Startups Archives - Page 111 of 144

Startup America Partners With Startup RockOn For DNC RNC Events

Startup America and Startup RockOn have announced that they are partnering for some very exciting events this year.

Startup RockOn is a collaborative effort of fast growing Startups, Event Farm, HyperVocal, and Fighter Interactive. Together they are putting together mini festival style events at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) on September 3, 2012 in Charlotte North Carolina and the Republican National Convention (RNC) August 27th in Tampa Bay.

The events will highlight America’s thriving startup culture, have interactive displays and sessions and feature musical performances, including the group The Roots who have agreed to headline the events.

Startup America CEO, Scott Case, stated, “As the RNC and DNC capture the attention of the country, it’s imperative to highlight the importance of startups to our national economy, and we’re incredibly excited to partner with EventFarm, HyperVocal and FIGHTER Interactive — three hard-working startups themselves — to do just that.”

The StartUp RockOn leadership team stated, “From a garage band to culture-shifting software, from next-generation media companies to 21st century energy solutions, the greatest American success stories start (and will start) through ingenuity, creativity, hard work and perseverance. StartUp RockOn honors the entrepreneurs of America’s bright future.”

Startup America is now 23 regional partnerships strong and has already hosted or partnered for a bunch of great events including a Startup America event at the Hilton in Austin during South by Southwest Interactive.

This new partnership will spur even more interest in Startups, entrepreneurism and technology in the United States, regardless of political affiliation.

Linkage:

Las Vegas Startup: SpoonerSpot Prepares For Global Rollout

A new Las Vegas startup called SpoonerSpot is preparing for a global launch. Their socially charged recommendation platform has been in beta for a while. The develops are putting the finishing touches on the official public release and tidying up their website.

SpoonerSpot is trying to bridge the gap between the physical world and the world. This is achieved by users posting “spots” or places and recommending them on a global map for others to see. Its like a crowd sourced, map based version of Yelp.

SpoonerSpot was born when Las Vegas startup CitySpoon pivoted from a coupon platform along the lines of daily deals, to recommendations. Users, called “spooners” could report their own great or hot deals to the social community. Now the platform is for any kind of “spot” and soon it will encompass the globe.

The company did an extensive beta test which they report gave them lots of feedback:

Feedback from beta users of SpoonerSpot has allowed the site to increase its overall User Experience, continuously creating an even more engaging social networking platform. Beta user demand has given the team insights that has led to a notification system, so users can be updated on recent changes in their SpoonerSpot social network, a more robust layout that brings all of the site’s features to the forefront of the experience, and an easy to use method of finding friends on SpoonerSpot by searching for either user name or first and last name.

CitySpoon was launched in Las Vegas’ thriving startup community last summer and they pan to release the first version of their public product by the end of the week.

Linkage:

For more info on SpoonerSpot visit this site

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Baltimore Startup: NJorku Is A Job Board In Africa INTERVIEW

There’s a startup in Baltimore called Njorku and what they are doing is actually very exciting. Co-founder Chika Uwazie and her team are connecting people in Africa with jobs in Africa.

We’ve heard time and time again that more and more people in Africa are taking to mobile phones and smartphones because they can’t afford computers and internet access in the home. When we ran this story we actually found out that hundreds of millions of people live off the grid and walk miles to charge their phones. So in continents like Africa mobile is a lifeline.

That’s why Uwazie and her team have developed a job site and aggregator that delivers the information to African people via their mobile device. Employers get access to NJorku’s database where they can upload jobs and then correspond with candidates via SMS/Text messages on their phones.

The service is available in Cameroon, Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, South Africa, Egypt and Ghana.

Job seekers can also do everything most typical full job websites allow you to do, via mobile whether they are on a smart phone or feature phone. NJorku has made it easy for job seekers to upload their resumes and show interest in available jobs with text messaging.

With such an awesome idea we had to take a few moments and talk with Uwazie. The interview is after the break

Vermont Startup: i-ask Mobile App Let’s You Get Feedback Instantly INTERVIEW

Burlington Vermont startup i-ask is all about asking questions and getting feedback instantly. The concept is the brain child of co-founder Steve Foley who used to take online surveys for fun. He was looking for a way to offer a question and answer format with instant feedback via a mobile app. It was that idea that is the foundation behind i-ask.

Imagine being at the store and not having a buddy with you to decide what to get. Or actually I had this exact experience last month at Best Buy when both the Nikon D3200 and the Nikon D5100 were the exact same price. Luckily I have 100,000 followers on Twitter and could solicit feedback really quickly however if I had i-ask I could just ask and for lack of a better word, crowdsource the answer.

Foley was able to solicit feedback for his startup from comedian and star of the CMT hit show “Mabe In America”, Tom Mabe, who said, ” I spend hours going through sites having to delete unwanted or unrelated comments made on my videos and content, i-ask would be the perfect choice for me to put my material on and I no longer need to worry about the feedback”.

We got a chance to talk with Steve about i-ask, check out the interview after the break
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LA Startup: 12 Society Offering Hot Subscription Box Of Celebrity Endorsed Goodies

We’ve all seen so many varieties of the subscription box model. We’ve got birch box for health and beauty, Chicago’s Klutch Club for health and wellness products, England’s Flavor Box for monthly flavors, Houston’s Whimsey Box for craft goodies and countless others.

12 Society is offering something really cool. We don’t want to call it the dudes equivalent to a Birch Box because there are definitely geeky, gadget and fun loving women who will love the stuff they can get from being a 12 society member. The best part about 12 Society though is that you’re getting products that are endorsed by celebrities like Nick Cannon, Nas, Tim Linecum, Michael Strahan, Blake Griffin and Kevin Love.

12 Society offers top notch gadgets, gear and fun. Their website shows off a pair of headphones, remote controlled helicopter and a nice Spalding basketball as some of the things you could get delivered for your $39 subscription, monthly.

12 Society promises between four and six premium products from tech,athletics,fashion and apparel.

Co-Founder Nasir Jones (Hip Hop legend Nas) says on the company’s website:

“I’ve been blessed to lead a lifestyle that allows me to experience the pinnacle of creation and innovation, and I have always wanted a way to share this with the people that I love. That’s why I’m teaming up with some of my favorite athletes, entertainers, musicians and thought-leaders to start 12Society.

Our celebrity style board will give you an inside look into the latest trends in tech, fashion, popular culture and athletics that are impacting and improving our lives. We’ll turn you into a taste-maker and trend-setter by picking out products every month that we love and use, all while giving you a great value on gadgets, gear, apparel, accessories and more! We are award-winners, world champions, entrepreneurs, music legends, dunk masters and sack-artists – and we’re here to hook you up.”

Nas’ co-founder and CEO of 12 Society is Sameer Mehta a 2009 graduate of Carnegie Mellon. Mehta was also the co-founder of Mark Cuban backed Jungle Cents which had raised $1.5 million before selling the assets off to Cuban to found 12 Society.

Linkage:

Check out or sign up for 12 Society here

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

Silicon Beach Fest What To Look Forward To On The 21st

Over the past weekend both Kyle and I were at startup events, and if you think with all the events so far this month the two of us have been covering is enough you’d be wrong. Later this month I’ll be covering Silicon Beach Fest in Santa Monica California from June 21-23rd. Organizes by Kevin Winston formally of MySpace, and current CEO of Digital LA. Jason Crilly, CEO and Founder of Pagewoo and Efren Toscano. Founder of TechZulu an independent news organization delivering an insightful story of the technology industry by showcasing the very people creating it. Brought together he top Startup Incubators in the Los Angeles area such as Start Engine, io/LA, Idealab, Amplify and others. For this start studded event. When Kevin Winston was questioned about what brought him to creating Silicon Beach Fest, he mentioned to me.

Chicago Startup: Ox&Pen Loyalty & Reward Network INTERVIEW

Loyalty and Reward startups are hot right now. One thing that some of the newer entries into the space are learning is that people are tired of accumulating points and rewards at one place, that they can only spend at one place. Philadelphia’s Lokalty, DesMoines startup FreeBee Cards and Kansas’ Front Flip are all loyalty reward networks that allow users to earn points in one place and spend them at another.

Chicago’s Ox&Pen takes that reward philosophy and brings it to the bustling city of Chicago. Ox&Pen isn’t just about checkout reward points though. With the OxandPen app you can earn points by checking into network places, socially sharing network places and of course with purchase rewards.

The app is quite robust and feature packed while keeping the UI graphically rich and easily organized. There is also no printing involved with Ox&Pen, everything happens in-app including redemption.

With Ox&Pen once you accumulate enough in network points the rewards are free and require no additional purchase.

The best part about the network? It’s reserved for local, independent, unique merchants. You won’t find deals or rewards for big box national chains on Ox&Pen, but you will find promotions for Vera, The Fifty/50, Krista K Boutique, Bleeding Heart Bakery, Dog-a-holics, Roots Pizza and more (only in Chicago at this time). And, of course, you can earn loyalty points at these placesand redeem them anywhere in the network.

We got a chance to interview Ox&Pen, check out the interview below the break.

Nashville Startup Populr.Me Could Be A Game Changer

Tennessee has some great startups. We saw a slew of them this past weekend during 48 Hour Launch, you can check out all of that coverage here. Now we move our coverage of startups “everywhere else” east to Nashville.

There’s a startup in Nashville called Populr.me which is bubbling under the radar. Populr.me is a self publishing platform that the company dubs a “Personalized One Page” or pop. They were aiming for a Q1 release, right now they are currently doing a beta sign up on their home page.

From what we can tell Populr.me’s POP platform has a variety of uses. You can use it for your resume and include multimedia. On the other end of that spectrum, companies can use it to build a one page for welcoming new employees, or a flier page for talking about a company event.

The company’s motto is “Richer than email and Faster than a website”. While there are plenty of self publishing platforms, Populr.me seems to offer simplicity and quickness as their top selling points. There isn’t a service out there that allows for this quick, one page publishing. Sure you can set up a Blogger blog or Word Press blog in just a few minutes but you have to fidget with themes, produce content, figure out what plugins you want for multimedia and then you can publish.

The Nashville based startup was founded by CEO Nicholas Holland and the rest of the team includes Jared Scheel (Chief Product Officer) and Daniel Nelson (Chief Technology Officer). A couple of weeks back the company tweeted that someone in their beta test had embedded a Starbucks gift card, pretty neat stuff.

Some folks around the web have compared Populr.me to popular site about.me. I think the concepts are inherently different. About.me is my one online destination site to link all my links in the world. Of course it can include my resume and other things, but it’s not the same. Populr.me is going to allow the user to make a resume page, or maybe a birthday party page, an invitation, all kinds of other easy to use tasks.

Nashville music and technology entrepreneur Mark Montgomery, is an investor in Populr.me because he feels that the service could be “a game changing venture that could boost Nashville’s position on the digital map” that according to Getahn Ward at the Tennessean.

Linkage:

Nibletz is the voice of startups “everywhere else” check out these stories from “everywhere else” (there’s a lot of Memphis in there right now)

Greenville Startup: EyeBar Relocating To Wilmington After Winning Contest

A cool video streaming startup from Greenville South Carolina recently won the “Bootstrap ILM” contest in Wilmington North Carolina. The BootStrap ILM contest was sponsored by Wilmington Downtown Inc, Double Eagle and Tayloe Gray.

Double Eagle is a co-working space located in Wilmington North Carolina. They’re the backbone to the prize package that EyeBar has won.

The winning companies in Bootstrap ILM were the proud recipients of:

Office Space: The Double Eagle at 404 North Third Street comes complete with parking, free secured bandwidth internet, a conference room and kitchenette/break room. BootStrap winners get 90 days of free rent and The Double Eagle will offer flexible terms to those who desire to stay long term, or even month-to-month. Visit the website for the Double Eagle.
Support from the Community: A weekly brown bag lunch series will feature roundtable discussions of various entrepreneurial and industry supporters (lawyers, accountants, other high growth entrepreneurs, real estate professionals, etc).
Design Services: TayloeGray will provide business cards, a basic web site and design assistance when and where needed.
Publicity: Wilmington Downtown Inc. (WDI) will provide the marketing push to get your company initial notoriety upon launch. Additionally, WDI will network your company with others in the downtown community so that when you need something, it’s only a call away.

Spencer Barrick the founder and CEO of EyeBar is very excited about venturing over to Wilmington. His technology allows users to see what’s going on at bars, clubs, festivals and events. Barrick is already looking for places where he can implement the EyeBar technology. He said in a press release:

“BootStrap helps WDI complete several of our goals and we look forward to running this program again next year. We generated some great interest and I’m impressed with the high quality applicants that [were] submitted this year,” said WDI president and CEO John Hinnant, in a press release.

Greenville just started their “Next Big Thing” incubator program today in Greenville.

Linkage:

Find out more about Eyebar here

Find out more about the Bootstrap ILM contest here

Check out Double Eagle Here

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

Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors Backs Seattle Startup Tango Card

Seattle startup Tango Card is looking to continue to bring innovation to the gift card and rewards space. They are focused on enterprise customers and incorporate digital goods into gift cards and loyalty programs. Tango Card already powers solutions for Bing Rewarsd, FedEx, Extole and Shutterfly.

Those are just some of the factors by two big announcements the company had last week. First of which was that Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors has participated in a $1.8 million dollar Series A round, alongside Western Technology Investment. Tango Card plans to use those funds to hire more software developers and expand their proprietary software applications.

Tango Card also announced that Westpac GM Technology and Boeing Joint Strike Fighter IT director Randy Fennel is joining the company in an expanded CTO role.

“As a company we’re focused on launching innovative and proprietary software applications in huge and unexplored verticals, execution, and strong brand and partner curation. With Innovation Endeavors and WTI as our first institutional investors we have access to incredible industry thought leaders, mentors and innovators from the Innovation Community. Both investors also bring very deep pockets and long-term focus to Tango Card,” said David Leeds, CEO and Founder of Tango Card. “Additionally, our ability to attract someone with the pedigree, capabilities, and respect that Randy Fennel brings to the company underscores the exciting things we have already done and the mission we are on. Ultimately, this additional capital and the hire of Randy positions us to scale rapidly – a good thing since we have grown 30X already year-over-year,” Leeds concludes.

“We were attracted to Tango Card’s vision of bringing gift cards and digital goods to huge and unexplored areas, and doing this primarily through efficient and scalable software and proprietary applications,” said Dror Berman, Founding Managing Partner at Innovation Endeavors. “We believe we can add significant value as partners and advisors and look forward to working with this exceptionally talented team.” Maurice Werdegar, CEO of WTI stated, “We love David’s track record of success and clear results-based leadership. I’ve known him since his FiberTower days, just before he and his co-founders took that company public, and we see similar opportunities here.”

Tango Card works like no other gift card program out there. A purchaser can buy a Tango Card and give it to the recipient via email. The recipient can then exchange the value of the card for a variety of retailers cards like Amazon, iTunes, Target etc. Or they can elect to donate all or a portion of the cards value to charity.

Not only that but Tango Card makes their card program more social. They call it the “What I got” card, and they allow the recipient to take a picture of what they got with the card and post it for the giver to see via a mobile app available for both Android and iOS.

Tango Card allows more variety for the recipient and a better chance they’ll get what they actually want, no matter what the retailer.

Linkage

Find out more about Tango Card here

Check out the Tango Card app for Android here

Check out the Tango Card app for iPhone here

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

Hollywood Hack A Day, Final Recap

“It’s like a party, you are afraid that no one will show up”

Rahim Sonawalla mentioned to me about his fears about putting together Hollywood Hack A Day. But boy did they show up. While Kyle was in Memphis for a Launch event this past weekend, I was on the West Coast. More specifically Hollywood California to witness Hollywood Hack Day taking place at io/LA which was nice enough to provide their location to use for the weekend. Put together by Ryan Chisholm, Rahim Sonawalla and Abe Burns, this weekends event expected around around 70 developers, graphic artist, and visionaries to show up. Battling 80 degree crystal clear skies, developers spent all weekend from 0900 on Saturday to 6pm on Sunday putting together not only presentations but working projects as well.

Bowie Business Innovation Center Opens For Maryland Startups

Bowie State University has teamed up with the city of Bowie (a Washington DC suburb in Prince George’s County Maryland) to launch the Bowie Business Innovation Center. The center resides on the campus of the University and provides early stage companies with access to low cost office space, mentoring and other essentials needed for launching a startup company.

The Bowie Business Innovation Center received $50,000 in funding from the city of Bowie. They are slated to receive another $50.000 for fiscal 2013 that starts in July. Bowie’s city council is supporting the program because it’s advancing small business in Bowie and hopefully the startup companies in the program will bring more jobs to the area.

There are currently two resident companies and two affiliate companies. According to gazette.net the center, which is housed on the second floor of Bowie State University’s business building, has space for 9 early stage companies.

According to gazette.net:

Clark Training Solutions LLC is owned by a service disabled veteran from Bowie specializing in management and IT training, Smith said, and the second is Magadia Consulting LLC, a home-based, risk-management company owned by a Bowie State University alumna specializing in information assurance. BSS Now, an e-commerce website for military families started by a recent BSU grad, and X-Prop Sports, a minority-owned builder of sports training aids, are the two affiliate companies.

Linkage:
For more information of the Bowie Business Innovation Center visit this site

Source: Gazette.net

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Memphis Startup: Yaddoog Final Pitch At 48 Hour Launch

Yaddoog, Good Day spelled backwards, was one of the best startups at 48 Hour Launch this weekend in Memphis. It was a great event overall with a lot of Memphis’ startup community supporting the entrepreneurs and their ideas all weekend long.

For first time startup founder Harold Strong, it was a weekend to get the idea living in his head out into the open and developed. According to the support team at Emerge Memphis Strong had been working on his pitch for days prior to Friday’s first pitches and the hard work then and over the weekend has paid off.

Problem: The answer to the question “How Was Your Day” is usually bull sh*t. 99% of people answer “fine”

Solution: Yaddoog wants to turn the question on it’s head. They do this with a new photosharing app. I said repeatedly all weekend long to people who asked for my feedback on the event, that it has been a longtime since I heard a good pitch for a photo sharing app, until Friday.

Yaddoog lets the user take a series of up to 24 photos (representative of hours in the day) and then publishes them all onto the Yaddoog website at the set time at the end of the day. The user can also assign two emotions to each picture like, happy, sad, pissed, etc. As Strong said in his presentation and in talks with us throughout the weekend, 24 photos tells a story.

After the event I was talking with David Traxler co-founder of Memphis startup Friendsignia and Eric Matthews CEO and Co-President of Launch YourCity and we all agreed that in addition to telling great stories of someones day Yaddoog would be great for special days like, a baby’s first day, or leading up to a kids first day at school. Weddings was another time that Yaddoog would be awesome.

Showing the roulette wheel of emotions a bride has leading up to the big moment would make a great story for Yaddoog.

Of course it’s not all about happy bappy days either. We’ve all had a college buddy who has had their picture taken and posted to Facebook after a night of drinking, pictures get progressively worse as the night ensues, with the final picture typically being a face full of Sharpie marker. Traxler said, wouldn’t it be great to see that guys day starting with his bowl of cornflakes the previous morning.

Indeed it would.

Traxler’s startup Friendsignia just graduated from the most recent SeedHatchery class last month and was paying his experience forward by mentoring Strong and the other startups all weekend long.

Strong admitted that they have a lot of work to do to get the app to market but he’s going to do it or die trying. Check out his final pitch from Sunday here:

Linkage

Checkout Yaddoog here on Facebook

Here’s more coverage from 48 Hour Launch

Nibletz is the voice of startups “everywhere else” check out these stories from “everywhere else”

Memphis Startup: HappyPotty Final Pitch At 48 Hour Launch

Lot’s of people came out Sunday night to the final pitch event for LaunchMemphis, SeedHathery and LaunchYourCity’s 48 hour launch event. Graduates of SeedHatchery’s two previous classes were in attendance all weekend long to mentor and support their fellow startups. Also, previous participants in the last 5 48 Hour Launch events were in attendance as well.

Hometown startup hero Sarah Lacy of PandoDaily was absent from the event, despite the fact that she vowed to cover startups everywhere in her inaugural post at the relatively new startup focused Silicon Valley website. Oh Well we’ve got a lot of coverage here from the great event.

HappyPotty was another one of the unique “finalists” selected to develop over the weekend long event.

Problem: Finding a clean bathroom on a road trip

Solution: HappyPotty hopes to be the mobile app of choice to find clean “Happy” bathrooms while traveling by car.

There are a couple of similar sites out there. The biggest one was developed in conjunction with toilet paper giant Charmin, however it has it’s flaws.

HappyPotty ran through some statistics including the fact that there are over half a million potty breaks during road travel per year. That number actually seems a little low.

The app is simple, go to a bathroom and rate it “Happy” or “Crappy” the interface shows two toilet flushers, one colored green, and the other red.

They hope to add more functionality like details on the bathroom from cleanliness, to changing tables, seat covers and more.

For monetization they are looking at traditional mobile app in app ads and geo-located advertising with couponing.

The biggest challenge with an app like this is they have to build enormous, nationwide scale fast. The other challenge is sourcing bathrooms. Surely there are a lot of location based api’s however none that will tell you whether they have a multi-person bathroom or a one person bathroom or if you’ll have to purchase something to even use the bathroom.

They Happy Potty team was able to track down some gas station and rest stop data to start the build out of the app, alongside FourSquare API’s. Check out the pitch video below:

Linkage

Check out Happy Potty here at happypottyapp.com

Here’s more of our 48 Hour Launch coverage

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