Startups Archives - Page 114 of 144

Baltimore Startup: BetaPunch A Great Beta Testing Solution For Startups INTERVIEW

Last month we brought you this story about BetaPunch, a startup in Baltimore Maryland that is a beta testing platform for other startups. They pride themselves on how easy it is for new startups to set up and recruit beta testers.

Typically a startup goes to friends and family for beta testing. This can be ineffective for several reasons. One of the reasons friends and family make bad beta testers is because they aren’t going to give you real honest feedback. Even if you have the dumbest idea in the world they’re going to tell you it’s great. That’s not good for testing your product.

The other problem with friends and family testing is that you’re going to run out of testers. Now there are some services out there that offer hundreds and hundreds of testers, but it may cost you hundreds and hundreds of dollars. That’s a lot of Ramen noodles you’re going to give up to get your Beta Test done.

LaunchRock is great for startups to start a mailing list, but most of the startups using LaunchRock never say when their beta test is going to happen, and when it does, the people who signed up have moved on to other things. I can’t tell you how many times I get an email back from a Launch Rock I signed up for months ago.

With BetaPunch though, it’s as easy as signing up. Installing their cool new widget and letting it rip.

We got a chance to talk with BetaPunch founder Ross Nochumowitz about BetaPunch, Baltimore’s startup scene, other startups he’s done, and being a bail bondsman during the day. The interview is below the break

Brooklyn Startup Launches SwapOMatic The Bartering Vending Machine

Just the other day we were talking about, and tweeting out how hot bartering was. We even ran an interview with the founder of Arizona startup Kwiddy which is an online site to facilitate person to person bartering or trading (as in real life).

Well this Brooklyn startup has taken a concept art piece and turned it into almost a viable startup. The SwapOMatic machine doesn’t accept credit cards, cash or change. Instead, if you see something cool in the machine that you want, you can swap it for something that you’re willing to give up.

For now the machine operates on the honor system and doesn’t give a monetary value to anything in the machine because value depends on how bad someone wants something.

However, with all the publicity and interest the SwapOMatic team has picked up, they are currently reworking it for the next design. This machine is part concept art, but it is an actual working machine. In fact they have it sitting at the Ample Hills Creamery in Brooklyn, where anyone can swap anything for the stuff inside of the machine.

On the company’s website it gives you a text base map of what’s currently inside the machine. Take a look below:

As you can see it’s a wide variety of things. Everything from YiGiOh trading cards to hand written poems have lived in the machine and traded for other stuff.

The SwapOMatic team has a kickstarter project going on now for $135,000 so they can do more research and development on how to actually make this a viable business and a product to promote bartering. They have raised $34,529 (at the time this article was written) of the $135,000 goal. There are 10 days to go.

Bartering is becoming hotter by the minute. Bartering goes back to probably the stone ages where people would trade their goods, like vegetables and milk, for meat and clothing. Bartering has taken on a new life of it’s own thanks to the internet and sites like Craigslist and now Kwiddy which offer online bartering solutions.

The trading and bartering phenomenon is so hot that A&E has just launched a new show called barter kings.

We’re hoping that the SwapOMatic team can either raise this $135,000 or other angel money so they can develop this idea. We could see a day where you could swap your iPad nano for a baseball card you’ve always wanted. Or a stack of cd’s for something else new and more interesting.

Linkage:

SwapOMatic Website

SwapOMatic’s Kickster Page

Source: Tech.li

We’re the voice of startups “everywhere else” check out these stories from “everywhere else”

Minneapolis Startup: Brain Hive To Offer E-Book Rentals For K-12

A Minneapolis startup called Brain Hive is looking to solve a problem for school libraries across the country. That problem, is access to books. With such a diverse taste in content in American public schools, school libraries often fall short in fulfilling student requests for books.

With the wide adoption of tablets and e-books Brain Hive has come up with a solution. Brain Hive has developed a platform that allows students to rent books from their digital library as a supplement to their schools actual library.

The Brain Hive service will offer traditional e-books, non fiction books, graphic novels and books curated by school librarians and administrators. Through the schools portal into the Brain Hive system, librarians and administrators can determine which content is age appropriate, set limitations on numbers of rentals at a time per student, and decide to offer titles around the current curriculum.

More after the break
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Baltimore Startup: Kithly Take Hold Of Your Contacts & Do Something INTERVIEW

You probably have a rolodex… ok scratch that, no one has a rolodex anymore. You probably have a contact list with hundreds if not thousands of names on it. It can probably become a pain to organize, I know that mine is.

Well Baltimore startup Kithly sets out to help you manage those contacts. Then, they take things a step further and recommend things to do with those contacts so that you never lose touch with them again.

Co-Founder and CEO Devin Partlow tells us that Kilthy offers a Pandora type interface and intense algorithms in the background that offer up suggestions and recommendations of things to do with your contacts. If you don’t like the suggestion your an just ask for another.

This is definitely a new approach to a contact management app. We got a chance to interview Partlow. Check out that interview, after the break.

St.Louis Startup: LockerDome Announces $1.04M Round

Our good friends at LockerDome have announced some great news this morning. They’ve just completed a $1.04 million dollar round of financing led by St. Louis Arch Angels. Cultivation Capital, Capital Innovators, the Missouri Technology Corporation and several individual angel investors participated in the round.

This new round brings LockerDome’s total investment to date to $2.1M.

In addition to this great funding news LockerDome has also announced today that they’ve seen a 25% increase in users week over week for 24 weeks straight. In just about five months the sports based social networking site has seen growth to 850k monthly uniques. They also have 80 pro athletes signed up including Pittsburgh Steelers Safety Troy Polamalu. They’ve also secured iconic brands like Rawlings.

LockerDome allows users to create their own sporting profiles for their local sports teams. Within LockerDome, teams can create their own social networks whether it be for a 5 year old T-Ball league, a 15-17 year old basketball team or a semi pro team. Even pro-athletes can create their own profiles.

Square Co-Founder Jim McKelvey has been a strong believer in LockerDome and the St.Louis startup scene. McKelvey has invested in LockerDome and holds a seat on their board.

“We’d like to give a huge thanks to the St. Louis investor community, whose support has been fantastic. Oversubscribing on a million-dollar financing round in only a matter of weeks not only speaks to the strong growth and demand that LockerDome is experiencing, but to the quickly emerging St. Louis tech startup ecosystem,” commented LockerDome CEO, Gabe Lozano.

The St.Louis Arch Angels invested $3 million dollars in the thriving St. Louis startup scene in 2011

Linkage:

Check out LockerDome for yourself here

Find out more about St. Louis Arch Angels Here

See Nibletz’ coverage of St. Louis’ startup community here

Memphis Startups: Launch Memphis Holding 48 Hour Launch Event This Weekend

This weekend if you’re in the Memphis area and an entrepreneur you should probably go ahead and skip the heat and humidity and head indoors to EmergeMemphis (516 Tennessee Street) to Launch Memphis 48 hour launch event.

The event takes the format of a typical startup weekend but your time is actually shaved down six hours.

Friday will start off with a 2 minute pitch contest for ideas that entrepreneurs have.From there teams will be put together to launch these new ideas and the teams will have until Sunday evening at 7pm to build their idea, test their idea and present it to the crowd.

This event will be great for the startup community in Memphis and for entrepreneurs to test out ideas. As with the 54 hour startup weekend events across the world, some entrepreneurs take ideas that they aren’t 100% sure on and flesh them out. We’ve seen some great startups born out of a weekend’s worth of work.

More after the break
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Startups: Dot Registry LLC Has Filed For Four New Top Level Domains

The folks at Dot Registry LLC realize that we’re running out of good .com domain names. The newer .co is taking over as a recognized worldwide domain name, in fact LeWeb founder Loic Lemur recently changed their web presence from a .net to a .co domain name, ahead of their new event in London.

Dot Registry LLC has filed for some domain names that may be real appealing to both startups and small businesses. The extensions that they filed for are .LLC, .INC,.LLP and .CORP these four domain suffixes mean that many of these new startups can register their official company name as their domain name.

“ It is our goal to create increased integrity for business representation online by developing gTLDs that represent specific business entity classifications. Through our corporate gTLD strings we will work to decrease the possibility of identity misrepresentation in a cyber setting and assist small to medium size businesses in legitimizing their services online.” Dot Registry LLC CEO Shaul Jolles said in a statement today.

DOT Registry worked closely with many Secretary of State’s offices to develop their registration
policies, which call for transparency in reporting and annual verification. Additionally, securing
support letters from these Secretary of State’s offices in order to affirm the necessity of
restrictions surrounding the strings LLC, INC, LLP and CORP. DOT Registry was informed by
the position of the National Association of Secretary of States Business Services Committee in
regards to business identity theft in a cyber setting and has taken a position similar to that
described in NASS’s White Paper in regards to the importance of accurately representing
businesses online.

In a March 20, 2012 letter to ICANN the Secretary of State of Delaware, Jeffrey W. Bullock
whom protects the integrity of Delaware’s legal entity registration system, which is home to
nearly one million legal entities and 63% of Fortune 500 companies indicated that, “it is
absolutely critical that if ICANN determines to grant such name extensions (. INC, .LLC, .CORP)
… that it does so in a restricted manner that is intended to protect consumers and the community
of interest that exists among validly registered US companies” he further indicated that “at
minimum, any approval for company ending strings be restricted in such a way that reasonably
assures that the legal entity is, in fact, an active and validly registered legal entity in the United
States, as DOT Registry LLC has proposed within its application.”

Jolles indicates that his, “ team has worked tirelessly to develop guidelines that will be both user
friendly and allow our registrars to appropriately determine if an applicant is in fact a registered
US business. Over the last six months we have created strong partnerships with the leading
corporate registration companies in order to have the most efficient and credible registration
process possible. As a corporate affiliate of the National Organization of Secretary of States
(NASS), we feel an acute sense of responsibility to uphold our company’s mission and guidelines
in order to deliver a strong product and we are excited to participate in this newest evolution of
the Internet.”

Linkage:

For more information on these top level domains visit Dot Registry here

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TechStars Announces New Patriot Bootcamp July 18-20 in DC

Veterans are you ready to venture out on your own? Have you had a great startup idea like former Navy Seal Doug Moorehead? If a startup is in your civilian career path then pay attention to this important announcement from TechStars.

TechStars, the Boulder Colorado based accelerator with programs all over the country (“everywhere else”) has announced a new three day bootcamp designed for veterans who want to learn everything there is to know about launching their own startup.

The intense three day program will occur next month on July 18-20 at Georgetown University in Washington DC. If you’re interested in participating you can apply here.

During the three day program participants will hear from successful TechStars alumni, industry leaders, DC area startups, mentors and speakers. All of the speakers and mentors are emotionally invested in supporting Veteran entrepreneurs.

TechStars said on their website:

“Over the course of the three-day program, the presentations by TechStars mentors and one-on-one mentoring will guide the participant to solidify a business idea, focus their fundraising pitch, improve their accelerator application, refine their product concept, or demonstrate progress as it relates to their entrepreneurial path. Each participant or group of participants will deliver a short presentation on Digital Demo Day to share their progress.”

TechStars has assembled a great group of sponsors for Patriot Bootcamp including: the Kauffman Foundation, Kauffman Fast Trac, Silicon Valley Bank, Prediculous and Georgetown University.

Linkage:

Find out more about TechStars Patriot Camp Here

Here’s the application

Austin Startup MapMyFitness Announces $9 Million Dollar Round

Austin fitness startup MapMyFitness has received a $9 million dollar round of funding.

SiliconHillsNews is reporting that Austin Ventures and Milestone Venture Partners led the series B round for the fitness app development startup. Competitor Group Inc, and The Running Specialty Group LLC also participated in the round through other business partnerships.

The Austin based startup makes a variety of fitness apps that allow their users to track their progress on their smartphone or other mobile device. They’ve already built up a strong community of over nine million registered users. They are currently adding 25,000 new users per day.

“Austin Ventures’ continuing enthusiasm is a great validation of our success to date. We’re also thrilled to leverage Milestone Venture Partners’ unique expertise on healthcare technology services, and to deepen our business partnerships with Competitor Group and run.com, the e-commerce platform for The Running Specialty Group,” said Richard Jalichandra, chief executive officer of MapMyFITNESS. “This Series B funding allows us to continue innovating and improving our tools for people of all levels to improve their fitness, nutrition and overall health.”

One of MapMyFitness’ strong points is how their apps are resonating within the fitness community. Fitness event producers have used MapMyFitness to track participants progress in races, decathlons and more.

“MapMyFITNESS’ amazing growth of one of the largest audiences of runners, walkers, cyclists and active people has tremendous synergy with what we’re doing at Competitor with events like the Rock N Roll race series,” said Scott Dickey, president and chief executive officer at Competitor Group, Inc.

“The MapMyFITNESS team has created one of the most engaging utilities for fitness enthusiasts, one that complements what we’re trying to do with our new website, run.com,” said Ken Gart, President of The Running Specialty Group.

MapMyFitness is available across multiple platforms. Of course iOS and Android are their leading platforms but it’s also available as a native app for Blackberry, Windows Mobile and iPads.

Linkage:

Find out more about MapMyFitness here

Source: SiliconHillNews

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New Hampshire Startups: $500,000 Startup Competition Launches This Fall

New Hampshire has a budding tech startup scene. Some entrepreneurs are attracted to the peaceful and beautiful climate in New Hampshire. There are some startups in the hospitality industry that are coming out of the University of New Hampshire’s hospitality program that are choosing to stay put to develop their ideas. Now though, there are 500,000 new reasons to launch a startup in New Hampshire.

The New Hampshire High Technology Council and the abi Innovation Hub have announced a new $500,000 tech startup competition. They’ve received financial commitments from 20 accredited investors who will also assist in mentoring New Hampshire startups in the so far unnamed competition, which is going by “The Fund” at the moment.

The $500,000 will be spread out into five annual competitions with $100,00

0 in prize moneyeach year for the next five years starting in September 2012. The first prize will be $50,000 the second prize will be $30,000 and the third prize is $20,000. The top two prizes will be determined by a panel of judges organized by the Entrepreneur’s Foundation of New Hampshire. The third prize will be determined by audience vote at the pitch contest scheduled for every fall.

The first competition will be September 20, 2012.

A separate company is being formed to manage the contest, obtain a name and a URL. Five members of New Hampshire’s tech sector are going to form the company and they are; abi Innovation Hub Executive Director Jamie Coughlin; early-stage investor Matt Pierson; co-founder and chief technology officer of Dyn Tom Daly, a Manchester Internet firm; Executive Director of the New Hampshire High Technology Council Matt Cookson; and member of the Cook, Little, Rosenblatt and Manson law firm Matt Benson.

“This competition fills a void in New Hampshire’s start up scene,” stated Pierson. “Not only are we going to put money into winning start up companies, we’re going to leverage the knowledge of our investors in helping them grow their businesses and ultimately attract additional capital.”

The abi’s Jamie Coughlin stated, “By having a five-year commitment to fund this event up front, we’re sending a strong message to entrepreneurs that we’re establishing New Hampshire as leader in getting start ups off the ground. This is all about investing in people, ideas, and ultimately stimulating our next crop of tech companies.”

“This competition is one more initiative to help drive innovation in New Hampshire,” added Cookson. “This effort will help create new, high paying jobs in our dynamic tech sector. The fact that individuals have stepped up to fund this effort demonstrates the commitment to nurturing our entrepreneurs.”

While “The Fund” is awaiting a name and url information about applying for the contest and the contest itself can be found at the abi Innovation hub website as well as the New Hampshire High Technology Council Site (linked below).

Linkage:

Find out more here at the abi Innovation Hub website or

The New Hampshire High Technology Council Website

Nibletz is the voice of startups everywhere else, here are more new stories from everywhere else

Interview With New York Startup Spark Rebel

Social discovery is one of the hottest online and mobile crazes right now. There are social discovery sites for everything from restaurants, events, people, things, food and fashion. Spark Rebel is an amazing blend of social and discovery revolving around fashion that real women are wearing today. Sure it’s nice to be able to shop the top tier boutiques in Chelsea, Manhattan and Rodeo drive and Spark Rebel does have feature some high fashion, but the thick of this social discovery site for fashion is what everyday women are working to work, out on the town or for a relaxing evening.

As people’s lives got busier and busier and they began to take to online shopping over in store shopping, an entirely new way to discover things popped up. The problem with traditional online shopping sites is that you’re seeing what the stores want you to see. You’re seeing the fashions that the buyers are seeing and not necessarily what everyone’s wearing.

Then, you go about your busy day and see that awesome outfit a woman is wearing at Starbucks or you see a must have dress on a woman in the elevator with you, and then you never see it again.

Spark Rebel uses a mixture of social, discovery and recommendation to bring the hottest trends and fashions to their users.

Spark Rebel was born out of site for teenage girls, which is a segment even harder to curate than traditional women’s wear. We got a chance to interview Spark Rebel. Check out that interview after the break

June Is California Month At Startup America

If you’re a startup and you’re not already taking advantage of the benefits from a free Startup America membership you’re cheating yourself.

Startup America is a nationwide cooperative partnership that helps support startups through their national organization and 22 (current) partnerships across the country. The organization, led by CEO Scott Case, who was the founding CTO of Priceline.com, holds lectures, seminars, webinars, events, summits and much more. They also give away stuff that’s useful to companies just starting up.

Startup America has three main goals; to provide valuable resources and connections to help companies grow, support regional startup ecosystems throughout the country, and to recognize startups as the drivers of our economy and their founders as American Heroes.

They’ve assembled over $1 billion dollars in commitments from partners to support the growth of startups.

Startup America holds national events, like the event they held at South By Southwest, Regional leader summits and more. They also hold big kickoff events for each regional partnership and then they also partner with other events as they did with Capital Connection/ TechBUZZ in Washington DC and as they are doing with the We Own It Summit June 28th and 29th in New York City.

They’ve been rapidly deploying regional partnerships across the country. They have 22 regions already and by the end of this month they will have 25. Three new partnerships are kicking off in California this month.

San Diego on June 9, 2012

Orange County on June 13, 2012

Los Angeles June 16, 2012

If you’re in any of those areas, click on the links above to find out more about the kick off events for those regions.

For more information on Startup America visit their extremely easy to remember website at s.co

Milwaukee Startup: The Good Jobs Wins Startup Wisconsin Contest On Kick-Off Day

Startup Wisconsin launched last Thursday as part of the Startup America Partnership. They didn’t waste anytime either, and kicked off their kickoff party with a quick pitch contest with a quick $1750 in prizes. The prize money was furnished by the law firm of Michael Best & Friedrich.

A new employment website startup called The Good Jobs, was victorious in the quick pitch competition. The woman owned startup from Milwaukee is creating a jobs site that will launch this summer. Their spin though is that they are matching people up to jobs based on lifestyle badges.

For example, companies that are hiring use proprietary badges to identify things like their commitment to the environment and the planet, or flexible scheduling. All of the things that an employment candidate would be looking for as far as “lifestyle” or “quality of life” are concerned in a new job.

Too often you go into a job interview because you really need a job and forget to ask the important questions. That cruise you have scheduled in two months with your 90 year old grandparents could be in jeopardy if you don’t know ahead of time how a company is about prior family appointments. The office closes at 5pm, does that mean you can still make your sons soccer practice at 6:00? Quality employers know these things are important.

More after the break
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Ohio Startup: Fundable Launches CrowdFunding Startup For Startups

Exciting news in Ohio today as Fundable, a crowd funding source for startups, after seven months of work, and making sure the Jobs Act passed, Fundable is open to the public. They are dubbing themselves the Kickstarter for startups.

If you’re not aware, Kickstarter doesn’t let you fund startups. We’ve tried several project ideas surrounding our “sneaker-strapped nationwide startup road trip” and all were rejected by Kickstarter. We then switched to Indiegogo which we used twice. The first time we raised $300 and the second we didn’t raise a dime. That’s despite the fact that literally hundreds of people looked at the page, showed interest and asked us via email, Twitter, Google+ and Facebook.

After Congress passed the JOBS act it went over the the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The SEC has until July 4th to set the rules up for crowdfunding. Crowdfunding means that the public at large can invest in a “startup” or other company, or product through crowdfunding sources in exchange for equity.

Startups and small businesses can receive up to a million dollars with this form of funding.

Fundable (if approved as a broker by the SEC) will become one of the first startup funding crowdfunding websites. They opened up for business two weeks ago with a “reward” model similar to kickstarter but devoted to startups and businesses.

The Fundable website outlines what kind of businesses they want on the site as it first rolls out. Fundable is targeting startups in the fields of gadgets, technology,apparel food and sports. John’s dry cleaners, or a franchise of pizza hut isn’t going to get approved. At this time they are also not handling charities or a “Clown suit franchise” (damn there goes that idea).

The other great thing about Fundable is it’s not a place for artists, either the painting kind or the musical kind, and it’s not for crafters there are plenty of sites out there for that.

Fundable is a great way to fund a startup and good ideas are going to shine through on the site (we’ve submitted an application for nibletz and hope it’s approved and you’ll support us).

Since their launch, Fundable startups have already raised $40,831 (at the time of this writing). In fact Elevation Training Mask 2.0 is already 115% funded at $11,506.

If you’re a startup with a good idea, you definitely want to consider Fundable.

Linkage:

Get funded with Fundable here

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

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