Interviews Archives - Page 31 of 57

Replace Your Next Events Sign In Sheet With Dallas Startup SimpeSign.In

A brother and sister founding team have come up with a new Dallas based startup, SimpleSign.in, that will replace the sign in sheet for your next event. We know that eventbrite has event management tools like sign in sheets, however SimpleSign.in allows groups and event organizers that don’t need everything else that comes with eventbrite to have an equally as easy to use sign in system.

Once on site, event attendees can use their smartphones to sign in to your event. Once they’re signed into the event they are “logged in” to the event. You can use this “login” to hold votes during your meeting and solicit instant feedback through the course of your event.

Professional and civic organizations, universities, clubs, churches, conferences and businesses can all benefit from the ease of use of SimpleSign.in

Simplesign.in has baked in features of much larger event software into something that can be used and planned for well in advance or set up on the fly.

Users hosting an event just log into simplesign.in and from their they can create an event in under a minute. An event host can set up how much info they want to capture at sign in including name, phone number, address, email address and other fields. When attendees arrive they’ll either scan the events QR code or insert the events password and then they’ll be logged into the event.

After everyone has signed in the event organizer will be emailed a .csv spreadsheet file that has all of the information they requested when they set up the event.

When event hosts use simplesign.in for the registration process ahead of the event the organizers can use the spreadsheet to create email lists, name badges and other important documents that go along with an event.

Nate Bleker and his older sister Anna Bleker are the founding team behind simplesign.in. Nate is handling the technical aspects while the design is being handled by Anna.

We got a chance to talk with Nate about SimpleSign.in, check out the interview below.

Ottawa Startup NoteShares Wants Social Document Sharing INTERVIEW

Ottawa entrepreneur Brenden Palmer knows there’s a better way to share documents. There’s more to sharing documents than just allowing access. That’s what separates his Ottawa startup NoteShares, from cloud based document storage lockers DropBox, Box.com and their hundreds of clones.

Palmer tells nibletz.com:

“We are not a hard drive in the cloud, and that is not what our premise and model is. We focus on creating a social community around user uploaded content. The point of using the platform is to share your documents and content, whereas other services and platforms like Dropbox, and Box.com simply allow you to have access to that content anywhere (which we offer as well). The differentiator is the ease of use and access that allows you to share this content and these documents with others who are using the platform. We don’t just allow access to share this content, but the social aspect around the document is the most prevalent aspect of our service and platform. Another thing that differentiates us is that we are launching our platform as a free web service.”

We wanted to dive in and make sure that Palmer wasn’t just another DropBox copycat. Obviously DropBox has been very successful and in their success they’ve generated a startup a day.

Adding a social aspect to documents makes them more open to discussion, commenting and discovery. Traditional cloud based lockers are really just dressed up ways to share attachments.

We got a chance to talk with Palmer in depth about Noteshares. Check out our interview below:

Interview With Berlin Startup VERSUS IO, Compare Anything

Last month we brought you a story about Berlin comparison platform startup VERSUS IO. They recently added 240 cities to their comparison platform which takes comparing two things and brings it down to it’s simplest form.

The internet is great for comparison shopping. Every major online retailer like Amazon, Best Buy, Carphone Warehouse and everyone in between, offers some kind of side by side comparison of products. Just about every time I go to make a major electronics purchase, I comparison shop something online.

Sure you may want to compare the iPhone 5 vs the Samsung Galaxy S 3, or the Galaxy Nexus vs the iPad Mini. But what if you wanted to compare other things? What if you wanted to take a European vacation and wanted to weigh France vs Italy. Well Versus IO allows you to do that comparison too.

With their recent addition of 240 cities to compare it makes deciding your next vacation a breeze. The team at VERSUS IO is in the process of creating the go-to site for comparing anything and they are well on their way. In fact they plan on providing comparisons on 640 different verticals.

We got a chance to talk with VERSUS IO, founder and CEO Ramin Far who previously headed MTV Networks’ North European online departments. Check out our interview below.

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.

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.

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

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.

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:

Utah Startup: HeadCase Fighting Global Poverty With Head Phones?

Joshua Fairbairn and his team of co-founders at Utah startup HeadCase have a lofty goal. They are going to contribute to the fight against world poverty by selling headphones. Of course selling products and tying them into charities is nothing new, however Fairbairn is trying to put a new spin on the concept, launching their “premium” headphones with a direct tie in to a different charity with each model.

The company is calling their philanthropic headphone campaign #MoreThanMusic.

On the social side of things HeadCase is using the slacktivist model to donate health kits to children in need, shoes, aftercare for victims of human trafficking, vaccinations for Polio and pumps for farmers in Kenya.

On the headphone side of things, the HeadCase headphones come in a variety of colors. The company also boasts that they are durable, stylish and lightweight. Best of all the 50mm speaker drivers used in every pair of headphones are built at the same factory as Senheiser and Dre Beats.

Combine the two and you have a recipe for sound social entrepreneurship.

The charities that HeadCase has aligned themselves with are; One Day’s Wages, Soles4Souls, The Global Poverty Project, Free The Children and The Adventure Project.

Elyakim Samuel (CEO), and Samantha Bruandet (CFO) round out the founding team of socially conscious entrepreneurs.

We got a chance to interview Fairbairn, check out our interview below.

Louisville Startup: Kodable Teaching Kids 5 And Up How To Code

When you start talking to technical co-founders of today’s startups, most of them talk about how they’ve been coding in some form or another since they were little kids. Such is the case for Jon Mattingly the co-founder of Louisville startup SurfScore and their newest product Kodable. Mattingly started “fiddling” with computers at the age of 6, and now he and cofounder Grechen Huebner are setting out to teach a new breed of grade school kids how to code.

Kodable is a new iPad game that teaches kids aged five and up how to code. This is taught by teaching the fundamentals of programming and problem solving in a fun way. Kids are learning these fundamentals without even realizing it.

“It introduces the basic concepts of programming, including conditionals, loops and functions, in an abstract way simple enough for young children to understand. Kids give the characters, called fuzzes, commands that guide them through a maze. This challenges children to think through a problem in multiple ways before deciding on a solution, then rewards them for choosing the most efficient path.” Huebner told us in an interview.

There’s a variety of software out there now that teaches even younger children the fundamentals of reading. Huebner and Mattingly thought that if those skills could be learned at an early age, programming could be taught the same way. Mattingly credits Hubener’s artistic ability with actually making these skills fun to learn and easy to understand.

Check out the rest of our interview with the SurfScore/Kodable team below.

UK Startup: Spacehive Brings Civic Crowdfunding Across The Pond

As crowdfunding continues to grow in popularity, we’ve seen more and more “civic” crowdfunding sites pop up in the United States. Back in August we brought you an interview with Kansas City startup neighbor.ly and also during the summer we reported on Tampa startup Citizinvestor.

Now our friends across the pond in the UK are getting into the civic crowdfunding space. UK startup Spacehive is offering people in the UK the opportunity to crowdfund civic minded projects. These can include anything from planting a garden, to developing an open neighborhood wifi.

Crowdfunding was sparked and started in the United States with sites like Indiegogo and Kickstarter. In the UK there are already sites crowdfunding startups, like our good friends at Up And Funding. The civic crowdfunding space is new for them though.

Crowdfunding typically exists in two models. There’s an all or nothing model, where the crowd has a goal to raise and projects are funded once all of the money is raised. Other sites like Indiegogo allow people to raise money for projects but every dime goes to the project’s founder regardless of whether or not they hit their goal.

With Spacehive it’s the all or nothing model. Someone with a civic project will go online to their site. Once they create the project and the project is approved by Spacehive, they are free to raise money to their goal. The funds for the project will only be released once the goal is hit giving backers a little more piece of mind that the money is going to what it’s intended for.

We got a chance to talk with the team from Spacehive, about their civic crowdfunding platform and their cool name. Check out the interview below.

Vancouver Startup: Perch Turns iOS Devices Into Hands Free Cameras and More

Being on the road as much as we are here at nibletz.com the voice of startups everywhere else, we’ve come to realize how useful the iPhone and iPad have become to stay intune with what’s going on at home. For instance, FaceTime with my five year old daughter is something we do multiple times per day, every day. FaceTime is perhaps one of the easiest to use video chat apps ever created. A startup in Vancouver Canada, called Perch, has made it even easier.

Perch allows you to set up stationary iOS devices throughout your home or office. This unique app builds in video along with motion detection. Your iOS device becomes a Perch camera. All you have to do is walk up to the stationary iOS device and start talking, Perch knows to start rolling audio and video. The Perch app then uploads the video to the cloud making it easy for the recipient to get it.

Perch cameras can be used for surveillance and security, or as a great interactive tool for the whole family. Perch calls this hands free video operation, “ambient video”. In addition to those features you can also text and video chat with anyone in your Perch family.

The app was born out of a previous startup called Redhand which turned iOS devices into sophisticated security cameras.

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

New York Startup: Unpakt Brings The Expedia Model To Moving

The Expedia model of comparison shopping and booking online for the best discounted prices is a proven model that’s being used for several new verticals. Earlier this week we reported on Tennessee startup MDSave which applies a similar model to finding low cost health care for self pay patients. We’ve also reported on Nashville startup Rentstuff which applies a similar model to the merchandise rental industry.

As a testimony to the success of the Expedia model in other verticals, MDSave just raised $1 million dollars for their startup while Rentstuff was recently acquired.

Today we’ve found New York startup Unpakt which is applying the same type model to moving.

Sharone Ben-Harosh is the founder of Unpakt and a 20 year veteran in the moving industry. His first moving startup is FlatRate moving which he founded in 1991. FlatRate Moving takes away the uncertainty associated with hourly moving in exchange for a more honest flat rate move.

Unpakt works on the same principals, but on a larger scale. Users simply put in where they are moving from and to, how much stuff they have and what, if any, special services they need. Unpakt than brings back several real time quotes of movers that can do your move on the date requested and an actual flat rate quote so you know what you’re getting into. You also book the move online which takes a major part of the headache of moving, out of the picture.

We got a chance to talk with Ben-Harosh about Unpakt. Check out the interview below.