Interviews Archives - Page 47 of 57

Cincinnati Startup ChoreMonster Makes Chores Fun For The Whole Family VIDEO INTERVIEW

Cincinnati startup ChoreMonster makes chores fun for the whole family. The Cincinnati based startup, founded by Chris Bergman and Paul Armstrong was one of the standout startups in the 2011 class at the Brandery Accelerator in Cincinnati’s Over-The-Rhine neighborhood. The startup was designed around monsters that Paul Armstrong had created and shown to Bergman. The two decided that they really needed to do something fun, positive and profitable with the monsters.

Bergman tells us in the video interview below that he didn’t have the best home life as a kid. He didn’t delve deep into that but you can tell that he is very passionate not just about starting a tech company,but the good that ChoreMonster is going to do for families and kids. He loves the idea behind incentivizing chores and of course the gamification of them as well.

So how does it work?

Parents sign up at ChoreMonster.com. While it’s in beta right now Bergman tells us that all you have to do is share it with your Facebook friends, through a one-click process and you’re into the beta. He also tells us you can find beta invite codes everywhere. At this point the beta is more about putting the finishing touches on the product rather than limiting users at this stage in the game.

After you sign up, you create a profile for your child (children) no worries though the parent controls everything that the child sees.

From there you start setting up chores. You can pick from the list of chores or make up your own. Once you’ve selected a chore you fill out the chore form which asks you to assign it a point value.

The next step is to set up rewards which your child can redeem for points. The parents create the rewards themselves. For my daughter we created a chore “pick up toys and books” we assigned it a value of 5 points and that it needs to be done every day. At 50 points our four year old daughter can redeem it for a new My Little Pony. We added a variety of other chores along with a bunch of awards including things like movie night where we will go see a movie in the theater, after school ice cream trip, and after school trip to the park.

There is an app that we downloaded for her on her ipod touch which tells us she’s completed a chore. Once we verify the chore she gets the points in her point bucket.

The best part may be when the monsters come into play though. Armstrong has designed a great group of monsters that each kid can redeem. They plan on adding a virtual market so the kids can add virtual items to their monsters, buy premium monsters and interact with other kids and other monsters.

Original ChoreMonster artwork like this fills the 3rd floor at the Brandery where ChoreMonster works. It's referred to as the "Alumni Penthouse" (photo: nibletz LLC)

Sure ChoreMonster isn’t going to last forever in a kids life. The average family will probably get great use out of ChoreMonster from the time their child is four to about 12 or 13. They may grow out of it by then, but heck it’s around that age that the chore chart comes down as well.

From a startup business standpoint, with their core set of users theres barely any attrition. After the family has the big family meeting about ChoreMonster, and once the kids start using it, it’s not something that can be easily tossed to the wayside like an app or game you may have gotten bored with.

Bergman tells us the next step is to add an app for the parents so that they can verify chores, track chores, and check up on their child’s progress from their own app.

The two co-founders are filled with heart, soul and laughter and of course creativity. They work out of the top floor of the Brandery which has been dubbed the “Alumni Penthouse” from some of the companies that work out of the space. From the middle of the top floor of the Brandery Bergman and Armstrong can see all the way down to the bullpen where the current class is working hard on their startups.

Both co-founders can often be found mentoring the new startups as well. You can also find them very active in the social, community parts of the Brandery whether it be a Reds game, basketball, beer pong or one of the Brandery’s social gatherings. They’re both as committed to the Brandery community as they were when they were going through the same rigorous program.

Check out the video below where Bergman talks more about what drove him and Armstrong to create ChoreMonster and you can just tell from the discussion this is something he believes in. Investor’s believe in them as well. In 2011 they took the $25,000 top prize in the Cincinnati Innovates competition. They also closed a round of funding at the beginning of the year for $350,000 dollars from private investors and CincyTech.

Linkage:

Go sing up for ChoreMonster here

Here’s a great piece on the Brandery

Nibletz is the voice of startups “everywhere else”

We’re on a sneaker-strapped nationwide startup roadtrip and need your support

Interview With Los Angeles Startup: Teachmeo Learn & Teach Anything, And Everything

Teachmeo is a new startup in Los Angeles, “Silicon Beach”, their mission and purpose is to allow anyone who wants to teach anything, to teach it and allow anyone who needs to learn anything, learn it. They will facilitate this with a community of teachers and learners.

They describe it like this:

Say your son needs help finishing his math homework, it’s 9pm there’s no one around that can help locally, you wouldn’t think of calling his teacher and there’s nowhere else to go. He can go to teachmeo.com and find in just about real time, answers to his math questions.

The same thing goes for Brian who wants to teach guitar to someone, he can teach it via teachmeo. Really with the platform that teachmeo is building you can learn and teach just about anything, as their Rockstar CEO Natalie Novoa tells us in the interview below.

Zack Miller Talks To Nibletz About The New Norfolk Startup Accelerator Hatch

Hampton Roads Virginia is a thriving community anchored by Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Hampton, Newport News and Chesapeake. They’ve got a lot of great technical talent coming out of the military bases in the community and a great feeder system of colleges like Norfolk State, Hampton University and Old Dominion University. They’ve also been put on the map with efforts like Start Norfolk.

So it was only natural that one of their own entrepreneurs Zack Miller decided to start an accelerator program for the region. He decided to put it in Norfolk which is the epicenter for Hampton Roads. Hampton Roads already has three accelerators in Innovation Research Park, Hampton Roads Technology Center and James City County Incubator. The region needed something like Hatch.

We got a chance to talk with Miller about Hatch. He talks about the importance of an accelerator in the region and also gives us a break down of Hatch’s first class in the interview below.

Win! Alcohol Discovery From New York Startup Drynk.me

This story doesn’t really need any fancy dressing up. You go out. You like to drink occasionally or perhaps more than occasionally. You try great drinks, but maybe you’re too tired (read drunk) to remember what drink it was you tried, or what was in it.

New York startup Drynk.me is here to help.

Whether you’re a beer connoisseur (or beer snob), or a purveyor of fine wines, or you just like a great new cocktail, you want to remember it right? Drynk.me allows you to do all that, share it with friends, crowdsource new drink ideas, take pictures of your favorite drinks all on your smartphone. You can even geo-tag your drink so you can remember where you were when you had that wonderful concoction. Yes, drinkers, this is your app!

Who has made such a great idea a reality? Well the co-founders behind Drynk.me are Fernando Garza, Chevon Christie and Preston Hall. They took a break from their extensive customer validation and market research to talk to nibletz.com, check out the interview below:

Boston Startup: Prospective Plus Wants To Give You More Prospective On Your Job Applicants INTERVIEW

Finding the best job applicants seems to be getting harder and harder every year. The applicant pool gets bigger every year and normal application/resume hiring practices aren’t providing enough background to possible employers in just about every situation. This is the pain point that Phoebe Farber and her team at Prospective Plus are hoping to solve.

Through their SaaS platform which targets entry level candidates, Prospective Plus is carving out a niche in the employment world by providing more robust feedback for candidates.

Prospective Plus calls their approach “Culture Fit” and it’s a holistic approach to applicant screening that provides recruiters and HR professionals with more well rounded information about prospective employees (hence the name).

We got a chance to interview Prospective Plus. Check out the interview below:

Buenos Aires Startup: Citibuddies Wants To Be Your Buddy In Every City INTERVIEW

Citibuddies is a new startup that just relocated from Europe to Latin America, and they’re now happy to call Buenos Aires home. As you may be able to tell from the headline, Citibuddies wants to be your buddy in whatever city youre in.

It’s much like Poynt but a little more social. Citibuddies connects people with places and events in cities. They’re hoping to become the go to app that can tell you what to do, where to go and who to meet. Citibuddies uses a robust algorithm and collects data from your social network so you don’t have to input a bunch of information into your profile. From there it starts it’s magic by finding like minded people, events and places.

While they don’t do a badge system in Citibuddies they do have Citi Champions who are well versed in the local city and can help out the other users. CitiBuddies hope to make it easier for people visiting a city to connect as if they were locals.

We got a chance to interview Darja Gutnick one of Citibuddies founders below.

Track Job Applicants Easier With London Startup Pleekant INTERVIEW

There are a ton of startups these days entering the hiring and recruitment space. Most of them have to do with the actual hiring and recruitment process. There are startups like Houston Texas’s Job Plotter which helps applicants plot jobs on a map to know if they are close enough to their homes to apply. Another great startup in the job’s space is PitchPick an Austin based company that helps the pre-screening process with a video platform.

Pleekant is equally as useful to HR folks and recruiters. The London based startup provides a platform to better track job applicants. If you are running a good sized HR department you may have 20 positions open and hundreds of applicants to track. That’s where Pleekant comes in.

With Pleekant, companies can keep tabs on applicants,resumes, applications, notes and what position the applicant is applying for. Pleekant also makes it easier for recruiters within an organization to collaborate with each other. If your company has a multi interview process Pleekant makes it easy for each interviewer to keep their notes and records from the interview in one easy to find record, accessible to everyone in the hiring chain.

Pleekant’s founder Ramario Depass describes his startup as “A content management system for hiring employees, making life easier for recruiters. He’s identified Resumator as one of his key competitors but feels that Resumator is clunky, and has an early 2000s feel to it.

Depass’ description of Pleekant is rather fitting. It feels like a content management system where the assets are the job applicants.

We got a chance to interview Pleekant. Check out the interview below:

Scottish Startup: Tummy With Mummy A Great Product For Tummy Time INTERVIEW

The first thing I thought when I heard the name of this Scottish startup is, what in the world is a Tummy With Mummy and what is Tummy Time. Well Tummy Time is the activity where babies essentially lay face down on the floor and scoot around on their tummy’s or play with toys in this position.

It turns out that Tummy Time is an essential part of the development of a baby’s motor skills and the most critical time for this to occur is between zero to 6 months.

Well sometimes Tummy Time doesn’t work out. Parents are often scared that the baby will hurt themselves on a hard wood floor and sometimes it doesn’t really look comfortable to see a new-born facedown, you worry if they are ok.

Tummy With Mummy is a patented product made by Scotish startup called TWM Productions. Tummy with Mummy is a baby seat that allows baby’s to play in the Tummy position with a parent or loved one or by themselves. It keeps the baby’s in the best position for Tummy Time and then it folds completely flat for storage and to fit in the trunk of a car.

TWM Productions is actually part of the Entrepreneurial Spark program which provides resources to growing startups in the UK. Tummy With Mummy’s co-founder Dave Abrahams says that Entrepreneurial Spark actually instills North American values in some of the UK startups.

Check out our interview Abrahams below. He tells us all about this new startup that was actually followed by his mum and is now a family business.

Meet TellBob He’s A Canadian Startup Rewarding People For Taking Surveys On Their Mobile Device

Getting customer feedback can be tricky. Almost every kind of survey engagement tactic has been tried time and time again. It’s hard to get someone to take a survey for a chance to win $10,000 or even a free meal the next time you visit a restaurant. Companies need this valuable data, and the survey platform that can pull it off is going to win.

That’s where TellBob comes in. This Canadian based startup with a really cool name is all about having customers take surveys on their smartphone and then getting rewarded instantly for participating.

So TellBob isn’t really a guy named Bob in fact it’s two guys Trevor Howie and Dan Renaud. They came up with the idea back in 2007 after visiting a Home Depot and thinking how great it would be if you could get some kind of instant gratification for completing their customer service survey.

With TellBob’s reward program the customer is rewarded instantly and they can save or trade their rewards with their friends and even share the entire experience on Facebook. It’s a win for their survey customers as well. TellBob can give back some great information and even confirm that the person completing the survey was actually at the location.

We got a chance to interview TellBob, well actually Howie, check out that interview below.

Miami Startup: Sumpto It’s Like Klout For College Students, But Better INTERVIEW

Klout is still a big mystery to most, how do you get those crazy Klout scores. If you know how it’s really calculated feel free to send me an email. Klout Perks is a great program that puts manufacturers products into peoples hands. They presumably want the cream of the crop when it comes to Klout, but we have no idea who that really is.

Sumpto is looking to do something along those lines when they launch next week. They’re going to match products to college students with influential social graphs. Sumpto will rank a college students social clout (with a c not a k) and then link manufacturers with college brand ambassadors who can presumably get the word about those products out to the masses.

Manufacturers love it when they can get exposed to people with real influence. Ranking that influence can be a challenge but Sumpto’s Founder and President Ben Kosinski seems to have figured out the magic formula. Yes, Sumpto’s partners will most likely reach the hands of the right people.

The college demographic is a hard one to crack, with free stuff though it may be easier. When you add the free stuff to an exclusive layer of folks, your destined to gain exposure down the lines to the masses. That’s exactly what Sumpto is going to do.

We got a chance to interview Kosinski check out the interview below:

Interview With Romanian Startup: MonitorBacklinks

Don’t you just love it when a startup comes up with an idea and the name of the startup directly reflects that idea. Such is the case with Romanian startup MonitorBacklinks. Founder Razvan Girmacea has created MonitorBacklinks to make it easier for any publisher, webmaster, or blogger to monitor their backlinks.

Girmacea’s software checks all of a websites backlinks and then sends a notification when the status of a backlink changes, for example if it disappears, reappears or moves.

When vying for pagerank backlinks play a big part into the SEO of any website.

In the interview below Girmacea talks about MonitorBacklinks and how easy he has made it for the end user. He also sheds some light on the budding entrepreneurship and startup scene in Romania.

Interview With Canadian Startup Hashcaster

Back in June we brought you this story about Canadian startup Hashcaster. Hashcaster provides a curation, and measurement (analytics) platform for event coordinators to manage their social media graph. It really comes in handy when gauging the effect of marketing, press and media efforts on behalf of an event just about any size.

At Social Media Camp in June not only was Hashcaster used by the event organizers but they also received a “Coastie” for “Most Innovative Social Media Product or Technology”.

Event organizers everywhere are counting on social marketing efforts more and more everyday as traditional marketing has fallen to the wayside. Organizers need to be able to capture tweets, likes, and mentions and then aggregate them, and analyze them to make sure the cohesive message is getting across. They also want to know who their top influencers are and what kind of impact any paid social marketing may have had.

All of these things are why Geoff Clendenning and Paul Vet created Hashcaster.

Now social media dashboards are nothing new but this particular use case is. Hashcaster also takes into consideration that the social graph of a particular event is going to swell as the event draws closer. When you’re at a popular event, especially one with a social media focus, tweets, likes and mentions can come in a matter of seconds.

We got a chance to interview Clendenning about Hashcaster, check out the interview below:

Interview With Portland Oregon Startup: Hively, Easy Engagement Feedback Platform

Businesses, retail establishments and restaurants have been using the internet for surveys for the past fifteen years. Lot’s of restaurants still resort to printing a phone number to call or a website to go to to enter a code, do a survey and get some kind of discount. The problem with this method of surveying is, despite the reward, there is still extremely low engagement.

Even customer service surveys at the end of a call to a cell phone carrier or cable provider go unanswered, and that’s after you’ve said yes you’ll answer the quick two minute survey. Most travel related surveys that I get in my personal in box go straight to a spam folder and never get completed. In fact the only time I typically fill out a survey is if the customer experience was bad, and there are a lot of people in the same boat as me.

An Oregon startup called Hively is looking to change that for business. They are hoping their platform will have a better engagement rate for two primary reasons. It takes just nanoseconds to complete and they make it happy and fun. Hively just asks one simple question, please provide feedback and with that simple question customers can quickly hit one smiley face, like the ones above, and that’s it.

On the side of the employee, employees who receive good feedback are awarded points that they can accrue for a prize.

We got the chance to interview Hively’s co-founder Jason Lander, check out the interview below:

Interview With Atlanta Slacktivist Startup: SocialVest

Before we dive into a great interview with an awesome Atlanta based startup, I get applause and a lot of flack from the term slacktivist. It’s definitely not a bad thing, and actually I’m hoping the term gets picked up. As busy as people are in 2012 “slacktivist” are the things that people can do without any additional, trying to actually contribute back to the community. Tom’s shoes for instance is a great example of slacktivism. Pubslush is also another great example of slacktivism.

I certainly don’t have the time to get out there and participate in relay for life races anymore or bake sales, although I am looking forward to selling girl scout cookies with my daughter. In the meantime though I am definitely a proud slacktivist and I love platforms like SocialVest. I’m that guy that always rounds up at GoDaddy and at Petco, why because it’s super easy and it helps. So check out this awesome Atlanta startup.

SocialVest is probably the easiest platform for a slacktivist or ok you don’t want to be a slacktivist, how about it’s the easiest platform for anyone who wants to make sizable contributions to a cause through shopping. After all you can only buy so many Live Strong bracelets at Radio Shack (are people still doing that these days?).

Once you register for an account at Slacktivist you accrue cash back awards from the 100s of retailers that are partnered with SocialVest. Then you take that reward money and select one or as many causes as you would like, out of over 1.5 million causes, to receive that bonus. Socialvest calls it “Purchase On Purpose” and it’s really really easy.

As they explain in the interview below, partner retailers give back up to 35% of a purchase (based on the retailer and their agreement with Socialvest) that money than goes into your reward account and is given to the causes of your choice at the intervals and amounts you choose. The more you shop online the more you contribute to the causes that matter most to you. Without doing an extra thing, period.

Pretty awesome right?

Check out the interview below and don’t kid yourself if you don’t have time to get out and do the volunteer things you want or write that check to the cause you love, sign up for Socialvest. It’s easy.