Startups Archives - Page 121 of 144

Boulder Startup: Mocavo Announces $4 Million Dollar Round

Boulder startup Mocavo has announced a $4 million dollar funding round to expand their business of helping people find their ancestors. Yes the site competes with Utah genealogy giant Ancestry.com but in playing with the site for just a few minutes, the search function was much easier and the results were much more precise.

Mocavo offers a great search engine for free, that will even let you access records, newspapers and other citations for free. They let you drill down if you become a premium member which is free for the first week.

Mocavo was part of the TechStars program last year, graduating out of their 2011 class.

Mocavo’s COO Ryan Hunter thanked Boulder and TechStars in the Wednesday announcement. He reconfirmed their commitment as part of Boulder’s startup scene and even announced some job openings they plan on filling with the funds from this round.

“As a Techstars 2011 team, we want to say how thankful we are for Boulder’s startup community, and that we will continue to support our town. With Foundry’s investment, we now have the resources to rapidly grow our technology with a talented team of product engineers and developers. We have immediate openings for front-end developers, back-end developers and interface designers”. Hunter said on Mocavo’s Blog.

The $4 million dollar round came from the Foundry Group. Seth Levine, Foundry’s Managing director will get a seat on Mocavo’s board.

Our friend Sean Ludwig at VentureBeat reports that Mocavo’s previously raised $1 million dollars in an Angel round “from a long roster of angel investors (most of them named Dave) including Dave McClure, David Cohen, David Bonderman, David Calone, Dave Carlson, and others.”

source: VentureBeat

TechCrunch Disrupt NYC To Offer Design Office Hours On Stage

Next week we’ll be in New York covering the three day startup, entrepreneur and tech conference, TechCrunch Disrupt NYC. Just like last year we’ll be talking to all the great startups that present onstage for Battlefield and the ones in Startup Alley.

Although he was absent from the Crunchies amidst the TechCrunch/AOL drama, Mike Arrington will be back on stage hosting interviews and asking the tough questions to startups competing in the Battlefield.

Last fall Arrington left TechCrunch, the site he had founded, ultimately over concerns that AOL’s investment in Crunchfund, Arrington’s VC fund, sparked ethical questions and a conflict of interest (in some eyes). After the dust settled at TechCrunch earlier this year, Arrington welcomed the opportunity to come back and host this years Disrupt event.

Another highlight of this years Disrupt NYC is the new design office hours. Last year, Paul Graham, co-founder of Y-Combinator hosted office hours at Disrupt NYC. This year TechCrunch’s Kim-Mai Cutler reports that Graham will be at home in the valley playing daddy to his new baby.

This year’s office hours is focused on Design and includes Leland Rechis, (Director of mobile product at Etsy), Jamie Devine (head of user experience at AVOS), Jason Marrow (lead product designer at Betaworks), and Mimi Chum (design director at General Assembly).

If you’re interested in picking the brands of this design arsenal you can head over to TechCrunch Disrupt NYC website and complete this form. Those selected to participate will be announced at 11:55am sharp and must have a laptop, iPad, or phone to show the design.

We will have round the clock coverage of TechCrunch Disrupt on TDGN on Slacker & AOL radio as well as a ton of coverage here at nibletz.com of course focusing on startups from “everywhere else”.

Linkage:

TechCrunch Disrupt NYC page

Are you a startup from everywhere else that’s either presenting or attending email us here at disrupt@nibletz.com to get on our interview schedule.

Nibletz is the voice of everywhere else, check out these new stories

Orlando Startup: Doccaster, Proximity Based File Sharing For Convention Go-ers

A new startup in central Florida is looking to disrupt the file sharing space. Rather than going with a cloud based model, like every other startup in the space, Doccaster offers proximity based file sharing. This type of file sharing will be great for conventioneers.

Doccaster is based in Orlando, which reportedly hosts 25 of the top 250 conferences in the United States and ranks behind only Las Vegas and Chicago for hosting conventions. I’ve personally attended many conventions in Orlando, most recently the 2011 CTIA spring show.

With Doccaster you will be able to share files with large groups within a 15 mile radius. The user will be able to search files based on proximity or DoccasterID (user name).

Co-founders Kyle Steele and Himanshu Pagey first launched a location based chat platform in 2010. That startup, called GoTootie, has pivoted into Doccaster.

More and more conventions are going green. Over the past two years the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), the producers of the largest trade show in the United States, CES, have made a huge effort to go green, and encourage their exhibitors to go green.

Certainly major exhibitors have the dollars needed to produce thumb drives with their material on them (no company in 2012 would dare give out a CD), but smaller companies at CES or any major trade show don’t necessarily have the money to invest in thousands of thumb drives. Doccaster makes it easy for those companies to sign up for their service and use it as a vehicle to get their literature into convention go-ers hands.

More after the break
Read More…

Providence Startup: JumpOffCampus Connects Students To Off Campus Housing

JumpOffCampus is a Massachusetts startup designed to connect college students and landlords with off campus properties. While it’s a useful service for students, it’s just as useful for landlords who are looking to rent rooms, and apartments to students.

The startup was developed after two friends Mark Abramowicz and Kyle Nichols-Schmolze struggled with finding a good place to live off campus while they were attending Tufts University. There was a lack of resources to find good housing. If you’ve been a college student then you are well aware of the problems with signs on the side of the road and posted on bulletin boards. Come August all the places are rented and everyone forgets to take their signs down.

Out of this need Abramowicz and Nichols-Schmolze became co-founders of JumpOffCampus. Their goal is to solve the off campus housing issue faced by every student in the US.

We got a chance to talk with Abramowicz about JumpOffCampus.

Briefly tell us what JumpOffCampus is.

JumpOffCampus is an online resource for university students, facilitating their off-campus housing search. In addition to a map-based apartment search, we also have added functionality like the ability to share progress with friends and family, as well as a roommate finder, marketplace, and the ability to post and search for sublets.

How did you come up with the idea, are their other founders involved?

The idea for JumpOffCampus was born out of a general frustration with the process of finding an apartment while we were sophomores at Tufts University. We couldn’t believe that there was no resource and so we sought to make one, using our own experiences – and those of our friends – as inspiration.

More after the break
Read More…

UPDATED – London Startup: Lightbox Acquihired By Facebook

Facebook is obviously using their last days of independence to scoop up whatever companies they want. Of course everyone knows about the $1 billion dollar acquisition of Instagram. Facebook also recently acquired social discovery app Glancee which uses Facebook as it’s backbone and was the closest competition to Highlight at South By Southwest in Austin this year.

Now we’ve learned that Facebook has acquired the seven man team behind Lightbox. ~~Including designer Giles Peyton-Nicoll, the companies creative director and the driving force behind their UI.~~

Giles Peyton Nicoll The Creative Director behind Lightbox, acquired this week by Facebook, has announced plans to launch a new global design consultancy and build a portfolio of brands “as cherished as Coca-Cola, Apple and Nike”.
As the seven-strong Lightbox engineering team prepares for its relocation to the States, Creative Director and Product Designer Giles Peyton-Nicoll is staying in London and is set to launch a new agency. Full Press Release Below

No financial details were announced. The Lightbox team is based in London, so it’s also unclear where they will work out of or if they will all move to Silicon Valley.

Lightbox is a photo sharing app for Android. They debuted last year and had a pod set up at Google IO. The service is very similar, at least in the sharing aspect, to Instagram. In fact, before Instagram arrived on the Android platform Lightbox would send out emails to it’s user base touting it as a better than Instagram and available on Android. They continued with the same marketing message after Instagram launched on Android just days before the Facebook acquisition.

It was widely reported that on the Facebook investor road show, the company was highly criticized on their mobile efforts. Despite pushing out regular updates of the Facebook app some investors seemed worried that more and more users are resorting to the mobile device and that Facebook needs to make sure they own that position the way they do with social media.

It’s also obvious that Facebook is taking photography very seriously. They recently updated their mobile site and mobile apps to enlarge the size of photos on users walls and news feeds. With the acquisitions of both Instagram and Lightbox they must be working on some bad ass mobile photo app to integrate into the social network.

source: VentureBeat

FULL PRESS RELEASE:

LIGHTBOX CREATIVE TO LAUNCH NEW CONSULTANCY

The Creative Director behind Lightbox, acquired this week by Facebook, has announced plans to launch a new global design consultancy and build a portfolio of brands “as cherished as Coca-Cola, Apple and Nike”.
As the seven-strong Lightbox engineering team prepares for its relocation to the States, Creative Director and Product Designer Giles Peyton-Nicoll is staying in London and is set to launch a new agency.
The 41-year-old is a world-leading branding strategist with a wealth of experience in designing and developing global brands. He founded boutique design agency Aspect, which sold to GYRO in 2000. He then took on a Creative Director role at GYRO, helping them achieve global recognition.
After leaving GYRO in 2002 he became a Digital Strategy and Design Consultant working on global brand, advertising and marketing campaigns for some of the best London digital agencies.
With extensive experience in brand guardianship for many of the world’s favourite brands, his true talent lies in creating successful brands from conception – his last two brand identities – Nakama and Lightbox – have become global success stories.
Mr Peyton-Nicoll said: “I wish my Lightbox colleagues all the best. We had a great time developing the product and I am very proud to have played a major part in the development of what is now a globally-recognised digital brand.
“I’m now looking to the future and the exciting prospect of creating similar powerful brands, as cherished as Coca-Cola, Apple and Nike, for my new clients.”

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

We’re on a sneaker strapped nationwide road trip, check it out and support us here

Austin Startup: Outbox A Drop Box For Your Snail Mail

Outbox co-founder Will Davis realized after moving four times in six years that something needed to be done about the mail. He was tired of losing mail in his moves and having to forward his actual address all the time. That is the foundation behind startup Outbox.

Outbox is essentially a mail intercepting service. Outbox intercepts users mail and then scans their mail and puts it in a digital mailbox. Outbox also forwards packages to a customers home free of charge.

Outbox is great for people like Davis who have moved quite a bit in a shot period of time. It’s also a great idea for frequent travelers. With Outbox you don’t have to worry about missing that important piece of mail or making a return trip to the house just to check the mail. For travelers like myself our home automation system links to my phone so I can keep an eye on the house. Outbox would solve yet another travel related hiccup.

The company hasn’t specified what will happen in the case of checks delivered by US mail. There is a company in San Francisco that allows mailbox renters (like a UPS store) to have their mail digitally delivered. That company can actually electronically deposit checks as well, possibly an option for Outbox.

More after the break
Read More…

California Startup: Smule Releases Hit App Songify To Android

At CES 2011 (last years CES not this years) hip hop producer/artist T-Pain told us personally and on video, that the “I am T-Pain” app would be coming soon to Android. Well for whatever reason that didn’t happen. But, there’s good news from the same startup developer Smule.

In addition to crafting the “I am T-Pain” app for iOS, which makes anyone sound like T-Pain, Smule has released a handful of other, intensely popular, interactive “music” apps, including Songify. If you’re an Android user and you’ve every seen or played with Songify on a friend’s iOS device then you know how addicting creating your own songs with the app can be.

What makes Songify so great? Well we had a chance to talk with Smule ahead of today’s announcement and here’s what they said:

“Songify has reached 9MM users on iOS and over 120MM songs have been created to date. We get multiple requests a day for users asking us to release Songify on Android.

Our “secret sauce” is using sophisticated artificial intelligence technology to make music creation accessible to non-musicians. Anyone can make music with Songify. Just talk into the phone, and Songify turns your speech into melody. We also made the user interface super-simple, so everyone from the ages of 3 to 93 can (and do!) use the app with ease. When you make music creation so easy, it gives people a powerful new mode of self-expression. “

That’s a lot of user created songs.

It’s been no secret that with midi api’s gone from Android since the release of Android 2.0, Android has lacked in the music creation category. Until now, all the cool creative music apps were on iOS only.

Smule released their popular Songify app to the Google Play store this morning. In addition to Songify and I am T-Pain, Smule is the developer of other hit music apps for iOS like Magic Guitar, Ocarina, Glee Karaoke and Magic Piano (which will hit Android next month)

If you can’t wait to try it, grab it here https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.smule.songifyin the Google Play Store.

Toledo Startup: Buyvite Launches Group Payment Platform INTERVIEW

Do you have a big family? Have you ever pulled money together from your entire family to buy grandma and grandpa a cruise, a vacation or other gift? Well pulling all the money together, checking off the payments and then writing one big check or paying by credit card can be a huge hassle. Sure these days you can have most of your family Paypal you but there’s still those few that don’t have a Paypal account. This is just one of the scenarios that Toledo OH based startup Buyvite is looking to solve.

Another easy scenario is times when maybe you and a bunch of friends have wanted to pull together money to buy tickets to a concert or a basketball game. One person typically shells out all the money and waits to get paid back. No more of that thanks to Buyvite.

Buyvite members will have the ability to create a Buyvite by inviting friends and family to a group purchase. Once the requested amount is achieved, the group purchase organizer has the ability to trigger a Buyvite Code, that functions like a gift card code, that is worth the requested amount and can be used to make the purchase on any site that integrates the Buyvite API. Group purchase organizers also have the flexibility of sending the collected funds directly to any U.S. bank account for free.

We got a chance to talk to Brandi Wimberly the woman entrepreneur behind Buyvite

Interview after the break
Read More…

Santa Barbara Startup: Talentwire Connect To Mentors Who Do What You Do INTERVIEW

Do you like what you do? Are you looking for like minded people? Do you feel like you could offer someone who does what you do advice? Would you like to learn more about the profession you’re in? These are just some of the questions that will be answered when you join the new talentwire.me platform.

Talentwire is a platform that connects professionals to each other and allows mentorship, sharing and more. Users can share via simply writing about what they do, asking and answering questions and even doing how to videos. Talentwire integrates with Facebook for quick logins.

Once you’re in the Talentwire site at talentwire.me you can select your profession, or “what you do” and then drill down even more. For instance I found a category for news media after clicking through media and arts. There’s categories for every profession under the sun from healthcare to actors, computer coders to fashion, and the platform is still building.

Talentwire founder Sam Sperling has been hard at work promoting his new startup. They debuted at South By Southwest in Austin Texas this past March and then went on to TheNextWeb conference in Amsterdam. At SXSW Sperling was flanked by scouts from other social networks in the professional space like LinkedIn, BraveNewTalent and Dice.

We got a chance to speak with Sperling.

Interview after the break
Read More…

Boston Startup: CoachUp An Online Marketplace For Personal Coaches

A new startup has launched out of Cambridge Massachusetts this week called CoachUp. The premise is simple, in fact it’s surprising that no one had attempted this before. CoachUp connects personal coaches with athletes for any sport.

Co-Founders Jordan Fliegel has been a professional, personal basketball coach for the last five years. In an interview with nibletz.com he told us that before CoachUp personal coaches relied on Craigslist, word of mouth and ads in Ice Cream Shops. Some personal coaches have the advantage of being team coaches at the same time and can offer their services as a personal coach on the side. The same way some teachers tutor.

“For athletes (or the parents of young athletes), it is really hard to find a good private coach in their sport, in their area, at a price they can afford, at a time that works for them. After all, most private coaches don’t have websites. Even if you can find a coach through a referral, it is very hard to compare that coach with others, even harder to verify the accuracy of that coach’s reviews (if they have any), and impossible to know if there may have been a closer, cheaper or better matched option elsewhere.”

The market for personal coaches is more lucrative than some may think. Kids, especially teenagers and high school students often use their sport of choice as a vehicle to get scholarships and go onto higher education. They sometimes rely on the use of a personal coach or athletic trainer to refine their sport and better their skills.

Because a lot of their clientele are parents looking for a coach for their kid Fliegel and co-founder Arian Radmand take vetting coaches very seriously. Right now, while the service is launching in the Boston area, coaches go through a phone interview, and if parents want to run more extensive background checks CoachUp has an affiliate relationship with a background company.

More after the break
Read More…

Shark Tank: When A Startup Gets Thrown Back

If If you’re a regular reader of Nibletz, the voice of startups everywhere else, then you should also be a loyal viewer of The Shark Tank on ABC. Despite the story I’m writing right now it’s still my favorite television program of all time. If you’re not familiar with The Shark Tank on ABC, it’s a show that pits real startups and entrepreneurs against self made millionaires; Robert Herjavec, Kevin O’Leary, Barbara Corcoran, Daymond John and Mark Cuban.

It must be heart breaking to be like Oregon entrepreneurs Sue Krukopf and Nancy Bush who pitched their startup, mywonderfullife.com, on the season premiere of Season 3 of the Shark Tank. While they had a good enough idea to get past an open casting call and other preliminary judges, when they made it to the tank, all five investors balked and they walked away with nothing. One of the rules of the Shark Tank is that you have to convince at least one of the “sharks” to invest exactly what you’re asking for or more, or you walk away with nothing.

What has to be even more heartbreaking is cases like Keeley Tillotson and Erika Welsh (coincidentally also from Oregon) whose Wild Squirrel Nut Butter startup was featured on this past Friday’s episode of Shark Tank. This Friday Shark Tank actually ranked number one out of all of the programs in it’s time slot, so millions and millions of people watched as Tillotson and Welsh, two quirky college students pitched their business.

In their episode it got down to the wire. Four of the sharks were out and only self made real estate mogul, turned shark, Barbara Corcoran was left. The girls were looking for $50,000 for 10% equity in their company. Corcoran countered with $50,000 for 40% equity of their company.

More after the break

Washington DC Startup: LightSquared Files For Bankruptcy After Botched 4G/LTE Plan

Many of you know the sad story of Lightsquared, a wireless broadband startup located in the suburbs of Washington DC.

LightSquared was an offshoot startup founded by wireless pioneer Philip Falcone. The company had a firm background in satellite communications under two former names, American Mobile Satellite Corporation and Mobile Satellite Ventures.

It was LightSquared’s intention to take frequencies that had been located near bands used for government and military GPS and use them for next generation 4G/LTE services. They had actually carved out a huge deal to be the 4G/LTE provider for Sprint, the nation’s third largest carrier which also has roots in the same DC suburb of Reston Virginia from their NexTel days.

After months and months of testing and appearance after appearance in front of the FCC the FCC finally ruled in February that “there was no practical way to mitigate potential interference at this time.”

The Sprint deal immediately fell apart after that announcement and a large number of LightSquared employees were laid off.

Well one more nail has been put in the LightSquared coffin as the company filed for bankruptcy protection. LightSquared CEO Marc Montanger told the Washington Post that the company hasn’t given up on it’s plan and the bankruptcy protection was to give them some breathing room.

However, at this time they may not have any large scale customers left. Sprint has resorted back to their own 4G/LTE rollout in conjunction with Clearwire for which they own 50% of. T-Mobile has announced their own 4G/LTE strategy which will be funded through their parent company Deutsche Telekom and some of the nearly $4 billion dollars in break up money and considerations from the failed AT&T/T-Mobile merger last year.

source: Washington Post

Ur Daycare Locator Aims To Locate

Ur Daycare Locator aims to locate local daycare centers and schools for your child. The service has been tailored to give raw user-generated reviews and easy to use tools to help you make the best choice for you daycare needs. With only a few simple steps you will be able to find several daycare centers in your area or specified area and get directions to them via your favorite maps application or browser on your Android device. The app is now only available on Android, but will soon be available on iTunes for your iOS device as well.

Start screenAt the home screen you can easily access the Directory, Maps, Search, Favorites, Applications and more.

SearchThis is the simple search option that will help you find any publicly listed daycare center within up to 20 miles from your specified chosen or current location.

Results Results are nice and cleanly listed for your choosing pleasure.

Map Maps view give you a better idea of how far your commute to and from the daycare centers will be.

Get Directions With the option to open a daycare centers address directly from your favorite map app or browser, you’ll have no trouble at all getting navigation instructions or driving directions to your favorite daycare center.

Apply Ur Daycare Locator makes it even easier by providing an easy to fill out application form that can be sent directly to your chosen daycare center. You don’t have to print and deliver your applications anymore.

Favorite List The favorites list makes it easy for you to save and access the daycare centers contact info when you need it.

Conclusion

After using this app for a few weeks running through the different features while looking for the perfect daycare center to enroll my son at, I’ve found that Ur Daycare Locator has saved me a ton of time and allowed me to discover daycare centers that I didn’t even know were in my area. It is an important decision to pick where our children spend their time and who will be watching them. Let Ur Daycare Locator help you find the perfect daycare for your kid(s). Give the app a try on Android from the Google PLAY Store here Ur Daycare Locator for Android or if you’re an iOS user you’ll have to wait a bit. It will be available on iTunes soon.

Source: Ur Daycare Locator

Toronto Startup: IppinKa Is A Crowd Buy Store For Beautiful Products

A new startup out of Toronto called IppinKa is recruiting tastemakers and lovers of beautiful products. In the tech world these people are commonly referred to as early adopters. However if you have a keen eye for beautiful things than you should pay attention to what this startup is doing in the crowdbuying space.

IppinKa is also recruiting designers of great products. Are you a sculptor? Have you made a unique home accessory? Are you a contemporary furniture designer? IppinKa is looking for you. They hope to match those tastemakers with designers of fine quality products.

As their website suggests they are starting a movement for functional and well made products.

We got a chance to talk with one of the co-founders of IppinKa before their upcoming launch.

Who are the founders and what are their backgrounds?

Jerry Chang is a sucker for Japanese products. Educated in Engineering and Product Design, his role model is Dieter Rams.

Fran Rawlings is a social media maven and a world traveller who loves finding great products from different corners of the world.

Alan Soong, with an education in Engineering, is a product designer by day and seasoned online shopper by night.

Where are you located?

We are located in Toronto, Ontario.

Where does the name IppinKa come from?

“Ippin” is the Japanese word for great products. “Ka” means house. We came up with the name after seeing a picture of a house with beautiful products displayed in it.

More after the break
Read More…