Memphis Woman Takes Her Startup Pink Robin Avenue From 48 Hour Launch To Black Enterprise Pitch Finals

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.

Check out Pink Robin Avenue here.

We’ve been tracking Inez and Pink Robin Avenue since day 1 find out more here at nibletz.com

This Startup From The British Countryside Pays You To Search! [video][disrupt]

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

Brazilian Entrepreneur Leaves Finance World To Launch Art Startup [video][Disrupt]

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

We’ve got a ton more coverage of startups everywhere else, from TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013.

No Really Dialexa Is The Most Bad Ass Startup In Dallas

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

We’ve got over 25 more startup stories from TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013 here at nibletz.com the voice of startups everywhere else.

Memphis Answers Call To Task On Women Entrepreneurs With Upstart Accelerator

On Tuesday at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013, Alexia Tstotsis got some of the more influential names in the tech/vc community to talk about women entrepreneurs and venture capital. David Tisch offered this tidbit in regards to what really pisses him off when VCs are talking to women. Aaref Hilaly (Sequoia) offered this opinion on why there is such a divide. Hilaly also called everyone to task to help increase the number of women entrepreneurs ready for venture funding.

While startup communities everywhere are starting to embrace and cultivate their women entrepreneurs. One startup community in particular has taken a very proactive role.

Eric Mathews, Andre Fowlkes and Elizabeth Lemmonds the team behind Launch Your City and Launch Memphis started a women’s initiative in 2012 called Upstart. Upstart is a multifaceted initiative with their latest phase coming into fruition now. It began with a meetup group, office hours for women entrepreneurs and a 48 Hour launch event for women founders.

Upstart is just one of the many startup community initiatives that Launch Your City has developed. They are also responsible for Seed Hatchery, a general tech accelerator that is two weeks away from their third graduation (demo day). Interestingly enough there are two startups in the class of six that have women founders; Boosterville and Mentor Me. A third woman entrepreneur, Rachel Hurley, started as a co-founder for one startup, Soundstache and has since segued to another team, Musistic. Hurley has always been active in the Launch Memphis startup community and took the challenge to apply to this years Seed Hatchery class.

In addition to all of this, Lemmonds, served as the moderator for the “Kick Ass Female Founders From Everywhere Else” at the everywhereelse.co inaugural conference. It was there and on a trip to Silicon Valley that Lemmonds continued to forge relationships with women entrepreneurs across the country, some of which will serve as mentors for the upcoming first session at Upstart.

The Upstart Accelerator basically starts as soon as Seed Hatchery graduates. The application deadline is May 24th and the application can be found here.Those accepted will be notified by May 31st. The session starts in Memphis at the Launch Your City Launch Pad on June 20th and runs until October 3rd.

Upstart participants will get access to the four M’s, mentors, milestones, money and Memphis. The Upstart team is encouraging women led startups from across the country and around the world to consider their program. Memphis is a great place to launch startups, cost of living is incredibly low and the startup community is close knit and growing. And YES their can be men on the team as well, but one of the cofounders must be a woman.

You can find out more here at upstartmemphis.com

See why this woman, and her husband, the founding CTO at Cha-Cha moved to Memphis for an acceleartor.

Pittsburgh Startup PayTango Will Make Sure You Never Lose Your Wallet Again

Last month we brought you this story about Pittsburgh startup, turned Y-Combinator company, PayTango. They were one of the first in the biometric wallet space.

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

We’ve got more startup coverage from TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013 here.

If You Lose It, Chicago Startup Crowdfynd Wants To Help You Find It

Lost and found is pretty boring and in a lot of respects, un-effective says Pinaki Saha CTO and co-founder of Chicago startup Crowdfynd. Currently, the traditional vehicles for lost and found are not nearly as effective as they could be using the broad scope and reach of the internet.

Unfortunately too many of us know the ritual of printing out signs for a lost dog or cat and stapling them to every tree and lamp post in the neighborhood. We also know too well that losing something of value can prove fruitless unless you happen to stumble upon some very honest people. In other cases, items that some people have lost are extremely valuable to them, and could be perceived as junk to others.

Sure there is a lost and found section on Craigslist but even the most regular of Craigslist users don’t check that section everyday. So why not create an app for that.

That’s what Crowdfynd is all about. It’s a social platform and community using the crowd to help locate the things you lose or find. It can also be used for crime reporting.

How it works.

Using your iPhone or Android device you can report things you’ve lost or found. You can upload pictures of the lost item if you have them, or pictures of where you think you may have lost an item. You can also upload pictures of things you find. Crowdfynd connects the finders and the losers to make a match and get things back to where they belong.

Saha says that Crowdfynd offers social, local, mobile and 3.0 components to make it stick. They also have a reward platform as well. People who lose items can offer a reward and collect it through the system insuring the safe return of the item. Saha has found people are offering rewards in the hundreds of dollars. He says that cat owners are offering rewards in the thousands of dollars.

They also have an offline hybrid where someone who loses something can print out signs to hang up in the neighborhood that directs them back to their Crowdfynd page.

People are chiming in because there’s a “Goodwill” factor about helping people. Crowdfynd is also hoping to partner with businesses too like cab companies, airports, hotels and restaurants where people are known to lose things. They hope by building up their network that they can be the one destination for people who lose and find things.

In order to do this though, Crowdfynd is going to need to build tremendous scale, very quickly. Saha says they’re prepared for that and have a lot of money they are going to invest in marketing and getting the name out there. They plan on unveiling the service in Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco to compliment their first market, and their home market, Chicago.

Check out our video interview with Saha below and for more information visit crowdfynd.com

You can find more of our startup coverage from TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013 here.

Mobile Polling Done Right, Check Out 1776 DC Startup YoPine [interview]

When our good friend Donna Harris left Startup America earlier this year we were really excited about what her and Washington DC Startup America Champion Evan Burfield were going to build. Now 1776 is a reality and the nation’s capital, and the nation for that matter are talking about it.

Back in March we brought you an interview with “Her Story” our first 1776 interview.

For those not in the know 1776 is Washington DC’s new startup and entrepreneurial epicenter. Think event space, co-working space, and incubator. 1776 is the heart of DC startups, in fact DC Mayor Vince Gray sported a 1776 T-Shirt while perusing SXSWi.

While 1776 is on this leg of the sneaker strapped startup road trip we were ecstatic to meet quite a few DC entrepreneurs who roam the halls of DC’s new startup space. Our good friend Brian Park with Startup Grind DC, was volunteering at Disrupt. He holds the Startup Grind DC events at 1776.

We also met Kevin Ostrowski and Gary Mendel, who’s startup YoPine is a resident at 1776. Kevin is still based in New York but Gary works out of 1776 which is where YoPine is officially headquartered.

YoPine is the first (of many) mobile apps that do polling correctly.

How does it work?

Say you want to find the best place to watch the Washington Redskins play on any given Sunday. Typically if you sent out a group text you would get 100-300 messages back with most people taking 3 or 4 texts just to answer the question. Then you would have to circle back with all of those texts and keeping that organized can be a complete mess.

With YoPine you simply ask your contacts through the YoPine app. If your contacts have YoPine they will answer via app and if they don’t they can answer via text message and mobile website.

You set up the question, input some possible answers, select the contacts you want to poll and hit send. Voila, you’ll get the results you’re looking for quickly. You can then send the results back out to everyone that participated.

YoPine’s UI and functionality are much better than any of the “hot or not” clones we’ve seen to date. There is huge potential in the platform. We’re sure there’s a reason that a social polling platform is headquartered in the political capital of the world (wink,wink). Check out our interview with Kevin from TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013 below. You can find out more at YoPine.com

So yeah we’ve got A TON of startup stories from TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013.

Enigma Reinvents Public Data And Wins TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield

Public data is a huge gigantic mess. Some municipalities offer everything in indexed searchable sites, while others send you cd roms of property values and tax records. Still, some municipalities require that you go down to their town hall or courthouse and sift through filing cabinets as if they’re trapped in the 1970s.

Cumulatively you’re talking about 100’s of millions if not millions of records of data, and none if it’s uniform. It’s possibly the largest big data project in the world. An ambitious project, taken on by Hicham Oudghiri and Marc DaCosta co-founder sof Enigma.io, as well as CEO Jeremy Bronfmann.

There are mountains upon mountains of public data. What is “public data” it’s really determined by the municipalities themselves. For instance, tax records, property records, marriage licenses, etc are just about public data in every town and city across the country and around the world. In some municipalities though, restaurant food scores, public transportation records and even dog licenses are considered public data.

Sure there are scammy data sites that off-shoot to wanna be background reports, but Enigma is out to do something bigger. They want to create an entire new layer of the internet in the next five years.

Enigma has already raised $1.1 million dollars in seed funding from Triple Point Ventures, CrossLink Capital, and angels like YouTuber Brent Hurley. They’ve also inked some important partnerships with Harvard Business School, Gerson Lehrman Group (a research firm), S&P Capital IQ and The New York Times.

One of the challenges Enigma faces is the rapid rate at which more and more data is released to the public. Yet another thing that Bronfmann says their team is ready for.

Enigma started to amass this huge collection of data by sending a ton of Freedom of Information Act requests. They’ve had to compile the data in one simple, easy to use format even though it comes in a variety of sources. Bronfmann told us in an interview that some data even comes on “print outs”.

The scope of what Enigma is looking to achieve along with the powerhouse team and the work they’ve done to date, was enough for them to win the TechCrunch Battlefield competition on Wednesday. That honor comes with a $50,000 non-equity prize and of course startups that have won in the past like UberConference and GetAround, have gone on to raise huge rounds.

Check out our interview with Bronfmann below and sign up for more info about Enigma here at enigma.io.

See how this Cincinnati startup went from Startup Weekend to TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield.

10 Ways Subscription Sales Can Increase Your Startups’ Sales

TRY TO BUNDLE AND FINANCE

“Consider bundling your products into groups of commonly utilized items, and offering your customers the chance to pay for a “package” on a monthly basis rather than all at once. For example, If your average client buys 10 widgets a year for a total of $110, offer a package of 10 widgets for only $9 per month. Basically, you’re offering in-house financing. People love that sort of thing.”

– Robert Sofia | Co-Founder & COO, Platinum Advisor Strategies

PRODUCT OF THE MONTH CLUB

“Subscription plans that automate sales are a great way to get your product out to raving fans regularly. Whether it’s a cupcake, T-shirt or fabric of the month, giving regular access to your new and best sellers can build anticipation and brand loyalty.”

– Kelly Azevedo | Founder, She’s Got Systems

INCENTIVIZE GIFTING TO OTHERS

“We have a “Mod of the Month Club” where customers choose any one of our watches for a heavily discounted price (30-45 percent off retail). We always make sure to thank these members by offering them first-looks at our new merchandise. The best perk: we offer an extra strap ($15-$20 value) in the package when customers tell us they are “gifting” the watch, gaining us new customers monthly!”

– Aaron Schwartz | Founder and CEO, Modify Watches

USE MEMBERSHIPS TO CURATE

“Subscriptions and memberships are a great way to offer customers the best of the best — wines handpicked by the best sommelier or this season’s must-have shoes chosen by a Hollywood stylist. Combine subscriptions with curators to offer customers the best of your selection.”

– Laura Roeder | Founder, LKR Social Media

HELP YOUR CUSTOMERS USE YOUR PRODUCTS

“Customers come back to companies whose products and services they use. A membership program that helps a client actually learn how to effectively use what they’ve bought makes it more likely that they’ll come back to you. That can include offering case studies, in-depth training and support far beyond the typical user’s manual.”

– Thursday Bram | Consultant, Hyper Modern Consulting

PROMOTE ACTION AMONG YOUR MEMBERS

“By positioning your membership or subscription as the best way to take action, you’ll inspire people to join. Very few things motivate people as much as spending money. If they are spending $50/month on your service, most people will actually do something with it, thus see results. These positive results become the best testimonials you’ll ever receive.”

– Sean Ogle | Founder, Location 180, LLC

START TO SUBSCRIBE AND SAVE

“Follow Amazon’s lead and implement a ‘Subscribe and Save’ program, where you give customers a discount for setting up a subscription. It’s an added convenience for the customer and it’s a nice revenue stream for the business.”

– Josh Weiss | Founder and President, Bluegala

CREATE COMMUNITY MASTERMINDS

“If you already have customers that are willing to pay for your products, there is an opportunity in bringing all of your customers together to share their ideas and network. By creating some sort of forum or mastermind platform, all of your customers will be able to enjoy an uncontested level of product support, fresh ideas, and new opportunities through your community.”

– Logan Lenz | Founder / President, Endagon

PICK YOUR PROBLEMS WISELY

“Examples of subscription services with high lifetime customer values include hosting, email marketing, and other self-service apps. The key to them is that they solve an ongoing problem. In other words, you don’t just need hosting for your website next week, you need it all the time! So, pair your product with a subscription that makes sense. For instance, web design and web maintenance packages.”

– Matthew Ackerson | Founder, Saber Blast

EVERY COMPANY IS A MEMBERSHIP!

“The key to long-term sales growth is developing a loyal customer base that you can tap into in order to sell new products and add-ons. And the best way to build customer loyalty is with a rewards program. Whether with points used to redeem reward items or randomly distributed benefits, any merchant can convert its customer list into a membership.”

– Michael Tolkin | CEO, Merchant Exchange

You can find more startup tips here at nibletz.com The Voice Of Startups Everywhere Else.

WebKite Can Help You Easily Create A Kayak For Anything

Pittsburgh entrepreneur and angel investor, Eric Silver, was in the Startup Alley at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013 on Tuesday showing off his latest startup called WebKite. The idea behind WebKite is to aggregate data in a comparative analysis format enabling anyone who wants to create a site like kayak.com, do just that.

Silver and his team noticed the value in comparative data sites like Kayak but quickly realized there weren’t more of them because the back end coding and data aggregation is a long lengthy process. They’ve simplified that process by allowing anyone to create a comparative data site.

As Silver explains in the video below, the data can come from a variety of sources, API’s, spreadsheets and data scrapes just to name a few.

Once the data is put in it’s output is fully customizable, easily updatable and comparable. For the example at their Disrupt booth they showed off a site that compares juicers. With this particular “kite” when new juicers are added to shopping.com or Amazon.com they are automatically added to the juicer site.

It seems that Silver has found a hole and was willing to put his money where his mouth is. He is the principal with alt-capital which invests in early stage startups. He invested in ModCloth and has also founded a startup called Pikimal that has since pivoted to WebKite.

Pikimal is a decision making platform that makes fact based recommendations over a wide range of categories. The startup was growing fast, until the “Google Panda” changes back in February 2011 just about crippled it.

Silver, a Peace Corps alum, is a natural born problem solver who had the patience and foresight to solve his Pikimal problem. What he decided to do was pivot to offering the technology that Pikimal was built on, as a white label service, and eventually turning it into the WebKite product we saw at Disrupt.

It’s not sexy or a cool new social food restaurant finding comparison app in the cloud, but if Silver executes on this the way it looks, WebKite could be one of the biggest things to come out of TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013.

Check out our video interview with Silver below, you can check out WebKite here.

Here’s more great startup coverage from TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013

EatWith Is The AirBnB For Dinner Parties. Watch Their TechCrunch Disrupt Pitch Here

Eatwith was one of the TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield participants on Tuesday afternoon. This exciting new startup is like the AirBnB for dinner parties. Guy Michlin, the CEO of EatWith discovered that eating at a complete strangers home, while traveling, was one of the best ways to experience what the locals have to offer.

“The inspiration for EatWith came while I was travelling in Greece and had the opportunity to share a meal with the Papadakis family. It was a wonderful opportunity to experience authentic local food with a local family that made me feel at home. The food was tastier, the location more interesting, and the experience was by far the highlight of my trip, ” Michlin said in a statement Tuesday morning.

“When I came back home, I did some research and saw that this dining experience exists today all over the world but it’s hard to find and there’s no consistency or feedback for you to know which hosts to trust. I realized that there was a real opportunity to build an online platform that enables people all over the world to connect around the dining table and have a similarly unique experience.”

Michlin said that on that trip to Greece he and his wife wanted to find the unique places that locals ate at but towards the end of the trip they had eaten at every “tourist trap” in Greece. So he asked a complete stranger on the street “where do the locals eat”. The bewildered stranger looked back at Michlin and said “at home”. Thus the idea was born.

Eatwith allows amateur chefs and cooks to share their homes for a meal with complete strangers and make a little money on the side. The startup is insured and vets the diners so that there is minimal risk. It’s a lot safer than say advertising a dinner party on Craigslist.

Michlin saw the service take off in it’s beta testing stage, but what he didn’t expect was that locals were actually signing up as well and they were dining out multiple times each month, using the Eatwith platform.

The platform provides guests with a beautifully designed site that allows them to easily find a local host. The site features a wealth of information about each host including information about the food, the location, and the price of the meal allowing guests a perfect experience catered to their needs. Mirroring this is a set of tools that hosts can leverage to share information about their offering and attract guests.

Some of the most important elements of the service are the processes and tools created by EatWith to ensure the trust and safety of both its guests and hosts. This includes a vetting process for hosts by the EatWith community, the EatWith Guarantee — third party insurance coverage, and a ratings and reviews system.

When it came time for judging David Tisch asked Michlin how many times people were expected to open up their homes to strangers. He seemed shocked when Michlin reported some hosts were hosting 4-6 times a month. Tisch felt that with 72 dinners a year, isn’t that in itself becoming a “tourist trap”.

Michlin shook that question off and powered forward through the rest of the questioning. Overall it’s a new innovative way of getting to know people, trying new things and for the hosts, perfecting their culinary skills on new diners they couldn’t otherwise cook for.

Check out their pitch video below and for more information visit eatwith.com

See even more of our startup coverage from TechCrunch Disrupt here.

This Berlin Startup Has A Great Idea But Is The US Patient Enough For It?

A startup from Berlin Germany called ParkTag came out to TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013 all decked out to draw attention to their startup. Parktag is a peer 2 peer social parking application.

Here’s how it works:

You’ve parked in a public parking spot and gone into your favorite restaurant for lunch. When you are getting ready to finish lunch you go to ParkTag and let the app know you’re about to leave your parking spot and where it is.

Someone who is in the area and needs the spot will see that your spot is coming available. They go to the spot and wait for you to arrive and move out of the spot.

Once you pull out, they pull in, in what ParkTag calls the “Handoff”.

When the new person parks their car, they send you a thank you and voila they have a parking spot. Users can earn point by making the transactions as smooth as possible.

ParkTag is up and running in Europe where they say people love it. Things could be a lot different in Europe but I’m not sure that drivers in the U.S. have the patience to effectively use ParkTag. There’s a good chance that while you’re waiting for the spot you would block traffic and people would quickly become frustrated with you.

Without building immense scale people in the US aren’t going to understand that you reserved the spot via the app.

ParkTag doesn’t seem to have those problems in other countries. I’m very interested to see how it turns out if they do come to the US.

Check out the video interview and learn more about this great idea below.

3DLT From Startup Weekend To TechCrunch Battlefield

Pablo Arellano Jr is serious about starutps and entrepreneurship. How serious? Well he just went through Arkansas’ Ark Challenge accelerator with one idea, pitched a different idea (3DLT) at Startup Weekend Cincinnati last summer, is a startup event organizer and the Startup Digest curator for Cincinnati, Arkansas and Northern Kentucky.

We met Arellano at Startup Weekend Cincinnati last summer. It was there that his idea for a “99 designs for 3D printing” was born. Naturally with 3D printing being such a hot space it was selected to build over Startup Weekend and they came in second.

Arellano kept pushing and while he was in the Ark Challenge program with his other starutp he met the rest of his 3DLT team. They realized quickly they were onto something extremely hot. When Ark Challenge closed out Arellano and his teammates returned to Cincinnati where they are housed at the new Cintrifuse incubator. One of their biggest mentors and advisors is Rob MacDonald, co-founder of Cincinnati’s “The Brandery” as well as the son of the sitting CEO at Proctor & Gamble.

In February the team from 3DLT won a spot onto the Battlefield Stage at an event in New York City. From there it went into hyper mode so that they could pull off a great pitch and get ready to serve the public. For their big kick off Arellano is giving away $10,000,000 worth of memberships on the site right now.

3DLT has evolved from a simple place to buy 3D templates to a marketplace for both templates, and eventually goods that a consumer can produce in their home.

In the feedback section, David Tisch was concerned that Arellano didn’t talk enough about the business, “Why did you just spend 6 minutes talking about 3d printing and not your business.”.

Other than that hiccup the team seemed to have good answers, but overall the truth of the matter is that 3D printing is on fire, just six months ago it was unheard of to have a 3D printer in the home. On the way to New York I saw an at home 3D Printer in the SkyMall magazine for under $1000 and Arellano told me there was a kit to build a 3D printer at home for under $200.

The team at 3DLT sees a time coming, sooner rather than later, when people will be able to create products they need or want in the home. Toys, shoes, sunglasses, cups, plates and other items will be cheaper or easier to produce in home rather than travelling down the road for WalMart.

President Barrack Obama said 3D printing was a gamechanger, and Arellano didn’t let that slide, a video clip of that speech was in his presentation.

If they keep their fingers crossed 3DLT could end up finishing in the top 3. They’re ready for the 3D world and no Zach Sims, there aren’t any other platforms out there like 3DLT, we checked.

Here’s Arellano pitching 3DLT at Startup Weekend last summer:

3DLT made it from a Friday pitch at Startup Weekend, to this, pitching on the TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield stage.

Here’s more awesome startup coverage from everywhere else, at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013.