Interviews Archives - Page 48 of 57

Interview With New Jersey Startup: Clipix, Pinterest For Everything

Bookmarklets are nothing new, however Pinterest turned the concept of bookmarkletting into a world wide phenomenon. Pinterest has turned itself into a company with an astronomical valuation and no direct revenue, by simply bookmarkletting “Pinning” photos on interest boards. Heck even President Obama and Mitt Romney are doing it.

But what if you wanted to go beyond just pictures. What if you wanted to pin websites, articles, heck even word documents and pdfs? Well you would turn to Fort Lee, NJ based startup Clipix. The company, founded earlier this year has already attracted the attention of both TechCrunch and Mashable and now we’ve had the chance to interview them.

For starters they’re very very feature rich and the features don’t just sound great they work great. One of their most popular features is “Price Drop”. Clipix knows when you’ve clipped something that’s from a retail website and notifies you at set variables when they price either drops by percentage or to a certain dollar amount. Sure there are other services that do this but it’s all in one.

The other big feature is the ability to clip things from documents and pdf’s which can come in handy later on. Then you can view the items you’ve clipped via mobile device. It’s actually rather amazing.

You’ll see in the interview below, why Clipix is considered the “Pinterest for the real world”.

Interview With St. Louis Startup Systematic Revenue, Eons More Efficient Than Constant Contact

Earlier this month we reported that Cultivation Capital had invested $100,00 in Sytematic Revenue.

Systematic Revenue is a great automated system that allows you to keep consistently following up with your contacts, customers and prospects. According to many sources it takes up to 6 follow ups with a contact to make a sale. With Systematic Revenue those followups are automated, but learned and made to feel genuine. This is achieved because Systematic Revenue’s system learns about your contacts.

You start by importing all of your contacts from your major social networks, Outlook, Google contacts or any other relevant data file. From there you can create campaigns with any number of steps you like and any frequency that you like. You can also incorporate Systematic Revenue with your contact form on your company’s website so that when you get a new contact it’s automatically entered into Systematic Revenue’s database and entered right into the campaign.

Systematic Revenue takes the premise of ConstantContact and makes it relevant to the business world by providing some features originally only found in robust CRM systems and applying them to your contact database, making the followups relevant and easier to create sales and revenue.

We got a chance to interview Systematic Revenue below:

StampedeCon Big Data Conference In St.Louis Next Week, Interview Here

We’re very glad to be involved with next week’s StampedeCon Big Data conference in fact Nibletz.com is the official national media sponsor of the event that happens August 1st in St.Louis.

The StampedeCon Big Data Conference will feature a whole day of great speakers about one of the fastest growing segments of technology, big data.

StampedeCon founder Gary Stiehr, has put together a great program featuring ReadWriteWeb’s David Storm, Rob Peglar of EMC/Isilon, Bill Eldredge of Nokia, Frank Cotignola of Kraft Foods, Eric Hochmuth of Monsanto, Scott Fines of NISC, Alex Miller of Revelytix, and Jim Duey of Lonocloud.

In addition to the content packed feature speakers there will be a vendor exhibit area and a ton of great people to network with. People are coming from across the country to participate in the first ever StampedeCon and Stiehr tells us he hopes to do more of them. We got to talk to Stiehr in the interview below:

California Startup: nfinitu.de Helping Legacies Live On Through Social Media

Back in March we were the first site in the world to report on UK startup Deadsoci.al. This unique startup allows people to let their social media channels live on after death. After someone passes away, messages that they set up in advance can continue to inspire (or haunt) those they knew through social media and in real life. Mortality is an issue that more and more people are facing and that was actually the motivation behind deadsoci.al. As we found out at South By Southwest, the founder of deadsoci.al is dead serious about the startup.

Many don’t like to bring up tragedies but if you take a look back at the tragic incident at Columbine high school in 1999 and compare it to the recent tragedy in Aurora Colorado this past week, you may have noticed how much technology has changed in the previous 12 years. While social networks were just blossoming in the late 90’s today through social media many of the Aurora victims have Facebook tribute pages set up, walls with thousands of pages of comments, Twitter feeds with thousands of Tweets and more. In fact some of the survivors of the Columbine massacre have reached out to the victims of the Aurora tragedy via, you guessed it social media.

Combine things like that, with the tragedies surrounding mortality that we face all the time and it’s no wonder that Mario Horvath the founder of SplashHead LLC has created nfinitu.de.

While Hovarth is simultaneously launching nfinitu.de and another startup called Mindbl.am at the same time, nfinitu.de is what he focuses on in our interview.

Taking mortality into consideration and the way that people cope with tragedy nfinitu.de actually makes a lot of sense. A few years ago some may think the concept is morbid but not anymore.

With nfinitu.de people can create social media pages for those recently deceased in a tribute fashion. Often reminiscing, even if it’s just in the online context, can help people cope with the loss of a friend or loved one, whether they died of natural causes, fighting an illness or some other tragedy.

People sometimes don’t know what to do to cope with the feelings that come up after someone passes away and nfinitu.de actually helps them harness those feelings.

Check out our interview with Hovarth, below:

Interview with Toronto, Ontario & New York Startup RemoteStylist

Interior decorating can be a pain in the ass. You normally have to go from store to store and showroom to showroom. Not to mention the fact that you’ve got to deal with a pushy sales person at each showroom and each store. It’s more of a pain than it’s worth. That’s why so many interior decorating and interior design projects get put on hold. Or worse, people spend thousands of dollars on something they don’t necessarily like, just to get the process over with.

That’s where Toronto, Ontario and New York based startup RemoteStylist comes in. With RemoteStylist you simply sign up for your own free profile and then you can coordinate your style for your interior project with one of RemoteStylists’ interior designers.

As you work with your stylist from RemoteStylist you’ll see your rooms come together right before your eyes. If something doesn’t look right on the screen you can simply send your stylist back to the drawing board and they’ll continue to work, change and revise until you have the room you’re looking for.

Once the painful part is over, you’ll be completely satisfied with what you selected. Then the second magic part happens. Everything you liked is purchased for less than retail prices and then delivered and installed in your home. Yes 99% of this entire process can happen at your desk, in bed or at the kitchen table. RemoteStylist founder Kelly Fallis and her team have made sure that the interior design process is simple, and easy and that in the end the customers are happy.

We got a chance to interview the folks at RemoteStylist check out the interview below:

Interview With Atlanta Startup StoryMark, A Novel Idea For Photo Sharing

I was just telling StoryMark founder Dana McIntyre the story about when my mom turned 60 five years ago how all the kids got her one of those groovy digital photo frames that allowed 30 second narration on each photo. It was a cute idea and we were able to get photos from each couple in our family and the grandkids. We were then able to narrate what the photo was about.

Well, the reason we are writing about another photo sharing app is because StoryMark does virtually the same thing, but now instead of a clunky novelty digital photo frame, it’s on your iPhone or Android device where it will be way better utilized. In fact this year in September we are getting my mom an iPhone (yes she’s ready) and StoryMark will definitely have a place on her phone.

StoryMark allows you to take photos and then add up to 30 seconds of audio to send with the photo. It’s great for pictures that tell a story. Say you go on vacation you can send those loved ones back home a great photo and an audible description. Maybe your son or daughter is just laughing away, now with StoryMark you can audibly annotate the photo for years to come.

StoryMark has so many use cases it’s absolutely ridiculous (in a good way) McIntyre tells us in the interview below you can use it for those family moments, doctors can use it to get advice and collaborate with other doctors, even the know it all leader of your neighborhood organization can use it to audibly talk about how your grass is a smidgeon too high. Teenagers could use it to pitch their parents on that must have shirt, sweater, or video game at the mall. Again this is one of those ideas so good you think, “why didn’t I think of that” well that’s because McIntyre did.

Check out the interview below

Florida Startup: Sprigster, Crowdfunding For Veterans Looking To Start Franchise Businesses

There’s an alarming statistic when it comes to unemployment in our country and that is the fact that veterans who have moved from military to civilian life are one of the highest groups that are unemployed. That’s one of the reasons that TechStars just concluded their Patriot bootcamp to help and inspire veterans with ideas for startups to get started on their plans.

Sprigster, is a startup we actually heard about first back in April. Sprigster is a crowdfunding startup where several people can come together (as with any crowdfunding model) and support a franchise or business project for veterans.

CEO Mark Mohler likens crowdfunding to “Barn Raising”, back in the day towns would rally around their neighbors if one of their neighbors lost a building or had some other need. The townspeople would have a fundraiser in a barn to give money to the community member. With crowdfunding this is all done online and meant to help our military neighbors.

Ideally the platform is meant for former military who are now civilians who would like to hire themselves as the owner of a franchise business. Mohler explains why franchising is a better model for this platform than traditional startups in the interview below.

Startup Interview With Chicago Startup: The Plastic Bag Solution

The Plastic Bag Solution is a green startup located in Chicago IL where the issue of plastic bags is actually becoming a hot button topic among residents, environmentalists and government officials. In fact 1st Ward Alderman Proco Joe Moreno introduced a ban in 2011 of single use plastic bags. The legislation is still waiting to be heard in the Health and Environment Committee. If the legislation is passed Chicago will be the largest city in the country to enact such legislation.

Plastic bags clog sewers,drains,cause animals to suffocate, and take hundreds of years to decompose. The Plastic Bag Solution provides an alternative to the plastic bag that is 100% compostable and great for the environment.

The Plastic Bag solution provides their compostable bags at a fraction of the cost as traditional plastic bags and also educates consumers, business owners and government officials on the use and benefits of their solution to plastic bags.

We got a chance to talk with Coleman Franklin, Co-Founder and Vice President of The Plastic Bag Solution about what their startup is all about and what they’re doing in Chicago.

Check out the interview below:

Nashville Startup: InQuicker Gets You In The ER, Well Quicker, INTERVIEW

If it’s the weekend and you break your arm, or your toe, perhaps your nose or have some semi-emergency that requires you visit the ER but isn’t life threatening than I’m sure you’ve experienced the extremely long wait time that is the ER waiting room. Whatever the reason you’re in the ER, I’m sure you’re experiencing some kind of discomfort and ER waiting rooms are far from comfortable. What if you could use a web app to speed up the ER waiting process.

Well Nashville startup InQuicker is here to help. InQuicker is an online waiting room. In conjunction with their hospital partners someone who needs the emergency room services and is not in a life threatening emergency can sign in at the InQuicker online waiting room. InQuicker gives the patient a projected wait time. When the patient arrives at the hospital or clinic they are greeted by a healthcare provider.

InQuicker reports that eight out of ten patients that use InQuicker get seen within ten to fifteen minutes of the time they arrive. For just a rough idea on the value of InQuicker, they recently ran a study with their ER partners and found that patients can wait up to 208 minutes to get into the ER to see a doctor. That’s a lot of time you could be nursing your injury or ailment in the comfort of your own home.

InQuicker is very beneficial in the emergency room, but they also work with doctors offices as well.

We got a chance to interview InQuicker. Check out that interview below:

Interview With Pennsylvania Startup: Mountain Of Agents, A New Kind Of Real Estate Directory

There are several varieties of real estate agent directory web sites out there on the internet. Most of them are either from a realty association, a real estate company or the professional real estate agents themselves. Well a startup in Bucks County Pennsylvania has taken the real estate directory into their own hands by providing a real estate directory for consumers, by consumers. That directory is called Mountain of Agents.

Michael Becker the founder of Mountain of Agents explains that creating a real estate agent directory for consumers by consumers isn’t their only differentiator. Mountain of Agents has simplified the ratings system, which in turn makes it more transparent than other directories.

Mountain of Agents has a simple ratings system that’s done by tally instead of long drawn out text based reviews. Also, in order to rate the agent you must be logged into Facebook making it harder to manipulate the ratings system. The Facebook integration also allows the user/rater to share that rating and their agent on Facebook, which of course is the 2012 equivalent of word-of-mouth, which is the driving force behind good real estate agent relationships.

The main goal Becker is trying to achieve with Mountain of Agents, is the need for transparency. The startup was born out of a bad experience Becker had that ended up delaying his real estate search because they had to fire the agent. He talks more about that in the interview below.

Interview With Florida Startup: Yovia, A People Engine

Yovia is a new startup in Jacksonville Beach Florida. They call themselves a people engine that focuses on the people that make social media work.

Yovia takes brands, products, services and leverages them across a network of people who has signed up on Yovia. Yovia users can use their hard earned social capital for good. So how is this achieved?

Well after you sign up for Yovia’s platform you are presented with opportunities to spread the word about products, services and brands across your social graph and are rewarded. Your rewards can be in actual cash or free products or a combination of both. Exploring the Yovia site we found, and participated in several offers. The offers ranged from $6.00 for a 200 word blog entry to $.08 and $.15 for liking something or sharing something across social networks.

Yovia is a great way to drive brand engagement, and social engagement. There were news blogs that needed a like or share, and new services that needed signups. None of the offers seemed too outlandish and so far none have asked for my credit card information. It looks to be on the up and up.

Now eight cents and fifteen cents may not seem like a lot however if Yovia continues to grow quickly it will be easier to find higher paying offers and easier to complete more lower paying offers.

We got a chance to talk to Jalali Hartman, co-founder of Yovia in the interview below:

Interview With Chris West Founder of Memphis Startup: NeedRegistry

NeedRegistry is an original new idea for a startup based in Memphis TN. As you may have guessed it involves a registry, but not like any registry you may have seen before.

When someone goes through a major life changing event, like a bad illness, death in the family member, cancer, or even birth of a newborn, friends and family members inherently want to help. It’s part of human nature. Often times, the person going through the life changing event is too proud to say that they need help or to accept help. Friends and family don’t know what that person’s needs are so they resort to what Chris West, the founder of NeedRegistry, calls “death by casserole”. Friends and family members bring food, and lots of it.

Typically after the initial life changing event occurs, the person that had that event in their lives starts realizing that they do need help with even the basic and simplest of necessities. Perhaps they need someone to cut the grass, clean the house, or even clean the pool. Maybe that life changing event was a long term sickness like cancer, or an injury that has the person off their feet. These easy tasks can mount up quick.

Enter NeedRegistry.

NeedRegistry connects friends of that person with vendors of the services they need. The person that has had the life changing event happen to them can select things like lawn care, then the size of their lawn, the frequency of the lawn maintenance, and then a local service provider.

Friends can then fund the lawn maintenance and when the maintenance is performed the vendor gets paid.

It’s this direct vendor to friend connection that sets NeedRegistry apart from other crowdfunding startups that allow you to collect money for health reasons. With those types of sites you would still have to source out the work itself, get estimates and pay.

As West explains in the video interview, for the vendor its an easy sale and a no-brainer,once the service is ordered they go do the job and get paid.

West is excited about a beta launch in the coming weeks and plans on expanding the platform piece by piece over the next six months.

After the initial NeedRegistry rollout this year, he’ll expand the startup to cover two more markets and then by the end of 2013 he hopes to have a decent sized footprint across the country with a robust network of service providers.

Check out the video interview with West below:

Linakge:

Check out NeedRegistry here

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Video Interview With St.Louis Startup: LockerDome

Back in April we asked if St.Louis startup LockerDome was the Groupon for St.Louis,you know the standout startup that stays in their hometown and grows. By all accounts LockerDome is shaping up to be that startup.

LockerDome is a social networking site focused on team sports from just about every level. Whether your son or daughter is on a neighborhood soccer team, you’re a high school athlete playing on the football team or you’re a professional athlete LockerDome allows you to make a profile to correspond with the type of team your on.

With your profile you can keep friends, family, teammates, scouts and anyone interested up to date with how you’re doing as an athlete. For kids, think back to when you had trading cards made with the team photos, now grandma and grandpa across the country don’t need to wait for the mail, they can just go online and check out your profile.

One of the great things about LockerDome is that athletes of all levels can be found on the network. Pro Athletes are often the inspiration for many young athletes and you can find pro athletes from all kinds of sports on LockerDome. Imagine playing pee-wee hockey or pee-wee football and having a LockerDome profile just like your favorite professional athlete.

LockerDome has already attached some major attention. St.Louis native and Square co-founder Jim McKelvey sits on the LockerDome board and has invested into the company through Cultivation Capital. LockerDome has raised $2.1 million to date with their latest round totaling $1.04 million, which closed in June.

Check out our video interview below:

How about some Linkage:

Click here to check out LockerDome, start a profile why don’t ya?

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Interview With California Startup: Bib4Brides

Okay so in a previous life I owned a rather large dj business, you know the type that does weddings, school dances, that kind of thing. We were the biggest in the state of North Carolina and South Carolina as well. I’ve actually been involved in over 1000 weddings, that’s a lot.

When helping brides plan the dj part of their wedding, we had a lot of influence over the schedule and flow. One of the big things that brides and grooms wanted to know was when should they do their special dances, like Father/Daughter, Mother/Son, Bridal Party Dance etc. The question was easy, the answer was some times chuckled at, laughed at and some even found it offensive. We would ask every bride and groom that asked us that question, well “are any of you messy eaters”. Why, because a stain on a tux or wedding dress could ruin the wedding photos the couple is paying thousands of dollars for, and that are precious memories.

Enter in California startups Bib4Brides. Now we know this isn’t a tech startup but as we’ve shown here many times we do tangible startups too and this one was one that couldn’t be passed up.

Bib4Brides founder Sandi Romena has developed a product, essentially a bib for the bride and the groom, that in the long run can save embarrassment, ridicule and a lot of money. Sure the bride keeps her dress forever but Italian sauce isn’t the easiest stain to remove from the tuxedo before you take them back Monday morning.

The Bib4Brides was created after Romena had a little incident at her daughter’s wedding which she describes in the interview below: