Interviews Archives - Page 49 of 57

Interview With Miami Startup: PitchShark A Social Network For Launching Film Projects

Social networks are a staple in just about everyone’s daily lives. In the Facebook generation it feels like everyone who has any kind of internet access is online and part of some kind of social network. Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ have a strangle hold on mainstream social network needs. LinkedIn has the business sector covered, but now social networks are emerging for specific industries.

We’ve reported on Memphis based “Work For Pie” which is a social network/linked In of sorts for developers, there are social networks for real estate agents and now a social network for those working on films.

When we first heard about Miami startup PitchShark we weren’t exactly clear on the need for a social network, where did the real problem lay? Well co-founder Justin Perez talked with us in the interview below and there are a ton of reasons that PitchShark makes sense.

For instance, casting an indie film or a film not sanctioned by one of the major studios, can be a long and painstaking process. Perez explains in the interview that it’s not just about casting either. There are other resources that film producers need in order to get the project off the ground.

Check out the interview below:

New York Startup: PubSlush Crowdfunding Book Publishing For Good

Writers and authors take heed we found an awesome startup in New York called Pubslush. Not only do they have an uber cool name but what they do is fantastic. We actually get amped up when we find a startup that has a unique idea that doesn’t fall under one of the normal categories like SoLoMo or discovery.

Pubslush is a publishing platform for authors to crowdsource the funds that they need to actually publish their works. Pubslush is building up a healthy following of people who love to read, write and check out new books from new authors. Sure there are authors out there crowdfunding their books on KickStarter and Indiegogo but with PubSlush there’s another great incentive.

With every book sold through Pubslush they donate a book to a child in need. This is perfect for the slacktivist set. You know the type, the people who buy Tom’s because they donate a pair of shoes to charity. Well PubSlush is even better. They’re putting more physical books in the world. Needy children are reading books and passing them along to the other children around them. Great idea right?

Pubslush has a trifecta of problem solving. New authors are getting their works read. Authors are also getting their works funded and books are going to people in need. Add in the fact that Pubslush is putting more books out there in the world at a time when print publishing is down thanks to the advent of e-readers, tablets, Amazon and iPads.

We got a chance to talk with Amanda Barbara the development director at Pubslush in the interview below:

What The MixTape Is Back? We Interview Los Angeles Startup Mixtaping.FM

Do you remember those late nights you used to sit around your bedroom with your dual cassette deck and make sweet mix tapes for your girlfriend or boyfriend, yeah me neither. (Ok yes I actually do). Well if you were into creating mix tapes for that special someone than Los Angeles based startup mixtaping.fm may be for you.

Mixtaping.fm has taken the concept of making mix tapes and brought them up to date. They offer a cloud based platform that lets you create 30 minute mix tapes, legally.

Edward Chan, the co-founder of Mixtaping.fm realizes that today’s “mix tapes” in the sense we’re talking here, are very similar to playlists but there are problems with playlists. First off everyone’s playlists are on different services. Some services require you to sign up and pay a fee just to listen to the playlist. Other services are so obscure that it’s hard to find anything.

Mixtaping.fm lets you make a custom 30 minute “mix tape” with music that you like, or want to specifically share with someone or a group, and then you can share it easily.

One of the other big things with Mixtaping.fm is that they’ve integrated Facebook and Instagram so not only can you create a “mix tape” but you can also create cover art.

MixTaping integrates with Spotify and has plans to integrate Rdio as well.

We got a chance to talk with Chan in the interview below.

Interview With Jessica Meyer Founder Of Austin Startup: Locate Special Diet, Bet You Can’t Guess What They Do!

Over the last few years smartphones have helped me control my type II diabetes. Even when I was a devoted Android user I was able to find great blood glucose management apps that allowed me to track my diet, blood sugar and other important information and share it with my family and diabetes “sponsor”. The next thing I was in search for was a restaurant finding app. You see I’m on the road a lot.

There have been a few out there but mostly they provide nutritional guides. I can quickly go to a handful of restaurant chain apps and look up carbohydrates and even sugars in some of their dishes. But now, thanks to Jessica Meyer, the founder of Locate Special Diet, I can find restaurants and businesses that cater to diabetics. The best part though is that Locate Special Diet isn’t about just diabetics Meyer has covered just about every special diet there is from vegetarian and vegan to people looking for organic, or gluten free.

The idea for Locate Special Diet arose when Meyer was diagnosed with Celiac Disease in 2007. She wanted a way to find places that would cater to her need for a special diet in Austin Texas, and also where she traveled.

We got a chance to talk to Meyer, a female serial entrepreneur, about Locate Special Diet in the interview below.

Toronto Startup: ShopLocket Easily Sell Anything INTERVIEW

Ever had something you wanted to sell on the internet? Sure you have. Maybe you thought signing up for ebay, setting up an account and then trusting Paypal was too much of a pain in the butt? Maybe you wanted to sell your item on Craigslist but you didn’t want to deal with 100 emails telling you they would send you $10,o00 for your $400 item. Well if you thought online selling was a pain, ShopLocket could possibly be the cure.

ShopLocket is a Toronto based startup which promises to make listing your item online as easy as embedding a YouTube video anywhere. You can embed it on your Facebook page, Tumblr, Posterous,Blogger, WordPress, other web page, blog or anywhere else that you would like. If you don’t know how to embed a YouTube video, no worries ShopLocket will teach you how to embed your item.

There are three easy steps to listing an item on ShopLocket, just create your sale, share it and sell it. You can sell whatever you want. Got some old baseball cards? Sell them. Have an old cell phone? Sell it! Want to teach guitar lessons, no problem. Best of all there is no coding required.

As for payment, yes you can trust the overlords at PayPal but they also use the new payment service Stripe as well.

We got to talk with ShopLocket and their truly innovative service in the interview below:

DC Startup: Swapel Is Bartering For Startups And Small Businesses INTERVIEW

Washington DC startup Swapel is all about bartering. It’s a different kind of bartering though, it’s bringing back the old b2b bartering network system that was popular in the mid to late 90’s.

Nick Barron, one of the co-founders at Swapel doesn’t know it but through both of our new media startups we’ve survived because of bartering. We’ve bartered ad space and social media expertise for everything from legal services, to design and even travel. Bartering is a great way for sneaker strapped startups to save vitally needed dollars.

That’s the foundation for Swapel. Swapel puts a layer of trust into the bartering ecosystem for businesses. Bartering is growing in popularity we’ve covered a handful of good bartering startups here at nibletz.com. Bartering on a consumer, person to person level is a lot different than bartering in business to business. At the consumer level most people are bartering tangible goods. I’ll trade you my riding lawnmower for your iPad. I’ll cut the tree branches down, if I can have all the fire wood. When people are bartering with each other it’s typically a straight up trade.

The problem when it comes to professional B2B bartering is that often times at least one of those in the barter or trade is performing a service that may not be executed immediately. For instance maybe you’re bartering legal services for tax preparation services. Perhaps the tax preparer is getting a contract drawn up immediately and the lawyer doesn’t need the tax preparation until the following winter. With trades like that you need a platform to manage them, add a layer of trust and a network of trusted service providers who are willing to barter. You can’t just go to the barter tab on Craigslist and trade SEC filing paperwork for wallpaper removal.

Barron and co-founder Shawn Scott are building Swapel in the thriving DC startup community. We’ve already been through DC twice on the sneaker strapped startup road trip and we know first hand how great DC startups are. In fact Barron says that one of their business role model is fellow DC startup founder Zvi Band of Contactually.

We found that out in more in our interview with Swapel below.

20 Year Olds Get $100,000 Investment For Their Cincinnati Startup CapStory, Interview Here

Online privacy is not just a problem for Facebook users. The problem is shared across all social networks, especially ones that allow public searchable results. We’re not talking about those safety and security privacy concerns, we’re talking about those beer pong pics, jello shots and beer bongs that you don’t want that fortune 500 recruiter to see. Long gone are the days where you could share things care-free on Faccebook.

This is actually a real problem for many people .Sure the more conservative set may say you shouldn’t do those things but we’re willing to bet those people criticizing good ole college fun, had some good ole college fun themselves, back before Facebook.

It was just a few months ago where we reported on employers that actually asked interviewees for their social network accounts and their logins.

So where can you share and aggregate your photos, statuses and messages safely and privately? Where can you save them?

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Susprasanna Mishra & Dustin Studer co-founders of CapStory (photo: marketwire)

Well a Cincinnati startup called CapStory says they have the answer. We first met the guys from CapStory at Chicago TechWeek last month. Last week it was announced that they secured a $100,000 investment from CincyTech as part of their larger seed round. CapStory plans on using the money to finish the user interface and complete the mobile version, and then roll it out on college campuses.

There are a few other startups that are trying to do what they do. BonFyre in St.Louis has a social network that is likened to Facebook before it opened up to everyone in the world over 13.

“There are other companies trying to do what Capstory is building, but the company’s emphasis on telling a story and its simple mobility are what set it apart from its competitors,” said Justin Thompson, senior analyst at CincyTech.

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

Interview With Helsinki Discovery Startup Grafetee

The discovery business is a shrewd business these days. It seems every time we go to a pitch event there is the next best discovery app, not to mention the discovery apps we saw at South By Southwest. Discovery is a hot startup space in the US. It’s also hot in Europe but Helsinki startup Grafetee seems to have a new spin on discovery that should help them pull ahead of some of the competition.

Grafetee isn’t just about discovery it’s also about real world location bookmarking. For instance if you’re out and about and you see an interesting landmark you can find out more about it and bookmark it for later. Grafetee also lets you bookmark websites to comeback to later to actually check out in real life. The founders behind Grafetee seem to have a grasp on not just discovery but that online, real world fusion that a lot of startups are targeting as well.

Grafetee is actually the first discovery app startup out of the 10 person team called Rakettitiede. Grafetee adds in elements of augmented reality to make it easier to share, not just the fact that you’re at the local pub, but that you’ve found a new local pub, museum, shop or other place worth checking out. The team considers it a more data driven alternative to FourSquare.

The Rakettitiede team has attracted the attention of the local police department called the Poliisi who are using Grafetee to increase public safety.

“We’re extremely excited to have the Finnish Police on board. Their testing and the ensuing refinements to the app will help us create truly useful location based services on our Grafetee platform.” The company told siliconangle.com

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

Interview With San Diego Startup Recovery Brands, Disrupting The Addiction Treatment Space

The addiction treatment space is a $16 billion dollar industry. When you or a loved one needs an addiction treatment center, finding the right center can be an overwhelming experience, especially when coupled with helping the addict. Often times, it’s too late when you actually need the services of a treatment center, to do the mounds of research.

There are lots of factors that go into finding the right treatment center. Will my insurance cover it, how far is it from home, is it a lockdown program, can we visit, how much is it? Sure there are sites out there with directories of treatment centers and they are great. Many recommend getting treatment out of state.

Even with centers charging $25,000 to $50,000 per person per month, there are many treatment centers out there that aren’t reaching profitability. Some of the profitable centers aren’t reaching their desired goals for treatment. Through Rehab Brands services they hope to help treatment centers become more profitable, help rehabilitate more people who need it and educate addicts and their families in a better way. Some of the smaller centers are also being hurt by the fact that many recommend getting treatment out of state, and that is lost income as far as they are concerned.

This startup has a very interesting story and we were able to get more of it in the interview below.

After First Full Week At Brandery, Startup CrowdHall Is Already Gaining Popularity In Cincinnati

The CrowdHall Team Won The TechBury Pitch Wars Friday (photo: CrowdHall)

We talked with Utah startup CrowdHall a few weeks back. They had been selected for the Brandery incubator in Cincinnati which is one of the most popular incubators in the United States. We got to talk with co-founder Jordan Menzel right before the crew packed it up to move east for three months.

The Brandery’s 2012 session started on July 2nd and last week was their first full week in. CrowdHall has agreed to check in periodically throughout their experience in Cincinnati and at the Brandery. Their first check-in was a little late. Not only has the CrowdHall crew been working around the clock, but they were also busy competing in the BunBury festival’s TechBury pitch wars.

CrowdHall faced off against Brandery alumni VenturePax which we’ve also covered here at nibletz.com. The CrowdHall team rode their bikes through a seedy section of town at nearly midnight, back to their apartment with a $1,000 check,emerging as the winners of the pitch wars.

This is how we described CrowdHall earlier:

Imagine if you could mix a social network, reddit,crowdsourced answers and a town hall meeting into one platform that wasn’t an absolute train wreck. Now imagine if you could use that platform to host virtual conferences, discussions with elected officials, or even with your blog audience (yeah we can’t wait to try it). Now stop imagining because that’s what the founders of CrowdHall are doing.

Here’s what the team has to say after being at the Brandery since July 2

So give us a little insight how was your first full week at the Brandery?

We’re kids in a candy store. As a startup, you learn to get by with limited support, limited resources, and having to fight for mentors’ time. So when we showed up to the Brandery, we were able to turn on fire hose and start drinking. We’ve loved being around the fellow startups, working with fascinating mentors, and of course taking advantage of the nitty gritty legal help. The collaborative office space is great too, and is a vast improvement to our last corporate office (the public library). We’ve quickly seen that workshops, pitches, BBQ’s, ball games, late nights of coding, and 14 hour work days will be our lives for the next few months.

Now that you’re finally at the Brandery what’s one thing that has surprised you guys about CrowdHall?

We are all blown away with how much more we can get done when we are all working in the same space. Early in our development, our team was in DC, NYC, and San Diego. With us all together, the increase in productivity and turn-around is insane. After having worked for government agencies and big companies, nothing is more fun than having an idea in the morning, a team brainstorming session on it over lunch, and testing it out live on the site at night, with no layers of bureaucracy in between.

What’s the best piece of honest feedback you’ve received from either the Brandery folks or a mentor?

With the technology we’ve built, there are literally a hundred different applications and features that we have brainstormed. In addition, every time we talk to somebody new they get excited about some new way they can see themselves using the platform.

When we sat down with our mentor Tim Schigel (Founder of ShareThis and Head of Digital Strategy for the Republican Party), he really pushed us to focus in on one application at a time, and prioritize the development based on working out one functionality, then going to market with that. We can’t try to do everything at once.

Have you pivoted yet?

There is a lot of grey area in that question. We have always been aware of various applications for our large audience moderating features and have generally had a clear strategy on which applications we wanted to focus on first. However, now that we have
met with mentors from Twitter, Anaheiser Busch, ShareThis etc…. we have definitely taken a step back to revisit our development priorities. But in terms of the core product, we are still about allowing crowds to communicate in a democratic and organized manner. Talk to us next week, we’ll probably give you a totally different answer.

What’s on the agenda for next week?

Organization!! With new interns, new mentors, new ideas, and new resources, we are about to dive into improving our teams structure and flow. Nick, our developer, is probably tired of getting pulled away from the code with every single thought/idea/recommendation. While it’s fun to be all in the space, it’s not always the most efficient.

In terms of our product, we are getting ready for a pretty sweet soft beta launch coming up soon so keep an eye on Twitter and Facebook to see what we are scheming.

Is there anything the public can help you guys with?

CrowdHall is coming! Sign up for our beta launch at www.crowdhall.com. Once we launch, you’ll be able to communicate with those already on the site, and also recommend any people/organizations of interest you’d like to have a conversation with. We’ll reach out to them to join CrowdHall as your recommendations draw support.

Has your experience at the Brandery been what you expected so far? Harder? Easier?

It has been more all-consuming than we expected, but in a way, it’s actually easier. We are so excited to be working on the company and seeing how much it progresses with the time we put in, that none of us wants to be doing anything else. So even though the commitment is crazy, it’s only like that because that’s the way we want it. One hilarious experience was competing in the Techbury Pitch Wars at the Bunbury Music Festival, after 5 rounds of pitching against great companies we were stoked to have won, and that meant biking home with a giant novelty check and an unnecessarily large trophy.

Linkage:

See what the talk is all about at CrowdHall’s site here

Here are more Brandery stories from nibletz.com

We really need help with the next leg of the sneaker-strapped startup road trip you can help here

Interview With DC Startup Edorati A Beautiful News Sharing Web App

A few months ago on our first leg through Washington DC on the sneaker strapped, nationwide startup road trip, we got introduced to Artie Patel co-founder of DC startup Edorati. When we first met with Patel Edorati was a curated news magazine set up with a newspaper feel and interface. They’ve since pivoted from that, gunning to become your source for news.

Edorati integrates with your Facebook account so you can share what you’ve been reading with your Facbeook friends. They’ve also included a bookmarklet making it as easy as pinning on Pinterest to share a great news story. In fact we encourage you to go ahead and install Edorati onto your Facebook and share away, all the news and interviews from Nibletz.com.

We got a chance to interview Patel, who’s very excited about the new pivot that Edorati has taken and how they hope to become the number one destination for people to share news.

Check out our interview with Patel below.

Florida Startup: Vaultbox Is An Excellent Way To Manage Home Inventory INTERVIEW

How many of you have a comprehensive home inventory? Taking home inventory is a pain in the ass but it’s a necessary evil. You never want to get to the point where it’s too late, and you’ve been robbed, or had a natural disaster destroy your home, to start calculating what you’ve lost, especially when an insurance company is involved. So if you don’t have a home inventory yet than perhaps you should read this story and then get off the computer and take one.

Vaultbox is a new startup in Miami Florida that assists with your home inventory and then keeps it in the cloud where it’s actually safer. You actually might run into a problem if your house was robbed and your laptop was stolen with the home inventory on it. Or worse, if your home was destroyed by fire, tornado or other natural disaster. By keeping this data in the cloud, you can access it later, when you need it, from anywhere.

Vaultbox makes it simple to email your complete home inventory to your insurance agent, friends, family or law enforcement. It also makes it easy to add things, and subtract them, from your home inventory as you upgrade the things in your home, or clean out the clutter.

There are hundreds of reasons that a comprehensive home inventory is important for everyone. Whether you have home owners insurance, renter’s insurance or no insurance (which you should get) a home inventory is a life saver in certain circumstances.

We got a chance to talk with Jacob Israel from vaultbox. Check out the interview below:

Estonia Startup: Oddspotter Is A Cool Art Appreciation Game For iPad INTERVIEW

If you’re wondering where the heck Estonia is, no worries they have a thriving startup scene there. In fact when talking with Tanel Teemusk the founder of Estonia based startup Oddspotter, he tells us that Estonia may have the largest number of startups per capita of any European country.

You may be familiar with their biggest startup, it’s called Skype. Of course with Skype, like many other startups that have had huge exits or gone public, they have a venture arm too that’s churning out great startups. One of our favorite European startups Hail-o is also backed by Skype founders.

So what is OddSpotter, it’s an art appreciation game. It’s got great graphics and Teemusk isn’t afraid to call it “edutainment”. Of course we’re not talking about edutainment for kids it’s edutainment for adults, and if you’re not careful playing OddSpotter, you may actually learn something. We did.

We got a chance to interview Teemusk in depth and we’re not going to knock him if he does in fact come and stay in San Francisco for a few months. Oddspotter was raised in Estonia so it’s an international startup from everywhere else.

Check out our interview below:

Indianapolis Startup: Trensy Makes Doing Good Deeds Fun INTERVIEW

A hot new startup in the vibrant startup community of Indianapolis Indiana is gamifying good deeds. The startup, called Trensy, makes it easy to earn points for just about any kind of good deed.

Good deeds ranging from volunteering, to much easier tasks like taking the bus or using a reusable grocery bag at the grocery store can help you earn points on Trensy’s good deed platform.

The platform ties into your Facebook account for 0-auth verification and then a way to share your good deeds socially and invite others to participate as well. One of the cool parts about Trensy is when you sign up and look at the available good deeds, you’ll probably find that you’re doing some to these things already. (if not most of them).

The two founders that met at IU (Alma Mater of Mark Cuban and Nick Tippmann) didn’t set out to do a startup together. They first became roommates and friends, and then went off into the real world. When they realized they wanted to start something, and something good for the community, they naturally turned to each other as co-founders.

Trensy co-founder Kyle Robbins told us:

“After graduating, we both moved to Indianapolis to begin careers and worked independently for several year before connecting on trensy. Bryan worked on the service side of an educational software company and I worked as a developer. The decision to venture together on this journey all came down to the trust and confidence they had in each other. Fate got us together to work on changing the world”

Trensy is available for both iOS and Android. The good deed app platform can be a lot of fun especially when you challenge yourself or friends to get more points.

Here’s our full interview with Kyle Robbins below.