Most people in tune with the startup community have heard of Ben Milne and his payment startup Dwolla. Milne founded Dwolla in Des Moines and has no plans to take it elsewhere.
Dwolla is making a name for itself by providing a payment system that isn’t dependant on a traditional banking system or credit card backing. It’s this innovative approach to payments and the fact that they’re based in Des Moines that attracted actor and tech investor Ashton Kutcher and his A-list venture fund to Dwolla’s latest Series B round (announced in February).
Although announced in February Kutcher wasn’t formally announced as an investor until earlier today at Startup City Des Moines.
A new EdTech startup in Memphis Tennessee is hoping to revive the stigma, fun, and “accidental learning” that came from software titles back in the day like “Where In The World Is Carmen San Diego”.
The company, called KnoCo is based in Memphis Tennessee. CEO and lead developer Ken Gibbs met co-founder Elliott Boyette while the two were working for a company that develops iOS games. They decided go out on their own and fill a void in The edutainment space. They added James Youngblood as composer, game designer and product manager.
Gibbs admits that thre are a lot of educational games out there but most of them are flash card type games. In those games kids see one card, identify something and then are rewarded with the next card.
Comments Off on DC Area Company: Cadre Looking To Change The Face Of The Network Mixer0LikeLike 1,869
I’ve been attending networking mixers for all of my adult life. In a previous life as a radio personality and then programmer I attended many conventions that had their own networking mixers as shoulder events. When I started founding my own businesses as “SMBs” before “Startups” were chic, I attended every chamber of commerce business after hours, every small business mixer, power breakfast and the like.
All of these events, and even the ones I regularly attend today for both of our sites, it amounts to a room full of people that get all clicked up into their circle of friends and the theme of the mixer is lost almost instantly as you walk through the door. Sometimes when you go to these things and try to be outgoing and meet new people, people look at you like you’re nuts.
I’ve recently started using discovery apps like Sonar, Glancee and Highlight to see if they would help in the networking mixer problem. In some ways they have but not by much. I’d find people I wanted to meet and they were already in deep conversations with the other people I wanted to meet about baseball, football or their latest deal.
Review sites like Yelp are great. The problem is when you’re looking for something in a hurry the last thing you want to do is read a 2500 word review on something. You want the meat and potatoes now and that’s what Stamped specializes in.
Stamped launched in November and was born in New York. Founders Robby Stein and Bart Stein previously worked for Google. The third co-founder, Kevin Palms worked with risk analytics at a New York hedge fund. They’ve already secured $1.5 million in seed funding from Bain Capital Ventures and Google Ventures.
We’re still going strong on our Rawporter Roadshow stopping in and talking with tech companies and startups from “everywhere else”. We spend some good quality time at Fortified’s “The Fort” accelerator in DC. We already brought you our interview with NexGame and now we’re spending some time with Sam from Venga to talk about Venga and what it’s like to startup outside of Silicon Valley.
We actually felt like it was more important to spend more than just 3 hours in the nation’s capital to really get a feel for the scene. We also got to spend a lot of time with Kendrick and Carl from inthecapital who lent us some of the co-working space they were borrowing from canvas.co the largest co-working space provider in DC and a great friend of startups.
Check out the interview video above. We covered Venga earlier on here as well. If you like what we are doing we could sure use some gas money for the trip hit the donate button on the right side.
If you’re a startup from literally “everywhere else” send us an email at startup@nibletz.com and we’ll get you covered.
Comments Off on Minnesota Tech Startups Gopher Angels Is Looking For You (Real Soon)0LikeLike 1,723
A new group of Angels is putting the finishing touches on their website, business and an event to kick off their new fund. Gopher Angels is holding an invite only event for seed stage tech startups on May 3, 2012 at the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management.
Gopher Angels is currently pre-screening startups to see if they have what it takes to get funding from the group. Interested startups should visit this link to check out Gopher Angels and submit their best idea.
Comments Off on Top 10 Reasons To Pick The STL Over SF For Your Next Startup0LikeLike 2,025
This is a repost from a Tech.li article with their permission with a link a bottom of article.
1.St. Louis is Cool
If you like sports, St. Louis is your kind of town. If you like eating, restaurants abound and if Mardi Gras is your type of thing, try checking out the nation’s biggest Mardi Gras celebration outside of New Orleans in the French District. In a city dripping with history, there is plenty of culture to keep anyone satiated, if/when you ever take a day off from growing the business, of course.
Comments Off on Kansas City’s Hallmark Acquires L.A. Startup Spirit Clips0LikeLike 3,991
U.S.greeting card giant Hallmark has acquired Los Angeles based video startup SpiritClips.
SpiritClips was founded in 2007 by Academy Award winning producer and studio executive Rob Fried who’s credits include the hit movies “Hoosiers” and “Rudy”. The company makes heartwarming short films and movies that will compliment Hallmark’s similar offerings and give Hallmark customers access to a variety of video content.
Fried said in a statement:
“It’s a dream come true for SpiritClips to be part of the digital future of so esteemed an organization as Hallmark.”
Hallmark CEO Donald Hall Jr said “It is a superb brand fit for Hallmark, with each story delivering compelling emotional content, positive family values and meaningful life lessons,”
Comments Off on Chattanooga Startup Retickr Filters Out The Noise From News And Social Media.0LikeLike 1,884
Most of us are too busy to sift through the noise of news sites and social streams to get exactly what we want. Many times the important information is lost in the shuffle. That’s where Chattanooga based startup ReTickr comes in.
ReTickr was created by three young entrepreneurs and University of Tennessee graduates; Travis Truett, Brian Trautschold and Jared Houghton.
The threesome has seen enormous growth after being featured in the Mac App Store for three weeks back in October 2011, but it wasn’t always that easy.
If you’re expecting a story about an app that helps you find posh deals on Rodeo Drive, that’s not what Lovvvit is all about. Lovvvit was just recently released into the iOS app store by founder, movie producer and Broadway producer Max Gottlieb.
Lovvvit is a recommendation app that’s based on videos and improves interaction between local businesses and their best customers. Long are the days when everyone is waiting for the latest daily deals app. Recommendation and rewards apps seem to be the app du jour.
Comments Off on DC TechEd Startup Grade Ninja Revolutionizes Grading With ScanTron0LikeLike 2,146
Grade Ninja was born when Daniel Kleinman noticed that his sisters were spending their nice weekend days not going outside, jogging, shopping or even relaxing. His sisters are school teachers and they were constantly using up their free time grading Scantron sheets, something that ideally was supposed to be a fast process because it’s Scantron. That wasn’t the case and Kleinman wanted to do something about it.
Kleinman created an iPad app that uses the iPad’s camera to take a picture of the Scantron sheet and check it against a master. Kleinman, a self-taught Objective C programmer was able to refine the app so it has a margin of error of, at best, 1%. Things like how fast the sheet is fed and if the sheet is still perfectly in tact can swing the margin of error far greater when using a Scantron machine to grade.
I noticed it first with my sisters and my mom. Why are dedicated teachers spending so much time outside of school grading? Teachers spend about a day a week grading, roughly 8 hours. What if we could give this time back? This is why I created Grade Ninja. Kleinman told Carl Pierce of InTheCapital.com
In addition to freeing up teacher’s valuable free time Kleinman’s app will link back to gradebook apps making the grading process seemless and far more accurate than having to transpose anything. From their website:
GradeNinja can cut grading and recording time down to a fraction of what you spend now. Instantly scan multiple choice tests and input scores directly into your gradebook. Use the ultra fast grid to enter all your scores in a flash for any assignment types.
Kleinmann is sneakerstrapping this startup but we’re sure it’s going to become a hot commodity as TechEd continues its nationwide explosion. As for ScanTron grading, there are so many other issues our public schools need to work out before they make a move away from traditional ScanTron machine.
We’re in the midst of the Rawporter Roadshow visiting with startups and checking out tech everywhere. While in DC we stopped at the Fort accelerator where we met with Next Game. NextGame thrives off the fact that nothing is more social than pick up sports. With Spring in full swing millions of people will be flocking to the local park, open fields, and gyms to participate in pickup sports and other activities, this is where Next Game fits in.
When you’re in grade school, high school and even college sports are a way of life for most people. They’re also a given all school levels have sanctioned sports, intramural sports and pick up games. When you’re living on a college campus you can look at your dorm room window and find a soccer game, frisbee golf, hacky sack, pickup basketball and more. Once you get out of college the drive and want to participate in pickup sports is still there but finding pick up sports or men’s or women’s leagues is for lack of a better word, a pain in the ass.
Often times, unless it’s a real established adult league, participating in sports is contingent on organization and follow through and no one seems to communicate well. NextGame handles that for you.
Comments Off on Startup Quick Byte: Sworly0LikeLike 2,596
For today’s Startup Quick Byte, we take a look at Sworly, think Pinterest meet 80’s/90’s MTV, you know, when MTV was actually watchable with music being played. Sworly takes the confusion of what Pinterest could be and does it all around music.
Why Sworly?
We scour the web to provide you unlimited access to over 20 million songs readily available throughout the web so you don’t have to stress your wallet. You also no longer have to stumble through dozens of mind-numbing fakes on YouTube before finding that coveted song.
Based out of Ottawa, this Startup is one of many specialized Pinterest clones popping up. For music lovers this is perfect as it is just for the music fans to discover new music.
Comments Off on Rawporter Roadtrip: Fose 2012 Check Out What SF Based Startup Nixle Is Doing For Communities Everywhere0LikeLike 1,994
On our Rawporter Roadtrip stop at the FOSE 2012 show in Washington DC we bumped into the guys from Nixle. Nixle is a new platform that allows municipal agencies like the police, elected officials, and county governments to quickly communicate with their residents in emergency situations, for community announcements and to keep people informed.
When Nixle started in 2009 they had just one local government agency using the service today they have over 5,000 local police and other public safety services using Nixle to communicate with their residents through SMS and mobile applications.
“Nixle provides communities throughout the country with news and information that is both proximate and personally relevant. Our technology is critical in creating new communication paths that have never existed before. We’ve set out to enable highly granular, location-specific information to be immediately available to users, depending on their physical location at any given time. Nixle makes this information instantly available over, SMS, mobile application, email, and web. Nixle’s executive team has in-depth experience and a deep understanding of internal processes at local police departments, emergency service agencies, city and municipal governmental agencies and community outreach organizations. This allows Nixle’s technology to be “best of breed” for these authorized users and ensures credibility of information delivered to residents and community visitors. Given the success of Nixle’s Municipal Wire Service, Nixle is currently releasing new and exciting paid-for services into the marketplace. “
People are beginning to take notice of how fast information can spread by mobile application and text (SMS) messaging. For instance when school campuses get locked down texts go into an all time frenzy. Now with Nixle, those folks living in a city or town that is in some kind of emergency they can rest assured knowing that their police, fire department or other agency may be using the Nixle system giving them an easy way to determine the validity of a message.
Nixle can come in handy in spontaneous natural disasters like Tornados where there is often not enough lead time before the actual damage sets in. Now with a click of a few buttons municipal leaders can quickly dispatch a massive message to their residents.
Nixle was the 2011 winner of the Government Service News: Best Mass Notification System award. Other accolades include the “Outstanding Product of 2012” by Law Officer.
You can see if your city or town is covered by simply texting your cell phone number to 888777.
Kyle
Nick Tippmann
