iGrabber Is The Kayak For Car Shopping

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iGrabber team shows off at everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference (photo: Allie Fox, for NMI)

When it’s time to shop for a new car there are hundreds of websites to go to and a handful of sites that everyone trusts. When it gets down to comparison shopping though, your web browser, or multiple browsers can turn into a huge, unorganized mess. If there was a simpler way to comparison shop for cars, similar to the way you can shop for travel through Kayak.com, it would make the hassle of finding the next automobile much easier.

That’s the idea behind Northern Virginia based iGrabber. Founded by Khurrum Shakir, Abdul-Malik Ahmad, Deepak Pillai and Ronald Fraser, this talented group of tech savy car aficianados, knew there was a better way. In fact, Shakir, told nibletz.com earlier this year that he was surprised no one had tried to do a search engine, comparison platform like this before.

“iGrabber.com takes the frustration out of searching multiple sites for your next car, truck or SUV. We’re the only True Vehicle Search Engine on the web. Taking the Google and Kayak approach we’ve made the process of searching for your next vehicle much easier. Unlike a lot of the Auto sites on the web that only show vehicle listings from within their database we will show you everyone’s vehicle listings in one site.” Shakir said.

iGrabber is built around the fact there are currently 7.7 million duplicate unique visitors every month searching for a vehicle of choice. These numbers account for repetition across up to 6 different sites. With iGrabber one site grabs all of the possible car choices and then lets you compare them the way you would compare cameras on bestbuy.com or travel on kayak.com “We have what some have coined as the Kayak of vehicle search.” Shakir told us.

Building iGrabber hasn’t been easy. To date the startup hasn’t raised any venture capital, bootstrapping it through launch. Shakir added, “We have been completely self-funded, mainly working out of a small home office and jumping from local coffee shops to local pizza restaurants within the Northern Virginia area holding our team meetings. ”

If iGrabber can get the word out to the over 7 million people searching multiple sites to comparison shop for cars, this could be a lucrative business. What do you think?

Visit iGrabber online here.

iGrabber was one of nearly 100 exhibitors at everywhereelse.co 2013, don’t miss next years conference at this years rates, more here

Memphis’ ZeroTo510 Accelerator Opens Applications For 2013

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Shawn Flynn, co-founder of Restore Medical Solutions, pitches at ZeroTo510 investor day, a pitch that led to $2.5 Million dollars in follow on funding (photo: NMI)

Last year, the inaugural Zeroto510 medical device accelerator was met with phenomenal success. Five out of the six participating teams received follow on funding. Four of the teams received $100,000 dollars. The fifth team, Restore Medical Solutions, went straight to raising a Series A round at $2.5 million.

With results like those, medical device startups across the country are feverishly preparing to submit their applications for the next cohort. One of the secrets to the success of the Zeroto510 program is that it is a joint venture between Launch Your City’s Seed Hatchery accelerator and Memphis Bioworks. Bioworks supplies the lab space, and the deep rooted scientific and engineering mentorship. Launch Your City comes in with the curriculum to prepare the startups for pitching and success on the business side of the world.

When compared to other medical based accelerator and incubation programs, Zeroto510, through their unique partnership, is able to get their startup founders to communicate and pitch at a level understandable to the traditional investor, media and public. In a medically based program, founders and entrepreneurs with scientific and engineering backgrounds tend to get the science, and not necessarily the business.

Bioworks is able to offer a bridge from the surrounding medical community including St. Jude’s, Methodist, Vanderbilt University, the University of Memphis and other high ranking leaders in science and medicine, to offer hands on mentorship to refine these great ideas.

Zeroto510 gets it’s name from the FDA’s 510(k) pre-market notification filing. In laymen’s terms this filing allows medical device companies, with similar technology to something that has gone through FDA approval, to fast track a process which can sometimes take 3-5 years.

Six companies will be selected for the 2013 program. Each company will receive $50,000 in initial seed capital and be part of an intensive, mentorship driven 12 week program of instruction and hands on activities to guide the entrepreneurs through the process.

One of the other factors that makes Zeroto510 successful is the cohort size. By having a smaller group, the same size as the tech accelerator Seed Hatchery, the teams get to know each other better and collaborate more meaningfully. Last years program only featured one Memphis based startup. The other five startups relocated to Memphis for the program and are still, growing their companies in Memphis.

“We received applications from across the United States, carefully selected our six
participants and were very pleased with the quality of their ideas, the spirit of comradery that developed, the levels of learning, and, in the end, with the final presentations that resulted in additional funding. We expect even higher quality in 2013.” said Allan Daisley, director of entrepreneurship and sustainability for Memphis Bioworks.

If you’ve got a medical device startup head over to apply here at zeroto510.com

London Startup Wants To Know What Float’s Your Goat

File this under: startups with kick ass names. What’s more is that London based startup Float Your Goat has already attracted over 350 freelancers to their network that connects freelancers to their powerful social network.

Float Your Goat is a social workplace where creative people can network, build teams, grow ideas, and earn money. To date there are 367 freelancers in the network and some of them have been rates as part of the top 100 designers in the UK by The Drum.

The site connects graphic artists, illustrators, photographers, web designers, copywriters, animators and more, not just to each other, but to businesses and other colleagues that have projects that need a designer now.

Float Your Goat was founded by Emeline Wraith who appropriately took the title of “Chief Goat Herder”. The idea for Float Your Goat came up in 2010 as part of “Dragon’s Den” (American’s think Shark Tank) style competition called Dream Big.

“The dream was to create and promote fair, honest and open relationships between clients and freelancers, encouraging the idea of remote working and offering a social media platform for freelancers to share their ideas, tips and tricks as well as showcase their work.” Wraith told nibletz.com in an interview. “We are keen advocates of the idea of remote working; internet access, a laptop and a creative mind is all you need to freelance, and this is something we wanted to promote. Equally, we wanted to be able to cut out the middle man and offer affordable and fair services for all parties involved!”

With a variety of free lancers at different levels and rates, Float Your Goat is perfect for small businesses, large businesses, individuals, and of course startups. Since it’s 2013 and everyone is using the internet anyway, it’s very easy for a startup in Boise Idaho to connect with a designer on Float Your Goat. In fact that startup plans on growing without geographic borders.

Float Your Goat is just as effective for recruiters and those with projects as it is for freelancers.

“For recruiters, With the site’s search engine and rating system in place, clients can easily browse freelancers’ portfolios, testimonials and references, and so find the right person with the right skills to fulfil their needs. Perfect for any ad hoc work!” Wraith said. She’s also hoping that Float Your Goat will become agency executives’ “little black book”.

Now with a solid community growing Float Your Goat is launching a campaign geared towards startups.

“Float Your Goat have just founded a new campaign called Startups 4 Startups (SUSU), a meaningful network of creative startups that, together, delivers selective areas of expertise to nurture, collaborate and develop new business propositions into a working reality. We want to demonstrate the development of a startup from inception to launch, taking a fledgling company and making it fly.

Startups 4 Startups (SUSU) consists of five partners which, when combined, provide a 360 degree service and the necessary elements to help a new business succeed, from business development and financial management to design, print, PR and online presence. Float Your Goat, Incisive London, EML Wildfire, Print My Pixel and People Of Print each offering a different angle and a different skill set to be used both within and outside the creative community. Together we provide the knowledge and ability required for business to business propositions and supply the creative services needed for success.

Each of the partners is either a start up themselves or a collaborator with startups. Through Startups 4 Startups, each will give an understanding of how the startup process works as well as offer sound advice and best practice in terms of the startup journey.”

We will be reporting on this as it launches next month.

You can find out more about Float Your Goat here

Reno Startup ShortStack Does The Grunt Work So You Can Make Apps Sexy

Everyone needs an app these days. Whether it’s a web app, Facebook app or Mobile App, without an app your company seems behind in the times. People love showing off features and making their apps and presence look sexy, but before you can get to that, someone needs to do the grunt work. That’s where Reno startup ShortStack comes in.

ShortStack was created by Jim Belosic and Doug Churchill while Belosic was running a successful web design company. ShortStack was actually a toolset his own in house people developed to make some of the backend grunt work on design quicker. The pair quickly realized they were onto something and rather than just using ShortStack in house, they could offer it as a DIY software as a service, and make some money while helping business owners.

The response they got when the first rolled the product out was more than they ever expected. They amassed 80,000 users in year one and added another 100,000 users the following year. Now ShortStack alone is a multi million dollar business.

ShortStack allows business owners to create all kinds of different apps on a variety of platforms including the web, Facebook and mobile. It’s being used to create contests, sweepstakes, newsletter signups and integrations with Instagram YouTube and Twitter.

Belosic isn’t a flyby night developer either. He gets design and social media and contributes regularly to Mashable, Social Media Examiner, CMS Wire, PR Daily, and Smart Brief. He was also named the Technology Entrepreneur of the Year by the Nevada Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology. That’s not such an easy feat with Las Vegas’ thriving tech scene just miles down the road.

Making the move from in house agency tool to SaaS wasn’t easy. ” It was a challenge because we needed to continue to do both businesses at the same time. ShortStack was bootstrapped so we needed revenue from the agency to support the new endeavor. The biggest challenge was figuring out how to double the workload with essentially half the revenue. It was a huge balancing act, but luckily we had the luxury of a product that was making money from the beginning. Without that early revenue, we would have had to look for investors. ” Belosic told nibletz.com in an interview.

After several years at the helm of a profitable web design business, taking the plunge into the startup world wasn’t an easy task either. Reno’s startup scene isn’t nearly what it is in neighboring Las Vegas.

“The startup culture in Reno is pretty non-existent and haphazardly organized. People get good ideas, get really excited, and recruit other people to work with them … and then they just burn out. Or businesses do really well and are too busy to contribute to the startup culture. There’s not a lot of steady startup activity here and there’s not enough support for regular continued efforts.” Belosic said.

But raising a startup in Reno has it’s benefits as well. “The cost of doing business is a huge advantage. Nevada has no state income tax and the business tax climate is extremely beneficial. Business licenses are inexpensive and the cost of talent is inexpensive. Rent is also insanely cheap. When it comes to my monthly expenses, rent comes in at number 18 on my expenses list. The quality of life is also an advantage for my employees. Housing is inexpensive and there’s no traffic. Reno is also close to awesome outdoor activities like skiing, hiking, fishing, Lake Tahoe, San Francisco, hunting, etc., so it’s a desirable place to live and raise a family.”

Bootstrapping it to revenue probably explains why Belosic is such a fan of Atlanta startup Mail Chimp’s founder Ben Chestnut.

“I have a big man-crush on Ben Chestnut from MailChimp. I read his blog regularly and feel like we are in a very similar industry. We’ve been through a lot of the same stuff when it comes to our previous experiences. I was reading about their company history and realized that they too began as an agency. The MailChimp platform was created as an internal tool at first, but was later released to the public. I feel like every time I have a question, I can read Ben’s blog and he’s either had that same problem or offers some insight that is relevant to me.”

ShortStack now includes more than 40 tools and 70 templates, you can check it out for yourself at shortstack.com You can keep up with Belosic and Shortstack on Facebook

New York Startup CheckOutTheLatest Gets Deeper YouTube Integration Through App

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Last month we covered a new New York startup called CheckOutTheLatest. After interviewing them and spending a little time with the platform we quickly realized that they are the mother load of all video aggregation startups.

“The idea came to us a year ago while on twitter. People were always tweeting @ us hoping to get us to “Check out” their latest Youtube videos or go watch their vimeo vids.” co-founder Deni Belanich tells us in this interview about how they came up with the idea for a super video search engine.

Now, CheckOutTheLatest.com has just added a powerful web app aimed to help YouTube content creators get more subscribers & more click backs when uploading new videos.

The new feature allows users to subscribe to any YouTube channel with their Facebook accounts. The site allows users to search for any YouTube channels along with videos. When a user goes into a channel they will have the ability to subscribe to that channel using their Facebook account. In addition to searching, CheckOutTheLatest.com has made it easy for users to find channels they like by using the same channel names that are found on YouTube. For example:YouTube.com/HodgeTwins can be found at CheckOutTheLatest.com/Hodgetwins the difference being a YouTube account is not necessary to subscribe to the channel or to be alerted when new videos have been added to the YouTube channel.

The ability to subscribe to YouTube channels using Facebook unlocks the potential to reach literally 100s of millions of people who do not have a YouTube account but do have a Facebook account. YouTube content creators now have another huge pool of potential users they can “hook”, users who never had the ability to subscribe to their channels.

Another huge benefit to YouTube content creators is that users who subscribe to their channel will be notified of a channel update via Facebook notification. No longer will YouTube content creators need to depend on their subscribers allowing YouTube to send them emails to get alerts, or depend on their subscribers to sign into YouTube and view their subscriptions. Subscribing through CheckOutTheLatest.com, a subscriber will be notified via Facebook instantly when a video is uploaded to a channel. There is no need for the subscriber to come back to the site to check their subscriptions in order to receive the alert, or to allow their email inbox to be spammed with videos in order to receive alerts. This is a much better solution to converting alerts to views and it is beneficial to both the subscriber and content creator.

The quickly growing CheckOutTheLatest.com, will not be stopping at Youtube either. They plan to include Facebook subscriptions for more video sites like Vimeo and Dailymotion. The video giants are next to be converted to a much more user friendly way of subscribing and sharing video content.

Rawporter: Nitty Gritty Raw Citizen Journalism

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Rawporter co-founder Kevin Davis pitches at everywhereelse.co 2013 (photo: Allie Fox for NMI)

By: Andrea LeTard, University of Memphis Entrepreneurial Journalism Student

To startup co-founders Rob Gaige and Kevin Davis, news is news, and it’s spreading fast with their website, rawporter.com.

“Rawporter.com helps people earn money for the photos and videos they normally post on Facebook and Twitter,” said Gaige. “Think about when you see breaking news or you see a celebrity, your normal instinct is to take a photo or video, and you tweet it out. With Rawporter, you can make money off these posts.”

Many media outlets, ad agencies, and brands want to use the photos and videos people post online. The problem is they can’t always find good, relevant photos and videos, and when they do, they can’t always trust them. Once they finally find one they actually want, they have to negotiate and determine what it is worth.

“With Rawporter, you can actually take a photo or video, post it to our site, and we still tweet it or put it on the Facebook page, but it’s got a watermark and it’s got a price tag,” said Gaige.

Every big idea has a story, and Rawporter came about when Gaige and Davis were at the right place at the right time. Back when both of them were working in corporate America two years ago, they were at a local bar’s happy hour talking about their future careers when a car ran into the restaurant next to them. According to Gaige, it was a huge scene, with the street closed down and people running out to take pictures and videos – something they assumed would naturally be seen on the news that night. Wrong. The story didn’t even make the local evening news.

Gaige said, “By the time the news media got there, the scene had already been cleared and there was no story, but if they would’ve had our footage they could’ve had something to lead off the newscast.”

Rawporter turns regular people into reporters. Media outlets send push notifications via the Rawporter app if they know a story is breaking across town. If they can’t get there fast enough, they can go to Rawporter and see how many people are in that area, and those people will be paid for the job.

“So instead of media outlets patrolling twitter or hoping someone got a photo, they can now go online and find what they need immediately,” said Gaige.

With several thousand users in over 50 countries, Rawporter’s base is now strong enough for them to approach media outlets and outsource their assignments.

For more information on Rawporter, visit http://rawporter.com.

Milwaukee Startup Creates A Stock Photography Market For The Social Photog

Technology has made it so that every person with a cell phone is now a “photographer”. Of course there’s also those those tens of thousands of wanna be photographers who flock to Best Buy to get the latest DSLR from Nikon or Canon and never use more than “automatic mode”. While the people who actually know what they’re doing have sites like photorankr that serve as market places for those photos, what about grandma Lilly’s photos of the tomato garden?

Rest assured that if you’re taking tomato garden photos or pictures of your best friend doing jello shots, there is a market place for those “social photographers”. That place, is VZIBL.

The Milwaukee startup’s founder Alexander Marasco, picked the name VZIBL as a sort of slang for “visible”. “The idea of the company was to bring self awareness to your photographic content or become visible. VZIBL is just the ‘visual you for sale’.” he told us in an interview.

While sites like iStock are popular with folks sourcing photos from professional, semi-pro and even amateur photographers, VZIBL is the place for “social stock”. “photographic content created by socially engaged photographers focusing on new digital tools and social networking technology. Instagram, GoPro, iPhoneography, Nikon D90…whatever your camera vice!” Marasco said.

Once a social photographer sets up an account and starts sharing photos using VZIBL it’s up to him or her on whether or not they want to make money with their pictures. A photographers “social stock” can be accessible either royalty free, rights managed or exclusive rights, depending on both the photographer and the content.

Marasco is quick to point out what VZIBL gets out of the deal. Using the VZIBL app automatically assumes a 70/30 split in a sliding licensing agreement between the photographer and the platform. Naturally if you’re going royalty free there’s no split but a 30% revenue share isn’t too far off the industry norm.

VIZIBL has gone through a pivot or two along the way. At first Marasco wanted to do create a photo thread app where people could communicate through photographs. What he found in talking to people about that idea, was that no market place really existed for this layer of photographers that’s cropped up. There are probably more photographers in the “social photographer” category than any other.

While Marasco is getting ready to move east to Brooklyn New York, VZIBL was created in Milwaukee which like it’s counterpart Madison, has a bit of a startup scene starting to form.

“Milwaukee is definitely creating some great ‘Hackers’ and with new incubators and Think Tanks now available, it seems to be consolidating minds and is launching some really interesting concepts to market.” Marasco told us about his city known for it’s beer.

The secret sauce in VIZIBL is creating photo-celebs according to Marasco ” Publishing content has never been so easy…why not possess the ability to create future earnings from your original photography. We like to see ourselves as a visual ringtone. We want to make Photo-Celebs out of our users!”

Find out more about VIZIBL by following them on Twitter!

Pittsburgh’s Startup Hustlers Move Into The Hustle Den

Pittsburgh just opened up a new incubator space which will house fifteen to twenty early stage startup teams across a variety of industries. With the grit and grind that comes with building a technology startup in a blue collar town, it’s appropriately called the “Hustler Den”.

With the first class of teams set to move into the space, it’s good to know that they’ve secured an anonymous donor who’s provided the incubator with enough funds to run for three years.

The fifteen to twenty startups will have free desk space, access to conference rooms, break out rooms, a ping pong table, original Nintendo and other recreational and community benefits. They are also hoping that the teams will leverage each other’s networks along with the mentors committed to helping those hustlers.

This local Pittsburgh blog reported that over 200 people showed up for the grand opening of the Hustler Den including Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravensthal (who was also spotted at the DNC startup celebration in Charlotte this past summer with Startup RockOn). Ravensthal leads a new wave of municipal leaders that realize the days of big corporations moving into towns to create jobs are over and cities need to embrace the future employers of America.

Meet the first 14 startups taking up residence in the Hustler Den (from their website)

Allegheny Organics is committed to providing an easy and seamless organic waste recycling service to the residents, businesses, restaurants and community events of Allegheny County. Through our efforts, we aim to promote healthy eating, responsible farming, waste minimization, and local economic sustainability, which will play an integral role in reinvigorating our region and building a strong, cohesive community.

Hajj Media / Virtual Lobbies designs and tailors mobile and web solutions, to decrease the inefficiencies in appointment scheduling and line management, with a dynamic platform that not only increases the transparency of wait times, but allows people to interact remotely. The debut product of Virtual Lobbies is the “Q”, a generally applicable mobile-web application for appointment scheduling and line management for a number of markets: barbershops & beauty salons, administrative offices, mechanic shops, massage parlors,colleges & universities, valet parking, etc.

Open Curriculum is a non-profit organization based in Pittsburgh, PA with a vision to provide access to high-quality K-12 learning material to children around the world. We are involved in developing a platform that allows communities to access, create and share K-12 curriculum material, and in due course, become a ubiquitous Wikipedia-like hub for K-12 learning material.

Orro believes in aiding your team’s funding efforts, while building a sustainable earth in the process. Orro is a free and easy eco-friendly movement, where we collect and examine old electronics to ensure the most resourceful way of reusing, reducing or recycling each individual item. Orro does not require any paperwork, so get on your feet, and help your team grow with the environment today!

Private Lender Nexus helps solve the problems that many commercial real estate professionals have when looking for private money to fund their own or their clients commercial real estate needs. To find the right private lender can be time consuming and fraught with unethical lenders and brokers with upfront fees. Private Lender Nexus will be an online database of screened private commercial real estate lenders. Commercial real estate professionals will be able go to our website and enter their private financing needs and be matched with verified and ethical private lenders with no upfront fees throughout the continental United States.

Aura is a bicycle safety lighting system which illuminates the wheels of the bicycle and dynamically responds to the rider and environment.

Salad Specialty/ Team Salad is developing a specialty salad restaurant concept for the East Liberty area, focused on providing access to health-conscious and nutritious meal options in the region. We are designing a new dining experience with a creative food presentation style–inspiring everyone in the ‘Burgh to start thinking “out of the box” when it comes to eating more veggies!

Scholar Hero wants to create a web-based, tablet, and mobile app that will get scholars and students to share works-in-progress in a fun and collaborative manner. We hope to establish the most trusted and engaged place for academia online.

Source is a restaurant and educational facility that aims to inform, inspire, and invigorate customers in every stage of the sustainable growing process, from seed to plate, in a unique dining atmosphere that embraces guests as an integral part of the food production and preparation process. Source will be a beacon for health-conscious eco-consumers who wish to exercise mindfulness in their selection of food products, even while dining out, and who are interested in learning more about sustainable food systems.

Kennedy Blue Communications provides strategic communications plans to leverage clients access and impact with consumers and media markets. Services provided include: press placement, writing and editing services, consulting, web development, video and animation production, marketing and branding.

Haitian Families First (HFF) is a non-profit organization, founded by Pittsburgh sisters Jamie and Ali McMutrie that provides support by strengthening communities through nurturing families. Our long-standing presence in the community, holistic approach, and three distinct programs allow us to work with families to assess their individual needs to help them achieve their goals of family preservation and self-sufficiency. Haitian Families First preserves and sustains families by helping them to find employment, supply their loved ones’ most basic needs, and provide for their children’s educations and care.

NAVISection is a project to enhance driver licensing decisions with intelligent vehicles. Our mission is to link technologies advancing driver evaluation, training, and safety for people seeking to obtain or retain a driver’s license.

Student InTuition, a for-profit social enterprise, offers a web-based platform designed for college students who want to reduce their debt and develop better career opportunities. Student InTuition monetizes in-class work products in the form of direct tuition payments for students in exchange for high-quality work products and meaningful recruiting opportunities for sponsoring organizations.

Sponsortize is an ad platform that allows local businesses to support local bloggers and advertise to local communities.

Body Boss Is A Fitness Startup For Teams VIDEO INTERVIEW

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Body Boss co-founder Daryl Lu explains his startup at Startup Rally (photo: NMI 2013)

There are a lot of fitness startups out there. At CES 2013 back in January, a panel of media big wigs actually talked about the fact that there may be too many fitness startups these days. There’s a lot of noise in the fitness space and you’ll have to be unique to succeed.

Atlanta startup Body Boss may actually have that uniqueness people are looking for. Body Boss isn’t just a fitness app, but it’s a fitness app for teams. High School, college and even professional sports teams can use the Body Boss platform to track the fitness performance of their players.

Coaches can use Body Boss to track workouts from individuals as well as the entire team. The platform gives coaches the analytics they need to compare each player, how fit they are and where they need improvement.

Body Boss is making it easier for college recruiters to get a better picture of the high school athletes they’re looking at.

“This is a great tool for tracking and recruiting high school athletes. I like the competitive aspect, accessibility on smartphones and tablets and instant updates. There is nothing on the market that is this professional looking” John Sisk, Director of Football Player Development at Georgia Tech said about Body Boss.

The competitive aspect that Sisk mentions is a feature in Body Boss that allows intra-squad competition. Virtual weight room crap-talking can be done through Body Boss, and whether athletes want to admit it or not, that can be a powerful tool.

Real time updates and an easy to understand UI make it a great way to create accountability for players and coaches. It also eliminates paperwork coaches would have to do on athlete’s workouts.

As the platform grows, Body Boss co-founders Daryl Lu and Don Pottinger hope that teams will be able to use Body Boss to not only keep up with their own team but other teams as well. A network for collaborating and sharing is already baked into the platform.

Check out the video below:

For more info on Body Boss visit bodybossfitness.com

Atlanta Startup Plisten Is Bringing Pinboards For Brands VIDEO INTERVIEW

While we will stay away from calling Plisten, Pinterest for Brands, that may be a very good description of exactly what Randy Mitchell and Eric Yu are doing with their Atlanta based startup.

Mitchell tells us in this video interview that Plisten came about after he had some trouble with major brands. He gives us just one example, citing a problem he had with a major bank where he had been a customer for years. As his situation got escalated he became more and more frustrated with customer service and the way the bank was treating him. Finally, a customer service “manager” told him to get any further he would need to write a letter to the CEO. Plisten is that letter.

But, Plisten is more about good interactions with brands as opposed to bad ones. Facebook, Google+ and even Twitter have taught us that people will communicate about their favorite brands. People will tweet about great experiences and of course bad experiences with any brand from Best Buy to BMW.

Coca-Cola, MTV, Disney, Red Bull, Converse, Starbucks and McDonalds are just some of the top brands on Facbeook today. Those seven brands alone count for over 250 million likes.

Brands are definitely a big play, Yu and Mitchell are hoping to hit a homerun with Plisten, which is a pinboard specifically for brands.

Consumers will be able to talk about their favorite brands, like their favorite brands and communicate directly with those brands. This is a powerful tool for consumers and for the brands themselves. By cutting away the noise from everything else people like, and honing in just on brands, Plisten will be able to deliver captive audiences and in turn those brands will be able to market directly to their most active customers.

Of course in Mitchell’s case, when someone has a problem with a brand they’ll also be able to communicate that problem. Perhaps they’ll find that the problem is more widespread. They may also find it’s isolated, but either way, with the focus strictly on brands, brand managers will have a better way of finding those problems, and fixing them.

Check out our video interview below.

You can find out more at plisten.com

Athens GA Startup Wagglez It All Began With A Honey Bee Dance

Sure there are plenty of daily deals startups out there. In fact, one of the most popular Atlanta startups is daily deal startup ScoutMob, but, none have as good a name as Wagglez.

Athens Georgia based Wagglez takes it’s name from a dance that honey bees do when they get back to the hive to tell the other bees where the honey is. It’s that same principal Wagglez is hoping to achieve with deal seekers.

By delivering relevant local deals straight to the smartphone ,Wagglez eliminates the need to clip coupons or use a daily deals site like Groupon.

When a user fills out a profile on Wagglez, their data (minus their personal info like their name) is saved and delivered to participating merchants. Merchants can then analyze the data to see which offers and promotions are working with which demographic. They can then use that data to offer more strategic offers that will benefit both the consumer and the merchant.

Wagglez wants to make the daily deals experience as easy as possible for the end user. There’s no need to print coupons, all of the participating merchants create the deals themselves, along with the stipulations to take advantage of the deal. This makes the experience as easy as walking into a participating merchant and redeeming your Wagglez deal.

Wagglez is incubating at the FourAthens incubator in Athens Georgia along with several other up and coming tech startups.

Wagglez wants to be as relevant to visitors as it is to locals. The idea came about when founder Chris Bell and some of his fellow University of Nebraska alums went to a football game in Seattle. They didn’t know where to go or what to do. They were eventually pointed to a bar which some other fellow cornhuskers had taken over. For travelers, Bell is hoping to make Wagglez a platform where out of towners can easily find the best things to do with the best deals as well.

Bell was unable to be at the Startup Rally event in Atlanta Monday as he and his wife are expecting a baby, who will also become a Wagglez user. In his place we got to talk with Matt Downing, who even does the Wagglez dance for us in the video. Check it out below.

For more on Wagglez click here

What?? You weren’t at everywhereelse.co 2013, well don’t make that mistake again, 2014 tickets are on sale now at the 2013 rate (for a limited time) click here

Atlanta Startup TripLingo Is Disrupting The Yellow Box

In 2011, after my third trip to IFA in Berlin I made a conscious decision to try and learn German. I wanted to be able to know how to order more than just a “cola light” (that’s German for Diet Coke). So I did what everyone in my position would do, I went to Union Station in DC and plucked down nearly $500 for a big yellow box from Rosetta Stone.

Don’t get me wrong, Rosetta Stone seemed great, but it wasn’t teaching me what I really needed to know. How can I hail a taxi, how can I read a mass transit sign, how can I ask someone where the bathroom is, and how can I order a German chocolate cake. I learned a lot of words I would never need to know, and not enough of the phrases I did need to know.

Well with a trip to LeWeb planned next year, I need to learn French. Since I didn’t pay an ounce of attention in high school, I need to get learning. Luckily at Atlanta’s Startup Rally I bumped into Bijal Nagrashna the VP of Strategy at Atlanta startup TripLingo. After a couple of real time lessons on how to correctly pronounce her name, she took me on a tour of what language learning software should look like.

TripLingo is a platform for learning languages specifically geared toward travelers. The extremely robust application is intuitive and pleasant to use. You start off by identifying where you are going, what you want to do there, why you are going there and your special needs.

For example, I’ll be going to France on business, to cover LeWeb. I won’t be shopping, but I will be eating. I’m type II diabetic (there’s an option for that), other than that I like just about any kind of food.

TripLingo pulls a bunch of popular, and necessary phrases together and gives the user a bunch of options. You can pick the text book translation, or you can go with something a little more casual or slang. If you’re adventuresome there’s a “crazy” option as well. Once you master that option you’ll sound like any hipster local.

TripLingo leaves no stone unturned (no pun intended). Their app offers the transliteration in text and if you plug in a headset you can hear how it’s supposed to sound.

The app also has the ability to help you out in a pinch, whether you’re having an emergency or you’ve spent all day at a conference and forgot to take a break to eat.

While I haven’t dove into the platform just yet, I’m going to use it and I’m confident that it’s going to be a much better experience than Rosetta Stone (and a lot less expensive).

TripLingo also offers a customized professional version for companies. Say you’re the CEO of a big company with offices in another country. Your company can customize TripLingo for phrases that will be important to people traveling on behalf of your company for business.

TripLingo was one of nearly 100 startups that exhibited at Startup Rally in Atlanta.

Find out more here at triplingo.com

Atlanta Startup Founders Tell Their Stories On “Why Atlanta”

Startup Georiga, Startup America, Startup Rally, Bad.gy,ScoutMob,Jermaine Dupri,Atlanta Startups

Bad.gy founder Rob Kischuk speaks on “Why Atlanta” at Startup Rally/Startup Georgia Launch (photo: NMI 2013)

Can startups be built anywhere in the United States? That’s a question the Wall Street Journal Accelerator’s blog and the Huffington Post have recently asked. Between those two widely read publications and last weeks everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference, the answer is a resounding “Yes”. Just to reiterate that though, Atlanta’s startup community came out in full force Monday night to tell their stories in a “Startup Georgia Parade”.

There was no confetti, or marching bands, but the grand marshall, Scott Case (CEO of Startup America and founding CTO of priceline.com) was in his trademark red, white and blue Chuck Taylors.

Rather than 50 foot floats, the standing room only crowd at the historic Biltmore Hotel in Atlanta celebrated multi million dollar companies, entrepreneurs, founders and investors who’ve chosen to keep themselves, and their businesses in Atlanta.

Event organizer Scott Henderson, pointed out several times that, Monday’s event, dubbed “Startup Rally” was the largest assembly of startups and entrepreneurs since the International Cotton exposition, a 100 day exposition held in Atlanta 118 years ago (1895 for those that don’t want to do the math).

Bad.gy

One of the first startup founders to speak was Rob Kischuk founder of Bad.gy. He was quick to point out that just the previous week he was at everywhereelse.co with 1000 other entrepreneurs and startups, using that as testimony to the fact that startups can launch just about anywhere. Kischuk almost got emotional when talking about his decision to stay in Atlanta and that he would have it no other way.

He was lucky that major investor Mark Cuban, is all about raising startups where they are born. Kischuk also commented on how relationships built through Startup America, and specifically with Scott Case, helped engineer a relationship with Cuban that eventually led to a financing round. The introduction to Cuban was made at our co-founder Nick Tippmann’s Shark Tank party as part of Super Bowl festivities in 2012. (You see how fast that happened?)

Finally Kischuk recognized that many of the people in the room at Startup Rally, the influencers of the Atlanta startup community were instrumental in the success bad.gy has had to date.

Find out more about bad.gy here

Sig Mosley, Atlanta’s GodFather of early stage venture capital speaks at Startup Georgia Launch at Startup Rally (photo: NMI 2013)

Every state seems to have a godfather of early stage startup funding. In Tennessee Vic Gatto of Solidus is the godfather. In Atlanta it’s Sig Mosley. Mosley was an early stage venture capitalist, took a short hiatus but couldn’t stay away. He stood on stage and talked about the technology sectors that would build the next stage of companies in Atlanta.

Jim Flannery the founder of Four Athens spoke about coming to Athens Georgia with nothing, in fact he moved from Silicon Valley to Athens Georgia, a town made famous by REM and the B52’s. Now they have their own budding startup community. Four Athens serves as the hub for entrepreneurs in the Athens area. Sam Zebarjadi, a wireless entrepreneur, and mentor for both Four Athens and Greenville’s “Iron Yard” also spoke about startup communities, and the power in Georgia.

Paul Judge, an Atlanta based serial entrepreneur has already had two exits to Silicon Valley firms. While the time was ripe to head out west Judge remained in Atlanta where he currently serves as the Chief Research Officer at Barracuda Networks (which bought one of his companies). He’s currently working on his latest company Pindrop Security, which was exhibiting in Startup Rally’s expo earlier in the day.

Many of the speakers made reference to some of Atlanta’s more well known startups like Sarah Blakely’s Spanx and of course Mail Chimp. Neither company raised venture capital and instead made their money the old fashioned way. Now millions of people are buying Spanx’ products and using Mail Chimp to send out emails in droves.

ScoutMob CEO Michael Tavani on stage at Startup Rally/Startup Georgia Launch (photo: NMI 2013)

Michael Tavani, the CEO of ScoutMob praised Mail Chimp when it was his turn to speak, noting that he wants to start his next company in Atlanta and do it without venture funding. Tavani’s local deals startup has raised $5 million dollars to date, but it wasn’t easy.

Tavani said growing your company in Atlanta “…forces you to be scrappy, we were forced to find a business model that made revenues early on. Instagram would have never worked here.”

Being scrappy and grinding paid off for Tavani and his team. When ScoutMob launched, they had created enough buzz, through hard work, that investors called right away, as did merchant partners. “It’s easy to make an impact here in Georgia. There’s a lot of noise in the valley, the impact we were able to make took a much shorter time” Tavani said.

Check out ScoutMob here

Several other startup founders spoke, as did some of the venture capitalists in Georgia’s startup eco system.

All of this was in celebration of the launch of Startup Georgia the official partner region for Startup America. Case stuck around until the end of the event when he and I had time to talk about how Startup Georgia was still in it’s infant stages of forming back in October during the Startup America Regional Champions Summit. The team behind both events really pulled it off.

This all led up to one of Atlanta’s most infamous entrepreneurs Jermaine Dupri who spoked for about a half an hour on building his business, So So Def Recordings, into a multi million dollar empire, all the while growing it in Atlanta, rather than moving to New York or LA.

A celebration of startups everywhereelse, tickets on sale now at 2013 prices for EE2014, follow this link.

The pivoting features when creating the next rockstar mobile app

Or if we’d rephrase it, how long would it take before a user would give you a hug because he had a good experience with your app? Why? Besides having a great app in terms of users and success, hugs are less expensive than bandages.

We talked about what mistakes you can make when developing a mobile application. But it would be presumptuous to just point out mistakes. Now we’re going to focus on what you should never loose sight of if you want your mobile app to become the next app rockstar.

We’re going to highlight on what makes an app a great mobile app that people actually like, what can make it a viral app, what features are sine qua non and how it can grow beyond its limitations and get a lot of users patting you on the back.

1. This cannot be stated enough….UX, user experience, la experiencia del usuario, you get the picture

Think about Angry Birds. Yes , I know, everybody keeps beating the drum on how that game took over the world.

Even so, whether intentional or no, it really hit the nail in the head when it came to psychological impact and reasons. Why do people play that game? Let’s analyze it for a moment.

As people, we like to destroy things in games, and it’s no wonder why games in which you throw birds at entrenched nasty pigs ( and scream evilly and cute) would be addictive. The micro-physics in Angry Birds creates a unique user experience each time you catapult those frowny birds into everything. What mobile app mechanic can we learn from this example?

Simply put, when developing an app, create the possibility for the user to customize his own experience as much as possible. If it’s a social app, then let them customize colors, icon sizes, buttons, etc. If you’re gunning for a business app, then you should focus on what content the user deems to be relevant : such as choosing preferences over certain information providers (like newspapers, business blogs, etc.) so they won’t have to check each bit of info one at a time. ”

Make a user feel like he can play with the app in more ways than just tapping a few buttons and closing it. In doing so, you gain a greater level of user engagement and retention. Make it fun and easy or in other words, make creation a part of the user experience. It’s their app at the end of the day and making it feel even more personalized will go a long way for them to remember you.

2. Push notifications = a light tap on your shoulder to improve the day

Push notifications. They can mean anything from alerts, products, offers, updates, beeps, images, anything.

They are essential to the success and survival of a mobile application. From getting certain discounts or new updates on an app, PN’s can remind your users that your app either is still there or that you can ease their day.

For example, a way Foursquare created and maintained user loyalty was through push alerts. When a user was 10 check-ins away from becoming mayor of a certain location, it would provide an incentive to continue using the app.

The key words of push alerts are : targeted, context, geo-points, geo-location, timezones. Unlike ads where often you can shoot blindly and hope for a catch, push notifications mean you know your niche and if you do it right, you’re going to expand it.

3. Contact points, friend invite, developer and customer feedback = visibility and friendliness

In the App Store or Play Store, you’re going to find apps by the bucket. So how exactly is that shiny piece of code you wrote going to attract any attention?

Simple. The user knows who developed it, who published it and what to expect. Reviews are golden. This should be done with simplicity unlike web browsers, where you have to create an account (a uselessly tedious business) to post a comment or a review. A one tap, one touch contact point (i.e. address, mail, phone number, forum) where you tell the developer or the company of that specific app what it’s all about.

Without contact points, the user will feel isolated with his app, which is quite the opposite of what a mobile phone means. Your app philosophy should emulate this concept.

Also, don’t forget about social one touch sharing, like Facebook, where you like the app and want to share it with your friends or invite them. Another useful trait is bug reporting from users. Although the chances of encountering a bug on a mobile app is rarer than a few years ago, it’s a great way to quickly correct mistakes through on time feedback.

4. Social integration – if you want your app to be known it has to support social interaction

People like to talk about their mobile phones, that’s a given. What they can do, how they pay their bills and don’t have to wait in line, how they filmed their cat doing a back flip and so on.

We’re going back to the Angry Birds analogy. So what was one of the leading causes for the proliferation of this game? Social interaction.

Among many other of its traits, one of the things that made the game such an immersive experience was interaction and competition. You could play the game and see the ranking of your friends on Facebook for example. And that really made users want reach the top rankings and use the app more

Gamifying your app is a must. If you make it fun for users then you’ll set the stage for a memorable experience. Monetizing an app is nearly impossible if the app is a headache to use or it’s simply too complex without any reason. It’s all about psychology and the things we tend to remember were those bits of info encapsulated in fun emotions.

Again, it’s about simplicity that has infinite ramifications. One tap sharing and fun comments from users to their social companions is the most powerful form of communication that leads to brand visibility and retention.

,,Extremely useful for understanding user experience : 48 psychological facts you should know”

According to Susan Weinschenk, synchronous activity bonds the group. Your mobile app will be popular if it supports features such as interactive ratings or reviews (either through smart push notifications or an easy to scroll comment bar, either from friends or experts). Buzzword: Interactivity = popularity.

5. Cross-platform compatibility

Or one code to rule them all. It means that a program developed as cross-platform is fully capable of operating on any mobile phone regardless of what operating system that phone is running.

Application development frameworks offer the beauty of code reusability. A magnificent and useful app such as Google Maps would have been a hell to program for one OS at time.

They don’t just cut down development costs and time pressing situations, but they offer the advantage of updating the app as quick as possible. Thus you can ensure you can deliver content /updates to your app faster and users will have higher retention and appreciation. If the app you’re going for is a native one, then having cross platform tools will give you a boost in ensuring fast delivery for updates and changes.

6. If less is more, then great apps mean a dialectic of simple and brilliant implementations

Great mobile apps are very task-focused. A nice analogy would be the classical saying ,,Do you want the short version or the long version of the story?”. With mobile apps the same truth applies. The hardest part in any area is to make something simple.

It’s quite easy and tempting to fall into the mindset of ,,Yeah, we need a button for that, and a scroll for that one, 50 side scrolling screens and so on.” But tablets and smartphones aren’t desktops. Quite the opposite of what people were saying at the dawn of smartphones, which was ,, A computer in the palm of your hand”. It’s a little more than that.

Because the screens are small , you need clear buttons and a precise functionality. Here’s a good example of rules for a clean and simple design.

A stunning app is one that incorporates complex ramifications in a few simple buttons and touches and not dozens of buttons for just one thing. Don’t rush when mulling over complexity and needs. Think about the old military saying. ,,Slow is smooth and smooth is fast”. Just what do we mean with it? Well, the nature of mobile, being on the run and everything. Even though people spend more time on their mobile than on their desktops, one of the reasons for this is clever and fluid simplicity.

7. Analytics are the backbone of where your app is going

Besides finding out how many users actively use your apps, other bits of info can be the turnpoint in knowing what to add or what to cut out in your app. Analytics can be combined with smart push notifications to deliver the most relevant content where it matters and when it matters.

They are also a boon when taking the pulse of in-app purchases and polishing monetization strategies.

The key traits of mobile app analytics are:

Acquisition and user metrics such as downloads and new user
Engagement metrics such as retention, crashes and conversions
Outcome metrics such as app sales and in-app purchases

We could mention other traits a great mobile app should have but that is dependent on the nature of the app itself. QR code scanners are useful in retail and shopping. In-app ads are starting to become a little more refined but then again, this is solely linked to what you want to do with your app and if ads are going to be your main monetization plan. Other things we could highlight would be GPS coupons (repeated visits to a certain place give customers a bonus or discount), loyalty points and promotions.

A viral app has the possibility of creating an online community by itself if it’s done right.

And there we have it. Now these are just the main elements when designing an app that has the possibility of becoming viral. In the end it comes down to basic psychology and user experience. The pivotal features you need to always consider is how your app can spread through social media. To give a soul to an app means to make it interactive and unbound.

And the most coolest trait is that your app will do most of the heavy lifting and actually market itself, leaving you with a lot of monetization options rather than picking a niche and crossing your fingers. Elements such as customer points, badges, in-app money, rewards, they all gamify and create more engagement, fun experience and all round good user reaction.

Unless you’re putting one time apps intentionally, all of these will lead to your own app success story.

This is a guest post by Appscend (http://www.appscend.com) — the all-in-one cross-mobile performance based application platform. Appscend offers its customers the fastest cross platform development technology available on the market today together with a complete list of backend technologies that ensure application & user management, a powerful push notifications platform as well as app analytics, ad-integration, in-app purchases and over-the-air distribution services.