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Memphis Startup: ScrewPulp Final Pitch 48 Hour Launch

ScrewPulp is an idea that hasn’t been tackled in quite this way before. It’s a self publishing website that allows authors to publish their books to the site. So what’s so unique about that?

Problem: More and more authors are turning to self publishing. Just look at 50 Shades of Gray for instance. According to the startups data there were over 200,000 self published books out of over 1.5 million books published with ISBN numbers.

Self published authors have a hard time garnering social network interest, ratings and reviews which can be the lifeline for a self published book.

Solution: ScrewPulp offers an innovative new platform for self publishers that builds the social network interest piece and the ratings and reviews piece as well. After a book is downloaded 100 times they will switch to $.99 for the next 1,000 copies. After that they’ll increase to $1.99 and so on.

The monetization plan is to take 25% of the sales from books that are selling on the site.

Screw Pulp will giveaway the authors first 100 copies in exchange for a social media share and a rating/review. Readers who love reading new books will be able to download one free book at a time. Once they share it across social media and provide a star rating and or review, they’ll be allowed to download their next free book.

As far as rights are concerned, Billings would like to require authors to hold their work on ScrewPulp for a year regardless of whether or not that author gets their book picked up from another publisher.

Founder Richard Billings said in the Q&A that ScrewPulp will start with novel sized books first and then expand to series and even short stories. Billings also said he would like to use the format for indie artists as well and said we could expect a ScrewTapes out at some point as well.

Check out their Sunday pitch video below:

Linkage:

Check out ScrewPulp here at their website

Here’s more of Nibletz’ coverage of 48 Hour Launch in Memphis

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New Hampshire Startup: Regaalo Takes To Indiegogo For Expansion

The student founders of Regaalo (photo regaalo.com)

Stories like this one are a strong indicator that as soon as the SEC figures out the regulations for crowdfunding for startups, it’s going to take off.

Regaalo, a social gifting startup founded by University of New Hampshire (UNH) graduates has taken to crowdfunding site, Indiegogo, to expand their gifting startup to Boston.

Regaalo allows parents and loved ones of college students to send them real gifts using an app on their mobile phones. The service is currently available for UNH students from surrounding merchants. Basically a parent or loved one back home can pay for and send their college student a real gift that will show up on the students mobile phone.

For example parents can order their student a pizza from a local pizza merchant. All the student has to do is pick the pizza up and show them the app on the phone to verify payment.

“The text-messaging gift gives us our edge, it’s what makes us unique,” said Jessica Streitmater, a Litchfield native and one of the student co-founders of the site told the New Hampshire Business Review. “There are quite a bit of people that do care packages, but we do have an edge on that too because we make it customizable.”

The startup is looking for $5,000 on Indiegogo to fund interns in the Boston area so that they can expand their service to Boston University. The company will remain headquartered in New Hampshire. There are incentives on the Indiegogo campaign for donations up to $800. At the time this story was written they’ve raised $975 of their $5,000 dollars with 21 days to go.

“we have a lot of people who are really interested in the company and who would love to help us,” said Streitmater. “They ask, ‘How can I help?’ And we really needed the help… to get to Boston.”

Linkage:

Check Out Regaalo here

Help them out on Indiegogo here

Source: New Hampshire Business Review

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Memphis Startup: LostPetCast Final Pitch at 48 Hour Launch

Sunday night in Memphis brought the final pitches for the four startups that were selected to develop at the weekend long event. LostPetCast was the first startup to the plate.

Idea: A centralized place to report lost pets and found pets

Problem: Losing or finding a pet can take hours of work to get the message out and spread the word. You need to contact local vets, animal shelters, humane societies, put up flyers, and search Craigslist ads.

Solution: LostPetCast allows users to quickly enter information for a lost or found pet. Through LostPetCast the information is automatically shared across multiple channels. It also becomes the one spot to see if your pet has been found by others.

LostPetCast is also offering premium features like an email/fax blast to local vet clinics, adoption services, shelters etc.

The idea is great. There are a couple of competitors in the space however if LostPetCast builds scale quickly they could have an advantage. They want to have several localized sites under the LostPetCast umbrella.

When I wrote about them on Friday I was concerned about the name. In the original pitch the founder said that they were the “amber alert for pets” however they researched that and there is already an amber alert for pets. Now they’re faced with a domain name challenge.

You can find them online at lostpetca.st while it’s a clever name it’s the same challenge that know.es faces it doesn’t roll off the tongue and when spread by word of mouth it will be hard to explain and then remember.

One way to get over that challenge is to have damn good SEO and get to the top of the Google results page for lost pets. That may be a new challenge in itself.

The concept is great. We can’t wait to see the execution. Check out their final pitch video below:

Linkage:

Check out LostPetCast here at their website

See more of our 48 Hour Launch Coverage Here

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

Florida Startup: Bellco’s Ion Air Mouse Computer Glove Preparing For Holidays

This is going to be a great holiday season. We are expecting to see new Retina display MacBooks introduced this week at WWDC, there will be a ton more ultra books and of course traditional PC laptops. In anticipation of that, a hot new startup from Central Florida called Bellco, will also see stock piles of their Ion Air Mouse Computer Glove, hopefully fly off the shelf.

Now that smartphone adoption has come to record heights, and tablets are flying off the shelves as well, people are growing more and more accustom to using their fingers for navigation. Sure you can do it on a track pad but it’s not the same familiarity as your tablet or smartphone screen.

I’m sure I’m not the only one that has tried to swipe across the screen of their MacBook Pro. (see you laughed) that’s where the Ion Air Mouse Computer Glove comes in. It’s a glove that fits around your hand snuggly, has a comfortable charging port (via micro usb) and a wireless dongle that attaches to any computer.

Once the glove is on you can use it your hand/finger as your pointing device. Admittedly it’s still not the same as the gestures that you’re used to with your smartphone but it’s effective. The glove also leaves your fingertips free for typing.

Now not only is it an effective peripheral but it’s also effectively priced. While the new startup behind the Ion Air Mouse Computer Glove, Bellco, could probably get away with selling it in the high $100 range, it comes in at just $79.99 making it priced the same as some of the more serious mice available today.

Bellco reports that the glove comes in gray and black and works with Windows, Linux,Mac and Android. Bellco encourages users to try it by setting up your computer via HDMI to a big tv for a “Wow” worth of experience.

Linkage

Itching to know more about it, go to their website here

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get your startup covered email startup@nibletz.com

Atlanta Startup: NearbyThis Launched Last Week At Virginia Highland Summerfest

NearbyThis is exactly what you think it would be, a new “discovery” mobile app for iPhone. Ray Abram CEO of NearbyThis and lead developer Glenn Martin, say that their app is different though because it drills down and geo targets advertising.

“NearbyThis helps consumers see what’s going on around them in real time and save money with daily deals by leveraging social media,” Abram said. “For retailers, NearbyThis offers the power to have two-way conversations with mobile customers. Advertisers, meanwhile, can take advantage of innovative geo-targeted technology by placing ads on users’ phones when they’re nearby places that sell their products.”

“Imagine going to a mall and having all coupons for nearby stores on hand, having the ability to receive realtime communications from the stores, as well as promotions from advertisers selling goods in those stores,” Martin said to the Examiner. “Other advertising models target users by behavior. We do it by proximity, which is more efficient and cost-effective.”

They recently launched NearbyThis at the popular Virginia Highland Summerfest in Atlanta last weekend. It was a great opportunity for them to launch the app in front of tens of thousands of people in an outdoor environment with plenty around to find and discover using NearbyThis.

NearbyThis also aggregates daily deals. We all know about Groupon and Living Social. We also know about the countless emails you can get for daily deals. NearbyThis pulls all that info into their app as well.

We’ve solved the problem with daily deal spam,” Abram said. “You get these emails every day, but you don’t want to unsubscribe because occasionally you find ones you like. We put all deals for nearby places on one page so you can just scroll through the list to see what you like.”

Another key advantage to NearbyThis is that Martin is no stranger to technology, mobile apps and big data. He holds the patents that power the widely popular Kayak.com travel site.

NearbyThis is combining the power of daily deals apps,social networking apps and geo-location or LBS (location based services apps) into one easy to use app and interface.

Linkage:

Find out more about NearbyThis at their website here

Here’s the iTunes page for NearbyThis

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

Boston Startup: SCVNGR Announces $12M Round For LevelUp Expansion

Boston location based scavenger startup SCVNGR has secured another $12 million in funding. This time it’s to roll out their payment platform LevelUp on a national level. LevelUp is currently in 8 US cities and plans to rollout nation wide.

“This is a new round of preferred stock that will be left open for 1-2 more large strategic partners to join,” SCVNGR founder Seth Priebatsch said in an email to the Boston Business Journal. “We’re already in late-stage conversations with them — just haven’t officially closed on their funds yet.”

LevelUp is a gamified, deals based mobile payment system that connects to a users current credit or debit card. The user gets a discount by using the LevelUp app the first time at a merchant and can earn more discounts by continuing to pay with LevelUp.

LevelUp is currently supported at 3,000 locations in their 8 states including national hamburger chain Johnny Rockets. They have nearly $200,000 users and are paint $2 million dollars per month through the service. Towering the adaption of services like Google Wallet.

LevelUp is currently available in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Seattle, San Francisco, San Diego and Chicago. SCVNGR will use the investment to add 40 people to their sales team and add more exciting merchants across more cities.

Linkage:

Check out LevelUp here at their website

Here’s LevelUp’s iTunes page

LevelUp in the Google Play Store

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

Portland Startups: Portland Seed Fund Graduates 9 In Second Class

The Portland Seed Fund has graduated nine startup companies out of their second 90 day incubator program. Portland Seed Fund held a demo day this past Wednesday to unveil the efforts of all nine startups to an audience of west coast angel and venture capital investors.

All nine startups, call Portland home, and are at varying stages in development. Most of them are either web or mobile based startups. Each startup received a seed investment of $25,000 along with mentoring, services, and help with development.

“These companies have made major progress in 90 days, not just on their products but on their approach to revenue and customers as well,” said Angela Jackson, co-managing director and co-founder of Portland Seed Fund with Jim Huston. “Many of these companies have already raised additional seed capital during the 90-day period, getting a big head start on life after Portland Seed Fund,” said Huston.

Take a look at the nine companies:

Beeminder tracks your goals and makes you stick to them. It plots your progress along a Yellow Brick Road and if you go off track, they take your money. Founded by computer scientists with backgrounds in data analysis and incentive systems, Beeminder has thousands of devoted users. @bmndr

Cloudability is the simple way to track and control cloud costs across all of your IaaS, PaaS and SaaS. Just a year old and based in Portland, OR Cloudability already has 3,000 users in 80 countries managing $75M – and growing daily – of cloud spending. @cloudability

Gliph allows you to connect with others safely online without having to share personal and private information. @gli_ph

Globesherpa – Secure, convenient mobile ticketing for transit commuters and more. Secure, convenient mobile ticketing for transit commuters and more. @globesherpa

Good Works Now produces cloud-based solutions to modernize the infrastructure for non-profits to increase revenue, donor base, board accountability, and online reputation management. @goodworksnow

Indow Windows – the only non-tech or mobile company this term, Indow Windows makes thermal window inserts that press into place on the inside of window frames, offering double pane window performance without the hassle and price tag. It has developed a custom IT system for managing all aspects of the value chain: estimation, window measurement, and manufacturing. @indowwindows

SERPs.com is a search engine optimization monitoring dashboard. It deeply enhances Google Analytics with link, social & keyword data for daily insights to improve traffic. Early customers include simple.com and customink.com. @scottkrager

ShowKicker enables fans to crowd-source events on the web, capturing more money for artists and venues and gets fans into the right shows. It delivers pre-sold audiences for promoters and reduces their risk. ShowKicker makes the shows venues want to book and that people want to see. @ShowKicker

Superb.ly (formerly Tell it in 10) is an SaaS platform for investors, lawyers and entrepreneurs to collaborate on deal documents and due diligence. @superb_ly

Linkage:

For more on the Portland Seed Fund visit their site here

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Day 2 Has Started At Hollywood Hack Day At io/LA

We are here at Hollywood Hack Day, on a gloomy Sunday in Hollywood California covering what has turned into 70+ programmers from all over So Cal into one place. The idea behind Hollywood Hack Day was to bring Media and Tech together into one. With sponsors like Rovi, ToxBox, Mashery, Rdio, Spotify just to name a few, the programmers here have been coding all throughout the night.

We’ll be covering all the goings on today as well as later tonight and tomorrow have full videos on all the pitches and the winners as the night goes on.

Calgary Startups Prepare To Pitch In Pitch Rodeo By June 18th

Calgary area startups are invited to submit their 80 second pitch videos to Podium Ventures by June 18th. Startups submitting videos for this contest will be judged on ideas, execution and entertainment value.

The event is part of Calgary Stampede. Startups will have 80 seconds to “rope their way to the top” in hopes of winning the Pitch Rodeo trophy. There are three great prizes available to pick from for the top three pitches:

Two tickets to Canada House at SXSW 2013 to pitch internationally
Opportunity to pitch your startup in front of Venture Alberta to get funding
Visual business model session with Business Instincts Group to hone your business plan

“We are very excited to sponsor an event in which the Calgary startup community has the opportunity to pitch their ideas” says Adam Joyce, Executive Vice President of PODIUM Ventures.

If you think you’ve got what it takes you can submit a summary outlining the idea and a YouTube link to your 80 second practice pitch. Submissions are due by June 18th and should be emailed to pitchrodeo@podiumventures.com

Interview With Memphis Startup Work For Pie, Seed Hatchery’s First Funded Startup

Memphis has got a great startup culture, ecosystem and community. Most of that happens at Emerge Memphis in downtown Memphis Tennessee. Emerge Memphis is a co-working space, home to SeedHatchery, LaunchMemphis and LaunchYourCity. It’s also home to Work For Pie.

Work For Pie is an online community for developers, with a focus on open-source developers. It’s a lot more than a LinkedIn for developers and the only thing like it in existence right now.

The company was founded in 2011 when Cliff McKinney met Brad Montgomery at a Launch 48 event at Emerge Memphis. The two tweaked a different idea into what Work For Pie has turned into today.

Work For Pie’s unique community allows developers to start a free profile that includes a portfolio of their development work. There is also a rating system involved to show the achievements of the developers in the community. The plan as they continue, is to create a site for businesses as well and then link the two so that businesses have a talent pool of top rated developers to choose from for their project.

They’ll be able to do that now that they’ve secured a a $300,000 round in funding. Work For Pie went through the first incubator class at SeedHatchery last year and they are the first startup to get any kind of substantial outside funding round. The two co-founders are excited about working on Work For Pie full-time.

As part of that great startup culture and eco-system in Memphis, they were onhand at 48 Hour Launch this year to help mentor the four startups that are building out in the weekend event. Friendsignia, Paytopia and a host of other EmergeMemphis companies and SeedHatchery graduates also spent the weekend at 48 Hour Launch paying their experience forward.

Check out our interview with both Cliff and Brad about Work For Pie and the startup culture in Memphis:

Dallas Startups: Prepare For LaunchDFW Kegs & Code Rooftop Party

Beer, coding and a roof, that’s what you’ll get if you’re in the Dallas startup community Friday night. LaunchDFW is hosting Kegs & Code 2012.

The party kicks off at 6:00pm this Friday night (June 15th) at 3200 Main Street #5.2 in Dallas. At 7:00pm their having a “Hack Attack” and at 8pm they’re giving away a $500 prize.

The evening ends with dancing until sunrise. It looks to be a great time sponsored by LaunchDFW and Senico Labs.

Memphis Startup Interview With Friendsignia Not Just Another Social Dashboard

So this is how Friendsignia went down. I got a tweet from Cole Hawkins, co-founder of Friendsignia, the other night. He pointed me to a blog entry written as a parody of Lord of the Rings. Truth be told at 36, I read the Hobbit as a kid but never saw Lord of The Rings, or read the book. If you want to test my geekyness, I’ve never seen or read a Harry Potter book, Twilight or the Hunger Games, and don’t get me started about Doctor Who.

So I knew the blog entry was good, I just didn’t get it. Were they taking on Facebook. Who in their right mind would pitch me taking on Facebook. No. So I forwarded the link to the blog post to one of my other editors and asked her to explain it to me. She said “it’s a social dashboard”. I mean that’s a little better than challenging Facebook but I’ve tried a good 40 to 50 social dashboards to date.

Once I was told that Friendsignia was a social dashboard. I took another look at it, and basically what it does is it narrows down your social feeds to the 150 most relevant people to you. This is based on Dunbar’s number which says that scientifically you can’t keep up with more than 150 relationships. Truth be told I have a hard time remember 25 but ok.

The next piece is that it narrows down your most relevant social contacts, which for a Power User (like myself with 100,000+ Twitter followers, is truly relevant).

Friendsignia is a recent graduate of Memphis’ Seed Hatchery incubator program and they are currently building out of Beta. They are also starting to raise funds. After spending time with the founders they’ve got a great idea for a product.

I tried it late last night and I’m working with the team so that they can handle power users with six figure followings. I will tell you on my personal Facebook account with nearly 1000 friends, it did awesome!

Check out the founder video interview below.

Check out more of our 48 Hour Launch coverage here

Kansas Startup: FrontFlip’s Ken Miner Starts Team Kris For His Wife’s Fight Against Cancer

Back in April we reported on an innovative loyalty reward startup called FrontFlip. The Kansas startup, founded by Sean Beckner, takes a unique approach to rewards by offering virtual, mobile based “scratch cards”.

FrontFlip is currently available for both iOS and Android, and back in April they already had 725 merchants signed up.

While heavily entrenched in a national rollout for the Overland Park based FrontFlip, their director of national account Ken Miner got some terrible news on the home front. SiliconPraire reports that Ken’s wife Kris was diagnosed with Stage 4B Large Cell Lymphoma. It’s a very aggressive and intrusive form of cancer with a life expectancy of 1-3 years. Milner’s doctors advised a quick course of action including a bone marrow transplant.

Less than a month ago, on May 11th the Miner’s found out that out of 17 million people on the national bone marrow registry, not one of them was a match for Kris.

So while maintaining his full time position at FrontFlip, Ken decided to attack his wife’s Lymphoma the same way that an entrepreneur would attack and solve a problem by founding a startup.

Problem: Kris Miner needs a donor

Solution: Team Kris Miner

Almost immediately Ken dove into his contacts and first reached out to Joe Cox, the President of the Social Media Club of Kansas City.

Of the phone call, Ken told SiliconPraire:

“(Kris) wants to tell her story, to be able to help people. That’s ultimately what she wants. Now, I’m a little more selfish; I want to find a match to give her the best possible chance of living.”

Ken is hoping that he can get 1000 new registrants on to the registry. As of Thursday 103 people had already signed up for the registry. Ken set up a Facebook page and a custom landing page on the national registry site. Friends, family and colleagues have already taken to Twitter with the hash tag #TeamKrisMiner

SiliconPrairie has posted these ways to help:

To register for program, Team Kris Miner has set up a custom link that tracks their goal to 1,000 sign-ups: join.marrow.org/krisminer. They’re also aiming to raise $25,000 for the organization. Ken said the monetary support is meaningful, as well, as it costs the National Marrow Donor Program around $100 per test conducted.

To learn more about Kris’ disease, the ways in which you can help and her hopeful treatment, visit kris-miner.com. You can also reach Ken by email, kminer@ken-miner.com.

Also, this isn’t the first time the tech community has seen an individual expecting for a bone marrow transplant drum up awareness on Twitter. In October, a friend of the founder of Photojojo turned to social media to encourage people to sign up for the bone marrow donation program. In January, a match was found.

Tips For Pitching At A Hackathon Style Pitch Weekend

As the voice of Startups everywhere else we spend quite a lot of time at hackathon style startup competitions. You know the type,two or three day build a startup weekends. In fact there’s an international organization called Startup Weekend that hosts a lot of the events we really enjoy covering.

Now let’s preface this and say these tips are from the last ten events Cameron, Brent and I have attended and or judged, and not the two events we are at this weekend.

Timing Is Everything
In most weekend long startup competitions the first day starts with rapid fire pitches. From there they are whittled down to a handful of ideas that will be developed over the weekend period. The rapid fire idea pitches are between 2 and 5 minutes. That’s certainly not a lot of time. Make sure your pitch is concise and you don’t sound like the micro machine man.

Cut To The Chase
You don’t have a lot of time to pitch. Jump right into the idea first and do the background stats second. It’s ok to run out of time rattling off statistics that many have probably heard before. If you start with the stats upfront,you may not have enough time to actually get the idea out there. If you run out of time on the idea, your startup has very little chance of getting produced.

Build The Startup During The Contest
Keep in mind these are “weekend pitch contest tips”.
If you have your pitch deck done, a product in beta or at least a concept built,a weekend hackathon style contest isn’t the place. You need what we call in these parts, a networking event.

To me there is nothing less classy then signing up for a startup weekend event, pitching a product just about done that may need a designer or two or a marketer, or an investor and then leaving when your idea doesn’t get picked. Network, help others that aren’t as far along as you are.

Mark’s Mango Smoothie Shop or Toms Tshirt manufacturer isn’t a “startup” most startup weekend style events are looking for businesses that can go from idea to proof of concept in 48, 54 or 72 hours.

The Team That Works Around The Clock Will Probably Win
I’ve only seen two startup weekend style events where the teams didn’t have at least the option of working all weekend long. If you had a great idea and so did Tom and you went home and Toms team stayed all night, when you get back in the morning don’t be surprised if they already have social media streams, an alpha shell and feedback from four major companies. That’s just the way it goes.

In fact at a Startup Weekend in Portland most teams stayed all weekend even with a threat explosions and guns

Do Your Research
If you’re going to make a claim in your pitch that you have the first ever this or the first ever that,do some research. When judging contests I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt if I can’t find your concept ten pages back in Google search results. However if your idea is on the first page in the Google Results within the first two results, FAIL.

Pay It Forward
Last night at the launch for 48 Hour Launch in Memphis folks from Friendsignia, Paytopia, Work For Pie and other local companies who have either been through 48 Hour Launch or Seed Hatchery were there. They joined teams and they are mentoring and helping. Especially “everywhere else” you need to stick together. Take a look at St.Louis. St.Louis native Jim McKelvy, best known for being a co-founder of Square, is constantly reinvesting in St. Louis.

More tips to come later