Interviews Archives - Page 56 of 57

Atlanta Startup: SherpaDesk Wants To Be Your Support Desk INTERVIEW

Jon Vickers and Patrick Clements, the guys behind Atlanta based BigWebApps have designed a help/support desk product aimed at small businesses. While BigWebApps has been around since 2001, Sherpadesk is just now launching.

BigWebApps is part of Vickers and Clements company called Micajah ITS which is a network integration and development firm. Their BigWebApps application is aimed at government and large enterprise. Sherpadesk is aimed at smaller businesses and startups that need to bring customer support online early on.

We got a chance to interview Sherpadesk

What is Sherpadesk?

SherpaDesk is a client support solution designed to assist small to medium size businesses and independent contractors with managing client service requests, projects estimations and billable time in one easy to use interface.

Who are the founders and what are their backgrounds?

Jon Vickers – CTO – Started Micajah ITS a network integration and application development firm while attending the University of Georgia. Later sold the managed service side of the Micajah to concentrate on custom web development with concentration of .NET technologies. Launched bigWebApps in 2001 as a way to license some of their multitenant solutions.

Patrick Clements – CEO – Joined Micajah ITS post-graduation after spending a year and half getting a Colorado education in skiing. Launched bigWebApps in the Spring of 2001 to be the marketing and application solution of Micajah ITS solutions. It’s first solution was a web based help desk application called bigWebApps HelpDesk

How did you come up with Sherpa Desk?

bigWebApps launched its first support solution bigWebApps HelpDesk in 2001. It was focused on government and mid-market support teams providing internal support to their employees. SherpaDesk is a repurpose of the bigWebApps HelpDesk solution targeting small (1-2 man shops) to medium size businesses needing an integrated help desk system with a time and billing solution.

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Nashville Startup: Interview With Rentstuff CEO Chris Jaeger

If you’ve got nice stuff that sits around a bit you can make money by renting. Say you have a mountain bike that you never use or perhaps a lawnmower that only gets a work out very two weeks? Well with rentstuff.com, a Nashville startup, your stuff can make money for you.

Rentstuff.com is a localized marketplace set up to help local people rent stuff to each other. Everything from dome tents to Dyson vacuum cleaners can be found for rent on rentstuff.com at a decent rate. The site even offers a quick calculator to show you an idea of what your stuff should rent for by the day.

The company protects your stuff by allowing you to charge a security deposit that puts the deposit amount on an authorization hold on the renters credit card. Provided everything goes well, the user gets their stuff back and the renter gets their deposit back. Rentstuff also has a community feedback system for renters and users. This way the renter knows that the person renting the property is trusted and vice versa.

We got a chance to interview the CEO of Rent Stuff, Chris Jaeger.

Who are the founders for rentstuff.com and what is your/are their backgrounds before starting rentstuff.com?

I founded RentStuff.com back in January 2010 along with my twin brother Robert Jaege (COO) and Adam Albright (CTO). Prior to starting the company, Robert and I were both working in Finance in New York City, and Adam was completing the first year of his MBA at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN. Robert and I connected with Adam through mutual friends.

How did you come up with the idea because it’s brilliant?

Robert and I came up with the initial concept back in 2008. We were both frustrated after spending countless hours trying to track down kayaks and bikes to rent for weekend trips from small rental shops all over New York City. At the time, we were both living in a high rise building and knew there was a good chance that someone in our building or at least in our neighborhood had what we needed. However, there was no organized system to easily connect people who had stuff with people who wanted access to that stuff on a temporary basis. Our company solves the need to connect renters and lenders in a better way.

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NY Startup: StoryTBD Revives The Choose Your Own Adventure Model (Interview)

This is the story of an awesome New York startup for many reasons. First off, it’s a woman founded startup, we love covering women founded startups in addition to startups everywhere else. Secondly, it brings back a favorite past time of mine, and many other technogeeks around the same age in Choose Your Own Adventure.

I remember many a day sitting at a Crown Book Store (way before the big boxes) and deciding which of hundreds of Choose Your Own Adventure titles I would buy with my lawn cutting money and my allowance. The series of books really sparked your imagination and it was almost like buying many different books in one by the way the stories were laid out and the alternative endings you could navigate through.

Now, Katherine Myers, who had a career in the entertainment industry, with stops at DreamWorks, CBS, AMC and New Line Cinema, has turned entrepreneur and launched StoryTBD, a digital, mobile form of Choose Your Own Adventure.

We got a chance to chat with her a bit interview after the break;

NY Startup: We Talk With Three Ring The Winners Of Best Education Startup At New York Tech Day

At the recent New York tech day a startup called Three Ring walked away with the best education startup award. In short three ring provides a platform that makes it incredibly easy to digitize students work. The backbone of the Three Ring system functions as a portfolio or digital filing cabinet.

Teachers can use an iPhone or Android phone and take a photo or video of a student assignment. From there they can organize the entries by tags including student name, class, assignment and other core parts of the assignment which makes it incredibly easy to recall for later use.

Teachers can use the assignments stored in Three Ring to provide assessments of the students work, go over the assignment more in depth with students and easily recall assignments for things like parent teacher conferences. Three Ring is currently in beta and only for teachers however Three Ring plans to incorporate a parent, student and administrator component.

In the future a parent module or student module could easily be the remedy for “the dog ate my homework”. The possibilities with all four components are endless. Later on, Three Ring could be a way for students to submit an assignment to a teacher once completed. Imagine uploading the assignment to Three Ring and even if the student couldn’t make it to school, got sick before class, or had to leave early for a football game an assignment could be turned in to a teachers Three Ring account and the student could still get credited on time.

There are several tools out there in the digital world for teachers. Three Ring makes is an extremely easy to use tool that can be adapted to several scenarios.

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Israeli Startup: “Pops” Makes Android Notifications Pop

Remember when downloading ringtones was the hottest thing on the planet? Then after that ringback tones became popular. Well at one time Ringtones was a $7 billion dollar industry world wide. Now, it’s less than a billion. They just went out of style I guess.

Israeli startups have been really good at harnessing the power of the mobile device. Recently we featured SellARing which is an Israeli company that is selling the ringback tone as advertising. Rather than listen to 10 seconds of ringing, you get to hear an ad, get a discount and engage.

This Israeli startup called “Pops” is making notifications more interesting by bringing all kinds of customizable content to notifications. Pops allows you to customize any kind of Android notification that you could possibly have and use content you like to pop up, wake your phone up and alert you of your new message, Gtalk, Text, email or a host of other notifications.

When we talked with the co-founder he told us in addition to major brands like Rovio Mobile’s “Angry Birds”, they are in negotiations with record companies to produce customized “Pops” from users favorite artists.

Pops is free in the Google Play store. Their monetization is through a customized app store where you pick your pops content. A lot of the “pops” are free but there are some premium “pops” available now.

Check out the video below:

Linkage:

Find Pops in the Google Play Store here

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NY Startup: MOWA Launching Today, We Find Out What It Is In This Interview

A new startup in New York City is launching today. The startup called MOWA tells Nibletz.com that they are producing the ultimate social game to win unique and exclusive prizes. Sure the social gaming space is a bit crowded but with a unique name and a unique plan we’re hoping MOWA has a successful launch.

Now just as a quick note this isn’t the full launch but it’s a start. We got a chance to interview MOWA on this momentous day for them. Here’s that interview:

What is Mowa?

MOWA is the ultimate social game to win unique and exclusive products.

MOWA is mobile social game with challenging daily missions about fashion, beauty, food, sports and events. It is played by sharing pictures that respond to the challenge of the daily mission. The most voted picture of the day wins coveted prizes sponsored by trendy and high-end brands.

“So, you wake up in the morning and before anything else you grab your phone, just like most of us do. You read MOWA’s mission of the day which might read something like: ‘Who doesn’t love a lazy Sunday? We sure love kicking back and making the most out of the day off. Show us your lazy Sunday pajama and we just might hook you up with some PJs that are even more comfortable.‘ And the mission will show you what is the final prize. After that you snap a picture of your lazy Sunday PJs, and post it up on MOWA. You can promote your pic as much as you want, because in the end it’s all about other people voting for your picture. The picture that receives the most votes wins.”

Who are the founders and what are their backgrounds?

The founder of MOWA is Matteo Franceschetti. He’s an Italian serial entrepreneur, passionate about conceiving and developing business opportunities and always focused on what’s next.

He’s most recent venture, before entering the tech industry, was GIR, an international group operating in the renewable energy industry with a main focus on solar energy.

Matteo’s passion for business and start-ups has motivated him to keep developing projects and mentoring young talents, which is a key element for him when putting teams together.

(you can read more information about Matteo on his site:www.matteofranceschetti.com)

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NY Startup: GiftSimple Wins Best Social Startup At NY Tech Day INTERVIEW

New York startup GiftSimple won the Best Social Startup award at the recent New York Tech Day. The woman owned startup is a crowdfunding gift registry startup.

Now, instead of collecting a bunch of regiftable gifts that you either don’t like, won’t wear or are way too small, you can use GiftSimple to tell people what you really want. The best part is, when the item is too much for one person, multiple people can team up to crowd fund that gift.

GiftSimple is fully integrated with Facebook so that you can easily share your gift list and friends can contribute whenever they want. GiftSimple also reminds you of your friends birthdays and easily allows you to see their gift lists as well.

We got a chance to speak with Jess Lachs the founder of GiftSimple about GiftSimple and winning the “Best Social Startup” at New York Tech Day.

Interview after the break
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Florida Startup: LokalMuzik Proximity Based Local Music Aggregator INTERVIEW

A Jacksonville entrepreneur, Jason Belanger, has just launched a new mobile app for discovering new local music by proximity to your device. The app called LokalMusik is available for Android phones in the Google Play store.

Basically you open up the app and based on your GPS coordinates you can find new music and artists of multiple genres. New unsigned artists create profile pages which allow you to learn more about them, hear their music, even find out when and where they are playing next.

This is great for people who love to find new music and artists a lot or even if you want to keep up with your local music scene. Since the app is proximity based, if you’re in New Orleans you’re going to get an entire different set of artists then you would n New York, LA or even Florida.

Now if you’re attending a big music festival like SXSW, the New Orleans Jazz Festival, or even Bonaroo you can check out the national acts coming to the stages and the home brewed talent in whichever genre you like. Whether you want to support up and coming hip hop artists or a local string quartet LokalMuzik will offer it all.

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California Company Creates New Search Startup Called Gooey Search INTERVIEW

Google is the goto search for most of the people out there on the internet. Sure there is Bing and Yahoo (powered by Bing) that we use occasionally but we tend to default to Google. However, we’ve all noticed as Google grows bigger and bigger, and now especially after the implementation of Google+ in the search results, searching isn’t as accurate as it used to be.

Couple the accuracy issue with privacy concerns, and you may be looking for a new search engine. Privacy is a growing concern for many. While there is a novelty in searching for something and seeing like ads on the side bar, sometimes the ads get in the way and feel downright stalkerish.

All of those reasons are why San Luis Obispo, CA based company Visual Purple is bringing their Gooey Search product to market. GooeySearch is an app that compliments your Google experience. We got a chance to talk with GooeySearch for an interview here it is:

What is Gooey Search and Visual Purple

“Like most people, Google is our go-to search engine and we love the iPad.” Heinbockel says, “With the exception of PageRank, search has changed little compared to other technologies over the years and has yet to successfully venture beyond 10 blue links. That inspired us to optimize for the iPad our proven, professional-grade search technology for analysts and researchers, GisterPRO. Gooey makes search fun and brings a new dimension of accuracy, privacy, anonymity and content transparency to Google searches. We have set out to make an app for the iPad that will allow you to interact and explore Google results like never before.” The search app is slated to launch December 2012, pending full funding from Kickstarter supporters.

David Ostby and Ed Heinbockel were founding figures when Visual Purple. The Company has enjoyed being an industry leader in intelligent training simulations and technologies throughout the Virtual World, Embedded and Decision-Based training sectors. In 2011, Visual Purple publicly introduced GisterPRO, a Cloud-Powered Exploratory Search Tool that delivers precision, high-quality search results while often revealing unanticipated yet highly insightful concepts and relationships. The tool has been in continuous use since Fall 2010.

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Nashville Startup: Taigan Lets You Shop The World From The Comfort Of Your Own Home

The days of wandering the halls of a mall in search for rare shops with cool, exquisite, beautiful things are long gone. It’s rare that you find an independent shop keeper who is willing to put in the overhead it costs to be in the nicer malls typically anchored with a Nordstrom, Neimans, Bloomingdales or Crate and Barrel. Boutique shops can be found on the strips of the more popular touristy towns but more often than not you find yourself paying 2 to 3 times more than you should because of the address.

If you’re one of those people that enjoys shopping boutiques and loves a good treasure hunt at a store off the beaten path, then you need to pay attention to Taigan and how they let you shop the world from your computer chair, or smartphone.

Taigan is like an online mall comprised of boutiques and individually owned shops. Maybe you’ve shopped at a handmade jewelry store nestled into a backstreet in Georgetown. Perhaps you found nice cashmere sweaters and artisan designer clothes at a shop on Main street in middle America. Those kinds of stores and more are curated and then added to the wide array of merchants you can find at Taigan.com

As you will find out in our interview with Taigan’s CEO Elizabeth Nichols, this unique, well curated online community of shops is the brain child of Mary Catherine McLellan and Mark McDonald. Nichols was a hired CEO who had built her own shopping center development company from start to going public. In our interview Nichols highlights how Taigan is uniquely different and an amazing experience.

The other thing that sets Taigan apart from anything even remotely similar is that they vet all of their merchants, you can’t just sign up and have a store front at Taigan. The Taigan team travels around the country, and the world to see the merchants using their service. If they can’t get to a merchant they require a chance to review the products in hand to make sure that they are good quality and that the merchant isn’t fly by night.

One other thing we will touch on in the interview is how when we began working on this story I noticed that while the items in the merchant stores may be on the high end of the quality scale, the Taigan team isn’t snobby or snooty and just about everyone feels like they belong at Taigan and can find something they like using Taigan.

Interview after the break
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Philly Startup: Interview With The Student Founder Of Neo-Cover

Every once in a while we come across some great tangible goods startups, either ideas that are just full of awesomeness and win or ideas that are being grown in the US. Neo-Cover is one of those ideas. Add that to the fact that it’s founded by a college student and designer in Philadelphia and it makes it an even better story.

So what’s a neo-cover? Well the idea is so damn basic you’ll be asking yourself why didn’t I think of that? Well the reason you didn’t think of that or I didn’t think of that is because 22 year old Jake Frey did. Neo-Cover is a magnetic light switch wall plate. Don’t go and try and steal it this 22 year old has his ducks in a row and has the patent. Once he bulks up his sales Kevin O’Leary and the sharks on Shark Tank would gobble this idea up.

A magnetic light switch plate, what would I use that for? Well for starters you could hang your keys, a mini flashlight, a dog leash, a money clip anything that you often forget can go right up on the light switch. Presumably you turn your lights on every now and then, and now it’s easy to find. The magnet is so powerful it can hold a decent sized hammer, or a screw driver. I told you this idea is both basic and genius.

So let’s meet the 22 year old behind neo-cover…

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L.A. Startup: Hereon.biz Discover Business Professionals Around You INTERVIEW

The past year has been a big one for discovery apps. We all know about the hype surrounding Highlight, Glancee, and countless other social discovery apps at south by southwest this year. Discovery apps are great for discovering people around you.

Most of the discovery apps are using Facebook and Foursquare as their backbone. This is great for finding people with like minded interests or in the same place but sometimes you want more out of a discovery app. Take conventions for instance. Big conventions like South By Southwest and CES have hundreds of thousands of people around. With everyone checking in somewhere or another it can be kind of noisy.

Hereon.biz solves the noise problem for people that are looking to meet people in their same profession or field. In most cases you’re paying hundreds if not thousands of dollars to participate in a work or professional conference. You don’t need to meet the barista from Starbucks that happens to be a block away jamming with friends.

Hereon.biz uses LinkedIn API’s to connect people in like minded professions. Ultimately events like conferences and conventions or being in major hubs on business are the ideal place where Hereon.biz really comes in handy, but you may be surprised at the people that are around you at home, in your same profession.

I know that when I signed up for Google+ and discovered the nearby feature it showed a lot more Google+ users in my hometown than I thought. However, after perusing their streams and profiles most of them really didn’t have much in common with me, outside the fact that they used Google+.

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Austin Startup: PitchPick Let’s Job Candidates Pitch Themselves On Video INTERVIEW

A new startup in Austin Texas has a real startup/entrepreneurial feel in it’s execution. PitchPick is a new job interviewee pre-screening solution that allows candidates to use a video platform to “pitch” themselves to employers.

The idea came about because the amount of non-hire interviews can be a major point of frustration for any small business owner and large scale enterprise HR department. Regardless of what is supposed to happen in a job interview, most interviewers can size up a candidate in the first minute or so. So in an effort to not waste valuable time for either the interviewee or interviewer, PitchPick was created.

We got a chance to speak with Jeff Talmadge one of PitchPicks co-founders.

Jeff tell us, what is PitchPick?

PitchPick is a web-based video hiring and candidate screening solution designed to lower the cost, time, and energy employers waste during the interview process. Often times, employers know within the first moments of an interview whether or not a candidate will be a good fit for not only the position but the organization. With PitchPick, an employer can request a 30 sec.-1minute response to a basic interview question such as, “Why should we hire you for this position?” and give a candidate a deadline to submit his/her Pitch online. The employer will be able to more efficiently evaluate their “Yes-No-Maybe” piles of resumes and bring only the individuals they want to learn more about.

Who are the founders and what are their backgrounds?

PitchPick’s managers are Co-Founders Reece Norris, Bryan Johnson, and Jeff Talmadge.

In addition to PitchPick, Norris and Johnson lead a large multi-site healthcare company as President and Chief Operating Officer. There, the two developed a workflow and software system for their niche in the healthcare industry. Before PitchPick, Talmadge spent his time developing his skill set in account service while interning at advertising agencies in Austin, TX.

After graduating from Baylor University with a BBA in Entrepreneurship, Reece Norris went on to earn his Juris Doctorate from the University of Texas Law School. Norris practiced law as a corporate attorney at Thompson & Knight LLP in Dallas, Texas and clerked for U.S. District Judge Ed Kinkeade. Despite his success as a lawyer, Norris’ hunger to create and grow a successful business ultimately caused him to join Johnson in building their healthcare company. His depth of knowledge regarding the law and unparalleled work ethic has and will continue to be invaluable to PitchPick.

As Norris was beginning his study and practice of law, Bryan Johnson began his career as a business development associate for an infusion management company based in Dallas-Ft. Worth, Texas. Also graduating from Baylor University with a BBA in Entrepreneurship, Johnson went on to found the Austin Infusion Center, which has since grown to be one of the largest office-based infusion centers in Texas. Johnson’s proven ability to start and grow a successful business has been instrumental in the foundation of PitchPick.

With the knowledge he gained studying and observing the fast-paced world of advertising, Jeff Talmadge took the opportunity to join PitchPick as its first employee to help oversee its final months of development and marketing strategy. Demonstrating his capabilities as a reliable and driven individual, Norris and Johnson distinguished him with the title of Co-Founder following his graduation from UT Austin. He completed his BS in Advertising with High Honors and was recognized by the College of Communication as a Senior Fellow.

Allen Sockwell, Trey Weir, and Nigel Dessau currently helm the Board of Advisors for PitchPick. Sockwell is the founder of a consulting firm, Sockwell Performance Advisors, and was previously the Senior Vice President of Human Resources and Chief Talent Officer for Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). Weir has an extensive background in technology and entrepreneurship and currently operates his own enterprise, Trey Weir Media, which produces magazines, online recipes, and other media. Dessau is the principle consultant at Ad Claro Consulting based in Austin, Tx where he specializes in helping companies form or update their marketing organizations. Additionally, he is the driving force behind the website “The 3 Minute Mentor,” and was previously the Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of AMD.

While Norris formed the original vision for PitchPick, Johnson largely developed its initial design and functionality. After designing the product for several months, the two brought on Talmadge to build a marketing strategy and eventually lead the PitchPick sales efforts. With PitchPick in its last stage of development, it is already being tested by a series of beta clients and will be ready for market within the next three months.

So roughly the concept is, the interviewee pitches the employer in the same way that a startup pitches potential investors in the first round of most contests?

That’s a great analogy! Whether you are a job candidate or a start-up, The Pitch is crucial for creating opportunity. From the hiring perspective, we’ve developed a platform for employers to evaluate a candidate on their ability to sell themselves and their potential value.

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Chicago Startup: Woman Owned SpaSircle Connects You With Medical Spa Treatments

A new woman owned startup in Chicago is taking on the task of educating women about medical spa treatments and then connecting them to carefully curated providers with discounts. SpaSircle offers women discounts on laser hair removal, Botox, dermal filters, chemical peels and more.

While some may be skeptical of finding information on a discount driven site online, Jessica Wiser the founder of SpaSircle has taken every precaution to make sure that SpaSircle isn’t just offering discounts and information, but that it’s a safe marketplace as well. As Wiser explains later in our interview, her and her physician advisory board make sure that SpaSircle keeps out the “riff raff”.

We caught up with Jessica for a quick startup interview.

Briefly describe SpaSircle

SpaSircle is a website designed to educate women on medical spa treatments, such as Botox, laser hair removal, dermal fillers, and chemical peels, while also providing great discounts on these procedures! Physicians want to be listed on SpaSircle, because it is an exclusive group of physicians that can only be invited to join. We have a board of physicians who have screened all medical spas and physicians in the Chicago area who do these procedures, to make sure that the provider we send our members to is well trained, and will give their patients the very best results. We are the only website with discounted procedures and Chicago’s premiere physicians that people can trust, so we feel we’re poised to take this business from GroupOn and other daily deal sites.

Who are the founders and what are their backgrounds?

I am the founder of SpaSircle, but do have some employees that have been crucial to the success of the company. Amy Phillips, in particular, has been head of sales and just like a partner to me.

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