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Cultivation Capital Invests In Two More St. Louis Startups: Yurbuds & Systematic Revenue

Two weeks ago we got a chance to meet Rick Holton of Holton Capital, Arch Angels, and Cultivation Capital among other things. We talked about the thriving tech scene in St. Louis and the synergy created when a meeting at Holton’s office formed VentureSTL.

Cultivation Capital is back in the news again as they’ve announced their two most recent investments. Cultivation Capital’s principals include Holton, along with Square co-founder Jim Mckelvey, Brian Matthews and Peter Esparrage. Back in April we reported on Cultivation Capital’s first three investments, including a $250,000 investment in St.Louis favorite, LockerDome.

In the latest round of investments Cultivation Capital invested $219,000 in Yurbuds a company that makes sports headphones. The company makes earbuds that can withstand the heaviest of workouts. In fact at the International Consumer Electronics back in January, Yurbuds had acrobats walking on their hands while the earbuds stayed firmly in their ears. To prove that there was no PR hocus pocus on-lookers were encouraged to open brand new packs of the earbuds for the acrobats to use. Yes they were awesome.

The other startup to receive funding from Cultivation Capital was Systematic Revenue. While not as sexy as earbuds that won’t fall out of your ears, Systematic Revenue is an online automated marketing solution to help track potential clients. Back in May the startup reported that they had 25 businesses signed up in their beta test.

Systematic Revenue received $100,000 from Cultivation Capital.

“We look forward to assisting the vibrant Yurbuds team and the calculated Systematic Revenue teams as they continue to define St. Louis as an entrepreneurial hub,” saidCliff Holekamp, a general partner of Cultivation Capital, in a statement.

Cultivation Capital plans to invest $500,000 in the most promising startups in the Fall 2012 and Spring 2013 classes of Capital Innovators.

Linkage:

Here’s Cultivation Capital’s website

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St. Louis Startup: NorseCorp Lands Huge Deal With Global eTelecom

NorseCorp is a technology startup located in St.Louis that specializes in fraud detection. The company was one of the first startups to receive funding and mentorship as part of the first Capital Innovator’s program in St. Louis last fall. As part of the program NorseCorp received $50,000 in seed funding along with free office space. They also presented during Capital Innovator’s first demo day last December.

Two weeks ago the startup, led by CEO Sam Glines, a 1995 graduate of Saint Louis University, reported a major deal with one of the largest electronic check and ACH payment processors in the U.S. Global eTelecom has over 55,000 merchants nationwide that will rely on NorseCorp’s IPViking software to provide another layer of protection for their customers.

NorseCorp has developed a technology that assists in online transactions by spotting for high risk, fradulent transactions. “Our eCommerce Fraud Prevention service works seamlessly at the payment gateway level to identify and block high-risk transactions before they occur,” said Skip Foss, NorseCorp chief operating officer said in a statement. “The service addresses two essential aspects of effective fraud prevention. It offers accuracy in evaluating the legitimacy of the IP address behind any transaction, and it delivers that information in real time for automated decision-making, not manual review.”

Linkage:

Check out NorseCorp here

Source: St. Louis Business Journal

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Interview With California Startup: RewardMe

Loyalty and reward is the hottest space for startups right now. Within a years time (probably by the next sxsw) many of the loyalty and rewards startups out there will have disappeared and only the brightest and best will survive. One of those is California based startup RewardMe.

RewardMe was founded by four friends that were college buddies from UCLA. The company provides a point of sale based loyalty and rewards program that provides great information back to the business owner. RewardME rewards those loyal customers but it can also assist in bringing lost customers and sales back into the retail store or restaurant.

One of the unique things about RewardMe is while you can get incentives, messages and discounts via your smartphone or regular mobile phone, a smartphone isn’t required.

RewardMe’s merchant dashboard is available to any user anywhere. This is great for when the owner or manager goes out of town or if you’re managing multiple locations from one centralized office.

RewardMe has thought of everything that should be built into a solid reward and loyalty program. We got a chance to interview the guys behind RewardMe. Check out the interview below:

Interview With Aaron Gray Founder Of Atlanta Startup The Legacy Movement

As a youngster growing up almost Asian (Hawaiian) I sort of fell into a minority category. As my career in media, first in radio and then later in tech media, flourished I was no longer in the minority. Especially in the tech scene. However in our plight to cover startups “everywhere else” we also try and highlight those startups that are women owned, black owned and latino owned, because those entrepreneurs are underserved.

In fact, when we did office hours a little over a week ago in Memphis Tennessee we met the co-founders of BioNannovation a startup currently participating in the zeroto510 incubator in Memphis. The companies co-founders, Charleson Bell and Andre T Stevenson are both in their twenties and black. Both of them appeared similar to any of the other young black guys I have hung out with near my home in Baltimore. However they may both have been the smartest two guys I have ever had the chance of meeting. Bell, a Phd candidate, had discovered a nanoparticle that could change the way doctors find, track and treat virus’ and infection and Stevenson had discovered the biomarkers for cancer, before it manifests. (see what I mean BRILLIANT). Now these two on smarts alone should have no problem bringing their ideas to market, but that’s not the case for everyone.

Take another good new friend of ours, Harold, his startup Yadoog is one of the best photo-sharing ideas we’ve seen in years. Harold is really friendly, outgoing and has ideas pouring out of his brain at a mile a minute. He’s also in his twenties and black, and admittedly a little rough around the edges. He’s got another great startup as well.

This is where Aaron Gray and his Atlanta based startup “The Legacy Movement” comes into play. Gray, like many

Aaron Gray founder of Atlanta based Legacy Movement

entrepreneurs, fell into the world of corporate America early in life but had an itch that needed to be fixed. Actually, two itches, that Gray is hoping to solve with one startup.

The Legacy Movement, he hopes, will become the Linked In for anyone who wants to do deals. Anyone who wants to buy or sell a company, or launch a new company will come to the Legacy Movement they way you go to LinkedIN for talent.

His second itch, helping the underserved entrepreneur ecosystem in America, will also be solved by the same startup.

Gray filled us in on The Legacy Movement, check out the interview below:

Skip The Grocery Checkout Lines & More With Seattle Startup: Qthru

If you thought the self serve lines at grocery store checkouts were convenient, you ain’t seen nothing yet. A new Seattle startup called Qthru is developing a mobile app system that integrates with a grocery store checkout kiosk to let you scan, pay and go,skipping the traditional checkout line altogether.

The startup’s founder, Aaron Roberts, grew tired of waiting in checkout lines, so he developed an app for that. Qthru allows the user to scan the barcodes of their grocery items with their smartphone creating a “shopping cart” while they go. As the user scans and puts the groceries into their cart, the app keeps a running tally for the total.

Roberts even figured in the necessity of the scale, so at their beta testing store in The Seattle area, they integrated a barcode printer for weighable items.

When the user is finished shopping they scan their phone at a kiosk and then enter their pin into the app which initiates the payment with the card tied to Qthru. A store employee looks over the groceries and the customer is ready to go.

Qthru is being tested at the Snoqualmie IGA store which is owned by Tyler Myers. Myers owns four more IGA store and a hardware store as well.

At first Myers was concerned about theft but quickly found out that with the employee checking through the groceries when the customer leaves, shoplifting is nearly impossible. Myers has been a big proponent of the Qthru system and has even offered Roberts feature ideas for the app.

“There’s a lot to be done with coupon and suggestive selling,” Myers told the Seattle Business Journal

Myers has suggested that Qthru could offer customers suggestions for wines and other things that would compliment the items already in their carts and offer a discount with them. He also suggested that the system could let a customer know if there is a cheaper alternative to the item they just bought, for example if the customer scanned Coke products and it was Pepsi week.

The beta test is near completion and the app is just about ready to upload to the iTunes store. Roberts promises and Android version and Windows Phone version as well.

Linkage:

Checkout Qthru here

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Wisconsin Startup: DateCheckPro Keeps Your Inventory Fresh, INTERVIEW

One of the things I always bring up here at nibletz.com is the fact that sometimes the most useful startups aren’t the sexiest startups. Such is the case with DateCheckPro. DateCheckPro is a startup based in Whitewater Wisconsin and their main objective is to help keep store inventory fresh.

Date Check Pro is a cloud based solution for grocer’s to keep up with the ever important expiration dates. Andrew Hoeft the founder of Date Check Pro has done a great job of creating an easy to navigate cloud based platform and native apps for both iPhone and iPad.

Grocer’s can keep up with their expiration dates now. Date Check Pro reminds the grocer when products are coming up to their expiration dates which enables them to rotate stock or possibly put products on sale to get them out of the store before they expire and their money is wasted.

Hoeft is a student at UW-Whitewater, in between that and starting Date Check Pro we got a chance to interview him. Check out the interview below:

Startup Weekend Heads Back To Los Angeles, Register Now

The 54 hour Startup Weekend program is headed back to Los Angeles next weekend, starting on July 20th which is the same weekend as Memphis’ Startup Weekend.

Los Angeles just completed a Startup Weekend back in February that was a great success.

The February event saw 13 teams pitching on Sunday evening before the judges. The judges that time around included: Howard Marks (Start Engine), Paige Craig (BetterWorks), David Waxman (PeoplePC, Firefly Networks, SpotRunner) and Tyler Crowley (Sqweal, OAF, Launch, TWiST, Mahalo).

The judges for this round haven’t been announced yet but we are sure they will be just as good.

Organizing the Los Angeles event are Tyler Koblasa, Cameron Rasouli and Avesta Rasouli.

Registration started July 2nd and the organizers warn that last spring’s event sold out in 10 minutes. As of right now the eventbrite page shows tickets still available.

Startup Weekend LA kicks off Friday July 20th at 6:00pm and is being held at Coloft (920 Santa Monica Blvd, Santa Monica, CA 90401).

To register click here

Austin Startup: VolunteerSpot Raises $1.5 Million From Nebraska New York & More

Whether you’re in charge of volunteers at a school’s PTA, your local church, civic organization or even the boy scouts, organizing volunteers can quickly turn into a big mess. Everyone typically means well when you first call out for volunteers and you end up with more than you need. Then, when it gets to be crunch time, people are too busy with other things or forget what their volunteer job was. This can lead to a chaotic mess for any volunteer coordinator or event organizer. Until recently, even the most organized of volunteer coordinators often pulled off a great event with a gigantic headache.

Karen Bantuveris, the founder and CEO of VolunteerSpot said enough was enough and took this problem into her own hands. She solved it by creating an online platform to manage volunteers. The service has taken off with over 1.5 million volunteer users already using the free platform. What’s even better is the fact that there’s been no real marketing. The startup has survived off word-of-mouth advertising and some social media.

Last week VolunteerSpot announced that they’ve raised $1.5 million dollars in a round of funding that they plan to use to bolster their marketing efforts.

The round was led by FF Venture Capital out of New York. The Central Texas Angel Network, the Baylor Angel Network and Angel List also participated in the round. But those aren’t the only angels Bantuveris was able to woo.

The Nebraska Angels ponied up $450,000 in the round. 14 of the Nebraska Angels contributed $25,000 or more towards that $450,000. Nebraska Angels Vice President Steve Clinch told SiliconPrairieNews that he liked Bentuveris from the minute he picked her up from the airport because of her “go-getter” spirit.

“We like to look at scalability. Does it have that?” Clinch said. “VolunteerSpot, from my investment standpoint — and I think I speak for a lot of other angel investors — does.”

Bart Dillashaw, President of the Nebraska Angels told SPN “The Nebraska Angels are excited about the investment in VolunteerSpot. VolunteerSpot provides a fantastic service to an attractive demographic, and we were incredibly encouraged by the strong loyalty and support of their users.”

“Until this point, we’ve grown almost entirely by word of mouth,” said Bantuveris told the Austin Statesman. “Now, with formal marketing money, we’ll be able to reach a wider group of power moms, teachers and community coordinators who drive the lion’s share of volunteer activities in this country.”

VolunteerSpot is one of the most scalable startups we’ve seen in quite sometime. Every kind of organization from gymnastics clubs to habitat for humanity can, and do use VolunteerSpot, and of course there are volunteer organizations in every town, city and state in the U.S.

Linkage:

Check out Volunteerspot here

Source: SiliconPrairieNews, Austin Statesman

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New Startup WarSocial Is A “Risk” Like HTML 5 Game, Interview Here

If you spent hours as a kid, or even a teenager planning, strategizing and taking over the world in the game Risk then you’ll be happy to know that two entrepreneurs have started something called WarSocial which is an HTML 5 game based on the fun, and strategy behind the game Risk.

The game was born out of another game that Bill Franceschine and his co-founder Dustin had played but was pretty much abandoned by it’s founder. They put their heads together and expanded that idea to form WarSocial. Now with one game out under their belts they may continue to develop other group played social games using HTML 5.

As a kid I played a lot of Risk, after graduating from Stratego. While many think of big multiplayer online and mobile games being fantasy, or science fiction based, it’s nice to see a startup bringing back a real thinker’s game.

We got a chance to interview Franceschine. Check out the quick interview below:

What is warsocial?

An HTML5 social game inspired by Risk.

Who are the founders and what are their backgrounds?

Bill: Serial web entrepreneur with a deep background in poker. There is your hint about what our next game might be!

Dustin: Software engineer who was previously CTO of a venture backed startup.

Where are you based?

Distributed team: Bill in California, Dustin in NYC, contractors in Canada and India.

How did the idea for WarSocial come about?

Dustin and I met playing a simliar game. A game the creator has all but abandoned the last few years but which still has a very loyal following who play it many hours per week for years. We both saw the potential for the game to be very popular if done correctly so we decided to do it.

Briefly tell us how the game is played?

2-7 players can play. Each is randomly assigned lands on a map and those lands are randomly assigned dice. Players attempt to win the whole map by attacking the lands of other players.

Can people win prizes? Money? Virtual goods?

We are currently giving away $500 per season (roughly six weeks) in cash prizes to the top ten on our leaderboard.

Tell us one of the challenges you faced in the startup process?

Our biggest challenge thus far has been onboarding additional programmers. The game is very popular with engineers so recruiting talented developers is easy. Indeed many people reach out to us volunteering to help. However since we use a number of cutting edge technologies onboarding them has been a challenge. They have to setup a Ruby on Rails environment to work with Redis, Heroku, Pusher, HTML5 and in the near future probably also Node.js. This isn’t an easy task.

Whats next for War Social?

Continue quickly iterating based on user feedback and growing the community. Bringing the game to Facebook, iOS and Android are also top of mind. Once we are ready we’ll be using our platform to launch additional games as well. We could easily launch most turn-based games.

Linkage:

Wanna play? Check out WarSocial here

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Boston Startup: Ministry Of Supply Gunning For Kickstarter Fashion Award

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer could really benefit from Ministry of Supply's shirts

A new Boston startup called Ministry of Supply is looking to break the fashion category fundraising record on crowdfunding site Kickstarter. The current record is held by a company called Flint & Tinder that makes men’s underwear. They were able to break the fashion record by raising $291,493 back in May.

At the time this story was written (late Friday evening) the Boston startup that uses space suit technology to manage moisture, sweatstains and odor, in dress shirts, had raised nearly $275,000. The best part of this story is that their initial goal was just $30,000. In what’s becoming a trend now for Kickstarter projects, Ministry of Supply quickly blew through that goal.

“After we got the word out about the Kickstarter campaign through the help of friends and family sharing the news through social media outlets, we then saw the Kickstarter community really start to embrace us,” Ministry of Supply co-founder Kevin Rustagi told the Boston Business Journal

Ministry of Supply’s Apollo shirt is sweat free and will save many business people the embarrassment of odors and big sweat stains in meetings and around the office. The Apollo shirt will come in real handy in the heatwaves we’ve been experiencing across the country.

The company’s Kickstarter campaign goes until Wednesday so it looks like they should have no problem reaching the number 1 spot, and raising close to, if not more than $300,000.

Ministry of Supply is currently working hard on their e-commerce platform and opening a brick and mortar location which will contain a showroom as well as their offices. The Boston Business Journal reports that Ministry of Supply will also participate in MassChallenge this summer.

Links, we’ve got em:

Check out Ministry of Supply here

Get in on their Kickstarter project here

Source: Boston Business Journal

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NY Startup: Emotish Lets You Share Pictures With Emotion INTERVIEW

Emotish is a new mobile app startup in New York City. They’ve taken a twist of the standard photo sharing app and added an element to it that makes this app special. The element is emotion.

With Emotish you take photos of yourself or you and your friends and you can tag it with what you’re feeling at the time and then share it via Facebook and Twitter. Users will soon be able to keep tabs on the photos and tags and see what feelings are trending, how everyone was feeling in a given area, favorite photos and contextual tags.

Emotions bring a whole new life into photo sharing. Instagram is great with it’s filters and likes but with Emotish not only will you see photos and a smile but you’ll have a better context of what the smiles about, or even what the long face or frown is about.

What makes Emotish even cooler is this isn’t just about great coders or a cool mobile app development startup. Emotish Co-Founder Ryan Wegner is actually a PhD candidate in the clinical psychology program at Columbia University. So like Smurks in Chicago, there is actual real psychology behind this app and what emotion brings to the table in people’s every day lives, in context and in photos.

We got a chance to talk to Wenger in between saving the world and developing great apps, check out the interview below:

Silicon Prairie News Now Taking Nominations For Annual Awards Show August 30

Four years ago Silicon Prairie News (or SPN as they’re affectionately known) began reporting on stories in Omaha and surrounding areas. They soon added coverage from Des Moines, Kansas and other areas. Today SPN is the site of record for anything happening in the Silicon Prairie.

While we know all too well how hard it can be to get traction and coverage for Startups “everywhere else” SPN covers their regional area with the veracity that TechCrunch covers Silicon Valley. Not only that but SPN co-founder Jeff Slabotski has formed quite a community around the tech site and the rising startup scenes out there.

To recognize the hard work that startups and tech companies have put forth in the region, Silicon Prairie News started The Silicon Prairie Awards. We are all well aware that the work put into a startup “everywhere else” towers the work needed to build a startup on either coast. Not only are entrepreneurs and startup founders fighting for big media coverage, resources, funding, and talent are more challenging.

Silicon Prairie News has also become a valuable resource to other tech and startup news sites. We’ve picked up some great stories from SPN.

“Over the last four years, Silicon Prairie News has worked to highlight and support the region’s startup community,” SPN co-founder Jeff Slobotski said in a release. “The Silicon Prairie Awardsis now an annual opportunity to bring that community together under one roof and recognize the companies and individuals that have had an exceptional year.”

The Silicon Prairie Awards will highlight the achievements of startups in their core coverage areas Omaha, Des Moines and Kansas City. The awards will be in these categories; Startup, New Startup, Consumer Startup, B2B Startup, Mobile Application, Startup Executive, Startup Technologist, Startup Designer, Startup Investor and Startup Service Provider.

Nominations are being taken here through July 25th.

Linkage:

Source: DesMoinesRegister.com

Cast your vote now at SPN

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Even a few bucks would make a big difference

Tampa Startup: Muzime Is A Spotify For Indie Artists That Kicks Ass

Music sharing startups are popping up all over the place. A lot of them would qualify as “a dime a dozen” but that’s not the case with Florida based Muzime. Joel Fenelon tells the FloridaTechnologyJournal that while he was in college his studies pivoted from business to music. After that he studied and became a conductor, eventually leading to an offer to conduct overseas.

While building up his musical repertoire he realized that his works were his and filled with emotion. He also realized he didn’t want anyone else to own his music, he wanted to own it, perform it and share it with who he wants to when he wants to. That tiny idea eventually evolved into what today he is calling Muzime.

Muzime is a familiar idea, a music sharing platform ala the newest iteration of MySpace and of course social music powerhouse Spotify. However those comparisons just about stop after the “shared music” anomoly.

Muzime,Tampa startup,Florida startup,startups,music startup,independent artists,Joel Fenelon

Joel Fenelon CEO & Founder Muzime (photo: 84degrees.com)

What separates Muzime from the Spotify’s of the world, is that the platform is entirely about indy artists and musicians, like Fenelon, who hold onto the rights of their music.

The service is free to sing up for both artists and music buffs. Artists can create a profile page and share snippets of their songs on their pages. In fact they can upload as many songs as they like. From there, Muzime charges $.89 for the user base to download songs. Of that, the musician gets $.69 while Muzime holds onto $.20 from each track, to keep the servers running .

One of the great features about the site itself is that music lovers can stream each song two times. After the second time they can get a :30 clip of the song or download it for the $.89.

Muzime catalogs the music by artist, title, genre and mood. If you’re feeling happy, sad, angry or any other mood you can select music that way as well.

Muzime has a wide variety of music from just about every genre. We checked out “Jam Bands”, Hip Hop, Jazz and Classical all offering a good sized list of songs and artists. Also each song and artist have their own page where you can get lyrics, read stories about the song and artist and interact with the artists. Muzime is an incredibly robust platform especially considering it’s made up of just independent artists.

The real beauty behind this innovative Florida startup is that Fenelon is not just looking to expose new artists to more people, he’s looking to help artists monetize on their works, which is obviously a win-win for everyone involved.

Linkage:

Check out Muzime and sign up here

Nibletz is the voice of startups “everywhere else”

source: FloridaTechnoloyJournal

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Canadian Startup: Growple Challenges You To Grow Together Interview

While things seem to be falling apart for Waterloo Canada’s biggest company RIM, a new startup wants people to grow together. Their startup Growple is all about making challenges over anything and everything and either challenging yourself, your friends or new acquaintances using Growple’s mobile platform.

The challenges can be anything from “I challenge myself to lose 30 pounds” or I challenge Mike to pick up the girls number across the bar. Challenges are more fun when their done together. Making new friends and growing socially is more fun when it’s surrounded by challenges.

The team behind Growple is frustrated about how people claim to be “social” and how they try hard to stay connected rather than actually being connected. It’s another one of those startups that takes the virtual world and brings it to the real world, bringing the online world off line.

We got a chance to interview Growple’s co-founder Kevin Kim. Check out the interview below.