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Black Girls Code Coming Home To Memphis In January

Black Girls Code, Memphis, startups, developers, Kimberly Bryant

Meka Egwuekwe (rear) and his daughters Elechi (L) and Sobenna (R) talk about Black Girls Code coming to Memphis photo: nibletz LLC

Kimberly Bryant is an award winning social entrepreneur, technology junkie, an engineer by trade and a native Memphian. She relocated to Silicon Valley and now she’s launched a program that’s rolling out across the country. That program, Black Girls Code, promotes teaching coding and development to young African American Girls.

Bryant describes the mission for Black Girls Code on her website as:

“to introduce programming and technology to a new generation of coders, coders who will become builders of technological innovation and of their own futures.”

Like many others, Bryant believes there’s a “dearth” of African American women in science, technology, engineering and math professions. While some may say it’s because there’s a lack of interest, Bryant knows that it’s more like a lack of access and exposure to STEM topics. The Black Girls Code program is about making STEM topics accessible to African American girls and exposing them at a young age. It’s also done in such a way that it’s fun and positive.

Bryant has held programs through Black Girls Code in cities all over the country and some around the world. Black Girls Code has had events in San Francisco, Chicago, Oakland, Las Vegas, Atlanta, Detroit, Los Angeles, New York and even in Johannesburg. Her most recent event was this past Saturday in Atlanta where they taught kids how to develop their own apps using Google’s App Inventor.

Two of the girls that participated; Elechi (11) and Sobenna (8) Egwuekwe, came to speak on Sunday night at Memphis’ 48 Hour Launch for women event. Their father, Meka Eqwuekwe, who works for local web developer Lokian, has taken an active interest in the Black Girls Code program, and is helping to bring it to Memphis.

The Memphis Black Girls Code chapter will hold an Open House January 15th at Emerge Memphis, the local technology and startup incubator. Then, on February 16th the Memphis chapter will hold it’s first event.

Albeit a little shy, or possibly tired from the 6 hour drive back from Atlanta, both Elechi and Sobenna were glowing with excitement as their father explained the concept and program behind Black Girls Code and the events coming up.

When asked if they had fun, Elechi quickly responded by saying yes and then described the experience. Elechi told the audience of about 50 that she and her sister got to create their own app using the App Inventor platform. She was quick to point out that App Inventor is a Google product and that meant their first app was for the Android platform.

The app that the girls created was a photo app that allowed a user to add sound effects to a picture taken on an Android phone. Launch Your City’s Chief Brand Officer and the woman in charge of Upstart Memphis, and the 48 Hour Launch For Women, Elizabeth Lemmonds, was quick to point out to both young ladies that there was no age limit for Upstart and that next year she expected to see the two sisters pitching a startup at the 48 Hour Launch for women.

Linkage:

For more info on Black Girls Code visit this site

Here’s more info on Upstart Memphis

Black Girls Code will also be talking to possible new members at this exciting startup conference

Meet The 4 Women Led Memphis Startups Pitching At 48 Hour Launch

Memphis’ Launch Memphis, is holding a 48 Hour Launch made up entirely of startups founded by women. This is part of Launch Memphis’ new Upstart Memphis initiative focused on enriching women entrepreneurs and startups across the midsouth.

In addition to events like this, Upstart Memphis holds a regular women’s entrepreneur meetup and provides access to women founders and entrepreneurs to the organizations free workshops and seminars. Upstart Memphis welcomes entrepreneurs of all types from traditional small businesses to high growth potential startups.

This weekend’s 48 Hour Launch saw traditional high growth startups and a hybrid startup with huge upside potential locally and if it can build scale, nationally as well.

Care2Manage

Care2Manage is a web portal and referral service aimed at 30 and 40 somethings who’s parents may be ready for elder care. More and more of the elderly are turning to staying home rather than going into managed care centers, which can be frightening for their children, especially when 100s of miles separate child and parent.

That’s where Care2Manage comes in. This referral site and management platform allows the parent and the children to collaborate together and find the best care providers in the parents’ local area. With the service being based on the web, children from across the country and around the world can be involved in their parents care. Not only that, but Care2Manage will also staff up with 24 hour staff available to the parent or the child, and in some cases both.

Here’s the Friday raw pitch:

focusED Path

This startup plans to be a first in it’s space. Essentially focusED Path is a social network for students and parents to keep up with their scholastic activities. Using focusED path, parents and students can put all of their grades, achievements and assignments online. As the student reaches milestones they can be celebrated as well.

focusED Path takes it’s name from one of it’s key features. At the eighth grade level most students start thinking about careers and the work force. They start solidifying their first “what I want to be when I grow up” plans.

focusED Path takes those ideas and makes recommendations on courses to take and what grade averages are needed to sustain that goal. The system will also help when that student undoubtedly pivots to another career path. The student and the parent can see what changes will need to be made to keep them on the focusED path.

Finally, in their secure network students and parents can share milestones, and victories along with areas the student needs to work on with that student’s support network.

Here’s the Friday Pitch:

Pink Robin Avenue

Pink Robin Avenue is the ultimate event planning tool for the busy person. Professional career minded women, single dads, single parents and anyone who’s day to day makes them too busy to plan a party can easily use Pink Robin Avenue to design an event in a box and have the party they’ve dreamt about in just a few clicks.

The founder of Pink Robin Avenue, Danielle Inez, put together the idea when she found that with her social calendar and PR consulting firm she didn’t have enough time to think of things like cake toppers, decorations, and party favors.

Check out the Friday pitch:

Mentor.me

Brittney Fitzpatrick has noticed that there is a huge flaw in mentoring. One of her close colleagues is in charge of administering a very big mentor program in Memphis Tennessee and told Fitzpartrick that most of the mentor matching she does is strictly baed on what’s on a sheet of paper. For so many reasons this process is flawed.

Mentor.me plans on taking profiles for the mentor and the mentee and using algorithms to better match the two.

With Mentor.me a mentee will be able to better address and get more indepth about their needs in a mentor. The mentor will also be able to better see if they’re a match or not.

Mentor.me will help both mentors and mentees waist a lot less time and get right into mentoring, which is what they’re supposed to do.

Check out Mentor.me’s Friday Pitch.

Linkage:

Here are more startup stories from “everywhere else”

Find out more about Upstart Memphis here

Come to Memphis for the largest startup conference in the country, more on that here

3 Challenges, Besides Funding, Facing Startups Everywhere Else

When you make the bold move to take your idea and turn it into a startup, the cards are already stacked against you. Depending on what you read, some folks say 70% of startups fail, others say 80% of startups fail. Either way, those aren’t good percentages no matter what way you slice it. Couple that with the fact that you are trying to grow your startup outside of a major startup hub like Silicon Valley and many may believe that’s a recipe for doom.

Of course thats not the case for the nearly 2000 startups we’ve covered from “everywhere else” since launching nibletz.com the voice of startups “everywhere else”. So we circled back with some of our startups to find out what challenges they face, or more specifically, what was the biggest challenge they faced in starting up.

Most of these challenges facing these entrepreneurs aren’t unique to one certain geographic region, but rather encompass challenges faced by most.

Finding a Team & Resource (you thought we were going to start with funding didn’t ya?)

Many startups that we’ve interviewed have eluded to the fact that finding the right team was one of the toughest parts or challenges they faced as a startup. When you build your startup outside a centralized technology hub like Silicon Valley, Boston or even Washington DC, attracting top tier talent to work for next to nothing to get your idea off the ground can be challenging.

Even Kapture, a startup founded in Brooklyn had problems at first attracting a great team. Kapture’s co-founder Michael Szewczyk had actually made the decision to move back from Silicon Valley to Brooklyn to launch Kapture. That may have helped them attract a good team.

“The biggest challenge is being creative with the limited amount of resources you have.” Jumyo said in an interview.

In Seattle, story telling startup Jumyo is also plagued by the talent problem. Seattle has often been thought of as a hub for innovation yet they had trouble attracting a good team. Imagine if the problem is rampant in Seattle and Brooklyn, it’s gotta be a whole lot tougher in Boise and Providence.

Even a startup coming out of Dartmouth had a challenge with finding the best team.

“I think the hardest part for a software startup is finding a rock-solid team of devs, especially when the first founder is not technical, as is our case. It took quite a while before I found James and Sang and got them on board, but I feel incredibly lucky for the team that we have. Recently, we added another pemanent developer, who is actually located in Bulgaria, and so now the development process has been going really smoothly.” Square One Mail co-founder Branko Cerny told us in this interview.

Changing an age old industry

Some more innovative startups are taking problems that have existed for years in traditional industries and trying to solve them once an for all. Such is the case for New York startup Unpakt. Unpakt has taken the Expedia model and applied it to an industry where over billing and even fraud has run rampant for year. That industry is the moving industry. Unless you had a big enough house that you called one of the gigantic companies like Allied or Mayflower, you were faced with a lot of mom and pop or small regional companies.

No one knows when the time clock starts or stops. No one can remember how much furniture was originally allotted for the move. In the end the people being moved are either out more money or in some instances their belongings are held hostage for more money.

By making the process all but transparent through the Unpakt system this New York startup can help people who need to hire movers and honest movers as well. Unpakt’s problem was getting movers to buy in to the new:

“Convincing movers to see the benefit of an exact pricing system and operate within a larger network, instead of the historic autonomy of the industry. We’re demonstrating to movers that revealing their rates and exposing pricing is ok. To be successful in the online world, pricing needs to be readily available.” is what they told us in this interview

Launching

Launching a product is tough no matter where you are at. There are a lot of confusing methodologies out there especially for a new entrepreneur and a new startup.

For instance, if you just got into the startup world and went all hipster as soon as you did, you’re probably preaching the Lean startup methodology and “minimum viable product”.

On the other hand you may not want to show off your minimum viable product to anyone because it’s in complete and it looks like crap. A big worry for those entrepreneurs second guessing this method is that in showing an MVP they may actually have their idea ripped off when in fact they planned on a much grander idea in the first place.

Iterating can be a problem too. Some startups worry every time they think of a new feature that they need to add it to version 1.

Other startups like Vancouver based Perch, found that while their product technically worked, it’s a video product and they wanted it to be the best it could be. They would launch it and then pull back. They went through this process several times.

“Getting Perch out the door. We’ve come so close to launch numerous times, but because we’re dealing with video and very technical aspects of video, we’ve had to pull Perch off the shelf and back into development several times.” Perch told us in this interview.

Linkage:

This conference will deal with all of these topics and funding, in the biggest startup conference in the U.S.

More startup stories from “everywhere else”

Columbus Startup: AboutOurWork Disrupting The Chamber’s Networking Events

I’m going to go out on a limb here. I’ve been to several Chamber of Commerce events at cities across the country and for the most part their networking mixers suck. Not much real networking actually happens at business after hours events, business before hours events and holiday parties. Most Chamber of Commerce network events are a huge circle jerk and ego strokes for people that already know each other. In fact in most cases you’ll find more cliques at a Chamber of Commerce mixer than you will in the cafeteria of your favorite middle school.

With everyone being so deeply entrenched in the internet, we’ve been waiting for a startup to come along and offer what most Chamber’s of Commerce charge hundreds of dollars for, real networking, real introductions. Sure LinkedIn is great, but again most of LinkedIn is built on who you already know. Even when you might kind of know someone or you want to meet someone you heard about but “didn’t do business with”, LinkedIn discourages it.

Well a Columbus startup called AboutOurWork has created a new network connections platform that promises to link small businesses (and startups) with other small businesses (and startups).

Co-founders David Hungenaw and Brooke Paul are serial entrepreneurs, both with successful exits. Now they are setting out to solve a problem no one wants to talk about (but I just did), finding a way for small businesses (and startups) to actually network.

We got a chance to talk to Hungenaw about his startup that’s disrupting the Chamber of Commerce mixer.

Austin Startup Cinsay A Video Based e-tailing Platform INTERVIEW

An Austin startup called Cinsay has a new way for merchants big and small to sell their wares on the internet. At first glance you may find yourself saying, not another e-commerce platform, however the team behind Cinsay has done a great job of blending video with e-commerce.

It’s pretty straight forward. Companies of any size, either one man shops, or stores the size of Neiman Marcus can sign up for a Cinsay account. From there users can upload a video that features their products. Within the video photos are extracted to the top of the viewing pane and end users can click on those products to share, get more info or complete a purchase.

So after getting the preliminary interview back from Cinsay we weren’t yet sold on the idea of using video quite this way. What’s wrong with going somewhere like Bestbuy.com, Amazon.com or even ebay searching for what you want and buying it. Well NeimanMarcus’ Cinsay page is what sold us on the concept. And then we couldn’t stop looking at stores on Cinsay.

Now mind you guys that nibletz, the voice of startups everywhere else, is still just a budding startup. We’ve only raised an angel round to date so Neiman Marcus is really the last place we’d ever shop, top that off with the fact that the video was on women’s clothes, but the concept intrigued us.

It looks like part commercial, part product video but every outfit the models showed off would pop up into the top of the window and you could easily purchase by clicking the picture of the item and going to that items page. $695 was way too much for a plaid blazer I would never wear but nevertheless it was intrguing.

So I did what you would probably do and I clicked the technology category. I quickly realized that the 360 degree view you get from a video is much more enticing than a normal picture. Sold!

We got a chance to talk with the guys behind Cinsay, check out the interview below.

Nashville Startup: TalkApolis Brings Locally Produced High Quality Video To The Smartphone

As media consumption continues to move the direction of the smart, connected, handheld device, companies need to continue to adapt. Or of course just launch new companies. Such is the case with Nashville startup TalkApolis. The Nashville startup is headed by John Bransford

“You can watch locally focused, entertaining, high quality video shows on your smartphone or mobile device that were made to be watched on it. Download our app for your device and watch TalkApolis content with a touch of your screen” Bransford told us in an interview.

The microcasting company was originally selected for the 2012 Jumpstart Foundry cohort but dropped out before the program ended in August.

Even without the accelerator program Bransford’s background in media (real media like HBO) and development, including Drupal, helped bring TalkApolis to fruition.

Bransford has designed the TalkApolis platform to operate smooth and efficiently with the ability to produce relevant content extremely fast. ” Our production suite is so adept, we can test out a show from something we see trending on the internet and see if it sticks almost immediately. If it doesn’t get traction or the host get an audience, we move on to the next one. Licensees will benefit from this agility of the back-end system by being able to do the exact same things in their local markets. Our plan is to allow licensees to apply their unique local knowledge where it matters.” Bransford said.

Check out the rest of our interview with Bransford below.

Ohio Startup: 530Funds, Sorting Out The Crowdfunding Space For Everyone Else

Ever since the first non music related project went on the Kickstarter platform, crowdfunding has grown to new heights. After the JOBS act was passed last year, it became a blistering inferno of new startups, companies and websites. If you were looking for a good crowdfunding solution on Google you would come up with over 9 million results. Now there are new startups out there like StandOffer, and Athens Ohio startup 530Funds which are helping to make the crowdfunding space, easier to navigate.

530Funds opened up their beta on November 12th and are continually iterating to make the site exactly what the crowd needs, offering good information about available crowdfunding options. One of the main obstacles they have to overcome in building a platform like this is that every time they release another version, 10 more crowdfunding sites have popped up.

Also, at the present time, crowdfunding for equity is still not legal. Although the legislation is passed we are still waiting for the SEC to develop the regulations around crowdfunding for equity up to $1 million dollars. We interviewed a startup last Friday, from Richmond, called LendingClouds, that has sidestepped the SEC by offering royalties instead of equity.

We spoke with Richard Rodman, the founder of 530Funds. Check out the interview below.

Brooklyn Startup Kapture Turns You Into A Brand Ambassador

A startup in Brooklyn New York, called Kapture is turning people everywhere into brand ambassadors based on the photos they take with their smartphone cameras. Everyone loves sharing pictures over social media, now, when you’re snapping away, and you catch a brand, you could be rewarded. Kapture is allowing new ways for retail brands, consumer goods, and other businesses to capitalize on pictures being taken of their products, services and businesses already.

When a user shares a Kapture moment with a social network like Facebook, or Twitter they can be instantly rewarded with items that range from discounts to physical goods. Rewards can be redeemed immediately or stock piled for a later date.

Michael Szewcyk, the co-founder and President of Kapture is no stranger to startups. In fact, he was working for a Silicon Valley based startup, Qwiki when he had the idea for Kapture. He quickly moved back to New York and began the launch process.

Kapture started last December with 25 businesses on board in the greater New York area. Rewards including things like a free glass of champagne for users who took a picture at Gansevoort Park’s rooftop Bar. Legendary ping pong club spin, offered a free drink to people who posted pictures of their game.

Kapture also makes it easy for people to find opportunities to earn rewards, which the startup conveniently calls “Photo Ops”. Within the iPhone app, users can find photo ops and then partake in the ones they want to get the prizes for.

We got a chance to talk with the Kapture team. Check out the interview below.

St. Louis Startup LockerDome Surpasses 3 Million MUVs

Lately St. Louis startup LockerDome has been on fire. We recently reported that the sports social networking startup announced the first game/app built on their platform. Soon after we reported that 19 year venture capital veteran Mark Lewis, had joined the company as CFO. Thursday, they announced that they’ve surpassed 3 million monthly unique visitors (muv).

In addition to offering a sports social network for any stage athlete, from childrens intramural sports, up through college and pro, LockerDome also features over 1350 professional athletes, brands, media personalities, parody sites and other recognized sports properties that host their brands on LockerDome. By leveraging LockerDome, publishers are able to reach a more engaged, targeted sports audience and increase their overall social media footprint. Since launching in January, the interactive sports social media platform has delivered 47% average growth across Facebook and Twitter for its properties (average 4.3 month span, 109,018 to 144,746 followers).

Sports enthusiasts join LockerDome to become a part of interest-specific sports communities where they can consume content and interact with like-minded fans around their favorite professional athletes, teams and sports. The company has been growing at an average rate of14% per week since its launch 11 months back, surpassing one million uniques in June, two million in October and now three million in November. At its current growth rate, LockerDome is on pace to be a top-10 most visited sports site in the next 12 – 18 months.

Contributing to LockerDome’s tremendous growth are the contests that professional athletes, brands, and media personalities host on its platform, with its high-profile contests attracting more than 100,000 entries. Unique to LockerDome is the ability for its properties to easily cross-promote one another, as well as run their contests seamlessly across Facebook and Twitter, maximizing the audience that each property reaches. Contests on LockerDome boast an average landing page conversion of 19%, more than six times above the industry average of 2% – 3%. Current featured contests include MLB Hall of Famer, Wade Boggs, MLB’s all-time hits leader, Pete Rose, NFL Superstars, Larry Fitzgerald and Troy Polamalu, and the iconic baseball brand, Rawlings.

“This is just the tip of the iceberg for LockerDome. As explosive as LockerDome’s growth has been in 2012, we will undoubtedly be even more dominant in 2013,” commented Gabe Lozano, co-founder and CEO of LockerDome. “The overwhelming demand for LockerDome by professional athletes, media partners, brands and the targeted audiences these publishers reach, and the subsequent meteoric growth from that demand, is a clear indication that the LockerDome platform will only continue to strengthen.”

“Every professional athlete needs to be on LockerDome. By leveraging LockerDome as the social media hub for my personal brand, I’ve been able to better engage my fans and grow my entire social presence across Facebook, Twitter, and LockerDome,” said Larry Fitzgerald, All-Pro NFL wide receiver with the Arizona Cardinals. “From a content standpoint, I use LockerDome not only to host unique fan giveaways, but also as a daily source to post behind the scenes, interactive content.”

“As one of the world’s premier sports agencies, we’re always looking for unique technologies that give our clients an edge. LockerDome has become part of our secret sauce,” said Adam Rosenthal, Director of Athlete Marketing at Octagon Sports. “LockerDome not only enhances our clients’ brands, but also provides them with new monetization opportunities. LockerDome will become a standard across all professional athletes and notable sports figures.”

Linkage:

Go get a LockerDome account today, here

Here’s more St.Louis coverage at nibletz.com

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Kentucky Startup Tagapet Brings The Pet Tag Into The 21st Century

As an animal owner all of my life I know the feeling when you’re dog has run off. Luckily I’ve never permanently lost an animal but I know several people who have. Microchips are great for recovering animals but what many pet owners don’t realize is that microchips can only be read with microchip readers at your local vet’s office, and if you’re lucky, the shelter.

With the rise in use and popularity of smartphones many people who’ve lost a pet wish they had a microchip reader built into their iPhone or Android device. While that’s not possible, a Lexington Kentucky startup called Tagapet, has a solution.

Tagapet’s new pet tag incorporates both QR code and NFC technology. This means that NFC equipped smartphones, and bar code readers (available for every smartphone these days), someone who finds your pet can easily find important information. The QR code on the tag can be coded with all of your important owner information including contact info and even animal allergies. The QR code actually has a huge benefit over traditional engraved collars by allowing a much larger data field to incorporate complete contact info.

Not only that but Tagapet has also incorporated GPS so that when the lost pet is scanned with a smartphone the owner is notified of their GPS location, making reuniting pet and owner, even quicker.

We got a chance to talk with the brilliant team behind Tagapet. Check out the interview below.

Life Is A Story, Tell It With Seattle Startup Jumyo

Everyday millions of people around the globe are using their smartphones, cameras, and apps to tell stories. They’re telling stories through pictures, video and of course text. Seattle startup Jumyo is helping people connect the dots and tell the stories of their lives through their social community and their iPhone app.

There are a few startups out there that are addressing the issue “if pictures could talk” by simply adding voice clips to photos sent to social networks. Jumyo knows that there is more to a story than just the picture, with or without context. Perhaps you’re at your daughters birthday party. Maybe you’re on a vacation to Mexico. What happened before these key events, what happened after? How did you get there in the first place. These are all questions that can be answered when the story is woven together.

As we put more and more pictures and videos on our phone, the ability to recall each event gets harder and harder. I travel all the time. When I visit a city I’ve been to before I often try new places but also go back to the places I really like. So at the end of the day (well actually at the end of several months) when I comb through Facebook albums, Google Plus instant upload albums and iPhoto I find pictures from the same places at different times. Sometimes it’s hard to remember why in the world I took some random photos, or videos, which at the time probably weren’t random at all.

Hopefully Jumyo can solve that problem for me and for you.

We got a chance to talk with Joe Egan, co-founder and CEO at Jumyo. Check out the interview below.

Memphis Grizzlies Star Rudy Gay Featured In Los Angeles Startup MyStorey

Rudy Gay, Memphis Grizzlies, myStorey, LA Startup,California startup,startup

Memphis Grizzlies star forward Rudy Gay will be featured in myStorey (photo: nibletz LLC)

A new startup in Los Angeles called MyStorey is set to debut with some celebrity heavyweights in the mix, including Memphis Grizzlies star forward Rudy Gay.

myStorey is a we-commerce platform where users build online stores through the stories of their lives. They allow people the unique opportunity to tag the things in their personal photos from Facebook, Instagram, Flickr, or their blog and aggregate those tags into a shoppable store so that others can discover and shop them too. Celebrities, bloggers, brands, and even everyday people have found immense value in myStorey’s ability to transform their digital content into shopping opportunities.

myStorey worked with Rudy Gay’s social team to leverage his social media content and use it to highlight the products from his everyday life. myStorey will highlight some of the clothing and accessories that Gay wears in everyday life along with some of the luxury items that help bring his swag like his Audermars Piguet watch.

Anyone can use myStorey, whether you’re the average Joe or a trendsetter, myStorey lets you highlight the things you wear everyday and then helps people discover those items and purchase them.

Other celebrities participating at launch include:

US Open Surf Champion Lakey Peterson
Fitness guru Chalene Johnson
Jacksonville Jaguars Quarterback Jordan Palmer
Miami Marlin’s player Bryan Petersen
Miami Marlin’s player Logan Morrison
Beauty Biz CEO and expert Sumita Batra
HoneynSilk.com fashion blogger Stephanie Liu
Beachmint’s Social Media Coordinator Vaneza Pitynski

myStorey seems like a very innovative platform, and with the star power they’ve recruited in the beginning they should be in good shape for a successful launch. We got a chance to talk with the team behind myStorey, check out the interview below.

New York Startup: Self To Shelf Is A New Business To Business Market Place

New York based entrepreneurs Doug Crisona and Cyrus Park have created a new marketplace for businesses to market to other businesses. They call their New York startup Self To Shelf. They liken it to other marketplaces already out there like ebay and etsy but instead of onesie twosie operators with side businesses, their marketplace is for established businesses to sell their wares to other businesses without the need for their own e-commerce site.

Self to Shelf is a wholesale marketplace. If your looking for a place to sell your wares to other retailers, or you represent a retail shop, than this may be the platform for you. You can now get in front of a large and curated community of retailers and wholesalers without having to rifle through other folks, not so serious about their business, that can stifle sales and pollute a community.

“We read a newspaper article titled “Getting Your Product onto Retail shelves”. The story was about a man selling a gourmet food product who wanted to get into retail stores. His predicament was that he had a great product that his (small) customer base loved. However, he didn’t have the means to spread the word about his product to get the attention of stores. So he was forced to pound the pavement and go door-to-door, pitching his product. The article presented a few solutions: hiring a sales rep/product broker, or going to trade shows. From our experience, we’ve seen these traditional routes work well, but they can be expensive, time consuming, and very limiting by one’s budget and geography. So we got to talking about how an online marketplace, if done right, could really help to change this aspect of the industry. We started by talking to a lot of people in the industry and it grew from there.” Crisona told us in an interview.

The two cofounders are looking to help others break into retail which can be a very hard process going through traditional channels.

Check out the rest of the interview below.

Montreal Startup: JobBook Automagically Matches Users To Jobs

We’re all familiar with the old online job board model. You fill out a profile, then find the jobs you like and apply for them. Most jobs sites like Monster.com and HotJobs (Yahoo), would make it easy for you to apply by simply storing your resume information and then manually applying for a job. Montreal startup JobBook is one of the newer breed of job sites which matches you to jobs based on your profile.

The other thing that JobBook is doing is