Startups Archives - Page 103 of 144

Canadian Startup Scolaris Crowdfunding Tuition

We knew this day would come, we just weren’t sure who would do it first. A startup in Toronto called Scolaris offers a crowdfunding platform for students to find funds for tuition for college.

The site allows Canadian students attending colleges and universities in Canada to setup “scholarships” for themselves. Once the scholarship is setup students can turn to friends, family and even complete strangers for funding.

We wouldn’t be surprised if some of the students who participate on Scolaris.ca tell compelling enough stories that anonymous philanthropic donors choose to fund their entire education. Stranger things have happened.

Scolaris.ca uses a Paypal interface to complete the transactions for the fundees. That allows contributors to pay via PayPal account, credit or debit card.

Scolaris founder and CEO Mark Mauleesan drew from his own hard experience raising money for medical school when coming up with the idea for Scolaris.

“Medical school wasn’t cheap. I was fortunate enough to have people apart from my parents say ‘Here’s a cheque for Mark,’” Mauleesan told itbusiness.ca “My parents helped me through medical school and now my sister’s going through law school in Ottawa. So she can raise funds for her scholarship (on Scolaris.ca) in the coming year.”

Scolaris doesn’t charge the student or the donor. To make money the company does take an 8% fee off every dollar raised, with half of that going to cover PayPal fees.

In order to raise money for tuition students must provide proof that they are actually enrolled or accepted into a post secondary education institution.

Also all funds raised on Scolaris are put in a lump sum account on the students behalf and then paid directly to the school once the student furnishes a tuition invoice.

Unlike the US an average year of tuition in Canada is around $5500 so it’s not a huge amount of money to raise.

“As long as you’re going to an accredited (school) and can prove you’re a student or are going to be a student…(there’s) no way to come to Scolaris.ca and try to scam donors to try to rip them off,” Mauleesan said.

Linkage:

For more information visit scolaris.ca

Nibletz is the voice of startups “everywhere else”

We are doing a little crowdfunding of our own. Please support us here.

Madison Startup: SeatSwapr Facilitates That Airline Seat Swap For You

Last week, when we stopped in Madison Wisconsin as part of the Nibletz sneaker strapped, nationwide startup road trip we took office hours with 10 hungry entrepreneurs and startup founders. One of those founders was Thomas Mueller who is hoping to take something that happens on lots of airlines, streamline it and execute it through an app.

Seat swapping is nothing new. A lot of people get on an airplane and realize for some reason or another the seat that they picked or have been assigned isn’t going to work out. At that point, if the plane is full, the passenger is stuck. Sometimes when this happens you’ll hear people trading seats or even selling their seats. In fact I’ve done this a number of times. I often select an exit row seat and then someone really tall comes along and wants the seat with the extra leg room. More often than not I’m offered between $20 and $60 to swap seats. (as long as they’re coming from an aisle seat I typically do it. I don’t do window seats, you get out of the plane quicker on the aisle).

Well Mueller is also very familiar with this practice. Every now and then you’ll see seat swap requests on major flights happen on Twitter. Typically the bi-coastal NY/SF or NY/LA flights have the most traffic on Twitter. Tweets will read “I’m on NY/LA Flight XXX and need an aisle seat $50”.

Interestingly enough the flight attendants don’t seem to care as long as you don’t delay them starting their safety instructions, and of course don’t interrupt the flow of other passengers getting to their seats.

Well Mueller realizes that websites like seatguru and seatexpert already know which seats are the best. Other sites like tripit know what flight your on and of course all the airlines offer viewable maps online of the inside of the plane so you can see where your seat is.

When you put all this information together and then tie it in with a mobile app you have the opportunity to create a seat swapping app.

Now it’s not as easy as it sounds and Mueller is ready to face the challenge. Of course with any mobile app the first thing a founder wants to do is build scale. Mueller has to build tremendous scale because for the app to work, two people need to be on the same flight. In addition as Mueller told us “If a plane is half full there’s no market for us”.

That doesn’t seem to be a problem though because since 9/11 airlines have reduced their number of flights and have tried to fill every plane to capacity. The load factor right now is 83% full while some of the more popular flights like New York to San Francisco are 98% full. Those are the flights where people would really benefit from an app like SeatSwapr.

Mueller is hoping to partner with some of the other travel sites to implement his technology.

Linkage:

Check out SeatSwapr here at SeatSwapr.com

Nibletz is the voice of startups “everywhere else” here are more stories from our sneaker strapped nationwide startup road trip

We could use your help, we’re a startup helping startups!

Chicago Startup: Red Meat Market Connecting People With Meat, Socially! Video Interview

Did you know that meat could be social? Of course you did, how many times have you socialized over burgers, hot dogs (is that meat) or great steaks? Well a new startup in the Chicago area is connecting people socially over meat. This time though, it’s about buying meat.

Red Meat Market, like Kansas’ AgLocal, connects people in Chicago, Madison and Milwaukee (for now) to the freshest, farm raised sustainable meat. Red Meat Market has a website and a mobile app which makes it a cinch to order meat in boxes, by dollar amount, choosing the cuts that you want.

With Red Meat Market you tell their platform what you want to spend and it tells you what you can get in your “box of meat” you can get a variety or one choice cut but this way you always stay in the budget that you want, each and every month.

There are actually a couple of social components to Red Meat Market. The first is the ability to split your “box of meat” up with friends, within the site and the app. Red Meat Market handles the payment distribution and everyone gets the meat they want. The meat box can be delivered to your door, or you can opt to attend one of Red Meat Market’s Meat Ups (clever huh). At their Meat Ups, Red Meat Market supplies the beer and the sides and everyone gets the box of meat that they ordered.

By holding a meat up you can meat or meet other Red Meat Market users and socialize or swap cuts of meats between boxes.

Red Meat Market is in a great part of the country to start a business like this. Co-Founder Mark Wilhelms blends his 18 years of digital and marketing experience with his love of meat for a new way to not just sell great, quality, grass fed meat but to connect people who love meat together.

Check out our video interview below:

Linkage:

Check out RedMeatMarket here at their website

Here’s more of our Chicago TechWeek coverage

Nibletz is the voice of startups everywhere else

JustDecide & Nibletz Present The Startup Dilemma Of The Week

Justdecide.com and nibletz.com are partnering for something very exciting, thought provoking and hopefully helpful to startups everywhere.

Jay Amato, the founder of justdecide.com has a long standing background helping to build and rebuild fortune 500 companies in New York. After a great career of doing just that, he found that he had a dilemma, what to do next. That’s where justdecide was born out of Amato’s own dilemma.

While many people turn to Amato for his advice in business and mentorship he’s also jumped head first into Justdecide, his own startup. That’s where the idea for the “Startup Dilemma Of The Week” was born.

There’s no real “if” about it, along the startup path you’re going to come into a dilemma, or two or ten and need some help. Now every week you can submit your dilemma to startups@nibletz.com and if you’re lucky we will post it as our dilemma of the week.

All week long you’ll be able to see your dilemma on justdecide.com at this link or by clicking the banner to the right side of the page here on nibletz.com.

We will encourage our community of startups “everywhere else” do help solve your dilemma by choosing one of the three possible answers and weighing in with feedback. Hopefully you’ll come to some resolution with the help of the startup community. Also we will randomly select people who weigh in on the dilemma for cool prizes from some of our great sponsors.

Our kick off dilemma actually comes from a crowded discussion at dinner during TechWeek in Chicago. There were actually about 10 of us around the table discussing one founder’s dilemma.

“I’ve finished my pitch deck, what should I do next”. The discussion got heated because everyone at the table had a different point of view, mostly predicated on where they were in the startup process.

The person who asked the question was ready to go head first and pitch venture capitalists, in Chicago and all over the country, and of course the valley too.

One of the participants in the discussion thought that the idea hadn’t been vetted out enough. The entrepreneur was still green and wet behind the ears. Other participant thought at this early stage in the game the entrepreneur would be chewed up and spit out by any venture capitalist and perhaps blow his chance at ever getting in front of that VC again.

We all seemed to be in agreement on that. If the entrepreneur took his idea to a VC this early in the game he would blow his one and only shot. Of course we could all understand why he wanted to just go pitching away, like many of us, he needed the money.

Another one of the participants in the discussion suggested that the entrepreneur vet the idea and practice the pitch with friends and family. Of course the downside to this is that more often than not his friends and family are going to blow smoke up his ass.

One person suggested he just randomly talk about the idea with 50 complete strangers in Chicago and see what they thought.

Please click over here to justdecide.com to weigh in on the “Startup Dilemma of the Week”. Also don’t forget to send us your dilemmas so that the startup community can help you out with your important startup dilemmas.

Linkage:

Find this week’s “Startup Dilemma Of The Week” here

Find all of the “Startup Dilemmas Of The Week” here

Find out more about JustDecide here at nibletz

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

We could use your help, here check this out

Move Your Resume To The Front Of The Line With Chicago Startup hiredMyway.com

A new startup in Chicago called hiredMyway may have just solved a huge problem for job-seekers and that’s getting their resume actually reviewed and reviewed quicker. There is a cost involved, but when it’s all laid out for the job seeker the nominal $5 fee is worth so much more in the end.

Matt Mosher the CEO and Founder of hiredMYway.com is offering a different kind of job site. With hiredMYway, when an interested job seeker finds a position they feel they are qualified for or “perfect” for they can submit their resume for free, or they can elect to pay the $5 fee which guarantees their resume will be reviewed in the first 15 days. In fact hiredMYway will notify the job seeker when their resume is actually read.

Now we realize that job seekers don’t have a bunch of $5 bills just laying around, especially if they are out of work while on the job hunt. That’s actually the beauty of Mosher’s system though. Job seekers will only pay the $5.00 for jobs they feel they are really qualified for and actually want.

The current job hunting website system is broken. Typically when a job is posted to one of the current job sites, thousands of people submit their resume, whether they are qualified or not. Some even submit their resume when they don’t even want that particular job, they just want “something”.

Recruiters, hiring agencies and HR departments that sign up with hiredMYway will know that when someone is submitting their resume along with the $5.00 payment, they have a truly interested candidate. It will effectively move those candidates to the top of the pile.

“You’re not going to pull your credit card out if you don’t think you’re going to have a chance,” Mosher said in an interview with redeyechicago.

Now here’s where it gets better.

There’s a signing bonus structure within the recruiters, hiring agencies and HR Departments. According to this article from redeyechicago that signing bonus could potentially be as big as $4,000 if not more. As with any job site or hiring agency a fee changes hands from the employer to the “agency”. hiredMYway splits that fee with 2/3 going to hiredMYway and the other third going back to the job seeker who gets the job.

With that 1/3 of the “finders” fee back in the pocket of the job seeker they most likely will make all their money back, regardless of how many jobs they paid the $5.00 “token” fee for.

Mosher is in the process of moving the funded startup from Detroit to Chicago. They currently employ 24 people and plan to hire more. They’ve secured $3.5m in their first round of funding from VC’s and angel investors.

While the $5.00 payment may be a turn off to some, if you live in a world where you believe you get what you pay for you may actually see the real value in redeyechicago. Some job sites charge extra for premium listings for job candidates. With hiredMyway your $5.00 goes directly to getting your resume seen.

Linkage:

Check out hiredMYway here at hiredMYway.com

Source: redeyechicago

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

We’re on the sneaker-strapped nationwide startup roadtrip, help us out if you can

Prague Startup: mySchoolNotebook.com Expands To US INTERVIEW HERE

Two Czech entrepreneurs have developed a note taking app for students that has become very popular in Prague and surrounding areas.

There are a few apps out there for students to take school notes however none are as easy to use or as feature packed as mySchoolNotebook.com. With their app students can take notes, organize them into notebooks and even add audio to the notes. They stay organized in the same way that you would keep a traditional three ring binder.

mySchoolNotebook.com uses Facebook authorization, so to use the app you need to have a Facebook account. The upside to the Facebook integration is that it adds a conduit for sharing notes with fellow students that may be collaborating on an assignment together.

mySchoolNotebook.com also has a pdf export function that allows the student to export their notes as a pdf if you need to have an actual paper version of the notes.

More and more schools across the country (and apparently the world) are allowing students to use smartphones and iPads in class to take notes. This is good for the environment and great for the student as it gives them a way to quickly move their notes back and forth from their computers and makes them easier for reference when writing long papers or studying for exams.

We got a chance to catch up with mySchoolNotebooks.com who were actually in Chicago for TechWeek two weeks ago. Check out our interview after the break

Chicago Startup: Matador Transforms How People Invest INTERVIEW

What are the two ingredients for making a successful investment? Answer: Knowing what to buy and when to buy. Say its late 2004, knowing that Google’s stock was going to skyrocket beforehand and timely buying some GOOG shares would seamlessly make you rich (and also mommy proud). But how would you know what to buy (i.e. Google) and when to buy a stock or commodity? That’s where Matador comes in.

Matador is a advisory messaging platform that empowers investors to be informed from financial advisories and act on this information by messaging a broker.

Example, Yahoo! Finance recommends to buy gold or treasuries because the economy is tanking. Using Matador’s web and mobile platform, an investor can receive an instant recommendation from Yahoo! and then accordingly email or call their broker within the app. Hence, Matador streamlines the slow and boring process of manually receiving information from an advisory and communicating that time sensitive information to your broker.

Matador has real potential to innovate in the investing space that hasn’t particularly seen many successful apps. We like the value they offer to users, advisories and brokers. Plus, it doesn’t hurt to have a rockstar team including serial entrepreneur Jared Steffes, founder of Tap.Me

Co-Founder Andy Guinn gave us a sneak peak of how the app would work. Check out the video interview below:

Links we’ve got em:

Signup for Matador’s private beta

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

Nibletz could use YOUR help click here

South Carolina Engineers Creating Cotton T-Shirts For Charging Electronics

Anyone who knows me knows that I am all about maximizing efficiency by wearing whatever I can to hold and charge my devices with minimal weight. My wearable accessories at the moment include a wide range of PowerBag’s by RFA Brands in Michigan and my new found gadget holder the TechSlinger. While the Powerbag has an intricate, modular charging system within the bags I have the TechSlinger puts everything close to my body and is extremely light weight. On days when I’m only using the TechSlinger I use a 16,000mah battery stored in the lower pocket for my iPhone, iPad and whatever Android device I have on me at the moment.

Well, according to our friends over at Boy Genius Report there are some innovative engineers at the University of South Carolina. A team of two engineers being led by Xiadong Li, a professor of mechanical engineering at the university, are working on storing a charge right in the fabric itself.

Li and his team took a brand new store bought plain white t-shirt and soaked it in a flouride solution. They then baked the t-shirt at a high temperature in an oxygen free oven. When the t-shirt was done baking the fibers in the shirt were converted from cellulose to activated carbon, capable of holding an electrical charge.

“We will soon see roll-up cell phones and laptop computers on the market,” Li said, according to Innovation News Daily. “But a flexible energy storage device is needed to make this possible.” The engineer notes that the activated carbon textile acts like a supercapacitor, because they can have “particularly high energy storage densities.”

The engineers also coated the shirt with a nanometer layer of manganese oxide which enhanced the shirts charge-ability.

The future is pointing to roll up cell phones, keyboards, and computers as well as flexible display devices. People are going to grow more and more tired of having to charge everything at home on a 110 outlet and stored batteries may soon one day fall to the wayside.

When it does, things like this t-shirt they are working on and even the possibility of furniture that just charges things in close proximity, will be the norm. We may not be too far off.

Source: Boy Genius Report

Puerto Rico Joins the Startup America Partnership

Startup America added their 26th regional partnership on Tuesday with Puerto Rico. Startup Puerto Rico kicked off in true Startup America fashion with a networking party for entrepreneurs across the island held at Universidad Interamericana, Recinto Metropolitano in San Juan.

“Puerto Ricans want to develop their own country on their own terms,” said Startup Puerto Rico representative Richard Vazquez. “Startup America encourages Puerto Ricans to develop the country by creating more jobs and kick-starting our local economy.”

The partnership between Startup Puerto Rico and Startup America will give entrepreneurs and startups on the island access to the same benefits that Startup America members have on the mainland. In addition, Startup America membership is free, and you didn’t have to attend the launch event to sign up, you can simply click the link below.

Startup America offers free educational webinars, free benefits from partners including indiegogo, American Express, Intuit and plenty of others. The member portal on the Startup America website shows every member what the current benefits are.

They also regularly hold contests which have included a trip to attend the Super Bowl with Startup America CEO Scott Case and a trip to the Kentucky Derby.

Startup America is chaired by AOL co-founer Steve Case (no relation to Scott Case) and with Puerto Rico, now has 26 regional partnerships.

Linkage:

Startup Puerto Rico

Startup America

Nibletz the voice of startups everywhere else, could use your help

Florida Startup: Coach Crowd Helps Connect You To Private Coaches INTERVIEW

Before this year I had no idea that private coaching was such a big thing across the country. Back in May we brought you the story about Jordan Fliegel and his Boston based startup CoachUp designed to help find and vet private coaches.

CoachCrowd, a Florida startup (with one founder in Austin) is about to launch their platform to connect athletes with private coaches. They’ve even gotten the endorsement of the Offensive Coordinator at Texas A&M Kliff Kingsbury who said:

“CoachCrowd is perfect for former athletes everywhere to turn their talents and experiences into a fulfilling way to help young athletes in their community and make money.”

CrowdCoach was founded by Branndon Stewart who is a former quarterback at Texas A&M and the University of Tennessee, Allan Branch who is a former D1 offensive lineman and Steve Bristol who is co-founder of Less Everything, along with Branch.

The three combined are promising an easy to use, easy to navigate, web platform to connect youth athletes with private coaches.

We got a chance to interview Branndon about CoachCrowd.

Happy Fourth Of July Startups Everywhere Else, From The Nibletz Team

While many of us are still working all through the holiday because it’s the startup way we just wanted to take this time to wish all the startups “everywhere else” a Happy Fourth Of July. Keep plugging away. Keep practicing your pitch. Keep reaching for those dollars. Keep testing your model. Keep failing and trying again.

But please take a quick break at some point in your day to watch this quick video,and crack open an ice cold Bud Light. You deserve it.

And if you’re so inclined, by us a beer or two and help us get out on the road again.

Baltimore Startup: SocialToaster Grabs $1.975M In Series A Round

Baltimore startup Social Toaster seems to be on the cutting edge of monetizing social media distribution. There are a lot of companies in the same space as Social Toaster but none some to be executing with the same results.

The concept is pretty simple. If you have are a digital publisher or major brand Social Toaster helps you register ambassadors and super fans. These people are charged with helping to get your message out to the world, and because their fans, they do just that. Ambassadors and Super Fans are the type of social media folks who carry a lot of weight. How much?

Well according to Social Toaster’s CEO and Founder Brian Razzaque, “One of our clients told us that with 60,000 ambassadors, we were more effective than their Facebook page of 2 million.” he told the Baltimore Sun

In fact, one of Social Toasters clients is the Baltimore Ravens. The Ravens use Social Toaster for monthly media sharing contests which help their content go viral.

This isn’t a fly by night operation or a flash in the pan. Social Toaster has been perfecting their craft. Last year their sales were $300,000 this year they are projecting $2 to $3 million in sales. That’s why Razzaque was able to announce last week that the firm had completed a $1.975 million dollar series A round.

The round follows a seed round in 2011 from Neuberger Ventures and other individual investors.

Blu Venture Investors led Social Toaster’s latest round, Baltimore Angels, Wasabi Ventures, and Piedmont Investment Advisors also participated.

Razzaque plans to double the headcount from 22-50 and also plans moving the company to larger offices to Clipper Mill with about three times the office space they are currently operating out of.

William Militello, Founder of Piedmont Investment Advisors, LLC commented, “I am always excited to fund great entrepreneurs. I believe that true innovation occurs when skilled labor, intellectual capital, and entrepreneurs with great ideas are combined with the financial capital Piedmont can provide.”

Paul Silber of Blu Venture Investors, said, “our team was really attracted to SocialToaster’s novel “message amplification” solution, to the company’s leadership, and to the fact that they were rapidly gaining traction with recognizable name-brand customers. We liked the fact that their software solution offered a cost-effective and simple way for organizations of all kinds to effectively use social media to get their message out to a wider audience.”

Linkage:

For more info on Social Toaster visit them here at socialtoaster.com

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

Source: Baltimore Sun

We could really use your help, details here

Video Interview With Chicago Startup ReGroup Therapy

ReGroup Therapy is a new Chicago startup that brings group therapy into the digital age. The service puts together people with common conditions in a video chat style group support session. The sessions are moderated by licensed professionals.

ReGroup Therapy can be applied to any number of conditions. Say you’re looking for a support group to quit smoking or an eating disorders support group. Now you can confidentially attend a group therapy session from the comfort of your own home.

One of the best parts though, is because it’s done over the internet and via video, you don’t have to miss your session if you travel out of town. You can access ReGroup Therapy from a laptop or a tablet and have the same experience.

Co-Founder David Cohn tells us that right now they are working with women with maternal depression and anxiety and plan to expand to a number of other group support offerings.

Cohn and his co-founder Sari Nass Ziv are two friends who met during their MBA studies in 2010. Cohn had developed an interest in the way technology can change people’s lives while volunteering in the Peace Corps in Guatemala. That passion stuck with him through more traditional positions in technology.

Nass Ziv started patients with mental illness as part of her psychology studies but then pivoted to the business world. That passion for helping people also stuck with Nass Ziv.

In 2011 as Nass Ziv was pregnant with her first child and Cohn’s wife Ana was pregnant at the same time, they started the idea for ReGroup Therapy which launched earlier this year.

Check out our video interview with Cohn below.

Linkage:

For more info visit ReGroupTherapy.com

Here’s more of our coverage from TechWeek 2012

Nibletz is on the sneaker strapped, nationwide startup road trip and could use a hand

Indianapolis Startup: Blab Bubble Is A DIY Platform For Pay Per Click Social Media Advertising INTERVIEW

If you haven’t noticed advertising is moving away from traditional online pay per click models of years past. Advertisers are reaching out to both mobile and social media channels for advertising.

Companies like Ad.ly,MyLikes and Sponsored Tweets allow individuals with good social media followings to capitalize on their tweets, likes and recommendations by offering cash based incentives. Blab Bubble is a new startup that’s coming into the same space with a new spin that may work out even better in the long run.

Blab Bubble spent a lot of time and money researching the market to find out where social media advertising is breaking down. They found two key areas that had the biggest pain points.

The first was that many advertisers felt that traditional social media advertising sites were too cumbersome when trying to create campaigns. The other area that needed improvement was in the startup and small business arena. Most social media advertising companies targeted big brands and enterprise. Of course, with that, they were pricing small businesses and startups out of the market.

Blab Bubble has created a simple, easy to use interface for businesses of any size to set up social media campaigns. The process takes just a few minutes and the campaign is off and running. Blab Bubble also offers very easy to understand pricing, how about $.40 per click no matter who you are.

We got a chance to interview BlabBubble to find out more about this Indianapolis startup and their spin on social media advertising.