all over the country with the creation of Startup America, the passing of the JOBSAct and many other initiatives that have been it in place to help entrepreneurs and startup founders across America.

Thats why it’s our honor to cover the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte North Carolina. We’ll be partnering with Startup America and the guys at StartpRockon.com to bring you guys everything there is about Startups at what’s sure to be one of the best DNC’s of our time.

We’ve got some great access to bring the best coverage for Startups across America.

We’ll be representing one of the best states “everywhere else” for Startups and entrepreneurs and that is Nibletz home state, the great state of Tennessee. Not only that but starting Tuesday we’ll be using one of the exciting new startups that just graduated from JumpStart Foundry’s 2012 class, KiWi,

We got off to a rough start with KiWi after their founder ad libbed at the end of his presentation. Since then KiWi and it’s co-founder Jayme Hoffman has come highly recommended by Michael Burcham, Vic Gatto and Marcus Whitney,

Hoffman and his team couldn’t catch a break after demo day as they’ve been working tirelessly since then to make sure we’ve got something great to use at the Democratic National Convention.

KiWi is like Instagram except instead of photos you are taking short videos. The UI is extreme

As for Demo Day, Hoffman had said that he would be looking for term sheets in Nashville for thirty days. It came off to me that he was giving Nashville an ultimatum, give us a term sheet in 30days or we’re leaving. That was far from the case. Hoffman was trying to convey that things have been moving so fast for the KiWi team that an opportunity for local investors to get in at the ground level may not exist in 30 days. Of course we may speed that process along this week.ly user friendly. Filter selection is topnotch and from capture to share, the experience is fast and fluid. It’s actually not nearly as clunky as SocialCam.

We’re looking forward to the next few days here in Charlotte representing our home team: LaunchMemphis,LaunchYourCity,Launch Tennessee and Startup Tennessee.