Interviews Archives - Page 39 of 57

Houston Startup: Sports Tradex, The Fantasy Stock Exchange For Sports INTERVIEW

For those of you old enough to remember, back before 9/11 Cantor Fitzgerald was the outfit behind a virtual stock exchange called HSX. HSX stood for Hollywood Stock Exchange and it was one of the first virtual stock exchanges that allowed users to buy and sell celebrities, movies and movie options. Unfortunately after 9/11 and the loss that Cantor Fitzgerald had in the tragedy, HSX faded. It was revived for a short time but not the same way.

Houston Startup Sports Tradex has revived the model except instead of Hollywood it’s all about sports. Sports Tradex gets to the core of the fantasy sports lover with a financial background. It’s the ultimate place to go if you like to armchair quarterback sports and the stock market.

Sports Tradex really heats up when it’s game time. The market stays open throughout a sporting event so traders can trade in real time.

Sports Tradex is the brain child of co-founders Ben Lipson and Omri Buzi, both entrepreneurs. Lipson’s first entrepreneurial experience was actually a root beer company while Buzi has a more traditional background in web development.

We got a chance to talk with Lipson in the interview below:

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Interview: Outgrow.me is the Marketplace for Products Successful in Crowdfunding

Outgrow.me is one of those startups that we came across and I immediately thought to myself. They are on to something. What is outgrow.me? Are you familiar with kickstarter or indiegogo – have you heard of projects that have Have you ever wondered what happened to that kickstarter or indiegogo project that you heard about weeks or months ago? Where did project end up? Is it possible to find the High Roller Adult Big Wheel or the Pebble after the hype has died down? What option follows a successful crowdfunding campaign?

Those questions are finally being answered with Outgrow.me. It’s the solution that was just waiting to be created. We talked to Sam Fellig the founder of outgrow me read below.

What is outgrow.me?

“Outgrow.me is an online marketplace for successfully crowdfunded projects.”

In layman’s terms, how does it work?

“Outgrow.me picks up where the crowdfunding platforms leave off. It’s a marketplace for successfully crowdfunded projects from all over the web. Outgrow.me offers product designers the ability to further grow their brand by marketing their products to a growing community of shoppers that support innovation, creativity, and small businesses. On the flip side, Outgrow.me offers shoppers a unique shopping experience filled with highly innovative and creative products supported by the online community.”

Paris Startup: HeyCrowd Lets You Poll And Be Polled INTERVIEW

An interesting new startup in Paris is dealing with the realization that surveys are no fun anymore. Startups like Seattle’s PlayMySurvey are the exception not the rule. Paris startup HeyCrowd is all about polling rather than surveying.

This cool new platform allows users to set up their own polls about whatever they like and then poll the crowd. They can participate as well. Users can also participate in any of the other users polls, and then after they vote they can see where they stack up to the rest of the crowd.

HeyCrowd has positioned their platform and mobile app as “the addictive question game” gamifying the polling process rather than making it a long, lengthy list of questions. It could be looked at as a distant cousin to Quora but the questions are meant to be voting/polling type questions rather than long drawn out, ask and answer questions.

When you go to the heycrowd website or download the mobile app, the service keeps asking you questions that originated from the user base. The questions could go on forever if you’d like. HeyCrowd’s website says there are over 41,000 active questions. You can stay at the top of the page and let the questions keep moving up or you can sneak down to the questions you want to answer. You can answer as many or as few as you would like.

You can also ask whatever questions you would like and give multiple choice answers. Your question immediately goes into the rotation.

So far the questions seem playful enough. Once you answer a question it shows you in a graph how the rest of the user base answered.

We got a chance to interview Matthieu Rouif, co-founder of HeyCrowd. Check out the interview below:

UK Startup: omoii (oh my) Is A Disruptive Search Engine INTERVIEW

The search engine is a hard nut to crack. Back in the earliest days of the internet most of us used infoseek, Lycos and then Yahoo. Then, as we all know, two Stanford students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin set out to create Google. Companies both big and small like Microsoft and Duck Duck Go, have all tried to compete with Google.

Some of those competitors have carved out a good niche, more so with Duck Duck Go rather than Bing. Others are trying to attack Google feature by feature. Some search engine competitors are looking to offer an alternative to the way Google serves up results. One of those companies is a startup in the UK called omoii (pronounced Oh My).

Omoii is hoping to go beyond the keyword and offer a more robust, and accurate list of search results. The hope is that by offering a better search results algorithm, web searching will be more targeted and offer advertisers a better audience.

We got a chance to talk with Steve Pritchard the founder and chief architect of this unique new search startup. Check out the interview below:

Australian Startup: School Hours Helps People Find Jobs Around, School Hours

We’re hopeful that either this Australian startup will come to the United States or someone will do something very similar. School Hours is a new startup, based in Australia that helps Australian parents find flexible jobs. Sure not every person that uses SchoolHours will have kids, but all of those using it will require some kind of flexibility.

After checking out SchoolHours even further you begin to realize that people taking night or even day classes can utilize the platform. People with second jobs can utilize the platform. Even those people that have a hobby they pursue at a set schedule can utilize SchoolHours to find the best jobs with flexibility in mind.

It’s no secret that more and more job seekers are taking culture into consideration when looking for those jobs, and of course flexibility in hours can play a big role in that.

SchoolHours is packed with a variety of jobs and a variety of schedules.

We got a chance to interview the founders of SchoolHours. Check out the interview below.

Interview With Kansas City Startup: Truckily Accelerating At Ark Challenge

Food Trucks are all the rage these days. Most metropolitan areas now have a plethora of delicious food available in converted bread trucks. If you’ve ever been to Austin Texas, especially during South By South West we’re sure you’ve seen some great food trucks. When we were in Chicago for Chicago Tech Week lunch was catered by a dozen delicious food trucks outside the Merchandise Mart.

Aside from big events though, finding your regular food truck can be a tough task, especially when you have a limited amount of time for lunch. Or perhaps you’re in the mood for food truck food but you’re not sure about the cuisine. Well mobile food truck apps are becoming just about as hot as the food trucks themselves. In fact, Pennsylvania startup TruckyLove has incorporated both a food trick finder and a social network surrounding food trucks.

With Kansas City startup Truckily, it’s a little more cut and dry, but the guys behind Truckily have taken into consideration the diner and the driver.

As is with most of the other apps being built in the space, Truckily provides a function that allows diners to locate their favorite food trucks by name, or cuisine. They can also do a generalized browse type function where they can see what food trucks are around them.

On the driver side Truckily provides a function that allows food truck owners to find the best spot to set up shop.

Truckily is based in Kansas City but they’re currently accelerating at the Ark Challenge accelerator in Arkansas.

We got a chance to talk with Derek Kean one of the two co-founders of Truckily. Check out that interview below.

Salt Lake City Startup: Text Me Tix Is The Ultimate Fire Sale Ticketing Startup INTERVIEW

No venue, promoter, sports team, or stadium likes empty seats. Not only is there a loss in revenue but if you go to a show or a ball game and the stands are not filled to capacity it looks bad. The problem lies in the fact that there’s never really been a good last minute ticketing platform.

Sure scalpers are abundant, especially outside of popular sporting events and concerts. You’ll notice that scalpers will charge a high premium an hour or two before an event, but once the event has started, or as the minutes countdown to show time or game time, those scalpers even lower their prices. Nobody wants to take a loss.

The ticketing space is a very difficult one to crack. TicketMaster/LiveNation has a stranglehold on most large venue tickets and they don’t seem to budge as the clock narrows down. Separate venues and groups that like to stick it to the man, like Pearl Jam, and of course your local bands have other alternatives for ticket sales.

Salt Lake City startup Text Me Tix, provides a really great way for venues, promoters and teams to fire sale tickets. The method of delivery is text messages, which according to Text Me Tix Founder and CEO Mark Harmsen, are read within 3 minutes of receipt. Why not use that urgency in the text message realm to sell tickets.

Text Me Tix is picking up a lot of traction. They just won the opportunity to pitch Zappos founder and Mr. Startup Las Vegas Tony Hsieh as the first place winner of the Crowdfunder.com, Crowdstart Las Vegas competition.

In the interview below Harmsen explains how Text Me Tix saves ticket buyers a lot of money and solves a huge problem for ticket sellers.

Mediaton & Arbitration Go Online & Social With Toronto Startup: eQuibbly

Move over Judge Judy and Judge Joe Brown, when you have a dispute now, you don’t need a tv show, a judge or a lawyer. Now you can settle your disputes in an online forum called eQuibbly.

eQuibbly is an incredible idea founded in Toronto by Lance Soskin, a lawyer, investment banker and now entrepreneur.

The concept is pretty easy to grasp. eQuibbly is an online forum where two people can post their legitimate disputes. Those involved in the dispute can choose to post their dispute in a private room with just the two parties, an arbitrator or a mediator or, they can take it to the people, socially. The idea behind the public forum isn’t to bash either party but rather to get feedback and constructive ideas on how to solve the dispute.

With eQuibbly, no matter what your dispute is, you can take it to the platform and get people to give their ideas for resolution and then the public can vote on them. Did the plumber do a bad job on your shower and you want a refund? Did the dry cleaners rip your favorite blouse? Is the dog next door barking and driving you crazy?

Both parties in an eQuibbly dispute can state their side of the story and offer resolutions. Then get help from the crowd. It’s a lot easier, and even more fun than wasting lots of money with lawyers and courts.

We got a chance to talk with the team from eQuibbly about this great new Toronto startup. Check out the interview below:

Israeli Startup: Summer Lets You Easily Look Up Anyone On A Web Page

Summer, a new Israeli startup, has designed a way to easily look up the people who’s names you come across on web pages. Using their Google Chrome extension (coming soon to Safari & Firefox), Summer uses a semantic web engine that crawls the web site you’re on and then allows you to look up those mentioned by name on the page through over 70 different sources.

For example let’s take Mark Cuban for instance. Now we realize a lot of websites may link key figures names’ to previously published articles on their site, however when you use Summer, the plugin will quickly check ESPN, the New York Times and several other sources for information about Mark Cuban. When you click on Cuban’s name in an article on nibletz.com a side wall will pop up giving you information on Mark Cuban in a biography format, other story links and links to people that Cuban is somehow connected with. As the startup continues to grow, more and more information will be added.

Ohad Frankfurt, Lior Degani, Shlomi Babluki and Oz Katz have been friends for nine years and they are all co-founders of this unique new startup.

We got a chance to talk with Summer. Check out our interview below:

Montreal Startup: MatchFWD Socially Connecting For The Job Market

MatchFWD is a startup based in Montreal that is hoping to change the paradigm in the job hunting game. They want to cut out the middleman by leveraging social media and sharing. MatchFWD provides a platform that allows hiring managers to share new job opportunities with people and then down the social landscape, in a word-of-mouth style that will hopefully connect good candidates with great jobs.

MatchFWD works both ways though, job seekers can leverage the same social media networks to promote themselves to potential hiring managers and jobs. The pinnacle of MatchFWD is when, through social networks, a person that’s seen and shared a job can connect a person that’s looking for a similar job.

While recruiters are sure to frown on the concept behind MatchFWD the power is granted back to the people and the hiring becomes a smoother process. Also, hiring managers benefit by seeing the real time recommendations that are coming through shares.

MatchFWD is using the sharing economy to disrupt the job changing experience and make it a more level playing field. Job seekers will love this platform because they won’t waste their time applying to blind box ads where recruiters are just fattening their talent pool.

The startup launched this sharing platform back in March even before Washington DC based startup “Barrel of Jobs” launched. Barrel of Jobs is also using the social economy to help place candidates but in a different way.

We got a chance to interview MatchFWD co-founder Phil Gauvin about their new approach to the job hunt. Check out the interview below:

Xoogler Spotlight Interview With Boston Startup Price Intelligently

Although it may not seem like it, pricing products and services is one of the hardest things that a business owner has to do. They of course need to make money and make a profit but at the same time, it’s a scary thought to most that a bad price could leave product sitting on the shelves for an indefinite amount of time. There is a huge problem with the way prices are calculated these days, and that just shouldn’t be in the 21st century.

Former Boston based Googler (Xoogler) Patrick Campbell has set out to find a way to more accurately and more effectively price products. As he tells us in the interview below, until now business owners have relied on weak data, archaic practices and even “gut feelings” when it comes to pricing. Price Intelligently’s technology is built on a scientifically proven methodology that leverages existing and potential customers to determine a products price.

How important is pricing? Campbell tells us that a 1% improvement on price correlates to an average increase of profits of 12.5%.

Check out our interview with Campbell below:

Interview With Australian Startup: CheckinLine

CheckinLine is a new Australian startup that gives insight into data from checkins for engagement, promotion and insight. It works by virtually camping out for registered fans and gives access to promotions and engagements to those who deserve it most by way of a daily check-in.

The startup based in Melbourne claims that in their own case studies with their platform the average engagement level in 2011 was 69% which is well beyond the average engagement on any other platform. CheckinLine gives a more accurate picture to their clients because one check in equals one opinion. Their end research is more intimate than most, they liken it to having a one on one conversation with a companies most active customers.

CheckinLine seems to be a lot like SCVNGR where the user completes a task upon check-in rather than a blank check in without engagement. An engaged check-in is much more effective than a non-engaged check-in.

The company describes their camping out philosophy like this: “I’ll hold your place for you, but I need you to come back regularly to let me know you’re still interested. If not, I’ll reward more committed users”.

We got a chance to interview CheckinLine below:

Los Angeles Startup: Swagsy Turns The Swag Bag Into A Flash Sale Platform INTERVIEW

We’ve reported on a handful of good Los Angeles area startups that are leveraging the celebrity power in Los Angeles for their companies.

LA startup 12 Society is spearheaded by rapper Nas (Nasir Jones) and he’s called on many of his influential friends from the hip hop, music, sports and celebrity communities to launch a “birch box” subscription startup with gadgets, toys and cool tech stuff. The monthly subscription box is curated by the stars and quickly had everyone in Los Angeles talking.

We’ve also reported on MoonShark a mobile gaming startup that was built as a partnership between the Creative Artists Agency (CAA) and Qualcomm. MoonShark leverages CAA’s roster of A-List celebrities to endorse, and build mobile gaming products with and around. Their latest project, Verticus is a collaboration between them and comic book icon Stan Lee.

Today we’re talking with Los Angeles startup Swagsy. This is a new online shopping and flash sales platform where the items that they are selling have been curated by a panel of “influential tastemakers”. Swagsy Co-Founder Grant Cohen, likens Swagsy to a flash sales site for things you would often times find in swag bags at A-list events. That’s also where the idea came from, as well as the name.

Swagsy’s curators recommend the type items from the top brands. From there Swagsy negotiates flash sale offers with the brands and manufacturers themselves, then their A-list tastemakers take to social media to help promote the brand, the item and the website.

No startup has tried to use celebrity power to back a flash sales model so far.

We got a chance to talk to Cohen in the interview below.

Houston Startup: GoodDeedsGlobal Hopes To Make A Difference

Self proclaimed “Modern Day Renaissance Man” and entrepreneur Corey S. Davis of Las Vegas has teamed up with co-founder Ken Melancon of Houston Texas to create a new social startup called GoodDeedsGlobal network. GoodDeedsGlobal is a cause driven social business that intends to help put money in the hands of those that need “good deeds”.

GoodDeedsGlobal has a request a good deed page which is designed for those with needs to contact the organization. It’s unclear as to what specifically constitutes a need but the site says it can be anything. So if you’re in need, go for it here.

Davis gave us this example of how the platform is designed to work:

“Maybe someone like a single mom who is really struggling to make ends meet and can’t afford to pay all the bills on a particular month, plus on top of that feed and take care of the kids and everything else. If she wrote into our site asking for something like $150 to maybe $300 dollars to help make it through the month and pay a few bills (maybe help to keep the lights on or something like that). Then what we would do is contact her back as soon as possible and verify her situation as best we can, and then simply help her out by fulfilling that request (essentially sending a money order for her to pick up in her local area and/or city)”

Davis says that the GoodDeedsGlobal network is designed to touch one person at a time and is a change agent to promote doing good deeds for each other. He is hopeful that people will use the GoodDeedsGlobal platform to “pay it forward”.

Davis equates it to the “Make A Wish Foundation” for people that are over 17 and not going through the hardship of a life threatening illness.

Perhaps our interview with Davis, below, will provide my clarity.