EdTech Startup 19 Pencils Is Saving Lots Of Time For K-6 Teachers

Most teachers don’t have nearly enough time to spend finding resources and lesson planning. Cuts in education typically mean that average teachers have a larger class load, and some are often faced with pulling down multiple jobs in school and even after school. This can be especially difficult for K-6 teachers who often want to give their students all they possibly can.

This is where Jason Fabbri and his Sacremento based educational startup 19Pencils comes in. 19Pencils provides an online community for like minded elementary school teachers. Using their platform teachers can search and discover great educational content and upload and share things that have worked for them in the classroom.

Fabbri has been a software engineer for the last 17 years. He’s had a long career with Adobe contributing to projects like Photoshop Elements, Photoshop Services and more. It was volunteering at his children’s schools that prompted him to create 19Pencils. He saw firsthand the frustration that teachers had in curating good web content for first grade students, and then sharing it.

We got a chance to talk to Fabbri in depth about 19Pencils and the growing startup community in Sacremento, just 90 minutes outside of Silicon Valley. Check out the interview below.

Chicago On Today: A New Startup Launches Every 44 Hours

It’s hard to believe that less than a year ago Silicon Valley based PandoDaily sent a reporter to Chicago and he came back suggesting that their startup scene was sleepy. Fast forward to February 2013 and we’ve been tracking the startup communities rapid growth here.

Earlier this month NBC’s Today Show reported some amazing facts about Chicago’s startup community:

More startups launched in 2012 than any previous year.

A new startup launched every 44 hours.

197 of those were digital startups.

59 companies raised more than a million dollars.

We’ve also made three different trips to Chicago this year as part of our “sneaker strapped startup road trip”. We attended a kick off event at Chicago’s huge 1871 incubator, Chicago TechWeek and the Startup America Regional Champions Summit. On each trip we got to spend more time with Chicago’s seasoned startups like Groupon and Belly and some of their community’s newest players like KlutchClub and SpotHero.

Chicago’s startup ecosystem even caught the eye of TechStars founder David Cohen and Foundry Group’s Brad Feld, who recently announced a merger with Excelerate Labs to form Techstars Chicago.

We are looking forward to what Chicago has in store for 2013. Chicago is my kind of startup town.

Funding Round Up Everywhere Else: batterii, Bluefields, Nomi, Club W 2/18/13

batterii, Cincinnati OH $2.5 Million

batteri is a “co-creation” social network software platform. They recently raised $2.5 million dollars led by Cincinnati local private/public seed stage investor CincyTech. CincyTech contributed $500,000 to the round which included Los Angeles based investor Ken Salkin, batterii CEO Kevin Cummins and other unlisted individuals. The company reports that they have nearly a dozen clients. TechCrunch noticed that quotes from Nike, Crush Republic and ConAgra Foods were on their site. source TC

Bluefields, London England $1 Million

Bluefields is a social platform and management tool for recreational sports teams. The startup is originally from London and is an alumnus of both Seedcamp and 500 Startups. In addition to this latest one million dollar round, Bluefields just launched out of private beta.

During the private beta, TNW reports that there were over 60,000 sports teams players using the service.

Tony Hsieh’s VegasTechFund, Ballpark Ventures, Venrex, 500 startups and White Star Capital all participated in the round. Elliot Loh, Edward Wray, Christian Hernandez, Alicia Navarro, Chang Ng, Andy McLoughlin, Tim Fong, Richard Fearn, Andreas Koukorinis, Christian Lawless and Nathan Elstub all contributed as individuals. source TNW

Nomi, New York, $3 Million

Nomi is a retail “Experience Economy” startup helping to drive engagement for loyal retail customers, rather than having to race to the bottom in price wars. The company was founded by Marc Ferrentino who was formerly the Chief Technical Architect at SalesForce. Nomi takes relationship lessons borrowed from CRM and implements them in a real time environment that’s crucial to closing sales at retail cash registers.

Philadelphia’s First Round Capital led the $3 million dollar round with participation from Greycroft Partners, SV Angel, Forerunner Ventures, Ralph Mack, Dave Tisch, Andy Dunn (CEO, Bonobos), and Sam Decker (CEO, Mass Relevance and former CMO, Bazaarvoice).

Club W, Los Angeles $3.1M

Los Angeles based Club W claims that they are the “coolest wine club” . They are also the first company to offer a personalized and curated subscription model for wine. Their$3.1 million dollar round follows a $500,000 angel round closed this time last year. L.A’s Crosscut Ventures led the round.

“We look at wine and see a $34 billion annual market ripe for disruption,” says Adam Goldenberg, Venture Partner at Crosscut said in a statement. “Club W has great traction and a solid model. We realize we’re taking a contrarian position on eCommerce given the prevailing attitudes among venture capitalists but we’ll continue to bet on the early movers leading great teams in markets with huge potential.” source: bizjournals.com

SideCar Acquires Ride Sharing Competitor Heyride

Ridesharing has been a very popular means of transportation in Europe for many years, it’s just now starting to take off in the United States. Startups like RidePost, who recently graduated from the Iron Yard accelerator, and HeyRide have started a trend in peer to peer ride sharing.

San Francisco based SideCar has, by far, been one of the most popular ride sharing platforms to date. With SideCar you use the companies web based and app based platform to find someone “going your way” and then book a ride with that person. Unlike Uber and Halo users aren’t relying on pricey, already existing ride for hire drivers. Rather, with these kinds of apps you’re just looking for someone going the same place you are. These apps essentially take the ride bulletin board off the campus wall and put it in an app.

HeyRide, was a startup founded two years ago when the founders were embarrassed by the lack of adequate transportation in their hometown for SXSW. People were tweeting, updating their Facebook status and finding other ways to use the web to communicate the need for rides. The HeyRide team turned that need into an app that took off and quickly spread.

Now, with less than a month to go before SXSW 2013, SideCar has acquired HeyRide for an undisclosed amount.

“We’ve heard from people across the country and around the world that they want the SideCar community to take root in their cities and towns,” said Sunil Paul, CEO of SideCar. “Heyride’s talented team has developed a unique design and experience that will help take the rideshare movement we started here in San Francisco nationwide. We are thrilled to welcome Heyride to the SideCar family.”

SideCar and Heyride have a shared vision for empowering communities to solve transportation problems. Heyride’s world-class user experience and design team will join SideCar’s product team to focus on creating an outstanding experience for SideCar drivers and riders. Heyride’s assets include its critically acclaimed iPhone application for ridesharing available at Heyride.com.

During its initial launch phase SideCar will be available for drivers and riders Friday and Saturday nights from 5pm – 3am in West LA, Venice, Santa Monica and Culver City in Los Angeles; and downtown Austin and Philadelphia. Expanded hours and days will follow as the community grows. SideCar is actively recruiting drivers in New York, Chicago, Boston and Washington, DC. Drivers can sign up to be part of the community at www.side.cr/drive. SideCar’s free mobile application is available for download for riders via the App Store for iPhone and GooglePlay for Android users.

How SideCar works
SideCar matches everyday drivers with a car with people nearby who need a ride. It’s like getting a ride from a friend or a neighbor when you want it. Riders place a request to share a ride by setting a pick-up and drop off location using the SideCar app. Once the request is accepted, drivers can be viewed approaching in real-time. Riders can make a voluntary donation at the end of the ride.

SideCar has many features in place to keep riders and drivers safe. All SideCar drivers are pre-vetted for safety. All rides are tracked and passengers can share their progress and ride status in text, email and social media. Donations are made through the app, so the entire experience is cashless and hassle-free. The SideCar community sets and enforces high standards for safety and quality. Drivers and riders rate one another and people with low ratings are removed from the SideCar community. SideCar’s safety features can be found at www.side.cr/safety

Calmighty Is The Twitter Of Calendars For Sports? INTERVIEW

If you find yourself toggling between apps like the official NHL app, the official NBA app and ESPN just to find out when your favorite teams are playing, than a startup out of Finland may have the answer for you. Calmighty, says they are the “Twitter of Calendars” for sports fans.

The app offers an easy to use interface which allows you to quickly scroll through your favorite professional sports leagues, pick your favorite teams, or an entire league and have one click access to when and who your favorite teams are playing.

This may not be the biggest of first world problems to solve, but their UI is both pleasing to the eye and a breeze to navigate. At the moment the NFL and MLB are not part of the app, which may be a downer for some sports fans but if you like soccer, NBA, UFC, or NHL you’re in luck.

Finland has had some luck with mobile startups in recent years. Rovio is probably their most well known mobile developer, with their Angry Birds franchise.

We got a chance to interview Calmighty co-founder Tomi Kaukinen. Check out the interview below.

Portland Opens Up Applications For Startup PDX: Challenge

Portland Oregon’s Portland Development Commission has kicked off a new initiative to lure startups to the Central Eastside part of town. The new program called the Startup PDX Challenge is a non-equity based grant program that will give up to six startups $10,000 grants and free office space for a year in what once served as Mayor Charlie Hale’s campaign office.

The office space is located in what most people in Portland know as “Produce Row”. It’s for the most part, an industrial area that the city is trying to revitalize with new types of restaurants, businesses and now technology startups.

There are several equity based tech incubators in the Portland area. This program is the first of it’s kind where the money comes with no strings attached (other than working in the office space). The PDC has a budget of $150,000 for the project which includes the grant money as well as money to make improvements to the building where the startups will be housed. In consideration for the improvements the landlord is not charging the tenant startups rent this year.

In addition to the cash and office space, startups selected for the program will also have access to services donated by Portland area law firms, accountants and human resources services according to Oregon Live.

The Startup PDX challenge has already lined up several sponsors including; Perkins Coie; Davis Wright Tremaine LLP; Perkins & Co; Trupp HR; Xenium; Lewis & Clark Bank; Business Accelerator at Portland State University; Pie; Portland Seed Fund; Technology Association of Oregon; Portland Development Commission; Oregon Entrepreneur Network and Transfer Online.

Applications are due April 4th and can be filled out here.

DC Startup CrowdCusp Making The Best Of Things Before SEC Regulations

Crowdfunding is a hot topic these days. Hundreds of crowdfunding startups have surfaced over the last few months, patiently waiting as the Securities and Exchange Commission takes their sweet time figuring out regulations.

While crowdfunding is nothing new, the JOBSAct passed last year which will allow people to crowdfund startups for an equity stake without the normal regulations around venture capital and angel investing. Startups will be able to use this form of crowdfunding as a vehicle for up to $1 million dollars in funding, just as soon as the SEC defines the regulations.

This waiting period has put some crowdfunding startups on ice, while others have found ways around regulations without allowing startups to actually give up equity. In some cases prize packs, swag, and other gifts are donated by the company in exchange for someone’s backing. Other times it’s just about feel good donations.

CrowdCusp is a Washington DC based crowdfunding startup that has already started crowdfunding, sans the equity stake.

We got a chance to talk to the team behind CrowdCusp. Check out the interview below.

Add Your Portfolio To Your LinkedIn Profile With French Startup Dokker

LinkedIn is undoubtedly one of the most useful tools to connect with people from your work life. However, many users have complained that their LinkedIn profile doesn’t give them an adequate platform to show off their portfolio. This can prove to be an important missing piece for marketers, artists, designers, and even writers.

French startup Dokker is looking to change that by offering a platform for portfolios to sync up with LinkedIn accounts. Dokker is free and allows users to post any kind of document to their online portfolio. Once a user builds a Dokker portfolio they can share it with LinkedIn and also Viadeo, which is LinkedIn’s number one competitor in Europe.

Services like Dokker allow for a much more robust picture of someone’s work life rather than just text and recommendations.

We got a chance to speak with Fred Ducrot, Dokker’s co-founder, General Manager and Product Designer. Check out our interview below.

Talk Is Cheap 10 Things New Startup Founders Always Say

Talk is cheap, especially when a pitch is filled with startup buzzwords. One of the huge benefits to last Sunday’s 2 minute quick pitch contest at everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference, was that many of the startups had very limited pitching experience. This also meant that they hadn’t picked up on bad habits, like filling their presentations with buzzwords, that can ultimately be seen as crutches.

Coming from a background with 20 years on commercial radio I am no stranger to crutches. DJ’s have a ton of buzzwords “on your radio”, “coming up,coming up,coming up”, and the always irritating repeating everything the person calling the radio station says to buy more time.

Well in the startup world crutches are also immensely popular. Things like “we’re not too concerned about revenue” or “we’re going to build virally and organically”, are complete turn offs to not just me but to investors who know all the buzzwords already.

Our good friends at Spinnakr.com just published a list of 37 things that new new entrepreneurs say. Here are 10 of them.

This idea is unstoppable.
Nothing else like this exists.
Sorry, man . . . I can’t tell you unless you sign this NDA.
We’re going to totally disrupt the market for [spy cams], [back scratchers], [player pianos], [hover bikes].
We’re revolutionizing the way [flautists], [tug boat captains], [veterinary assistants], [cardio-pulmonary surgeons] approach [dating], [home improvement projects], [booking airline tickets], [personal hygiene].
It’s tapping into the [future of the internet], [awesome purchasing power of secretaries], [real need affecting SAT tutors].
We’re gamifying [sushi], [country music], [the LSAT], [eyebrow extensions].
No one else can build what we’re building.
These financial projections are conservative.
We’re expecting hockey-stick growth curves, year after year.

You can see the rest of the list at the link below. While these may not be the most irritating of them all, you should get the idea.

When you’re pitching, whether it’s at the end of an accelerator demo day or your pitching in a VC’s office you need to kill them with your product, presentation and personality. Knowing the buzzwords doesn’t impress anybody.

Check out the rest of the list of 37 things new entrepreneurs say, here at Spinnakr.com

Eh You Need My Guy, Rochester Startup Takes On Angie’s List INTERVIEW

Nothing says recommendation like when your good buddy says “eh you need my guy”. Whether you’re looking for a plumber, deck builder, photographer, heck even a birth coach. Whatever independent contracting service you need, a new Rochester startup called You Need My Guy has someone for you.

When we first heard about You Need My Guy we immediately drew a comparison to top ranking, publicly traded Indianapolis startup Angie’s List. You Need My Guy’s founder Joe Cassara says that YNMG is different because Angie’s List is a paid model with mostly blue collar providers. They also offer no accountability to insure the identity of users. While Angie’s List is a great resource for some, they are plagued with stories about bad experiences sprinkled all over the internet.

You Need My Guy is the hybrid in the middle. You can find accountants and carpenters on the startups site at youneedmyguy.com

YNMG integrates social networks by allowing perspective clients with links to their perspective service providers Facebook, LinkedIN and Twitter profiles. This way users can vet out their service providers, going a little deeper than traditional reviews and referrals. Review systems can be plagued with fake reviews, created by service providers to “push down” any bad reviews. Of course in the case of referrals most service providers only provide referrals from people who have had the best experiences.

One of the best assets for this New York startup is Cassara himself. He’s thoroughly entrenched in the up state New York startup ecosystem. He has a background in strategic consulting. But what’s more important is that Cassara is also the managing partner of Harvest Ventures an early stage venture-funding firm as well as a mentor at New York accelerator StartFast.

We got a chance to interview Cassara about You Need My Guy. Check out the interview below:

College Students’ Condom Startup To The Rescue

Let’s face it, college students have sex. Of course this is no secret. The fact that sex among college students can crop up at the inoppertune is actually no secret. Having safe sex on the campus of College Of New Jersey in Ewing Township is safer thanks to student entrepreneur Kyle McCabe.

Business Insider reported today on the college student turned entrepreneur and startup Condam. Condam is short for Condom Ambulance.

Students about to get lucky can ping McCabe by way of Condam’s website at condam.net. Once an order is placed McCabe dons a hat with a blue police beacon in the top and comes to the rescue of young lovers.

McCabe also has a more discreet package where he won’t come to the door with blue lights blazing.

The website has several condoms to choose from and customers can pick up anywhere from 1 to 10. Of course the more condoms you buy the cheaper the cost. McCabe offers express hours service from 7pm-3am Friday and Saturday nights.

Right now the service is only available at McCabe’s school, but perhaps expansion or franchising could be in the cards for the future.

We’ll be curious to see what McCabe’s future holds and what other businesses ideas he comes up with. Condam definitely makes for an interesting “lemonade stand” business.

500 Startups Dave McClure Headlining Conference In New Orleans April 22-25

Dave McClure the infamous Sith Lord of 500 startups and huge advocate for startups globally, will be the keynote speaker at Pubcon 2013 in New Orleans. The conference focuses on social media and search and is hosted at the state of the art New Orleans Convention Center.

McClure will discuss his vast experience helping to grow and cultivate startups. In addition to being the founding partner at 500 startups he also hosts regular Silicon Valley meetups called Startup2Startup and of course Geeks On A Plane. To date McClure has invested in over 250 startup companies through his 500 Startups fund and their Mountain View based accelerator program which goes out of it’s way to attract talent worldwide. Some of his investments include MakerBot, TaskRabbit, SlideShare,Mint.com and Twillio.

McClure’s experience spans two decades including serving as PayPal’s Director of Marketing from 2001 thru 2004. While in that role he launched the now infamous PayPal Developer Network. He’s also worked with other well known companies like Facebook, LinkedIn, O’Reilly Media, Intel and Microsoft.

“We’re thrilled to feature Dave McClure as a keynote speaker at Pubcon New Orleans 2013, where his unique spin on the role of social media and optimization in Internet startups will make for a fascinating and insightful presentation,” said Brett Tabke, founder and chief executive of Pubcon.

Michael Slaby, the Obama For America Chief Integration and Innovation Officer, will kick off Pubcon. In addition to playing a major role in the 2008 Obama campaign, Slaby has also served as the digital global practice chair at Edelman and chief technology strategist at Tomorrow Ventures, Eric Schmidt’s venture capital fund.

Pubcon promises to announce more high profile speakers in the coming weeks.

You can register for Pubcon here

Work On An Iceberg: Ark Challenge Applications Open Through April 7th

We were really pleased that our neighbors from Arkansas’ Ark Challenge accelerator program were just one of many Global Accelerator Network (GAN) accelerators in attendance at everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference. The Ark crew was at the conference talking to attendees and startups about retail, logistics and food processing the three core focus areas for the North West Arkansas based accelerator.

Startups selected to accelerate in the Ark Challenge program will receive a seed investment of $20,000 for 6% equity to offset the cost of relocation to North West Arkansas.

The program will be held at the beautiful new IceBerg coworking space, where founders will have 24×7 access. They’ll also get access to a huge mentor network, product development and design support, promotion, and access to advisors and funders. On the retail side of things Ark Challenge isn’t far from the largest retailer in the world, Walmart.

The Ark Challenge is one of 20 projects nationwide that receives funding for the advancement of regional competitiveness from the Economic Development Administration (EDA), Small Business Administration (SBA) and the Employment And Training Administration (ETA).

In addition to all of that, two teams are selected to receive follow on funding of $150,000 to help the startup get through “speed up”.

The early bird application deadline is next week on February 24th with the final deadline on April 7, 2013. The session will run from June to mid September with an investor/demo day at the end of the session.

You can apply to the Ark Challenge here

Did you miss everywhereelse.co 2013? Well don’t miss everywhereelse.co 2014, ticket sales open and discounted now for the next six weeks here.

Powerhouse Team Behind Gui.de Raises $1 Million For Max Headroom Like News Startup

A new startup based in Miami, called Guide, promises to bring technology that will turn online news, social streams and blogs into videos guided by 20 different anchors or avatars. Included in the 20 anchors are a dog, a robot, and anime characters.

These characters will read articles, and present photos and videos like your personal guide to the content you’re looking at. The animated characters are the driving force behind the technology. If you’re thinking this sounds rather silly, well think again, as Guide has already raised $1 million dollars in funding from some credible heavy hitters in the video and entertainment industries.

The Knight Foundation, Sapient Corp, Bob Pittman (MTV founder), and Google’s employee 13, Steve Schimmel.

The Gui.de team is headed by Freddie Laker a former executive at Sapient with who’s been dabbling in startups for some time. Leslie Bradshaw, the company’s Chief Operating Officer, has a rock solid resume including being named one of the top five female executives in the technology industry by Fast Company magazine. Bradshaw was listed alongside Cher Wang of HTC, Marissa Mayer of Google and Mary Meeker of KPCB.

The demo on the gui.de website looks like they paired Siri up with some video animation and use her to read the news. The technology may not quite be there yet, but with the team they have in place they should be able to put something spectacular together.

Gui.de is headed to SXSW to debut their product and strike up some buzz at the conference that’s known as the launch pad for Twitter, FourSquare, Zaarly, Ban.jo and more.

Find out more here.