Startups Archives - Page 130 of 144

Canadian Startup: Wantser Is the Canadian Version Of Pinterest For Wants

Pinterest has caught on like wild fire. We’ve run several stories about Pinterest and it’s crazy valuations. We’ve heard lately that their active users have gone down however it’s still extremely hot. With Pinterest you can “pin” pictures on the internet. It’s been highly adopted by women who pin everything from the latest fashions, to art projects, home interior decorating ideas and even fashion.

Imagine if you will, pinning the things you want and then having access to the ways to get those things. If you see a fancy new purse on Pinterest instead of pinning it, you “want” it. Well that’s the idea behind Canadian startup Wantster.

CEO Ky Joseph and Chris Edelman a Canadian radio sales executive, started Wantster to do just that. You can simply download the Wantster “want” button to your browser, the same way some do with Pinterest, and when you see something you want, “want it”. With Wantster’s mobile app you can take a picture of something you want for later and put it in your “want” list.

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Columbus OH Startup: Flymuch Launches New VenueSeen Photo Monitoring

Sure most business owners probably have a Google Alert set up for their business. They may also use some kind of clipping/monitoring service and then of course, a smart business owner (startup or not) is using some sort of social media monitoring to see what people are saying and doing about their business. Well now, Columbus OH based startup FlyMuch has launched a new photo monitoring tool for brands.

Did you just have a really great burger from CheeBurger Cheeburger and share it with the world? Did you have a bad experience at Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse and post a photo of your server? Well whatever it is, business owners, whether they like it or not, are constantly having photos take in their business.

Perhaps there was a great 21st birthday party with a lot of smiling faces at TGIFridays or your 5 year old hit a hole in one at a local miniature golf spot. Businesses want to see it all, the good, the bad, and with VenueSeen, the ugly.

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Is LockerDome St. Louis’ Groupon?

LockerDome is one hot startup coming out of St.Louis. It’s the first ever dedicated sports social network for youth and amateur sports. LockerDome has been likened to the Facebook or LinkedIn for athletes.

LockerDome allows individual sports organizations to develop their own sports networks, and most of the well known sports programs in the country have already joined and have thriving networks. The Dallas Texans, one of the top ranked soccer teams in the country has a LockerDome network, as does the East Coat Pro Showcase, a well known east coast event that’s made up of more than 100 of the 2011 Major League Baseball draft picks.

LockerDome and CEO Gabe Lozano aren’t just making a big name for themselves in the sports world, they’ve already chalked up a lot of funding. In December of 2011 they raised $750,000 in an angel round. Participants in the round include serial entrepreneurs Brian and Carol Matthews, co-founders of Primary Network and CDM Fantasy Sports; Capital Innovators, a St. Louis-based technology accelerator fund; Moosylvania Marketing, a nationally-recognized marketing agency; and Hal Gentry, co-founder of Capital Innovators and GridLogix, among more than a dozen other angel investors.

LockerDome also caught the eye of Square’s co-founder Jim McKelvey who invested and also took a seat on the company’s board of directors. But McKelvey wasn’t easily sold at first. He’s not the kind of investor that looks to pump money into a “flavor of the week” just to catch a big windfall he has three businesses that he’s started and still runs today, including Square which he founded with Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey.

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Chicago Lean Startup Challenge Taking Applications For Summer Session

The Chicago Lean Startup Challenge, like other similarly named challenges across the country is based on Eric Reis’ “Lean Startup” methodology, customer development by Steve Blank and the business canvass model by Alexander Osterwalder. Ultimately the challenge is to take startups and hone them in on the most efficient way to succeed.

“Unlike business plan competitions, the Lean Startup Challenge focuses on real, meaningful results for the participants. The final presentations provided insights into the area where so many startups fail – understanding their customer!” -Nik Rokop, Director at Knapp Entrepreneurship Center IIT.

The 14 week startup program is designed to get startups on the path to success. The program, in it’s second year, will hold lean startup classes, give participants access to mentors and the community, connect startups with the tools they need and they have over $75,000 in cash and prizes.

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New Mexico Startup: Whiteman Technology Unveils Windows Set Top Box At DEMO

A Clovis New Mexico startup, Whiteman Technology, is hoping to take advantage of a hole in consumer entertainment that’s been caused by the delayed release of next generation gaming systems by both Microsoft and Sony. While the world awaits the two gaming giant systems, Whiteman has unveiled a monster of a set top box.

There are a lot of choices in set top boxes these days. You’ve got Boxee, Roku, Google TV boxes, Netgear Neo boxes and many more all competing for the same space. However Whiteman has packed their box with a ton of features.

Whiteman Technology’s set top box features:

– The ability to display cable tv programming (not found on most boxes)
– Playing 3D games for the PC
– Recording 6 channels at the same time (DVR)
– 1 terabyte hard drive to store everything in your collection
– voice control and gesture recognition

“We’ve taken people off guard with a hardware startup,” Ryan Whiteman said at DEMO. “We have gotten a lot of attention, and we intend to build this in the U.S.”

Whiteman and his co-founders Blake Jordan and Shaffin Baldwin have not announced pricing or availability for the new set top box but did say it would be on par with TiVo’s set top boxes which tend to run a little more than the Roku, Boxee or Google TV variety. But, you’re getting a ton more features.

Whiteman Technology was one of 80 companies chosen to participate in IDG’s Demo Conference in Santa Clara, CA this past week.

source and photo: VB

Interview: California Startup: Workers Count Giving Workers Everywhere A Voice

So I’m pretty sure everyone’s been there, you saw a cool job listed in the paper or maybe heard about some cool place to work right? Well then you start working and you realize that everyone is bitching about bad hours, cuts in pay, the boss is a jerk, or maybe you find the exact opposite and everything is great. Well a new California startup called WorkersCount is a resource that allows you to check that kind of thing out.

Co-Founder Myles Suer is in San Diego, he and co-founder Matt Weeks created WorkersCount which is a new mobile check in app that measures worker sentiment (how they feel about work) in the workplace. Weeks tells nibletz.com “It’s fun, safe, anonymous and empowering for workers at all levels. “. It’s a direct to consumer service.

Now let’s get something straight real quick this isn’t just a “bitching” service. They want users of WorkersCount to talk about the good and the bad. There are plenty of people out there who love their jobs and their perks. WorkersCount can be used to gauge a great employer and a not so great employer.

We got a chance to interview Weeks to find out all about WorkersCount and take a break from customer reward, loyalty and engagement startups, for at least a few minutes.

How did you come up with the idea?

We pivoted on this idea from another, more complicated idea we were working on. It hit us one day that the one pain workers have is that there is no real-time, consumer-provided information about what it’s like to work somewhere. It’s all monolithic by brand, yet today’s workers are hyper-connected via twitter, Facebook and LinkedIin… tons of information flies around, but it’s hard to sort the signal from the noise.

Briefly describe what you hope the end user will get out of the app/platform

By checking-in daily and engaging in the WorkersCount community, workers will be able to see where people just like them are thriving or struggling. They will be able to validate when their current role or company, warts and all, is the right place for them, or whether they need to start using the WorkersCount system to quietly start to sift and sort, compare and set alerts. All along the way they can see where their friends work and how those companies are comparing. The service is a fun and safe way to give “voice” to workers at all levels, and through the tweets, charts, indices and rankings we produce, they will be able to have real impact in driving accountability and a better workplace for themselves and others.

This is important to understand about our brand and our positioning: we work directly for consumers. This is not something that comes “down” to them from their employers. Thus we are accountable directly to users, not companies.

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Interview: Austin Transplant Startup Sprockster Is A Great Place For Kids And Families

After getting my start in media at the age of 12 for Radio Aahs (the precursor to Radio Disney), naturally kid focused startups occasionally catch my eye, especially when their done well, and with a little TLC.

Sprockster is one of those great kid and family focused startup. Sprockster is a gateway to family friendly entertainment. They have a collection of over 1,000 kid friendly songs, hundreds of music videos and they’ve promoted over 600+ family friendly events. Sprockster is reminiscent of the newest version of MySpace (post Justin Timberlake) except guaranteed family friendly.

Co-founder Jesse Atwell tells nibletz.com:

“Sprockster is an online community dedicated to the discovery and promotion of new and emerging family entertainment. Initially focused on kids’ music and kids’ music videos, the site features 1000+ streaming songs, 500+ original music videos, and has promoted 600+ family-friendly events. Sprockster’s users include parents, educators, artists, brands, educators, video producers, etc. Our artist members have profiles that typically include streaming songs, videos, upcoming tour dates, pictures, current news, and more. Any user can create an account and contribute and engage with artists and other users. If you’re looking to explore, discover, and talk about new family-friendly entertainment, Sprockster is the place!”

There’s definitely a hole in aggregation services for family friendly entertainment.

“…If you visit iTunes and search “Kids Music” the first song you get is “Kids” by MGMT. I LOVE iTunes and “Kids” by MGMT is a great, GREAT song. One of my favorites. But it’s not very helpful if you’re looking to sample, explore, and discover the next Laurie Berkner or Dan Zanes. That’s not necessarily a perfect example, but ‘Family Music’ is a special case and definitely deserves its own neighborhood in the musical townscape . . . the main point being that not everything you find on traditional platforms is family-friendly and there’s a need to kind of clear the clutter. This is what inspired Sprockster and – ultimately – what we are trying to solve” Atwell said.

Atwells co-founder is his wife. She has a background in child development while he has an extensive background in entertainment marketing and digital production development. Before founding Sprockster Atwell held positions at Sony Music and Hallmark Cards. While there are already sites dedicated to the discovery of music like iTunes, MySpace, and Pandora, the Atwells couldn’t find a solution dedicated to just family entertainment.”

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Denver Startup ShortTermHousing.com Holding Habitat For Humanity Campaign

The team at shorttermhousing.com is happy about donating to Habitat For Humanity this month

Denver startup shorttermhousing.com kicked off a campaign to help Habitat For Humanity of metro Denver at the beginning of the month. Through the end of April for anyone who lists their home for rent, vacation rental or corporate suite shorttermhousing.com will donate $1 to Habitat Humanity. Listing your property on shorttermhousing.com is free.

“We believe people deserve options where they lay their head down at night–whether it’s for someone in need, like those that benefit from the Habitat for Humanity, or for an individual who wants to find their home away from home.”shorttermhousing.com’s founder Elia Wallen said in a statement.

shorttermhousing.com challenges already established sites like AirBnB or VRBO without charging fees and no fees or markups to travelers or property owners.

People are paying for online rental listings and I wondered, why? Would you pay to create a Facebook profile? Probably not. So, why are people paying to create a profile of their home on a property website? Because it’s the only option. So, I created an alternative, ShortTermHousing.com, and we live by three rules:

100% free for property listings and reservations. No hidden or back end fees.
Open communication for everyone. Let visitors communicate on their terms.
Adapt if a visitor suggests a change to the site, listen, and if it makes sense change.

Wallen hasn’t said anything about how they plan on monetizing their business. Wallen also owns traverlershaven.com which is a corporate focused website which finds employee’s their next temporary home. The site boasts corporate apartment housing opportunities in all 50 states and in 5,000 cities.

source: prnewswire

Where’s The Beef? New Kansas Startup AgLocal Will Help You Find It

I’m going to break the code of hipster bloggers by publicly announcing that I am an omnivore there is nothing I enjoy more than a nice big steak complimented by some kind of exotic potato side dish, some asparagus and a beer. Yup that’s me. Sorry vegetarian and vegan bloggers. That’s why I’m really thrilled to hear about a new startup called AgLocal.

I heard some murmur about the startup and it’s founder Naithan Jones who left his job as director of Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundations aspiring entrepreneur FastTrac program to undertake his own startup.

So here’s how this AgLocal works. Farmer’s markets are actually growing. If you’ve been to a farmer’s market in a decent sized community you’ll probably be inundated by fruits, vegetables, locally raised grass fed cattle, a few food trucks and cupcakes. You typically know where the farmer’s markets are or your local Whole Foods, but what if you don’t. AgLocal connects meat sellers to meat buyers.

Now you can order you meat straight from a local farmer and even cut out the grocery store. Jones and his co-founder Jacob McDaniel have been visiting locally owned farms across the midwest and have signed up over 100 farms already. The strategy is to connect local people to local farms.

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Portland Clean Tech Startup LucidEnergy Has Found A Way To Create Green Power In A Water Pipe

A CleanTech startup in Portland Oregon called LucidEnergy has announced that they’ve found a way to create clean energy in a segment of water pipe. Lucid’s method involves pipes that have been fitted with a simple 5 turbine system. These special pipes could be installed when a utility replaces a segment of pipe.

How effective is it?

Gregg Semler, LucidEnergy’s President and CEO says that a stretch of pipe carrying water downhill might be able to produce enough electricity to power 100 homes. Impressive. Not only that but all around it’s cheaper. Semler says that without any government subsidies the cost of installing his pipe method is three to four times better than solar or wind systems.

LucidEnergy’s first public test of this technology will start next week on April 26th. That’s when the project opens at Riverside Public Utilities in Southern California. Riverside has tested four generations of the system over the last two years. This last test has gone flawlessly according to cities assistant general manager for water Kevin Milligan.

“I think it’s great technology,” Milligan told the Portland Tribune. “It could be widely adopted by water utilities and result in some significant cost savings. And it’s green.” The power generated from the Riverside test site is said to be enough to power 14 miles of street lights. Milligan says that after labor and capital construction, energy is his third highest expense. At his water fields in San Bernadino, CA he pays $.13 to $.25 per kilowatt hour. The Lucid system produces energy at a cost of $.05 to $.09 per kilowatt hour which is a significant savings.

Riverside will be the first city to publicly test the service however there has already been interst from San Antonio and New York as well as Israel and Zambia.

source: PortlandTribune

Chicago Startup: MentorMob Teams Up With Girl Scouts & Motorola For Online Badge System

Chicago Startup MentorMob Is Taking Girlscout Badges Online (photo Jose M. Osario/Chicago Tribune)

One things for sure, these aren’t your momma’s brownies.

The Girl Scouts of America are going high tech with the help of Chicago startup MentorMob and technology/financial partner Motorola Mobility Foundation.

Last month MentorMob was the recipient of a $150,000 prize as part of the Digital Media and Learning Competition, a contest sponsored by the Mozilla Foundation and others. MentorMob aggregates web based learning content into playlists. Mentor Mob CEO Kris Chinosorn describes what they do at MentorMob as crowd sourced learning.

MentorMob was originally set up to do learning content and that infrastructure is already in place. With the grant money from the Digital Media and Learning Competition they are building the framework for a certification and badge system. While the badge system is being designed for the Girl Scouts, Chinosorn is going to scale the technology to fit in any kind of setting. The certification system they are building will also be able to implement tests and quizzes to assess the level at which someone has learned the content.

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Exclusive: Italian Startup 20lin.es Prepares To Disrupt Social Collaborative Writing At International Book Fair

A team of 10 relatively young entrepreneurs in Italy have teamed up to create something quite disruptive in the collaborative writing space. The four founders and six collaborators are all between the ages of 24 and 26. Their startup called 20lin.es is set to debut on May 10th during the International Book Fair in Turin.

So how does it work? Writers collaborate with each other in what co-founder Alessandro Biggi calls a 20×6 format. The writers collaborate on what 20lin.es calls a “pill”. A pill is a short story made up of 6 sections with 20 lines each, hence the name 20lin.es.

Biggi took some time to explain to Nibletz how this new innovative collaboration works:

“At any moment, 20lin.es selected users can start a new story by writing a (max) 20lines input that will stay active for 20 days. If other users like such input, they can decide to contribute to the story by writing a second section of max 20lines. More users can then decide to either continue the story by adding a new section or to re-write the previous one. In such a way, every input can be developed in a large/endless number of possibilities. Every story can have max 6 sections while each section can be voted, commented and shared by any user. At the end of the 20 days of activity of the input, there will be a 6-sections story with the highest approval. It has finally became a Pill and it will be digitally published. 20lin.es publications will collect 20 different Pills originated from 20 different inputs or the 20 most liked stories started from the same input. 20lin.es publications will be sold on: iTunes, Amazon and directly on 20lin.es

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Chez Gourmet’s Burger Queen Takes Home Top Prize In Angel Oregon Competition

Yes this is a Veggie Burger by Chez Gourmet, you see why they won now huh?

A woman owned startup in Oregon has taken home the $250,000 first price in the Angel Oregon competition for her startup Chez Gourmet. Chez Gourmet is still considered in the startup stage despite the fact that founder Marie Osmuson first founded the company in 2006.

Osumuson created Chez Gourmet after a friend of hers, who is a well known local real estate agent, Barbara Durrett, sampled one of Osmuson’s veggie burgers at a family birthday party. Durrett encouraged Osmuson to try and sell her veggie burgers in local stores. Durrett also set Osmuson up with a food industry friend who agreed that the burgers were definitely good enough to sell. Durrett and Osmuson became business partners and their burgers started catching on.

Fast Forward to 2012 and Chez Gourmet has just taken home the top prize for the Angel Oregon competition. Chez Gourmet is expected t clear $2M in revenue this year and is on track to grow to $12M in revenue by 2015. Chez Gourmet was one of five companies to present yesterday at the Angel Oregon event held at Portland’s Governor Hotel.

A startup that makes social network analytics software called, Tellagence came in second place winning $94,000. The Portland Business Journal reports that this competition has been around since 2003. The 46 companies that have participated in the competition have generated $121 million in revenue and employ 741 people. They’ve also raised $81 million in venture capital and angel investment.

Here’s the linkage:

To find out more about Chez Gourmet visit their site here

Nibletz is the voice of startups everwhere else check out more stories here

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Source: Business Journal

Kansas City Startup: Rare Wire Takes The Wraps Off Their Native Mobile App Building Platform

The do it yourself app space is getting crowded, however most of the DIY app building platforms are based on HTML 5 or just wrappers for mobile sites. What Matt Angell and Kirk Hasenzahl, the co-founders of Rare Wire have built is a platform for non-developers to build their own native apps.

If you’re not familiar with the term native apps, that’s an app that you download to your smartphone or other mobile device, that for the most part functions on it’s own on the hardware side. Non native apps require the backbone of the internet to operate on and HTML 5 in most cases. The advantage to native apps is that they are popular and give the developer and user a sense that the app is created specifically for what it was downloaded to do. The advantage to HTML 5 is that it’s truly multi-platform enabled.

Rare Wire is an app development firm that builds white label apps for clients like the United States Military Academy at West Point, Ebony Magazine and the Atlantic, so they have a bunch of credibility backing them. They’ve been using their platform, called The Wire, to build apps for their clients, but are now unleashing it to other developers. According Hasenzahl the platform that they’ve developed allows developers with just web development experience to design truly native apps.

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