Last week at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013, Mike Arrington had a sit down with Betaworks’ John Borthwick. After that, the founder of TechCrunch and the Managing Partner at CrunchFund was able to get Borthwick to give him an early release of a game that just hours later would turn into a megahit in the iOS app store. That game was Dots.
Through a series of tweets, Arrington has kept us up to date with his progress, showing off a score of 290 on May 3rd
Only to top that score and reach 442 later that afternoon.
It’s probably safe to assume with big things happening at CrunchFund, like MG Siegler leaving for Google Ventures, Mike’s been a little busy lately and hasn’t had time to brush up on his Dots.
In the meantime though, since it’s release last week Dots has already seen 25 million games played. It’s an addictive little bugger. It’s like that game of dots you would play in grade school on a piece of graph paper, except as an app and with a spin. You can get points every time you connect two or more of the same colored dots.
I’ve been playing the game since day one as well but can’t get past a score of 357. Several of Mike’s followers on Twitter thought he was cheating, but he’s just figured out the strategy. Mike explains to Trustev CEO Pat Phelan:
Since it’s release Dots has reached #2 on the free iOS apps chart. They also predict they will have one million players by the end of the day.
Picture this, the thick of the summer of 2013 and you find yourself at the amazing One Ocean Resort in beautiful Atlantic beach. You’re there with hundreds of like minded coders, developers and software engineers, learning, living and having fun. Oh and did we mention your wife and kids are hanging out by one of the pools or on the sandy beach? This sounds like a great “working” vacation right?
It’s a reality at Code On The Beach, a software engineering conference in Atlantic Beach August 16th-18th. The conference will cover topics from ASP.NET MVC to Windows Azure to HTML5 to SQL to mobile. Friday will feature intro and beginner tracks while Saturday and Sunday will feature intermediate to advanced level content. Conference organizers have made the session length longer so you can “dive in”, but they’ve also structured the event so you can literally take some time and “dive in” to the ocean.
Intro sessions on Friday afternoon
Intermediate to Advanced sessions on Saturday and Sunday
Great hospitality with a full beach resort experience
Family-friendly: bring your spouse and kids
Top speakers from across Florida and the U.S.
Longer session length allows for deeper dives
Open Space track where you can speak on any topic you desire
Nightly hackathons to benefit local non-profits
Opportunities to meet local industry leaders and employers
Steps from the session rooms to the beach or beachfront pool
Walking distance to excellent local beach dining and nightlife
Early registration starting at just $99 (compare to other weekend conferences!)
So if you’re like me and constantly on the road to conferences and events leaving your husband or wife at home to tend to the kids, no worries, Code on the beach will be a vacation for them too:
Catch sun or waves at the beautiful Atlantic Beach
Lay back or splash at the beachfront pool, with poolside docent services (hotel guests only)
Relax and get quality treatment at the ocean view hotel spa (hotel guests only)
Visit the 24/7 fitness center for exercise (hotel guests only)
Walk to nearby beach shops, dining, and nightlife
Attend beginner programming sessions so they can get in on the conference action too
Hack on projects with you at nightly Hackathons by Ignite for local non-profits
Travel to nearby attractions like the Jacksonville Zoo & Gardens, Adventure Landing Water Park, and Talbot Island State Parks
You can get in on the early bird registration and a savings of $60 per night at the resort. The link to register for the conference is here. The link for hotel registration is here.
Here at nibletz.com The Voice Of Startups everywhere else, we’ve profiled a few startups that have made the lives of those living with autism easier. Often times these technology startups come in the form of mobile or tablet applications to assist with communication. Whether it’s picture based short messaging or assigning pictures and graphics to simple sentences, doctors have praised the work of those entrepreneurs creating these kinds of apps.
Chad Ruble, a New York based entrepreneur has created something similar, but this time for his mother, who suffered a stroke.
We met Ruble on our sneaker strap road trip when we stopped at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013. It was there that he told us that communicating with his mother was very important to both her and him. So he went to work to create a mobile app that allowed her to send simple messages that were assigned to pictures.
TapGram lets users communicate by tapping large icons to signify moods and needs. After suffering a stroke TechCrunch reports that Ruble’s mother has been dealing with a condition called Aphasia which prevents her from processing language the way that she used to. TapGram was born out of a Microsoft Kinect hack that Ruble put together to help his mom write emails.
TapGram has been in public beta over the last four months and Ruble has found that people who suffer from Autism, brain injuries and of course strokes are using TapGram to assist in their communication.
Check out our interview with Ruble below and for more information visit tapgram.com
I’m going to date myself here and say when I first heard the name of this Norwegian startup I thought about the fat baby dancing on Ally McBeal. I’m sure some of you are thinking, who the heck is Ally McBeal.
After getting over the uber cool name (and you know we love great named startups here at nibletz) we got to talking with the startups co-founder Gunnar Wold, about just what an OogaBaby is.
In the simplest explanation, OogaBaby is Instagram for babies. Using the OogaBaby app, gushing parents everywhere can upload baby photos to their hearts content. They can also track their baby’s height, weight and even the circumference of their heads. Parents can add milestones and special moments as well in this social network for babies and their parents.
Now as a parent myself I totally understand and get it, I just wish I had it five years ago. Speaking of which Wold says you can track your kid as long as you want but it’s primarily designed for baby’s up to age five.
Oogababy is great for parents and their friends with kids, but it’s also great for friends without kids. Why? Because with OogaBaby parents can stop flooding their Facebook walls with pictures of their babies.
Wold created OogaBaby after he became a father and realized there was really nothing like it on the market.
Check out our interview with Wold below and for more info visit Oogababy.com.
Since starting our nibletz sneaker strapped startup road trip last year we’ve seen hundreds of startups pitch at countless demo days. Nick and I were finally relaxing with one of our advisors, Patrick Woods’ with a>m ventures, on the last night of SXSW and we had counted over 65 startups that we saw pitch through a variety of demo events at the annual festival.
We’ve also seen countless accelerator demo days and with it being May and most of the spring accelerators graduating this month, we’re on track to enjoy another dozen or so before we get to the thick of the summer. Speaking of summer, last August their were three accelerator demo days in Tennessee alone.
Startup community members and leaders are constantly debating “the rise of the accelerator” and where accelerators should focus their resources. Is the best accelerator model general tech and cohort based? Or vertical and rolling? Who knows, it will take several more iterations until each community finds the accelerator model that works best for them.
But what about demo day?
On Friday Business Insider ran this piece which references an indepth article about YCombinator and it’s historic demo day from the New York Times. In it, author Nathaniel Rich, quotes an investor saying that YC’s demo day, often thought of as the super bowl of demo days, “used to be a can’t-miss event, but that’s not so anymore. It’s a different vibe. Some major investors are starting to skip it.”
Rich points out that one investor said that YC Demo Day used to be a feeding frenzy for deal flow and it’s just not anymore.
Of course YC’s demo day is all the way at one end of the spectrum. Y combinator is said to take the best of the best and with hits like DropBox and Airbnb, the newer teams know they can set their valuations and standards higher, pricing a lot of smaller VC firms out of the deal. This either leaves VC’s empty handed or startups empty handed.
“The only way for a company to be overvalued is if there’s someone willing to pay that price,” Graham told the NYT. “So what they’re saying is: Going through Y.C. causes companies to raise money on better terms than they would have otherwise. We wouldn’t have the barefacedness to make that claim ourselves!”
Graham acknowledges that YC does take some bad startups though, saying sometimes investors can’t pick out the good startups; “Well, it’s not because the good start-ups look bad,” Graham says. “It’s because the bad start-ups look good! Which means we’re doing our job.”
Business Insider recently shared some of Mark Suster’s, a VC with GRP Partners and the founder of LaunchPad LA, best and worst sources of deal flow from his personal blog.
Surprisingly, blogging was revealed to be the best source of deal flow available. “The sheer number of relationships I’ve built through being public, transparent and being willing to engage in comments and through social media has enabled me to get to know entrepreneurs even before they launch their next company,” Suster said on his blog.
Investment bankers were said to be bad sources of deal flow, but the worst? Demo Day.
“Getting excited about a company at a conference and investing is a sucker’s bet,” Suster writes. “Entrepreneurs raising at prices not normally supported by progress face risks downstream when they have to raise more capital. And that fund raising is part of the job of being an entrepreneur – not something that gets in the way of your doing your job.”
Startup accelerators everywhere else are having a hard enough time getting investors in the door for demo day as it is. One accelerator participant in the middle of the country told us “outside of the investors that had a stake already in the cohort, no investors came to our demo day last year.” That can be hard to swallow.
As to the blogging, we have a handful of angels and VC’s that email us from time to time to get the vibe on some startup we wrote about. We also get thank you cards in the mail from startups that have gone on to raise money after getting their first piece of press from nibletz. To that end, we live off of our crowdfunding so to help out the everywhere else cause, click here.
Serial entrepreneur, restauranteur, and startup junkie Andrew Batey, the cofounder of Los Angeles startup Hater, credits Maryland startup CoFoundersLab with helping to lead him to Jake Banks the founder of Hater. We ran into Batey talking with Shahab Kaviani, the founder and CEO of CoFoundersLab at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013.
Batey and Kaviani were talking about how CoFoundersLab is way more than just a place to find co-founders. There are several startups in the “cofounder finding” space. One of the most popular ones is Silicon Valley based FounderDating. Many entrepreneurs feel that FounderDating is too selective and doesn’t reach the core of the startup community.
Community is what drives Kaviani who’s already had his successful exits and is working on CoFoundersLab to help startups find the perfect team.
CoFoundersLab helps link cofounders through a profile based system. Kaviani is quick to point out that the perfect cofounder may not be that friend or relative you think you want to start a company with. Through their online system and their in person events, hosted in 25 cities so far, CoFoundersLab is about linking real people with each other to foster great ideas.
The non elitist community at CoFoundersLab is over 10,000 members strong and to date has helped 100 teams form. One startup founder came over to Kaviani’s TechCrunch Disrupt booth to tell him that not only did they cofounders find each other on CoFoundersLab but to date the team has raised over $2.7 million dollars.
CoFoundersLab is also about the community. In addition to finding a cofounder you may find other key team members within the community or find a community member that can help you get over a hurdle or a pivot.
CoFoundersLab was a finalist in the Startup Maryland, Pitch Across Maryland bus and they are also a member of the Fort in DC which is now housed at 1776.
It’s free to join CoFoundersLab however there is a pro membership available too that gives founders access to personality assessment tools and other tools to refine the cofounder search. There is a small fee, usually ten bucks or less, for their in person events.
Kaviani founded CoFoundersLab after realizing it was the founding team at the first startup he was part of, HyperOffice that became the widely known WebOS.
In 10 days thousands of entrepreneurs will convene in Columbus Ohio for the biggest celebration of African American entrepreneurship in the country. The Black Enterprise Entrepreneur’s Conference and Expo is four days of celebrating startups, and small businesses led by some of the brightest entrepreneurs in the country.
Names like Robert Johnson (BET), Daymond John (Fubu/Shark Tank) and Magic Johnson are staples within the pages of Black Enterprise Magazine and in the halls of the conference in years past, and present.
One of the biggest attractions at the conference is the Elevator Pitch Competition. Entrepreneurs with new startups and small businesses have 60 seconds to pitch a vetting panel and if selected, a panel of judges on site at the conference. 10 semifinalists have been selected from across the country. Those semifinalists will have 60 seconds to pitch the judges. Then, they will eliminate five of the semifinalists and the remaining five will pitch the judges for 30 seconds. After the 30 second pitches, there is a Q&A session with the judges and then one entrepreneur will win $10,000 to help grow their company.
Danielle Inez, Memphis native and founder of Pink Robin Avenue, has been selected as one of the ten semifinalists. Her startup is a tech hybrid that allows users to order everything they need for the perfect party online and in one box. Their favors, decorations, theme pieces, and everything else they need for the perfect event is then delivered to their home.
Inez initially pitched the concept in Memphis at the Upstart 48 Hour Launch in December. Her idea was quickly chosen to develop out over the 48 hour hackathon. By Sunday afternoon she had won the weekend competition. Early feedback recognized how valuable Pink Robin Avenue would be, especially for busy people.
The founder is also key to the success of Pink Robin Avenue. Inez owns a PR company that specializes in high profile, luxury and celebrity events. Inez also spent part of her career as a wedding planner with exquisit taste and is incredibly organized with an eye for design, and detail that many people are just too busy to notice.
Inez is a busy woman. She spends her days tending to the details of her PR firm, diPR which includes a mixed portfolio of clients that touch the luxury world, celebrities and even non profit organizations. She spends another full time jobs’ worth of hours working on Pink Robin Avenue.
Although relatively new to the startup space, Inez has been an entrepreneur her entire life. She got a taste of entrepreneurism and non profits when she started a company focusing on mentoring with her mother. Inez put herself through college helping people plan weddings, events and eventually pivoting that business to the PR company.
Now Inez is ecstatic that a magazine that’s been inspiring her since high school has selected her in the contest. “I’m amazed! I’ve followed the contest for a couple of years and I’ve read the magazine since high school. I’m so happy to be able to represent my city and my network of entrepreneurs from the main stage.” Inez told nibletz.com in an interview.
Inez brings a well versed pitch with a bubbly personality, and she knows her stuff, but above all she’s a fierce competitor; “I’m extremely competitive, so first and foremost, I wanna win! This is also an incredible opportunity for exposure for my business and myself; I plan to plant the seed for potentially valuable connections. Last – but certainly not least – I hope to inspire someone else to step out of their comfort zone and take advantage of the platforms that can help grow their business.”
Inez is one of the founding members of Memphis’ Upstart program. Upstart is initiative set in place by Launch Your City and focuses on empowering women entrepreneurs. Elizabeth Lemmonds is the Chief Relationship Office for Launch Your City and the Director for Upstart. She’s been working closely with Inez since December.
” Ever since Danielle brought Pink Robin Avenue into the Launchpad and to our female founder 48 Hour Launch, I’ve been impressed with both her concept and her sheer tenacity. This remarkable opportunity is a testament to both. I’m proud to have worked with her and look forward to the huge things ahead for Pink Robin Avenue!” Lemmonds told us.
Inez’ Pink Robin Avenue and other startups like Mentor Me, currently accelerating in the Seed Hatchery program are a testament to the fast success Upstart Memphis has seen.
The finals for the Black Entreprise Elevator Pitch contest are bitter sweet for Inez who will miss Seed Hatchery’s Demo Day while she is pitching in Columbus at the Black Enterprise Event. “I can’t believe I’m going to miss Brittany’s pitch (Mentor Me), Brit’sbusinss has evolved into something that seems incredibly profitable”. Mentor Me was one of the other startups selected to build out at that Upstart 48 Hour Launch event where Pink Robin Avenue was born.
Here’s Pink Robin Avenue’s second ever pitch at 48 Hour Launch.
We love talking to British entrepreneurs and founders, it’s just something about the way they say process that makes them seem so professional and articulate. The same goes for Jonathan Knight the cofounder and CEO at Qmee. Knight was quite animated when he told us that Qmee was based in Gloucester England, in the countryside where they have cows and hills, but very few tech startups.
So it was the perfect place for Knight and his co-founder Nick Sutton to launch an internet startup. What amazed me was the idea that these guys have come up with.
Qmee is a platform that pays you to search for stuff on the internet. It works with all of the big search engines like Google, Bing, Amazon, Ebay and Yahoo.
Once you install the browser plugin everything magically happens in the background. When you search for something that Qmee has advertisers for you will see an unobtrusive sidebar on the left side of your browser. This sidebar serves up relevant ads and alongside those ads is the amount that you’ll actually get paid for clicking through to the ad. Now this isn’t some kind of crazy deal where you only get paid if you agree to three offers that will set you back $1000 this is pretty simple, search, click, get paid.
One of the best parts about Qmee is that users can take their payments whenever they want. Payments accumulate in a “Qmee Piggybank”. You can look at your piggy bank balance anytime you want and see what you’ve made so far. Whether it be $80, $800 or 80 cents, you can have Qmee pay you via paypal whenever you would like.
Not bad for some guys from the British countryside right?
Check out our interview with Knight below and for more information visit Qmee.com
Here are over 25 great startup stories from TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013
Luca Parise was working at a nice cush job in Sao Paulo Brazil for FRAM Capital, an investment management firm, when he decided to launch his own startup in the art world.
Nailonwall helps take the offline world of Latin American art and put it online for people around the world to find. But Parise doesn’t see it as a show and tell site by any means. He’s hoping to apply what he’s learned in the finance world to Nailonwall because “Art is a huge market and an investment opportunity”, he told us in an interview.
Parise hopes that by linking the Latin American art world to art collectors and investors globally artists’ works will become worth a lot more. So in affect Nailonwall is an entire art marketplace rather than just a showing of art work from Latin America.
Parise hopes to bill $500,000 in commission from helping to facilitate the sale of the artwork on nailonwall, this year, according to Portugese site exame.com.
There are several art marketplace startups out there, but so far none that have focused on artwork in Latin America.
Check out our video interview with Parise below, and for more info visit nailonwall.com
This year marked my third trip to TechCrunch Disrupt NYC and my 7th trip to a TechCrunch Disrupt event overall. Typically we expect to see some cool big data startups, social mobile startups, food startups and over the last two years, hardware startups. I don’t think in all the startup events I’ve ever been too, I’ve seen anything quite like Dialexa.
Dialexa is a startup themselves, but what they actually are is a technology development company. The company, formed by entrepreneurs Mark Haidar and Scott Harper, Dialexa was founded upon recognizing a huge market demand for innovative and scalable technology solutions. Mark and Scott serve as Co-CEOs jointly spearheading operations, strategy, local and international sales, product development and engineering for clients and Dialexa Labs.
Harper and Haidar met each other at 2GO Software where Haidar was the CTO and Harper joined as Head of Operations. 2GO was the recipient of the 2010 Honeywell Scanning and Mobility ISV Partner Of The Year.
Prior to meeting at 2GO, the founders had a multitude of experience in technology and starting companies. Previously Mark led the development of a state of the art research and development project for the US Army Tank Automotive Research Development Engineering Center (TARDEC). He was able to successfully research, design, develop, and validate an original service-oriented intra and inter-vehicle communication system for transportation, robotic, and military systems. This technology enhances each vehicle’s situation assessment and awareness in military combat situations and has the potential to help create safer and more efficient highway systems. Scott previously started a web based marketplace for tutors in the college tutoring market, a web based suite of software tools that helped non-profit organizations enable their supporters to give money for free, and was part of an initiative to start up a bank focused on the medical community that heavily leveraged technology and eventually led to the buyout attempt of a several hundred million dollar bank.
So what are they working on at Dialexa? Oh just little stuff like:
A surveillance and protection system for the Nigerian navy. The Nigerian navy is losing $6 billion dollars a year in crude oil. They don’t have the man power or equipment to cover their entire shoreline. Dialexa is developing a system using drones, small submarines, cameras and a monitoring system to alert the navy when people, or machines are stealing their oil.
They also have a GPS system in the works that will allow someone to track anything. The system can track packages, people, kids, money in armored cars, etc. What’s unique about this system is it’s designed to require just a charge once a week and works through a variety of mobile systems.
They also have a system in development that will print 3D teeth from 2D scans. Haidar told us in an interview the entire process of evaluating a tooth for surgery could take months. Now it is down to just hours.
Haidar credits the team they’ve assembled to the success they’ve had so far and the team continues growing. No project or startup is too big or too small for Dialexa. They even have your general mobile startups within their portfolio of companies that they are helping take to market.
Watch our video interview with Mark Haidar below and for more information visit dialexa.com
Fred Wilson is currently being interviewed on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt NY by Michael Arrington and a topic of discussion that came up was the “Best and Worst Things to do in VC Pitches.” If you’re not familiar with Fred Wilson, he is a managing partner and venture capitalist at Union Square…
When we spoke with PayTango co-founder Brian Groudan at TechCrunch Disrupt he acknowledged how crowded the biometric mobile wallet space has gotten after their videos and pitch decks started popping up online. We talked about New Jersey startup PulseWallet, that we met at CES 2013 and Groudan pointed out another biometric mobile wallet startup that was also in the Startup Alley at Disrupt.
PayTango was one of the first in the space and for now they are focused on smaller networks where they can really get a feel for the technology and what it can do.
What is PayTango and a biometric wallet?
Well by now everyone has heard the term mobile wallet. We all know that you can use your NFC enabled phone and other forms of mobile commerce without having to bring credit cards along. What PayTango and other startups in their space hope to do, is to eliminate the wallet altogether and use your finger print as your wallet.
Using a biometric wallet is not just easier and more convenient but it’s a lot safer when it comes to fraud.
PayTango tested on the campus of Carnegie Mellon University and has also tested in some health clubs as well. While students who signed up for the beta can use their finger print to pay for meals, there’s also the capacity to store your entire academic history in the cloud, accessible by finger print.
While only saying that PayTango is looking at a lot of different uses, it’s easy to see that the team behind PayTango is looking at a much bigger picture than just syncing your American Express card with your index finger.
Groudan was actually excited about all the competitors in the space because it gives PayTango more market validation.
Check out our interview with Groudan below and for more info visit paytango.com
The old lady in “The Clapper” commercials would be very proud of Israeli startup, ClapTo. We found them in the Israeli pavilion at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013.
Shay Dadush, the founder of ClapTo, created the starutp after experiencing a real world problem that many workers face. Whether you work in a customer service center, data entry office, or coworking space, if you work with headphones on, communicating within the workplace can be a challenge.
“Sometimes you think someone wants you and they don’t, other times the boss wants you and you don’t hear them” Dadush told us at Disrupt. That’s why he created ClapTo.
ClapTo is a piece of software that fits ontop of your audio settings and listens for two claps in a row. If ClapTo hears the right claps then it quickly pauses whatever audio source you’re listening to so that you can hear what’s going on around you. Now all Mr. Lumbergh would have to do is clap two times to cut your music off so he could ask you to work this Saturday.
Dadush tells us that ClapTo knows the difference between the clapping, and someone making a loud bang.
This seems kind of cool but if ClapTo builds massive scale what’s going to happen when 30 people in the office have it installed and someone claps. Tell us what you think of ClapTo in the comments below.
Here’s the video, you can find out more at clapto.com
The nest thermostat was the coolest piece of hvac innovation ever. It’s got a beautiful design and the functionality is amazing. Now if you’re not familiar, Nest, learns the behaviors of those in the house and programs itself to optimize your comfort and energy in regards to your heating and cooling.
What New York entrepreneurs Ryan Fant and Nayeem Hussain have discovered, is that the thermostat is only about half the problem. Energy loss and discomfort also stems from the vents itself. Nest, controls the heat pump or the ac unit. The vents are controlled manually.
“We found that just by closing four vents in an average-sized home, we’ve reduced the run time of the furnace by about 30 percent,” Fant explained in an interview. “So not only were we redirecting air to rooms that were actually in use by intelligently closing vents, we were increasing efficiency, as well.”
Their vents can be controlled by smartphones, learn a users behavior and open and shut automatically based on imported data. Overall this will improve the energy efficiency in homes and make them more comfortable.
The duo are predicting a 32% reduction in run time on hvac units thus resulting in money and energy saved. Vents haven’t changed in 60 years they’re basically the same design. When making their pitch it’s obvious that they are looking to the immediate future as smart homes become more mainstream and less sci fi.
In an interview with Nibletz Hussain tells us that the Keen Vent is just the beginning. Their next products are equally as simple, and equally as life changing. Check out our interview below and for more info visit mykeenhome.com
Kyle
Last week at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013, Mike Arrington had a sit down with Betaworks’ John Borthwick. After that, the founder of TechCrunch and the Managing Partner at CrunchFund was able to get Borthwick to give him an early release of a game that just hours later would turn into a megahit in the iOS app store. That game was Dots.
Guest
