Startups Archives - Page 109 of 144

Israeli Startup: GetTaxi Plans New York Expansion

New York City has reached out to all of the “mobile hailing” applications like Uber, Haillo and GetTaxi to submit proposals to become the official taxi cab hailing app for New Yorks millions of taxi cab users per week.

New York has an enormous amount of taxi cabs that are all sanctioned and controlled by New York’s Taxi and Limousine Commission. If you’ve been to New York you may have noted that the only cabs you see (and there are thousands of them) are yellow, they all run the same fares and have the same features.

Until now there was only one way to get a taxi cab in New York and that’s by going out on the side of the street and flagging one down. You can’t call the New York TLC and request a cab at a certain address. If you want to do that you need to use a sedan or car service, which can cost a lot more.

GetTaxi told nibletz.com in an email that the New York Taxi and Limousine Commission is specifically soliciting proposals for a mobile hailing app. They will only select one, and GetTaxi plans to be that app.

“The smartphone revolution is about to change the way we travel as profoundly as it has changed the way we communicate,” said Jing Wang Herman, CEO of GetTaxi USA and the proud holder of a New York City taxi license. “GetTaxi will take the guesswork out of the NYC taxi experience, making it easier to find a cab, share a ride and pay the fare. We are excited to help New York City improve mobility by better integrating taxis into the transportation ecosystem.”

Here’s how GetTaxi works:

· Find a cab: The GetTaxi App will provide a snapshot of transportation options, helping passengers see if their best option is a street hail, digital hail or booking a car.

· Pay any way you want: GetTaxi will be payment agnostic, enabling passengers to pay in any and every way possible, from a stored credit card to a digital wallet, through a monthly family plan to a direct company account, or even through alternative payment networks such as Dwolla or PayPal.

· Share a ride and split the fare: GetTaxi will introduce a simple ride-sharing feature that allows passengers to identify and join a shared ride, using GetTaxi to easily split the bill at the conclusion of the ride.

· Find an accessible or hybrid vehicle: With GetTaxi, New Yorkers will be able to track the location of special vehicles, making it easier to find the one you need.

· Earn loyalty points: Earn points every time you use GetTaxi that are redeemable for free rides and merchandise.

· Choose your language: GetTaxi will be available in New York in 16 languages, catering to the city’s diverse population and ensuring that it’s easy for tourists to get around as well.

· Rate your driver: Let your driver know they provided good service with a 5 rating.

· Find lost property: Because GetTaxi knows exactly which car you were in, we can quickly alert the driver that the passenger has left an item in the taxi.

GetTaxi has announced exciting partnerships with Des Moines Iowa based Dwolla for payment processing, and with HopStop which will allow GetTaxi users to combine their commute with more than one transportation method. Using HopStop users will be able to coordinate their cab ride with buses, subways and other transportation available in New York.

Linkage:

Find out more about GetTaxi here at gettaxi.com

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One Of The Coolest Little Tech Startups Is In Winnipeg Check Out Po-Motion

I was combing through over 5,000 emails from the last week and saw a pitch from Po-Motion in Winnipeg Canada. They said “please help it’s hard for us to get coverage out here”. So after I had them send back a one sentence pitch, and they sent back a full pitch, I was like, ok that’s what Po-Motion is all aboat (intentionally spelled wrong).

Po-Motion is affordable,customizable easy to use interactive floor and wall software. It’s like the Nintendo PowerPad on crack, but really without the pad, or the console. You simply connect your web cam and a projector to po-motion’s proprietary software and you’re literally off to the races, the ice rink, the dance hall, or wherever else your imagination takes you. Just check out this video so you understand what I’m talking about.

PO-MOtion is affordable, customizable, easy to use interactive floor and wall display software which responds to physical user activity. PO-MOtion is patent-pending, and includes a family of products to allow the audience to connect with the client’s message on an emotional level. A combination of award winning design, artificial intelligence, gesture controls, and motion tracking are used to make interactive advertising displays, promotional signage, and educational games for clients like Google Tokyo, Air New Zealand, and museums around North America.

PO-MOtion is designed for consumer grade electronics, making it accessible to a much wider market than competitive products. The Motion Maker customization tools, (available now), and contributor features, (launching next month), are free to try and allow a community of software users to create and share interactive floor and wall content through the PO-MOtion online platform.

What are some practical uses?

– Crazy video game
– an amazing version of Twister
– Dj’s bars and clubs will love this technology
– Science centers, museums and exhibitors
– Amazing golf games
– Amazing inter actives at restaurants and retail (check out the rock pond on their website)

and so much more.

Now here’s the best part, Po-Motion makes it easy for people with minimal programming experience to harness the power of their software. It’s also not bajillions of dollars. They have several very affordable plans for creating what you’re going to do with po-motion.

Austin Startups Get New Resource Center In Napkin Venture

The name napkin venture actually makes a whole lot of sense. I’m sure most of you have jotted down or sketched out a business idea on a napkin over dinner at a restaurant. In some cases those “napkin ventures” have actually been something, other times they’re cleared with the rest of the table scraps. Well Austin Texas based entrepreneur, and former city council candidate, Tina Cannon wants you to save those napkins and bring them to Napkin Venture to take your startup to the next level.

Napkin Venture plans on providing business and legal services to early stage companies. Everything form idea development to pitch development and even handling your first filings can all be done at Napkin Venture.

While this isn’t a venture capital fund, angel investment fund, incubator or accelerator they are offering valuable resources to entrepreneurs. They also have a legal package of services available for $3,000.00. So while Napkin Venture may be perceived as some as a pitch for legal services at a fee typically outside an early stage startups realm, the classes and other services they offer should off set that first feeling.

Napkin Venture was founded by Cannon who was the founder of PetsMD.com which was acquired by Pet360 in 2011. She’s also the entrepreneur in residence at Texas Sate University. The remainder of Napkin Venture’s Executive Team includes:

Chuck Miller an entrepreneur with a solid background in media. He is the designer of the bunch and has recently worked with; NASA, Halliburton, Miller Lite, Houston Texans, Pura Vida Tequila, and The Washington Times.

Eve Richter who has a deep rooted background in emerging technologies, and small business. Richter’s previous roles include; Emerging Technologies Coordinator in the Economic Development Division at the City of Austin, as well as a seat on the board of Austin Women in Technology. She is currently on the board of the Technology Advisors Group.

Raul Calvoz is the legal eagle on the executive team, and also has a background in both big business and growing early stage companies. He has held positions as the head of a global unit at 3M, and Vice President of Europe for top travel industry site Travelocity.

“I’ve been there, done that, have the t-shirt,” says founder Tina Cannon. “I’ve struggled out there and learned my lessons, and want to help other startups to avoid some of the mistakes I made, and get on the fast track to success. I’m excited to finally realize my goal of helping entrepreneur dreams become reality.”

Linkage:

Find out more about Napkin Venture here

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Toronto Startup: Konekt.Me Helping Build Personal Brands INTERVIEW

You’ve probably been hearing more and more about personal brands lately, and that’s a good thing. Years ago, the contents of your personal brand typically fit on one or two sheets of quality 8 1/2 x 11 paper. If you were really lucky you had that really heavy paper with the lawyer finish. Resumes were about the only personal brand identifiers available. If you were in media that could be complimented by a head shot, with your resume on the back.

Nowadays with the web, photos, movies, and hot graphics your personal brand can tell a lot more of your story. Your personal brand can include your work history, education, likes, recreational activities, heck even pictures of your dogs and your cats. Now, personal brand is all about you.

Sure there are personal branding sites out there like about.me however Toronto startup Konekt.me is hoping to make their mark by offering an even easier to use platform and a method of uploading that will knock our socks off.

Konekt.me is based in Toronto and part of Project Rhino. We got to talk with Neil Martin one of the co-founders of Konekt.me in this interview below the break.

Pittsburgh Startup: NoWait Is Kicks Restaurant Wait Times Ass

I like casual dining and I like chain restaurants. As you guys know we travel all the time, especially during our sneaker strapped nationwide startup road trip. Casual dining and chain restaurants save us time, and aggregation because I know what’s on the menu and what to expect.

One of the problems though is wait times. They vary from state to state and city to city. The way wait times are handled also varies from state to state, city to city and restaurant to restaurant. You may wait until your name is called over a PA system. You may have to wait until the host or hostess screams your name out loud. Or you may have to wait until the beeper/vibrator goes off in your pocket.

Here’s a scenario for you. You arrive at a nice casual dining restaurant or a chain, that’s in a nice big outdoor mall type shopping center. The Apple store is just across the parking lot, and too far for the restaurant pager to work. You want to go to the Apple store but you arrive at the restaurant at 7:25 and the Apple store closes at 9, oh well you’ll have to wait until another day.

Now imagine if the restaurant could automagically text you when your table is ready. Now you can go just about anywhere within reason, and wait for your table. Imagine if you could text the restaurant back and tell them you really need 20 more minutes.

All of this has become a reality thanks to Pittsburgh startup NoWait.

NoWait uses a system fueled by iPads and other iOS devices that keeps the host/hostess, managers, servers and customers in-sync thanks to the cloud. The host/hostess app has a very familiar feel to it, reminiscent of the paper, or white board systems that many restaurants have employed until now. But thanks to the power of Apple, the cloud and no wait, there’s a lot of back end functionality that maximizes convenience and time for the customer. Of course time is our most precious commodity.

This is the idea behind NoWait, founded by Robb Meyer, Luke Panza, Richard Colvin and James Belt.

Really it was all a matter of time before someone somewhere developed a system like this and, it happened to be these four guys, and according to their testimonial video it’s working out great. Their video includes feedback from managers of chains like the Spaghetti Warehouse and local favorites like Burgatory Bar in Pittsburgh.

Now of course we know that no startup is going to put bad testimonials into their video but the testimonials seemed authentic and there’s a lot of footage provided that shows active, busy restaurants utilizing the technology.

NoWait’s quick pitch is that they are the “Open Table” of casual dining. This seems like a good analogy but it may not necessarily do NoWait justice. Where OpenTable requires the adoption of the user themselves, NoWait brings to their technology to anyone who gets in line at the restaurant.

Now if you’re one of those people that doesn’t do texting, doesn’t have a text messaging plan or god forbid you don’t have a phone (chances are you aren’t reading this website), you can still have your name called and wait around the host stand. There won’t be a huge crowd waiting, everyone else will be out enjoying their evening until they get their text message.

One of our favorite sites, DailyDealMedia doesn’t quite understand how NoWait reduces wait time, so let’s explain it real quick.

Now using NoWait instead of pen and paper, you eliminate the messy writing that can mean you call Dan 100 times over the loudspeaker instead of Don. Dan and Don look a lot alike but tables are lost in this confusion. Now your hostess is explaining to Don why he lost his table, he’s upset, and the host staff is dealing with a situation, not calling tables.

Open tables (no pun intended) are stacking up in the back and now that there are 6 open tables in the restaurant it will actually take longer doing it the old fashion way because you can’t just walk a single file line through a restaurant and drop people off.

That’s just one example of how this decreases wait time.

Another way that it saves wait time is the ability to text back. Say I just got in a heated discussion at the Apple store and I tell the Spaghetti Warehouse I need 20 more minutes. They can now call the next person and bump me down.

Yes, NoWait is a great name for this innovative startup. I just hope they build scale quickly because waiting sucks.

Linkage

Find out more about NoWait here.

Check out DailyDealMedia’s article here

Here’s NoWait’s video here

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Charlotte Startup: Rawporter Strikes Exclusive Deal For Libyan Coverage

Citizen Journalism startup Rawporter has reported some very exciting news themselves. The Charlotte based startup has announced that they’ve teamed up with freedom fighter and journalist Matthew VanDyke, who will provide 1st person perspective of the newly liberated Libya, for Rawporter users around the world to use for footage.

“Weʼre excited to participate in this incredibly unique opportunity, Matt is genuinely trying to make a
difference and weʼre extremely proud to assist in his efforts to bring more visibility to Libya while it
undergoes a massive transition,” said Kevin Davis, co-founder. “Weʼve been building a powerful
platform to help people share their stories and this is a great example of our vision being put into
practice.”

Rawporter will have a page (http://rawporter.com/pm/matthewvandyke) dedicated to Mr. VanDykeʼs videos and photos that anyone can view or purchase. Any proceeds from video and photo sales will be donated to a fund for the family of a journalist killed while reporting in a conflict zone. Additionally, Rawporter will be subsidizing a portion of Mr. VanDykeʼs expenses so that he can focus on his mission and worry less about logistics. Mr. VanDyke will attempt to make himself available to respond to assignments if possible but wants to reinforce that there will be significant limitations on his time.

“Citizen journalism played a key role in the Libyan civil war. The videos captured by Libyans in the early days of the revolution were broadcast through the internet and helped mobilize international support for the war. I believe that Rawporter is an innovative company that will facilitate the dissemination of Arab Spring footage from Libya, Syria, Egypt, Bahrain and elsewhere. Their technology will also assist in the broadcast of revolutionary footage from beyond the Arab world that is essential to attracting the attention of the international community to support struggles for freedom worldwide. My partnership with Rawporter is another opportunity for me to contribute to the cause of freedom, as well as another cause I care deeply about – journalism and freedom of the press. I hope that my participation can help expand Rawporterʼs market and give another way for the voices of the oppressed to be heard,” said Matt VanDyke.

Rawporter offers a unique app for both iOS and Android phones that allows users to participate in the action and supply “citizen journalistic” videos and photos for news outlets, media sites, blogs and more to use across the Rawporter network.

Adding this partnership with VanDyke solidifies Rawporter’s commitment to full fledged journalism in addition to their innovative platform.

Linkage:

For more information visit rawporter.com

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California Startup: PortfolioDashboards Helps Investors Manage Startup Investments

If you’re an angel investor, venture capitalist or have any other kind of hand in investing in startups and early stage companies, than you know that tracking your investments isn’t as easy as you would like it to be. That is until now.

Orange County California based startup PortfolioDashboards offers something that angel investors and VC’s have been longing for. Their problem, was to find a better way to track investments in startup companies and they’ve done it.

PortfolioDashboards was founded by Ancestry.com alumnus Kerry Kane. Kane ran digital marketing at Ancestry.com and has had his hand in many different startup companies. Ancestry.com alumni are starting all kinds of companies. Just over a week ago we interview Jesse Gant, also an ancestry.com alumni who started Recmnd.Me

We got a chance to interview Kane about PortfolioDashboards. Check that interview out, after the break.

Startup Event: Dallas Prepares For Startup Weekend

Entrepreneurs, startup founders, and members of the Dallas tech community are preparing for Startup Weekend next weekend. The official startup weekend organization advises those participating to not let their ideas, and plans get sidetracked this week with father’s day. Next weekend means business.

In anticipation of the event the Startup Weekend committee for Dallas has announced some of their mentors that will be helping the teams build their startups over the 54 hours next weekend.

Startup Weekend Dallas will have two lawyer mentors in Danica Mathes and Craig Cox of Bell Nunnally LLP. They will be able to tackle some of the tough legal questions as teams vet out their startup plan.

They’ve got BioTech and NanoTech specialist Phong Le of Marketing in the Life Sciences Group at HPC.

Paul Griffith, Senior Director of Business Development at AOL Inc will be on hand as well Brad Kendall of Great White North.

Rounding out their list of great mentors is Amrit Kirpalani who is the founder of predictive social commerce company called Nectar Online Media.

The mentors won’t be there throughout the entire event, however Startup Weekend Dallas plans to post the hours of their ability at the event so you’ll know exactly when you can get the kind of help you need.

Startup Weekend Dallas starts Friday, here’s the link to register.

Linkage:

Check out StartupWeekend Dallas at Startupweekend.org here

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Cincinnati’s The Brandery Announces 2012 Startup Class, And It Starts Young

Earlier we reported on Louisville Kentucky startup Impulcity and the fact that they would be headed up to Cincinnati for this years class at the Brandery. The Brandery is a marketing focused Cincinnati incubator. All of the companies selected to participate in the 2012 session receive $20,000 in seed capital and will participate in a 14 week program that includes free office space, mentoring, working with some of the top marketing and advertising people in the country and access to venture capitalists.

To date the Brandery has graduated 14 startups since 2010. This year’s class is 11 startups deep and the ages of these entrepreneurs range from 17 years old to 45. It’s a mix of Cincinnati based startups, to startups from across the US. However the Brandery received applications from over 40 different countries and received twice as many applications as the previous two years combined.

Enterchange reports that Rujul Zaparde is the youngest in the class at 17. His co-founders in their New Jersey based startup FlazCar are Shri Ganeshram and Kevin Petrovic, both of whom are just 18 themselves. Details were stealthily as to what they would be working on however Laura Baverman of Enterchange reports that these three high school buddies started a non profit that’s built 50 wells in India serving 80,000 residents. One word: Impressive.

At 45, Vinay Murthy is the oldest member of the class. Murthy left a position at Google where he helped develop Adsense, Adwords and also worked on YouTube among other things. His startup, with co-founder Vikram Venkataraghavan is called 360pager, and again there’s word on exactly what they are doing.

Here’s the full list of startups in this years class as reported by Enterchange at Cincinnati.com:

Brooklyn, NY: Off Track Planet, Freddie Pikovsky, 29, and Anna Starostinetskaya, 29.

Chicago: Ontract, Julian Miller, 31, and Matt Duch, 26.

Cincinnati: Modulus, Charlie Key, 28, Brandon Cannaday, 28, and Richard Key, 24, (moving back home from Tucson).

Cincinnati: VouchedFor, Michael Bergman, 33, David Volker, 31, Bree Bergman, 31, Stephen Hartz, 34.

Cleveland: Flock’d, Greg Svitak, 37, and Kurt Pettit, 34. According to its website, Flock’d is a mobile application that lets groups check-in at bars and request rewards from the bars’ owners or managers.

Louisville: Impulcity, Hunter Hammonds, 21, and Austin Cameron, 22. They’ve already received some press in Louisville for a plan to use data from a person’s social media presence to recommend events and venues that fit his or her interests.

New York: Socstock, Jay Finch, 26, and Angelo Stracquatanio, 25. Its website describes an online platform that helps small businesses raise capital from their community of supporters, in return for future goods and services at the business.

New Jersey: FlazCar, Rujul Zaparde, 17, Shri Ganeshram, 18, and Kevin Petrovic, 18.

Salt Lake City: CrowdHall, Austin Hackett, 27, Jordan Menzel, 27, and Nick Wientge, 34, of San Diego (and Cincinnati native). A website for the company calls it a free online platform that lets high-profile people respond to public discourse and lets crowds more effectively communicate with those high-profile people.

San Francisco: 360Pager, Vinay Murthy, 45, and Vikram Venkataraghavan, 36.

Seattle: FlyDutch, Andy Zhang, 26, George Lin, 26, and Sean Wen, 27. According to a profile on AngelList, a site that matches startups and investors, FlyDutch helps online daters meet in person faster, safer and more casually.

The Brandery has a team of over 55 mentors with top notch business and startup experience. The list includes Mike Bott, the General Manager of The Brandery; Lucas Watson, Vice President of Sales and Marketing at YouTube; and Tim O’Shaughnessy, CEO of Living Social.

Powerhouse VC firms including Union Square Ventures, First Round Capital and Polaris also have mentors participating. This is actually one of the strongest teams of mentors we’ve seen at an incubator “everywhere else”.

The program officially starts July 2 and will end with a Demo Day set for October 3rd when all 11 teams will show off their startups.

Linkage:

Source: Enterchange at Cincinnati.com

For more information visit brandery.org

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South Carolina Startup: 52 Apps Will Produce 52 Apps This Year

Here’s a story that’s just screaming “everywhere else”. Two students who actually hail from Arkansas, Brandon Lee and Chris Thibault are two ambitious young entrepreneurs who have built a startup app studio with a twist. Their startup is working out of an incubator at USC where Thibault was a student.

Their development company, called 52apps, is set out to produce 52 high quality apps over the next year. They hope to produce each app in just five days, presumably cheating the startup culture and taking weekends off, which is ok considering they are also students.

While the 52apps concept isn’t entirely new, the way they’ve set out to find app ideas has an interesting twist. The startup held almost a “pitch” event Friday evening. At the event they took app suggestions from all walks of life at an event with a stage, pitches and brainstorming.

Lee and Tthibault heard a ton of great app ideas at their “Idea Day” that was held immediately following a launch and kick off event for their University of South Carolina, Columbia, based company,

These two aren’t guys who just decided to become app developers in College. Both Lee and Thibault are BFFs from high school, who developed their first app while they were till in high school, with the ambitious idea to make math homework easier and more automated. They were able to achieve that as part of a goal to stop taking backpacks to school.

52apps is just one of 32 resident startup companies at a fairly new incubator at UNC.
“These are two- to three-month projects,” said Steve Leicht, who serves as 52apps’ chief executive and part of the management team put together by the incubator and Columbia venture capitalist Don Tomlin, said Tomthe statee.com. “These folks pull it off in a week.”

The duo has already put out their first iOS app under the 52apps umbrella. The app, called Tap Notes, sells for $2.99 in the iTunes app store and helps students, and business professionals take notes, and record conversations for the notes that can be accessed at specific points rather than having to listen to an entire conversation and then pulling what you need.

Lee and Thibault report that they’ve received over 30 great ideas so far and will start developing straight away.

Linkage:

Check out 52apps at 52apps.com

Source: thestate.com

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Chicago Startup: OpenAirplane Rent Planes As Easily As Cars

A startup in Chicago is looking to change the game for about 96% of pilots who have their licenses but have been fed up with the current way planes are rented. Currently, after you’ve invested nearly $10,000 in a pilots license the next step is to start getting flight hours. Planes are quite costly so the easiest way to do that is to rent them.

Planes rent for roughly $185 per hour that the engines are actually turning. While it may seem like a costly hobby that’s just the start of it. Right now when you rent a plane you have to do what is called a “check out” with the plane rental company. It’s almost like a mini pilots test and can involve half the day and add money to your bottom line.

If you rent one plane in Chicago, and take it to Miami, and then rent a different, plane, but the exact same model for the return trip from Miami to Chicago you have to take another checkout “test”. They can’t just take the certificate or the word of the previous rental company.

OpenAirplane is trying to change that by offering a network of pilots who’ve taken a more universal “checkout” annually. By having their network of pilots take one “universal” checkout it speeds up the process, cuts down the frustration and ultimately adds up to more rented plane hours and more revenue for the plane rental companies.

OpenAirplane’s two founders Adam Fast and Rod Rakic are both pilots themselves and have experienced these pains first hand.

Fast and Rakic have gotten out of the office and into the field and successfully recruited every single major insurance carrier that provides insurance to plane rental companies, on board with their idea. This is not a matter of the TSA or the FAA. In fact Rakic told a group after a pitch in Chicago that the FAA would prefer that more pilots were renting and ultimately flying.

After a major aviation industry trade event in Florida, Rakic and Fast were able to recruit over 2700 pilots to their network which is still in stealth mode, but will roll out publicly, very shortly.

OpenAirplane will then serve as a network to connect pilots to plane rentals and even customers. Their “network” will be free for pilots and rental companies to join. OpenAirplane will take a revenue cut from the rental companies who ultimately should be more than happy to share in revenue because OpenAirplane will generate more rentable hours all around.

In addition to putting more money in the rental companies pockets, and more flight hours for the pilots, they will also make private rentals and flying safer. They can make this claim because their “universal” checkout test will be streamlined so that every pilot takes the same test and also because it will be an annual requirement. The FAA only requires pilots to test every two years.

Now as Rakic says, pilots with a pilot license in their back pocket will be able to book their next flight online and grab the keys, the checklist and go.

Linkage:

We’re featuring Chicago all week long in preparation for TechWeek, more info on that here

Check out OpenAirplane at their website here

Check out their pitch video on their Angel.co page here

We need some help to get to Chicago check this out IT’S JUST TWO BUCKS

Auburn Alabama Startup: GolfJoust The Perfect FREE Father’s Day Gift

Auburn Alabama is known for their Auburn Tigers championship football team, Bo Jackson, Cam Netwon and being the alma mater of Apple CEO Tim Cook. It’s not known (yet) for it’s thriving startup scene.

There’s a startup in Auburn hoping to change that, and they are Verge Pipe Media. Verge Pipe Media is a media engagement, social, app developer who’s signature product Golf Joust is turning heads on the golf course because it’s easy, different and a lot more fun than just a boring old score keeping app.

The Verge Pipe team is headed by CEO and founder Don Crow and COO Meredith Singer. Crow had a seasoned career at America Online and has a firm background in media. Singer also has a background in media having worked in television and interactive media throughout their career. They came together last year to work on both Verge Pipe Media and their first major project GolfJoust.

Their office in downtown Auburn is screaming startup culture despite the fact that they’re just a smidgeon older than the 20 something sect of startup founders springing up across the country. That doesn’t matter though, when you walk in there’s of course orange and blue accents, but high top wooden desks, macs everywhere and the classic big ass table in the middle of the office for brainstorming sessions, meetings and lunch. It’s here next to Auburn’s oldest used bookstore and a stone throws away from campus that the magic happens.

You may be asking yourself just how magic can a golf app be. After all Golf Joust is their first signature product. Well Crow and Singer along with their developers have come up with a golf app that combines golf, scoring, daily deals, social networking and gamification into one complete package.

With Golf Joust you keep your score and as you play more rounds you move up through knighthood. You stay social within your golf group (typically of four) and also golfers near you and the entire network.

There’s challenges, badges (for good and bad) and even the ability to get deals from clubhouses and golf courses.

They’re even working on an element of Fantasy golf where you can play against your favorite PGA players at your favorite PGA courses. I really hate paraphrasing EA sports but Golf Joust really lets you get in the game.

Crow and Singer are constantly brainstorming more and more things that they can add to Golf Joust and they aren’t afraid to get out in the trenches. They regularly spend days out on the golf course promoting Golf Joust. Crow admits that while he expected easy adoption from golfers 18-25 their next biggest segment is in their early 40’s like himself.

Crow explained that many people love the game of golf but know their limits and levels so utilizing Golf Joust and then adding the ability to play against their favorite players makes it even more fun. But the social element makes it ripe for “crap talking” against golfing buddies. You can even give badges to your fellow knights when they hit the double bogey.

So while we would never advocate giving someone a free gift for Father’s Day, introducing your dad, or the golfer in your family to Golf Joust for Father’s day may get a thank you for many years to come.

Linkage:

Check out Golf Joust at their web page here

Here’s your download link for the Google Play Store

Here’s Golf Joust in the iTunes Store

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Knoxville Startup: Virtuous Products Wins Business Plan Competition

Imagine if you could take recycled bottles and turn them into flooring, countertops and even outdoor casual furniture. Well you don’t have to imagine it anymore because Mark Wassenaar and his startup Virtuous Products Inc, have created it. Well at least the business plan for it.

The material called Sedonite uses recycled glass with the strength and look of resin or cement based products at a fraction of the cost, and much greener.

“We were impressed by all the entrepreneurs who took part in this competition,” Todd Napier, executive vice president of The Development Corporation of Knox County and co-presenter of the program with the Knoxville Chamber and Tech20/20 said. “Virtuous Products shows an enormous amount of promise and the judges indicated they expect big things from the start-up in the years to come.”

The Knoxville Chamber Business Plan Competition actually started back in April. That’s when Wassenaar submitted his original business plan. He was able to survive four rounds of judging which included written summaries and in person proof of concept presentations.

Tabletops made out of recycled glass and "sedonite" are why Virtuous Products won the Knoxville Chamber Competition (photo: Sedonite.com)

As the winner of the competition Virtuous Products wins:

$10,000 grant for start-up costs
$15,000 potential investment: Tech 20/20 Venture Start-up Fund
One-year’s rent at the Fairview Technology Center
Accounting services provided by Rodefer Moss & Company
Business coaching provided by CEO Advisors
IT Hosting/Services by The IT Company & Digital Crossing Networks
Legal Services by Kathleen Zitzman
Chamber membership by the Knoxville Chamber
Business coaching by Tech 20/20

Wassenaar has plans to use the prize money to purchase a glass crusher, which will allow him to take recycled beer bottles and smash them into a sand-like consistency. From there, his company takes the material and can put it into a molding with a proprietary bonding agent that creates a faux stone surface that is as strong and less expensive than most competitors on the market today.

“I’ve been in manufacturing my whole life. I try to get out but it just keeps coming back because there is so much creativity involved. I literally lie awake at night thinking of new ideas,” Mark Wassenaar, the founder and CEO of Virtuous Products said. “This competition, even if I didn’t win, it would have been an unbelievable opportunity because the competition really helped me along the way.”

Linkage:

Find out more about Sedonite and Vertous Products here

Find out more about the Knoxville Chamber here

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Lithuanian Startup: GigBasket Moves To US To Launch Job Pinning Site INTERVIEW

The two Lithuanian co-founders behind startup GigBasket have moved to the United States to launch their job “pinning” platform. GigBasket allows users to save job openings to a users GigBasket account from virtually any site in the world.

If you’re familiar with Pinterest and the “pinning” concept of being able to go to any website and “pin” something which then posts that something to Pinterest, then you will automatically understand how GigBasket does the same thing for jobs.

The platform works in two different ways you can add a job manually that you may have seen online, or you can add the bookmarklet to your browser by simply dragging it to your bookmarks bar and then hit the GigBasket button anytime you see a job you find worthy of applying for.

GigBasket allows you to create your own profile after logging in using your linked in account. GigBasket also pulls through data from your LinkedIn account to make keywords for your job search.

Rounding out the simple, but feature packed site are an interview calendar and a dashboard that shows you what jobs you’re “tracking” and what jobs you’ve “applied to”. It makes it extremely easy to remove a job if you’ve either lost interest or the job has been filled.

We got a chance to speak with Eddy Balcikonis, co-founder and CEO of GigBasket in the interview below. He tells us about the GigBasket platform and why he and his co-founder Eugene, moved to America to launch this very useful startup.