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12-12-12 Concert Shows The Importance Of Startups Like New Jersey’s Pre-Digital Project

Pre-Digital Project, New Jersey startup,startups

This photo was shared at the Pre-Digital Project, a New Jersey startup

The 12-12-12 concert at Madison Square Garden in New York City, last night, was broadcast to billions of people around the world. The concert was an effort reminiscent of Live Aid in 1985 or the concert to benefit victims of Hurricane Katrina back in 2005. Even before some very high profile celebrities took to the phone banks to answer donation calls, over $30 million had already been collected by the Robin Hood Foundation who will distribute those funds to victims of Hurricane Sandy.

Halfway through the concert we received a tweet asking if we could do a simple RT for a New Jersey Startup called Pre-Digital Project. After checking the startup out a bit we decided to not just RT them but report on what they’re doing and how it’s connected to events like Hurricane Sandy.

Although they launched in June, a couple of months before Hurricane Sandy ravaged the mid-atlantic and north eastern United States, world changing events highlight one of the purposes behind the startup.

The Pre-Digital Project is a “then and now” photo archive to show off old photos of locations, landmarks and places. The site shows off user submitted photos dating back to the 1800’s from across the country. It’s a crowd-sourced pre-digital, digital archive, which is of course where the startup took it’s name from.

A lot of the photos are from New Jersey and surrounding areas and others are from as far away as London and the Philippines.

The digital archive has a unique spin and it’s great to have everything all grouped together. Some of the more popular photos include photos of the New York skyline prior to September 11th. Others highlight monuments like Buckingham Palace and the Bay Bridge in San Francisco.

There are also several photos of Atlantic City, the Jersey Shore and parts of New York that were beaten down by Sandy. Many images that could never be captured again. Through the Pre-Digital Project, users can save their memories and share them with other people for decades to come.

Linkage:

Checkout the Pre-Digital Project, here

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Toronto YCombinator Startup: Canopy Labs Raises $1.5 Million

Y-Combinator Toronto based startup Canopy Labs has just raised $1.5 million dollars to help further their company that helps mid-sized businesses build predictive customer models. These models help identify high value customers that can lead to repeat business.

While big businesses typically outsource he development of lead optimization tools, medium sized businesses that may still have over 10,000 customers often don’t have the money to hire a company to build a specific tool. Canopy Labs offers those companies a self serve tool for a fraction of the cost.

To some that may not be the best model in the world but Canopy Labs founder Wojciech Gryc, told TechCrunch in August that their target customers may not need “the most accurate, the best model ever built” instead they need something that’s “actionable and quick”

Gryc is a Rhodes Scholar who is applying his Master of Science Degrees in Mathematical Modeling and Social Science to create the Canopy labs platform.

“We offer our clients insights into their customer data that marketing or sales analysts can understand and use right away to make customers happier and increase their sales. We’ve launched analytics capabilities for our clients in under 24 hours.” Gryc said in a statement.

Canopy Labs helps consumer and retail enterprises with a large customer base prioritize efforts and deliver different marketing messages to different customers. This results in a more personalized sales experience and higher revenue. Customer modeling case studies have shown that the Canopy Labs platform is capable of processing three million records within minutes, increase sales leads by 25%, and increase sales conversions by 200%.

Canopy Labs’ self-serve platform creates customer models by importing all of the interactions that a business has with its customers. Everything from email, social media, voicemail and call center recordings are analyzed with the products that customers buy and how much they paid for these products. Canopy Labs clients are then provided recommended actions for each customer without a sales rep having to reflect upon each customer, thus saving time for the company while decreasing customer churn and increasing customer spend.

“Many analytics companies say they can solve tough problems but most IT projects in enterprises fail or end up stagnating,” said Ron Warburton, managing partner at the BDC Venture Capital IT Fund. “Canopy Labs has found a way to address a very clear problem for enterprises that don’t want to hire consultants or create customized customer modeling programs – streamlining their analytics process and delivering smart, usable data in a very short timeframe.

Canopy Labs $1.5 million dollar round was led by BDC Venture Capital IT Fund. Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures and a number of other angel investors participated in the deal.

Linkage:

Check out Canopy Labs here

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Memphis Startup: AFocusED Path Starts Helping Students With Careers In Middle School

AFocusED Path was one of the four startups built during Memphis’ recent 48 Hour Launch for women as part of their new UpStart program. AFocused Path is essentially a social network surrounding a students academic life, and their support infrastructure. It’s also a great way to keep a child’s support network, no matter how close or far away they live from the child, involved.

Parents of school aged children can sign up for a free profile at AFocusED Path. From there they will add information about the student academically and socially as it related to their child’s development. Report cards, progress reports, key assignments, reports, intramural sports achievements, school play programs, you name it all of this can be added to a child’s AFocusED Path profile. This will serve as the ultimate archive for a child’s early years.

With all this information collected and displayed in a private social network, families are building an online resume of their child dating back to the earliest years. Long gone are the days of throwing shoeboxes filled with photos away during the next move.

This aspect of the the platform is also great for keeping aunts, uncles, grandparents, friends and other supporters, up to date with a child’s progress, achievements and areas of improvement. Now grandma and grandpa in Florida get to participate more actively in their grandchildren’s lives. If the student got good grades they can leave praise, if they are having a rough period they can be there for support.

Eventually the startup would like to add other key players in a child’s scholastic career in the platform as well. Guidance counselors, teachers, and coaches could all be involved in the overall well being of the child through their school career and then even onto college.

The second part of AFocusED Path is equally as interesting.

Usually when a student hits 8th grade they start getting the first real inclination of what they may want to do when they grow up. Whether the child wants to be a doctor, vet, counselor, entrepreneur or an electrical engineer, AFocusED Path is able to help create a clear plan as to what the child should be doing in their school years to prepare for college in that field.

The system will know what classes to get and what grades to maintain and if that student is underperforming or overachieving when it comes to those goals.

Naturally, starting a career path at 8th grade usually means a pivot or three and AFocusED path can accommodate that pivot and several others. The platform can also let a student and their support system know how hard it will be to change career paths at whatever point they make that decision.

They hope to become the goto social platform for everyone scholastically prior to college.

Denise Davis PHd and Rod DeBerry are the two founders behind this new startup and they are anxious to get it moving. They worked relentlessly with their 48 Hour Launch team to perfect their pitch as well as starting their social media channels. Check out their Friday pitch video:

Here’s the pitch video from Sunday evening:

Linkage:

Check out UpstartMemphis here

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Swiss Startup Nearbors, Let Your Neighbors Pick Up Your Shopping List

In reading the pitch from Swiss startup Nearbors I immediately started thinking about Zaarly. The pitch talks about being too busy to go out shopping for groceries or food and having someone else do it for you. Zaarly has done well in some big city markets and is deploying across other medium markets in the United States, so why not have a similar startup in Switzerland?

Well after watching the video below, I quickly realized that Nearbors has taken part of the Zaarly concept a lot further and they’ve combined mobile payments.

Here’s how it works:

Say you’re on deadline either working from home or the office. It’s lunch time and you need some groceries or a decent salad and sandwich. With Zaarly you put the request out there and hope that someone responds.

With Nearbors, there is a community of folks out there waiting for your Nearbor requests. Nearbors, neighbor couriers sign up for the service, have GPS enabled on their phone and receive “jobs” while they are enroute.

So now say Sally is passing by Panera and they are networked into the Nearbors program. I can order a half sandwich and macaroni and cheese and have Sally bring it to me on her way back to her office.

The best part is that through Nearbors they already have my payment information. When Sally gets to checkout she shares a QR code unique to my payment information order and voila it’s paid for. I can see where Sally is enroute to my home or office in the app and then when she arrives I can click the app one more time to pay her a “commission”.

This idea is very well thought out and according to co-founder Ryan Vannin they hope for global expansion. We got a chance to talk with Vannin who’s native tongue is Italian, so please look past his English and onto this great idea.

Boston Techstars Grad: Testive Raises $500,000 Seed

A recent Boston Techstars startup graduate, Testive, has just announced a $500,000 seed round led by influential local investors.

Testive operates on the premise that SAT prep books suck and SAT prep classes are too expensive. Miro Kazzakoff, the startup’s founder says not only can Testive predict a high school students SAT score but also their method is more efficient.

“Somewhere between cheap, boring prep books and expensive classes is an opportunity to deliver online test prep that doesn’t suck,” Kazakoff told the Boston Business Journal “Testive is building the tools that help students learn more efficiently and more enjoyably.”

Immediately following the Techstars Boston session the company moved into Dog Patch Labs an incubator/co-working space founded by Polaris Venture Partners and also in the same Microsoft building that houses the Boston Techstars program. Several other high growth potential startups occupy the space and work in a collaborative environment.

Local angels; Jean Hammond (A Zipcar investor), Eileen Rudden (co-founder of LeanLaunch), Dharmesh Shah (co-founder of Hubspot) and Bill Warner (founder of Avid/ProTools), all participated in the round.

Kazakoff reports that over 10,000 students already use their SAT Habit software. Their software is based on Turbo Test, originally developed at MIT. The investment will go to continued development of the software. They plan on adding features to add in the preparation of the “writing” part of the SAT.

Linkage:

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Twin Cities Startup: Peerparazzi Tagging Photos At A Whole New Level

Photo apps are now just about a dime a dozen. Many startups think they’re innovating in the photo space, but come to find that another six startups have had the same idea. Tagging photos for social reasons isn’t a new idea. In fact we just reported on Brooklyn startup Kapture that allows you to take pictures, on assignment, tag them and become a “brand ambassador” for rewards.

A new startup in St.Paul Minnesota is looking to maximize tagging in a social photo app. The startup is called Peerparazzi.

Peerparazzi says they provide an exciting new picture taking and social experience. Everything in the photo can be tagged, the people, places and things. Tagging photos within Peerparazzi allows you to automatically send the photos to the people that are in them.

On the business side, businesses can claim themselves in photos so that tags become interactive. A tag for a Wendy’s or McDonald’s could send a user to an interactive promotion. A tag for a shopping mall could send out a daily deal. A tag for a museum could send a user to a website.

Peerparazzi founder Damen Johnson believes that people are more likely to interact with product photos shot by their friends and family rather than just regular advertising.

We got a chance to talk with Johnson about Peerparazzi. Check out the interview below:

DC Startup Speek Raises $1.2 Million Dollar Seed Round

We’ve been tracking DC startup Speek since last May when they pitched the initial concept and platform at the TechBuzz competition in Washington DC as part of Capital Connection.

What originally attracted us to Speek was the super easy interface for their conference calling application. The conference calling space is definitely a hot one. Back in May, another conference calling startup UberConference won the highly coveted TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield at TechCrunch Disrupt NY.

Speek is actually easier to use. With Speek you simply go to the website, pick a username and enter some information, like your primary phone number. From there, when you want to make a conference call you go to that user’s page on Speek and hit the big button in the middle of the page and voila, conference call initiated. For example, my Speek address is http://speek.com/kyle yes I was using it early enough.

The other main attraction to Speek is the startup pedigree. The company was founded by John Bracken who sold his first big startup e-vite to TicketMaster. Speek’s CTO Danny Boice was the founder at Jaxara a startup he sold to Pantheon in 2006.

Today they announced that they’ve raised a seed round of $1.2 million by “several early stage venture funds”.

“Conference calls today are a painful experience in a $3 billion market that hasn’t innovated in over twenty years,” said Speek.com co-founder and CEO John Bracken. “Speek is revolutionizing conference calling by turning a limited telephone-based service into one that is simple, free and in-tune with the next generation of web and mobile services.”

“Speek makes conducting a conference call fast and easy,” said co-founder and CTO Danny Boice. “No longer do you have to frantically search for a PIN number or wonder who’s on the call or who’s talking. Nearly ninety-percent of people who have used Speek would be disappointed if our service disappeared.”

Linkage:

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Month One In A Startup Accelerator, Cliff McKinney CEO, Work For Pie

“This is my rifle. There are many like it, but this one is mine.”

So I’ve started a couple of companies before. Okay I say “started companies,” but I don’t really
mean either of those words. I just incorporated some ideas I had. I got business cards with my
name on them. I built a little website for interested people to sign up. One of them even earned
me a little play money. But in truth, I was just playing house.

When I walked in the door a month ago at Seed Hatchery, a startup accelerator in Memphis,
TN, I hadn’t discovered that yet. In my mind, I was kind of a badass. I had read more books
about entrepreneurship than anyone I knew. I had listened to every episode of This Week in
Startups. Hell I even suffered through a few episodes of This Week in Venture Capital. My
team had a GREAT idea that NOBODY ELSE was doing (or doing well, at least), and I had this
awesome, undiscovered savant of a co-founder and we were just going to waltz in there and
kick serious butt.

And day one was awesome! I was part of a special fraternity of entrepreneurs, and we were all
going to change the world. It was all champagne and roses. And I really felt that way. It was
wild man. Like livin’ on Haight in ’67.

Then the rest of the week felt something like this:

“Your idea sucks. No one is doing it because it sucks. You haven’t thought it through, you
haven’t done a bit of customer research, and it’s amazing that you didn’t have the good sense
to realize it before you walked in this door. You are only slightly less likely to fail because you’re
here than you were before you got here, which is to say that the likelihood of your failure just
went from 100% to something closer to 99.5%. Your pitch sucks. It’s too long. Where’s the
real pain? Are you solving a real problem? Your presentation isn’t that great either. Too many
words, not enough substance. You’re half as talented as my mother and you’re in Memphis-
freaking-Tennessee. They don’t give money to stupid people here. They don’t even give it
to smart people. You have 90, 89, 88, 87, 86 days to make a great product, and you haven’t
shown me anything that makes me believe that will happen yet…”

Thank you Drill Sergeant, may I have another?

It was an awakening, to say the least. Turns out everything I thought mattered didn’t, and
everything I thought was true wasn’t (except for the bit about the genius co-founder), and
everything I had learned wasn’t relevant anymore. By the end of that first week, I was huddled
in a corner with my rifle, crying, hoping the whole thing would just blow up and take me along
with it.

“Okay, forget everything we just said.”

But I kept coming back, because it was the most awesome thing I had ever done. Humbling,
yes, but awesome nonetheless. I was doing THIS. I was being brought to my knees HERE,

doing OUR THING. We didn’t answer to anyone but ourselves. We were keeping late nights
because we wanted to, not because some freaking busybody micro-manager in another
department needs her TPS reports by noon tomorrow. We were living the dream!

And we were getting better. Bit by bit. By week two the pitch had improved. We met mentors
who had been there and were willing to guide us through the trials and tribulations. We were
doing customer research and starting to turn our crappy little idea into something that just
might work. We had this amazing, awesome group of cohort companies, each with great
entrepreneurs and talented individuals, helping us along the way. We were making progress,
and we were doing it at a speed that my counterparts in “the real world” wouldn’t even be able
to comprehend.

So three weeks in we said “okay, forget about everything we just said,” and changed just about
everything about our original idea. Three days (and about 12 hours of sleep) later, we pitched
that new idea to investors for the first time. We had come far enough to be able to say “yeah,
this one is going to be better, and it’s okay that we have to scrap a bunch of stuff to make it
work.” It was progress, and the investors noticed. It IS a better idea, and they knew it. And we
had survived. It wasn’t pretty, but we had survived. At least the first battle.

“You think Grendel’s a bear–you should meet the mother!”

Things aren’t any easier these days. Not at all. Sleep still comes in short bursts. The pressure
is building as we get closer and closer to demo day, and the expectations are higher because,
somehow, we’re infinitely better than we were when we walked through the door a month ago.
We’ve got a month to build a product that thousands of people will one day use. 31, 30, 29, 28
days. They pass before we even know what hit us.

But the false hope that got turned into realistic doubt in that first week is creeping into the
territory of realistic hope. And what we’re hearing in week five sounds a bit more like this:

“Your idea sucks, but you’ve got time to make it better. You haven’t thought it through, but
you’ve got the tools to do that now. You haven’t talked to your customers enough, but we’re
going to help you do that. And no matter what you think, we didn’t bet on your idea. The only
thing you brought with you was you, and you are what we bet on, not your stupid idea. You’ve
got a shot at this. Keep going.”

Here’s hoping that kind of talk continues…

Author Biography:

Cliff McKinney is CEO of Work for Pie, a company that is changing the way software developers
get recruited and hired by changing the way they communicate with companies. He and his
team have conducted countless interviews with both developers and the companies that hire
them. You can find him on twitter at @cliffmckinney.

Linkage:

Learn more about Seed Hatchery, the accelerator WorkForPie went through, here

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UK Startup Swogo Launches The “Best Way To Find Products” Starting With Laptops

According to various consumer electronic trade publications the average consumer takes three weeks to make a decision on a laptop. A new UK startup called Swogo is looking to take that decision making time down to seconds.

Swogo says the main hurdle in making a purchasing decision is the way people search for items. Either they have an idea in their mind at what they want to purchase and then go to a consumer electronics retailer for comparison shopping.

Other consumers take to gigantic search engines like Google and Bing. The problem with traditional search engines is that they lead to information and not answers. Sifting through that information and then vetting it against paid ad campaigns can often lead consumers down the wrong path. In this case they either make the wrong purchasing decision or they prolong the decision making process further.

Swogo plans on becoming a recommendation connection engine for many types of products but they are starting with laptops. The site launched on Monday afternoon in the UK with laptops only and plans on expanding their product line and their global reach this year. By the end of 2013 they plan on adding tablets, smartphones, cameras and TVs.

Sure there are plenty of other electronic and gadget sites out there but Swogo says they have an algorithm that aides customers in making their important purchasing decisions,reducing the time down to seconds.

Check out these links:

Swogo is on the web here

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Founder Of Memphis Startup Mentor.Me Crowdfund’s In Person For Everywhereelse Booth

This weekend was a big weekend for Memphis entrepreneurs, specifically women founders and entrepreneurs. Upstart Memphis, the latest initiative by Launch Memphis, officially kicked off with the 48 Hour Launch, women’s edition. During the 48 hour period four women CEO’s from Memphis built 4 exciting new startups; Care2Manage, AfocusED Path, Pink Robin Avenue and Mentor.me.

Throughout the weekend the women were rushing to gain as much business knowledge as they could, test their idea out and validate it with customers, and work on their pitch deck. They were also competing for a free booth space at the upcoming “everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference” event being held in Memphis in February.

The three day event is bringing entrepreneurs, founders, and investors from across the country and around the world to Memphis for three days of startup knowledge. A smorgasboard of panels, discussions, fireside chats, networking opportunities and parties. There’s a huge list of nationally known speakers as well. (here’s more info on the event).

Mentor.me is solving a big problem for non profit groups that are linking mentors with mentees. Until now the systems used by most mentoring non profits has been flawed.

For instance Brittany Fitzpatrick said in her pitch that a few people she knows that connect mentors and mentees have to go through thousands of applications and then they link mentors with their mentees by looking at a simple sheet of paper. This paves the way for bad connections and relationships. We also learned that most mentor relationships dissolve in six months or less and that’s actually worse for the mentee than not having been mentored at all.

Check out Mentor.me’s Friday pitch:

And here’s Fitzpatrick’s Sunday pitch:

Fitzpatrick’s web based platform will allow both mentors and mentees the opportunity to build a much more robust profile with likes, interests, needs and goals. This way both the mentor and the mentee have a better chance at vetting each other out to see if they’re likely to be compatible.

When the judges convened after hearing all four pitches on Sunday evening it was a very close call between Mentor.me and the startup that won, Pink Robin Avenue.

Undeterred, once Fitzpatrick realized she wasn’t the winner she started approaching the folks in the audience with a simple proposal, help me get my startup into the conference.

Very quickly Fitzpatrick got sponsored to the beat of $265 and at that point I kicked in the last $30 to get her startup into the conference.

Hopefully both Fitzpatrick and the winner Danielle Inez, will wow the investors the way they wowed the judges this weekend and raise some venture capital.

Linkage:

Check out Upstart Memphis here

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Memphis Startup: Pink Robin Avenue Wins Free Booth At Everywhereelse.co

This weekend was Upstart Memphis’ 48 Hour Launch weekend. Upstart Memphis is the newest initiative for Launch Memphis the catalyst behind all things entrepreneurial and startup in Memphis Tennessee. Upstart Memphis is about helping women entrepreneurs and startup founders through fellowship, education and events. 48 Hour Launch, Memphis’ take on Startup Weekend, was the first big even for the organization.

Launch Memphis has held several 48 Hour Launch events. They function the same way most weekend startup hackathons function. This time was a little different though because all of the ideas pitched needed to be led by women.

Care2Manage, A focusED Path, Mentore.Me and Pink Robin Avenue were the four ideas picked to build throughout the course of the weekend. As you can see from both the Friday and Sunday videos for each startup, they got a lot of work done.

Danielle Inez and her Pink Robin Avenue was the prevailing winner though, even after an original judges tie.

Pink Robin Avenue is an easy way to plan and decorate for an event. For those who like it broken down in it’s simplest form, Pink Robin Avenue is an “event in a box”.

Inez and her team used the weekend to work on their business plan, website, social channels, customer discovery and preparing a great presentation. Inez brought out her bubbly personality and really shut the crowd down with her enthusiastic responses to every part of the Q&A, having a sensible answer for every question thrown her way.

While Inez will initially grow Pink Robin Avenue in Memphis she plans on expanding nationwide and helping people plan events, and get all the decorations they need from top to bottom in a box delivered to their door step, instructions and all.

After checking out her Sunday pitch video you’ll see why she ended up winning a free Startup Village booth at everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference. Inez will be very busy over the next two months making sure that her idea is ready for prime time and ready to go onstage in front of over 1500 people, 400 of them investors.

As a testament to the weekend startup hackathon building model check out her Friday pitch here:

and here’s her wining Sunday pitch video

Linkage:

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Chicago Startup: Barandwaitstaff.com A Jobs Network For The Service Industry

While some consider waiting tables stepping stone jobs, there are plenty of career minded people in the field. Perhaps you want a job that doesn’t require a lot of thinking so that you can pay the bills and work on a side startup. Perhaps you actually make really good money waiting tables and so no reason for change. Possibly, you like working with people and feel most comfortable helping customers.

For whatever reason there are thousands of people who are perfectly fine, if not extremely happy, in the service industry. A new Chicago startup, barandwaitstaff.com is going to make it easier for professional service industry folks to find the best service industry jobs. In fact, even though there are thousands of restaurants in every state, the service industry has gone rather unnoticed in the recruitment space.

Barandwaitstaff.com promises to make it easy for anyone looking for work in the service industry to find it, and vice versa.

The startup is led by two brothers Len and Jim Kazmierczak. Both brothers hold history degrees. At one point they had bought a small live music bar in the area. However with the economic downturn it became harder and harder to keep the doors open and eventually closed it down. After closing the business down they decided they reflected on what they could have done differently in their business. Staffing was one of those things. With that Barandwaistaff.com was born.

We got a chance to talk to Len Kazmierczak. Check out the interview below.

Meet The 4 Women Led Memphis Startups Pitching At 48 Hour Launch

Memphis’ Launch Memphis, is holding a 48 Hour Launch made up entirely of startups founded by women. This is part of Launch Memphis’ new Upstart Memphis initiative focused on enriching women entrepreneurs and startups across the midsouth.

In addition to events like this, Upstart Memphis holds a regular women’s entrepreneur meetup and provides access to women founders and entrepreneurs to the organizations free workshops and seminars. Upstart Memphis welcomes entrepreneurs of all types from traditional small businesses to high growth potential startups.

This weekend’s 48 Hour Launch saw traditional high growth startups and a hybrid startup with huge upside potential locally and if it can build scale, nationally as well.

Care2Manage

Care2Manage is a web portal and referral service aimed at 30 and 40 somethings who’s parents may be ready for elder care. More and more of the elderly are turning to staying home rather than going into managed care centers, which can be frightening for their children, especially when 100s of miles separate child and parent.

That’s where Care2Manage comes in. This referral site and management platform allows the parent and the children to collaborate together and find the best care providers in the parents’ local area. With the service being based on the web, children from across the country and around the world can be involved in their parents care. Not only that, but Care2Manage will also staff up with 24 hour staff available to the parent or the child, and in some cases both.

Here’s the Friday raw pitch:

focusED Path

This startup plans to be a first in it’s space. Essentially focusED Path is a social network for students and parents to keep up with their scholastic activities. Using focusED path, parents and students can put all of their grades, achievements and assignments online. As the student reaches milestones they can be celebrated as well.

focusED Path takes it’s name from one of it’s key features. At the eighth grade level most students start thinking about careers and the work force. They start solidifying their first “what I want to be when I grow up” plans.

focusED Path takes those ideas and makes recommendations on courses to take and what grade averages are needed to sustain that goal. The system will also help when that student undoubtedly pivots to another career path. The student and the parent can see what changes will need to be made to keep them on the focusED path.

Finally, in their secure network students and parents can share milestones, and victories along with areas the student needs to work on with that student’s support network.

Here’s the Friday Pitch:

Pink Robin Avenue

Pink Robin Avenue is the ultimate event planning tool for the busy person. Professional career minded women, single dads, single parents and anyone who’s day to day makes them too busy to plan a party can easily use Pink Robin Avenue to design an event in a box and have the party they’ve dreamt about in just a few clicks.

The founder of Pink Robin Avenue, Danielle Inez, put together the idea when she found that with her social calendar and PR consulting firm she didn’t have enough time to think of things like cake toppers, decorations, and party favors.

Check out the Friday pitch:

Mentor.me

Brittney Fitzpatrick has noticed that there is a huge flaw in mentoring. One of her close colleagues is in charge of administering a very big mentor program in Memphis Tennessee and told Fitzpartrick that most of the mentor matching she does is strictly baed on what’s on a sheet of paper. For so many reasons this process is flawed.

Mentor.me plans on taking profiles for the mentor and the mentee and using algorithms to better match the two.

With Mentor.me a mentee will be able to better address and get more indepth about their needs in a mentor. The mentor will also be able to better see if they’re a match or not.

Mentor.me will help both mentors and mentees waist a lot less time and get right into mentoring, which is what they’re supposed to do.

Check out Mentor.me’s Friday Pitch.

Linkage:

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3 Challenges, Besides Funding, Facing Startups Everywhere Else

When you make the bold move to take your idea and turn it into a startup, the cards are already stacked against you. Depending on what you read, some folks say 70% of startups fail, others say 80% of startups fail. Either way, those aren’t good percentages no matter what way you slice it. Couple that with the fact that you are trying to grow your startup outside of a major startup hub like Silicon Valley and many may believe that’s a recipe for doom.

Of course thats not the case for the nearly 2000 startups we’ve covered from “everywhere else” since launching nibletz.com the voice of startups “everywhere else”. So we circled back with some of our startups to find out what challenges they face, or more specifically, what was the biggest challenge they faced in starting up.

Most of these challenges facing these entrepreneurs aren’t unique to one certain geographic region, but rather encompass challenges faced by most.

Finding a Team & Resource (you thought we were going to start with funding didn’t ya?)

Many startups that we’ve interviewed have eluded to the fact that finding the right team was one of the toughest parts or challenges they faced as a startup. When you build your startup outside a centralized technology hub like Silicon Valley, Boston or even Washington DC, attracting top tier talent to work for next to nothing to get your idea off the ground can be challenging.

Even Kapture, a startup founded in Brooklyn had problems at first attracting a great team. Kapture’s co-founder Michael Szewczyk had actually made the decision to move back from Silicon Valley to Brooklyn to launch Kapture. That may have helped them attract a good team.

“The biggest challenge is being creative with the limited amount of resources you have.” Jumyo said in an interview.

In Seattle, story telling startup Jumyo is also plagued by the talent problem. Seattle has often been thought of as a hub for innovation yet they had trouble attracting a good team. Imagine if the problem is rampant in Seattle and Brooklyn, it’s gotta be a whole lot tougher in Boise and Providence.

Even a startup coming out of Dartmouth had a challenge with finding the best team.

“I think the hardest part for a software startup is finding a rock-solid team of devs, especially when the first founder is not technical, as is our case. It took quite a while before I found James and Sang and got them on board, but I feel incredibly lucky for the team that we have. Recently, we added another pemanent developer, who is actually located in Bulgaria, and so now the development process has been going really smoothly.” Square One Mail co-founder Branko Cerny told us in this interview.

Changing an age old industry

Some more innovative startups are taking problems that have existed for years in traditional industries and trying to solve them once an for all. Such is the case for New York startup Unpakt. Unpakt has taken the Expedia model and applied it to an industry where over billing and even fraud has run rampant for year. That industry is the moving industry. Unless you had a big enough house that you called one of the gigantic companies like Allied or Mayflower, you were faced with a lot of mom and pop or small regional companies.

No one knows when the time clock starts or stops. No one can remember how much furniture was originally allotted for the move. In the end the people being moved are either out more money or in some instances their belongings are held hostage for more money.

By making the process all but transparent through the Unpakt system this New York startup can help people who need to hire movers and honest movers as well. Unpakt’s problem was getting movers to buy in to the new:

“Convincing movers to see the benefit of an exact pricing system and operate within a larger network, instead of the historic autonomy of the industry. We’re demonstrating to movers that revealing their rates and exposing pricing is ok. To be successful in the online world, pricing needs to be readily available.” is what they told us in this interview

Launching

Launching a product is tough no matter where you are at. There are a lot of confusing methodologies out there especially for a new entrepreneur and a new startup.

For instance, if you just got into the startup world and went all hipster as soon as you did, you’re probably preaching the Lean startup methodology and “minimum viable product”.

On the other hand you may not want to show off your minimum viable product to anyone because it’s in complete and it looks like crap. A big worry for those entrepreneurs second guessing this method is that in showing an MVP they may actually have their idea ripped off when in fact they planned on a much grander idea in the first place.

Iterating can be a problem too. Some startups worry every time they think of a new feature that they need to add it to version 1.

Other startups like Vancouver based Perch, found that while their product technically worked, it’s a video product and they wanted it to be the best it could be. They would launch it and then pull back. They went through this process several times.

“Getting Perch out the door. We’ve come so close to launch numerous times, but because we’re dealing with video and very technical aspects of video, we’ve had to pull Perch off the shelf and back into development several times.” Perch told us in this interview.

Linkage:

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