Chicago Startup Hummingbird Is The Rotten Tomatos For Anime

Chicago startup Hummingbird has created a platform that anime fans have been looking for for years. The startup, founded by Josh Fabian and Vikhyat Korrapati is the first database and recommendation engine just for anime. “Think Rotten Tomatoes had a baby with Netflix’s recommendation engine, and that baby is a huge anime fan.” Fabian told nibletz.com in an interview.

“Users rate the titles they’ve seen in the past and, based on their tastes, Hummingbird gradually ‘learns’ what you like and don’t like, enabling it to make extremely accurate suggestions on what to watch next. Users are able to properly determine if the anime suggested is something they’d like to watch by making use of our comprehensive database featuring trailers, screenshots, plot summaries and much, much more for every anime you could imagine. Because some users lead very busy lives, we’ve also integrated a simple to use episode tracker to help keep you organized, no matter how many titles you may be watching at a time.” Fabian explained.

Fabian is based in Chicago while Korrapati is based in Hyderabad, India. Fabian says he loves the Chicago startup scene and has found that it’s extremely easy to get the help he needs in Chicago.

“It’s seems no matter where you turn in this city, there’s a community of designers, developers and entrepreneurs learning from each other, encouraging each other and giving a helping hand when you need it most. I can’t think of a better place to launch a business.” He said.

Hummingbird came to life after Fabian, a huge anime fan, found himself without something to watch next. “I hit a roadblock.. I had no idea what to watch next. All of the ‘popular’ choices that come to mind I had already seen, in some cases, multiple times. I did a lot of googling but after a lot of searching, I couldn’t find anything to completely solve my problem. ” So he created it.

Korrapati, a developer, saw Fabian’s first landing page for Hummingbird and reached out to help. “I can honestly say that without Vikhyat joining the team, Hummingbird wouldn’t be nearly as great of an idea as it is now”, Fabian said of his cofounder.

Fabian is bootstrapping it for now but has ambitious plans to try and get into YC or 500 startups. With Hummingbirds unique platform that may not be as difficult as it sounds.

They’ve been launched for about a month and have already picked up nearly 10,000 users. Their next goal is getting to a critical mass of at least 50,000 users but with no other recommendation engine for anime that shouldn’t be so tough. They were also named by TNW as a startup to watch.

You can find out more about Hummingbird here at humminbird.ly

Am I The Only One On Earth Who Thinks Mailbox Sucks?

I stood in line to get the latest app phenomena mailbox. I’m an early adopter so I was able to get into the app about 36 hours after my text message saying it was officially ready. I went through the process of downloading the app that showed me how many people were behind me and how many were in front of me. When I actually got into the Mailbox app there were over half a million people behind me.

To that, the creators of Mailbox get a big fat well played. They created an ear piercing buzz and created hype that will never be replicated quit that way again.

I’ve heard and read so many stories about how impressed people are with mailbox. A couple of my journalist friends seem to love it, even ones with much larger publications than nibletz. I can’t seem to figure that out one bit.

I also just read this piece on Business Insider, it’s a love letter from Cablevision’s PR Guy Jim Maiella, who’s been using email just as long as I have. Again I can’t figure this out.

I would assume that some of my journalist friends at larger publications than nibletz receive more email than I do. Perhaps I’m wrong, but for the record on a week day I get between 300-500 new emails on my main account.

I try to separate accounts where my important account is one address and my account for PR folks to bombard is another, but I’m talking about my “important” account, that’s where I receive 300-500 emails per day.

I can’t see how Mailbox was designed for anyone who gets more than a handful of messages a day, or anyone who’s corporate account is with Gmail.

So let’s go over why I think Mailbox sucks.

long pressing and swiping right can take entirely too long for people who receive a high volume of messages.

Quick deletion

All of the promotional mentions before Mailbox was released said that it would allow you to delete email quickly. I’d say a good 90% of my emails can be deleted by just reading the preview line of the email.

To delete an email on Mailbox you need to long press to the right. This may seem cool and hipster but it takes a lot longer to long press to the right than it does to simply batch check a bunch of emails in the GMail app or the native iOS app and then hit trash.

There’s also the issue of the wrong swipe. I tried the first few days to use the long press and swipe deletion method but every once in a while I swiped too fast telling the app to take an entirely different course of action.

While later is a great feature, Mailbox doesn’t bring through the rest of your folders, again troublesome for someone who is more than a casual emailer

Folders Suck

When I installed the Mailbox app it added a few cool delegation folders to my GMail account. The later folder is the one I liked the best.

What it didn’t do is allow me to take the actual useful emails that I needed to keep and put them into the folders they need to go into. I found myself going to inbox 0 and then trying to keep up with Mailbox so I could use it but it wasn’t a pleasant experience to say the least.

The first two days using Mailbox I tried to keep emails I needed to delegate until the end of the night and then go back to the computer and delegate them accordingly but that just ended up being one more headache.

I’m definitely not one of those “email haters”. I love email I would much rather someone email or text me than actually talk on the phone. Talking on the phone takes too long and requires a secondary form of input if the person is talking about something important. For instance if I take a phone call from a business colleague about business, I’m most likely taking a note on a computer, phone or iPad so email takes out an entire step.

I was under the impression that Mailbox would improve my efficiency… not so much.

I’m still waiting for an email app that will allow me to one click and create a calendar item in Google Calendar and than click back to the contact, record and keep them all together. Yes I’m looking for a GMail CRM.

After this posting though, Mailbox is going into my trash box.

Quick Tip A Fundraising Dealbreaker: Crazy Cap Table

So your product is out and your starting to get some traction (if you need more traction click here). It’s time to take that idea and go to the next level, but for that you need money.

Fundraising is the hardest part of a startups life. Many startup founders are inexperienced at fundraising, and perhaps the thought in itself is scary. Compound that with the fact that it’s traditionally it’s harder to raise money “everywhere else” and you’ve got the cards stacked against you.

So going forward with fundraising you need to make sure all your ducks are in a row. You want to make sure your deck looks great and your executive summary is clear and concise. You want to have your milestones and victories prominently showed off. You don’t want to waste an investor’s time.

Forbes recently posted some tips on deal breakers for inexperienced entrepreneurs. One of those is having a crazy cap table.

If you’re not familiar with a cap table, no worries, it’s the part of your corporate structure that defines who holds what in terms of equity.

A crazy cap table is a hodgepodge of small investors who may cause potential headaches for management and institutional investors.

How can you fix it?

While you may have given equity to anyone who liked your idea enough to give you a little bit of money, it’s time to start evaluating who gave you what, how much equity you gave them in exchange and what they will bring to your company down the road.

You can approach this and clean up your cap table by buying back your existing stock whenever you can afford it. You can also dilute those equity holders as you raise money. Be very leery of any investor that refuses to get diluted, and/or asks for preferred stock early on.

If you have an investor in your cap table that many not be a recognizable name to your future investors but bring something of real value to your company make sure that’s highlighted in your executive summary.

American Airlines Takes Notice Of Tennessee’s 9 Accelerator Regions

American Airlines is truly committed to startups and innovation. They are a corporate sponsor of Startup America and offer a huge benefit to Startup America members who sign up for their free Business ExtrAA rewards plan.

American has relationships with several startup organizations and entrepreneurs across the country have noticed there efforts. In 2012 American entered into a partnership with startup and technology blog and events company TechCocktail. They’ve provided sponsored transportation for several startup related events across the country including flights to DEMO in Santa Clara and last year’s SXSW. They know what it’s like for boot strapped entrepreneurs and startups.

Over the summer American Airlines partnered with Startup America for a huge contest. The video contest asked that startups and entrepreneurs tell a story about how travel connection has helped their business. They gave over half a million Business ExtrAA points away with the grand prize winner getting 100,000 points which was good for 50 round trip tickets. That’s a lot of conferences and investor meetings.

American Airlines has now taken notice of Tennessee’s nine startup accelerator regions and Startup Tennessee, the second Startup America Region. Launch Tennessee the public/private partnership that oversees the 9 accelerator region has entered into a relationship with American Airlines.

The company has also entered into a relationship with LaunchYourCity (LaunchMemphis), nibletz.com and everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference. American is helping an initiative for LaunchMemphis that will see local Memphis entrepreneurs venture out to Silicon Valley for a four day outreach trip.

Through nibletz.com and everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference American will be sponsoring the 2014 conference including offering a considerable discount to those traveling on American to the conference (February 17-19th 2014 in Memphis). To take full advantage of the discount attendees should sign up for the free Business ExtrAA program. The discount will be announced in the coming days (and it’s a good one).

While every traveller doesn’t always have the experience they want no matter what airline they travel on, we are always hearing stories about how American Airlines has come through for our fellow entrepreneurs. On stage at everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference, Lean Entrepreneur co-author Brant Cooper talked about a string of delays in getting to the conference. Rather than waiting for Cooper to complain, he reported on stage that American Airlines went proactive and gave him a number of extra Business ExtrAA points for the trouble.

For more information on the benefits American Airlines offers Startup America members sign up for Startup America at s.co and look under the member benefit section.

Starter Pad Is A Collaborative Online Community To Build Startups

Lithuania has a bubbling startup community and Lukas Gediminas Sukys, the founder of Starter Pad, is hoping to broaden his reach way beyond his home country.

He bills his startup, Starter Pad, as a new way to build startups online. It’s a collaborative platform for entrepreneurs to reach other entrepreneurs, create ideas and then build them remotely.

“…I was thinking about ways to improve Startups building process and make new connections with entrepreneurs. After some tries to achieve these goals, I understood that Startup people using computer as main tool for building startups, so that means website would be ideal place to begin from” Lukas told nibletz.com in an interview.

For those new to starting up, Starter Pad has four main objectives to helping founders find each other and build.

Connect.

We bring all Startup specialists to one place with fully completed profiles. It’s so easy to find your CoFounder or research to hire these startup specialist. Just what you really need.

Learn.

You can learn from our community of specialists every day by watching their activity in groups, startups, questions page and other places. Give direct questions to them and ask for feedback.

Build.

If you have your startup idea, you can add it to our Startups list and begin to search for a cofounders, mentors, advisors or even investors at our Pad. StarterPad Advocates and our community are at your disposal to get the feedback you need.

Grow.

The final step after being successful of building your Startup: We help you to grow your business. get specialists which will help you to grow. Experts from every IT business role, working on the biggest StartUp hive-mind on the internet to help you grow responsibly.

Starter Pad also provides resources and ideas for legal issues, pitch development, marketing and business development.

Lukas, along with co-founder Joseph Martz, are hoping that Starter Pad can become an international place for startups to launch. As for Lithuania though, the startup scene is growing.

“Lithuania is a small Baltic country, with a population of about 3 million. Our entrepreneurial culture is relatively young: Lithuania has only 20 years out of the Soviet Union, so its a too short timeframe to have a strong entrepreneurial base. However, it seems to grow very fast. Here are based international startups like YPlan or GetJar. Lithuanians specialists are known because of their high productivity in addition to their technical skills, but our roots are a bit conservative” Lukas said.

Starter Pad isn’t alone in the collaborative, connect a founder space. There are other startups that we’ve written about here like LaunchTable, FounderSync and Cofounders Lab just to name a few.

To that end Lukas says; “Our secret sauce is to connect Startup people. There are a lot of specialists living in smaller cities and countries, who can’t attend to startup events easily. StarterPad gives an opportunity for them to connect with specialists from the biggest Startup stages and gather their experience. For Startup rockstars, it is a great way to find talents.”

What else can we expect from Starter Pad? “Our focus now is to make Startup building process more social. So we are planing to make feed for every startup, where you can post what your team is working on. We think this will engage to check StarterPad every day to see progress of Startups you are following.

“For Startup teams, it should give more motivation to build things. Community responses always trying to help to stay motivated and choose the right way for your Startup.”

You can find out more about Starter Pad here.

Working On Your Pitch Deck? You Gotta See This Pop!

Populr.me is a platform that allows anyone to create all in one pages on the internet. They can be used for a wide variety of things and it’s a lot better than trying to turn to tumblr or creating a word press blog for just one page.

For instance you could use it for a media kit, to brag about your favorite team, to keep people abreast of your schedule or to make a page for a yardsale. Businesses can use pop’s to show off business tips, circulate company wide information, or create all in one self contained pages.

Nick Holland, CEO and founder of populr.me is a Nashville startup leader and also the founder of CentreSource. To demonstrate the uses of the populr.me platform he created pops that Baker Donelson used to explain the legal necessities when launching a startup for the last cohort at Jumpstart Foundry.

Holland is currently working on his Series A round for populr.me and in doing that he started researching the best pitch decks. While he was doing his research he created this amazing pop highlighting some of the best pitch decks and other resources for startups that are looking to pitch.

As you can see from the screenshot above this pop is full of great information for any startup. (Just to note, Holland has a long career in web development and design and this particular pop wasn’t designed for design it was designed in less than an hour and to provide as much content as possible.).

When you hit the link below you can see Facebook’s first pitch deck, Color’s pitch deck, seedcamp’s deck and much more. We highly suggest you go over and check it out.

Click here to see the Pop: The Best Startup Pitch Decks

Listenup.FM Pitches At Spark Nashville

Listenup,Nashville startup,startup pitch video,startups,Spark Nashville

Listneup.fm CEO Mykas Degesys pitches at Spark Nashville (photo: NMI 2013)

Tennessee startup Listenup.fm just got back from pitching at everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference. Their platform is designed to engage fans with their favorite artists and bands while also returning bands and record labels with valuable analytics.

Their streaming music platform is built on top of the highly successful Spotify platform and rewards fans for sharing the music they’re listening to across their social networks.

CEO Mykas Degesys explains that as the music industry moves from an ownership to an access model, bands need more and more ways to engage with fans and of course generate extra revenue.

Even just a few years ago it was important to own your music collection. Whether it be vinyl, cassette, CD or mp3, most people who loved music owned it in some media format or another. Now with services like Rhapsody,Rdio,Slacker and Spotify, and high speed internet, more and more people are turning to all you can eat access packages with libraries millions of songs deep.

Royalties are baked into services that range from $4.99 a month to $19.99 a month, all supplying some sort of unlimited listening.

Bands can now find ways to get to their exact target market. They can reward fans with prizes and Listenup.fm even allows fans to earn points to purchase prizes like limited edition swag and backstage passes.

Check out Degesys’ pitch from the Spark Nashville event in the video below.

Listenup.fm also pitched at everywhereelse.co 2013, don’t miss everywhereelse.co 2014 with tickets now at 2013 prices through March 27. Click here

Nashville Entrepreneurs Share Their Dumbest Decisions Ever

Spark Nashville,Marcus Whitney,Nick Holland,Populr.me,Moontoast,SouthernAlpha

Nick Holland (L) and Marcus Whitney (R) talk about the dumbest thing they’ve ever done (photo: NMI 2013)

Failure and dumb decisions are part of every true entrepreneurs life. If an entrepreneur goes through life without any failures, anyone telling them their babies are ugly and any dumb decisions, they’re doing it wrong.

Thursday night at 3rd and Lindsley in Nasvhille as part of Southern Alpha’s Spark Nashville event, seasoned local entrepreneurs Nick Holland (CentreSource/Populr.me) and Marcus Whitney (CTO at MoonToast), shared their dumbest decisions.

Both guests looked surprised when Southern Alpha Editor In Chief Walker Duncan asked them to share their dumbest decisions, but the surprise on their face made everyone quickly realize that they were going to actually share their dumbest decisions.

Holland’s centers around his days growing CentreSource. He had a bunch of developers sitting around on the payroll and needed something to do. Holland wanted it to be something creative and something that could make them some money so he had the developers re-do any Nashville website they wanted. The hope was that the businesses who owned the sites they chose would throw money at CentreSource for the new design. What really happened made for a great story.

Whitney’s dumb decision is one that has been a source of constant debate the last four years I’ve personally attended SXSW (3 as Thedroidguy 1 with nibletz). I can only hope that startups out there heed Whitney’s advice, unfortunately with SXSW two weeks away, there’s going to be quite a few startups in Whitney’s shoes come March 12th.

Check out the video for some entertaining and enlightening stories.

Tennessee Startup GreenPal Pitches At Spark Nashville

Greenpal,Tennessee startup,Spark Nashville,Southern Alpha,pitch video

CEO of Greenpal pitches at Spark Nashville (photo: NMI 2013)

After pitching at everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference earlier this month, Tennessee startup GreenPal headed out to Nashville to pitch as part of Spark Nashville on Thursday night.

Earlier this morning we brought you the story about DC startup TouchdownSpace launching. That startup makes booking professional space just as easy as hailing a car with Uber. Greenpal makes it just as easy to get your yardwork done.

The market for this kind of app is huge. Greenpal’s CEO and cofounder spent 15 years in his own landscaping business and suddenly realized there was an easier way to find customers, collect money and set appointments. The company also realized making it easier on themselves would make it easier on the customers as well.

Now Greenpal is here and it allows you to order lawn care service on the web or on their mobile app by vetted professionals who are ready to do the job. Once the appointment is set and the job is done, Greenpal also has a payment mechanism that makes paying your service providers as easy as clicking a button.

These guys looked sharp at everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference and were one of the best pitches at Spark Nasvhille. Watch the video below.

Wait you missed everywhereelse.co 2013 well don’t miss 2014 more info available here

NY Serial Entrepreneurs Danny Nathan & Chuck Masucci Are Bringing Date Night Back

Last April we reported on New York startup Iwannanom, a cookbook startup that was revolutionizing the online cookbook. Founded by Danny Nathan and Chuck Masucci Iwannanom took a different, more efficient spin on online crowdsourcing recipes.

“I Wanna Nom is a reinvention of the cookbook for the digital world. It’s a recipe bookmarking and discovery tool that allows the user to keep track of recipes they discover anywhere on the internet and easily share them, rate them, comment on them, and find new recipes and dishes by following friends and fellow foodies.” Nathan told us in an interview.

Nathan and Masucci met five years ago while working at POKE New York a well known innovation company that worked with clients like 19 Management, the firm that represent American Idol artists.

Masucci eventually left to join the team at Skedj, which we interviewed back in November. Now Nathan, and Masucci are back together again, along with Joni Goldbach to launch DateNight a new New York startup that’s designed to take the monotony out of dating, post honeymoon phase.

Goldbach met Nathan on a date where they bonded over discussing great marketing ideas. They’ve been together ever since, and admit that they will use their own startup to keep date night alive and well.

“Date Night is a million things to a million different couples. But there’s one common thread we’ve discovered across couples everywhere. Once you’re dating – once you’ve reached the point in your relationship where you start talking about us and we – you stop going out on dates. Candle-lit dinners become take-out containers and theatre tickets become DVD mailers. Date Night gives way to the ease and simplicity of routine” Nathan said of his latest venture. “We believe it’s time for an evening out that was actually planned in advance. It’s time to try something new together – something that fuels your sense of adventure and discovery. Hire a babysitter. Take a class. Party on a school night. Dress to kill, for no good reason but that you can. We believe it’s time for couples to start dating one another, again.”

Nathan, a designer by trade, has turned to advice from Ben Pieratt, one of his role models saying Pieratt “…is always one of the first people who comes to mind for me when someone asks this. I’ve been a fan of Svpply from the early days, and started following his personal blog, etc. to learn more about how he did it. His discussions about transforming himself from designer to co-founder and CEO of a successful startup have always been inspiring to me. He’s a totally down-to-earth guy who made it happen. I respect him for that immensely. ”

Right now the trio is bootstrapping out of their apartments where they are admittedly keeping the cupboards stocked with the simple startup things like Ramen. They plan on iterating quickly and adapting to the community that they’ve started to form.

Sure there are sites out there that recommend things to do, there are also plenty of dating communities but most are targeted towards couples still in that “honeymoon phase” no one has really thought of the post honeymoon phase period. All three founders hope that Date Night can take off and that couples that use the service will continue to have date night with each other for years and years.

Date Night is bringing Date Night back to couples everywhere, find out more here at datenight.is.

2 Of Nashville’s Startup Community Leaders Talk About The Yes Mentality

Spark Nashville,Marcus Whitney,Nick Holland,SouthernAlpha,Startup Communities

Southern Alpha’s Editor In Chief Walker Duncan (L), Nick Holland CEO of Populr.me, Marcus Whitney CTO Moontoast (photo: NMI 2013)

Thursday night was a big night for Nashville’s startup community. New online publication Southern Alpha, which covers high growth technology for the south east, held their inaugural Spark Nashville event. The event organized by Southern Alpha Marketing Director, Kelley Boothe and Editor in Chief, Walker Duncan, was a huge success.

Spark Nashville consisted of three main parts, a fire side chat with Duncan, a pitch contest for Tennessee startups and time for networking in a startup exhibition.

For this first event, Duncan had a fireside chat with community leaders Nick Holland and Marcus Whitney. Both men are seasoned entrepreneurs who’ve had measurable success with their own startups to date.

Holland was the founder of what is now one of the biggest agencies in Nashville CentreSource and Whitney began his career with Emma and eventually spun off and cofounded MoonToast, a social agency that has clients as big as Universal Music Group. Whitney was named the CTO of the year this year by the Nashville Technology Council.

Duncan had come up with some great questions for both guests who are now frequent mentors and advisors to budding young startups in the Nashville community. Holland has an open door policy with all entrepreneurs, a recognizable figure that stops and chats with anyone with an idea. Whitney is a managing director at JumpStart Foundry and a regular, accessible face at community events, as well as at the Entrepreneur Center.

While both guests talked about the struggle and how hard it is to start your own business, they also both talked about the importance of peer groups and finding people to say yes. Sure every entrepreneur wants to find the people that say yes, “yes we’ll write you a check”, “yes your idea is great”, “Yes we can sponsor you”. As you’ll see in the video it’s actually an important foundation in a successful startup community.

Both Holland and Whitney acknowledged that once you go out and prove yourself, roll up your sleeves and prove you’re not afraid to work hard, and not afraid to try, the yes’s get easier.

Holland likes to steer clear of negativity and people who resort to no rather than to hear an idea out. When someone pitches Holland on an idea for a project or an event, if he can wrap his head around it he’s looking for ways to say yes and get it moving rather than to say no. “When I get inspired by somebody it’s infectious and I do whatever I can to say yes”.

Early on in the video Whitney talks about his first experience pitching Holland. Nick had already had some success with CenterSource and Whitney was about to embark on the first BarCamp event, he went to Holland for $1,000 to sponsor. Whitney was a scrappy young and hungry entrepreneur with a great idea, and Holland said yes.

The duo have worked together to help bring Startup Weekend to Nashville as well. They also both support just about any cause or event that’s good for the startup community. When startup community leaders are this supportive it is infectious and the community builds.. wait for it.. organically.

Watch the video below:

iGrabber Is The Kayak For Car Shopping

iGrabber, Virginia starutp, dc startup, everywhereelse.co

iGrabber team shows off at everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference (photo: Allie Fox, for NMI)

When it’s time to shop for a new car there are hundreds of websites to go to and a handful of sites that everyone trusts. When it gets down to comparison shopping though, your web browser, or multiple browsers can turn into a huge, unorganized mess. If there was a simpler way to comparison shop for cars, similar to the way you can shop for travel through Kayak.com, it would make the hassle of finding the next automobile much easier.

That’s the idea behind Northern Virginia based iGrabber. Founded by Khurrum Shakir, Abdul-Malik Ahmad, Deepak Pillai and Ronald Fraser, this talented group of tech savy car aficianados, knew there was a better way. In fact, Shakir, told nibletz.com earlier this year that he was surprised no one had tried to do a search engine, comparison platform like this before.

“iGrabber.com takes the frustration out of searching multiple sites for your next car, truck or SUV. We’re the only True Vehicle Search Engine on the web. Taking the Google and Kayak approach we’ve made the process of searching for your next vehicle much easier. Unlike a lot of the Auto sites on the web that only show vehicle listings from within their database we will show you everyone’s vehicle listings in one site.” Shakir said.

iGrabber is built around the fact there are currently 7.7 million duplicate unique visitors every month searching for a vehicle of choice. These numbers account for repetition across up to 6 different sites. With iGrabber one site grabs all of the possible car choices and then lets you compare them the way you would compare cameras on bestbuy.com or travel on kayak.com “We have what some have coined as the Kayak of vehicle search.” Shakir told us.

Building iGrabber hasn’t been easy. To date the startup hasn’t raised any venture capital, bootstrapping it through launch. Shakir added, “We have been completely self-funded, mainly working out of a small home office and jumping from local coffee shops to local pizza restaurants within the Northern Virginia area holding our team meetings. ”

If iGrabber can get the word out to the over 7 million people searching multiple sites to comparison shop for cars, this could be a lucrative business. What do you think?

Visit iGrabber online here.

iGrabber was one of nearly 100 exhibitors at everywhereelse.co 2013, don’t miss next years conference at this years rates, more here

London Startup Wants To Know What Float’s Your Goat

File this under: startups with kick ass names. What’s more is that London based startup Float Your Goat has already attracted over 350 freelancers to their network that connects freelancers to their powerful social network.

Float Your Goat is a social workplace where creative people can network, build teams, grow ideas, and earn money. To date there are 367 freelancers in the network and some of them have been rates as part of the top 100 designers in the UK by The Drum.

The site connects graphic artists, illustrators, photographers, web designers, copywriters, animators and more, not just to each other, but to businesses and other colleagues that have projects that need a designer now.

Float Your Goat was founded by Emeline Wraith who appropriately took the title of “Chief Goat Herder”. The idea for Float Your Goat came up in 2010 as part of “Dragon’s Den” (American’s think Shark Tank) style competition called Dream Big.

“The dream was to create and promote fair, honest and open relationships between clients and freelancers, encouraging the idea of remote working and offering a social media platform for freelancers to share their ideas, tips and tricks as well as showcase their work.” Wraith told nibletz.com in an interview. “We are keen advocates of the idea of remote working; internet access, a laptop and a creative mind is all you need to freelance, and this is something we wanted to promote. Equally, we wanted to be able to cut out the middle man and offer affordable and fair services for all parties involved!”

With a variety of free lancers at different levels and rates, Float Your Goat is perfect for small businesses, large businesses, individuals, and of course startups. Since it’s 2013 and everyone is using the internet anyway, it’s very easy for a startup in Boise Idaho to connect with a designer on Float Your Goat. In fact that startup plans on growing without geographic borders.

Float Your Goat is just as effective for recruiters and those with projects as it is for freelancers.

“For recruiters, With the site’s search engine and rating system in place, clients can easily browse freelancers’ portfolios, testimonials and references, and so find the right person with the right skills to fulfil their needs. Perfect for any ad hoc work!” Wraith said. She’s also hoping that Float Your Goat will become agency executives’ “little black book”.

Now with a solid community growing Float Your Goat is launching a campaign geared towards startups.

“Float Your Goat have just founded a new campaign called Startups 4 Startups (SUSU), a meaningful network of creative startups that, together, delivers selective areas of expertise to nurture, collaborate and develop new business propositions into a working reality. We want to demonstrate the development of a startup from inception to launch, taking a fledgling company and making it fly.

Startups 4 Startups (SUSU) consists of five partners which, when combined, provide a 360 degree service and the necessary elements to help a new business succeed, from business development and financial management to design, print, PR and online presence. Float Your Goat, Incisive London, EML Wildfire, Print My Pixel and People Of Print each offering a different angle and a different skill set to be used both within and outside the creative community. Together we provide the knowledge and ability required for business to business propositions and supply the creative services needed for success.

Each of the partners is either a start up themselves or a collaborator with startups. Through Startups 4 Startups, each will give an understanding of how the startup process works as well as offer sound advice and best practice in terms of the startup journey.”

We will be reporting on this as it launches next month.

You can find out more about Float Your Goat here

Reno Startup ShortStack Does The Grunt Work So You Can Make Apps Sexy

Everyone needs an app these days. Whether it’s a web app, Facebook app or Mobile App, without an app your company seems behind in the times. People love showing off features and making their apps and presence look sexy, but before you can get to that, someone needs to do the grunt work. That’s where Reno startup ShortStack comes in.

ShortStack was created by Jim Belosic and Doug Churchill while Belosic was running a successful web design company. ShortStack was actually a toolset his own in house people developed to make some of the backend grunt work on design quicker. The pair quickly realized they were onto something and rather than just using ShortStack in house, they could offer it as a DIY software as a service, and make some money while helping business owners.

The response they got when the first rolled the product out was more than they ever expected. They amassed 80,000 users in year one and added another 100,000 users the following year. Now ShortStack alone is a multi million dollar business.

ShortStack allows business owners to create all kinds of different apps on a variety of platforms including the web, Facebook and mobile. It’s being used to create contests, sweepstakes, newsletter signups and integrations with Instagram YouTube and Twitter.

Belosic isn’t a flyby night developer either. He gets design and social media and contributes regularly to Mashable, Social Media Examiner, CMS Wire, PR Daily, and Smart Brief. He was also named the Technology Entrepreneur of the Year by the Nevada Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology. That’s not such an easy feat with Las Vegas’ thriving tech scene just miles down the road.

Making the move from in house agency tool to SaaS wasn’t easy. ” It was a challenge because we needed to continue to do both businesses at the same time. ShortStack was bootstrapped so we needed revenue from the agency to support the new endeavor. The biggest challenge was figuring out how to double the workload with essentially half the revenue. It was a huge balancing act, but luckily we had the luxury of a product that was making money from the beginning. Without that early revenue, we would have had to look for investors. ” Belosic told nibletz.com in an interview.

After several years at the helm of a profitable web design business, taking the plunge into the startup world wasn’t an easy task either. Reno’s startup scene isn’t nearly what it is in neighboring Las Vegas.

“The startup culture in Reno is pretty non-existent and haphazardly organized. People get good ideas, get really excited, and recruit other people to work with them … and then they just burn out. Or businesses do really well and are too busy to contribute to the startup culture. There’s not a lot of steady startup activity here and there’s not enough support for regular continued efforts.” Belosic said.

But raising a startup in Reno has it’s benefits as well. “The cost of doing business is a huge advantage. Nevada has no state income tax and the business tax climate is extremely beneficial. Business licenses are inexpensive and the cost of talent is inexpensive. Rent is also insanely cheap. When it comes to my monthly expenses, rent comes in at number 18 on my expenses list. The quality of life is also an advantage for my employees. Housing is inexpensive and there’s no traffic. Reno is also close to awesome outdoor activities like skiing, hiking, fishing, Lake Tahoe, San Francisco, hunting, etc., so it’s a desirable place to live and raise a family.”

Bootstrapping it to revenue probably explains why Belosic is such a fan of Atlanta startup Mail Chimp’s founder Ben Chestnut.

“I have a big man-crush on Ben Chestnut from MailChimp. I read his blog regularly and feel like we are in a very similar industry. We’ve been through a lot of the same stuff when it comes to our previous experiences. I was reading about their company history and realized that they too began as an agency. The MailChimp platform was created as an internal tool at first, but was later released to the public. I feel like every time I have a question, I can read Ben’s blog and he’s either had that same problem or offers some insight that is relevant to me.”

ShortStack now includes more than 40 tools and 70 templates, you can check it out for yourself at shortstack.com You can keep up with Belosic and Shortstack on Facebook