Overnight Carriers Probably Owe You Money, This Florida Startup Will Get It For You

Every year more than $2 billion is wasted in unclaimed shipping refunds. While many people know that there are “guaranteed delivery times” for all of the major overnight carriers, very few actually know what those times mean and how they affect your bottom line.

Sure “guaranteed by 3pm” means guaranteed delivery by 3:00pm. Typically though, when a package arrives at 3:05pm we brush it off, thankful that the package arrived at all. What many folks don’t know is that UPS and FedEx both offer 100% refunds if a package is delivered even 60 seconds late. The package delivery time is scanned by the delivery driver, and chances are, if you ship a lot, you’ve even looked at packages that have been late and not thought a thing about it.

Well Jose Li, who at one point led FedEx’s retail and e-commerce practices, has started a company of his own that helps shippers get the money rightfully owed to them by the major overnight carriers.

71lbs is a software platform that analyzes customer’s shipping data and audits shipments against their guaranteed delivery times. 71lbs then retrieves the refund for the customer and takes a small commission when the refund is retrieved.

The service is free and according to the company it takes just 45 seconds to sign up. The rest is automatic. The best part is it’s totally legal and totally ethical.

What is your startup?

71lbs is a software technology company that is making it easy and automated for small businesses to claim shipping refunds. So when your FedEx or UPS package is delivered 60 seconds late, both companies have policies that entitle you to a 100% refund. Lots of people don’t know about this or don’t have the time to go through the tedious claim process. More than $2 billion dollars is wasted in unclaimed shipping refunds every year.

This inspired former FedEx executive, Jose Li, to create 71lbs, a software that automatically analyzes customer’s shipping data, audits shipments against guaranteed time commitments, and retrieves refunds for the customers. It’s totally free to use, takes 45 seconds to sign up, and is growing like crazy. 71lbs only collects a percentage fee when a refund is successfully claimed.

The company believes all businesses should have access to the same tools and resources that the “Fortune 500” utilize today. 71lbs also believes technology and software should enable small businesses to become as efficient, if not more, than their Fortune 500 counterparts. 71lbs believes in democratizing shipping.

Who are the founders and what are their backgrounds?

Jose Li, former FedEx executive, has 15 years in the shipping, logistics, and e-commerce industry. He experienced first-hand the lack of tools and resources while managing Jamba Juice’s supply chain of 450 stores, and also wore the carrier’s shoes, running a business unit for FedEx.

The management team has decades of experience in the shipping, software, and technology industries, with companies such as FedEx, DHL, and Tangoe Software to name a few.

Where are you based?

Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.

What is the startup culture like where you are based?

South Florida is gaining a lot of activity in start-up and tech, through a number of anchors like The Lab Miami, The Knight Foundation, universities, incubators and workspaces.

What is one challenge that you’ve overcome in the startup process?

Two particular challenges – raising funds and recruiting. We don’t call victory yet. It’s an on-going process. We call this ABR – Always Be Raising, and Always Be Recruiting. Being in South Florida the investor community is not as dense as other start-up tech places like Silicon Valley, New York City, Chicago, or Austin. So it just means we have to work harder at it. We leveraged a number of resources – old work colleagues, University alumni, networking, introductions, travel, conference calls, AngelList, LinkedIn, etc to share our story and mission with a number of potential investors. We were fortunate to get accepted into what is now Techstars Chicago and met a group of our investors there.

We faced and continue to face similar challenges with finding great people. We have taken the approach of sharing our story with community members, local media, Universities and continue to interview and recruit tech and business people to join 71lbs.

A.B.R. Always be recruiting. Always be raising.

What are some of the milestones your startup has achieved?

We were able to average over 50 customer sign ups per week and we hope to build on that momemtum.

What are your next milestones

We would like to continue developing our technology and go live with our next software release which includes invoice auditing.

Who are your mentors and role models?

I’ve been fortunate to have a number of mentors throughout my years. One piece of advice I was told early on my career was to recruit a personal “board of advisors”, which I personally invested a lot of my time and effort into making happen. Most recently, my former boss at FedEx was instrumental in helping me develop a number of skills, like leading without authority, influence and persuasion, and presentation.

What’s next for your startup?

We would like to continue to grow and offer additional cost saving products and services for our customers. We are working on adding a number of partners to our ecosystem, which will allow us to increase reach and distribution.

Where can people find out more, and what is your Twitter username?

71lbs.com

facebook.com/71lbs

twitter.com/71lbs

This Chattanooga startup aims to simplify your social life

Florida Startup Ziipa Helps You Navigate The Ocean of Apps

Sure there are a lot of app discovery startups out there, but ziipa, a startup based in West Palm Beach Florida, is helping people discover the diamonds in the rough. In the application discovery space there are two users, the app developers and the actual app users. Most app discovery platforms do one of those users well, but not both.

Ziipa is using their proprietary algorithms to help users really dig deep and find the apps that they need and want. It’s also helping app developers reach out and fund users they couldn’t’ get from a quick spike in the iTunes app store or Google Play store.

“This results in discovery of sites and applications that would most likely not have been discovered. The outcome is a benefit to the user as well as the developer,” ziipa founder Lee Starusta told Nibletz.

Starusta founded ziipa after getting frustrated that his other apps were hard to discover. Not only are there a lot of apps in the marketplace, but there are hundreds of new apps and startups coming out daily. Add to that the fact that a lot of the other app discovery platforms are “gameable” and the deck gets stacked against you quickly.

“Ziipa ranks applications using a passive approach that eliminates bias and cheating,” Starusta said.

Check out this Q & A ziipa below:

In layman’s terms, how does it work? (In other words how would you explain it to your grandmother)

Just go to ziipa and search for applications in a field of interest. As a user surfs ziipa for applications, ziipa identifies a users interest and anticipates any change in interest and recommends sites and applications to the user. This results in discovery of sites and applications that would most likely not have been discovered. The outcome is a benefit to the user as well as the developer.

Who are the founders and what are their backgrounds?

Lee Starusta – Founder & CEO. Creator, dreamer and out to disrupt! Industrial engineer by education, entrepreneur by genetic predisposition. self employed for 25 Years with loads of experience. 100% ziipa

Hugo Aponte – co-founder & CTO. Technology guru! Crazy amounts of experience running technology startups, patent holder and loves mathematics and artificial intelligence. (Who doesn’t!!)

Where are you based?

ziipa is based in West Palm Beach, Florida, United States.

How did you come up with the idea for ziipa?

The genesis for ziipa came from personal experience in trying to launch, run, and grow several internet start-ups. It is very difficult to get noticed and acquire customers as the underdog. ziipa offers a platform that gets you noticed quickly and connects applications with users based on interest.

Why now?

The explosion in mobile and web applications requires that there be more than a few players in the space. In addition ziipa offers a different approach to solving the problem of how to be found. ziipa helps by shortening discovery time, increasing the long tail and fairly ranking applications without money and bias.

What sets you apart from any of the other hundred+ app discovery platforms out there?

The main differences are as follows:

1- ziipa ranks applications using a passive approach that eliminates bias and cheating.

2- ziipa can recommend users not only based on interest but it can anticipate a user’s change in interest. This dynamic approach to recommending helps content stay fresh and relevant to the users.

What are some milestones you’ve achieved?

Considering that our marketing budget is zero, we are very proud of the fact that we have experienced steady growth and that tens of thousands of visitors find awesome apps on ziipa every month. Acceptance is a key metric, and I feel that our approach is certainly paying off for users as well as app developers.

What’s your next milestone?

ziipa will be rolling out a marketplace for applications where developers will be able to sell their applications.

Who are some of your mentors and business role models?

I could mention many and some would be obvious. I have been an entrepreneur for over 20+ Years and my mentors and models have to be the everyday person with a dream who actually stops talking and does it. Without these entrepreneurs life would be very boring!

Where can people find out more and what is your Twitter username?

ziipa.com @ziipa facebook.com/ziipa

Love Florida? Check out this developers conference on Atlantic Beach.

Belgium Startup Favebucket Is A New Way To Save, Share and Inspire

The founders of Belgium startup Favebucket have been burning the midnight oil lately so that they can bestow upon the word a new way to save, share and inspire, any kind of web content in an all in one, feature packed, but extremely easy to use web app.

Going all the way back to the Netscape Navigator days, bookmarks (or favorites) have been a way to save your favorite web pages. As internet browsers evolved they made it easier to share. Truth be told, in my opinion, sharing is easiest on the mobile versions of Safari and Chrome, however all of the current major browsers support url sharing through a number of channels.

Well what if you only want to share an image, video, or social media update? Sure you can right click a photo and then pull it out of your saved photos and attach it to an email, and of course you can always “pin” it using Pinterest or any of it’s clones, but Favebucket takes it one step further, making it about 5 clicks easier.

With Favebucket you simply use the bookmarklet on the content you want to save or share, add some tags to a quick pop up form and voila, it’s saved for your reference. If you want to share it, Favebucket allows you to quickly share it as well.

All of your faves, no matter what kind of web content they are, are saved to your Faveboard. You can go back to your Faveboard and decide if you want to heart it (making it a favorite fave), share it, go to it or see the details you saved about it. Sharing lets you share it directly from Favebucket (ala dropbox style), email it, share it through Twitter, Facebook or pin it on Pinterest.

While none of these ideas are new or earth shattering, bringing it all together as one, and making it so darn easy, is.

We got a chance to talk with the founders of Favebucket, check out the interview below.

What is your startup, what does it do?

“Favebucket is the assistant that helps you to save, recollect and share your favorites online!”

Who are the founders and what are their backgrounds

CHRISTOPHE NOVALET: chief creative technology. hybrid guru between technology, user experience and design. loves guitars and good food. hates: web dev stupidity – noise & clutter. loves: creation – the web as we’ll make it – simplicity

MARCEL CRAMER: social media, online marketing, business development, guiding teams. more than 15 years of online expertise. innovative mind. hates: boxes & beaten paths – bad food – bad UX. loves: people – design – strategy. married. 2 daughters. a cooking aficionado

What is the startup culture like in Belgium?

It is a very open culture, obviously much smaller than US and still with a lot to learn. Benelux startups need to get out in the open more and established business and venture partners should stimulate the entrepreneurs more and transfer knowledge and spirit. Reinvigoration would be welcomed by many.

What problem does your startup solve?

We assist people to manage the massive amounts of information coming to us every day. Making their life online easier and save them time and effort when trying to find, remember and share content.”in a world where information is created constantly, at lightning speed, where clutter is everywhere, you need a place to go where all your personal favorites are. information you want to keep, recollect, and use. Just for you.”

What is one challenge that you’ve overcome in the startup process?

Keeping our heads together when the going got tough (thnx Billy Ocean). We have been creating and building what we just soft launched with our own time, sweat, effort, burning the midnight oil for months. And that is not easy, its a “make or break” test for a team. In that period you find if you fit together, if there is maximum trust and inspiration. And we found our modus, we got closer together, we actually did overcome.

What are some of the milestones your startup has achieved?

We as a team achieved many milestones. Big ones and smaller ones. The first one was the deciding moment to throw away the first version we built, and then the second. Another milestone was the soft launch some weeks ago and also setting up a larger team. We needed that and we made it. Not done growing yet by the way ;)

What are your next milestones

Mobile – Plug ins with partner (can’t disclose yet) – New teammates – Getting the needed investment in

Who are your mentors and role models?

Roles models is a strong word. We create our position based on a mix of what we learned from great brands and their forerunners but also look at people we have around us. People in the advisory board with entrepreneurial knowledge and all sorts of different skills. Also in our families, mothers who are the best operational managers, dads who are great thinkers and tinkers. Not just one example but many.

What are some of the advantages/disadvantages growing your startup outside of Silicon Valley

Being outside makes you want to prove more that you don’t need to be in a specific location as long as you are in the right market. It is about finding the right people, that is true, but we do not feel that being in the super heated center of all things “startup” is a good thing. It seems a very volatile culture with changing trends and a specific savoir faire that is not necessarily a good thing. People you hire might just leap away to the next big thing, the next “Meme”. That is not a fact in Europe. The bad thing is that the position investors and people take towards startups in Europe is held back. Less interest, lower investment levels and less specific knowledge in what you might call “typical Silicon Valley” ventures.

What’s next for your startup?

Keep the audience in our market interested like we do now, tend to them, assist them. Find a good partner for advice, support, investment and business development experience.

Where can people find out more, and what is your Twitter username?

favebucket.com or on Twitter at @favebucket

This startup, Cabcents, applies the “Priceline model” to ground transportation.

New York Startup Wants You To DoItInPerson

There’s a new kid in town in the event space, and it’s New York startup DoItInPerson.

Founder Aron Schoenfeld realizes that the event space is very crowded but it’s also very fragmented. There are event discovery startups, event community startups, event social networking startups, and event ticketing startups. DoItInPerson is taking all of these fragmented pieces and putting them together in one platform. Their all in one platform promises one place to go for managing, promoting, and discovering events and communities.

Schonfeld has covered everything about an event with DoItInPerson. Using their platform you can create and manage your community, find and book speakers and sponsors, create and sell tickets, create partnerships, invite attendees, and monitor how it all fits together. Schonfeld found, through putting his own events together, that he was using different tools for each thing.

There are already a handful of great event organizers who have turned to DoItInPerson and discovered that the platform delivers everything they say it will.

(Disclosure: We’re using this product to help organize our Everywhere Else Conference and it’s been extremely helpful.)

What is your startup, what does it do?

DoItInPerson.com is an online event platform that allows people to create, manage and promote events and communities. It brings all of the fragmented pieces of the event space together; from creating and managing your community, sending newsletters, booking speakers, selling tickets, adding sponsors to managing partnerships. Our goal is to simplify the event process and create data around events and communities that will help organizers sell more event tickets.

Who are the founders and what are their backgrounds

The company was founded by Aron Schoenfeld. Aron is an accountant by trade and has worked on multiple startups. His first startup, which he still currently runs, is DreamArtists Studios, a boutique music production company that has composed theme music for shows such as ABC’s Good Morning America and 20/20 and ESPN’s Year of the Quarterback.

Where are you based?

We are based in NY

What is the startup culture like where you are based?

Very intense. Everyone wants to work on a startup and there is a lot of hustle going on. Unfortunately, I think that in NY we see more ideas and less actual startups than in other cities.

What problem does your startup solve?

Our company aims to solve and eliminate the fragmentation in the event space to make it easier for organizers to create, manage, and promote their events in a way that adds meaning and relevance to their events. Currently organizers are forced to use multiple sites and platforms, which leads to a lack of cohesive data across the event space. Through consolidation, we will be able to provide organizers with the data they need to create better events and collect more event registrations.

What is one challenge that you’ve overcome in the startup process?

Getting people to see the value proposition and why we are different then our competitors. Many people are familiar with other ticketing sites or other community management sites. We spent a lot of time refining our message to show people we are not just a ticketing or community platform.

What are some of the milestones your startup has achieved?

We recently had our 100th event run on the site and have had over 1000 registrations.

What are your next milestones

Our goal now is to hit 500 events, get more activity in the community aspect of the site and focus on having people use the speaker portion of our site more, which I believe adds tremendous value to the events and seems to be a lot of people’s favorite feature.

Who are your mentors and role models?

My mentors include Sergio Fernandez de Cordova, who taught me a lot about what I know about entrepreneurship and has helped me any time I have had questions or issues.

My role model is my father who as a salesman, worked extremely hard all the time to make sure we had whatever we needed, but more importantly, always put family first. Whether driving to the Catskills in traffic every Thursday night in the summer to spend the weekends with us, or never missing a school event, he put family first, no matter how busy work was.

What’s next for your startup?

We just launched a redesign for the site and are focusing on making the site a more responsive design. We also plan to launch 5-6 new key features to give the site broader appeal and are hoping to get 4-5 large conferences using the site over the next few months.

Where can people find out more?

doitinperson.com

Speaking of events did you see these 50 startup stories from TechCrunch Disrupt NY

Window Shop Through Your Friends’ Lives With Chicago Startup flik

Chicago-based husband and wife team Chris and Tracy Hayes have launched flik, a new startup that promises to bring the best of Vine, Pinterest, and Yelp into one unique experience.

Using your iOS device’s camera, flik captures short video clips between 5-8 seconds. Then they are instantly shared across your social channels. But unlike Vine, the clips are full clips rather than snippets of video looped together. Flik is designed for users to create original content around the products and places they love. Nothing says review better than a quick video.

While the company is just now launching, flik had a very interesting set of beta testers. Hayes used his network of professional baseball players in both the minor leagues and Major League Baseball (MLB) and their wives to test out the new app. They all reportedly loved it.

Hayes has been a career baseball player since graduating college from Northwestern University. Hayes started his minor league career with the Burlington Bees, an A league affiliate of the Kansas City Royals in 2005. At age 29 in 2012 he played with the Long Island Ducks in the Atlantic League.

While other players talk shop, watch tape, and goof off while traveling, Hayes took it upon himself to learn how to code.

He handled all of the coding for flik, while the business operations, marketing, and “everything else” was done by Tracy. Tracy also attended Northwestern, but a few years earlier than her husband.

What does your company do?

flik is an iPhone app that allows users to upload short videos showing products and places they love.

Who are the founders, and what are their backgrounds?

The co-founders of flik are a married couple, Chris and Tracy Hayes. Chris is a professional baseball player who has a degree in Computer Science from Northwestern University who coded several web and iOS apps during his days as a ball player. He was the weirdo sitting at his locker, working on his computer in the clubhouse and on buses and planes. He is self-taught in iOS, but incredibly anal retentive when it comes to coding. His engineering brain is a nice complement to his wife, Tracy, who is much more of a big picture, out of the box thinker. Tracy also went to Northwestern, but she robbed the cradle a little bit, so they never met in college. Tracy has worked in Research & Information at McKinsey & Company and ran a successful consulting business before launching flik. Tracy and Chris equally came up with the idea for flik (but when asked separately, they would each tell you that they came up with the idea on their own and the other person had nothing to do with it), but Chris does all the coding, Tracy does everything else (including writing this Q&A … in the third person, of course).

Where are you based?

flik is based out of Chicago, but has been lucky enough to have a team of people all over the country (West Coast, Midwest and East Coast — with a special shout out to the app’s beta users in the South. Thanks y’all!).

What problem do you solve?

flik solves a problem for both consumers and for businesses. Oprah isn’t the only one who has a list of favorite things and, until flik, there hasn’t been an appropriate place for regular people to share the things they actually have and love with their social network. For businesses, there really hasn’t been a great way to get truthful, real-time feedback from their customers.

Why does it matter?

The video space is hot right now and users are craving purposeful videos that are also easy to create. There are a lot of really amazing apps out there that allow people to share aspirational things they love, but users aren’t posting their own stuff on those platforms because it can be intimidating to create professional-looking content. The awesome thing about flik is it’s not asking its users for artsy-fartsy, it’s looking for REAL. flik is an app for real people who use real stuff in their real lives and that’s what sets it apart. It’s a jeans and t-shirt kind of app — casual and laid-back, allowing people to connect through things they love and places they go. At the same time, flik is your favorite jeans and t-shirt kind of app — not some crappy t-shirt you got when you signed up for that airline rewards credit card. So the content on flik is real and its real-ness invites users to post original content, AND at the same time, it’s all cool stuff–stuff flik users love. Don’t care who you are, that matters, right there.

What are some of the milestones your startup has already reached?

The flik team has been lucky enough to beta launch within the Major League Baseball community of players and wives and get key feedback from people who travel a ton, have cool stuff, and are on social media all the time. flik’s users have viewed fliks over 20,000 times (the flik team thinks that’s pretty impressive for a small beta group!) and flik has just launched a pretty awesome new website and cool video. Also, within a day of our public announcement, we began receiving emails about being pre-approved to become Nigerian millionaires if we just send a small check to some random address. So, it looks like things are moving along smoothly.

What are your next milestones?

flik is looking to build out its website to be a fully functional web platform and release an Android version of the app as well as bring on a few pretty awesome fliksperts, (experts in a particular area) to share their favorite things. There may be a trip to Nigeria in there as well.

Where can people find out more?

flik’s new website is pretty awesome – the video is worth watching, especially the hair dryer who says, “Tell them how hot I get”. Here’s flik’s website: flikapp.com, our social media: @flikketyflik and facebook.com/flikapp.

When you say Jump, this Florida startup literally asks you, how high?

New York Startup Spotter Is A Location-Based Video Sharing Platform

What is Spotter?

Spotter is a mobile app that associates videos with places, allowing people to find and share videos in a new approach rather than the traditional way with only video titles.

It is a fun, new, exciting method to share places and videos with family, friends, and the world. It is simple and easy to use. Take a video with your iPhone, associate it with a place and share it privately or publicly. If taking videos is not your cup of tea, you can look up places and/or friends near and dear to your heart and watch their videos. Spotter also allows the unique experience of finding public videos that were taken near your current location by using the GPS signal on your phone.

Allowing people to find videos by places unlocks a new way of sharing videos with others.

In layman’s terms, how does it work? (In other words how would you explain it to your grandmother)

Spotter uses the GPS in your phone to associate every video uploaded accurately to a place or a location. Having the location on every video allows us to deliver videos to users in a new manner.

Users can follow locations and places like they follow people on Twitter or Instagram. Every time a video is uploaded to a location/place, the video is delivered to the users who follow that location/place. Users also get videos that were taken near their current location and videos taken by their friends.

Users can also search their favorite places and see all the videos associated with that place without following the place.

Who are the founders and what are their backgrounds?

Mike Groves graduated from SUNY Albany in 2005 with a BS in computer science. Since then, he has focused on bringing software products from vision to reality. His career has taken him through a variety of interesting fields such as mobile, semiconductor quality control, healthcare quality management, energy market validation, and government budget management. His latest vision, Spotter, aims to provide a new way to experience the places around us by connecting digital experiences (video) to the very places those experiences occurred. He believes that by making these connections we will change the way people communicate and experience our world.

Kevin Pytel graduated from SUNY Oswego in 2006 with a BS in Computer Science, and a minor in Mathematics. He quickly integrated himself into the corporate world as a software engineer while running his own IT consulting firm on the side. To progress his business skills he completed his MBA at Union Graduate College while working full time. He has progressed through the corporate ranks and most recently worked as a Senior Project Manager. His experience in large scale redundant applications and project management has helped Spotter with the product launch and vision to make sure our servers can handle high peak loads and are up 99.99% of the time.

Dan Graham graduated from Long Island University with a B.S. in Digital Design and has been working in the online and traditional marketing industry for over 12 years. At the age of 15 Dan was brought on board to manage marketing and web development for a family owned e-commerce company. For the past 8 years Dan has run a media and marketing consulting firm focusing on social marketing, information architecture and advanced content management systems. He has worked with companies both large and small including Panasonic, Madison Square Garden, and Warner Bros.. Dan is responsible for updating the Spotter interface in the 2^nd version of the application as well as heading up marketing to get Spotter the attention it deserves.

Where are you based?

We operate out of a virtual office. The 3 co-founders are all located near NYC.

What’s the startup scene/culture like where you’re based?

NYC is really starting to support startups, so there are a lot more opportunities for us to network then in the past. The problem is we’re working our full time jobs during the day and then at night coding and making Spotter better, so we haven’t been able to use our location to our benefit yet.

There is also a strong startup community to the north of us in the Albany/Troy region. There are a bunch of meet ups held by Grand Slam Alley and Tech Valley Mobile Developer Network. The guys who created Dark Sky and forecast.io are based out of that area as well as some other successful startups.

How did you come up with the idea for Spotter?

Mikes Groves and I (Kevin) worked together as software developers and we always had a common interest in starting a company that focused on mobile. From early on we saw the potential of new products emerging from the mobile space.

One day Mike approached me with this idea of combining location and videos, and I really liked the idea, so we dug a little deeper to see what was in the market. Then we thought about it a little more and really figured out there is no way for you to find videos that you know for sure were taken where you thought they were. Someone could post a video on YouTube and title it “The Empire State Building”, but in reality it could be a very funny video of someone in their house doing something stupid. And, yes, there are plenty of videos like that all over the internet. If the video gets the views and popularity, that video is going to show up in the top of the rankings when you search YouTube for Empire State Building… So we focused on solving that problem.

From there we created a prototype and started laying out the functionality the app would have. We really like the ability to follow a place. For me I was a BMX racer and skier growing up and love watching those types of videos, so I like to follow all the BMX tracks and mountains to see new videos on a daily basis.

Why now?

Why not? But seriously, when we came up with the idea, and even now, there are no apps that focus on location like ours. We are solving a gap in the current market.

Who are your competition?

It feels like and is pretty much every social media company involved with photos and videos. No one has zeroed in to do exactly what we’re doing, but most are tagging the location and using that in some way to enhance user experience.

We have to continue to focus on what we’re good at, and get even better at that, which is ensuring the videos tagged to the location were actually taken there and delivering those videos to the user in a unique and easy way.

And what’s your secret sauce?

It’s top secret, if I told you then I’d have to kill you. I’m sure you’ve never gotten that response.
Really though, there isn’t anything too secret about what we’re doing. We’re using a bunch of technology accessible to the average developer to our advantage to provide videos to the user in a different approach than other companies.

What are some milestones you’ve achieved?

Over 10,000 videos have been tagged to actual places, and not just cities or streets. These places range from One World Trade, beaches on Hawaii, ski resorts in Austria, to music houses in Japan.

What’s your next milestone?

We think the milestones we’ve reached are very cool, but the application and server systems were built to handle many more users and videos, so we’re focusing on marketing the app to get the users it deserves.

10,000 users are our goal by the end of summer, and 20,000 by the end of the year.

Who are some of your mentors and business role models?

Previous bosses and college professors have mentored me to get where I am in my career to even make it possible for me to start this company, and I am continually looking and listening to advice of those who have successfully or unsuccessfully started their own company. Knowledge is power, and having an idea without being able to execute it will not get you anywhere.

I have always found Shawn Fanning (Founder of Napster) an interesting business role model just because he always seems to start companies that he finds interesting and builds products he wants to use which I find pretty cool.

Also Paul Tyma, founder of many companies is a business role model of mine. He’s worked closely with Doug Lea a professor of mine, so I’ve had the pleasure of working on some of his code in college, and occasionally bugging him with an email here and there for help with Spotter.

What’s next for Spotter?

We want to expand and move to Android as well as build out our traditional web browser experience. Moving to Android has always been on the roadmap, but with only three people, it’s been difficult to get traction on that development effort. We have also been contemplating adding photos to our service as well.

We’re looking for a motivated Java developer interested in building out our Android application. Since we don’t have funding currently we’re looking for someone who is willing to work for a small percentage of company or as internship to get college credits. If you have interest email kevin@spotterinc.com

Where can people find out more and what is your Twitter username?

spotterapp.us Download spotter in the iTunes App Store here Follow them on Twitter here

Check out what this Chicago startup is doing with video for charity.

Startup Founder Spotlight: Thomas Kjeldgaard, CEO & Founder, Splashpost

Thomas Kjeldgaard is an online entrepreneur who co-founded Pagemodo, which was acquired by Webs in 2011. Since then, he founded and is the CEO of SplashPost, a tool that helps Facebook Pages turn ‘likes’ into sales. Thomas is publicly known for his conference lectures and addiction to designing UI and UX.

Who is your hero?

Steve Jobs.

What’s the single best piece of business advice that helped shape who you are as an entrepreneur today, and why?

Develop something that you can sell over and over again. Create a business that is not dependent on you!

What’s the biggest mistake you ever made in your business, and what did you learn from it that others can learn from too?

Holding back with marketing. Marketing starts day one. As soon the idea is on the table the marketing process starts — not when the product is ready!

What do you do during the first hour of your business day and why?

First, I get an overview of the day and handle any crucial user issues. Customer service is crucial to success and many businesses don’t realize that.

What’s your best financial or cash-flow related tip for entrepreneurs just getting started?

Develop something scalable based on a recurring subscription model. This puts money in your pocket each month = cash flow.

Quick: What’s ONE thing you recommend ALL aspiring or current entrepreneurs do right now to take their biz to the next level?

Focus. Track everything in your business to know where you make money and what costs you money. Understanding your users and customers is crucial for success.

What’s your definition of success? How will you know when you’ve finally “succeeded” in your business?

When users tell you they are happy with your product, you know you are making a positive difference in their life. They will then be happy to pay you — and if you’re lucky, you make a nice exit from your company and cash in on that.

The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, the YEC recently launched #StartupLab , a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses via live video chats, an expert content library and email lessons.

What is everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference?

Buffalo Startup GripeO Is The Complaint Market Place

Have you ever had a girl that you tried to date… oh wait that’s not I was writing.

Have you ever been upset with something, be it customer service, product selection, feature selection or just any normal complaint? Has that complaint ever been enough to tick you off but not piss you off? Well with complaints like those they often die in your head. You may forget them later on, only to have them resurface the next time you go to that restaurant, store, or business or use that product. Then, you quickly remember that complaint.

Now, on the other hand if you feel you’ve ever been just totally wronged, or get really pissed off at a company, you may go through the motions of seeking out a contact form, email address or phone number and actually move forward with your complaint. This process can take a while and it too can be interrupted and die out.

A Buffalo based startup called GripeO is here to change that and disrupt the complaint space with a complaint market place that’s both easy to complain on and easy for companies to find their complaints. But lets establish one thing from the get-go and that’s the fact that GripeO is not a place to just bitch about everything under the sun.

“GripeO is a website and mobile application startup that’s going to disrupt complaint management. Consumers (people like you and I) can quickly and easily submit product or service complaints in one consolidated location. We notify and authenticate businesses who are then able to mediate the complaint via our system. During the process we encourage businesses to close as many complaints as possible with new savings and discounts. This won’t work for everyone, but for those that do it benefits both parties because it has the ability to please consumers yet drive new sales to the business. The real magic happens though when complaints are left open. The fact is, that information is far more valuable then people often realize. You have a qualified consumer who is frustrated with a business. GripeO offers those ignored complaints in a Complaint Marketplace where competitive businesses can search for complaints in an ad-market style and use our system to entice and lure those qualified leads away via our system. This is the revenue generating portion of GripeO and something that makes us truly unique.” GripeO co-founder and team lead, Mike Klanac Jr told us in an interview.

We’ve seen a few complaint platforms over the years but it seems that the founding team behind GripeO have worked out a lot of the kink and are poised to become the goto destination to sound off complaints and ultimately get them resolved. Check out the rest of Klanac’s interview below.

Who are the founders and what are their backgrounds

Our team is comprised of 6 co-founders who each are responsible for a different functional area. They include Mike Klanac (CEO/Team Lead), Nicholas Campanile (Finance and Business Development), Stephen Makula (System Architecture), Richard Panek (Development Lead), Jim Proux (User Experience), and Mark Taylor (User Interface and Mobile). The group has all worked together in the past and that’s really what ties everyone together. The corporate backgrounds of everyone actually created quite a link; working together in that environment allowed everyone to identify the best resources in their respective positions. When the idea and opportunity arose the team fell together quickly and naturally based on a mutual respect. Some of the other work the team has collaborated on includes Ellucian Inc., SimpleApply LLC, and ProfileFly.com.

Where are you based?

Our headquarters are in Buffalo, NY however we also have one co-founder in Boulder, CO and one in Houston, TX. We strongly believe that remote companies are the way of the future and actively debate the merits of Marissa Mayer’s decision to call all the cattle home. Our geographic location is also strategic. The core of our development is together, and we recently secured incubation and seed funding from Z80Labs Technology Incubator in Buffalo, NY giving our team a unified location to work from. Having strategic business representatives in Boulder, CO and Southeast Texas allows us to tap into the well established startup communities in those areas.

What is the startup culture like where you are based?

Buffalo, NY’s start up culture is actually very exciting right now. In fact, I’d go so far as to say it’s about to “pop” as a tech hub. For the longest time Buffalo has been a source of great technical talent coming out of the high density of Colleges in western New York. Unfortunately there just hasn’t been the jobs to keep them around. As organizations like Z80Labs start to develop the city is going to really be able to capitalize on the local technical talent pool.

What problem does your startup solve?

For consumers, we make it much easier to submit complaints, as well as more worthwhile. The fact is, searching through websites, filling out long forms, and wasting your time is something you only do if you’re extremely pissed off. With GripeO, a complaint can be filed in under 1 minute, from the convenience of your phone, right after the food comes out cold, the part is missing, or the airline delays. For businesses, we offer up a completely free way to manage complaints and provide instruction based on data trends on how to most effectively close out gripes. Lastly, competitive businesses are always in need of effective ways to generate new business. With pure advertising, your company can get completely lost in the ether. GripeO presents a strategic opportunity to target a prime consumer, ready to change vendors, who is also flush with demographic information.

What is one challenge that you’ve overcome in the startup process?

For us, it’s always been about generating the often talked about “warm introduction”. Unless you’re in the business, I can’t imagine a lot of developers are walking around with a rolodex of VCs and Angels. Let’s be honest – the whole concept is awkward, difficult, and quite frustrating. We’ve managed to break down some doors by doing several things. First, we started geographically. The people often willing to give you a first shot are the ones who are doing it for reasons outside of making money. Buffalo has a lot of economic initiatives and stimulation going on and that is an opportunity for us. Secondly, we try to be respectful and friendly to everyone in the startup space. We’re all people, and friends do friends favors. Finally, one tactic we’ve found to work quite well is to start small with a cold contact and build up. Rather then ask, “will you fund my startup with $500k?” a first contact might be more like a paragraph explaining the business, an attached executive summary, and one very simple request, “as we progress through build, beta, and traction, can I tell you more?”

What are some of the milestones your startup has achieved?

Finishing our web based MVP was a big step for us. It was kind of like the birth of a baby. So much time was spent preparing for it, yet once it came around you immediately start to realize the diapers are in the wrong location. Another major milestone was receiving our first term sheet. We try to leverage our talking points as much as possible. Telling one VC that you have a term sheet from another tends to pique their interest.

What are your next milestones

Right now we’re focused on getting the MVP ready for BETA testing and raising our remaining seed round. There is a lot going on – more so then at any other time in our existence. When I started preparing for this process I had read feedback from several entrepreneurs who’d had successful exits. Almost always you’ll hear the words “pivot” and “agile” in those interviews. With the amount of documentation, promotional sites, and network to keep apprised, that month 3 change to your revenue model means a lot of updating. Expect it.

Who are your mentors and role models?

Dan Magnuszewski and Jordan Levy at Z80Labs Technology Incubator has been great to us. It sounds kind of weird but we also let zeitgeist and data mentor us. I think it’s important to prolifically read Techcrunch, Mashable, Nibletz, and VentureBeat. Our role models tend to be operations that are mobile leaning or have innovative approaches to existing models. We like Mint, Groupon, Twitter, and Instagram.

What are some of the advantages/disadvantages growing your startup outside of Silicon Valley.

I’ll be honest here; I don’t know. I’ve never been to Silicon Valley. I would imagine a disadvantage is the investment strategy. To use a baseball analogy, regional Angel Networks go for hits. Institutional Investors swing for the fences. The reason is they get more at bats. Being out of the bubble is an advantage in itself. I think you’re able to rise up based on a micro level need or problem, whereas in the bubble your building around investment criteria “we’re a geo-targeted, mobile, big data, smart object”. What?

What’s next for your startup?

We’ve applied to pitch at Techcrunch Austin Meetup “1 minute pitch off” and SXSW V2V. We’re knee deep in MVP refinement and starting some planning to begin letting our BETA users try the system. We’re also ramping up mobile development a bit behind the web in order to follow its lead, and continuously meeting with investors to find the right fit.

Where can people find out more, and what is your Twitter username?

If you’re interesting in learning more about the product or being a tester, please LIKE our facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pays.to.be.heard We’re also on Twitter: @gripeo and of course you can always visit www.gripeo.com

Founder Spotlight: Miguel Ramirez, CEO Soccerly.com

Miguel Ramirez is a serial entrepreneur who co-founded mediotiempo.com, the largest sports site in Mexico and one of the most relevant Internet success stories in Latin America. The company was acquired in 2010 by Time Warner. Today, Miguel is co-founder and CEO of soccerly.com, which was launched in January 2013 with the ambitious plan of becoming “the online destination for soccer fans in the U.S.” Miguel is also a partner at kiwilimon.com, a leading food/community site. Follow him @mrlombana.

Who is your hero?

My grandpa.

What’s the single best piece of business advice that helped shape who you are as an entrepreneur today, and why?

It is important to be humble. Always remember the day you started and where you come from; no matter how successful you become, it is important to have both feet on the ground and keep on working hard at all times. Successes and failures are just life episodes and should not change the way you act.

Also, being a good listener is a must — be close to your team and think of them as family, not employees.

What’s the biggest mistake you ever made in your business, and what did you learn from it that others can learn from too?

One of the biggest mistakes I remember making is when my partners and I decided to sell our stake in a company because at that point, we did not have the necessary time to devote to it; even though we did consider several options, I guess we were not wise enough to make the best decision. At the end, it not only cost us money but also a good opportunity for the future that we regret today.

We should have asked for advice from other people (mentors, family, etc.) — that might have had helped us to act in a different way, but unfortunately we didn’t. But every learning experience is valuable, and without mistakes there are no successes.

What do you do during the first hour of your business day and why?

I check my agenda and my “to dos” to set the best road map for the day. I like to be well-organized and do as many things as possible every day, as the following day is always loaded with new stuff and more unexpected things. It is essential to have an organized way to work in order to achieve tasks and objectives.

Define your priorities and never leave for tomorrow what you could do today.

What’s your best financial or cash-flow related tip for entrepreneurs just getting started?

Resources are always scarce, and it is always easier spending than saving. Focus only on those things that will bring you to the next level and cut unnecessary expenditures — even if they’re minimal, they could hurt you in the long run. The best of you is always there, within you, so use your brain first and then your wallet.

Quick: What’s ONE thing you recommend ALL aspiring or current entrepreneurs do right now to take their biz to the next level?

Work only with the right partners. Take whatever time you need to be 100 percent convinced of the partners you are bringing to a venture; work only with people that add value, balance and commitment.

What’s your definition of success? How will you know when you’ve finally “succeeded” in your business?

Success is not only about money. It’s about achieving personal goals, fulfilling society’s needs, generating employment for lots of people, making users happy and seeing others using your product; when most of these “achievements” are done, you will be happy and can toast your success.

The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, the YEC recently launched #StartupLab, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses via live video chats, an expert content library and email lessons.

Beware the ill planned innovative rollout.

Seattle Startup LocalBlox Is Kayak For Your Neighborhood

A wife and husband founded startup in Seattle Washington is quickly becoming the goto place for everything, and anything having to do with your neighborhood. It’s a social networking platform that connects neighbors through anything and everything that relates to them.

LocalBlox already has over 77,000 neighborhoods listed in their platform which covers everything from getting to know your neighbors, to neighborhood events and even lost pets.

The company was founded by Sabia Arefin, a Duke MBA with a rich background in technology management and business analysis for Fortune 500 companies. Her cofounder is her husband, Ashfaq Arefin, a Microsoft Engineer who’s been the lead technologist for several companies ranging from startups to large corporations.

LocalBlox is a one stop shop for information about any given neighborhood. It’s like a mashup of Block Avenue, Patch, the Yellow Pages and the local community bulletin board. The feature rich platform has several uses including:

Discover your neighbors, Learn about a neighborhood, its residents and social vitality. Invite friends to the neighborhood. Know your neighbors from their social media profiles.
Explore what the neighbors say and like about the neighborhood. Connect & share with your neighbors (Neighborhood Wall, Neighborhood Ambassador).
Find out what’s going on around your neighborhood (events & announcements, news feed, neighborhood watch).
Neighborhood News Feed based on Resident activities, Neighborhood watch & alert.
Pet Alert : Is your Cat missing? Ask your Neighbors! Find out the neighbors and their children that your kid is playing with
Nearby amenities and services: Find out your neighbors’ recommendation. Rate goods and services around the hood.
Engage in social vitality around your neighborhood
Find a job close to home: babysitter, dog-walker, stylist, landscaper
Check nearby public transit stops

We got a chance to interview Sabira, check out the full interview below.

What is your startup, what does it do?

LocalBlox is a highly-scaled hyperlocal neighborhood platform that combines high-volume, high-value content aggregation, curation, real-time augmentation and updates, along with syndication, mapping and crowdsourcing with business and personal profile claiming services. To create a vibrant, interconnected social, local, mobile marketplace of content and tool sets, profile claiming, automatic mobile and web campaign content creation tools help local businesses and neighbors connect more efficiently. Proprietary scoring allows automatic Web and mobile campaign creation for local business owners and event organizers. We aspire to be “the Kayak” for neighborhoods & neighborhood businesses & more!

Who are the founders and what are their backgrounds?

The company was founded by me and my husband, Ashfaq Rahman.

I did my MBA from Duke University and I have years of experience in technology management and business analysis in Fortune 500 companies

Ashfaq is a serial entrepreneur technologist. He founded revolutionary technology platforms for companies ranging from startups to multi-billion dollar companies. An engineer from Microsoft in Redmond, he held the founding and key technologist roles in a number of successful companies, masterminding key inventions. He attended graduate school in computer science at the University of Pennsylvania.

Where are you based?

LocalBlox is based in Bellevue, WA.

What is the startup culture like where you are based?

The startup culture here is a strong and easily accessible, with regular events and meet-ups. There are a lot of really smart, educated and successful people here who help support startups and encourage entrepreneurs.

What problem does your startup solve?

We bring a diverse array of information, resources, tool & technology together in one place, and make it meaningful and locally relevant. People don’t have to go to 10 different sites when it comes to finding information about their neighborhood. It’s all in one place and validated for higher relevancy and accuracy. We place information into a neighborhood context. The LocalBlox infrastructure consists of data acquisition, parsing and extraction engines aggregating content to 112,000 neighborhoods in the U.S.

We have a large aggregation of local businesses and local events with extremely rich data-points, generating boundaries of the top neighborhoods in the U.S., with unique features like hyperlocal news and neighborhood crime watch built on top of our aggregation engine. We created some disruptive self-serve offerings for local businesses to gain a targeted reach and build their profiles in a more efficient way. We’re leveraging these assets to build a sustainable business model.

We have the scale and use big data and technology strategically, leveraging them to build partnerships focusing on our key strengths. We are not just a social network or another local site. There is unique depth in each of the modules offered at LocalBlox, which makes it possible for us to build a lot of interesting business models revolving around interesting technologies, algorithms and big data.

What is one challenge that you’ve overcome in the startup process?

We realized that staying focused was critical and not to get distracted or diverted into multiple directions by different opportunities, as it would be deadly for our little startup. After the failure of sites such as Judy’s Book and EveryBlock, it was difficult to overcome the idea that another local neighborhood site was “absurd and not fundable.”

What are some of the milestones your startup has achieved?

LocalBlox is live in 112,000 neighborhoods with 23 million comprehensive business profiles, millions of aggregated local content, news and events, crime mapped into neighborhoods, with social integration and a Mobile SDK. We have over 200,000 claimed business profiles, over 200,000 Twitter followers and more than 60,000 Facebook fans. We have trademarks and patents for some of our core proprietary discovery, validation and mapping engines.

What are your next milestones?

We are redesigning our site for a better user experience and focusing on a couple of key strategic partnerships for revenue monetization.

Who are your mentors and role models?

Our advisors Merrill Brown, founding team member of MSNBC, and Dane Madsen, founder of Yellowpages.com, are very inspiring. They’ve been very kind and contributed much to our company. They serve on our advisory board and we’re very fortunate to learn from them. I am personally thankful to Dane Madsen and Rick Blair[SR1] for their constant encouragement.

What are some of the advantages/disadvantages growing your startup outside of Silicon Valley?

I really didn’t feel any advantage or disadvantage of being outside Silicon Valley, though I imagine it would be much harder for anyone in the Valley, where every other person has a startup. We have funded the startup ourselves, bootstrapped all the way and have a solid, viable revenue model. I feel we are very fortunate to be in Seattle. People here understand and appreciate the hard work and technical merit that goes behind a solid scalable product and value team & technology.

What’s next for your startup?

We are focusing our efforts in a few key areas, redesigning our site for a better and more user friendly experience, and exploring opportunities with a couple of key strategic partners to take our company to the next level.

Where can people find out more, and what is your Twitter username?

www.localblox.com and on Twitter at localblox

Startup Weekend and Startup America have joined forces, read more about that here.

Panama Startup Deciderr Is The Latest Q&A Platform

Question and answer platforms aren’t new by any stretch. One of the most popular Q&A startups, Formspring, is on it’s last leg. A former Cha-Cha employee has told us that their platform, while at one time a huge hit, may have missed the boat on mobile. Quora is still popular, but mostly among the tech enthusiast set.

We recently interviewed Washington DC startup YoPine which is a great way for closed network polling. With them being situated in Washington DC it’s tough not to think they are destined to focus more on politics at some point.

Now, the general “ask everyone” question and answer format has a new platform in Panamanian startup Deciderr. With Deciderr users can ask anything their heart desires from “what color goes with mauve” to “are the Heat going to the NBA finals” and everything in between.

Since their iTunes debut in April the startup has amassed thousands of downloads and say their easy platform is taking off.

It seems that their strategy is do basic features well and people will flock to it since it’s so easy, and fun.

• Share your questions and follow the questions of your friends, family, and following;
• You can easily share your questions instantly on Facebook and Twitter;
• Make your questions better with uploaded pictures;
• Yes/No counters make tracking your question easy;
• You can comment on any question from anywhere in the world.
• You’ll receive instant notification when your question’s been answered.

“Just post the question and sit back; the answers you’re looking for will start rolling in just minutes after you’ve asked it.
Deciderr also creates a community that will help you make the right decision on the questions that matter to you, and you’ll receive the right answers.” co-founder Geoffrey Osorio told us in an interview.

Check out the rest of the interview with Osorio below:

What is Deciderr?

It’s a quick, easy, and fun way to ask your friends, family, and anyone else around the world important questions that can be answered with a simple YES or NO.
Want someone’s feedback to your question or decision?
Just post the question and sit back; the answers you’re looking for will start rolling in just minutes after you’ve asked it.
Deciderr also creates a community that will help you make the right decision on the questions that matter to you, and you’ll receive the right answers.
Imagine the world deciding for you. Imagine the world giving you the right answer…

In layman’s terms, how does it work? (In other words how would you explain it to your grandmother)

Deciderr its an app that lets you answer short questions with a simple YES or NO from people all around the world.

Who are the founders and what are their backgrounds?

Geoffrey Osorio
22 years old
Currently studying Dentistry, Entrepreneur.

Manuel Cabarcos
23 years old
Architect, Entrepreneur.

Juan Carlos Noriega
27 years old
Lawyer, Event Producer, and Entrepreneur.

Raul Noriega
30 years old
Lawyer, Journalist and Entrepreneur.

Johan Guerra
27 years old
Electrical Engineer, Entrepreneur.

Carlos Andres Davila
28 years old
Logistics, Construction and Risk Management.

Where are you based?

We are based in Panama City, Panama.

What’s the startup scene/culture like where you’re based?

Panama City, Panama is one of the hottest (real state investments) and cosmopolitan (tourism) cities in the word, but the technological startup scene is non existant, so we are looking to become pioneers and explote the scene.

How did you come up with the idea for Deciderr?

Each day we ask ourselves hundreds of questions about everything. We thought that it would be really interesting if you could get plenty of opinions about these daily questions, and at the same time, get some help and advice on making decisions. It’s a whole new branch in social networking, its a decision network.

Why now?

It’s evident that Social Networks are taking control of people thoughts, ideas and decisions, so if we want to impact the future generations, this is where we should start.

What problem does Deciderr solve?

We figured that life revolves about decisions, no matter how old you are or where you come from. Thus, the fact that this tool could help millions of people and companies around the world, get a better understanding of what they really wants, made us pursue this quest.

What’s your secret sauce?

In the era of misinformation, our secret sauce or competitive advantage relies on simplicity (YES/NO) and two important things. 1. You have to vote to see the results or trends without being bias, and 2. You can see who voted YES or N0

Are you bootstrapped or funded?

We are currently bootstrapped and looking for funding.

What are some milestones you’ve achieved?

The first milestone we achieved was on April 1st, 2013 when we launched on the App Store, two weeks later we reached our first goal that was set on 1,000 downloads.

What’s your next milestone?

Our next milestone is to reach 100,000 downloads, by then we will launch our Android platform.

Where can people find out more?

You can find us at our webpage www.deciderr.com, Follow us in our twitter @DECIDERR and like us in our Facebook page www.facebook.com/trydeciderr.

Now check out our interview with DC startup YoPine

Blow Up Your Cloud Based File Structure, Use New York Startup Docurated [video]

One of the more interesting (but less sexy) startups that we saw in New York at TechCrunch Disrupt last month was Docurated. This New York company has launched a new platform that puts all of your content and all of your files at your fingertips with the easiest form of search possible.

Just about everyone in every profession is creating some kind of content all of the time. Chances are that you’re going to write one proposal or do one pitch deck some day that you need information from a previous pitch deck or other file. Cataloging all of your files, both locally and in the cloud, lets the Docurated system get to work.

Once all of your files are cataloged, and as you create new ones, updated automatically, they are now available whenever you need them.

What happens next just adds to the experience. When you call up a search of your files Docurated serves up the files and the specific piece of content, putting it next to all the other pieces of content that match the same criteria.

Now all of your documents are useable materials for anything from content dashboards to presentations, fliers, meetings, reports and more.

Docurated was created out of a real world need from a Fortune 100 company. Alex Grobansky along with cofounder Irene Tserkovny created Docurated after Tserkovny found herself and her colleagues at American Express’ “disruptive innovation” team were constantly searching for content they had previously created to add to new presentations rather than working on the next disruption.

There are several search options available but Docurated seems to address the needs of people working on real projects, and presentations who don’t have time to fumble with broken search tactics.

Watch the video interview below and for more information visit docurated.com

Check out these other 50 startup stories from TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013

This London Startup Is Cookies For The Real World

We’re not about to tell you the story of the latest spin on the All American Cookie Company, the Great Cookie or even Mrs. Fields. PresenceOrb is a startup based in London and they’ve developed a “virtual cookie” for the real world.

I’m hoping that it’s not too far reaching to expect readers of nibletz.com, the voice of startups everywhere else, to know what cookies are, at least in the internet sense of the word. Taking it back to internet 101 for those of you not in the know, cookies are the little tidbits of information transmitted from you, across the internet to other websites that help determine what you need to know.

It’s how the adservers on nibletz.com know to offer you an ad for kayak.com when the last website you visited was US Airways, that kind of thing.

Unarguably, having some kind of offline version of this very important tool would be amazing. Imagine if everyone that shopped at Old Navy went through some magic door that left some kind of radioactive film on you so that when you went to Abercrombie & Fitch, you could get some kind of message that says, “Come Back To Old Navy we’ll give you a discount right now”.

OK so it’s not that freaky, nor futuristic. However, PresenceOrb is that useful. The only thing you need to bring in the store with you to make this magic work is your smartphone.

Using the PresenceOrb app and your smartphone, if you walk into a business in the program your phone is “marked” or “noted” now that business can market to you in the best way possible. Using a profile you’ve completed and information locally at said business establishment, you’ll get relative, passive advertisements that may seem a little cray cray but actually it’s kind of fascinating.

For the sake of understanding, on the company’s video they show a customer with PresenceOrb activated on their phone. The customer walks into two different car dealerships, a Volkswagen dealer not using PresenceOrb and a Porsche dealer that is.

After taking a test drive at both dealerships the user ends up taking some time to think about it. Low and behold, he drives past a digital billboard also equipped with PresenceOrb and the billboard offers him a special price on that particular Porsche. Voila, it’s an offer the user can’t refuse and bam he’s driving a brand new Porsche.

When you dissect this form of targeted advertising it’s actually pretty amazing. The potential for real world advertising to be affected this way could lead to billions of dollars in sales.

We got a chance to talk with Thomas Sheppard the brilliant man behind this startup, check out the interview below.

What is Presenceorb?

PresenceOrb is the cookie for the real world. POB allows retailers to cookie consumers as they visit brick and mortar stores. Retails gain analytics previously only seen in the online realm, Footfall, Bounce rate, return customers, new customers, linger time …. the list goes on. With this information and via our expanding advertising partner network retailers can then action these analytics by targeting consumers on the street through such outlets as digital out of home billboards.

Who are the founders and what are their backgrounds?

Thomas is the founder of Presence aware tech. He has worked as an engineer in banking producing financial markets software as well as for a number of technology companies producing consumer software for desktop and mobile for the past 11 years. Presence aware tech additionally has a North American partner company who provide development resource and are additionally POB’s largest customer.

Where are you based?

Presence aware tech is based within the Cisco office in North Greenwich, London. Having recently been awarded the Raptor SME grant for which Cisco is a key backer.

What’s the startup scene/culture like where you’re based?

The culture is fantastic. We are surrounded by like minded companies (Oprillo, AMBX, Lamppost, Prod designs, Crowd Vision) the majority of whom are also current or previous Raptor grant winners. We collaborate, disagree, challenge and encourage one another.It’s the sort of environment where you can lift your head and hear conversations covering twenty different industries.

How did you come up with the idea for Presenceorb?

Presence Orb was originally intended as a security device. After a startled wake-up at two am one night our founder thought someone was in his home. Thankfully it was just a bad dream which had forced him awake however it got him thinking. How could a home owner detect if someone was in the home, not just movement but be able to “cookie” someone and see if they where supposed to be present or not. From there he began to research how that could be done and then things got interesting. Thomas then went on to form Presence aware tech, we produced a prototype and pivoted our focus from security to analytics. We are now 8 months further on and the path from then to now has been astounding.

Why now?

The market is ready, hardware is now cheaper to make. People are familiar with the concept of cookies and the adjoining technology is available. In short the market has come to meet our vision.

What problem does Presenceorb solve?

Presence Orb levels the playing field between physical and online retailers. For years online retailers have had analytics software and marketing which has allowed them to analyse consumer wants, needs and actions. Online retailers can then adjust to these findings very quickly. Physical retailers have been hampered by an inability to gain such rapid feedback. Typical collection methods such as surveys, in store spotters and analysis took months if not more to conduct and collate. With Presence Orb retailers can gain these analytics instantly similar to Google analytics but for the brick and mortar stores.

Who are your competition?

There are others in this space doing similar things and we are aware of them however we don’t overly concern ourselves with competition. We have a vision and direction as to how we believe our product should function what features it should include and how we are going to do that. We can only concentrate on our own game, we leave everyone else to concentrate on there’s and the results will come out in the end.

And what’s your secret sauce?

It’s no secret that good people make great products. We make sure that our people have the drive to produce something truly amazing. It’s no secret it’s just what makes us produce a quality product is a desire to do exactly that.

Are you bootstrapped or funded?

Bootstrapped and proud. We would take funding when it’s needed but at the moment we can survive on our own resources and steam. We don’t charge for the hardware which can meet initial ourlay is high but our SAAS business model then takes over and will allow us to grow as we bring on more customers.

What are some milestones you’ve achieved?

We’ve recently been announced as Digital innovation finalists in the advertising space at Digital shoreditch London. We are one of 21 companies presenting in the final for 7 awards. This was a hugely proud moment for us.

To be accepted onto the Raptor SME program run in part by Cisco was another huge milestone for us. This fueled a number of conversations that without which we might never have begun or had the good fortune to be part of.

Our first enterprise level trial was another amazing milestone. We have deployed within a household recognizable location and it blows our mind every time we walk into the location to think …. we’re deployed here.

Our second enterprise level trial with a global chain…. i’ll say no more.

Honestly there are loads of milestones that as a team we are exceptionally proud of but our main focus is our product and perhaps the biggest milestone was our first customer feedback from a small Cafe in North Yorkshire telling us there takings are heading north in no small part because of Presence Orb they knew where to focus there marketing spend. That’s when we knew our product was making a difference.

What’s your next milestone?

Taking on the Digital Innovations final on May 20th. We want to wow the crowd with whats possible. And we will.

Who are some of your mentors and business role models?

We are in an incredibly privileged position to have not only people as mentors but also companies. Cisco provide us with one to one mentors and also business units will email from time to time giving advice. We are really thankful for that. We have advisers in the advertising space and even companies who have installed our product who we view as mentors. They provide feedback on what they like and don’t like so much about POB and ultimately that’s the best feedback and direction we can ask for.

Where can people find out more and what is your Twitter username?

presenceorb.com Twitter @presenceorb

Now see how this Wisconsin startup puts checkins in the real world!

Startup Founder Spotlight: Alex Schiff, FetchNotes

Alex Schiff is the founder and chief executive officer of Fetchnotes, which makes productivity as simple as a tweet. Prior to Fetchnotes, Alex was the vice president of Benzinga and a student at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business. Follow him @alexschiff.

Who is your hero?

Aaron Patzer is one of the entrepreneurs I look up to most.

What’s the single best piece of business advice that helped shape who you are as an entrepreneur today, and why?

Optimize for speed, not cost. Your entire organization should be structured around how you can accelerate progress and learning. That $20 a month here or $50 there is NOT going to mean anything in the grand scheme of things, but if it frees up a few hours of your life, then it’s worth it.

What’s the biggest mistake you ever made in your business, and what did you learn from it that others can learn from too?

Not focusing on one thing. At one point, I was working on three startups, working for another, and still in school full-time. They all suffered from my lack of attention. I learned that when you’re a founder you need to be thinking not “What do I need to do today?” but “What can I be doing to advance my business forward?”

The former has a finite amount of work; the latter is limitless.

What do you do during the first hour of your business day and why?

I take care of all the little things. Respond to email, complete quick tasks, etc. I actually purposefully put off anything that will take more than 30 minutes until after lunch because then I know I have the longest period of uninterrupted activity.

What’s your best financial or cash-flow related tip for entrepreneurs just getting started?

You can make money in weird ways. We offered to sing karaoke to any of our users who donated money.

Quick: What’s ONE thing you recommend ALL aspiring or current entrepreneurs do right now to take their biz to the next level?

The best part about being an entrepreneur is that you get to choose who you work with — don’t take that for granted!

What’s your definition of success? How will you know when you’ve finally “succeeded” in your business?

Honestly, I have no idea. There will always be a new mountain to climb.

The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, the YEC recently launched #StartupLab, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses via live video chats, an expert content library and email lessons.

Check out Alex’s guest post, Here’s A Better Way To Ask For An Email Introduction.