OMGPOP Employees Party Like It’s 2012 After Getting Laid Off

We’ve chronicled the rise and fall of OMGPOP, the creators of Draw Something. Before their huge hit with Draw Something, they had produced dozens of mobile games that didn’t hit it big. Draw Something hit the app store though, lives changed, and quickly.

Draw Something shot up to the top of the app charts. They amassed over 240 million users who were playing all the time. In just about a month’s time, they went from “another game studio” in New York City, to being acquired by–at the time–social gaming powerhouse Zynga back in March of 2012. Zynga didn’t disclose the financial details of the transaction but word on the street was that the deal was between $180 and $200 million. Around the same time this year, Zynga reported taking a $95 million dollar write down on the OMGPOP deal.

Porter, who had worked on events at Pimlico in Baltimore and had strong ties to Charm City, named all of OMGPOP’s conference rooms after characters from the HBO hit series, The Wire. That, coupled with Porter’s WYSIWYG attitude quickly earned him the respect of many tech journalists.

After OMGPOP was acquired by Zynga, Porter became the head of New York operations for the company. According to the announcement back in March of 2012, OMGPOP was to be Zynga’s top mobile unit. However, as Business Insider reported on Tuesday, things didn’t quite turn out that way.

According to Business Insider’s Alyson Shontell, Monday afternoon around 2pm the dreaded “all hands meeting” was called at the NY office of Zynga. These meetings had become common practice in New York, and as the employees filed into the room, they grabbed beers, “Sensory-numbing beverages were now essential for these gatherings.” Shontell wrote.

The resident HR employee at Zynga’s New York office told the employees the news. The New York office was being shut down. Employees quickly filled out paperwork to get there severance packages and then it was party time.

Business Insider reports that hoodies, t-shirts and anything with a Zynga logo were quickly destroyed, however morale stayed positive. Desks were cleaned out, trophies from Zynga meetings were left behind.

“There were no hard facts or figures. No real explanation. Just typical corporate BS,” one former employee who was in attendance tells Business Insider. “Everyone was just like, ‘Yep.’ Not surprised at all. It was like the weight had been lifted off our shoulders, that a decision had finally been made.”

“Most layoffs are sad. You imagine big corporate settings where security is there to lead people out of the office so they don’t make a scene. This was the opposite,” says the former employee. “Music was being played loudly, and people were ripping up Zynga hoodies and T-shirts. Anything that was Zynga was completely left there. The sentiment felt positive.”

The OMGPOP team was never really integrated into Zynga. Right around the same time of the purchase, Zynga had gone public and their stock started falling immediately. Shortly after that it was reported that Zynga would no longer have the stranglehold on social games on the Facebook platform, meaning that the company would need to rely on other money making avenues.

You would think that with Zynga’s focus coming off of the “ville” franchises, a mobile team like OMGPOP would be put to work full steam ahead. Employees told Shontell that really wasn’t the case at all. Earlier this year OMGPOP released a refresh of Draw Something as Draw Something 2. Right before Dan Porter’s exit from the company in April, Ashton Kutcher had actually tweeted how much he liked the new version of Draw Something. Kutcher had gotten an advance copy of the game.

Porter has already moved onto another startup and continues with his insidestartups.org. Just a few months before Porter’s exit, Zynga CEO Mark Pincus was named the 4th worst CEO.

Check out all of our OMGPOP coverage here.

If You’re Serious About Email Ditch Mailbox For Boxer, Launching Today

Earlier this year the startup world was abuzz about the brand new Mailbox app. You remember, the one that made you download a countdown timer, and for most, wait several days before getting your hands on the app. However, people who get high volumes of email, quickly saw that Mailbox was a hype machine. The hype got so loud they quickly got acquired by the team at DropBox.

While all that was going on, tens of thousands of people descended upon Austin, Texas, for the annual Woodstock of startups, SXSW Interactive. It was there, at the Capital Factory and then on one of the startup stages, we found Taskbox.

We got to hear about the meat and potatoes baked into Taskbox during a pitch session focused on startups that were immune to the series A crunch. All the startups in that pitch session had an investment ask at the end of their decks, but we were just longing for a really good email app designed for people that actually get email.

Taskbox proved to be that app. In fact, the Taskbox team accelerated at Capital Factory which just happens to be founded by Joshua Baer, who made most of his fortune in–you guessed it–email.

After downloading, I discovered immediately that the team behind Taskbox had loaded the app with easy to use features, an appealing UX/UI, and had actually considered people who received a lot of email.

I receive anywhere from 350-500 fresh email messages a day that can’t be marked as spam. If I factor in “spam,” we’re closer to 1000.

So Andrew Eye tipped me off a few weeks ago. He told me that during SXSW he had met Xoogler Jason Shellen. Shellen has a very strong background having worked with Google, AOL, and his own startup Brizzly. During their time together at SXSW, Shellen told Eye that he was working on something new called Boxer. Boxer had even simpler, easy to understand features. The Taskbox team quickly acquired Boxer and brought Shellen on as head of product.

Shellen helped the Taskbox team revamp the UI by flattening it and adding some features that I’m really excited about, like the ability to “like” an email. This feature will let the writer know “Hey, I’m not ignoring you.” Sometimes that’s all you need to say in an email: message received and understood! It’s like a 10-4 button.

Other features include:

Powerful swipe gestures to help triage, respond, and manage on-the-go
Inline profile images & helpful contact cards
Works with all your existing email accounts (including Gmail, Exchange, Yahoo and more)
Dropbox integration for adding files to email from the cloud
Adds elements of social tools to email to make email more fun and like-able again

While the Taskbox team had a great product to start with, in reforming and launching under the Boxer name, they’re going t take email to yet another level. They also added more heavyweights to their founding dream team. Adam Cianfichi. formerly with Accuvant and Ciphent, and Ian Ragsdale who worked with Baer on OtherInbox and also Skylist, round out the new Boxer team. Andrew is the CEO, Adam heads up Design, Ian runs Engineering, and Jason runs Product.

The app is gesture based (yes like Mailbox), but what you can do with the gestures is infinitely more powerful. You can swipe to earmark an email for a set later date, you can archive it, like it, use a quick response or add it to the “to do” list. They’ve also integrated a favorites list and the ability to call up all email exchanges between you and another person with a click of a button. It’s almost like a mobile email based CRM.

Currently, Boxer is only available for iOS. Find out more here at getboxer.com

Now read: Am I the only one on earth who thinks Mailbox Sucks?

DC’s Free & Easy Conference Call Startup Speek Throwing Free And Easy Mega Launch Party

A Friday night party at 1776 will be a who’s who of the startup world. Evite co-founder John Bracken and the legendary Danny Boice, the founders of Speek.com, are throwing their official launch party.

Speek eliminates long dial in numbers, bridge codes, and awful elevator music for conference calls. To use the Speek platform to conference call somebody, you just go to their Speek page and click one button. For example, if you wanted to conference call me you would just go to speek.com/kyle.

Speek went into beta last summer and has been iterating over the course of the last year. They’ve added robust mobile apps and packed the website with easy-to-use and easy-to-understand features.

Boice is a party animal, diehard tech guy, and a startup aficionado. In fact, he spoke at Everywhereelse.co with a great talk called “You Only Launch Once”. We next saw him at SXSW in Austin, Texas. As part of his speed pitch he said that if Speek got the most votes in a pitch contest, the slightly more reserved Bracken would get a tattoo of their monkey logo on his ass. Needless to say they won and Bracken got the tattoo.

So to celebrate their official launch, Speek is hosting the launch party of all launch parties at 1776 in DC. Because Speek and the DC tech scene are so intertwined with the fine folks at Startup America, this party will include dueling pianos (will Scott Case be back from Seattle?). In addition there will be an open bar, raffles and giveaways. The picture above is the temporary tattoos of the Speek Monkey that you can put on your ass, to match Bracken’s which it doesn’t come off.

The party starts at 8pm on the campus of 1776: 1133, 15th Street NW, 12th Floor, Washington DC 20005. It’s free, all you have to do is register here.

Brandery Startup Alum FlightCar Faces Lawsuit

Brandery, FlightCar, Cincinnati Startup, Lawsuit, Sharing Economy

(flight car founders: Kevin Petrovic, Shri Ganeshram, Rujul Zaparde photo: bostonglobe.com)

Last year, one of the most exciting startups in the 2012 class at The Brandery startup accelerator in Cincinnati, Ohio was FlightCar. The startup, made up of teenage MIT dropouts. had a revolutionary idea. With FlightCar, instead of paying to park your car at the airport, you could rent it out to somebody else, making money rather then spending it.

After honing their branding, image, and product at the Brandery last summer, the FlightCar team secured a huge insurance policy, follow on funding, and their place in Y-Combinator. In April, after Y-Combinator’s demo day, the trio raked in another $5.5 million dollars in venture capital.

FlighCar quickly began testing their model at Oakland Airport and soon after rolled out service to San Francisco International Airport.

That’s when the trouble began.

Insidebayarea.com reported on Wednesday that the startup is being sued by the city of San Francisco. San Francisco City Attorney, Dennis Herrera, is accusing FlightCar of dodging fees, undercutting competition, and not adhering to rules which include payments by car rental companies back to the airport.

The kicker, though, is the fact that FlightCar actually operates off a lot not located on airport property. FlightCar’s co-founder and Chief Operating Officer, Kevin Petrovic, who isn’t old enough to rent a car himself, told insidebayarea.com “I think they have a lot of pressure from rental car and airport parking companies,” he said. “We do take away some of their business.”

Herrera is counting on ordinances that say SFO is entitled to collect fees from rental car companies that primarily serve it’s travelers even if the rental operation is not located on SFO property.

Petrovic defends FlightCar by saying they aren’t an actual rental car company and hotels and restaurants surrounding the airport don’t pay fees to the airport.

“FlightCar has refused to comply with any of the rules,” Deputy City Attorney Jennifer Choi said. “We want the court to order them to comply with the law.” The city also points out that FlightCar doesn’t currently hold a commercial ground transport permit or an off-airport business license.

FlightCar joins a slew of “sharing economy” startups–including ride sharing startups like SideCar and room sharing startups like AirBnB–which have faced legal and public scrutiny over their business models.

FlightCar has been operating in Oakland and Boston without incident, so far. Outside of this lawsuit from the City Of San Francisco, people seem to like the idea of renting out their car for money rather than spending it. In addition to the rental fee, FlightCar cleans and washes each car before and after the rental and insures that you get to and from your car without hassle.

For more info on FlightCar, check them out at flightcar.com

See FlightCar’s pitch video from the Brandery’s 2012 Demo Day.

Revealed: What It Takes To Get A Top 10 Rank In The Apple App Store

With so many mobile-first and mobile-focused startups in the world these days, one of the biggest hurdles startups and app developers have is breaking the highly coveted Apple App Store Top 10. With many startups, that are truly starting from the beginning, without the help of a rock star team, cracking the top 10 can make or break a company.

Reading those words may be scary, but that’s the breaks with literally millions competing in the same space.

Trademob analyzed 72 campaigns conducted over an eight month period from August 2012 to March 2013. The analysis revealed average CPI’s (cost per install), during boost campaigns as well as data about the required volume of installs necessary to achieve a position in the top 10 of Apple’s App Store in each country.

Trademob found that installs required for top 10 status in the “free” chart for Apple’s App Store in the US were 3x as high than the UK, the next ranking country. Likewise the US also had the highest cost per install. They also discovered was that even if an app cracked the top 10 in the UK, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain, they still wouldn’t necessarily have the installs needed to crack the U.S. top 10.

The data set specifically looked at boost campaigns and their effect on app installs for iOS. It also highlights the “organic uplift” achieved from a boost campaign.

” In order to rank in the top 10 of the iOS App Store, an app must achieve a high number of downloads within 72 hours. App marketing boost campaigns can boost an app’s ranking by generating (buying) large numbers of downloads in a short amount of time. The downloads achieved during the last 24 hours have the biggest impact on the ranking position”. Trademob wrote.

If you’re an app developer and a mobile focused or mobile first startup, check out the data below.

Now check out this infographic: 10 Rules For A Great Startup Idea

Gainesville Startup Fracture Secures $500,000 Investment For Their Photo To Glass Platform

Fracture, a Gainesville Florida startup, specializes in preserving digital photos on beautiful glass works of art.

The end result is a stunning piece of art you can hang on your wall or put on your desk. It comes out a lot nicer than the canvas prints you can order from places like Walmart. The do-it-yourself ordering system is simple enough for anyone who has a basic grasp of taking and printing digital pictures to handle.

A user simply creates an account on fractureme.com, chooses the picture they want printed, decides on the size of the printout, pays and–voila–their picture is turned into a stunning piece of glass. Prices range from $15 to $125. Printing takes between 24-48 hours and orders are shipped shortly after.

On Monday, the startup, created by two University of Florida students in 2009, announced a $500,000 angel investment from Tamiani Angel Fund. They also raised $430,000 from TAFI in May of 2012. The Miami Herald reports that they also received a $530,000 convertible debt investment, of up to $1 million dollars from the Florida Opportunity Fund.

“We are grateful for the support the Tamiami Angel Fund has given to our burgeoning company,” Abhi Lokesh, co-founder and CEO of Fracture, told the Herald. “It’s clear they share our vision and appreciate the growth potential of the printed photo display market – a multi-billion dollar market that InfoTrends predicts will grow 40% by 2017.”

Fracture reports that revenue was up 211% in Q1 2013 from the previous year.

Check out Fracture here.

Startup Tips: 11 Tips For Increasing Customer Loyalty

No You’re Not Better Than Silicon Valley: How To Support Your Entrepreneurial EcoSystem

Cliff McKinney is the CEO and cofounder of WorkForPie and a community leader in the Memphis startup community. This post, which also appears on his personal Tumblr, can easily be applied to any town, any city, everywhere else.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Memphis lately. Where it is, where it’s been, and where it might go. What I think should be done to grow the entrepreneurial ecosystem here is perhaps a post for another day. Today though I thought I’d share a few words about how to support an entrepreneurial ecosystem. No doubt this applies in Memphis, but I’ll try to leave it general enough to apply to most any growing ecosystem. I’ll try to limit things to five general themes:

Theme One: Be Successful

Brad (my cofounder) and I talk a lot about how we might help Memphis. We do a lot of small things that we hope add up. We both serve as mentors to local entrepreneurs and lead user groups, but we always come back to the same general idea: the best thing we can do for Memphis is to become wildly successful. Doing that will bring in more investors and more interest, more jobs, and even a couple new angel investors. This goal trumps all the others, as it should. If our efforts to be successful leave us no time for all of the other stuff, then so be it.

This should be paramount for you and your company too. If you have to move to be successful, then move (but come back and invest later). If you have to put another company out of business to be successful, then do it. If taking advantage of some opportunity means others won’t have the chance, that’s okay too. It’s okay to be competitive. It’s okay to want to be better than the next guy. The success of your company is what matters most. Never forget that.

Theme Two: Give Time

I’d love to give money to my local ecosystem, but as a poor entrepreneur I just can’t afford it. What I can afford is my time, and I’d like to think that in some ways that is more valuable to local entrepreneurs. My office is always open, and my phone is always on, and I’m happy to give local entrepreneurs an earful (and often more than they bargained for) anytime they ask. Brad leads the local Python user group, and I lead the local Startup Meetup. It’s something we both do for fun, but we also do it because we feel obligated to give back to a community that has given us a bunch and that continues to support us.

Giving your time means a lot to local entrepreneurs—especially those who are just starting out. You don’t have to lead a startup meetup. Just make it a priority to attend once a month. Email startup CEOs and offer your help. It only takes a little while, and the good karma you’ll earn is totally worth it. Do what you can. Every little bit counts, and giving something, no matter how little, is always better than giving nothing.

Theme Three: Be Honest In Your Support

So here comes the first controversial part of this post. Truth is, I don’t think supporting local startups means blowing smoke up their asses. I’m a big fan of honesty, and if a local company has a terrible business model or distribution model or team then the fact that they’re local shouldn’t preclude you from saying so. In fact, I think you’re more obligated to say something if they’re local. It’s what I give, and it’s what I expect from the people I really respect.

I gave a little talk during the Seed Hatchery demo day last year. I won’t bore you with the details, but the general theme was that the companies at Demo Day weren’t competing with Memphis companies, or even Tennessee companies. They were competing with every company everywhere. If we didn’t treat them accordingly, then we were doing them a disservice. I’m hard on the local companies I mentor. I don’t call them out publicly, but in private I do as much as I can to convince them that this isn’t a mutual admiration society. You can’t build an ecosystem by calling a local company awesome when it’s clear to everyone else that it’s not. It just doesn’t work that way.

Theme Four: Pay and Get Paid

One of the biggest mistakes I’ve made as a founder was thinking that someone deserves some kind of discount or special recognition because he or she is a friend. That should never be the case. If a local company does awesome work and they charge companies $150/hr for it, then I expect to pay $150/hr. I honestly don’t care if the company is in Memphis or even if it’s run by my mother or my spouse. If the service is valuable to me, I expect to pay for it. If it’s not, and the company happens to be local, then I’ll take the time to tell them why, and if they correct the issue, I’ll pay for their service then.

Now (but not always) I feel the same way about the services I provide. I trade value for value. I have something valuable, and I expect companies to pay for it. It’s nothing personal, it’s just business. The only time we consider offering some discount for our services is when working with some company at a discounted rate is somehow highly valuable to us through the association. Despite the fact that they have millions more dollars than all of my local startups combined, I’m more likely to work with some company like Facebook at a discount than I am to discount our rate for a local company. I want to establish my value, and one of the most important places to do that is in my own hometown.

Theme Five: Talking Shit Hurts You More

It’s important to be proud of your city. The best way to show that pride is to talk about all the wonderful things your city is doing to support entrepreneurship. The worst way is to talk trash about other cities or other ecosystems. I’ve heard people say things along the lines of “our city is better than Silicon Valley because….” When I hear that, I almost immediately assume the person saying it is an idiot. Your city is not better than Silicon Valley. That’s why you’re comparing it to Silicon Valley. If your city was better than Silicon Valley, in any way whatsoever, then they would be comparing themselves to you. Honestly, the same goes for any criticism of another ecosystem. If you’re talking shit about them, then you’re wasting time you could be spending making your city better.

On the other hand, I happen to think that it’s completely okay to criticize your own ecosystem, and even startups or leaders within it. But, if you do, make sure you’re actually talking directly to the person or company in question. If they can’t take it then they probably need to hear it even more. And nothing sucks worse than hearing criticism secondhand. I’ve had more than my fair share of secondhand criticism and it sucks way worse than hearing it from the source.

See this guest post by McKinney’s co-founder Brad Montgomery, on “Minimum Working Thing”

New York Startup Spotter Is A Location-Based Video Sharing Platform

What is Spotter?

Spotter is a mobile app that associates videos with places, allowing people to find and share videos in a new approach rather than the traditional way with only video titles.

It is a fun, new, exciting method to share places and videos with family, friends, and the world. It is simple and easy to use. Take a video with your iPhone, associate it with a place and share it privately or publicly. If taking videos is not your cup of tea, you can look up places and/or friends near and dear to your heart and watch their videos. Spotter also allows the unique experience of finding public videos that were taken near your current location by using the GPS signal on your phone.

Allowing people to find videos by places unlocks a new way of sharing videos with others.

In layman’s terms, how does it work? (In other words how would you explain it to your grandmother)

Spotter uses the GPS in your phone to associate every video uploaded accurately to a place or a location. Having the location on every video allows us to deliver videos to users in a new manner.

Users can follow locations and places like they follow people on Twitter or Instagram. Every time a video is uploaded to a location/place, the video is delivered to the users who follow that location/place. Users also get videos that were taken near their current location and videos taken by their friends.

Users can also search their favorite places and see all the videos associated with that place without following the place.

Who are the founders and what are their backgrounds?

Mike Groves graduated from SUNY Albany in 2005 with a BS in computer science. Since then, he has focused on bringing software products from vision to reality. His career has taken him through a variety of interesting fields such as mobile, semiconductor quality control, healthcare quality management, energy market validation, and government budget management. His latest vision, Spotter, aims to provide a new way to experience the places around us by connecting digital experiences (video) to the very places those experiences occurred. He believes that by making these connections we will change the way people communicate and experience our world.

Kevin Pytel graduated from SUNY Oswego in 2006 with a BS in Computer Science, and a minor in Mathematics. He quickly integrated himself into the corporate world as a software engineer while running his own IT consulting firm on the side. To progress his business skills he completed his MBA at Union Graduate College while working full time. He has progressed through the corporate ranks and most recently worked as a Senior Project Manager. His experience in large scale redundant applications and project management has helped Spotter with the product launch and vision to make sure our servers can handle high peak loads and are up 99.99% of the time.

Dan Graham graduated from Long Island University with a B.S. in Digital Design and has been working in the online and traditional marketing industry for over 12 years. At the age of 15 Dan was brought on board to manage marketing and web development for a family owned e-commerce company. For the past 8 years Dan has run a media and marketing consulting firm focusing on social marketing, information architecture and advanced content management systems. He has worked with companies both large and small including Panasonic, Madison Square Garden, and Warner Bros.. Dan is responsible for updating the Spotter interface in the 2^nd version of the application as well as heading up marketing to get Spotter the attention it deserves.

Where are you based?

We operate out of a virtual office. The 3 co-founders are all located near NYC.

What’s the startup scene/culture like where you’re based?

NYC is really starting to support startups, so there are a lot more opportunities for us to network then in the past. The problem is we’re working our full time jobs during the day and then at night coding and making Spotter better, so we haven’t been able to use our location to our benefit yet.

There is also a strong startup community to the north of us in the Albany/Troy region. There are a bunch of meet ups held by Grand Slam Alley and Tech Valley Mobile Developer Network. The guys who created Dark Sky and forecast.io are based out of that area as well as some other successful startups.

How did you come up with the idea for Spotter?

Mikes Groves and I (Kevin) worked together as software developers and we always had a common interest in starting a company that focused on mobile. From early on we saw the potential of new products emerging from the mobile space.

One day Mike approached me with this idea of combining location and videos, and I really liked the idea, so we dug a little deeper to see what was in the market. Then we thought about it a little more and really figured out there is no way for you to find videos that you know for sure were taken where you thought they were. Someone could post a video on YouTube and title it “The Empire State Building”, but in reality it could be a very funny video of someone in their house doing something stupid. And, yes, there are plenty of videos like that all over the internet. If the video gets the views and popularity, that video is going to show up in the top of the rankings when you search YouTube for Empire State Building… So we focused on solving that problem.

From there we created a prototype and started laying out the functionality the app would have. We really like the ability to follow a place. For me I was a BMX racer and skier growing up and love watching those types of videos, so I like to follow all the BMX tracks and mountains to see new videos on a daily basis.

Why now?

Why not? But seriously, when we came up with the idea, and even now, there are no apps that focus on location like ours. We are solving a gap in the current market.

Who are your competition?

It feels like and is pretty much every social media company involved with photos and videos. No one has zeroed in to do exactly what we’re doing, but most are tagging the location and using that in some way to enhance user experience.

We have to continue to focus on what we’re good at, and get even better at that, which is ensuring the videos tagged to the location were actually taken there and delivering those videos to the user in a unique and easy way.

And what’s your secret sauce?

It’s top secret, if I told you then I’d have to kill you. I’m sure you’ve never gotten that response.
Really though, there isn’t anything too secret about what we’re doing. We’re using a bunch of technology accessible to the average developer to our advantage to provide videos to the user in a different approach than other companies.

What are some milestones you’ve achieved?

Over 10,000 videos have been tagged to actual places, and not just cities or streets. These places range from One World Trade, beaches on Hawaii, ski resorts in Austria, to music houses in Japan.

What’s your next milestone?

We think the milestones we’ve reached are very cool, but the application and server systems were built to handle many more users and videos, so we’re focusing on marketing the app to get the users it deserves.

10,000 users are our goal by the end of summer, and 20,000 by the end of the year.

Who are some of your mentors and business role models?

Previous bosses and college professors have mentored me to get where I am in my career to even make it possible for me to start this company, and I am continually looking and listening to advice of those who have successfully or unsuccessfully started their own company. Knowledge is power, and having an idea without being able to execute it will not get you anywhere.

I have always found Shawn Fanning (Founder of Napster) an interesting business role model just because he always seems to start companies that he finds interesting and builds products he wants to use which I find pretty cool.

Also Paul Tyma, founder of many companies is a business role model of mine. He’s worked closely with Doug Lea a professor of mine, so I’ve had the pleasure of working on some of his code in college, and occasionally bugging him with an email here and there for help with Spotter.

What’s next for Spotter?

We want to expand and move to Android as well as build out our traditional web browser experience. Moving to Android has always been on the roadmap, but with only three people, it’s been difficult to get traction on that development effort. We have also been contemplating adding photos to our service as well.

We’re looking for a motivated Java developer interested in building out our Android application. Since we don’t have funding currently we’re looking for someone who is willing to work for a small percentage of company or as internship to get college credits. If you have interest email kevin@spotterinc.com

Where can people find out more and what is your Twitter username?

spotterapp.us Download spotter in the iTunes App Store here Follow them on Twitter here

Check out what this Chicago startup is doing with video for charity.

Startup Founder Spotlight: Thomas Kjeldgaard, CEO & Founder, Splashpost

Thomas Kjeldgaard is an online entrepreneur who co-founded Pagemodo, which was acquired by Webs in 2011. Since then, he founded and is the CEO of SplashPost, a tool that helps Facebook Pages turn ‘likes’ into sales. Thomas is publicly known for his conference lectures and addiction to designing UI and UX.

Who is your hero?

Steve Jobs.

What’s the single best piece of business advice that helped shape who you are as an entrepreneur today, and why?

Develop something that you can sell over and over again. Create a business that is not dependent on you!

What’s the biggest mistake you ever made in your business, and what did you learn from it that others can learn from too?

Holding back with marketing. Marketing starts day one. As soon the idea is on the table the marketing process starts — not when the product is ready!

What do you do during the first hour of your business day and why?

First, I get an overview of the day and handle any crucial user issues. Customer service is crucial to success and many businesses don’t realize that.

What’s your best financial or cash-flow related tip for entrepreneurs just getting started?

Develop something scalable based on a recurring subscription model. This puts money in your pocket each month = cash flow.

Quick: What’s ONE thing you recommend ALL aspiring or current entrepreneurs do right now to take their biz to the next level?

Focus. Track everything in your business to know where you make money and what costs you money. Understanding your users and customers is crucial for success.

What’s your definition of success? How will you know when you’ve finally “succeeded” in your business?

When users tell you they are happy with your product, you know you are making a positive difference in their life. They will then be happy to pay you — and if you’re lucky, you make a nice exit from your company and cash in on that.

The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, the YEC recently launched #StartupLab , a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses via live video chats, an expert content library and email lessons.

What is everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference?

Buffalo Startup GripeO Is The Complaint Market Place

Have you ever had a girl that you tried to date… oh wait that’s not I was writing.

Have you ever been upset with something, be it customer service, product selection, feature selection or just any normal complaint? Has that complaint ever been enough to tick you off but not piss you off? Well with complaints like those they often die in your head. You may forget them later on, only to have them resurface the next time you go to that restaurant, store, or business or use that product. Then, you quickly remember that complaint.

Now, on the other hand if you feel you’ve ever been just totally wronged, or get really pissed off at a company, you may go through the motions of seeking out a contact form, email address or phone number and actually move forward with your complaint. This process can take a while and it too can be interrupted and die out.

A Buffalo based startup called GripeO is here to change that and disrupt the complaint space with a complaint market place that’s both easy to complain on and easy for companies to find their complaints. But lets establish one thing from the get-go and that’s the fact that GripeO is not a place to just bitch about everything under the sun.

“GripeO is a website and mobile application startup that’s going to disrupt complaint management. Consumers (people like you and I) can quickly and easily submit product or service complaints in one consolidated location. We notify and authenticate businesses who are then able to mediate the complaint via our system. During the process we encourage businesses to close as many complaints as possible with new savings and discounts. This won’t work for everyone, but for those that do it benefits both parties because it has the ability to please consumers yet drive new sales to the business. The real magic happens though when complaints are left open. The fact is, that information is far more valuable then people often realize. You have a qualified consumer who is frustrated with a business. GripeO offers those ignored complaints in a Complaint Marketplace where competitive businesses can search for complaints in an ad-market style and use our system to entice and lure those qualified leads away via our system. This is the revenue generating portion of GripeO and something that makes us truly unique.” GripeO co-founder and team lead, Mike Klanac Jr told us in an interview.

We’ve seen a few complaint platforms over the years but it seems that the founding team behind GripeO have worked out a lot of the kink and are poised to become the goto destination to sound off complaints and ultimately get them resolved. Check out the rest of Klanac’s interview below.

Who are the founders and what are their backgrounds

Our team is comprised of 6 co-founders who each are responsible for a different functional area. They include Mike Klanac (CEO/Team Lead), Nicholas Campanile (Finance and Business Development), Stephen Makula (System Architecture), Richard Panek (Development Lead), Jim Proux (User Experience), and Mark Taylor (User Interface and Mobile). The group has all worked together in the past and that’s really what ties everyone together. The corporate backgrounds of everyone actually created quite a link; working together in that environment allowed everyone to identify the best resources in their respective positions. When the idea and opportunity arose the team fell together quickly and naturally based on a mutual respect. Some of the other work the team has collaborated on includes Ellucian Inc., SimpleApply LLC, and ProfileFly.com.

Where are you based?

Our headquarters are in Buffalo, NY however we also have one co-founder in Boulder, CO and one in Houston, TX. We strongly believe that remote companies are the way of the future and actively debate the merits of Marissa Mayer’s decision to call all the cattle home. Our geographic location is also strategic. The core of our development is together, and we recently secured incubation and seed funding from Z80Labs Technology Incubator in Buffalo, NY giving our team a unified location to work from. Having strategic business representatives in Boulder, CO and Southeast Texas allows us to tap into the well established startup communities in those areas.

What is the startup culture like where you are based?

Buffalo, NY’s start up culture is actually very exciting right now. In fact, I’d go so far as to say it’s about to “pop” as a tech hub. For the longest time Buffalo has been a source of great technical talent coming out of the high density of Colleges in western New York. Unfortunately there just hasn’t been the jobs to keep them around. As organizations like Z80Labs start to develop the city is going to really be able to capitalize on the local technical talent pool.

What problem does your startup solve?

For consumers, we make it much easier to submit complaints, as well as more worthwhile. The fact is, searching through websites, filling out long forms, and wasting your time is something you only do if you’re extremely pissed off. With GripeO, a complaint can be filed in under 1 minute, from the convenience of your phone, right after the food comes out cold, the part is missing, or the airline delays. For businesses, we offer up a completely free way to manage complaints and provide instruction based on data trends on how to most effectively close out gripes. Lastly, competitive businesses are always in need of effective ways to generate new business. With pure advertising, your company can get completely lost in the ether. GripeO presents a strategic opportunity to target a prime consumer, ready to change vendors, who is also flush with demographic information.

What is one challenge that you’ve overcome in the startup process?

For us, it’s always been about generating the often talked about “warm introduction”. Unless you’re in the business, I can’t imagine a lot of developers are walking around with a rolodex of VCs and Angels. Let’s be honest – the whole concept is awkward, difficult, and quite frustrating. We’ve managed to break down some doors by doing several things. First, we started geographically. The people often willing to give you a first shot are the ones who are doing it for reasons outside of making money. Buffalo has a lot of economic initiatives and stimulation going on and that is an opportunity for us. Secondly, we try to be respectful and friendly to everyone in the startup space. We’re all people, and friends do friends favors. Finally, one tactic we’ve found to work quite well is to start small with a cold contact and build up. Rather then ask, “will you fund my startup with $500k?” a first contact might be more like a paragraph explaining the business, an attached executive summary, and one very simple request, “as we progress through build, beta, and traction, can I tell you more?”

What are some of the milestones your startup has achieved?

Finishing our web based MVP was a big step for us. It was kind of like the birth of a baby. So much time was spent preparing for it, yet once it came around you immediately start to realize the diapers are in the wrong location. Another major milestone was receiving our first term sheet. We try to leverage our talking points as much as possible. Telling one VC that you have a term sheet from another tends to pique their interest.

What are your next milestones

Right now we’re focused on getting the MVP ready for BETA testing and raising our remaining seed round. There is a lot going on – more so then at any other time in our existence. When I started preparing for this process I had read feedback from several entrepreneurs who’d had successful exits. Almost always you’ll hear the words “pivot” and “agile” in those interviews. With the amount of documentation, promotional sites, and network to keep apprised, that month 3 change to your revenue model means a lot of updating. Expect it.

Who are your mentors and role models?

Dan Magnuszewski and Jordan Levy at Z80Labs Technology Incubator has been great to us. It sounds kind of weird but we also let zeitgeist and data mentor us. I think it’s important to prolifically read Techcrunch, Mashable, Nibletz, and VentureBeat. Our role models tend to be operations that are mobile leaning or have innovative approaches to existing models. We like Mint, Groupon, Twitter, and Instagram.

What are some of the advantages/disadvantages growing your startup outside of Silicon Valley.

I’ll be honest here; I don’t know. I’ve never been to Silicon Valley. I would imagine a disadvantage is the investment strategy. To use a baseball analogy, regional Angel Networks go for hits. Institutional Investors swing for the fences. The reason is they get more at bats. Being out of the bubble is an advantage in itself. I think you’re able to rise up based on a micro level need or problem, whereas in the bubble your building around investment criteria “we’re a geo-targeted, mobile, big data, smart object”. What?

What’s next for your startup?

We’ve applied to pitch at Techcrunch Austin Meetup “1 minute pitch off” and SXSW V2V. We’re knee deep in MVP refinement and starting some planning to begin letting our BETA users try the system. We’re also ramping up mobile development a bit behind the web in order to follow its lead, and continuously meeting with investors to find the right fit.

Where can people find out more, and what is your Twitter username?

If you’re interesting in learning more about the product or being a tester, please LIKE our facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pays.to.be.heard We’re also on Twitter: @gripeo and of course you can always visit www.gripeo.com

Crowdfunding For Charity Gone Wild With Chicago Startup VideoJuice

The latest innovative startup coming out of the windy city is a video startup focused on crowdfunding for charity. The company, called VideoJuice, is helping people raise money for their favorite charities through “challenges” or “stunts”.

With videojuice, if you’ve got an idea and a cause you can make a quick “video juice” video to encourage people to donate money on behalf of your cause. If you raise the money you set out to raise, you fulfill the challenge and your charity gets the money.

For example, Startup Grind Chicago organizer Tom Denison was one of the first to upload a “video juice” for his he wants to raise $1,000 for the Susan G Komen foundation. If he raises that money, through crowdfunding on the videojuice.co website, Denison will have to color his hair pink for a month.

Their hilarious promotional video shows people running in a Leukemia benefit in skin tight orange suits. Another one of the challenges in the video is a young man who picks up trash in a park wearing a french maid’s uniform.

Videojuice encourages users to be as creative and daring as possible. Presumably, the more interesting, or crazy, your stunt is the more likely it is to raise more money. There’s even a videojuice posted right now where the person who created has pledged to play golf in a dress and high heels if he can raise $1000 for the Jimmy V cancer foundation.

So what’s your cause and what are you willing to do for it? Head over to videojuice.co

VideoJuice and Startup Grind Chicago were major sponsors for our TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013 Coverage.

EdTech Startups Here’s How K-12 Students Are Using Technology [INFOGRAPHIC]

EdTech startups are on the rise. More and more educational institutions, universities, school systems and students are using technology to assist with learning, student privacy, teaching aids and more. Educationweek.com recently polled 1600 teachers and administrators in K-12 schools to determine how well their schools are using digital technologies.

The infographic below provides a snapshot of technology in the classroom as well as how students are embracing mobile technology.

According to Piper Jaffray’s 23rd semiannual “Taking Stock With Teens” report 34% of teenagers already own a tablet computer. A whopping 86% of teenagers say their next device will be a smartphone.

On the school side privacy and security seem to be the biggest area for technology in K-12 schools. Personal e-portfolio’s for students had the lowest ranking in data compiled by The Software and Information Industry Association “Vision K-20 Survey”.

Probably the most interesting, and positive data was among school districts. According to the Center For Digital Education’s “2011-2012 Digital School Districts Survey” of respondents, 65% of school districts have some kind of digital content strategy. 67% of school districts have data dashboards in place and 76% have a classroom technology standard.

How does your EdTech startup fit in? Check out the infographic below and you decide!

Check out this Florida startup that is working on the first ever educational MMORPG

The Startup Fred Wilson And Union Square Ventures Would Back Right Now

The startup and venture capital world breathed a sigh of relief earlier this month when New York based venture capitalist, blogger extraordinaire and managing partner at Union Square Ventures, announced he was investing in Coinbase a startup that helps facilitate Bitcoin transactions. Sure Bitcoin is a hot commodity these days, just ask Ashton Kutcher, but there was more to it than that.

For many, Wilson’s investment in Coinbase was one of those big “signaling issues”. As most know, Wilson has been in a two year slump with investments while he tried to figure out what the next big thing was.

His firm, Union Square Ventures, did just fine with investments and made some great bets during Wilson’s cool period.

So what’s next more Bitcoin startups? Wilson has always been one to go ahead of the curve, so undoubtedly whatever he invests in next will go to that record. Wilson just saw an exit with Tumblr, for which he was an early investor. Some of their other great investments include Boxee, Turntable.fm, Twitter, Twilio and countless others.

Regardless of what’s actually in the pipeline, we can tell you for certain, if you read Wilson’s personal blog, avc.com, if you’ve got a team of college graduates who’ve developed the next thing that’s going to stop Google, and big hint here’s it’s not Bing, Wilson would go all in.

In a tribute to his daughter Jess who just graduated from College earlier this week, Wilson acknowledges the fact that he and USV often bet on college drop outs but he writes;

“Dropping out of college is all the rage today in startup land (even dropping out of high school). And when it comes to our business, we really do not care if someone went to or graduated from college. We have funded many college dropouts and will continue to.

But there is also something to finishing something you started. ”

So just to be clear, Wilson will still bet on dropouts but I’m willing to bet a college graduate team may have a special place in his heart these days.

As for what’s stopping Google, Wilson also wrote a short, sweet and to the point post called “Running the table”. In the post he talks about how Microsoft “ran the table” with desktop computing, Apple did it with mobile computing and Facebook did it with social networking. That was until Apple and the internet stopped Microsoft and Twitter stopped Facebook.

As for Google, Google is trying to run the table with the “entire fucking internet” and Wilson wants to know “Who Will Stop Google”.

So if you’ve got a college graduate team ready to stop Google, you better get that deck in front of Wilson.

Read Wilson’s blog avc.com daily. Got that startup ready, make sure your business plan submission includes a clear description of your operations and current progress and take it on over to Union Square Ventures, 915 Broadway, 19th Floor, New York, NY 10010, make it interesting, Wilson’s a busy go.

Here are Wilson’s Venture Capital Do’s & Dont’s

Canadian Startup TagMyDoc Releases Sweet Infographic! [no really]

Last month we got the chance to talk with the founders behind New York startup Docurated. They were pitching on the battlefield stage at TechCrunch Disrupt NY. Their idea is to provide enterprise with a way to easily search and find content within volumes and volumes of files, information, and presentations wherever it’s located.

Last October, we interviewed the team behind Canadian startup TagMyDoc. Their simple, easy to understand platform does almost the same thing, but they’re positioning it for everybody.

In looking at the two products side by side Docurated seems perfect for what it’s designed for. I’d say their best use cases would be big PR Firms and marketing units within big enterprise companies where multiple people are collaborating on projects and need to be able to quickly search through excerpted content.

TagMyDoc lets you organize your content, wherever it lives, whatever way you want. I like this for a lot of reasons too, customization being the number one reason. From a user like me though, this can be overwhelming at times because sometimes I forget how I organize stuff. Take my mess of Gmail folders for instance.

At any rate, TagMyDoc has come a long way in the last 7 months since we interviewed them and just in time for summer they’ve released this really “sweet” infographic on how far they’ve come.

See I told you it was sweet.

You know what we like for organizing, this is the startup we like for mobile email.