Startups Archives - Page 100 of 144

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.

22 Year Old Nick Tippmann’s Party Leads To Cuban Investment In Atlanta Statup Bad.gy

bad.gy,Badgy,Atlanta startup,Nick Tippmann, Mark Cuban,SuperBowl

22 year old Nick Tippmann With Mavs Owner Mark Cuban (photo: IU Kelly School Of Business)

It was SuperBowl weekend in Indianapolis and 22 year old startup evangelist Nick Tippmann was charged with a task by his mentor Larry Chiang. The task, organize a viewing party for the season premiere of ABC’s Shark Tank. To make the task even more stressful, ABC Shark Tank Shark and Dallas Maverick’s Owner Mark Cuban would actually come to the party.

With less than 10 hours lead time from speaking with Chiang until the premiere of Shark Tank season 3 the whirlwind of startup energy went into motion. Tippmann booked the venue, took care of the menu and started formulating a guest list which of course included Startup America CEO (who I’ve now got beat in travel miles) Scott Case. Both Chiang and Tippmann said that the Westin was very accommodating and that the infamous Don Shula was gracious in accommodating the party in his restaurant. Tippmann pointed out that Cuban hadn’t had a chance to meet Shula until then either.

Somewhere in Indianapolis, Atlanta startup Badgy founder Rob Kischuck was preparing for the Super Bowl. He knew there would be a Startup America event that Friday night and heard about the party that Chiang and Tippmann were hosting later on that afternoon.

Tippmann tells Nibletz exclusively that there were 23 IU students at the party and over 50 entrepreneurs. “My mentor Larry Chiang and I were talking about startups and entrepreneurs at a table with Cuban when Kischuck came up and told us about his startup. Badgy sounded like a great idea…”

Tippmann was shocked at the turnout for the party thrown together with just a moments notice. “It was good for all of the students and entrepreneurs that came out” as to Cuban, Tippmann said “Mark was very approachable, and he gets energized talking to most entrepreneurs. It was a rather intimate setting and a lot of the entrepreneurs were able to get face time with Mark”

As for Badgy, the Atlanta startup’s booth was non-stop at Monday’s TechCrunch Atlanta meet up. Kischuk was pitching from just about 6pm-10pm straight.

Thursday his company announced a $600,000 round led by Cuban.

Badgy helps increase visibility to Facebook marketers with “badges”. The innovative marketing idea also caught the eye of super Angel Sig Mosley who recently came out of retirement with a $25 million dollar venture fund. Bad.gy is also a graduate of Georgia Tech’s accelerator FlashPoint.

Linkage:

Find Bad.gy here at Bad.Gy

Check out Tippmann’s own blog here

Here’s a story about Tippmann here

And our Crowdfunding page, please help us out

#OMGUBERICECREAM Startup: Über Bringing On Demand Icecream Tomorrow!

It’s national ice cream month and Über has had an eventful week. The San Francisco startup, which operates in several major cities, has decided to make Icecream as easy to order as an Über ride.

Tomorrow (Friday the 13th) if you are in San Francisco, Washington DC, Boston, Seattle, Chicago, New York or Toronto, and you have the latest version of the Über mobile app for your smartphone you’ll see a button for IceCream. Once you hit it you’ll be able to order an Icecream truck right to your location. Über warns, if your request doesn’t go through just try again there’s plenty of Icecream to go around.

For a $12 charge to your Über connected credit card, you’ll get 5 Icecream treats. Über can’t list every type of Icecream available because their Icecream partners vary by city.

Über describes the process on their blog:

You can request ice cream by selecting the ‘ice cream cone icon’ in your Uber app.

Set the location where you want the ice cream truck to show up and tap ‘request ice cream delivery here.’

You’ll receive an ETA and be able to communicate with the driver.

The ice cream truck will deliver five ice creams (you will have the option to order more when the truck arrives).

We’ll bill your credit card card on file $12 for each bundle you order and hook you up with some sweet Uber swag.

Not only that but if you tweet about it with the hashtag we used in the headline #OMGUBERICECREAM you could win free transportation from Über.

How cool is that?

Linkage:

Here’s uber’s website

Find out more here at uber’s blog

We are on a sneaker-strapped nationwide startup roadtrip!

Eugene Oregon Startup: WallShops Offers A New Online Mall Shopping Experience

A conglomerate of online stores is nothing new to the internet, heck Amazon’s been doing it now for over a decade, however WallShops, a Eugene Oregon based startup, has reinvented the online mall. We get pitches 24 hours a day here at nibletz and every single pitch is revolutionizing, re-inventing, has the best ever, the most ever, etc etc etc, so when WallShops said they brought the shopping mall experience to the web, we brushed it off as pure startup talk. That was until we started poking around.

Wallshops has literally brought the mall experience online and it’s really about one simple function, a right left arrow at the top of the page. This feature will most likely take the form of a swipe in a tablet or smartphone implementation of the experience but it’s like you’re walking through the mall.

For instance we started with the category “Action Sports”, first I got QuickSilver then with a swipe (well actually hitting the right left arrow) I was at Vans, Element, Volcom then so on and so forth. Now really this sounds really simple, and it is, but there’s no experience like it just yet.

If you go to any of the major mall companies like Simon Malls, you go to a local mall site and then you’re looking at a list of stores and phone numbers. Other online shopping sites with multiple branded retailers make you sift through back buttons,menus, categories and keywords. The Wallshops experience is simplistic, beautiful and makes you feel like you’re in a virtual mall.

We got a chance to talk with Patrick Millegan, one of the co-founders of Wallshops and actually the only one of the founders not in the Kersey family, the other founders are all brothers. Check out our interview below.

Boulder Startups TeamUp To Thank FireFighters & Wildlife Relief

(image breakingnews.com)

We already know that Boulder has a thriving startup scene as far as the technology and ideas that are coming out of the Colorado town that’s home to Techstars and the Foundry. Now we’re witnessing what makes the Boulder startup scene an actual community.

When stories come out like this, it’s a great feeling. Startups that compete day in and day out for the same funding y, and the same spotlight can put all that aside and come together for the communities that they are in. Earlier this year a large number of North Carolina startups, including well established startups like ReverbNation came together to speak out against amendment one, which was unfortunately passed when NC went to vote. In that particular case the startups and their founders were worried that passing amendment one would make it harder to attract gay talent.

The story out of Boulder is in regards to the massive forest fires that destroyed thousands of acres in Colorado. While some members of Boulder’s startup community felt the effects of the fires first hand with displaced homes and businesses, others have pitched in with their own efforts just for the good of the community.

Some of the projects that the Boulder startups startups have worked on include fundraising drives, cash donations, wildfire t-shirts and even thank you cards. Card Gnome is behind the colorful thank you cards that have been sent to the firefighters. Startup Shirts has created t-shirts with 100% of the proceeds going to Colorado Firefighting and Rebuilding called “The Heal Colorado” t-shirt.

Linkage:

Source: TNW

HealColorado T-Shirt

CardGnome’s Thank You Cards

CrowdRise Fundraisng

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Cincinnati Startup: Tracour To Call Bull Crap On Tech Rumors

Will the iPhone 5 have 4G? Is there a 7″ iPad in the works? Will the next Samsung Galaxy device support telepathy? Will the next Motorola Droid support teleporting? If you are a regular reader of tech blogs, (and stopping by here is probably a strong indicator that you are), then you’ve heard your share of tech rumor bullcrap.

A lot of sites rely on third parties that can’t give up all the juice for fear that they would lose their jobs. Other tech sites simply produce great looking documents using photoshop, and then some are too lazy to do any fact checking. Outside of that, every once in a while, legitimate “ninjas” or internal sources actually get something mixed up or a leak they have gets shelved.

Well have you ever tried to keep score?

Sites like The Verge, Engadget , Tech Crunch and Business Insider try and keep score on the hottest rumors about the hottest gadgets, all the while keeping people grounded in what they believe is the truth and what they believe is a little fiction.

Now, you guessed it, there’s an app for that.

Cincinnati based Tracour was first reported on by our friends at TNW. The premise is simple. The platform functions as a database of sorts then it collates technology rumors and attributes them to their respective authors. When it’s all said and done and it’s time for the rumor to come out, or the device to be released, Tracour keeps score of how correct the rumors actually were.

Brad Sams, the creator of NeoWin and Tracour has his work cut out for him. There are a lot more bloggers, analysts and journalists than there even were two years ago. Just think 18 months ago everyone at The Verge worked at Engadget, Mike Arrington was still pretending to be happy at AOL and there was no Pando Daily.

Tracour is actually a great tool for other blog authors and of course readers. In our days of publishing Thedroidguy while we produced a ton of fresh content everyday, we often went late on the “rumor dejour” because they hadn’t been vetted properly. Sometime it meant we missed a story and other times it meant we saved face by not publishing some ridiculous nonsense. TNW actually does a great job of not pushing the crap out but with Sams’ tool you’ll be able to visualize an author or websites credibility.

In a day and age when even the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have pulled the trigger on a loose lead, Tracour will be a welcome edition to the blogsphere, and of course for others that rely on their fake informants and photoshopped documents, their antics will now have a scorecard. Bravo Brad and Tracour!

Linkage:

Source: TNW

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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:

JustDecide.com Startup Dilemma Of The Week #2 Should I Quit My Day Job

Startups, the Justdecide.com dilemma of the week is a feature here at nibletz.com where you can participate in an active discussion with other like-minded startups and founders to help a fellow startup with a dilemma. You can also submit your own dilemma to startups@nibletz.com if you’re having trouble making a decision about your startup you can crowdsource our community via justdecide.com

That’s exactly what Atlanta-based entrepreneur Aaron Gray did. Gray is the founder of the Legacy Movement, with a goal of becoming the go-to site for deals and to change the discussion about entrepreneurship and founding especially in regards to under-served communities of entrepreneurs and founders within the startup ecosystem. To that end Gray is trying to help all entrepreneurs and founders with an emphasis on black-owned, women-owned and latino-owned startups.

Gray has a dilemma though, and it stems from his strategy to build his user base and community base before focusing on funding. For Gray this is actually a great strategy, if he can build scale for his startup then it becomes more valuable in the eyes of the potential investor. Naturally with more funding he can do more for both aspects of his startup, the Legacy Movement.

Gray is still working a full-time job, which he needs to “pay the bills”. He knows at some point he’s going to need to leave his day job so that he can focus on his efforts with his startup. He’s come to the startup community to gauge their feedback and help him solve this dilemma.

His options include:

Continuing to work full-time while working on his startup in his spare time.

Negotiate a part-time agreement with his current employer

Leave his job

Raise an angel round of funding to subsidize his switch from full-time employment to full-time founder.

You can find out more about Gray’s back story here.

Each week we will present to you a startup dilemma of the week with our partner justdecide.com We would love it if you could take just a few minutes out of your day to weigh in on the discussion. The “Startup Dilemma Of The Week” is a free resource to any startup everywhere else, and you may need it some day.

Linkage:

Participate in this week’s dilemma

See last week’s dilemma

submit your own dilemma

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Contest: There’s A New Kid In Town, The TechSlinger And You Can Win One This Summer

At Chicago TechWeek we got to meet the team from Michigan startup TechSlinger. This is a new wearable accessory designed to easily transport your tablet, your phone, your wallet and other small items. You can even hang your keys from it.

At first glance you may not think it’s for you, but it so is. Especially if you carry multiple gadgets with you and one of them is an iPad or Android tablet. You see, when you go out to a meeting or a networking event, or any event for that matter and you bring your tablet you’re putting a device that costs hundreds of dollars at unnecessary risk.

I’ve witnessed first hand people who’ve had their iPads turned conveniently into coasters. I’ve seen people leave them behind and drop them, shattering the screen, trying to hold a beer or other drink. Oh and of course the countless times I’ve seen beer, soda and other liquids poured onto the iPad.

Granted, you want to take your iPad or tablet with you because you undoubtedly have work to do, or you want to show off the latest app you’ve downloaded or pictures and videos of the kids. Well that’s great except most purses can’t fit iPads, no one wants to bring the bulk of a backpack or briefcase out with them, and holding them is risky.

The TechSlinger looks like an under jacket holster and has one pouch designed to hold an iPad or tablet and then the other side has two compartments. One is a secure compartment for your phone the other is a secure compartment for your wallet, credit cards, money, license, etc. I actually hold a 16,000mah portable battery in my extra pocket insuring that not only are my devices with me but backup power is as well.

The TechSlinger fits under any jacket, blazer or suit coat and keeps your gadgets from interfering with important things, like walking.

At the recent TechCrunch meetup in Atlanta over 40 people asked about the TechSlinger. At the airport, TSA folks were asking about the TechSlinger, and of course on three different trips to three different Apple stores, people asked about the TechSlinger.

Well low and behold we’ve got Techslingers to give away.

Here’s how it works. Starting this week at ComiCon 2012 in San Diego, just tweet

“@nibletztweets & @techslinger I need a #techslinger” and if you’re lucky you’ll be randomly selected to win one. We’ll randomly draw winners in San Diego, Washington DC, Memphis, Cincinnati and other places along our sneaker-strapped nationwide startup road trip, and you’ll win. It’s that easy. Then your friends will ask, “where’d you get that”.

Linkage:

Find out more about the TechSlinger here

Here’s more coverage from Chicago’s TechWeek

Oh and we’re on this cool sneaker strapped, nationwide startup roadtrip

New York Startup: Hashable Shutting Down

Hashable was destined to become the best way to save and remember where and when you met someone. That’s why they debuted at South By Southwest Interactive in 2011. In fact we saw them at the Androidandme party that year where they pitched before a crowd of die hard Android fans. The technology was actually pretty good.

Hashable wasn’t people discovery, more of a way to do a virtual business card exchange in person and then take it from off-line to online.

The backbone to Hashable was the on-going history that the app kept for everyone you may have met and used Hashable to remember since their launch 18 months or so ago.

Well this evening they sent out their “lights out” email to users, saying that they are shutting down on July 25th.

Dear Hashable Users,

We regret to inform you that the Hashable mobile apps and Hashable.com will be shutting down on July 25th. The service will be unavailable after this date.

While we are still very passionate about making better connections and meeting new people, the time has come for us to focus our energy elsewhere.

Some of you have stored valuable information in Hashable, and we want to give you the opportunity to save that data for your own records. If you’d like to receive a file with your complete history, please log onto Hashable.com, navigate to the “Profile” tab, then to the “Your History” section on that page. You can download the file by clicking “Export full history to .csv” and accepting the dialog that pops up.

We are incredibly grateful for all the people we have met through Hashable. Thank you for all your support, and we hope to connect with you again in the future.

All the best,

The Hashable Team

No word on what the next project is, but if you’re a Hashable user at least you can save your history, which is the best part. It’s too bad, this was a great idea and had a lot of thunder at the 2011 sxsw.

Linkage:

Hashable.com

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Los Angeles Startup: 80sBrickphone Bringing Back Iconic 80’s Motorola Dynatac

A Los Angeles startup founded by designer Brad Helmink, is bringing back one of the 1980’s most iconic pieces of mobile technology.

The Motorola DynaTac was first introduced in 1983 for a price tag around $4000 in 2012 terms it would be closer to $9000. The phone was one of the first mobile phones that didn’t require a bag to be attached to it. The DynaTac had about 30 minutes of talk time and 8 hours of standby.

The phone was spun into popularity by the savvy Wall Street tycoon Gordon Gecko, played by Michael Douglas in the movie Wall Street. Our readers, just a little younger may recall the phone having a prominent place at Bayside High School where saved by the bell’s main character Zack Morris (played by Mark Paul Gosselaar) carried one to school.

If you’re too young to remember either, well just trust us, it’s freaking cool.

The new 2012 model is not an actual phone but rather a bluetooth speaker system that Helmink insists, sounds far more superior than the original during a call.

The Bluetooth version will give you the average bluetooth battery life, about 5 hours of talk time and tons of hours of standby. It also works with any Bluetooth enabled smartphone.

You’ll be the talk of the office, trading floor, party, pool,mall or wherever you go when people see you actually making and receiving calls on the new 80sBrickphone. In this day and age where the “coolest new” Android phone is released every two weeks and hundreds of millions own an iPhone 4s, the 80sBrickphone will be a status symbol of epic proportions.

To get the project off the ground Helmink took to Indiegogo. He’s looking to make $55,000 to cover the costs of an initial production run. He’s collected a little over $4000 just enough to buy an original back in the 80s.

If you want one (and we know you do) there’s a link below.

Linkage:

Want an 80sBrickphone? here’s it’s Indiegogo Page

You can find more info on their website

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NY Startup BarkBox Raises $1.7M Almost By Accident

Matt Meeker has had a successful exit with MeetUp and has also served as the entrepreneur in residence at Polaris Ventures, it’s no wonder that his admitted “side project”, BarkBox has just raised $1.7 million dollars.

While the round itself was intentional, Meeker never really thought this business would create such momentum. Obviously he wasn’t familiar with his $53 billion dollar pet care industry. It was only natural with a subscription box available for everything from purses to shoes, to healthcare and wellness products to, “bro stuff” a subscription box for pet care products was a shoe in for a great business.

“We started thinking this would be a little side project, and a nice little cash flow business, and then we got such tremendous feedback about it we decided there’s a much bigger opportunity here,” he said.”If we want to do it right, we’re going to need some capital in the bank to go build a team and start building real relationships with suppliers and things like that, so we decided to go out and raise that money to do it.” betakit.com reported

This $1.7 million dollar round was led by Mike Hirschland of Resolute.vc, and included Lerer Ventures, RRE, Polaris Ventures, Bertelsmann and Dave McLure’s 500 startups.

Linkage:

Visit BarkBox here

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