TechCrunch Disrupt Archives - Page 6 of 7

New Orleans Startup: Red Ticket Games Shows Off Extreme Trivia At TechCrunch Disrupt VIDEO INTERVIEW

Here at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2012 we got a chance to meet Barrett Conrad, CEO and PlayerOne at Red Ticket Games. Red Ticket Games is based in the Silicon Bayou, New Orleans to be exact.

We talked with him a bit about their innovative trivia game called Extreme Trivia where you can become an expert on anything, especially because the user creates the questions.

The game is a break from traditional trivia games. One of it’s mean differentiators is the fact that the users create the questions. To conceptualize that idea, think of a it like this: You’ve got a group of friends and you probably have some common interests. Well most trivia games will have the generalized questions based on your topic, but with Extreme Trivia you can do relevant questions based on your knowledge.

Imagine if the guys from Big Bang Theory played a game like this. Obviously their intellectual ability far outshines the game writers at Parker Brothers, but with creating your own questions you have a better chance at stumping your friends, or helping them out.

As a special part of this interview our managing editor Cameron Wright talked to Conrad a bit about the thriving startup scene in New Orleans and what it’s been like to rebuild after the storm. Admittedly there wasn’t much of a startup scene in New Orleans prior to Hurricane Katrina. After the storm New Orleans was like an open canvas in their rebuild.

While New Orleans hip hop scene migrated to Atlanta, Houston and Dallas, their tech scene started to bubble. In fact there was just a launchpad event earlier this month right smack dab in the middle of Jazz Fest.

Whether you want to know more about Red Ticket Games, Extreme Trivia or the New Orleans startup scene, you should definitely check out this video.

Linkage:

Find out more about Red Ticket Games and Extreme Trivia Here

Check out more of our TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2012 coverage here

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Philly Startup Snip Snap, Putting Print Coupons In The Digital Space

Snip Snap founder Ted Mann presenting at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2012 (photo: nibletz inc)

A new startup mobile app called Snip Snap presented today during the first session of Tech Crunch Disrupt’s Battlefield. Snip Snap is in the pool of 30 other startups competing for 50,000 dollars and the Disrupt cup. I loved the idea so much that I started writing this article while Snip Snap founder Ted Mann was still presenting.

The idea for the app is incredible (hence why I am writing about it right this second). Basically you take a picture of an actual print coupon out of your newspaper or direct mail. The picture uploads to the app, makes note of the barcode and the expiration date and goes into your virtual wallet.

Once in your wallet the coupon can be shared with other users. That gives the app a second life. I remember when I moved away from home my mom would send me her coupons from the Baltimore Sun and the Washington Post now with this app you can get coupons from major stores across the country. If you didn’t know, sometimes a Bed Bath & Beyond may have a great deal on something in California and not in New York and vice versa.

MC Hammer questions Snip Snap founder Ted Mann At TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2012 (photo: nibletz inc)

With all this nationwide coupon sharing, there is a function in the app that lets you report back to the Snip Snap network on whether or not the user was successful redeeming the coupon.

The judges met Snip Snaps founder with the immediate questions you would think of like, what about coupon fraud. Right now it’s totally up to the merchant on whether they are going to a) accept the coupon via an image on your phone and b) whether they want to honor the deal. Surprisingly there is still an 80% success rate with the coupons currently in snip snap.

Other features include:

Expiration date reminders
In store reminders (when you enter a store that you have a coupon for, Snip Snap lets you know)
Use for any coupons, it doesn’t matter what the coupon is for
Share with friends

You can find Snip Snap in the app store now.

Boston Startup: Brass Monkey Is A Fun Interactive Mass Challenge Grad VIDEO INTERVIEW

We found an awesome startup out of Boston Massachusetts called Brass Monkey. In addition to having an uber cool name the technology is cool, innovative and fun, a definite recipe for great success.

Brass Monkey allows the user to play fun, interactive games on their computer’s monitor or any other monitor with a browser, using their iPhone as a controller. The iPhone controller utilizes all the sensors in the iPhone to create an interactive experience. In the demo video below we check out a golf game, similar to Wii Golf, that allows you to use the iPhones motion sensors to control the iPhone like a golf club.

There are currently 10 games available. Brass Monkey has a free SDK for developers who are interested in developing games on their system.

Brass Monkey is a recent graduate of the Mass Challenge program, which they credit as a large part of their success thus far. They also received a $750k round of funding in January of this year which included the co-founders of Kima Ventures, Jeremie Berrebi, David Beyer, CEO of Chart.io, Founder and Managing Director of Boston Seed Capital Nicole Stata, and more.

Check out the video below:

Louisville Startup: Implucity Headed To Cincinnati Incubator, The Brandery

Louisville startup Implucity is headed to a 14 week accelerator program in Cincinnati called The Brandery. Along with a 14 week incubation period, office space and mentorship Implucity will receive $20,000 in seed capital.

Implucity is a mobile app that allows users to discover events, purchase tickets, invite friends to events and send photos. Co-founder Hunter Hammonds told the Business Journal that there were plenty of times that he wanted to go out but didn’t know what to do, Implucity solves that problem.

“We’re not trying to be a social network at all,” Hammonds said. “It’s not about who I am. It’s about what I’ve been doing.”

There are several apps in the exact same space, during their time at The Brandery they are going to really need to work on refining their secret sauce.

According to Hammonds and co-founder Austin Cameron, they’ve raised under $250,000 so far, and hope to raise over $2 million after their session at The Brandery. Right now their secret sauce relies on the fact that Implucity isn’t a social network, it’s focused on the singular user to find events to do and then share.

“I think that’s something we can hit because the user experience is awesome,” Hammonds said. “It’s just a cool product for you to use. It’s not a social network so we don’t rely on your friends. We just rely on you wanting to do something.”

Linkage:

Check out Implucity here

Source: Business Journal

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NY Startup MyStream: Share Your Music From Device To Device VIDEO INTERVIEW

NY startup MyStream is an app that allows you to share your music from device to device by simply using wifi or Bluetooth. Sounds basic enough right? Well the app comes packed with a lot of exciting features, and best of all it’s free.

When two friends have the MyStream app downloaded to their iPhones they can now share any music in their library with each other in a couple of different ways.

First, they can share over their choice of a wifi or bluetooth network.

They can also share the song one person is listening to in real time, with the other person. Or connected devices can browse each other’s libraries and listen to whatever songs they want off the library. Now this is a streaming share so you can’t copy the song form one device to another. However, if you like the song MyStream has a buy button that will connect you to where you can download the song directly to your device.

Now you don’t have to worry about sharing headphones and bumping heads or having to cuddle close to listen to the same iPhone speaker. MyStream eliminates all of that hassle.

Record labels aren’t put off by real estate agent turned tech startup founder Richard Zelson’s app because it encourages purchasing your own music. In an interview with our good friends at TechCocktail Zelson said: “We’re making it more valuable to have your own copy of music again,”

The buy button is the piece that keeps the industry folks happy. We’re sure you’re familiar with the scenario “Dude you need to hear this song”, well when the other user wants the song, they just go and buy it from their own device.

Check out the video below:

Linkage:

Find out more about MyStream here

More of our TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2012 coverage can be found here

We’re on a nationwide sneaker-strapped startup roadtrip, find out more here

Israeli Startup: Brayola All Bras Are Not Created Equally Video Interview

Here’s something you probably didn’t think I would say, I learned a lot about boobies at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2012. Well, not so much boobies as bras. See as a dude, I’ve been wearing the same Starter brand ankle socks and Hanes brand boxers since high school (now a whopping 20 years), no not the same actual pairs but those are the brands I get. Women don’t have it quite as easy.

Now if you’ve ever been with the lady in your life on a trip to Victoria’s Secret you probably thought, man there are a lot of bras and panties in here. Well there are, but there are even more bras out in the world. How many? Well Brayola’s database of bras has over 5000 different bras in it.

I know, you’re probably thinking database of bras? Well Brayola founder Orit Hashay probably knows more about bras than Victoria herself. Hashay explained that she was in the mall in Israel looking for some really nice bras. She found two that she liked that were about $60 USD a piece, so she bought them. Well after wearing them a couple of times each they started to stretch and expand. She had to stop wearing these expensive bras. This got her frustrated.

Harshay didn’t understand why it had to be so hard to find bras. Well her startup Brayola, solves that problem.

In the video at the bottom of the post, she takes us on a step by step walk through of how Brayola works.

To summarize: A woman signs up for a free Brayola account. Once the account is established she enters in the brand, type and size of her favorite bras. Harshay is quick to point out that the user needs to enter the size of the bras not her bras size. As Harshay found out, all bras are not created equally. A 34D at Victoria’s Secret could be a totally different size at Fredericks of Hollywood, or any of the other hundred or more bras vendors out there.

Through data base information and crowd sourcing Harshay and Brayola have created a database that can account for different bras sizes and tell you what your size would be in another brand at another store, based on the size of your favorite bras.

There are several options for women and their bras and Brayola accounts for them all. It helps the woman select new bras based on her preferences. She can then store here favorite bras in her virtual door under categories for example sexy, sports bras, wire bras etc. You can choose to buy one at a time, or empty out your entire set of drawers.

When you’re ready to buy, Brayola takes you to the vendor that has that particular bras and voila, new bras on the way in the mail and you didn’t even need to get fitted.

Check out the video below. Harshay is very enthusiastic about Brayola and she knows a lot about bras. She taught me a lot today about bras (not boobies).

See more of our TechCrunch Disrupt coverage here

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Boston Startup: About Last Night The Ultimate Night Life Social App

We love About Last Night for several reasons. First off the crazy Bostonian serial entrepreneurs who co-founded About Last Night are pretty awesome. About Last Night is one of several startups that are incubating in their own personal incubator. Brothers Darren Dodge and Derek Dodge have a bunch of their own startups “cooking in the microwave, we just open the door and check on them” says Darren.

But really, the great thing about About Last Night is the robustness of the platform. They left no stone unturned, but at the same time the UI is appealing and not too cluttered.

About Last Night is about sharing the good times you had last night. The About Last Night crew showed off good times spent Sunday night in Times Square, at Bubba Gumps and other fine establishments around New York.

The app allows you to follow people you don’t know (like Twitter), People you do know (like Facebook) and your favorite night spots and locations (like a reverse FourSquare), again it’s like leaving no stone unturned. It feels a bit like path, but it’s more about the jello shots you did at the Ale House, not waking up at 7:35 with a hangover and brushing your teeth.

They’ve been working on About Last Night for the last six months and they’ve come out with an easy and fun to use app. They’ve got plenty of time to work on even more startups, ya know with the Red Sox sucking and all…

Check out the video below:

Linkage:

Find out About Last Night here

More TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2012 coverage here

We’re on a sneaker-strapped nationwide startup road trip, check it out here (and support us please)

LA Startup: Lovvvit Video Interview With Founder Max Gotlieb At TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2012

Hollywood producer turned startup founder Max Gotlieb had a genius idea in his head and started developing it into what is now known as Lovvvit. We reported on Lovvvit earlier this year. It’s a video review/recommendation platform for people to pronounce their love for their favorite things.

After a few minutes with Gottlieb I quickly grabbed hold of the concept and it’s indeed genius. I thought back on the past seven years (the youtube years) and how many videos I’ve taken and shared from my favorite places. The number is quite large, but none of them ever talked about the places I actually love.

Sure there are birthday party videos, bachelor party videos, playing around videos and other funny stuff at my favorite haunts but not once did I walk in and do a video saying, “I love this place”. Imagine how cool it would be to have crowd sourced video reviews of peoples’ favorite places. It would be genuine, and engaging for both the loyal customer and the merchant.

Right now merchants are growing tired of the group-coupon (Groupon) deal space. Merchants are finding that they are losing their ass in margin to attract one time customers. Now they want better tools to target their frequent customers. Lovvvit provides a platform for just that, and it’s engaging, innovative and fun.

There’s a reward benefit on both sides of the platform as well. If you’re the customer and you do a video review of your favorite places you can earn Lovvvit dollars and upgrade to a premium status. As with any site the more reviews you do of your favorite places, the more trusted you become in the Lovvvit community.

On the side of the merchant, they are granted access to the videos in Lovvvit. They can share them across their own websites and their other social media channels. They can also add coupons and deals to the videos as well.

All of that makes Lovvvit a three fold community of reviewers, people looking to discover places and the merchants.

Check out our video interview with Gottlieb below:

Check out more of our TechCrunch Disrupt NY coverage here

Video Interview With Diego Saez Gil Founder Of wehostels.com (formerly inbed.me)

Back in March we reported on a world traveler turned entrepreneur, Diego Saez Gil and his startup inbed.me. Inbed.me is a service that connects travelers to hostels across the world. In addition for finding, booking and discovering hostels, it has a back bone social network that helps users recommend hostels, suggest things to do and meet up while traveling.

Inbed.me was Diego’s second startup. His first startup was called Off Track Planet, the ultimate backpackers online guide to travel.

Diego recently changed the name of inbed.me to we hostels.com because it’s a little more politically correct. Inbed.me has some risky connotations.

Wehostels.com is exhibiting in Startup Alley at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2012 check out our video interview below:

TechCrunch Disrupt: I Shot A 50 Caliber Rifle At A Fax Machine, Thanks To Twake

Twake, a new big data startup, had a great attention grabber at their booth at TechCrunch Disrupt NYC’s Startup Alley. Twake hired a man in a wooded area in a remote location with an arsenal of high-caliber fire arms and a junk pile of computer gear. Old cpus, monitors, fax machines, radios and other electronics were put in the pile for the man with the guns.

Meanwhile back at TechCrunch Disrupt Twake had an iPad app where passerby’s could choose a device they wanted to shoot, and the gun they wanted to shoot with. After they made their selections they would hit a button labeled “fire” which sent a signal back to the man with the guns to go ahead a fire away at the old computer junk.

This was very reminiscent of Tommy Jordan, the laptop shooting dad in North Carolina. Now even though I didn’t get to fire the gun myself, I could feel the thrill and satisfaction of popping a cap in that fax machines ass. The boys from Office Space would be proud.

So what kind of company goes through this much promotion to attract people to their booth? That would be Twake, a recently launched big data startup.

Twake is a secure, agnostic, scalable recommendation service. In their own words they describe Twake as:

“Twake’s cloud-based service maps anonymous referential data on customers, products and services with behaviors such as view, like, buy, and comment along with the sentiment and significance of each. Our wave propagation and interaction algorithms analyze patterns, recognize highly relevant items that are far removed from the source and synthesize recommendations that resonate”

We would say it’s a predictive recommendation engine. The idea of being able to recommend what a customer may buy next is often the competitive edge companies need, provided the data is right.

Twake’s platform is scalable to most industries. Their unique adaptive recommendation engine can handle e-commerce, app discovery, deep personalization, restaurant suggestions, smart pre-fetching, sentiment analysis, genome research, social discovery, travel planning, business intelligence, and network planning.

Is that too many verticals? Twake is so new that we’ll have to wait and see how it all comes together. It will be great to see what developers can do using Twakes API’s.

Check out the video here:

TechCrunch Disrupt Startup Interview With Connecticut Startup Shizzlr

Shizzlr is a new group platform social event platform with a website and cool mobile app to bit. In a way it’s similar to the startup we saw last year at Disrupt NY called “Salsa” unfortunately that startup had a very short life. Shizzlr has promise though, because of it’s unique feature set.

Shizzlr’s mobile app is available for both iPhone and Android. It allows you to discover local events and places nearby. After that you can share them into a group chat with friends and then decide what you want to do. Afterwards you can even run a poll and get feedback about the event or activity.

Shizzlr was founded by Nick Jaensch and Keith Bessette in the fall of 2009 while they were both students at UConn. They kept working on it after college and saw an official launch in 2010. Now both co-founders are here showing off Shizzler in TechCrunch Disrupt’s Startup Alley because they know its the shizzle.

Shizzlr is designed for smaller groups of friends between say 5 and 20. It aggregates local events from Facebook. Once the events are aggregated, users can decide which ones to do and make plans.

It’s an interesting new spin on the social event app. Check it out for yourself at shizzlr.com and watch our video interview below:

See more nibletz.com TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2012 coverage here

TechCrunch Disrupt Startup Interview With NY Startup hoppit

We got a chance to talk with the founder of hoppit at TechCrunch Disrupt NYC 2012. Hoppit was the winner of the best “Big Data” startup at the recent NY Tech Day.

So what is hoppit? Well hoppit is a discovery platform that lets you discover places completely based on atmosphere. Yelp, Urban Spoon and other restaurant recommendation sites use reviews that focus on cuisine to attract customers. With hoppit their engine takes into consideration keyword phrases that describe ambiance.

For instance, hoppit looks for multiple instances of groups of words like “romantic dinner” from there it would be able to dig deeper and determine that a restaurant is smaller and more intimate. This may be exactly what someone is looking for.

Right now hoppit lets you choose from eight different vibes; classy & upscale, hipster, watering hole, romantic, cozy & quaint, mad men,swanky & posh, trendy & chic, vintage & old world, and chill & relaxed.

After a long work week you know what you want and hoppit will help you find it. Check out our interview Steve Dziedzic below:

See more of our Disrupt coverage here

TechCrunch Disrupt Startup Interview With: Bar & Club Stats VIDEO

There’s no cutesie name name, no outrageously loud logo, no booth babes and no crazy animation talking about Bar & Club stats. It’s very straight forward and like a great name, their company name says exactly what they do. What a novel idea, Bar & Club Stats provides bar and club stats. It’s how they do it and exactly what they do with it that makes it cool.

Bar & Club Stats founder, Ben Silbert, said he started the business after finding most of the places he went to were really crowded. He developed an app and id scanner and then the back end piece which collects data.

Bar & Club stats is an app and id card reader that allows bouncers and door men to scan IDs. Fake IDs will not scan which makes it easier to weed out bad IDs and actually get rid of the offending person. Sometimes when someone presents a fake id they go into a temper tantrum yelling and screaming that their ID is real. After the ID is actually scanned the argument becomes a moot point.

As we reported earlier, the entry validation portion is just the beginning. Bar & Club stats take the data from the ID scans, anonymizes it and then analyzes it for the bar or club. This is invaluable information to a club owner. Were there more 18-21 year olds on Monday or Thursday? Did ladies night draw more men? Did our midtown club attract a slew of customers from Hoboken? All of this information is now available to the venue for marketing and business development.

While it’s not cute or quirky Bar & Club stats solves a problem for bars and clubs, well actually two. Check out their video interview here:

Arrington Is Back: Fireside Chat With Fred Wilson

Mike Arrington was back, looking right at home on the stage at TechCrunch Disrupt NYC. As most of you know he was here last year for Disrupt NYC but after that things between he and AOL got a little shaky.

Last year Arrington appeared onstage with a TechCrunch Green t-shirt that read “unpaid blogger”. This year there was no special shirt, just Arrington in his best form. After being introduced by John Biggs as a guy who used to be Biggs’ boss he sat down to chat with Union Square Ventures’ Fred Wilson.

Arrington pointed out that every time he talked face to face with Wilson they were always in New York. Arrington went on to ask Wilson if he was extremely wealthy and if Wilson had rode into Disrupt on a helicopter. Wilson was quick to point out he walked a couple blocks and then grabbed a cab. He also pointed out that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg often takes the train.

As far as Wilson and his investments are concerned, Arrington immediately started in on him about Duck Duck Go a new search engine. In regards to Duck Duck Go, Arrington looked at Wilson and simply said “Why, I don’t understand”.

Wilson responded by saying that Duck Duck Go has 40-50% of the traffic of AOL search which is still a top 5 search engine in the world. Wilson is also enthusiastic about Duck Duck go because it was created by just one person. Concerns about privacy will also drive the popularity of Duck Duck Go because it’s a 100% private search engine.

When Arrington asked Wilson if Google should be worried about Duck Duck Go, Wilson said no pointing out that Duck Duck Go is fundamentally different. Where Google uses algorithms and key words, Duck Duck Go “leverages 100s of services that are domain experts, hit their API’s and assemble on the fly”.

Arrington admitted that he was not enthusiastic about Kickstarter at first but has since become one of biggest fans of the crowd sourced funding site. Union Square was the only venture capital firm to invest in Kickstarter. When Arrington asked Wilson why they invested, Wilson described Kickstarter as a “futures market for product”.

Arrington and Wilson rounded out their conversation talking about Wilson’s investments in Twitter and Zynga. Arrington of course said Wilson needs to get to San Francisco more.

Check out more of our Disrupt coverage here: