Interviews Archives - Page 50 of 57

Indian Startup: Resumonk Makes Resumes A Cinch Interview

The most important piece of sales material in anyones arsenal is their resume. Resumes have evolved over the years. First there were typed resumes on fine parchment. Next was the rapid reprinting of resumes via the xerox machine in the copy room. Desktop publishing made resumes look very pretty but formatting could be a real pain in the ass.

Then in came the jobs site and the multiple types of resume files that every job hunter needed. Some job hunters needed to take a class just to learn how to do the proper type of resume file.

The resume has been a pain point that many startups have tried to solve, including Resumonk a startup based in New Delhi.

Resumonk is a DIY platform to build your resume. The company promises that they’ve got the technology, formatting and conversion down pat. All you need to know is your job history and have a decent grasp of the english language.

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

Paris Startup: LimeApp Is The Daily Deals Site For Online Services INTERVIEW

There are daily deal sites everywhere. Groupon and LivingSocial started a phenomenon for products, weight loss facilities, canoe trips, adventures and even cupcakes. You can find a daily deal for just about every tangible product known to man, heck you can find 20 deal sites these days.

LimeApp is a daily deals site that’s sole focus is online services. Think apps, cloud based storage, web hosting, things like that. As the LimeApp team told us in an interview, they specialize only in intangible products.

Some of the deals available on LimeApp today include 100 gb of cloud storage from Elephant Drive for $49 (retail value $99), Email marketing from ActiveCampaign for $99 (a $250 value), and professional banner creation from Canned Banners a $90 value for just $59.99

LimeApp tops everything off with a money back guarantee.

We got a chance to talk to the LimeApp people in the interview below.

Interview With Kentucky Startup WhyWait

There are a lot of discovery apps out there. This year at SXSW discovery was the biggest space represented by new app startups at SXSWi.

So now with hundreds of discovery startups popping up all over the place, the features, UI, UX and user benefit are the biggest parts to insuring the success of a discovery startup. Kentucky startup WhyWait has all of those elements in pace.

WhyWait is about serving the user the best local restaurants and then letting them know when things are going on at those places. WhyWait features event calendars, menus, specials, happy hours and even provides restaurants the ability to use push notifications to send out great deals to users.

The startup has even incorporated local events in addition to events at restaurants like Karaoke night, live music and big specials.

Kentucky has a flourishing scene of startups. They have an active Startup America Partnership and several hubs like Northern Kentucky (and Cincinnati), and Louisville. WhyWait started in Bowling Green and recently moved to Louisville.

We got a chance to talk to WhyWait co-founder and CFO Jon Matar in the interview below:

Two Gonzaga Students Create Startup easyzag INTERVIEW

Gonzaga students Josh Erickson and Shane Roach have launched a startup for Gonzaga students that can easily be adapted to any college campus in America. The concept behind easyzag is pretty simple, simplify the college students internet experience.

Easyzag.com takes the most frequented sites for Gonzaga students and puts them in a portal of sorts. If you’ve been through the post internet college experience than you’ve probably experienced the difficulty in finding the shuttle schedule from the home page of the schools website.

Some of the best institutions in the world, Gonzaga included, have so many sub-level domains within their website infrastructure its impossible to find the basketball schedule, much less when your professor is going to be out for three days.

That’s the problem Erickson and Roach are solving for Gonzaga students right now and hopefully more schools in the future.

We got a chance to talk with both co-founders. Check out our interview below:

Romanian Startup: Outsourcing.io Brings Contract Awarding Online INTERVIEW

There’s a very interesting startup brewing in Romania. The company called outsourcing.io is bringing the contractor’s bidding and awarding process online, to an easy to use, navigate, bid and win platform. We don’t want to go as far as calling it the ebay for contractors but it allows contractors to bid out jobs online.

Right now the startup is being coded, built and developed in Romania but the team plans to open their official European office in the UK shortly.

Outsourcing.io is taking all of the contractual bidding process into account. Contractors and those submitting calls for bids will be screened and verified and it’s a paid bidding process. Contractors will be able to bid on real good, and well paying jobs and those doing the contracting will know they’re getting qualified, interested contractors who know it takes money to make money.

We got a chance to talk to one of the co-founders, George Bratan in the interview below.

Ohio Startup: Venturepax, Adventurers This Site Is For You INTERVIEW

If you’re an outdoor enthusiast of any kind than there is a one stop place for you called Venturepax. Whether you’re into skydiving, rock climbing, leisurely strolls through the woods, hiking, mountain biking or anything else outdoors, adventuring is always more fun when you can share it with others. It’s fun to brag, share ideas, and of course best practices.

Are you longing for a new adventure? Venturepax is great for that too, there are great ideas from Diving the Florida Springs to climbing up Arthur’s Seat and everything imaginable in between.

There are a few other notable outdoor sites out there but the user experience at Venturepax is appealing and the community is strong.

We got a chance to interview Venturepax. Check out the interview below.

NY Startup Moovio Offers A Really Easy Way To Discover Movies, Interview

If you’ve felt like the current movie discovery platforms aren’t quite getting it you my be in luck. A new New York startup called Moovio promises to offer the fastest way to find a movie either in the theaters or for at home. They do this by offering a graphic intensive list of movies that looks reminiscent of the screen on a redbox. They couple that with some quick preferential questions and voila, you’re off to the movies.

If you find a movie you like on moovio than the site takes you right to where you can buy tickets. If you’re looking to watch a movie at home it points you to where you can rent the movie either on or offline.

Moovio says that they’re discovery platform isn’t just simple, they call it “ridiculously easy”. We noticed that after a brief tutorial coming back to the site is pretty easy and extremely fast.

We got a chance to talk with Erik Linde, Co-Founder of Moovio. Check out the interview below:

California Startup: PrefCity Is A Facebook For Sharing Preferences INTERVIEW

Prefcity considers themselves a “Facebook for sharing preferences”, no not preferences in an app, on a smarphone or on a computer, but consumer preferences regarding retail and restaurants. Yes Prefcity is yet another new loyalty and rewards platform. Prefcity has addressed some of the downfalls to other similar platforms though and that’s what makes this startup different.

Prefcity is targeting businesses loyal customer base. They offer a product called PrefPerks to consumers and they offer a highly customizable, pay as you go format for merchants.

“As we experiment with Prefperks our intention is to create a win-win situation for consumers who want to find good deals at places they love and businesses looking to maintain healthy margins, generally diminished by some of the more mainstream daily deal sites,” said Vic Sosikian co-founder of Prefcity.

On the merchant side they are paid directly by the consumer without a mass redeem cycle like Groupon or LivingSocial. This gives the merchant the flexibility to try out different types of deals and as many deals as they want. In the simplest of terms, a PrefPerk is given to a loyal customer of an establishment. It’s more of a “reservation” card for that specific deal.

Take the Groupon model for instance. When a Groupon deal is sent out, the entire group needs to buy into it by paying Groupon directly. Groupon takes their cut and then distributes the money to the merchant. With PrefCity the PrefPerk is sent out and then if the customer wants to use it they just pay the merchant as they normally would with a regular coupon or discount.

The Southern California based startup is testing in Los Angeles and plans to bring New York, San Francisco and Chicago online later this year. We got a chance to interview Prefcity co-founder Vic Sosikian. Check out the interview below.

Interview With Memphis Startup Stiqrd’s Founder Aaron Pranther On Expansion

One thing we all know for sure is that loyalty and rewwards startups are a flourishing space. A lot of the better ideas for loyalty and rewards are starting in small markets. Stiqrd is one of those startups.

The great thing about Stiqrd though is that when we first talked with Aaron Pranther, CEO and co-founder of the company they were already talking about taking their concept and scaling it as quickly, as possible but also honing in on what makes them special as well.

So what makes Stiqrd special? For starters? Pranther has a background in both tech and the restaurant business. He knows the real pain from a restauranteurs perspective as well as from the perspective of someone who likes to eat out. Pranther knows all too well what it’s like to try and keep tabs on multiple reward “punch cards”.

Most people have had the experience of thinking you were at the last punch tab of one card to find out you either forgot the card at home or you were in the wrong establishment.

Stiqrd has made loyalty and rewards easy by having a qr code based system and an app to track your purchases and rewards. A very real problem that many in the “loyalty reward app” business are experiencing is that soon instead of having too many key-tags or punch cards you’re going to have too many apps. Pranther is one of the first founders of a loyalty/rewards startup to acknowledge that.

What’s going to make a loyalty and rewards startup successful is going to be their ability to scale in both users and customers and for that Pranther has introduced the 15 minute loyalty program. Through rigorous testing he has found that the Stiqrd program can be implemented in most businesses in under 15 minutes complete with working dashboard.

But Stiqrd is more than a do it yourself loyalty program. He has real people available to speak anytime of the day to business’ that want to set up the loyalty program.

Pranther plans on implementing the system across the country at a few select retail partners however any business owner can sign up, and it truly is that easy.

We got a chance to interview Pranther about Stiqrd and the 15 minute loyalty program. Check out the interview below:

New Orleans EdTech Startup Dash Technologies Releasing Dash For Teachers App Interview

Three educators in New Orleans have teamed up to form Dash Technologies a new startup focusing on educational apps for teachers. Their first app “Dash For Teachers” will hit the Apple iTunes app store on Wednesday.

Dash4Teachers is almost like a CRM app for teachers to keep tabs on students performance, log that performance and than generate a quick speed dial list so that teachers can make those ever important calls to parents. With the Dash4Teachers app, when the student’s performance is logged the app knows what parameters are set that distinguish parents that need to be called over parents of students who’s performance is up to par.

This is a valuable tool for busy teachers and busy parents. It also increases the communication between teacher and parent for the students benefit.

We had a chance to interview Dash Technologies about their exciting new app. Check out the interview below and look for the app in the iTunes app store tomorrow.

Interview With California Startup: At The Pool, Casual People Discovery Platform

People discovery is a hot startup space this year. As you’ve heard time and time again it was the startup space dejour at South By Southwest back in March. Startups like Ban.jo, Glancee, and Highlight ruled the roost on the streets of Austin during the interactive festival.

Now four months later, Glancee has been purchased by Facebook and the others are getting just passive traffic (I know some may disagree). One of the problems with people discovery applications are the in your face constant notifications that occur when you’re logged into one of the services. You get inundated with notifications about people you don’t know and sometimes don’t even want to know. There has to be an easier way.

Enter “At The Pool”

The Los Angeles startup offers you a once a day match based on interests and things you may want to do off line. Are you looking for new rock climbing buddies? Maybe you’re looking for new friends to start some pick up hockey? Maybe you’re looking to talk startups or even build a startup? Well At The Pool says there’s a pool for that.

Just what does that mean? Well we talk with At The Pool’s co-founder Alex Capecelatro to find out about their pool party. Check out the interview below:

Chicago Startup: EcoResume Offers Job Hunters An Easy & Green Way To Hand Out Resumes INTERVIEW

Whether you’re actively searching for a job or you’re just passively looking, chances are you’ve been to a conference, networking event or other meetup and needed your resume close by. Now without bringing a briefcase or worse, a book bag, to every professional outing you take, carrying your resume with you can be cumbersome, often times resulting in a crinkled up, less professional looking representation of yourself.

Well a startup in Chicago, called EcoResume has a solution for you that solves this particular problem and makes things a little greener.

With EcoResume you upload your credentials and resume information to their website. From there the folks at EcoResume create a virtual business card for you, complete with the bullet points from your resume and links to your supporting documents. You can easily send this eco friendly card with resume highlights to anyone that you come across at a meeting, or professional event from your smartphone or when you get back to the office.

Sure there are other ways of doing this, including getting your own blog site, or custom url but EcoResume has it all figured out in a nice looking site that’s both easy to navigate and easy to find.

We got a chance to interview the founder of EcoResume Efrem McGruder. Check out the interview below.

Chicago Startup: SocialKaty Is Social Media Marketing For Everyone Else INTERVIEW

Enthusiastic and Scottish. Katy Lynch took her personality and social media skills from a hobby to creating a thriving venture backed company is less than two years. With a goal of providing result driven social media services for companies, she founded SocialKaty in August 2010.

SocialKaty is a full-service social media marketing firm employing 29 “social media assassins” who create and manage content for brands (big and small). Simply, they’re a one stop shop for social media who maintain and create content on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Blogs and even develop tabs and apps for Facebook.

Why start SocialKaty?
1) Companies are struggling with creating and managing effective social media campaigns.
2) There are no real pure play social media firms out there. (There are marketing and PR agencies that offer social media as an “add on” service, but not as their core offering.)

What’s interesting is the diversity of companies and industries they service. To name a few – funded startups, bars, restaurants, retailers, non-profits, and heck even energy companies. It’s no wonder they’ve been profitable since day one, grown to a 29 person team and raised a Series A round from Lightbank.

We caught up with Katy last week during Techweek Chicago:

Links we’ve got em:

SocialKaty Is Here

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Spanish Startup: ChattyBuy Is Turning Tweets Into Cash INTERVIEW

Back in April we reported on a Portland startup called Chippify that is enabling people to send money using Twitter. Using their service, sending a payment is as easy as replying to a tweet.

On the other side of the Twitter payment spectrum is ChattyBuy who is turning people’s tweets into cash, well at least legitimate discounts saving you cash. ChattyBuy is based in Alicante Spain, where they’ve already partnered with merchants and social media mavens to create a platform that, in some capacity pays you to Tweet, in discounts.

We got a chance to interview Alex Aitkenhead the co-founder and CEO of ChattyBuy about his unique new startup.

What is Chattybuy?

Chattybuy is a social network that turns communication into savings.

How? By rewarding users with discount points for chatting, sending “tweets” and
following businesses that they exchange for the coupons they want!

Who are the founders & what are their backgrounds?

Alex Aitkenhead Founder & CEO

Founder of www.quedescuentos.es an e-coupon directory in Spain.

Silvia Sanchez Co-founder

Working as sales representative for large multinationals

Alex Fernandez Communication

Recently graduated from university qualified in grafic design and communication.

Where are you based?

Chattybuy is a startup based in Alicante, Spain. The founder is Scottish but has lived in Spain for over 19 years.

What problem is Chattybuy solving?

More than solve a problem it’s about creating a new solution. No Social network wards users for chatting, why not be the first? Cash back sites are complex and you have to buy, in chattybuy WE reward you for using us to communicate and YOU decide where to exchange your points!

What is your secret sauce/competitive edge?

Our secret sauce is the simplicity of the product. We have turned online communication into something extra, helping user save money doing what the do most, chat, send tweets and use coupons!

What is the startup culture like in your town?

Unfortunately the startup culture in our town in non existing, in Spain most startups como from Barcelona, Madrid or Valencia. This is especially so when we are looking at technology startups.

What is one challenge you’ve overcome in the startup process?

The main challenge was being able to produce a fully functional beta version with such a limited budget and no external investors, they are really lacking in Spain it’s always the same 4-5 people.

What is next for Chatty Buy?

The next step for chattybuy is crowd funding to help create our mobile apps and improve systems. We want the public to decide if they think chattybuy is a great concept and reward them for backing us up from just $1.

We also want to setup chattybuy as a business in NYC or London ideal cities to grow as a company and hire the best.

Hit the links:

For more on Chattybuy find them here at chattybuy.com

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