Startups Archives - Page 136 of 144

L.A. Startup Spotlight: Thindish Eat Out, Stay Thin!

A new L.A. based startup has emerged out of a young businessman’s need to stay thin. Jason Lewis, founder of Thindish, says that while he was an advertising executive with worldwide firm TBWA/Chiat-Day he traveled so much he noticed he was putting on some weight. His wife noticed too. Lewis told startupfounder.info his wife said: “I’ll always love you… but it would be nice if you started to take care of yourself.”

So he went on a conquest to find out how he could continue his rigorous travel schedule, take clients out, and maintain his weight line. He and his wife combed through the menus of most of the places he liked to eat out and found the nutritional values of the dishes those restaurants served. From there Lewis sought out dishes that were less than 600 calories.

He stuck to those 600 calorie or less dishes and was able to drop 70 pounds. Well if it worked for him he knew it would help for others as well, and Thindish was born.

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St Louis Start Up Spotlight: Passer.by Now Anyone Can Invest In A Movie

Are you old enough to remember the days of HSX.com, before 9/11 it was the place to go to invest virtual money into real life actors, actresses and movie projects, called the Hollywood Stock Exchange. Now this wasn’t real you weren’t really investing money in a movie it was more of a game, kind of like fantasy baseball. If the movie did well the actors and actresses did well and then you made more virtual money.

Well shove all that aside because a St. Louis startup called passer.by is working on a crowdfunding website for real movies. Passer.by was founded by childhood friends Todd Metheny and Josh Clayton. Clayton has some experience in the film business but for Metheny it’s a new venture based on a love of movies.

Passer.by will be a way to get film projects off the ground with the help of many people, from friends and family. They have several funding options and plans they are working on. Metheny says they are riding out the “JOBS act” and the SEC to see if the entire crowdfunding model will be a go.

As for how much it costs for the film maker, right now they are launching the first 20 films with the film makers “paying what they choose”.

“It’s certainly a risk, but it’s exactly the kind of risk that we’re excited to take,” Passerby CEO
Todd Metheny said. “Some people will choose to pay nothing, but it’s a matter of trust. Our
mission is to be the crowdfunding option that puts filmmakers first, and to do that we need to
create a relationship with our users that is built on trust.”

CCO Josh Clayton is exciting to see how filmmakers react to the “pay what you choose”
option. “We’d love to be ‘pay what you choose’ forever, and we very well might be,” he
said. “We just need to make sure it’s possible to cover the expenses related to running the
platform at that level. We believe it’s a favorable experiment for the filmmaker.”

We spent some time talking with Metheny about passer.by check out the interview below the break.

When Hollywood And A Tech Incubator Have A Baby They Called It io/LA

Just steps away from the famed Hollywood and Highland intersection is LA’s newest Startup Incubator io/la. Mixing Hollywood and Tech like never before, io/LA tries to infuse old Hollywood with new Tech in a way we’ve never seen. In an attempt to break the stigma that the Bay is where you want to be io/LA invites those with a Hollywood aspirations and a Tech way of thinking. The newly launched Incubator is the brain child of former MySpace CTO Aber Whitcomb, Donovan Leitch and Chris Gartin.

Baltimore Startup 410 Labs Hits PR PayDirt With Evolve Communications “Rocket Packs For Startups”

Back in June of 2011 410 labs opened up their beta to their shortmail service. Shortmail is a service that helps users create 500 character emails that are concise and deliver the message without the superfluous chatter that clogs email messages everywhere.

It originally released to anyone with a Twitter account. In fact today you can still claim a shortmail account using your Twitter credentials, however in January they opened it up to anyone with a pulse via their web tool at shortmail.me

“Our goal is to bring communication simplicity to everyone,” says 410 Labs CEO Dave Troy. “After hearing from many of our our users that they love Shortmail, but don’t love their Twitter name, we’ve opened up a new name space that’s not tied to Twitter, so everyone can enjoy the benefits of shorter, more concise communication.”

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Israeli Startup Story About QT Recruit A Bad April Fool’s Joke

An Israeli startup called QTRecruit is looking to put job recruiters out of business, or at least obsolete. QTRecruit was founded by Nir Atsman and Yaron Cohen and evolved from a military project they implemented as part of the Israeli Defense Forces, 8200 unit.

The military project that was the backbone for QTRecruit was designed to automatically decide where in the Israeli army they should place new recruits.

“but the system spiders the Internet, like Google, gathering information about relevant candidates for a client’s open positions. In parallel, the client continuously feeds criteria into the system about the best kinds of candidates. Using some soon-to-be-patented artificial intelligence technologies and machine learning algorithms that we developed, the system learns over time how to find better candidates.” Yaron told website jobmob.co.il about how QTRecruit works.

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Australian Startup Announces The “Playa”iPhone Case The Ultimate Hook Up Companion

Australian based startup Annex products launched in 2011 with a product designed by mates Rob Ward and Chris Peters. Their first product, the Opena case, is an iPhone case with a bottle opener built into it very similar to beaheadcase.com’s cases for opening beer bottles. They launched the Opena case on Kickstarter the popular crowd-funding site for new products.

The new case called the “Playa” provides protection,not only for your beloved iPhone but from STD’s, and unwanted pregnancies as well. How does it do this? It’s the first case designed to hold your phone and a condom.

The condom is secured in a sliding compartment that is flush with the case and no one can tell what’s in there. It holds two condoms easily. As the company says “no condoms falling on the red carpet for the playa case owner”.

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South African Startup Whenpages Converges Just About Every Event Web Tool

When you’re organizing an event in 2012 you want to make sure you have everything covered where the web is concerned. You want to make sure people can find the event, stream the event, upload content from the event, reach the event from all social media channels, live blog the event, and see who’s at the event.

There are some great tools out there for each one of these different services but now one company, operating out of an apartment in Pretoria South Africa, is working on doing just that. Whenpages.com is the brain child of Twitter celeb Tendai Joe who’s social media savvy has garnered clients Telkom, Vodacom and the Nelson Mandela Foundation.

With his background in events and social media Tendai Joe had embarked on a mission. He originally only set out to buy the domain name when.com to do an event based website however, when.com was already in use. Tenda Joe then set out to develop a website that was the ultimate one stop destination for everything that has to do with events.

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DC Mayor Vincent Gray Makes Tax Changes To Attract Tech Companies & Startups

Washington DC Mayor Vincent Gray has announced some tax changes that are designed to keep the districts budding tech scene building to scale. The changes he outlined recently will be formally announced to the city council on April 17th.

The first tax change is that District residents who invest in technology companies or take on equity as part of their employment would be subject to a 3 percent capital gains tax that they hold on investments they hold for two years or longer.

Gray’s other tax plan for DC is to do away with the borders for the tax technology zones. As it stands now there are certain areas within the district where companies have no income tax for five years from the time they register with city offices. Gray has decided to make this a city wide tax break

“We want to make sure it’s as easy as possible for tech entrepreneurs and business people to set up their business in the city without worrying about which streets are in and which streets are out,” said David Zipper, the city’s director of business development and strategy.

These tax breaks are designed to grow the number of early stage investors who reside in the city. and encourage startups to remain after they cash in.

source: Washington Post

Las Vegas’s Newest Start-Up Tracky Debuts With A Huge Splash

Tracky is a new Las Vegas bred startup that allows users, both businesses and individuals, to collaborate and organize to-do lists, share files, delegate tasks and more project management functions. It’s like a Google Wave on steroids with a top notch social interface for many to be on the same page, working on the same project across the country and around the globe.

The startup led by CEO David Gosse and CMO Jennifer Gosse, held a media event and kick off party on Tuesday. The day started off with a press briefing at SuperNAP, a high tech data center that houses Tracky’s servers among others. According to 8newsnow Gosse briefed the press on the ins and outs of the Tracky application and the technology behind it.

Later that night the hobnobbing moved over to the mansion once owned by heavyweight champion Mike Tyson. While the party was absent of any loose tigers, hundreds of members of Vegas Tech showed out to support the Tracky Launch. Vegas Tech is a community of entrepreneurs, startups, developers, designers, marketers and “do-ers”.

While some other tech and startup communities proud themselves on competing with hot spots like Silicon Valley and New York, Las Vegas thrives on it’s own.

“There is an entrepreneurial boom taking place in Vegas, called Vegas Tech. More than 200 startups have recently formed in the valley and other businesses are migrating to Vegas from other cities like Silicon Valley, Seattle and Salt Lake. Rather than try to emulate these cities, Las Vegas is aiming to focus on being innovative collaborators that just get things done,” Tracky’s CMO Jennifer Gosse said in an interview with KLAS-TV.

Infographic Suggests Just 5% Of Startups Founded By Women

We’ve featured some really great women led startups lately here at nibletz. We brought you the story of KlutchClub in Chicago and it’s founder Julia Bashkin. We also recently featured Y-Combinator startup 99dresses and their Aussie woman founder Nikki Durkin and more.

According to the infographic below, published by IT Manager Daily, 56% of professional jobs in the U.S are held by women. However in IT just 25% of jobs are held by women. Then there’s the startups. According to the infographic only 5% of startups are currently founded by women. This may be in dispute though as women seem to be more and more involved in starting their own businesses. In ABC’s “The Shark Tank” it seems that a lot more than 5% of those startups presented are founded by women.

We’ll be featuring more and more of the best startups from around the country and we’re sure we’ll see more than 5% are led by women.

Flud The “Instagram For News” Raising $8 Million Dollars Heads To Android

San Diego based startup Flud, a social news reader app for iPhone is does a great job of differentiating itself from other news readers like Taptu and Pulse.

They do this by allowing users to create profiles join the platform and share their news with others in their network. The UI is very polished and some in tech circles are calling Flud, the Instagram for news.

Sure everyone has access to the same internet and the same news stories but the way people curate the news is what makes some blogs and most news aggregates so popular.

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Startup Quick Byte: Marker.to

Today on Startup Quick Byte we take a look at a Startup out of Chile called Marker.to. What this company does is make it so you’ll be able to after installing their plugin Highlight words and phrases on websites. You can then share that page with the words Highlighted easily so others can see what you are talking about specifically.

Maryland Governor Takes To Pinterest For Start Up Pitch Contest

Pinterest is one of the hottest social networks around. Most sites and analysis are suggesting that the pinboarding network is geared towards women. We reported earlier this week that America’s top man President Barack Obama has started using it.

Now Mayland’s Democratic Governor Martin O’Malley is using it as well. While Potus promises photos of the first family, including first dog BO, and Obama family recipes, O’Malley has something different.

Governor O’Malley is going to use his Pinterest page to promote homegrown startups. O’Malley is embarking on the first ever startup showcase pitch contest.

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Samsung Ventures Recruiting New Startups In Northern Texas

Samsung is no stranger to Northern Texas. Their Mobile divisions USA headquarters is located in Richmond Texas and one of their customer support centers is close by. That may be some of the thinking behind Samsung Venture’s recruitment of tech startups in the Northern Texas region.

Samsung Ventures is specifically targeting startups in the following areas: (software & services) wearable computing, mobile photos/video, context awareness, mobile commerce, p2p, computer vision, convergence/smart home, and big data and mobile.

In hardware Samsung is looking for: camera tech, audio, sensor tech and power management.

In B2B: secure Android, and vertical solutions, healthcare, education.

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