Comments Off on Minnesota Startup Jingit Raises $7 Million, Pays Consumers To Watch Ads0LikeLike 3,080
Jingit, a startup based in Edina Minnesota, has raised $7 million dollars in investment capital according to a regulatory filing. The startup was founded last year by Joe Rogness, the former CEO of tech consultancy Two Fish and Todd Rooke a former executive with Hewlitt Packard.
Jingit allows ordinary consumers to earn up to $15 per week for watching ads and giving feedback on them. Household brands like Walmart, Hershey and Kraft are in Jingit’s stable of clients.
The company partnered with US Bank last year which issues a debit card on their behalf. Jingit customers’ earnings from ad watching is directly deposited onto the debit cards. Each ad yields the user between $.05 and $.50 cents. Payments vary based on advertiser, market study, and demographics. For instance advertisers may pay more to have an 18 year old watch an advertisement for a video game rather than someone older. Kraft may pay more for people in an older demographic to watch their ad.
Jingit has fail safes in place to make sure that their users are actually watching ads. The ad will stop if another browser window or tab is opened while the ad is playing.
The startup gives advertisers unparalleled ability to drill down to their ideal customer. They’ve found that advertisers are willing to pay more money for this kind of targeted feedback.
Prior to this $7 million dollar round, Jingit had raised $3.5 million dollars.
Comments Off on Complete Your Lifelong Goals With Help From Bangkok Startup Bucketlistly0LikeLike 2,018
It all started when Pete, the founder of Bucketlistly went to Beijing for a Mobile Monday event. While at the event he was intrigued by everything going on around him. He was speaking at the event and wanted to figure out a way to share his own achievements and help others share their achievements as well.
Of course with that and seeing the movie starring Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson, Pete had an idea.
He calls Bucketlistly a social bucket list. The platform allows users to list all the things they want to do in their lives, crowd source ideas on how to achieve those goals, do the impossible and share all of that.
When it’s time to conquer those life long goals users can write stories about them and even include pictures. The website than chronicles the achievements and archives them so the user can reference them later and inspire others.
We got the entire skinny from Pete, check out the interview below.
Comments Off on Shop, Share, Indulge On The Go With Michigan Startup Ozmott0LikeLike 2,611
A new Michigan startup called Ozmott has said they’ve just made shopping more fun. They’ve done this by combining a map of local participating merchants that are part of Ozmott’s loyalty program. Once they get into a participating merchant, Ozmott users can decide which offer they want to purchase and use “Pips” or loyalty points, to help pay for the offer. When a user redeems an offer through Ozmott they earn more points which helps them get top tier “Luxe” offers.
The team behind Ozmott had learned first hand from a local merchant how they actually went upside down on a daily deal. This seems to be a trend with mom & pop shops that eagerly joined the Groupon or Living Social model. It’s why it doesn’t work.
It looks like Ozmott merchants won’t have the same problem, especially after throwing the reward points back in the mix.
We got a chance to talk with the team behind Ozmott. Check out the interview below.
Comments Off on Ohio Startup: Buyvite Adds “Pay Me Back” Social Payment Product0LikeLike 2,388
We’ve been following Brandy Alexander-Wimberly and her Toledo Ohio startup, Buyvite, since last May. Buyvite is a payment tool that makes group buying easy. For example, say you’re having a high school reunion and as a side activity you decide to catch a football game or a few rounds of golf as a group. Buyvite allows all of the group to pay for the excursion without having one person delegated in charge of the money, and risking one, or two people not paying.
Buyvite announced a new product on Monday called “Pay Me Back”. This product works after the transaction is made and is just in time for the holiday gift giving season.
With “Pay Me Back” say you and your family members decided to buy one of your other family members an expensive gift, like an iPad. Once one person makes the initial purchase, Pay Me back can divide the price paid among the others in your family and act as the conduit for the person who “fronted” the money to get paid back easily.
“Pay Me Back” has a variety of great uses. Alexander-Wimberly explains:
“This product was developed to give our partners an easy way to leverage the power of social commerce. Our social payment badges are designed to embed on product pages to promote the application. After the customer makes their purchase, they now have a seamless and social way of showing their friends what they bought, telling them how much they owe and an easy way to get paid back. It’s a perfect fit for any company focused on selling gifts, vacation rentals, event tickets and even works well for fantasy sports leagues and donations.”
Early adopters of “Pay Me Back” include Tiesta Tea, Pledge Music, Tony Packo’s, Swank Martini and payment processing provider E2E Payments of Lombard, IL. E2E President Brad Bialas explains the advantage of offering “Pay Me Back” to his customer base. “Our ecommerce clients are looking for new ways to reach their social audience. Consumers are already locked in to the concept of group purchases and peer-to-peer payments. Buyvite’s “Pay Me Back” product gives our clients a fresh and social way to promote a “crowd funding” model via their websites and ecommerce carts and it’s a proven way to help elevate traditionally group focused purchases like gifts, team costs or event tickets.”
Comments Off on Baltimore Startup: SickWeather Is Crowdsourcing The Sickness Forecast INTERVIEW0LikeLike 3,810
What if you could forecast sickness? What if you could find out what illnesses were going around just as easily as you could find out the weather? Well that’s what Baltimore startup SickWeather is all about.
The concept is a great idea, and while the two co-founders behind SickWeather are smart guys, it’s not like they have some magical powers that allow them to forecast what areas are going to get sick and when. What they have done though, is taken huge amounts of data available via public API’s and turned them into a startup that can tell you what’s going around near you.
It all started when co-founder Graham Dodge was sick with a stomach virus. It was a wicked bad virus and he wanted to see if anyone in his circle of friends was experiencing similar symptoms. Perhaps he wanted to track down the source of the stomach virus, or more importantly, get in contact with someone with the same symptoms and find out how much longer he would be under the weather. Whatever the reason, the idea immediately seemed scalable. With that, SickWeather was born.
Social networks have gigantic heaps of data available via public API. Through proprietary algorithms, SickWeather combs through those mountains of data for status’ like “Just got back from the doctor”, “Can’t get this flu to go away”. When the status on a social network is accompanied by a location marker, it will be plotted on the map. As they continue to work on the data, the team behind SickWeather could even plot out how long people have been sick.
They regurgitate all this data in much easier to read graphics that will ultimately provide valuable information to end users. Is that hacking cough coming from an allergy to a cat, or are you coming down with something?
We got a chance to talk with Dodge about SickWeather. Check out the interview below.
Comments Off on New Jersey Startup Vidyo Powering Video Chat On Wii U (And Google Hangouts)0LikeLike 2,373
New Jersey video conferencing startup Vidyo has probably outgrown the title “startup”. Their completely scalable video conferencing solutions can be found powering such high profile video services as Google+ Hangouts, NTT, Philips and more. Now it’s been reported that the company is powering the all new video chat feature found in the Wii U game system that debuted in stores across the country yesterday.
Wii U’s video platform can be found in their new improved MiiVerse service and is used with the camera built into the new Nintendo Wii U control pad.
We’re trying to bring video-conferencing to the world,” Vidyo chief executive Ofer Shapiro told Venturebeat.com’s John Koetsier. “We want to carry it to the masses.”
Vidyo isn’t necessarily taking on Skype but rather looking to put video conferencing in the living room. Having the ability for video conferencing in the living room opens up an entirely new world for content creators, both novice and professional. Also, with systems like the Wii U you can easily have whole family video chats using the tv as the monitor, no matter what it’s size.
Google+ Hangouts are incredibly easy to set up. It’s just one click within the Google+ network. Video chatting on the Wii U is even easier than that. It doesn’t require firing up the computer and getting on Google+. Let’s face it we’re probably looking at the possibility of much bigger scale utilizing the Wii U than the Google+ platform. Several quarters ago Google stopped reporting growth numbers for Google+.
Video integration with the Wii U also cuts the barrier to some people who are more comfortable with gaming systems and stay away from the computers.
While the video quality on the Wii U console is not “professional” it’s still “excellent” for the home use according to Shapiro.
The Wii U launched yesterday morning in the United States. Nintendo packaged two different bundles, a white “basic” system with 8gb of storage and no included game and a black deluxe system with 32gb of onboard storage, packaged with Nintendo Land.
Analysts are expecting the Nintendo Wii U to be one of the most popular gifts this holiday season. Most major big box stores have depleted their stock and are unsure if they will get another shipment before Christmas and Chanukah.
Comments Off on Understand Your Dog Better With North Carolina Startup Dognition0LikeLike 3,024
Brian Hare, the founder and director of Duke University’s Canine Cognition Center is introducing a new startup to help normal folks understand their dogs better. His North Carolina based startup, called Dognition, isn’t going to magically give your dog a voice, however it will provide ways for you to better understand your canine friends.
Dognition will feature a website and mobile app. The first step with Dognition will be an assessment test. The test will be offered via the mobile app and will tell dog owners exactly how to administer it. According to the News and Observer, through the administration of the test, dog owners will be able to discover their dogs cognitive strengths and weaknesses. From there, dog owners will be able to set up a “Dognition Profile” report.
Dognition will go into free beta testing today and plans to open to the public for between $40 and $60 in January. That may seem a little steep to you however the American Pet Product’s Association has said that despite the recession spending on pets has risen 4.8% or more in the last few years and is on pace to raise another 3.8% this year.
Hare is also hopeful that the research they do at the Canine Cognition Center will benefit from having hundreds of dogs across the globe using the platform.
“The collective data that Dognition accumulate also hold the promise of expanding our scientific understanding of dogs” Hare said. “Academic centers such as the one he leads at Duke only have the capacity to test a few hundred dogs a year, so opening up such tests to dog owners worldwide via the Internet has the scientist practically drooling.”
Local serial entrepreneur Kip Frey has come aboard at Dognition as CEO. Also McKinney, the largest advertising agency in the Research Triangle will also support Dognition with market research, marketing, brand development and helping with the UI for the website and mobile apps.
McKinney’s CEO Brad Brinegar has three dogs and told the News & Observer: “I wake up every morning and think, ‘This is going to be big”
Science has suggested in the past that to draw parallels between humans and other mammals you need to look to dolphins and apes. According to Hare, research over the last 15 years has suggested that dogs are more intelligent than once thought.
“Dogs are more sophisticated than even the most dedicated dog lover might imagine,” Hare said.” Actually dogs, in many ways, solve problems really similarly to human children. And they’re more similar to human children than … apes.”
Frey has already raised $1 million dollars for Dognition in an angel round.
Comments Off on Charlotte Could Be Next City For Founder’s Institute0LikeLike 2,183
Founder’s Institute, the largest startup accelerator in the world, is looking for their next new location. Founder’s Institute has had success in the valley, Boulder, Los Angeles, Seattle, Washington DC and other major cities around the country.
Now, Founder’s Institute is testing the waters in Charlotte North Carolina.
Once a conservative banking center, Charlotte has become a major hub for innovation Amon cities in the south east.
Charlotte played host to the Democratic National Convention this summer, and with that they give entrepreneurs, entrepreneurial media and more a glimpse into their growing startup scene. On our trip there for the convention we got to work out of Packard Place, a 4 story building in Charlotte’s Uptown (what they call their downtown) that serves as the hub for innovation.
Founder’s Institute has opened up discussion about coming to Charlotte on their website here.
Founder’s Institute also plans to test the waters by hosting a handful of events in Charlottte, over the next month:
Comments Off on MassChallenge Startups Have Created Thousands Of Jobs0LikeLike 3,207
Most people feel that the most important factor of the innovation and startup buzz is job creation. Startup America is one of the biggest proponents of startups leading to job creation. Most startup incubators and accelerators across the country pride themselves on preparing startups for job creation. One of the nation’s largest startup accelerators, MassChallenge, has been doing just that, creating jobs.
In a report with an accompanying infographic by Analogue Studio, MassChallenge has released their job creation figures over the last three years. The number is incredible.
According to their data, MassChallenge has created 2,912 new jobs. As MassChallenge reports, and we agree, these are “high impact” jobs. We’re not talking about the kind of jobs your neighborhood franchise entrepreneur is creating. MassChallenge startups are creating programming jobs, marketing jobs, business development jobs and more.
To date the 2010 MassChallenge class has created 1,060 new jobs. The 2011 class has created 1148 jobs and the 2012 class is well on their way having already created 704 jobs and the class hasn’t even been over for a month.
Comments Off on Indy Startup Weekend Team Max Recovery Already Up And Running0LikeLike 2,085
This weekend Startup Weekend is on fire. There are hundreds of startups being formed around the country and around the world. Indianapolis is one of the Startup Weekends happening this weekend.
Indianapolis startup evangelist, Nick Tippmann has jumped in to help form Max Recovery. With accelerator experience behind him, and even being a Startup Weekend Organizer in Bloomington Indiana, Tippmann has Max Recovery on a roadmap for success this weekend.
Max Recovery helps hardcore athletes track, balance and boost their body’s performance. It was built to help these body builders, UFC fighters, cross fit trainers, marathoners and those aspiring to be get the most out of their hard work. These people work themselves half to death and end up walking around like zombies. These are hardcore people we are targeting. They are the ones up at 4:30am to workout and not getting home until 9pm. Max Recovery allows these people to keep balanced. We have found that you need to work at Recovery as well to get the most out of these hard efforts or some of their effort ends up getting wasted because they have not properly recovered. They are not a sharp as they could be.
Tippmann told Nibletz exclusively.
Max Recovery is an app that allows these people to keep track of how balanced they are by logging their work and recovery in the terms of debits and credits. The idea is that everything cost. The more work you want to do, the more you have to pay for it. The goal is to keep a “balanced book.” For example a hard work out may cost -8, lack of sleep -4 and long run -6, you would then need to work at recovery to get credits from things like a massage +6, hot tub +2, 8 hours sleep +4, and acupuncture +8.
Max Recovery is in it for the long haul working on a legitimate, scalable, startup.
We are doing this at Indy Startup Weekend part of the global startup battle. We have one of the best teams I’ve ever seen assembled at one of these events. We have a specialist at every function and over 30 years experience combined in software. We have 2 devs, a graphic designer, UX designer, and a couple business/marketing guys. Tippmann said
Max Recovery isn’t like other health and wellness apps that allows you to track your workouts and count calories. It allows you to track how balanced you are. They haven’t found any competitors doing the same thing but they have found the area of recovery and habit building a hot topic. Tim Ferris mentions recovery as a key part of his four hour body workout
This weekend Max Recovery has already built their site and an app. Tippmann tells us they aren’t about mock ups, wire frames and demos, Max Recovery has done what teams ultimately should try to achieve during any Startup Weekend.
Comments Off on With The Animated Gif Back, DC Startup MyFaceWhen Is Ready0LikeLike 2,414
Way back in the 90’s (saying that is so wrong), animated gifs were typically banners that someone who was building a website would use to attract attention to something or another. The more popular animated gifs were dancing bears, christmas lights, and even cars driving along in the middle of the web page.
Nowadays banner ads are fading fast and the animated gif is actually coming back.
Thanks to mobile usage and social networks animated gifs are almost, if not more popular than meme’s. If you want to get your point across in a cute, happy, or even angry way, you can say it with an animated gif. Technology has vastly improved over the past two decades as well, which means better animated gifs.
Of course there are places that are stockpiling cute, one off animated gifs that you can use to send to your friends and family but just like meme’s witty people want to create their own. That’s where Rodney Curl and his startup MyFaceWhen come into the picture.
The Howard University graduate has gotten the creation of animated gifs down to a science. In fact from start to finish you can get an original animated gif ready to send out in under 10 seconds. Curl also tells us if you want to use a stock gif MyFaceWhen will take you out to Reddit where gifs are a plenty.
We’ve seen a vast variety of startups come out of Washington DC. Cur’s MyFaceWhen is a fun mobile app and a nice break from the traditional tech startup.
We got a chance to talk to Curl. Check out our interview below.
Comments Off on Colorado Startup SeedLauncher Joins The Online/Offline Crowdfunding Space0LikeLike 3,520
Crowdfunding could have very well been the most popular startup space in 2012. Crowdfunding startups came out of the woodwork for every industry and everybody. Even the porn industry got it’s own crowdfunding startup which we actually covered here.
One of the niche’s within crowdfuding that’s heating up right now is hybrid crowdfuding sites. These are the crowdfunding sites like SockStock and SeedVille, that fit in this hybrid space.
So what’s a hybrid crowdfuding site?
Crowdfunding sites that most people are familiar with function like Kickstarter and Indiegogo. These are sites where people can post whatever project they are working on and the crowd funds those projects. The project creators can be anywhere in the world because everything is done online.
In exchange for funding or a donation if you will, the entrepreneur getting their project or startup crowdfunded, gives the donator, or funder, some kind of perk. The more money that gets donated, the better the perk.
To us, a hybrid crowdfunding site is one that utilizes the internet for the funding but the business is local. Say you have a favorite ice cream shoppe around the corner from your home. The owner of the shoppe wants to expand but doesn’t have the money. He can go to a hybrid crowdfunding site and raise the money, and instead of sending perks in the mail, contributors can come to the local business and get their perk.
That’s exactly what Colorado startup SeedLauncher does. We got a chance to talk with SeedLauncher’s co-founder Jeromy Sonne about crowdfunding and the Colorado startup scene.
Comments Off on Israeli Entrepreneurs Not Thwarted By Missles… At First0LikeLike 4,199
Some may call it absolutely crazy, others may consider it a true testament to die hard entrepreneurial lifestyle, however an amazing story about Startup Weekend comes to us from the Jerusalem Post.
As the situation between the Israeli’s and the Palestinians intensified and missile fire erupted over Tel Aviv, Startup Weekend Beersheva was just getting started.
Startup Weekend is the 54 hour hackathon style startup building event. The Startup Weekend organization is based in Seattle, and helps facilitate hundreds of these weekends across the globe.
As the missile warnings began to come in, entrepreneurs were making their first pitches to see what startups would be worked on over the 54 hour event.
Some of the entrepreneurs used the events going on around them to fuel their ideas. One app idea was an app that would tell a user where a missile was coming from and where to go for shelter. Another app idea was for a one click notification system that could notify the users loved ones that they were safe.
How safe were these entrepreneurs?
The Jerusalem Post reports that it wasn’t until the third missile alarm went off and a rocket hit a building 12 yards away, that the event organizers called off the event.
After the first missile alarm we didn’t change our minds and it was amazing to see everyone starting to carry tables and chairs into the safe zones (Shelters) inside the building just so they can keep on working on their projects. Sometimes, the entrepreneurial spirit can overcome fear. It was so inspiring to see how everyone are focused on what seems to be the most important thing at the moment – how to take their idea and make it into a successful venture.
But sometimes reality just hits you in the face. At about 8:30PM, after the third missile alarm and one rocket hitting a few dozen yards away from the building where we were hosted, we had to submit the safety order by the Israeli Army and the city’s representatives who told us to shut down and cancel the rest of the event.
Talk about dedication.
They were finally evacuated at 9pm. The Startup Weekend Beersheva team hopes to pick up where they left off when the situation calms.
Comments Off on Startup First! Memphis Startups Pitch Federal Court Judge As Part Of Amazing Risk GEW Event0LikeLike 2,598
Memphis startup founder Rich Billings pitches ScrewPulp to Federal Court Judge John Fowlkes
For the third year running the state of Tennessee has held the most officially sanctioned Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) events with 91. One of those events as part of Memphis’ GEW activities is the Amazing Risk scavenger hunt.
A call was put out a month ago for startups to apply to compete in the Amazing Risk challenge. The field was narrowed down to three startups; Screw Pulp, Guild Local and the Memphis Urban Farm School. These three startups are competing for $10,000 in cash and prizes (services).
The three startups began the day at Risk City Field Day in midtown Memphis. At 10:00am all three teams were given clues to what they had to do to earn up to 1100 points. At the end of the day the team with the most points will win the prize pot.
The participants had to go to local eatery South Of Beale and pitch one of the waitresses. They also had to pitch Marvin Stockwell the Marketing Director at one of Memphis’ big social entrepreneur examples, the Church Health Center.
Finally the last clue had the teams headed to the Memphis Civic Center downtown which is the collection of state, local and federal buildings. From there they needed to interrupt President Barack Obama appointed Federal Court Judge, John Fowlkes, and again give their pitch.
Judge Fowlkes is no stranger to the Memphis entrepreneur community. His oldest son Andre Fowlkes is the Co-President of Launch Your City, the startup and entrepreneurial epicenter for Memphis Tennessee. While Judge Fowlkes was in on the contest, no one else in the courthouse was, which made the experience a bit challenging at first.
Once each of the three startups arrived in the court room, jitters and nervousness went on extra high. It’s one thing to pitch a room from of entrepreneurs and startup leaders. It’s another to pitch a sitting Federal Court Judge, in open court.
The first startup to arrive in Judge Fowlkes’ courtroom was, publishing alternative startup, Screw Pulp. Screw Pulp is a web platform that allows independent publishers to publish their books. Their book is originally given out free to a certain amount of readers who agree to review the book. After the first hundred copies are given away and reviews are accumulated ScrewPulp then begins to sell the book online in a more traditional manner.
Check out the ScrewPulp Pitch here:
Wes the founder of Memphis Urban Farm School was next to pitch in the courtoom. Judge Fowlkes and his clerks had plenty of questions for Wes.
Just before the judge’s lunch break the team from Guild Local arrived. They did a decent job of describing their startup but Judge Fowlkes still had questions.
We’re pretty sure this is a first for any startup to have to go and pitch a judge, much less a Federal court judge. Later in the day we’ll find out which team won the most points in the Risk City, Amazing Risk Challenge.
Kyle
Jingit, a startup based in Edina Minnesota, has raised $7 million dollars in investment capital according to a regulatory filing. The startup was founded last year by Joe Rogness, the former CEO of tech consultancy Two Fish and Todd Rooke a former executive with Hewlitt Packard.
