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Accelerate Baltimore Extends Application Deadline To December 21st

The holidays are upon us but for entrepreneurs and startup founders across the state of Maryland, across the country and around the globe who want to build their startup in Charm City, they’ll probably be on pins and needles, waiting. AccelerateBaltimore, the startup accelerator program put on by The Emerging Technology Center has extended their program application deadline to December 21st, 2012.

Baltimore is a great city to build a startup in, just ask McKeever Conwell who decided to keep his startup “Given.to” (formerly No Bad Gift), in Maryland’s tech city. Conwell, a Morgan State graduate, has been through the AccelerateBaltimore program and he’s been out west. He decided Baltimore’s best for his company.

Baltimore has a thriving tech scene (I may be biased being born and raised there). Video game studios, mobile app companies, mobile ad companies and many more call Baltimore home. In fact, mobile ad company Millennial Media, is a Baltimore startup that recently went public to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. The company has over 38,000 mobile apps on it’s network.

If you want a taste of that pie and you want to learn from some of the greatest mentors around, you still have a couple of weeks to apply. You don’t have to be based in Baltimore, but you do have to be willing to move to Baltimore to participate in the program. It’s worth it.

And speaking of Mentors, the ETC just announced 14 mentors for the next AccelerateBaltimore session including: Chris Brandenburg, Co-founder and CTO of Millennial Media, Greg Cangialosi, CEO of Nucleus Ventures, Ron Schmelzer, CEO of Bizelo and Co-founder of Baltimore Tech Breakfast and Andrew Coy, Co-Executive Director of Digital Harbor Foundation, Ann Quinn of Quinn Strategy Group, Victoria McAndrews of CMD, and Russell Clark Co-Founder of Illuminis.

“AccelerateBaltimore™ is one of the recognized programs that has proven to assist in nurturing startups from idea-stage to viable business,” stated Michael Binko, co-chair of Startup Maryland. “Formal programs like AccelerateBaltimore™, MindShare, Distilled Intelligence and others in the broader region are a great extension to high-touch entrepreneur events like our own Pitch Across Maryland. The mentorship, working capital and creative office-space provided by ETC form a great foundation for entrepreneurs who are eager to accept guidance from peer-mentors as well as program facilitators.”

The next AccelerateBaltimore session will begin in February. Six startups will be part of this next cohort and will receive $25,000 in seed funding. They’ll also participate in an intense development program, have free office space, a high level advisory team and more.

Linkage:

Apply to AccelerateBaltimore here

More startup news from “everywhere else”

Hear about McKeever Conwell’s experience in AccelerateBaltimore at the largest startup conference in the U.S.

Interview with Japanese 500startups Startup: Language Cloud

According to brothers Billy and John Martyn, language learning and educational technology in Japan needed a big dose of innovation. That’s what their Japanese startup Language Cloud is all about.

The Martyn brothers are half American and half Japanese and spent their lives growing up internationally. They were born in Saudi Arabia, and grew up in Pakistan, France and the U.S. Billy ultimately graduated college from UVA while brother John graduated from George Mason University. To call these two worldly may be a bit of an understatement.

Now back in Japan, both brothers are attacking the problem with technology in language education. We’re not talking about Rosetta Stone here. Language Cloud is a complete educational system that helps teachers teach languages to students better, and helps students learn easier.

“Language Cloud is a learning management system designed specifically for language education. In short, it provides educators and students with an easy to use and more importantly, free, digital platform for managing and enhancing the quality of language classes, while simultaneously promoting student collaboration and enthusiasm for foreign languages through school-based social networking. In addition, the Language Cloud interface has been designed to be both intuitive and simple to use. This allows instructors and students, even those with little tech experience, to confidently begin using web 2.0 technologies in the classroom for educational purposes.” Billy told us in an interview.

Language Cloud has already attracted 7000 students and teachers out of 54 academic institutions including grade schools, private language learning schools and universities.

We got a chance to talk in depth with Billy Martyn. Check out our interview below.

New Orleans Food Ordering Startup: Couchster, Set To Debut Dec 17th

After a long day at work, school or even at the gym, a lot of people just want to chill on the couch and order in. That’s the idea that’s driving New Orleans entrepreneur Sean O’Neill and his food ordering startup Couchster.

The New Orleans startup is an online food ordering site, optimized for mobile, but O’Neill is hoping to add native mobile apps in the not so distant future. While mobile food ordering isn’t necessarily new, it is new to New Orleans. According to our friends at Silicon Bayou News, O’Neill is aiming to make ordering food easy and more accessible.

Couchster serves up online menu’s so that ordering from your computer, mobile device or tablet can be a cinch. In a city known for it’s delicious food and variety at that, Couchster is a welcomed addition. O’Neill already has over 125 restaurant locations on board. While he’s not officially launching until December 17th, the menus for all of Couchster’s restaurant partners are already posted for users to view.

Couchster is bootstrapped to the hilt. O’Neill believes he shouldn’t try and raise money until he has proven his concept. So after having this idea for over a year, he went out and worked 8-5 everyday and saved every dime he could so that this past June he could quit his day job and work on Couchster full time.

As long as the rollout in New Orleans goes well O’Neill plans to expand to other cities in Louisiana like Shreveport and Baton Rouge, and then after that he wants to take Couchster outside of the state.

Linkage:

Couchster can be found here

Source: Silicon Bayou News

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Spanish Startup: Fiona Is Your Artificial, Virtual Cloud Based Assistant

There’s a cool new social robotics startup in Spain, called Adele Robots, that has created a collaborative, artificial, virtual, cloud based assistant. Her name is Fiona.

We’re not talking about Sims or avatars here, Fiona has features and skill sets that have been acquired by community collaboration, that the company calls “sparks”. One user may add a cool character trait while another may add a skill to make Fiona smarter. All of these sparks can be dragged and dropped when users create their own Fiona’s that are customizable to them.

As the company evolves, users will be able to use these cloud based, social robots for customer service, as a personal assistant or even for research. Think Siri with crowd sourced attributes that ends up actually looking like an avatar and having a personality of sorts.

Confused? Watch the video:

Now that you have a clearer understanding of what exactly Fiona is, we got a chance to talk to the founders of Adele Robots about Fiona. Check out the interview below.

Burlington MA Startup: Acquia Raises $30 Million

Burlington startup, Acquia, provides enterprise tools based on the open source Drupal web platform. If you’re not familiar with Drupal, it’s the backbone architecture for such popular websites as The White House and the Economist. The platform was created by Dries Buytaert, who also serves as CTO for Acquia.

The startup has now picked up a cool $30 million dollar round led by Growth Capital and Goldman Sachs. Accolade Partners, North Bridge Venture Partners, Sigma Partners and Tenaya Capital also participated in the round. They are looking to add between 120 and 140 new jobs within the next 12 months. They are also planning on using the money for more international expansion.

Acquia generated $21.8 million in revenue in 2011 according to the Boston Business Journal. CEO Tom Erickson plans to double that this year. They are also looking at a possible IPO within the next two years.

This latest round brings their total venture funding to $68.5 million since 2007. The company was founded by Buytaert and Vice President Jay Batson.

They currently employ 260 people. 140 of those work at the corporate office in Massachusetts. They also have offices in Washington DC, California, Amsterdam,Paris and Oxford England.

Linkage:

Check out Acquia here

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California Startup: RaffleForGood, A New, Easy To Use, Raffling Platform

As the holiday season continues we will continue profiling as many social entrepreneurs and their startups as we can. Greg Hoffman and Ben Daniel are two of those entrepreneurs. Their California startup, RaffleForGood, is exactly what the name suggests, a raffle platform to do some good.

With the rise in use of the internet businesses big, small, for profit and non profit want to use the internets vast reach to offer prizes in raffles to raise money for charity. The problem is, that posting a product on the internet, and raffling it off isn’t just time consuming, but there are mountains of legal red tape that prevent companies from raffling things off at their own whim.

RaffleForGood handles all of that for their users. They’ve simplified the raffling system down to just about listing a prize and starting the raffle.

“Basically, Raffle For Good is an online fundraising platform for organizations to raise money through an interactive, skill-based raffle system. Companies donate items to causes they support. The causes then list the items on their personal Raffleforgood.com subdomain, at which point they direct their supporters to purchase tickets. It’s a fun reinvention of the raffle designed to make online fundraising more effective, engaging, and exciting, for all parties involved.” Hoffman told us in an interview.

Check out the rest of our interview with Hoffman below:

Canadian Startup: Student U Is Building Student Communities INTERVIEW

When Facebook exploded into global social network domination by opening it’s gates to those that were not college students, a gaping hole was created in the social space. A few startups have begun trying to fill the hole for the “student social network”. One of those startups is Canadian startup Student U.

At it’s roots, Student U is a new social network for students. Through their app you can make no friends, chat, share pics, manage multiple profiles and much more. Checkout out their website you’ll see that Student U is part social network, part student portfolio and part student dating site. The founders have put a big emphasis on flirting and dating.

Once the user begins engaging with the Student U platform they can “give presents”, “share emotions” and “fall in love”

Student U also went mobile first the right way and introduced an iOS app, Android app and a Windows Phone app all at the same time. Naturally, students are using the smartphone as their key to the internet a lot more than any other device so it’s fitting to have a three fold mobile strategy.

We got a chance to interview StudentU take a look at the interview below

Memphis Social Entrepreneur Sarah Petschonek Takes Volunteer Experience Nationwide

30 Year old Memphian, Sarah Petschonek left her Nashville job in September of this year to return home to Memphis, Tennessee. Petschonek who has a socially motivated work background and a PhD, wanted to find a more impactful and meaningful path for her life.

Being a lifelong volunteer since childhood, and with the support of her family and closest friends, she did the most logical thing and went back to volunteering. This time around it would be different though — a mission.

For the entire month of November, including today, Petschonek worked each day, every day at a different volunteer organization. She blogged about each day of her journey on her website at confessionsofavolunteer.com.

Along the way she volunteered helping children, senior citizens, homeless people, urban farmers, students and more. When local CBS affiliate, News Channel 3 caught up with Petschonek she was volunteering for SAVE an organization that provides vision services for students.

“Each time you volunteer you generate a ripple effect across the community and you create positive change in the world. You don’t have to be perfect in order to be the perfect volunteer. Whatever your talents and interests, you have the potential to inspire yourself and everyone around you!” Petschonek said.

Her volunteer days go back 22 years to when she was 8 years old. Her and her two siblings would pull a wagon around Jacksonville Florida, passing out fliers and collecting food for the needy.

With this 30 day stint coming to an end, Petschonek has decided to do the next logical thing and take her volunteer experience across the country. She will begin the next leg of her journey in Portland, Oregon and travel to Boise, Salt Lake City, Kansas City, St. Louis, Nashville, Atlanta and back to Jacksonville to rekindle the youthful social entrepreneur that started this all.

Petschonek’s Memphis journey yielded media coverage from the prominent local media outlets. Her blog is already averaging 30,000muv. All Petschonek hopes to do is inspire people to donate just one hour of their time, whether it be once a week, or once a month to whatever cause they can relate to. The results are already amazing including a local law firm giving 10% of their revenues to the local food bank and many others giving personally with time, money, and resources.

Petschonek has launched an indiegogo campaign at indiegogo.com/volunteerbound to help fund the nationwide expedition. While she realizes that a journey like this may be more comfortable in the summer months, winter time is when people, and volunteer organizations need the most help.

People can stay up to date with Petschonek’s nationwide adventure at her blog site confessionsofavolunteer.com and contribute to her journey through links on that page or directly at indiegogo.com/volunteerbound.

Linkage:

Check out Sarah’s blog here

Support her on indiegogo here

No one covers startups in the southeast like nibletz.com

Sarah Petschonek will be here, will you?

Los Angeles Startup: Upperatus Is Making A Difference With T-Shirts INTERVIEW

Yesterday we brought you the story about Utah based startup HeadCase who is trying to make a social difference with their unique, premium headphones. Today we’re turning to Los Angeles and social entrepreneur Jeff Kudlishevich and his LA startup Upperatus.

Kudlishevich’s startup, with a really cool name, is taking uniquely designed t-shirts, pairing them up for social causes, injecting celebrity spokespeople and donating a portion to charity. We’re not talking about 50 cents or a dollar, no that’s all been done before. Upperatus builds in $11 of each t-shirt sold to the paired up non profit organization.

This month Upperatus has teamed up with classical singer Nathan Pacheco and artist Dan Mccauley to donate $11 per shirt sold to Save The Bay (The Santa Monica Bay for those of you keeping track).

The Upperatus site describes this month’s charity below:

The Santa Monica Bay is the centerpiece of Los Angeles’ beach culture, and the geographic center of the LA region. Stretching from Malibu to Palos Verdes, the bay is where millions of Angelenos relax and work. Because of their economic, ecological and recreational value, our waterways and the ocean are critical resources worth protecting.

Santa Monica Bay beaches average 45 million visits per year

The Bay generates more than $1 billion in visitor spending annually.

Tourism accounts for more than 500,000 jobs in the greater L.A. area

The population of Los Angeles has skyrocketed in the past 100 years and it’s putting a lot of pressure on our environment. In the mid 1980s, improperly treated sewage led to dead zones in the Bay and harmful water quality. Thanks to the efforts of Heal the Bay and its supporters, the EPA mandated stricter sewage treatment processes, resulting in greatly improved water quality.

Despite the amazing gains, your Bay faces ongoing challenges, from marine debris to overfishing. The good news is that you can help protect our beaches and oceans. And remember, watersheds connect you to ocean, no matter if you live on the coast or 60 miles inland.

If you haven’t noticed, with the holidays upon us we’re featuring more social entrepreneurs. Upperatus is another great way for the slacktivists to get involved, and you get a cool shirt in the process. What makes Upperatus even better is that they’re changing the shirts and the causes every month so you aren’t stuck with the same shirt and your money going to the same cause.

We got a chance to interview Kudishevich. Check out the interview below.

St.Louis Startup LockerDome Adds 19 Year VC Veteran Mark Lewis As CFO

News keeps pouring out from our friends at St. Louis startup LockerDome. Earlier this week the largest sports social network startup in the world announced that they had just partnered for the release of the first app/game built on the LockerDome platform. Thursday the team at LockerDome announced a new addition in 19 year venture capital veteran Mark Lewis, joining the team as CFO.

Lewis’ venture capital experience includes working with Gateway Associates and Two River Associates from 1998 to 2006. Most recently Lewis spent the last six years as a principal at Advantage Capital Partners, one of the nations leading venture capital firms with over $1.3 billion in invested capital.

While LockerDome founder and CEO Gabe Lozano is no beginner when it comes to startup and entrepreneurism, adding Lewis to the team brings a plethora of welcomed experience.

“As we continue to invest in the team’s growth, we are thrilled that someone of Mark’s stature, energy and talent will lead LockerDome’s efforts toward securing an even brighter financial future for the company,” Lozano said in a statement. “Under Mark’s financial leadership we will continue to build on the momentum the company has had this year in amassing over 1,300 properties and 2.5 million monthly unique visitors since January.”

“Joining a visionary leader such as Gabe Lozano to help build LockerDome into the premier interest-specific social media platform is an incredible opportunity. I am quite excited by the prospect of sustaining and managing LockerDome’s explosive growth,” said Mark Lewis, LockerDome’s new CFO “I look forward to securing a strong financial future to execute Gabe’s vision and LockerDome’s brand.”

LockerDome is a sports social network that allows anyone at any level in sports to join, create a profile and interact with others. From school age leagues to the pro’s, a wide variety of athletes make up the LockerDome social network. Hundreds of thousands of sports fans have also joined the network to keep up with their favorite sports stars, teams and even media sites.

Linkage:

LockerDome is here

More St. Louis startup coverage is here at nibletz.

LockerDome will be at the largest startup conference in the world, will you? CLICK HERE

Richmond Startup: Lending Clouds, Legally Crowdfunding Startups NOW!

One of the biggest steps in supporting startups in 2012 was the passing of the JOBS Act. The act itself was passed earlier this year and then turned over to the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC), to develop regulations. The JOBS Act is the legislation that will eventually make it possible to use crowdfunding sites, similar to how Kickstarter functions, to sell off micr0-equity stakes in companies up to $1 million dollars.

The SEC had originally announced that they would be done setting up the regulations back in July, however that was quickly moved to January of 2013. At this time it’s unclear as to when crowdfunding for equity in startups will officially start.

Several “crowdfunding” startups have launched. Others have launched websites with beta invites and LaunchRock’s in preparation for when they’ll truly be able to crowdfund for equity. Other sites have set up the ability to support startup companies with mico investments in exchange for “perks” like t-shirts, swags and hardware samples.

Barry Rickert, a 40 year veteran in the private equity field, has used his vast knowledge and experience, along with the law, to side step the JOBS Act and create a way to fund startups now.

His Richmond startup, Lendingclouds, is going to give back royalties instead of equity and to get that you need to join the sites “club”.

The combination of royalty based small business financing offers no debt and no personal guarantees to small business that need capital to grow, while at the same time giving investors access to high yield investments that pay immediate income. It’s really quite ingenious. The members only, online Crowdfunding Investment store brings together entrepreneurs and investors in a unique manner designed to benefit both. The funding group provides exclusive investment opportunities to members who bring as little as $100 to the table. Lending Clouds does this by accepting applications from entrepreneurs, which once approved, are offered to investors.

Investor members participate in what is known as crowdfunding. Rickert’s form of crowdfunding is focused on pooling resources to invest funds in new businesses, products and ideas that provide royalty based returns. Members are able to spread their funds amongst many different investments, which lessens their risk. Returns of 25%+ are expected on successful ventures. In 20 years, this can result in a $5,000 investment paying $1 million.

“We’re looking forward to working we people who have never invested before,” says Lending Clouds President, Barry Rickert, “and who may have a few hundred dollars or more to put towards various projects and products. There are a few unique aspects to Lending Clouds and crowdfunding, which makes us especially attractive to investors and entrepreneurs.” Rickert adds, “Unlike the stock market, investors don’t need a lot of money, and they start to see payments come back to them within 60 to 90 days.”

Members have access to exclusive listings posted on the Lending Clouds online store. They may read through the various opportunities and decide to put money in one or more projects. Once all funding is in place, an Investment Club is created as the vehicle for making the group investment. The club money is released to the user/grantee (entrepreneur) in return for a royalty agreement that details the product or service to be sold and the royalty to be paid over the term of the agreement. Investors start to receive payments as per the agreement between the user/grantee and grantor/investor usually within 30-90 days.

Rickert notes, “The opportunities we are providing investors with are easier to understand than stock offerings, with terms explicitly stated. Our investment opportunities are for expansion and growth with entities that are already established and familiar to our investors. This also helps to lessen risk.” He observes, “Grantees are looking for as little as $25,000 and as much as $2 million, with the average fund being capitalized at about $100,000. An investor can put as little as $100 into a fund.”

As part of Rickert’s lean startup strategy, he is giving away a significant number of $100 credits to new members, with no strings attached. About the only catch (if you can call it a catch) is that investors must pick an investment that gets funded. However, if it doesn’t, they’re free to use the funds to pick another investment. Rickert also states that while the offerings are very small today, he has some million dollar deals in the pipeline.

While hundreds of crowdfunding sites popped up the minute the JOBS Act was officially passed, Lending Clouds is not a flash in the pain, or a scam. Rickert has decades of experience in the field and has come up with the quickest, easiest and most legal way to start using crowdfunding mechanics to invest now, not when the SEC is ready.

Linkage:

Go see for yourself at lendingclouds.com

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Denmark Startup: MindTeacher Brings Daily Deals To Online Courses

Now that Groupon and LivingSocial have cornered the market for generalized, localized daily deals, we’re starting to see siloed startups across the globe create daily deals sites for other verticals. For example Paris startup LimeApp is a daily deals site specifically for online services.

A new Denmark startup, MindTeacher, is bringing the daily deals platform to online course offerings.

MindTeacher is connecting their users to classes for personal development. Whether you want to learn a language, a computer skill or even how to cook, you know you can find those classes online. However, there are 100s of websites to look towards for every different type of class. Also, there isn’t a site out there, yet, that’s offering classes at discounted rates. That’s what MindTeacher does.

MindTeacher is serving both the teachers and the students. For the teachers, MindTeacher is available to help them sell, or sell out online courses that need a little extra push. For students, it helps them find classes at more affordable rates. Using MindTeacher’s deal platform a student that could only afford one class may now be able to afford more.

We got a chance to talk with the people behind MindTeacher. Check out our interview below:

New Orleans Startups Prepare For Silicon Bayou 100 Event December 12th

New Orleans thriving startup scene is about to celebrate the second annual Silicon Bayou 100 release party. The event, being held December 12th at the Eiffel Society, will highlight a crowdsourced group of 100 top movers and shakers across the region known as the Silicon Bayou.

Registering for the star studded event will get you into see all the action live and if you can’t make it Silicon Bayou News will send you the list of winners so you’ll know who’s who for the next year.

Three of the regional organizations that support high growth startups and entrepreneurism will hold their monthly meeting in conjunction with the gala. Those organizations are NOLA, Net2NO and the Baton Rouge group, SeNSE.

Thanks to LaunchPad, Louisiana Technology Park, New Orleans BioInnovation Center and the Eiffel Society, tickets to the event are free (You just need to register).

Hit the links below:

Check out Silicon Bayou News’ story here

No one covers high growth tech news for the southeast like nibletz.com the voice of startups “everywhere else”

A lot of New Orleans startups are coming to the largest startup conference in the US

Official: DC Startup Living Social Lays Off 400

We reported early this morning that Washington DC based daily deals starutp Living Social was planning on laying off 400 people. That came to fruition later this morning and was announced by company spokesperson Andrew Weinstein.

Weinstein confirmed all 400 layoffs and said that they were spread across sales, editorial and customer service. They are also looking to streamline all of their operations and with that they are centralizing customer service to an office in Tuscon Arizona. Customer service jobs that were based at the companies DC offices are either being cut or moved to Tuscon. There may be some job openings at the Tuscon customer service office later on.

This may not bode will for Living Social who just received a major tax break from the DC government. Under the deal for the $32.5 million dollar tax break, LivingSocial is supposed to move to a massive, centralized headquarters and keep 1000 employees in DC.

Living Social is also trying to calm the editorial and social swell from the announcement. Many journalists, bloggers and investors in daily deals, are starting to worry that the once hot space is “over”. Weinstein told CNN “We think this actually puts us on the right path for long-term growth and profitability,”

Groupon, Living Social’s biggest rival and the big winner in the daily deals space, is going through turmoil themselves. It’s been widely rumored that the board of directors at Groupon is looking to replace CEO Andrew Mason. Their stock has performed dismally since going public and there has been a lot of executive turnover at their Chicago headquarters.

To add to LivingSocial’s problems, a month ago Amazon reported a $169 million dollar write down on it’s $175 million dollar investment in LivingSocial.

Linkage:

Livingsocial is here

Earlier story from nibletz is here

Startup News from “everywhere else” is here

A huge startup conference, is here