Meet BriefSkate The First Team To Build A Product On The Startup Bus, And It Kicks Ass [SXSW]

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Briefskate team pitches at The Startup Bus Finals (photo: NMI 2013)

On Friday night at SXSW we attended the Startup Bus finals at the Rackspace lounge on 4th street in downtown Austin. We saw the best of the best from the teams that competed while traveling 60mph across the country, and from Mexico.

The teams competing in the finals came from the semi-finals when The Startup Bus busses parked in San Antonio on Thursday night. A Startup Bus alumni team also competed in Friday night’s finals.

They competed in front of a panel of judges which included Robert Scoble and Dave McClure.

One of the teams really impressed the judges and the nibletz team as well. In fact, Dave McClure immediately started taking pictures of the BriefSkate, skateboard with his iPhone as soon as the team put the skateboard on the stage.

BriefSkate is tackling a new issue. More and more people are resorting to skateboards, not just as a form of recreation, or to impress a bunch of hipster chicks with their skills, but for actual commuting. Turn to New York City, San Francisco, Chicago, Miami, Baltimore and of course Austin and you’ll see people actually commuting to work on a skateboard.

The BriefSkate Skateboard was created and prototyped in 72 hours (photo: NMI 2013)

So what has this team done to revolutionize skating? They had a skateboard built with a compartment to hold your laptop, papers, cell phones and chargers. The BriefSkate even has a handle so you can carry through the lobby at your Madison Avenue building like a brief case.

Every team had 4 minutes to pitch and 4 minutes for feedback but Scoble was so curious he gave the team an extra 30 seconds to explain just how they were able to get a product actually created in 72 hours.

The Briefskate team said on the first night they drew up the CAD drawings and emailed them off to a 3d printer. The 3D printer had to overnight the 3d mock up to the busses next overnight stop. With the 3D printed mock up in hand the team tweaked the design and shipped that off to a manufacturer in Florida, who returned the prototype via Fedex to the Rackspace headquarters so the team actually had a product.

The prototype is a little rough, it’s admittedly a little bit bigger than the team would like and the hinges are exposed as they would be on a cabinet, but nonetheless it is still a great idea that will most likely see the light of day.

Check out the video of The Startup Bus’ first product produced in three years below. And of course with a product built they already have a website up, you can find out more about BriefSkate here at briefskate.com

Like what you see, there’s much more SXSW2013 coverage here!

Move Over Mailbox, Taskbox Is Better For Us Working Folks [video][SXSW]

I’ve been pretty hard on the “Mailbox” app, and for good reason. In my opinion they had the best marketing I’ve ever seen (in 1 year with nibletz and 4 as thedroidguy) for any app release, ever. At the end though, the cute, hipster email sensation left me with email blue balls.

The Mailbox app prompted me to write this post “Am I the only one one earth who thinks Mailbox suck” two days before any other journalist stepped up and called them out. Finally, Nicholas Carlson at SAI posted his thoughts, that were inline with mine.

Low and behold, a messiah rose out of the email heavens on Friday afternoon at SXSW when Andrew Eye, the CEO at Taskbox pitched a new form of email, blending your email with your tasks in a way that’s natural for business. My only regret so far is not spending time with him on Thursday night on the ATX startup crawl, so I could have started to use Taskbox even earlier.

So in his pitch Eye reveals some interesting information that makes sense. With the rise in smartphones and the mobile first experience, people are checking their email 40% more by mobile than on a computer. My hand is raised on that one for sure. On the computer there are plenty of ways to delegate your email flow, on mobile not so much. On the Mailbox app, delegation just sucks.

Eye is no stranger to technology, he’s been a software architect for NASA and the U.S. Marines. Taskbox is also a Capital Factory startup, which just happens to be run by email startup king Joshua Baer.

So after using Taskbox for the last 18 hours or so and driving the crap out of it, here’s what I like.

deleting: even though its swipe deleting it doesn’t require that long press that Mailbox does, just swipe to the left real fast and it’s gone. It leaves a second ask up on the screen but if you’re deleting quickly once you swipe the next message the first is gone
calendar priority assignment. If you want to delegate an email for later in the day or week you can do it easily. You’re not just throwing it in a “later” bucket, you can assign a date. For example, I’ve gotten a bunch of emails during SXSW that I want to return when I get home, I just assign them for the day I’m home. They don’t sit in a later bucket with 100 other emails they go to the date I want. (it makes you look more punctual)
Folders, all of my gmail labels are in Taskbox, where Mailbox only had three labels and labels I didn’t use.

So if you fell for the Mailbox app like I did, I highly suggest you check out the right box, task box. Check out Eye’s pitch below from the SXSW panel “Startups Immune To The Series A Crunch”, and for more visit taskbox.co

We Caught Up With Fetchnotes At SXSW INTERVIEW

Last April we first started reporting on Ann Arbor Michigan startup Fetchnotes. This startup was born out of the University of Michigan which is where Co-Founders Alex Schiff and Chase Lee met.

While they are tons of note taking apps available, Fetchnotes secret sauce is that the app is based on how the user takes notes rather than having the app dictate how notes will be taken.

Fetchnotes allows the user to organize their notes by hashtag. The user can use any hashtag methodology they want and they can categorize notes with multiple hashtags. For instance Schiff explained that if he wanted to write a note on me he could code it email, nibletz, SXSW and I would be on his list of people he met at SXSW, he would know I’m from nibletz and that he should email me.

Fetchnotes is no longer a Michigan based startup. They relocated to Cambridge Massachusetts after going through the last session at TechStars Boston.

We got the lowdown on what’s new and exciting with Fetchnotes from Schiff. Check out the video interview below.

Find out more about Fetchnotes here.

More startup coverage at SXSW can be found here

Startups Immune To The Series A Crunch, Capital Factory Startup StormPulse [SXSW]

On Friday at SXSWi, Capital Factory hosted a pitch off featuring 6 startups that are “immune to the Series A crunch”. Despite the fact that all of the startups talked about raising a Series A round, the concept behind the pitch contest was that these 6 startups didn’t need a Series A to get to profitability.

Getting startups to profitability, rather than rolling the fundraising dice, is the backbone behind The Capital Factory, the biggest accelerator in Austin Texas and one of the driving forces behind the Austin startup community.

Capital Factory Managing Director, Joshua Baer, hosted and emceed the pitch contest, highlighting the fact that when startups can’t raise a series A they often times find themselves closing their doors.

While all accelerators would love to see their cohort startups raise additional funds, get to profitability and create jobs, Capital Factory hones in on what it will take to get them to profitability from the onset of the program.

Getting to profitability is actually a theme for Austin’s startup community, one that’s echoes from multiple points. In a panel earlier in the day, Austin angel Rick Timmons said “I ask each and every startup how they are going to get their first customer and get them to keep coming back”.

Storm Pulse was one of the six startups to pitch in this “Startups Immune To The Series A Crunch” pitch off. Their idea is great and could save companies hundreds of millions of dollars.

They take historical weather data, predictive weather data and a company’s supply chain data and put it all on a map. This shows their client companies the impact a natural disaster or other huge supply chain disruption, could have on their business and their bottom line.

Co-Founder and CEO Matt Wensing had some startling remaks in his presentation. One of those being, that 2012 was the worst year for natural disasters disrupting business since the 1970s.

Check out the pitch for this very interesting startup below and for more information visit stormpulse.com

We’ve got a whole lot more SXSW 13 Coverage here.

Chicago Startup Tackling Childhood Obesity Catches The First Lady’s Eye [SXSW]

Chicago entrepreneur, investor, community leader and organizer of Startup Grind, Tom Denison, had his biz dev hat on at the Interact Expo at SXSWi on Friday. Denison is also the VP of Marketing and Development for Chicago based Jive Health.

Jive Health is the developer of the game Jungo which aims to help prevent childhood obesity. According to the CDC approximately 12.5 million children are obese, and when there’s a problem, there’s a startup for that.

Jungo is a really cool interactive game where the child playing needs to make recipes in order to win. For instance, one of the recipes is peanut butter and apples. The game may already have virtual peanut butter, the child would then have to find an apple in their home and take a picture of it.

Jive Health’s founder, Dennis Ai, couldn’t make it to the IneractExpo at SXSW, despite the fact the event was co-sponsored by Andreessen Horowitz. He had an even more important audience on Friday, First Lady Michelle Obama. She is talking to technologists, entrepreneurs and founders who are tackling children’s health issues.

While they are attacking a nationwide problem of childhood obesity, Ai and Denison are also very active in the Chicago startup community. Denison is a startup community leader and the Chicago area organizer for Startup Grind.

In the video below we talk about Jungo, Jive Health, Chicago Startups and Startup Grind Chicago. Check out the video below and for more information on Jive Health click here and for Startup Grind Chicago click here.

No really we have a TON of SXSW 2013 coverage here

Interact Expo At Capital Factory: Crowdery Interview [video][sxsw]

It’s standing room only, for the second time in the last 12 hours, here at the capital factory in downtown Austin Texas. Last night The Capital Factory was one of the hosts for the ATX Startup Crawl. Today, they’ve teamed up with Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) to host the InteractExpo.

This event is showcasing the best of the best in early stage startups, really from across the country.

The first startup we caught up with is Crowdery.

Crowdery is a Dallas based startup that is big data disguised as what the cofounder Aditya Viswanathan calls “Hot or Not meets Groupon”.

His innovative platform allows ordinary customers of brands to engage with them by helping to select the next product. If the consumer votes for the product that actually gets released they get to purchase it at a discount.

The retailers and manufacturers get access to mountains of useful customer data that would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in focus groups.

Check out the video interview with Viswanathan below and for more info visit Crowdery.com

EdTech Startup MatchBox Lets Colleges Manage Applications On An iPad, SXSWedu Pitch Video

Stephen Marcus, the founder and CEO of Matchbox has created a product that colleges and universities are quickly adopting and loving. Matchbox is a complete solution that allows admissions staff to manage the applications process via an ipad app.

“For us, using Matchbox was a no brainer,” said Sundar Kumarasamy, vice president for enrollment management and marketing at the University of Dayton, in a prepared statement released by the company. “Matchbox provides us with an intuitive solution that empowers our readers to give each applicant the critical attention they deserve while saving us countless hours in the process.” EdTech times reported last July.

Matchbox and their new and innovative way to handle admissions, made it to the finals in the higher ed category at the LAUNCHedu startup showdown as part of SXSWedu earlier this week.

Although SpeakingPal was the ultimate winner in the HigherEd category, Mathbox still beat out 10 other high caliber startups targeting college students and educators.

Check out their pitch video from the finals on Wednesday afternoon. For more info on Matchbox and how it can help your admissions process, visit matchbox.net.

Check out more of our SXSW 2013 coverage here

Interview With Shari Wynne Founder & CEO Of Austin’s Incubation Station [SXSW]

The ATX Startup Crawl at SXSW 2013 brought us to the offices of Incubation Station, a consumer packaged goods accelerator program.

The program, founded by Shari Wynne, just announced it’s selections for their second cohort which runs from March 19th to June 11th. The session will close with a Showcase day that will attract hundreds.

Austin is on fire about this new CPG program. At their recent event to announced this year’s cohort it was standing room only. In a city known for it’s budding tech startup community, Incubation Station doesn’t do tech they focus on helping to build consumer packaged goods, and the program is working. Wynne told us in an interview that 5 out of 5 teams in the last cohort received the funding they needed to accelerate to the next level.

Wynne is no stranger to startups of the tech variety though. This firecracker woman who functions like a 25 year old caffeine filled founder, practiced law at two of the biggest firms in Washington DC. After that, she hung her shingle out and worked with the phone on the floor, to help bring legal services to entrepreneurs and startups. Her law firm, MWR, has the big firm experience with the boutique firm feel, and entrepreneurs love the attention she and her lawyers can give them.

As for the Incubation Station, check out the video interview with Wynne below and for more info visit theincubationstation.com

We’ve got a lot more SXSW coverage where this came from

Baltimore Startup Common Curriculum Has Disrupted Curriculum Writing [SXSW]

Teachers write between 200-800 lesson plans per year based on how many unique courses they teach. This was a major pain point for educators. Often times they would want to take one lesson and take part of it and incorporate it into another. This would be great if they could easily put their hands on that file.

In 2009 Baltimore math teacher Scott Messinger became fed up with the old way of planning curriculum. EdTech was poppin up everywhere at the student level, yet teachers were still writing lesson plans in Microsoft Word, or the old fashioned way, by hand.

Messinger taught himself to code over the next three years and started building what became Common Curriculum. According to whatweekly, in 2011 Robbie Earle joined Messinger as co-founder, after Education Hack Day.

They launched Common Curriculum back in August and this week they were a finalist at LAUNCHedu as part of SXSWedu.

We got a chance to catch up with Earle. Check out our video interview below.

Check out more of our SXSW 2013 Coverage here at nibletz.com

We Kicked Off The SXSW ATX Startup Crawl At Ordoro (Video) [SXSW]

Ordoro is an e-commerce business owners dream. Their suite of tools to help e-commerce professionals who actually ship products help save time and increase the bottom line.

Nibletz co-founder and CEO Nick Tippmann, owned an e-commerce business as a junior and senior in high school that made over six figures in his senior year, not too shabby for selling electronics out of his parent garage. When we first arrived at Ordoro and found out what they were all about Tippmann admitted he really could have used that in the early part of the 2000s.

The Austin based startup raised $1.2 million dollars in a Series A round last summer. A huge feat for a startup that was passed up for Capital Factory. Austinstartup.com reports that it’s no loss though because Capital Factory founders Joshua Baer and Bill Boebel participated in the round.

We started our trek on the ATX SXSW Startup Crawl at Ordoro and it was a pleasure meeting co-founders Jag Narayan and Naruby Schlenker. Schlenker took a few minutes with us to tell us all about Ordoro and how to say it like an Italian.

Check out the video below and for more visit ordoro.com

We’ve got a ton of SXSW 2013 coverage here.

Chicago EdTech Startup ThinkCerca Pitches At SXSWedu

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ThinkCera founder Eileen Murphy Buckley pitches at SXSWedu (photo: NMI 2013)

50 years ago, a student challenging a teacher would be cause for a good paddle beating or wrapping on the students fingers with a ruler. Today, not so much.

Argumentation is now at the core of the new Common Core State Standards, and distinguished Chicago educator, Eileen Murphy Buckley, understands that with a passion. As the former Director of Curriculum and Instruction for over 100 Chicago Public Schools, Buckley oversaw the implementation of this kind of curriculum system wide.

Now she’s turned these important fundamentals into ThinkCerca a platform that helps build students critical thinking ability.

With argumentation we’re not talking abut back talking the teacher, Buckley and progressive educators worldwide are teaching students how to create valid arguments about everything built on five principles; claim, evidence, reasoning, counter argument and audience.

“ThinkCERCA is harnessing the unique combination of deep subject area knowledge, hard-earned, pedagogical design skill, and research-based expertise to build a marketplace that will give school districts economic access to the world’s largest selection of high quality literacy lessons. Unlike a the limited selection available in a static textbook, our dynamic marketplace will offer a distribution channel for expert teachers to refresh and deepen the lesson library in ways that both students and teachers find valuable.” Buckley wrote in a guest post to Chicago based Technori.

ThinkCera made it to the final round in the LAUNCHedu startup showdown as part of SXSWedu in the K-12 category.

Check out their pitch below:

SXSW team coverage from nibletz.com can be found here.

Danish Startup Papyrs Lets You Drag And Drop To Create Intranets

Unless you’re a technology startup, most small businesses don’t have the luxury of having a designer on staff. This can become a real pain for business owners when they need their own internal websites, or intranets, created.

Business owners could try and find a developer but that can prove to be a costly process. There are also plenty of do it yourself web building tools. Papyrs takes the ease of creation one step further by allowing the creator to simply drag and drop widges for files, discussions, social media,forms and more.

“Papyrs is in between a wiki and a database. And users don’t have to know anything about (markup) languages or technology. It’s all really pretty intuitive.” co-founder Diederik van Houten told nibletz.com in an interview.

“We tried a lot of products to help us collect, organize, and search through all our business information (the standard mix of Word and Excel documents, and email becomes painful quickly) but none of the existing products out there hit the sweet spot. We understand that an intranet should be built (mostly) by the people who use it daily: different companies have different needs, and the users know what they need for their job. So Papyrs allows people to easily drag&drop the widgets they need onto a page to solve the problems they have during their day. And with Papyrs you can find everything back instantly because we have great search and intuitive navigation between pages.” van Houten said.

There are plenty of quick website building platforms out there but most deal in templates. Papyrs allows the creator to get a little more creative and utilize more resources that may already exist in the company, like forms, and other creative elements.

Automation and measurement are what really set Papyrs apart from similar platforms. van Houten added “The trick is to automate the right things. It’s easy to waste a day automating a task that cost 5 minutes a week. It’s also easy to postpone automating something that doesn’t feel like a big drain on your time or attention, but is.”

“Measurement is critical because our intuitions are often wrong and sometimes *really* wrong. It’s easy to spend a week or more working on a feature nobody cares about. So nowadays we collect anonymous statistics This makes it much easier to make decisions. In the absence of good data we tend to debate the pros and cons of the different approaches in front of us. With enough data we can skip the debate and make the right decision immediately.”

What are some milestones you’ve achieved?

With Papyrs we reached a bunch of big milestones. The first major milestone was when the alpha version was barely good enough to be used by ourselves and we started putting all our company data into it. That’s when Papyrs got the its first users: us. The second milestone was the private Beta. That’s when we invited a few thousand people to try our product, kick the tires and tell us which parts make sense and which don’t. The third milestone was when we got our first paying customer. Even though the first customers pay only a symbolic amount of money, there’s still no other feeling quite like it. Another milestone was when Papyrs revenue exceeded that of our first product Thymer.

What’s your next milestone?

We just integrated Papyrs with Zapier, launched the Papyrs API, created functionality for Importing data from Backpack, made user activity graphs available to our larger customers and more.

There are a number of things on the road map, but we’re not giving out the specifics just yet. We’re working on improvements Papyrs Forms, we’re going to add a few frequently requested widgets and we’re working on an Affiliate program. This way our users can make some money by recommending Papyrs to friends and colleagues in other organizations.

Where can people find out more

You can read more about Papyrs on the website www.papyrs.com, and we have a company blog www.stunf.com. Finally, we tweet @stunf. We love to talk to people from the startup community and aspiring entrepreneurs. So if you just want to say hello or grab a coffee with one of us, just let us know at team@stunf.com.

Flinja The Place To Find Free Lance Ninjas SXSWedu Video Interview

There are so many reasons we like Flinja. First off, their name is short for Freelance Ninja, and any startup with the word Ninja in it rocks. Secondly they are connecting college students with ways to make money by sharing their service as free-lancers with college alumni.

The startup, founded by Rebecca Bahr and Victor Young, is a market place for current college students to find free-lance employment opportunities from alumni. Bahr says they’ve pivoted several times. When they first set out on the free lance ninja concept the platform was closed to each students actual school. Well Bahr, who went to college in Montreal, found it hard to find people to connect with when she needed a service provider in California.

Now, any college student can be a service provider to any college graduate from any school in their network.

Students are utilizing Flinja to offer videography services, photography services, wedding planning services, tutoring in a variety of subjects and anything else that they could do for others for a little money on the side (legal of course).

The hope is that the alumni or college graduates that hire the students as freelancers may be a gateway to more stable employment.

The Flinja marketplace is self contained. When a college graduate is looking for a service provider they can search through Flinja, see a provider (students) feedback and ratings, set up the service, agree to pay and actually finish the transaction. Flinja takes a small percentage from the person hiring, not from the college student.

UCLA was the first school to adopt the Flinja platform. Students are being hired as videographers, editors and tutors.

Flinja is a finalist in the LAUNCHedu competition at SXSWedu in the higher education category. They will appear in the showdown later this week.

Check out our video interview with Bahr below and for more info visit flinja.com

We’ve got more SXSWedu coverage here.

Startup Weekend Education Movie Debuts At SXSWedu

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(l to r: Chapman Snowden (Kinobi/Startup Weekend EDU), Adam Stelle (COO Startup Weekend), Vinny Verma (1887 Films) photo: NIM 2013)

Startup Weekend Education is a 54 hour long event that utilizes the same startup hacking weekend format that traditional Startup Weekend events use. They’ve been held all over the country, including Silicon Valley, New York, DC, and Florida. There have also been several successful Startup Weekend Education events overseas.

The movie, produced by Vinnny Verma of 1887 films, chronicles Startup Weekend Education events in Silicon Valley and New York City.

In New York, the focal point is Kevin Tame, who taught 8th grade math at Booker T Washington middle school in Baltimore Maryland. The idea for his startup Student Dashboard, is that kids don’t like to spend time logging into all the various apps and platforms they need for school.

Tame felt that if he could simplify the process he would give back a much needed commodity, time, and not only to the students but the teachers as well.

On the west coast the film turns to Rob Schwartz a 16 year educator and principal. His problem was that students and teachers need better ways to produce and consume content. His startup, MySciHigh went on to win the Silicon Valley event and is now in 35 schools across the country.

The movie was screened as part of the SXSWedu event at the legendary Alamao Draft House and Theater.

Startup Weekend’s COO Adam Stelle, Verma and Chapman Snowden of Kinobi and Starutp Weekend Edu all participated in a panel discussion after the viewing.

One thing that caught my eye was during the film Tame had said that he had gone to the NY event only to work on his project and didn’t want to work on any other project. This actually goes against the grain of traditional Startup Weekend events. We’ve been to over 60 Startup Weekend’s and at those events entrepreneurs are encouraged to stay and participate whether their idea is picked for building or not.

Stelle explained that at Startup Weekend Edu the hackers are actually teachers, and many come in specifically to get help “scratching their own itch.” Verma said that he had actually spent time contemplating this issue and went with it because if fit with Tame’s character.

Regardless, the movie was a great look at what happens when you get people together working on common problems.

“We’re too concerned about talking about the problem than real world action,” Tame said in the film in regards to teaching. He went on to say that at the Startup Weekend edu event people were talking about problems and solutions.

Tame’s team didn’t have a designer or a developer. Tame and a partner ended up hacking together the entire idea, and a pitch deck with one minute to spare.

Tame has transitioned from a Teach For America corps teacher to the organizations Director of Design and Technology, moving to this position in part because of his involvement with Startup Weekend edu.

The movie, which is finally edited down and ready to go, will be online and shown at several startup events across the country.

To find out more about how to host a Startup Weekend event in your city visit startupweekend.org

Find more of our Startup Weekend coverage here.