Interviews Archives - Page 54 of 57

Baltimore Startup: BetaPunch A Great Beta Testing Solution For Startups INTERVIEW

Last month we brought you this story about BetaPunch, a startup in Baltimore Maryland that is a beta testing platform for other startups. They pride themselves on how easy it is for new startups to set up and recruit beta testers.

Typically a startup goes to friends and family for beta testing. This can be ineffective for several reasons. One of the reasons friends and family make bad beta testers is because they aren’t going to give you real honest feedback. Even if you have the dumbest idea in the world they’re going to tell you it’s great. That’s not good for testing your product.

The other problem with friends and family testing is that you’re going to run out of testers. Now there are some services out there that offer hundreds and hundreds of testers, but it may cost you hundreds and hundreds of dollars. That’s a lot of Ramen noodles you’re going to give up to get your Beta Test done.

LaunchRock is great for startups to start a mailing list, but most of the startups using LaunchRock never say when their beta test is going to happen, and when it does, the people who signed up have moved on to other things. I can’t tell you how many times I get an email back from a Launch Rock I signed up for months ago.

With BetaPunch though, it’s as easy as signing up. Installing their cool new widget and letting it rip.

We got a chance to talk with BetaPunch founder Ross Nochumowitz about BetaPunch, Baltimore’s startup scene, other startups he’s done, and being a bail bondsman during the day. The interview is below the break

Baltimore Startup: Kithly Take Hold Of Your Contacts & Do Something INTERVIEW

You probably have a rolodex… ok scratch that, no one has a rolodex anymore. You probably have a contact list with hundreds if not thousands of names on it. It can probably become a pain to organize, I know that mine is.

Well Baltimore startup Kithly sets out to help you manage those contacts. Then, they take things a step further and recommend things to do with those contacts so that you never lose touch with them again.

Co-Founder and CEO Devin Partlow tells us that Kilthy offers a Pandora type interface and intense algorithms in the background that offer up suggestions and recommendations of things to do with your contacts. If you don’t like the suggestion your an just ask for another.

This is definitely a new approach to a contact management app. We got a chance to interview Partlow. Check out that interview, after the break.

Interview With New York Startup Spark Rebel

Social discovery is one of the hottest online and mobile crazes right now. There are social discovery sites for everything from restaurants, events, people, things, food and fashion. Spark Rebel is an amazing blend of social and discovery revolving around fashion that real women are wearing today. Sure it’s nice to be able to shop the top tier boutiques in Chelsea, Manhattan and Rodeo drive and Spark Rebel does have feature some high fashion, but the thick of this social discovery site for fashion is what everyday women are working to work, out on the town or for a relaxing evening.

As people’s lives got busier and busier and they began to take to online shopping over in store shopping, an entirely new way to discover things popped up. The problem with traditional online shopping sites is that you’re seeing what the stores want you to see. You’re seeing the fashions that the buyers are seeing and not necessarily what everyone’s wearing.

Then, you go about your busy day and see that awesome outfit a woman is wearing at Starbucks or you see a must have dress on a woman in the elevator with you, and then you never see it again.

Spark Rebel uses a mixture of social, discovery and recommendation to bring the hottest trends and fashions to their users.

Spark Rebel was born out of site for teenage girls, which is a segment even harder to curate than traditional women’s wear. We got a chance to interview Spark Rebel. Check out that interview after the break

Arizona Startup: Kwiddy Is The Ultimate Bartering Platform INTERVIEW

Bartering has been around almost as long as civilization. Back in the earliest recordable days of mans existence people would trade for the things that they needed. If you had fruit and needed meat you would trade someone. If you had meat and needed clothes you would trade someone.

Bartering was kind of lost for a while, and then barter networks came about. Barter networks were actually popular with advertising in the nineties. Whether it be print, radio or sometimes other broadcast media, media buyers could go through a barter network and trade airtime for vacation giveaways and other tangible and non-tangible goods.

Craigslist brought back bartering for tangible goods at the local level. If you’ve ever perused the bartering section of Craigslist there are some crazy odd ball things out there, and others that make sense. I once was traded a $50 gift card to Outback Steakhouse for just setting someone up a Twitter account and spending 30 minutes showing them how to use it.

So what is Kwiddy? Kwiddy is slang or another name for Quid Pro Quo, tit for tat, bartering if you will. You probably remember the scenes in Silence Of The Lambs were Dr.Lecter and Agent Staring go quid-pro-quo. The doctor helps Agent Starling with the case in exchange for Starling telling the doctor intimate details of her childhood.

I assure you that Kwiddy is not the least bit gruesome its actually one of the better pitches we’ve heard in recent days. Kwiddy is the ultimate online bartering platform. It facilitates the ability to swap goods in person and in real time.

We got a chance to interview Kwiddy co-founder Adam Thelwell. Check out that interview, after the break

Louisville Startup: Impulcity, Discover The World Around You INTERVIEW

I know I know I know, after South By Southwest you were sure the days of reporting on new discovery startups were over, but we assure you this one is a little different. Louisville startup Impulcity isn’t about social discovery, or app discovery, or thing discovery, Impulcity helps you discover kick ass events, venues and thing to do.

But Impulcity doesn’t stop there, they find the best events, and even sell tickets (often at great discounts) to those events. Then, once their users get into the events the entire experience turns just about user controlled. The user community adds pictures and media to prove what a grand ole time they are having at whatever event it is.

Impulcity will come in handy at Bonaroo, BamaJama, and of course next year at South By Southwest. So what you’re essentially doing is finding the best events, securing your spot in the best events and then reporting on the events to prove what a great time you’re having, and then in turn helping others discover kick ass events.

We got a chance to catch up with co-founder Hunter Hammonds who pinged us after we ran a story about the Louisville startup that’s moving to Cincinnati based incubator the brander.

After Hammonds bold statements for that story we had to check it out further. And yes, Impulcity is going to kick ass (It’s Friday the asses are ok)

Check out the interview after the break and I promise not to say that word again

Austin Startup: BeDJ Bringing Turntable.FM To Real Life, This is Hot! INTERVIEW

By now most of us have had the great experience that is turntable.fm. Hanging out with friends in a virtual space, and going around the room and controlling the music. You get to be the dj and so do your friends. You get to control the music in the virtual room.

Now imagine if this concept was done in real life. For instance, you and your buddies go to the local sports bar and hang out. Now it’s 2012 so instead of a juke box, imagine if you could control the music in the bar or restaurant using your phone. Sure you can control the tv’s with an IR blaster and you may even be able to hack a stereo system, but imagine if it was encouraged. Imagine if you could BeDJ in real life.

That’s the technology behind Austin based startup BeDJ. It’s so hard for restaurants and bars to control the music in their establishments. They can never appease all of their clientele all the time. That’s why in the 60’s -80’s jukebox bars were hot because the people could put another dime in the jukebox and hear what they want.

BeDJ is offering a system/app for venues that allow their overhead music to be controlled by customers with a controller app. It’s a fermium service where venues will be able to get the music controller app for free, however they can upgrade to offer a more robust user experience and also deliver location based ads to their customers.

Imagine the benefit to a restaurant or bar that says, “select your next song and get half off your next round” well we’re definitely in on that deal even if we’re four or five rounds in. The social, customer, and reward element of BeDJ make it a great model for the establishment.

We got to talk in depth with co-founder Simeon Duong to hear all about this exciting startup. Check out the interview after the break
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We Catch Up With Social Photo Sharing Startup StreamZoo At TechCrunch Disrupt VIDEO INTERVIEW

At TechCrunch Disrupt 2011 in New York City, our Managing Editor, Cameron Wright caught wind of Phonezoo’s latest startup project StreamZoo. StreamZoo is a multi platform photosharing application for Android and iPhone that has unique elements that make it one of the most popular photo sharing experiences outside of Instagram.

For starters StreamZoo allows users to follow users and streams that are created by hashtags. For example, co-founder Manish Vaidya talks in part three of this interview about how international users in Indonesia and Brazil make streams for their countries which draw more photos from other users in their country.

Wright also talks to Vaidya about the impact that Instagram has had on StreamZoo. Vaidya says that StreamZoo wasn’t really affected by the adoption of Instagram. Users were steadfast in their ways with their photosharing apps. What did happen however, was when Lightbox was acquihired by Facebook and subsequently shutdown StreamZoo found a lot of users migrated to their service. Those users used a stream #lightbox to find each other on StreamZoo.

StreamZoo also offers a badging element reminiscent of GoWalla which was also acquihired by Facebook. StreamZoo has the ability to create badges centered around locations, businesses, fun places to go and events. In fact Vaidya created a special badge unique to just Disrupt.

In Part I of the interview Wright talks with Vaidya about the progress that StreamZoo has made since they met the previous year. They also talk about how the StreamZoo community influences changes in the 8 person Sunnyvale based team. StreamZoo had gone a little notification crazy but quickly reacted to the community adding a more effective way to manage notifications in messages within the UI. Check out part I below:

In Part II of the interview Vaidya talks about the impact of Instagram, Facebook and Lightbox on the StreamZoo application. Check out part II after the break

Startup America Spotlight: Woman Owned, Mytab.co INTERVIEW

Last week Cameron and I attended a TechCocktail event that was keynoted by Startup America CEO Scott Case. We challenged ourselves to get more involved so we decided to start featuring Startup America startups as part of our interview/feature series. If you’re a Startup America member at any of their now 22 partnerships across the country email us at startup@nibletz.com and we’ll see if we can get you into our coverage schedule. (Hint it’s one of the only ways we’ll cover a Valley startup)

For our first Startup America member spotlight we talk with Heddi Cundle the founder of woman owned startup mytab.co. Mytab.co is a unique travel gift card.

The card serves two purposes, it allows you to crowdsource funds for your trip. Take a honeymoon for instance, your friends and family can add to your mytab.co account and you’ll have money for your travels.

The second purpose of the card is discounts and rewards from travel partners. Cundle is working with travel partners all over the world to offer mytab.co members exclusive discounts and deals on travel related costs.

Check out our interview with Cundle after the break

Toronto Startup: SocialBungy Is A DIY Promotional Platform For Social Media INTERVIEW

Canadian startup SocialBungy is a unique do it yourself platform to hold contests, sweepstakes and other engaging promotions across Facebook, Twitter and even micro-sites. SocialBungy promises not to be a template type tool, but offer all kinds of customizable options to help any size business launch promotions with real gaugeable ROI.

As much as we love reporting about startups “everywhere else” we also love it when we can talk with startups that offer a real benefit to other startups like SocialBungy. If you’re a startup and you’ve been evaluating some of the top level PR agencies out there, you’ve probably found that some of them have minimums per month in the tens of thousands of dollars. With SocialBungy you’ll be able to take your own idea and match it up to the services SocialBungy offers and not break the startup bank.

But SocialBungy isn’t just for the startup. They have programs for startups, small businesses, large brand and even agencies. SocialBungy is backed by the marketing and promotional experience of founder Mike Barwick who spent years in marketing and then launched his own social marketing firm.

“Our goal when launching the company was to make campaigns launched online sexy and engaging again – an area I think other like-minded companies are starting to lose focus on,” says founder Barwick said in a statement.

We got a chance to talk with Barwick more in-depth about SocialBungy, check out the interview after the break.

Michigan Startup HealPay: Developing Innovative Fintech Web Applications INTERVIEW

When you put together a Ruby on Rails developer with five years of experience working for engine yard, and a serial entrepreneur with two previous successful exits, move them to Ann Arbor Michigan, you’ve got HealPay. HealPay is the latest startup for serial entrepreneur Erick Bzovi, who teamed together with co-founder Lancelot Carlson to bring innovative fintech (Financial Tech) web apps to market.

HealPay currently has two billing applications aimed at enterprise available today. However, they plan on continually producing easy to use, but robust applications to handle financial tasks efficiently.

We got the opportunity to talk with Bzovi about HealPay and their fintech app development startup.

Where are you located?

After receiving some seed capital [http://www.annarbor.com/business-review/after-receiving-an-angel-investment], we opened an office in downtown Ann Arbor. We think this is the best place to start a tech business in Michigan!

Tell us about (and describe) a few of your apps:

We’ve developed two billing applications for the enterprise.

Our SettlementApp helps large businesses, e.g collection agencies, settle with consumers by offering flexible & friendly payment options. People are more willing (& able) to pay their bills when given options to do so. Creating a 3, 6 or 9 month payment plan is a breeze.

Our BillerApp helps small businesses, e.g. sole proprietors & contractors, send out invoices in a matter of minutes. The app is currently free and was considered one of the Best Invoicing Tools amongst Design professionals. [source: http://www.fastcodesign.com/1665487/infographic-of-the-day-the-best-design-tools-on-the-market]

More after the break
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Minneapolis Startup: CribFrog Is A Social Network For Neighbors

Have you ever lived in an apartment building or community? I have, and I’m sure if you’re like me than you probably know maybe one or two neighbors. Perhaps you recognize a few faces at the pool, the gym or on community day, but besides that you don’t know who lives next to you, above you or under you. Well Minneapolis startup CribFrog is hoping to change that.

Right now they are beta testing under closed beta, but when they debut to the public it will be in the form of closed social networks based on apartment and other housing communities. It will be a great way for neighbors to get to know each other.

For some reason people don’t talk to each other theses days without a social networking ice breaker. I’ve actually met about 15 people from my local community just be using the “near by” tab on Google+. A few have been following me on Twitter for years.

We got a chance to interview CribFrog’s founder Alex Reilly. While some may feel that face to face communication is best, and it is, CribFrog will facilitate face to face meet ups, outings and new friendships in ways people haven’t seen in the past. Check out the interview, below the break.

Startup: Shortcut Blogging Turns Spoken Word Podcasts Into Written Words

A startup that truly hails from everywhere else is turning spoken word and audio podcasts into written word blogs, case studies, course materials and other written forms of communication. They’re much more than just a transcription service they make sure that the context from the source audio is turned into understandable, useable written works with the context in tact.

Co-founders Dave Young and Paul Boomer have backgrounds in advertising, radio and as marketing consultants, so an idea like Shortcut Blogging was natural for them.

We got a chance to catch up with Dave Young to talk about this innovative startup that hails from Nebraska, Arizona and Missouri. Yes, Shortcut Blogging is truly a startup from “everywhere else”.

What is Shortcutblogging?

Shorcut Blogging is a production company that turns spoken-word interviews (podcasts) into written-word content for blog posts, case studies, course materials, web content and more. We use professional broadcasters to conduct focused interviews with CEOs and other experts who want to produce content without writing. We transcribe the interviews and then our team of proofreaders and editors re-write the transcriptions into written content in the writing “voice” of the expert. A professionally produced audio podcast is a by-product that most clients also post with their written content.

Some of our clients use us for regular blogging, some use us for batch-produced content for product launches, courses and to promote events.

We also offer the services of our interviewers for people who want to do web video and need the help of an interviewer instead of just being a “talking head.”

Who are the founders and what are their backgrounds?

Dave Young and Paul Boomer are advertising and marketing consultants associated with Roy H. Williams’ Wizard of Ads group. Both of them have prior careers in radio broadcasting.

As consultants, they mostly work with local owner-operated businesses in retail and service sectors. Services include marketing strategy, media buying, web design, copywriting and more.

More after the break
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We Interview DC Startup Barrel Of Jobs At Capital Connection 2012

barrel of jobs,barrelofjobs.com,chris hertz,craig zingerline,capital connection,dc startup,nibletz.com

(photo: nibletz syndicate)

While at the Capital Connection/TechBUZZ conference in Washington DC this week we got to meet Chris Hertz and Craig Zingerline, the co-founders of Washington DC based startup Barrel Of Jobs. They were one of 28 new startups that presented their business in a four minute presentation on Wednesday at the conference.

Of course by the name, Barrel of Jobs, you already know it has something to do with jobs and careers. With Barrel of Jobs though, we’re not talking bout the next monster.com or Career Builder. Barrel of Jobs is a social recruiting platform to connect employers to the best candidates. Barrel of Jobs is using the social web to help recruiters, employers and even startups, find the best talent.

As the baby boomer generation starts to retire, recruiters and HR Departments are looking to find the best young talent possible. With the current generation in the talent pool we’re all accustomed to the traditional online tools for jobs. Tools like monster.com, Career Builder and other job websites are getting crowded with jobs and applicants. Because of this, more and more talent seekers are turning to the social web to find the best applicants.

Their is a problem with the way recruiters are using the social web right now though, and that is that they really can’t penetrate past the first node in terms of finding applicants. Another problem is the fact that some of the best candidates are already employed, and they’re passive job seekers. This means that they’re employed but may consider changing employers if the best opportunity was presented to them.

More after the break
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Chicago Startup: Justice Bid, Bid Out Legal Projects INTERVIEW

Law firms spend millions of dollars a year contracting legal work out to third parties. Whether it be research, document reviews, investigative work or any of the hundreds of tasks that can be handled by third parties, there is an entire industry of service providers for law firms.

Typically law firms contract with one or two service providers for each type of outsourced work. Sometimes they spend more than they could on this legal work whether it be out of the convenience of using the same provider over and over again or there just aren’t enough service providers in their immediate local area to offer competitive pricing.

Also, as busy as legal firms are these days it’s hard to find the time to evaluate and outsource other service providers.

Now, a new Chicago startup called Justice Bid allows law firms to anonymously bid out projects to service providers and get the best quotes. Everyone knows that legal fees aren’t cheap but hopefully if law firms turn to this new service, and new way to bid out jobs, they could save their clients some money as well.

When the law firm is just billing the client back for this third party work anyway, as a client you would be happy to know they are looking to save you some money.

Justice Bid was founded by Omar Sweiss. Omar is an attorney himself and he founded Justice Bid by solving a problem that even his firm was experiencing.

We got the opportunity to talk with Justice Bid’s Chief Operating Officer Justin Strane about this new startup, in virtually its own space.

Check out the interview, after the break
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