Startups Archives - Page 115 of 144

5 New Mexico Startups From The Angel List (angel.co)

We’ve recently started highlighting startups from “everywhere else” that appear on angel.co. Angel.co is one of the top resources for startups across the web. It’s right up their next to CrunchBase.

What we discovered though, was in our weekly email from angel.co every single trending startup was from Silicon Valley. Once in a blue moon we would get a startup from New York, but the trending startups are predominantly from the valley. This shows that Silicon Valley has a lot of active users on angel.co. This is no fault of the valley or angel.co however we figured we would start an ongoing feature series on Angel.co startups. It’s free to create your profile there and if you haven’t you should (you should also make sure you’re on Crunchbase).

Today we’re going to look at five angel list companies from New Mexico.

Volopt (Las Cruces)

Volopt is based in Las Cruces New Mexico and is a web aggregator. They bill themselves as the “Huffington Post” for web content. We’re not sure if we get that reference from looking at their site. After all Huffington is a web site, and well the Huffington Post would be the Huffington Post of web content.

Volopt on the other hand has an easy to understand web interface. When you go to their site there is a “cloud” of content tags on the home page that you can click on to discover more information about the tag. There is also a search bar where you can travel outside of the content cloud.

The co-founders are Hank Muetterties, Joel Diemer and Louis O. Constantini.

They look like their on to something but when you’re building a startup that is going to encompass the entire web there needs to be an entire webs worth of content. There was a great amount of sports content, tags for the NBA,MLB and NFL served up great answers, as did tags for Mathematics and photography.

On the other hand a search for startup and startups returned no data at all.

The UI is very easy to use and understand, building scale may be a challenge.

Find Volopt on the web here and on Angel.co here

AgeNation (Santa Fe)

AgeNation is a web hub and content platform targeting baby boomers and seniors. As many baby boomers are entering into retirement in their work lives they were on the cusp of computers, new media and the digital age.

These baby boomers, no how to use a computer, and the internet but don’t have a portal or destination targeting them without making them feel old, like the AARP or any of the thousands of sites targeting seniors.

The AgeNation media group includes AgeNation.com, AgeNation Radio, AgeNation Live, NEXT Magazine, AgeNation Consulting and Coaching. They’re also about to add AgeNation television, publishing and travel.

The AgeNation group was co-founded by husband and wife team Sedena and George Cappannelli. Both workaholic, energetic babybooomers themselves they’ve set out to grow their media empire with their core audience.

Find AgeNation on their website here and on Angel.co here

MoTag (Santa Fe)

MoTag is innovating the QR space with a loyalty and rewards model gamifying discovery of products through a hide and seek platform. MoTag combines QR tag code info and UPC info with users personalized information, creating a fun social game based commerce network.

Think of it as Scavngr for products. But there is much more you can do with MoTag than just scavenger hunts.

MoTag presents themselves as a QR Code browser that has robust features.

MoTag is hoping to merge big box retailers and local retailers in reward and loyalty based games.

Co-Founder Allen Branch has a vast background in big box retail holding advisory positions at Whole Foods, REI, Home Depot and Autozone. He also founded Real Estate TV in 1995.

Co-Founder Bruno Allaire holds an MBA from Harvard and has 18 years experience in managing new business development.

See more about MoTag on their YouTube Channel and here on Angel.co

UsersUnite (Taos)

UsersUnite is a product review and social networking platform revolving around software reviews for business. The company seems to be taking an actual user approach to reviews and discussion about software rather than a techblog feel where readers often wonder about the deals behind the software reviews.

The premise for the idea seems solid. Co-Founders Bret and Linda Weir have over 29 years of software experience (Bret) and 10 years of public accounting experience (Linda).

Bret says in their YouTube pitch video that UsersUnite will be worth $200 million dollars within five years by saving businesses billions of dollars in software expenditures. That’s quite a lofty goal. If the startup lives by it’s user generated ideas and beliefs, especially behind the name UsersUnite, they could achieve that goal.

However, their angel.co profile suggests that their revenue stream is going to come from charging software vendors to participate, ultimately that will be what keeps them from the $200 million dollar goal. Once money from the publishers comes into play than the questions surrounding the authenticity and ethics behind the reviews put UsersUnite right back into the same categories as the TechBlogs that regularly run “sponsored” content.

Hopefully they will pivot back to the original premise, and make money off advertising or even affiliate sales of the software titles being discussed, then they could easily become a seven or eight figure company in revenue within five years. 9 figures though? Not likely.

More about UsersUnite from their website and from Angel.co

Enlitten.com (Santa Fe)

As online sales sites like Amazon.com continue to obliterate the local and big box bookstores into oblivion, one New Mexico startup, Enlitten, is trying to return people to local bookstores.

Enlitten uses a model that links users to local bookstores. They can pay through the website, which in turn pays the local bookshop and then the user can go into the local bookshop to pick up the book.While this isn’t as convenient as having the book shipped to your home or office, it can, sometimes mean you get the book quicker. Of course it also means you get out of the house and into the local bookshop.

A lot of local bookshops are adding entertainment, poetry readings, and cafes with increased menus to get customers to stick around longer.

Enlitten was founded by John Cole who is an award winning book designer

For more check out Enlitten at their website here and on angel.co here

Linkage:

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

Get your startup featured, email us at startup@nibletz.com

Arizona Startup: Kwiddy Is The Ultimate Bartering Platform INTERVIEW

Bartering has been around almost as long as civilization. Back in the earliest recordable days of mans existence people would trade for the things that they needed. If you had fruit and needed meat you would trade someone. If you had meat and needed clothes you would trade someone.

Bartering was kind of lost for a while, and then barter networks came about. Barter networks were actually popular with advertising in the nineties. Whether it be print, radio or sometimes other broadcast media, media buyers could go through a barter network and trade airtime for vacation giveaways and other tangible and non-tangible goods.

Craigslist brought back bartering for tangible goods at the local level. If you’ve ever perused the bartering section of Craigslist there are some crazy odd ball things out there, and others that make sense. I once was traded a $50 gift card to Outback Steakhouse for just setting someone up a Twitter account and spending 30 minutes showing them how to use it.

So what is Kwiddy? Kwiddy is slang or another name for Quid Pro Quo, tit for tat, bartering if you will. You probably remember the scenes in Silence Of The Lambs were Dr.Lecter and Agent Staring go quid-pro-quo. The doctor helps Agent Starling with the case in exchange for Starling telling the doctor intimate details of her childhood.

I assure you that Kwiddy is not the least bit gruesome its actually one of the better pitches we’ve heard in recent days. Kwiddy is the ultimate online bartering platform. It facilitates the ability to swap goods in person and in real time.

We got a chance to interview Kwiddy co-founder Adam Thelwell. Check out that interview, after the break

Copenhagen Startup: Klusterr Social Ratings For The Workplace INTERVIEW

Copenhagen startup Klusterr is an entirely new kind of social platform that allows users to rate workplaces, bosses, co-workers and work environments. It started out as an idea for a site to gather references for jobs and keep them in one place but as co-founder Richard Blackham tells us in an interview, they pivoted to the workplace ratings model.

Klusterr allows employees to share information and ratings about their workplace across Facebook,Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+. This type of broad social sharing forces a new kind of transparency.

While this startup is similar to California startup Worker’s Count, Klusterr seems to be focusing on a broader more social picture. Employees can provide reviews, ratings and information about their employers and workplaces either by name or anonymously.

Check out our interview with Blackham after the break

Baltimore Startup: Woofound Launches Gamified Recommendation App For iOS

Woofound is a Baltimore based startup in the recommendation space. Since we hail from Baltimore and Philly, this is exciting news for our area, and of course “everywhere else”.

Woofound matches your personality to things you want to do. Woofound was actually built in conjunction with psychoanalyst and psychotherapist Dr. Noreen Honeycutt from Baltimore Maryland. This is actually the second startup in just as many days that we’ve reported on that dives much deeper than the surface to serve up recommendations or discoveries. The first was London based ColourDNA which uses the psychology of colours in it’s discovery platform.

Our friend Sarah Pereze over at TechCrunch reports that Woofound co-founders Dan Sines and Josh Spears founded the company last year after Spears was set up on a blind date. The two friends thought, wouldn’t it be great if there was a way to match up interests based on personality traits?

Like Parking Panda, (another Baltimore startup) Woofound’s launch centers around Baltimore and DC, however today’s launch brings online the 70 top metro markets. Perez pointed out that most of the recommendations in her hometown of Tampa were things she was already familiar with. I had much better luck in Atlanta this early morning.

There’s not much mention of how deep the personality integration goes however they are going to develop a version of Woofound for the Univesity of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) that will help students with career path goals.

The interface is nice and it has this simple feel to it. The user simply rates things “Me or Not Me” reminiscent of the hot or not days.

The iOS version launched today with Android in the coming months.

Linkage:

Check out Woofound here

Source: TechCrunch

We’re the voice of startups “everywhere else” here are more stories from “everywhere else”

Arkansas Startup: Rebounces Puts The Green Back In The Tennis Ball

In our endless quest to look past the trending (read valley based) startups on the Angel List (angel.co), we came across one that is sports related, fun, green (environment) and green (money). The startup is called reBounces and they are based in Harrison Arkansas.

Arkansas has a bubbling startup scene and we’ve covered a handful of startups from Arkansas here at nibletz.

So what is reBounces?

Well Rebounces was founded by Bill Dirst and Cannon Fletcher. The company uses a gas based mixture technology invented by Dirst to put the bounce back into flattened tennis balls.

Typically when a tennis ball has been used over and over again they start to deflate. Even if you are only a casual tennis player you’ve probably noticed this deflating. Normally when a tennis ball deflates the natural reaction is to go buy another can of balls. While that’s all well and good, the tennis balls are not biodegradable and even in their flattened state they go into the landfill.

With the reBounces technology tennis balls are dumped into the Green Tennis Machine. After the machine is sealed and the balls sit for three days they enviro-magically have their bounce back. The balls have the same bounce as balls that just came out of a fresh can and they are back to regulation.

More after the break
Read More…

Boston Startup Postwire: Share Private Content In A Highly Visual Way VIDEO INTERVIEW

If you’re a sales person with a few binders worth of clients, a rolodex filled with other clients and vendors and you spend way too much time at a fax machine, Postwire may be for your. Postwire is a new startup application launched by Boston based VisibleGains. The concept behind Postwire is actually very easy, the execution is why it was one of the finalists in this years Disrupt Battlefield at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2012.

Postwire allows business users to set up private, personalized web pages for clients so that forms, orders, and other paper based correspondence can be shared quicker and in a much easier to view way.

Now instead of spending all day at a fax machine, sales people, vendors and other business to business companies can post things to a private post wire page to correspond one to one.

“We developed Postwire with the goal of creating a super simple approach for helping professionals and clients get on the same page — literally,” said Cliff Pollan, co-founder and CEO at VisibleGains. “Sharing just the right information goes a long way toward helping your clients succeed. Now, everyone from small business owners to sales and account teams to physical therapists can easily offer each client a personalized resource page to reference at any time.”

We got to talk with Pollan at TechCrunch disrupt who took us on a little tour of Postwire and plans on taking us on a little tour of the startup scene in Massachusetts as part of our sneaker-strapped nationwide startup road trip.

Check out the video below:

Indian Startup: iLiftoff Provides Easy To Use Testing Platform For Recruiters INTERVIEW VIDEO

Indian startup iLiftoff is an easy to use testing platform for recruiters. iLiftoff has it’s own database of test questions for many fields and industries. Their knowledge base of questions covers everything from financial positions to coding. Recruiters can even add their own questions.

HR recruiters will use iLiftoff for pre-employment screening.

iLiftoff has released their platform with tests covering four sectors; programming, finance, law and logic.iLiftoff than breaks those four sectors down to more refined industries like banking and insurance which would fall under the finance category.

iLiftoff also offers companies the ability to create their own tests. These tests can be for recruitment, advancement or to assess training initiatives.

They’ve taken this approach to testing one step further by creating a platform that will work on PC’s and Mac desktops and laptops and also on both Android and iOS tablets.This means that tests can be administered in the field on a wide variety of topics.

While it’s not a glamorous industry, iLiftoff does seem to be addressing a need for both good testing platforms and for companies to easily make up their own tests without having to outsource or take months for a project test.

Check out our video interview with co-founder Raghav Aggarwal below:

Linkage:

Check out iLiftoff here at their website

Here’s more of nibletz TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2012 coverage here

Nibletz is on a sneaker-strapped nationwide startup road trip learn more here

DC HealthTech Startup MedClimate Presents At TechBUZZ

MedClimate, a DC area startup in the HealthTech field, presented last week at TechBUZZ as part of Capital Connection 2012.

MedClimate is looking to take a problem that many new and expectant parents face with doctors and that is, getting questions answered without increasing wait times in already packed waiting rooms. As Tim Barnes, Founder of MedClimate, points out in his pitch, everyone has experienced long waits at doctors offices.

What you may not have considered is that as information has become more and more available to patients, including new parents and expectant parents, wait times in waiting rooms are increasing because more patients are asking more questions. This definitely makes sense when you’re the parent, or patient, but never in the waiting room itself.

Through a disruptive approach to appointment management and using things like videos, video messaging, and making web and mobile appointments, medclimate hopes t o streamline care and make wait times less painful. They plan on doing this all and still allowing for an increase in patient/parent care questioning.

MedClimate plans to use video conferencing to allow patients to ask questions and get immediate feedback from their doctors from the comfort of their own home, or office, while still allowing the practitioner to collect payment via insurance.

The ultimate goal is to not affect everyones already busy schedule with unnecessary appointments.

Check out Barnes pitch below:

Washington DC Startup: KikScore Aquired By Google

Google has Acquired a Wahington DC startup called KikScore. KikScore is an online reputation startup that helps smaller online businesses build reputations and become more trusted for consumers.

CEO and co-founder Rajeev Malik created KikScore after his wife noticed that people would fill up their shopping carts on her furniture website and then abandon them. Malik and his wife did some research and discovered that most incomplete shopping cart purchases were partially based on the customers trust, or lack thereof, of the merchant.

Malik describes KikScore on their blog as:
a patent-pending online reputation score and interactive report card for small businesses around the world. KikScore enables online small businesses to take information and reputational data about themselves, their track record of responsibility and dependability and show their website visitors that their business can be trusted. Small businesses do this by placing the interactive KikScore Confidence Badge, real-time merchant report card and comment platform on their website so they can close more leads and sell more.

KikScore’s other co-founders are Travis Valentine CTO, Mike Collins Head of Product, Mike Mauseth Board of Advisors member, and Tom Lewis another Board Of Advisors member.

This article from SocialMatchbox positions the acquisition as a straight up acquisition without acquihire. Malik told SocialMatchbox that he aimed to spend more time with his budding family and work on his next startup.

Google will most likely fold KikScore into their current Trusted Stores product that falls under the Google Checkout/Google Wallet department.

Linkage:

Source: socialmatchbox.com

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

We are on a sneaker-strapped, nationwide, startup road trip more info here

Interview London Startup: ColourDNA Discovery Of Things In A New Way

If you’re a starutp pitching “discovery” these days you need to make sure you have something unique, fresh and disruptive. London based startup Colour DNA is one of those startups.

Colour DNA isn’t about the things your friends like, it’s about the things that you like.

Once you sign up for the service you pick a color that matches your personality or your favorite color (it’s colour because it’s the British spelling). From there you use an icon with your colour and a heart symbol to mark all the things that you love. Sounds simple so far right?

Then through their property algorithms, ColourDNA matches your likes with other likes across the network. All of these places, foods, events and things also get their own colour based on the spectrum of colours that everyone who loves them has used.

So now you get matched with the things you love and ColourDNA matches you with the people you have the most matches with. Then, ColourDNA takes the things those people love that you don’t love and matches you to those things as discoverables.

Now ColourDNA has helped you discover things and share your things with others. Pretty simple huh?

There’s a lot more to it then meets the eye. Ben Poynter, Co-Founder and CEO of ColourDNA told TechCrunch in an interview earlier this year:

“We are all about discovery new things to enjoy in life based on your interests.. and a few other factors like your favourite colours. We think the interest graph should be about making it easy to discover new things that you’ll love through personalisation, much like Facebook has made it easier for you to re-connecting with your friends.

“I think Pinterest has done a great job as a beautiful and intuitively designed curation tool. We are less a curation tool, and much more a discovery tool… A key feature for us is that a user doesn’t need to know anyone to get an immediately rewarding experience from their unique actions. We push you personalised recommendations by unlocking how your interest graph overlaps with other users, so that you can discover great new things that you would struggle to elsewhere without having to spend a considerable amount of time endlessly browsing.”

Once you download the app itself you’ll see how all of these different aspects of Colour are relevant in ColourDNA. Check out our video below as well:

Linkage:

Check out ColourDNA at their website here

Here’s more of our coverage of TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2012

We’re on a sneaker-strapped, nationwide startup roadtrip, check it out here

Michigan Startup: Rippld Get’s $50,000 To Expand Social Network For Creative Professionals

Rippld a social network to promote, collaborate and bring creative together has announced the receipt of a $50,000 micro loan investment to continue working and expanding their network.

This innovative startup for creative professionals is a resident at Wayne State University’s TechTown incubator.

“Friends ask us all the time where to find creative talent,” said co-founder Adrian Walker, who conceived of Rippld with his partner Wilbert Fobbs III when trying to get a fledgling video production company off the ground. “I looked at what was out there in the online landscape and nothing offered the kind of access or information people were looking for. Rippld fills that gap.”

Statewide, Michigan has seen a huge uptick in startups forming in the state or moving into the state. In fact, just this morning we reported on the budding community of 37 startups and innovative companies at Ann Arbor’s TechBrewery, and their newest tenant the team behind PaperDesk.

As for Rippld, Michigan is firmly home of the social startup, in fact, co-founder Lander Cornado-Garcia moved back from Chicago to Detroit to help start Rippld.

“TechTown and its sister incubators have been and continue to be critical to Rippld’s success,” said Coronado-Garcia. “The one-on-one coaching, business plan support and networking capability we accessed through TechTown positioned us to be competitive in our bid for this pre-seed loan and validated the integrity of our business model. We owe this victory in large part to TechTown and its partners.”

More after the break
Read More…

Ann Arbor’s TechBrewery Welcomes Innovators Behind PaperDesk

Ann Arbor’s TechBrewery is part co-working space, part incubator and home to some of the top innovators in Ann Arbor’s thriving startup community.

Scott and Lida Hasbrouck are the innovators behind the educational notepad app PaperDesk. PaperDesk is the duo’s most well known app under their WebSpinner brand. It’s a note taking app developed with educational purposes in mind, and aimed at replacing traditional spiral and composition notebooks.

PaperDesk, is not what the Hasbrouck’s plan on working on at TechBrewery though. They will be working on a new educational startup that goes by the name Ginkgotree. They’re also bringing an iOS developer, 3D animator and graphic designer to the TechBrewery as well.

Ginkgotree will fall under the TechEd category, but it’s unclear exactly what they will be doing. Their website currently has a place for a login and the words “Learn Beautifully” on it, on a chalkboard, no less.

Ginkgotree will join these 37 other startups and innovator members of TechBrewery.

“We’re excited about our new beginning at the Tech Brewery,” states Lida Hasbrouck “and participating in the Silicon Valley of the Midwest.”

They’re not the only entrepreneurs and members of the startup community excited about Ann Arbor. The Foundry’s Jason Mendelson recently spoke at an event in Michigan and talked about how Ann Arbor is starting to thrive. Also we recently profiled Michigan startup HealPay who was happy to be moving back to AnnArbor to continue working on their FinTech web applications.

Two students also launched their note taking app called FetchNotes in Ann Arbor. All of this startup excitement in Ann Arbor is why we’re trying to make Ann Arbor, and actually most of Michigan, part of our nationwide sneaker-strapped startup road trip.

We can’t wait to see what the Hasbroucks have planned for Ginkgotree, and what else brews out of TechBrewery.

Linkage:

Ginkgotree’s website can be found here

Checkout TechBrewery here

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

Check out our sneaker-strapped startup road trip here

Louisville Startup: Impulcity, Discover The World Around You INTERVIEW

I know I know I know, after South By Southwest you were sure the days of reporting on new discovery startups were over, but we assure you this one is a little different. Louisville startup Impulcity isn’t about social discovery, or app discovery, or thing discovery, Impulcity helps you discover kick ass events, venues and thing to do.

But Impulcity doesn’t stop there, they find the best events, and even sell tickets (often at great discounts) to those events. Then, once their users get into the events the entire experience turns just about user controlled. The user community adds pictures and media to prove what a grand ole time they are having at whatever event it is.

Impulcity will come in handy at Bonaroo, BamaJama, and of course next year at South By Southwest. So what you’re essentially doing is finding the best events, securing your spot in the best events and then reporting on the events to prove what a great time you’re having, and then in turn helping others discover kick ass events.

We got a chance to catch up with co-founder Hunter Hammonds who pinged us after we ran a story about the Louisville startup that’s moving to Cincinnati based incubator the brander.

After Hammonds bold statements for that story we had to check it out further. And yes, Impulcity is going to kick ass (It’s Friday the asses are ok)

Check out the interview after the break and I promise not to say that word again

Interview With NY Startup Edamam Becoming The Worlds Food Knowledge Base

Edamam founder and CEO Victor Penev has a lofty goal. He wants his company to become the goto place for food knowledge in the world. While the goal seems quite lofty as I am writing this right now, if you watch the video below you’ll see that Edamam may well be on their way to doing just that.

They launched their consumer facing product, a mobile app which pulls over one million recipes from different sources, at the DEMO conference in April in Santa Clara California. This isn’t just your run of the mill recipes.com app though, the UI is appealing, the navigation is a breeze and you can separate and search through recipes six ways to Sunday.

On the business side Edamam offers an intense, information packed widget for food blogs and websites to tap their vast knowledge base in the same ways as the mobile app and more. They are also offering an API for developer partners to tap that big food database.

In this interview with Edamam they talk about how they plan on being the goto place for food knowledge. In a few years time they hope that the end user will be able to go to the grocery store, by a piece of salmon and get a treasure trove of possibilities wrapped around Edamam information.

Off camera he admitted that he would love to see Edamam being tapped by the users smartphone in the grocery store, and then a smart refrigerator, stove, or other appliance that offers recipes, food guidance, wine recommendations, anything. We’re talking the Jetson’s Rosie in the big data era.

We’ve covered quite a few food startups here at Nibletz, this is the first time that a startup has such a clear path to the future. We really wish these guys well, and after you watch the video you’ll see they have their stuff together and could easily achieve that lofty goal.

Linkage:

Check out Edamam here at their website

See more of our TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2012 Coverage here

We’re on a sneaker-strapped, nationwide startup roadtrip, check it out here