EP13: Equity Crowdfunding Discussion; Pitches From Thimble & Jessica Martindale

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In this action packed episode, San Francisco angel investor Manny Fernandez talks equity crowdfunding & the JOBS Act, then Oscar Pedroso pitches Thimble, and amazing new way to learn about robotics, software and hardware! Next we have amazing artist Jessica Martindale pitch her new album!

Listen to the show then check out these amazing campaigns!

Show Your Team Pride With Your Socks With Sock 101’s New Kickstarter Campaign

Sock 101, Kansas City startup, startup, kickstarter

Sock 101 is all about the socks. The startup built in Kansas City is bringing fashion back to socks. We’re not talking about your average Gold Toe or even the latest in argyle socks. Sock 101 makes a fashion statement with socks that complement any man’s fashion-sensible wardrobe.

Speaking of fashion sense, the durable, nice looking socks are affordable as well. Every pair of socks the company sells are only $7. The have awesome names as well like the blue infused “KC,” the red, white, and blue “Patriot,” the polka dotted “Dapper Dot,” and President George H.W. Bush’s favorite “The Johnny,” a crimson and white sock that the former President insists will be “perfect for days in College Station, Texas.”

In true startup fashion, Sock 101 also offers a subscription sock service where you get a new pair of socks delivered to your door once a month without even having to think about it.

If you’re like me and have a different pair of shoes to match every outfit, the socks from Sock 101 are absolutely perfect.

teamsocks

Now the company is looking to expand on their “Johnny” sock and do color combinations to match every major school.

Not convinced yet? Sock 101 offers these 5 ideas where your socks from Sock 101 will be a huge hit:

1. At the Game

Lift a little pant leg and show of your school spirit at the game. You have hats and shirts. Why not socks?!

2. At the Office 

The first thing that most people notice about your look are your shoes. The second? Your socks! Imagine sitting down in a meeting and crossing your legs. The next thing you know, somebody is wide eyed staring at your socks. Will they think you are cool? You betcha.

3. At the Bar or Party 

Whether you are watching the game or looking for love, our socks are guaranteed to make you stand out. Please see our warning above. Although we’d love to hear from you, please do not send us complaints about too much attention from the opposite sex.

4. On a Date

Do you want a second date? Wear our socks with your outfit. You will look more fun and more stylish. We guarantee it. If you don’t want a second date or are designated wingman, just wear plain white socks or gold toes.

5. On the Course 

These socks are great for golf! They are lightweight, breathable, comfortable, and durable. One of our owners has walked eighteen holes over a dozen times this year in the same pair of socks with no holes, rips, or tears. They still look great. As you can see, our socks are seriously versatile!

They’ve got several winning testimonials on their Kickstarter page where they are looking to raise $25,000 so that they can bring the team line to fruition. Nothing is as telling as the testimonial from President Bush, sent in a personal letter you can even read on the Kickstarter page.

EETen1

Startupland: The Movie, Chronicling Real Life In A Top Metropolitan (everywhere else) Accelerator

StartupLand, DC startups, Fortify.vc, The Fort, Jonathon Perrelli, startup movie

Justin Gutwein is a film maker and startup junkie who has combined his love of entrepreneurship and startups with his love of filmmaking with a little help from the most recent graduating class at Fortify.vc.

Gutwein has taken to Kickstarter to fund the post production and finishing costs of the Startupland documentary series. Startupland chronicles the lives of LegCyte, RidePost, SnobSwap, TrendPro, and TripTribe, who were all part of the spring cohort at Washington, DC’s “The Fort” accelerator, led by Jonathon Perrelli.

There have been a few spins on a “startup series.” Techstars did a series with Bloomberg that was great for entrepreneurs, but it looked more at the program and the program’s founders. Then there was that Randi Zuckerberg mess that didn’t really relate to any startup founders. What makes Startupland different, and necessary, is all the raw footage that Gutwein shot. None of it was scripted or orchestrated, aside from editing each episode for time, and to capture the story. It’s a real look at what an accelerator is like.

“JP [Jonathon Perelli] didn’t even want to be in the movie. He let me have full access to the startups and the program, but Startupland is about the startups and the stories are told by the startups themselves,” Gutwein told us in a phone interview.

Gutwein has a goal to have the post production done by the fall, just in time for–oh wait you’ll have to find out about that later this month!  To get there he’s looking to raise $75,000 on Kickstarter.  At the time this article was written, Gutwein had already had $25,000 pledged.

Startupland is going to be good for anyone involved in startups. For the beginner it will provide a good look into what it really takes to get into an accelerator program. For a startup in acceleration to seed or series A, it will show that every startup goes through similar issues. For the hardened veteran it will be both entertaining and educational.

Check out the rest of our interview with Gutwein below:

What is your startup called?

Startupland

What does your company do?

Startupland is a documentary series that weaves together the stories of five early stage companies in an accelerator together with interviews and advice from seasoned, veteran entrepreneurs.

Who are the founders, and what are their backgrounds

Justin Gutwein is the Producer / Director. He is the founder of ShineOn Storytelling and has produced numerous documentary projects including The Entrepreneurial Spirt and the video content for Creating Innovators.

Where are you based?

DC

What’s the startup scene like where you are based?

It’s energized, growing and supportive…you’ll have to watch to find out the rest!

What problem are you hoping to solve by releasing Startup Land?

The vision is to inspire and educate entrepreneurs globally on the ins and outs, ups and downs, successes and failures of starting and building a company and provide an accelerator-like experience to those who may not have access to an accelerator.

Why now?

With new accelerators sprouting up all over the world, it seemed the right time to capture what happens at an experienced one to teach those that may not have access.

How much have you completed already?

Five companies have been documented going through an entire accelerator course. Hundreds of hours of footage have been shot. The storylines that will be the backbone of the series are being developed and fleshed out.

What are your next steps?

We are in the final stages of confirming some legends of tech and venture capital to be interviewed for the series. We are also working on developing graphics and animations to help breakdown some of the more complicated topics, like the ins and outs of cap tables, the many methods for leveraging stock as a currency and sourcing tech talent.

Where can people find out more?

Back StartupLand on Kickstarter here.  find out more at startupland.tv 

This is an absolute must attend startup conference for any startup everywhere else.

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89 Year Old Grandma Reaches Her Kickstarter Goal

Pearl Malkin,Happy Canes, Kickstarter,startups

89 Year Old Pearl Malkin creating one of her “Happy Canes” (photo: CNN)

Kickstarter, the most popular crowdfunding platform in the world, saw $319 million dollars pledged for a wide variety of projects last year. With Kickstarter anyone can get their project funded.

Even 89 year old Pearl Malkin, has successfully had a kickstarter project funded. Her project called “Happy Canes” raised $3,606 from 154 backers, BusinessInsider reported.

While Malkin is a vibrant woman at 89, at one point she was stricken with vertigo which required her to use a cane. She felt that traditional canes were drab and boring and livened her cane up with flowers that she glued to the cane herself.

She decided she would make a go of these canes for others and with the help of her grandson, put on a Kickstarter campaign. “I want to be an example to young and old people that age shouldn’t be a barrier for what you want to do in life,” she said.

Here’s the original video from CNN:

OffBeatr is Kickstarter for Porn, more here

Utah Startup: HeadCase Fighting Global Poverty With Head Phones?

Joshua Fairbairn and his team of co-founders at Utah startup HeadCase have a lofty goal. They are going to contribute to the fight against world poverty by selling  headphones. Of course selling products and tying them into charities is nothing new, however Fairbairn is trying to put a new spin on the concept, launching their “premium” headphones with a direct tie in to a different charity with each model.

The company is calling their philanthropic headphone campaign #MoreThanMusic.

On the social side of things HeadCase is using the slacktivist model to donate health kits to children in need, shoes, aftercare for victims of human trafficking, vaccinations for Polio and pumps for farmers in Kenya.

On the headphone side of things, the HeadCase headphones come in a variety of colors. The company also boasts that they are durable, stylish and lightweight. Best of all the 50mm speaker drivers used in every pair of headphones are built at the same factory as Senheiser and Dre Beats.

Combine the two and you have a recipe for sound social entrepreneurship.

The charities that HeadCase has aligned themselves with are; One Day’s Wages, Soles4Souls, The Global Poverty Project, Free The Children and The Adventure Project.

Elyakim Samuel (CEO), and Samantha Bruandet (CFO) round out the founding team of socially conscious entrepreneurs.

We got a chance to interview Fairbairn, check out our interview below.

Read More…

Boston Startup: BRIGHTdriver Has Mobile Games Even The Driver Can Play

BRIGHTdriver,Boston startup,startup,startup interview, Dog Patch Labs,app,iosDo you get bored in the car? Sure you do,everybody does. Now in a lot of states, it’s illegal to do anything on your smartphone that requires you to actually hold the phone. Playing Angry Birds at a stop light is a little too risky, you don’t want to get a ticket, or cause an accident.

Well there’s got to be a way to play games in the car without actually holding the phone. A Boston startup incubating at Dog Patch Labs, called BRIGHTdriver has the answer, audio games.

BRIGHTdrivers unique and fun games are audio based and don’t require you to actually hold the phone to play. BRIGHTdrivers audio games are as safe as talking hands free on your mobile phone or yelling out the answers to the dj’s trivia question on the radio.

Currently BRIGHTdriver offers three titles. Volley, is their pub style trivia game. Careoke is BRIGHTdriver’s sing-a-long Karaoke game and Best Mile is a game that challenges you to drive your best (and safest) mile. They have plans to introduce more games as the platform gets off the ground.

BRIGHTdriver’s platform is set up to allow you to play by yourself or against others on the BRIGHTdriver network.

The BRIGHTdriver team has taken to Kickstarter to help fund their official launch. You can donate to their Kickstarter campaign here and get cool perks like early access to this exciting new platform

We got a chance to talk with BRIGHTdriver founder Matt Albrecht about his unique new spin on mobile gaming. Check out the interview below.

Read More…

Chicago Startup Everypurse Blows Out Kickstarter With PowerBag For Women

A new startup in Chicago has taken Kickstarter by storm with their integrated purse, charging bag. This bag designed for women, is a clutch style handbag on the outside. Inside though it has a battery charger that will fit most of the current line of smartphones via USB.

Integrating bags and power charging solutions isn’t new though. Michigan based Power Bag has been doing it now for two years. That company, founded by Homedics founder Ron Ferber, offers a full line of backpacks, rolling luggage, and messenger bags with integrated charging solutions and a variety of batteries for every work and travel scenario.

While Powerbag offers a “tablet bag” which I’ve personally been carrying around for nearly a year as a Murse (read man purse), it’s not a purse by any stretch for a woman.

In fact our reviews coordinator Allie Fox told Ferber and the PowerBag team personally that they were missing the boat by not offering a variety of stylish bags for women.

No worries now though because Everpurse has done a really good job of producing just that. The purses come in a variety of colors and in fact it looks like quite a few men have signed up on Kickstarter to buy a purse for themselves. Everpurse offers a black leather purse that looks no more feminine than half the leather iPad cases out on the market today.

To have the ability to charge your phone without the need for a plug is a definite plus, and far outweighs how unmanly carrying a purse around could be.

Everpurse trumps PowerBag in another department as well and that’s charging the device itself. All of the PowerBag products require the user to plug a standard “wall wart” AC charger into the wall and then into a weather protected charging mechanism on the bag, or directly into the battery pack.

Everpurse uses a white, stylish looking induction charger that you could easily put on a foyer table, coffee table or night stand. Simply place the Everpurse on top of the induction charger and you’re good to go.

People love it and so do we. We can’t believe that no one has taken this concept to market yet. The best part is that the product idea came from a busy social worker who realized her phone was dead after 6 hours on the go every day. People call me crazy because I carry several on the go charging apparatus but the one thing that drives me absolutely crazy is a dead phone.

Everyone seems to love Everpurse. They blew it out of the water on Kickstarter raising $238,187 of the $100,000 they aimed to raise.

Now that the Kickstarter campaign is over, start looking for Everpurse, soon.

Linkage:

Everpurse.com

Nibletz is the voice of startups “everywhere else” here are more startup stories from Chicago

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