Startups Archives - Page 7 of 144

Shutterstock Joins The Online Education Game With Skillfeed

Online education has seen some big growth this year, but we’re really just seeing the beginning of an industry. Startups like Khan Academy, Udacity, and Coursera are all trying out new models.

Earlier this year stock photo company Shutterstock jumped into the mix with Skillfeed.

Skillfeed offers a monthly subscription that gives users access to thousands of instructional videos across various subjects. Photography, Adobe InDesign, and WordPress seem to be the most popular subjects so far, but you can also take classes in business, startups, and almost any software you can think of. Skillfeed is especially for creatives and others who want to keep growing in creative careers.

What I love about Skillfeed is that there are short and long courses. You can access 20 minute or less “SkillSnacks,” or you can jump into a longer course anywhere you want to. One of the drawbacks to online education has been retention rates. Skillfeed cuts that off by not even caring if you complete a course. It’s more about what you learning what you need to learn than completing an entire course.

Check out our Q&A and sign up for the free trial on the Skillfeed website.

What does your company do?

Skillfeed is a new marketplace for online learning, with tutorials designed to help amateurs and digital professionals alike to be more successful in their career and beyond. With thousands of short and long-form instructional videos, we’re helping users of all levels build and expand their skill sets in design, photography, web development, video and more. Currently, Skillfeed offers around 20,000 videos, equating to 2000 hours of online courses delivered by 1,000 top-quality instructors from around the world.

Who are the founders, and what are their backgrounds?

Skillfeed is a startup subsidiary of Shutterstock, Inc., a leading global marketplace for digital imagery. Shutterstock CEO & Founder Jon Oringer is a serial entrepreneur who started Shutterstock 10 years ago in New York City. David Fraga, General Manager of Skillfeed, joined Shutterstock four years ago to lead corporate and business development; prior to that he worked in tech venture capital at Insight Venture Partners. Shutterstock is now a NYSE listed company which does business in 150 countries.

Where are you based?

Skillfeed is headquartered in New York City.

What’s the startup scene like where you are based?

New York’s Silicon Alley is thriving and we’re based here for good reason. We’re excited to be a part of the NY tech community’s continued growth and success. The city continues to attract top tech talent, entrepreneurs, startups, investors, and professionals from all corners of the globe, which creates a vibrant environment for starting a business.

What problem do you solve?

Skillfeed democratizes access to high-quality digital education around the world. For an affordable monthly membership, users get unlimited access to hundreds of high-quality courses from real industry professionals, who teach the skills necessary to advance in today’s digital world.

Why now?

The digital landscape is changing rapidly; designers, marketers, business owners and professionals of all kinds are required to have more digital skills than ever before. Whether refreshing your skills for a current job or project, adding new skills to become better suited for a future career, or running a business where you have to be able to do it all, there is huge demand for online courses.

Who is the competition?

This might sound odd, but we believe our primary competition to be books (static, one topic, quickly dated) and in-person classes (expensive, someone else’s schedule, unknown quality before you arrive). While digital is starting to become a more popular option, the vast majority of learning still happens offline. We believe we can help to shape an entirely new industry of affordable and accessible online learning.

What are some of the milestones your startup has already reached?

Launching with over 10,000 videos was a big milestone for us. We’ve since doubled the size of the collection and we’re now seeing the majority of our users log-in from outside of the US. Every day we’re adding new high-quality content, and servicing more clients from around the world.

What are your next milestones?

We’re constantly looking to simplify the process of online learning. We’re hard at work adding customers and instructors to our platform, and innovating on the way that educational content is made and consumed. We’ve got some big things in store!

6 Game-Changing Health Startups

In recent years, the healthcare industry has changed dramatically in terms of how general health knowledge is shared and how it has impacted our overall health. From tracking our progress in our workouts to keeping tabs on our heart rate and blood sugar levels, there isn’t much that we can’t monitor ourselves in between our regular checkups to our doctor’s office.

The healthcare industry has thus begun to provide everyday people with more readily available and convenient ways to track our health and become more aware of how the lives we live impact our bodies. Today, people have become far more aware and tuned into their health than previous generations, meaning that with so much health-related information available, there are plenty of us who are interested in utilizing it.

What many don’t realize is that It’s not just WebMD and Mayo Clinic who are leading the charge.

There are a lot of smaller startup medical healthcare companies that are specializing in providing health-related information to individuals, and are helping to improve the healthcare industry by making it less exclusive, less expensive and more accessible to people, mostly through the use of technology.

1. BluePrint Health

BluePrint Health is a unique group of healthcare professionals, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists who specialize in consultation for other healthcare companies. Their goal is to assist those companies with the business side of the work and to help connect the two disciplines. They’ve assisted a number of companies, including Symcat, iCouch and Allazo Health.

2. iCouch

It’s an app that allows you to search for a therapist based on your area of need, whether it be anger, anxiety or depression and then schedule an appointment with that therapist. Once an appointment is scheduled, you’re able to pay for the session through the app (which is very easy) and then you use the app to actually meet with the therapist over the internet in a Skype-style video chat session.

3. Eliza Corporation

The Eliza Corporation specializes in health engagement management solutions, which essentially means they help healthcare companies establish mediums for communicating with people about their health and allowing those people to respond. They’re a consulting firm that’s similar to BluePrint Health.

4.Simplee

Simplee is an app that is designed to help people pay for their health care in an easier, more straightforward environment that focuses on helping people know exactly what they owe and why they owe it.

5. Patient Knows Best

This company specializes in making medical records available to patients and making it simpler for them to connect with clinicians for a mutual benefit. Additionally, they provide tools and information that help doctors to improve care quality and to help patients manage their own health and save time on medical-related tasks.

6. FitOrbit

This unique fitness startup offers online personal trainers to help clients lose weight without having to pay the high prices of in-person trainers. The cost is less than $50 a month, and you do in fact get your own real life personal trainer. The trainer works with you just like any other, helping to establish meal plans, workout routines, while providing motivation and whatever else is necessary to help you succeed.

It’s a completely new way to utilize a personal trainer, with a price that’s tough to beat.

A New Wave of Healthcare

As traditional healthcare continues to get more expensive, startups (like these) that don’t rely on third party insurance companies are going to become more and more commonplace. The most attractive thing about them is that it allows you to be in direct control with an affordable form of healthcare, without needing to rely on an insurance company or government agency.

Keep an eye on companies like these as demand for them could certainly skyrocket in the near future.

Camille McClane is honored to have had the opportunity to share her knowledge of these health startups. In collaboration with HostPapa, her writing also covers nearly everything in the tech industry, including online marketing, social media and SEO.

Play It Raises $700k To Bring Mobile Games To Emerging Markets

Did you know there are 5 billion (yup, with a “b”) feature phones in the world? Oh, you remember feature phones. They were the things we had before our phones got “smart” just a few years ago.

In fact those good ol’ flip phones outnumber smartphones by 5:1, and most of those feature phones are in emerging markets. When we remember our old phones, we probably don’t think of gaming, but users around the world actually do play games on those phones.

Well, think 1990s desktop solitaire, not so much Candy Crush. At the moment most of those phones aren’t capable of mobile social gaming.

So, 5 billion feature phones. No mobile social or wagered gaming. Sound like an open market to you?

It certainly does to Calgary-based Play It Gaming.

The startup–a product of the Big Instincts Group–has raised $700 thousand to bring smartphone-like gaming to feature phones.

phone-mockup-game-01

Along with the raise, which was oversubscribed, Play It Gaming also announced a partnership with biNu, an Australian company that already has a platform to bringInternet services and apps to feature phones.

“We’re excited to be working with the Play It team,” biNu CEO Gour Lentell said in a statement. “The opportunity to bring social gaming experiences to mobile consumers in emerging markets is massive, and the combination of biNu’s mobile technology platform with Play It’s content, focus, and industry expertise is a sure winner.”

In 2014 Play It will launch the Game Center, a first of its kind social hub for gaming on feature phones. The Game Center will boast a leaderboard, a virtual currency, and a place for some good ol’ fashioned peer-to-peer smack talking. From the Game Center, users will be able to access cloud-based games.

Still, don’t envision Candy Crush. There are limitations to what can be developed, and the 200 different kinds of feature phones don’t help.

Instead, Play It Gaming has a few simple games in the works. Chess and checkers, trivia, and poker (wagered or social, depending on the country) all translate well to feature phones. The startup will also introduce local games to the mix. For example, mancala is huge in Africa, and before long people will be able to play it on their phones.

There are no plans to sell the games; they’ll be free like most smartphone games. However, the Game Center platform allows for in-app purchases.

Let’s be honest. Western companies often forget the emerging markets in favor of wealthier American and European ones. But, based on population size alone, companies seeking to serve emerging markets like Play It and biNu may be the big winners in the long run.

Bella Minds Brings Urban Tech To Rural America

Okay, let’s get real, y’all.

Tech and startups and software that eats the world is great. Awesome companies change the world (or at least make their founders and investors a lot of money) and create jobs. They also make life easier, better, and faster for people everywhere.

Except, when they don’t. Because, let’s be honest, most of the “problems” we’re solving in the tech world are first world, urban problems.

And, I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. We write about apps and car services and online shopping here at Nibletz because we love it as much as you do, and we believe that startups can innovate in a lot of great industries. But there’s a segment of the American population that is getting completely left behind in the startup race, and all it would take to fix it is a little education.

Jenn Shaw knows all about rural life in America. She’s lived for several years in New York City, doing the city life/big job thing, but she grew up in Alliance, Nebraska. As Jenn grew in her own career, and helped others grow in theirs, she realized that the women she had known growing up were leading vastly different lives from the one she knew.

Statistically, education in rural America can’t match that found in suburban and urban areas. Without real college or job prospects, most girls get married young and have families. The need to provide for their children means less money for their own education and fewer opportunities to advance in the world outside of their hometowns.

While plenty of people choose rural life, just as many are actually stuck there because they often don’t know what else is out there.

Armed with that knowledge, plus her background in building networks with NYTechWomen, Jenn created Bella Minds. Bella Minds is a network of hands-on education centers outside of traditional urban areas. The idea is to go into a city and hold a boot camp that will introduce a group of women to the tech world and the skills they’ll need to survive in it.

After the initial boot camp, the women will stay connected with online instruction, mentors, and community. At the end of the program, the women will not only have an understanding of the tech world, they will also have the mentors and some of the skills they’ll need to navigate it.

Bella Minds specifically helps rural women, but Jenn sees her programs as a huge win for the tech industry as a whole.

“We need more women in tech,” she told me over the phone, “but we also need more people in tech.”

Bella Minds is wrapping up a crowdfunding campaign to help them support the inaugural class, which will kick off next year with a boot camp in–where else?–Alliance, Nebraska.

What Rapt Media’s Erika Trautman Learned From Pitching 200 VCs

We expect a lot out of our content these days. We’re inundated with ads, articles, pictures, Tweets, status updates, email, and YouTube. And that’s just online.

It takes something special to really catch our attention, much less make us want to share the content with others.

Emmy-award winning producer Erika Trautman understood that when she decided to produce a video-based, gamified web series. As she and her husband–a game developer at NAMCO–played with the technology, they had an epiphany.

This could really help other people online, too.

So, the couple sold their Bay Area house, used the profits to move to Boulder, CO, and started Rapt Media. They hired their first engineer with personal money and no guarantee anything was going to work.

When Rapt Media was accepted to the 2011 class of Techstars Boulder, things began to look up. World class accelerators, great mentors. Surely the business would only be successful, right?

Well, except the Demo Day for that year’s batch happened to fall on the same day as the debt ceiling crisis.

“Investors were just getting up and leaving,” Trautman told me over the phone.

Despite the stressful Demo Day, Rapt Media ultimately raised all the money they needed, though it came in dribbles instead of one, fully subscribed seed round.

Trautman recently talked about her experiences raising capital as a woman in a post on Entrepreneur.com.

“I think there’s an inherent challenge for women telling the “Billion Dollars or Bust” story, or at least there was for me…Don’t get me wrong. I want nothing less than to reinvent online video to make it richly interactive. And I want Rapt Media to lead that billion-dollar expedition.

But the process of building a company is iterative and I focus on the next set of milestones and the next risks to be mitigated. If the guys are great at describing the view from the top of the mountain, then I’m the one focused on putting one foot in front of the other to get to the next ridge.”

Despite the challenges of raising capital as a woman, Trautman made it happen. She believed in her company and its ability to change how video is done.

I asked her if she ever felt nervous or uncomfortable, pitching a room full of male VCs who were used to hearing male CEOs tell those great stories. She laughed and referenced her background in journalism.

“No investor was a drug lord who could order a hit on me, so I would probably be okay.”

Rapt Media is a company that, by common wisdom, “shouldn’t” work. They moved from the Valley when so often companies move the other direction. They have a woman CEO in a male-dominated industry.

But with clients like NBC Universal, HBO/Cinemax, Maybelline, and One King’s Lane, they are working. And their innovative videos are proving valuable to clients, a feat other forms of video have never done.

While Trautman recognized that being a female CEO created some challenges, she has never really felt that it hindered her.

“It’s about taking your individual style and strengths and applying that to strategy,” she said.

And that’s true no matter your gender or location.

Is Applits A Quirky For Smartphone Apps?

One of the cool things about startups is the collaboration that happens when you put smart people together. In the hardware space, New York-based Quirky is growing. The startup allows wannabe inventors to submit their ideas online. The community votes on which should be developed, and Quirky’s experts build it.

Last month they announced a $30 million investment from GE that also includes opening up GE’s patents to Quirky inventors.

Now, a startup out of Ohio State University is doing the same thing for apps.

Keith Shields and Joshua Tucker are both engineering students at OSU, but they also run Applits. The company has a similar submission/vote/develop model as Quirky, but they also monetize by offering development services to anyone.

Each month, hopeful app creators submit their ideas, which go through a vetting process. Chosen ideas are put up on the site, and voted on during Voting Week. The winning idea goes through business model development, UI and design stages, and final a final development before it’s submitted to the App Store.

The company already has a few apps in the App Store and are seeing traction on their site.

Our Q&A with the Applits team is below. Check them out if you have an idea you love enough to develop, non hipster-style.

What is your startup called?

Applits: An App Idea Competition

What does your company do?

People submit their app ideas to our website, the community votes on those ideas, and we bring them to life.

Who are the founders, and what are their backgrounds?

Keith Shields (CEO) and Joshua Tucker (CFO) are co-founders of Applits and are current engineering students at the Ohio State University. They are both from Marcellus, New York.

What problem do you solve?

We help people who have innovative ideas without the tools to create them see their ideas come to life.

Why now?

With technology constantly growing, we felt that it was crucial to have the public have a voice in deciding what products get created. This is why we created Applits.

What are some of the milestones your startup has already reached?

We have created 7 great apps that are being used by many people and are available for download on iTunes.

What are your next milestones?

To get more awareness forApplits.com and our new #AppForCharity campaign where we will donate December’s winning app’s profits to a charity for one year.

Where can people find out more? Any social media links you want to share?

@ApplitsOfficial @_keithshields @JoshuaRTucker

Dublin’s Ger Kelly Is Building Startups Hipster-Style

Where most publicity hounds would be alluding to and making subtle jokes about hipster-dom, I thought I’d approach this story with a sense of seriousness.

Then Ger Kelly answered my Skype call with a full-head fur hat complete with earflaps. Headgear aside, Ger is a self-proclaimed non-hipster, which we all know is one of the first signs someone could actually be a hipster.

Ger’s also the creator of Hipster CEO, an iOS app that lets you become the CEO of a simulated startup. Think of it as something like The Sims but completely centered on the idea of bringing a new company to life (and without things like physical bodies, cheat codes and the ability to make your characters have babies while you chuckle.)

Growing up in Dublin, Ger’s been a footballer (soccer player) since he was a kid. Unlike his counterparts playing games like The Sims, though, he was playing Championship Manager, a game “with just numbers and words,” Ger says, where you, the user, are in control of managing a soccer team.

Fast forward through life a bit and he’s found his way to startups. It’s not long before people realize he can develop apps, a sought-after skill if ever there was one.

If you’ve been in the tech space for long, you know it’s quite a regular occurrence for people — regardless of whether or not you know them — to come up to you and say things like, “I’ve got this great idea for a new app!”

As he experienced this phenomenon, Ger had a bit of an ‘aha moment.’ What if there was a way that anybody — tech-savvy, entrepreneurially-minded, or ‘none of the above’ — could answer that question for themselves.

Hipster CEO was, like, birthed, bro.

From there, Ger set out on a mission to show people “how hard it really is to pay attention to and build your stuff.” He’s been developing since the beginning of 2013, and he’s got no plans of slowing down anytime soon.

His second ‘aha moment’ has come more recently. Though the app’s numbers have been on a steady rollercoaster, they have become an addition to his progress, success, and happiness so far.

I don’t mind working my ass off; I’m actually putting food on my table.

Eventually, Ger wants to create something along the lines of a “virtual startup world where people are getting startup skills without having to risk life savings.”

As for me, I’ve been playing Hipster CEO for about two weeks now. I’m already on my third startup, and I can’t help but wonder if I might have an ‘aha moment’ of my own while playing.

Will I come up with my next big idea while assigning an employee to a marketing campaign?

Will I have a better idea of what to do the next time I’m deciding how many kegs to purchase for the office?

Will I start calling my colleagues “bro” more often than I already do?

Visit hipsterceo.com to download the game and find out for yourself.

Tyler Sondag is a startup connoisseur with a hand in anything and everything you could imagine. Hailing from the ever-developing Northwest Mississippi, an alum of Saint Louis University and currently a transplant to St. Louis, Missouri, one of his main missions in life is to get and keep young people engaged in the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Follow him on Twitter: @MrSondag.

Alaska Startup Introduces Live Beauty Consultations

Okay. I have to admit when I got the pitch for makeoverly.com, I was pretty skeptical of the idea. Online makeup consultations? The best thing about Sephora is the personal touch of chatting with a new friend about pretty makeup AND trying it on right then.

Then I dug in. Makeoverly.com is run by Hannah Wright, a former staff member at Beauty.com. According to the website, their distributed makeup artists have already counseled 4,000 people, impressive traction since the August launch.

Here’s how it works:

Customers get on the website–which is gorgeous–and chat with a beauty consultant free for 15 minutes. You don’t even have to register. After that session, you can choose to add time for a small fee, or schedule a Skype session to talk face-to-face with a consultant. The company makes money from affiliate links when consumers buy recommended products.

I hopped on the site and asked the consultant a question I’ve known the answer to since I was 16: what’s the best color for green eyes? (Blues and purples, by the way.)

But, she surprised me with a long explanation of different shades of brown I could use, including a link to one of the products she liked.

Now, without the ability to try the products right away, I can’t confirm if her advice was good or not. Still, the novelty of a different answer is intriguing. She also recommended an eyeliner and offered a discount on a Skype session to end our chat.

Makeoverly.com is very new to the beauty startup scene, and they have a long road ahead of them. Chatting with a makeup artist is nice, but trying products (via Birchbox, for example) is pretty good, too. And, of course, any department store makeup counter can offer a similar service, with the added benefit of products right there.

“When you walk into a department store, the makeup artists are contracted out by specific beauty brands,” Hannah says, “whereas on makeoverly.com, our makeup artists can freely recommend any products and brands that they love. They aren’t limited to specific brands and are able to provide helpful links to products by any cosmetic lines.

In addition, there have been many articles lately regarding the germ concerns behind physical makeup counters. We give people the opportunity to instead receive their makeovers from the comfort of their own homes.”

The company has definitely done a lot in a short time, and it will be interesting to see how/if they scale. The Alaska location is a far cry–literally–from New York and Los Angeles, where these companies typically launch from.

I’d also like to see makeoverly.com branch out in the monetization strategy. Product links are a great start, but this market also presents a great opportunity for content. The expertise of so many beauty consultants would be great to leverage in building a loyal following. (Hannah did hint at such a strategy when she mentioned a quick start beauty guide that could be downloaded for a small fee.)

I’ll say it one more time: makeoverly.com is very, very young. They face all the same obstacles as early stage startups in every industry in every city do.

Still, in a couple of short hours, they convinced me they’re a company worth watching.

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Featuring.me: Because Musicians Need To Make Money, Too

A couple of weeks ago, we talked about a startup that is innovating the booking industry. Today we’re featuring another music industry startup called featuring.me.

There’s no doubt that musicians–and artists across all disciplines–can often struggle to make money on their art. As great as the Internet is, it has also paved the way for expectations of free music, videos, and articles. However, if we continue to not pay artists for their art, we’ll soon find that we have no art to consume.

That’s why startups like featuring.me are great news. Maybe they’ll work. Maybe they won’t. But, eventually we’ll find a model that allows to creators to make art without always sacrificing those little comforts, like food and shelter.

Check out our Q&A with featuring.me below:

What is your startup called?

Featuring.Me

What does your company do?

Featuring.Me is a new online platform for interactive, customizable and adaptive music. At its most basic, fans can customize elements of their favorite artists music. Lyrics, melodies, stories, solos etc.; whatever means the most to them. Fully realized, Featuring.Me represents an entirely new art form – a paradigm shift that will change the way we create, experience, enjoy and think of music.

Who are the founders, and what are their backgrounds?

Featuring.Me is co-founded by Gregory Green and Felix Sedal. Greg has extensive experience in business, marketing and IT, and is a guru of “getting things done”. Felix is an independent musician and producer who moonlights as a medical doctor.

What’s the story of the idea? Where did it come from?

Featuring.Me was created after Felix and Greg serendipitously found themselves living together in Melbourne, Australia. Felix was in the midst of an artistic odyssey, exploring the notion of creating music that exists in a multitude of forms. Greg was completing his MBA at the University of Melbourne, studying the emerging wave of mass customization, and looking out for the right idea to nourish his entrepreneurial ambitions. One night, over a few drinks, Felix and Greg exchanged their respective visions of the future of art and business. From this, Featuring.Me was born.

Where are you based, and what’s the startup scene like there?

We were founded in Melbourne, Australia, and are now considering where the US home should be, either Nashville or Austin. Both would be fine choices, the hardest part is choosing! Both have great things going for them. With Nashville, there’s a great convergence of entrepreneurs, investors and visionaries, all happening within a relaxed and down-to-earth culture. Austin is the weird little city that is easy to love, has the creativity and technology that we are looking to foster. So is it to be Music City, USA or the Live Music Capital of the US? Watch this space for more!

What problem do you solve?

Featuring.Me is a vision of a sustainable music ecosystem and economy. It seeks to further the artistic relevance of music (to fans and artists alike) whilst creating viable new financial opportunities for all players in the industry. The problems we solve are myriad; how to offer extra value to consumers whilst ensuring that artists are paid fairly for their work, how to engage the growing number of fans looking for deeper involvement and interaction with the music and art they love, how to evolve the musical art form and business model in a way which is positive for all parts of the industry, how to allow artists to retain control of their vision within the emerging paradigm of mass collaboration, and how to create a true model of mass customization in music.

Why now?

The technology is ready, artists are ready, and fans are ready. The music industry could do with a revitalization of the value of music. An alternative to the commoditization of music as a meaningful art form. Now is the perfect time for our platform where an artists fans are able to more deeply engage with the artists they love and the artists can better sustain themselves by spending more time on what they are good at, creating music.

What are some of the milestones your startup has already reached?

The platform is up and working, with a number of patents around the technology. We are taking in revenue and onboarding artists. We are currently private beta testing the fourth iteration of Featuring.Me with select artists and their fans. There is a growing core team of eight people working on the project, partnerships with several production houses and independent record labels, numerous artist signed on as supporters and content creators, and an increasing network of supporters within the music and business communities, in both Nashville and Austin.

What are your next milestones?

Always getting the next artist, the next studio or the next label on board! We are considering funding options, self funding has its benefits, as does finding good capital partners. Our aim is for a broader invite only beta launch of the platform mid next year, with a preview showing at South By South West in March.

Where can people find out more? Any social media links you want to share?

http://about.featuring.me or @featuringmeteam

Your New Mobile Wallet Should Be PAAY

Do you remember the last time you bought something from a new website? You’re not on Amazon, so the design is gorgeous, the products are awesome and ethical, and you’re super excited to be supporting a new startup.

You add the item(s) to your cart and click check out.

Boom. Great UX over. Because no matter how awesome the site is, they still have to ask you to fill out long forms with your address, credit card number, and a brief life history. The whole time you’re thinking, “Great. On the off-chance the NSA doesn’t already have this information, NOW they will.”

Yeah, Yitz Mendlowitz hates that, too.

When the problem grasped his attention, he was working on another startup, though that idea was winding down. When he would talk to people, his idea for a simplified system that uses your phone number to pay was the one they loved.

“Okay,” he finally thought. “I have something here.”

With the other startup ending, Yitz focused on the payments company. Then he met James Ruffer through an acquaintance. James had plenty of experience in startups and hacking, so Yitz pitched him the idea.

“It sucks,” James said, and proceeded to outline all the other areas the product could serve. With some extra effort, the company could also solve pain points for merchants and even for the credit card processing industry. What could be great for the consumer could also be great for the vendors, and that would be a real idea to pursue.

Naturally the two became cofounders.

The company has been working in stealth for almost a year, funded by two seed rounds that add up to $800k. With a shopping cart plugin, an iPhone app, and an Android app already in beta, they plan to launch in the next few months.

On the consumer side, PAAY is simple enough. You shop online, and when you’re ready to check out, you click the PAAY button. Rather than entering all of your information right then, you enter your phone number and a message is sent to your PAAY app. You approve the purchase in app and move on with your day.

“The only thing faster is Amazon one-click payments,” James told me.

As Internet consumers become more aware of fraud—but no less willing to shop online—the cool thing about PAAY is that your credit card number isn’t stored on the phone OR at the merchant’s website. It stays with the credit card processor, the same people that have it when you swipe at a store anyway.

And how exactly does PAAY help merchants?

For one thing, the plugin is free to them, too. (Credit card processors pick up the tab.) More importantly, because of the way credit cards work, it’s all too easy for customers to order something, but then tell the credit card company they didn’t make the purchase. Because there’s no signed receipt, Visa or Mastercard errs on the side of the customer and removes payment. Then the customer keeps the product but avoids paying for it.

With PAAY’s electronic signature, however, these chargebacks can’t be executed. The consent you give in the app, after giving your phone number, works as a signature. Merchants no longer have to worry about chargebacks, and they will be able to negotiate lower fees with the processing agencies.

Right now PAAY is focusing on the online space, but they hope to conquer the offline shopping experience, too.

Imagine all those times you got to checkout and realized you had left your card at home. When PAAY is in brick-and-mortar stores, all you’ll need is your phone. (And we know you never forget that!)

PAAY isn’t the only mobile wallet out there. Lots of people are trying to change the payments space. Dwolla, Google Wallet, and PayPal are all semi-competitors and have the benefit of pretty big head starts. While there is no product that does exactly what PAAY does, they still have to compete with the public’s general understanding about mobile wallets, payments, and credit cards.

Still, with Yitz’s sales backgrounds and James’s technical expertise—and both of their scrappy New York attitudes—I’m willing to bet we’ll all be clicking PAAY sooner rather than later.

ReplyAll Debuts The World’s First “Blogcasting” Service

ReplyAll is a content creation/distribution startup based out of New York City. Founded by former college classmates Zach Abramowitz (CEO) and Ari Gold (CPO) {now joined by Emanuel Ilyayev as CTO}, ReplyAll came into being as the result of ongoing, daily conversations among a group of friends. The founders were regularly engaging in daily messaging sessions on topics like sports, pop-culture, and current events. These intriguing and often humorous conversations among friends begged an audience. It was this realization and search for a distribution platform that led to the creation of ReplyAll.

Ari tried his hand at podcasting. Zach sought an audience as a stand-up comic. They examined the possibility of blogging. Between the solitude of blogging, the scheduling conflicts of podcasting, and the uncertainty of the comedy circuit, it was obvious to the two that none of these platforms was the solution they sought. Enter ReplyAll.

ReplyAll offers a platform for invited participants to engage in an ongoing online conversation. Unlike comment platforms, ReplyAll participants are community members that are invited to contribute to conversations via an email.

No need to worry about drive-by comments littering a feed or derailing a topic. No need to worry about trolls and spammers. ReplyAll allows an ongoing conversation to take place between interested participants, and that conversation can happen in real time. Invited participants are able to add their contribution to the discussion when their schedule allows.

No need for a pre-scheduled meetup time. No need for all participants to be in the same time zone or location. The conversation can happen naturally and proceed according to the will of the invited participants. Community members and onlookers are able to offer their contributions too, but those contributions are only added at the will of the existing, invited conversation participants. If your contribution doesn’t add to or further the conversation, chances are it won’t be included.

Now you might be saying to yourself, “Whoopee a closed conversation for invited-only participants…Big deal, what’s in it for me?”

ReplyAll is launching an embeddable widget that allows these ongoing conversations to be embedded on any website or blog. SEO friendly, these conversations can be indexed by search engines and offer a way for online content creators to add fresh content to their site on an ongoing basis without having to be the sole creator of that content.

Think group blogging meets podcasting.

As the conversations evolve over time, no single party has to be solely responsible for the creation of the content. Want a way to boost your site’s presence on the web and grow your community at the same time? Host and embed a community discussion on a topic near and dear to the hearts of your community. From investment chat on a startup blog to trade talk on a baseball blog, the options are only limited by your imagination.

See a conversation happening on Twitter amongst your peers relevant to your website? Why not invite specific participants to expand on that conversation via a ReplyAll discussion? No need for 140-character contributions; the conversation can grow and expand inside a ReplyAll discussion. Unlike question and answer sites or comment platforms, ReplyAll captures the camaraderie of a conversation. A group blogging platform where the conversations are the content; winning concept, right?

Their business model is pretty straight forward: premium accounts to be offered, native advertising, and white label offerings.

Think ReplyAll’s content creation/distribution platform might make a profitable addition to your portfolio? Connect with the team on AngelList.

Eleanor Wall (aka Tech Tidbits) is a freelance tech blogger and startup cheerleader. When she’s not busy unearthing intriguing startups, Eleanor ghost writes brand marketing content for corporate clients.

TheBankCloud Disrupts The Digital Banking Industry

Every industry is being overturned by technology, and banking is no different. At the Angel Capital Expo tomorrow, there are a couple of startups looking to disrupt the way banks offer apps and financial services to their customers.

One of those companies is TheBankCloud, a cloud-based service that enables banks to innovate quickly. The enterprise company offers an app marketplace and a backend infrastructure to help banks build their own apps.

TheBankCloud isn’t the only company looking to help banks innovate faster, and of course all companies face competition from the status quo. It’s probably a safe bet, though, that in the coming years banks will handle customer service in ever changing ways.

Check out our Q&A with founder and CEO Alfy Louis.

What does your company do?

We’re a portfolio of Sales tools & Banking Apps, aggregated in a Marketplace to serve key areas of sales, advice, servicing, and transactions. Apps are integrated with TheBankCloud platform, which is composed of an adaptive banking integration hub, single sign on, device management (including BYOD), software provisioning, and operational services. The platform enables partners to seamlessly integrate and activate their Apps in the most cost-effective way.

Who are the founders, and what are their backgrounds?

Alfy Louis, was EVP sales and Services for D+H (couple of Billion dollars company serving the banks), was the global VP strategy, Operations of HP Services, and VP global strategic sales and VP business Intelligence for HP.

Tim Evans, was the global banking industry lead for HP and the head of the Innovation Center for HP

Maurizio Greco, was the CTO of Finantix and an entrepreneur with couple of successful start ups

What problem do you solve?

Banks are under extreme pressure to innovate and modernize their applications to generate new revenues, however, innovation is very hard due to the fact that it requires integration with Banking back end systems known as Core Banking Systems.. These systems are owned by handful of companies that make it extremely difficult and expensive for any one to integrate their innovation with these core systems … in their attempt to protect their revenues from eroding. by doing so they stand in the way of innovation..

Our mission is to simplify this integration and build it once and use it with every innovator out there. In addition we will bring new innovation ready to be used in a form of applications and offer it as a services.

Why now?

Pressure is mounting for the banks to cut cost and innovate due to the low interest rate, increasing cost of sales and operations as well as the growing demand for mobile technology.

What are some of the milestones your startup has already reached?

we assembled an awesome team of experience, energy and innovation along with extremely experienced board of advisors
We completed the overall architecture of the entire solution and validated it with one of the top System Integrators.
Completed two banking applications to digitize the sales effort for the bank
Sold 100 licenses to a channel partner
Formed strategic partnerships with 12 partners to sell their applications on our marketplace.
Forming a strategic go to market partner that has access to over 25000 banks ..

What are your next milestones?

raise funds to complete the development of the back end technology
Market, sell and deliver 1000 licenses

Senate Hearings Aside, Is Bitcoin Going Mainstream?

The last couple of days have been good ones for Bitcoin, the digital currency that has grown in popularity in the last year. Which is good because last month saw the seizure of $28.5 million of bitcoins during the Silk Road shutdown. Plenty of people questioned the rise and ethics of bitcoin.

This week is a whole different story. The Senate conducted hearings on the legality and legitimacy of bitcoin, and in response, trading surged.

As Timothy Lee of the Washington Post said, “This Senate hearing is a Bitcoin lovefest.”

What does that mean for the average person?

From BitDazzle merchant Kiwi Avenue

Maybe nothing yet. But, last month saw the launch of BitDazzle, a marketplace for physical consumer goods that is the first of its kind to accept Bitcoin.

The site is the brainchild of Cashie Commerce, a company that helps users turn their sites into online stores, and Coinbase, a leading Bitcoin digital wallet. The companies are partnering to create an Etsy-like platform for small businesses trying sell products online, with the key differentiator being the acceptance of bitcoin.

I asked Cashie Commerce CEO Hieu Biu if it was really just a marketing scheme, and he insisted that it’s more than that. While the acceptance of bitcoin does help with marketing–especially this month–there is real benefit to merchants to accept bitcoin.

By nature, the cryptocurrency has a smaller transaction fee than credit cards: 2% as opposed to 7-9%. On Bitdazzle, Coinbase is waiving all transaction fees for the first $1 million a merchant brings in.

2% of $1 million is $20,000, right back in the pockets of smaller merchants across the country. That kind of money makes a real difference to small businesses.

I still have a hard time imagining using bitcoin for real, physical goods. The numbers and crypto-ness and all around digital nature trips me up, and I know I’m not alone.

“Don’t get too hung up on how it works,” Bui told me. “Just think of it as another form of payment.”

Coinbase is working to make it that easy. Similar to a PayPal account, you hook up Coinbase to your bank account. From there you can purchase bitcoins and spend them in the online marketplace.

Currently, somewhere around 90% of the transactions are done with bitcoin, a high early adoption ratio. For those customers on the fence about bitcoin, many merchants are offering discounts to buyers paying with the currency.

This isn’t the first bitcoin marketplace. Coingig and Bitcoinstore are both up and running, though they trend more towards electronics and gift cards and other goods that attract early adopters. And, of course, there was the less-savory Silk Road. How exactly is BitDazzle going to make the fairly large jump to the soccer mom market?

From Nela Ceramics Store

“Our goal is to be the kind of place my wife would tell her friends about,” Bui said. “We are working hard to keep it safe and secure.”

All merchants are screened and vetted before they are allowed to sell, and Bui assured me the first sign of illegal or unsavory activity will get a merchant booted from the site.

So, will Bitcoin become mainstream?

Despite the recent buzz, I think it’ll still be awhile before we can call it “mainstream,” but maybe not as long as you’d expect. Bui likens the current Bitcoin experience to the early days of PayPal: not always understandable, not always easy to use, but disruptive and gaining steam.

Before long my kids could be asking for Bitcoins instead of raiding the couch cushions for the old-fashioned metal kind.

Agriculture Startups Can Be Lean, Too

Want to see the definition of a lean startup?

Check out Phytelligence, an innovative agriculture startup out of Washington State University. (Yup, it’s farm day at Nibletz. )

Several years ago, as part of his research at the university, Dr. Amit Dhingra began interviewing local nurseries. He asked the same questions any good startup founder would ask:

What problems do you see over and over again?

What would you like to see research done on?

How could we make your life easier?

After getting that initial customer discovery, Dr. Dhingra set to work with his research team. After a few years, they had a solution that they believed could become a product. Plants that were free from disease and guaranteed to be the exact genetic specimen a grower ordered.

Then, 3 years ago, WSU entrepreneur-in-residence Chris Leyerle got involved.

Now, the company is independent of Washington State, and they have big plans. For now, they are targeting their products to commercial nurseries. Through these partners, they are able to get more exposure to growers and aren’t hindered by growing seasons. Nurseries are less seasonal than growers.

These nursery partnerships have been easy to get because, remember, Dr. Dhingra asked them years ago what they needed and set to work supplying it.

In addition to selling their plantlets, Phytelligence has found a market for their genetic testing abilities.

When growers order plants, they can often get completely wrong specimens. In the case of plants like trees, it could be a few years before they realize the mistake.

Phytelligence genetic analysis is able to quickly test every single plant, even in a large order, to guarantee it’s what the grower ordered. Obviously, this saves growers enormous amounts of time and money.

During their research, the Phytelligence scientists also uncovered an organic ripening compound that could change the way fruit is delivered. Think about the last time you bought a pear. Unlike it was from a farm stand during peak season, it was probably hard and unripe. You bring it home, set it on the counter, but it never ripens.

This problem is the result of current commercial storage compounds used when picking and shipping fruit. The Phytelligence team has found an organic formula that grocery stores can apply to fruit, pears especially, and restart the ripening process.

Phytelligence has been able to do all of this work on a small amount of investor money, and they are already post-revenue. Besides modeling a lean startup model, they also prove the benefit of local universities feeding the startup ecosystem.

This week Phytelligence is showing off at the Angel Capital Expo. Find out more about them at their website.

An earlier version of this article misspelled Dr. Dhingra’s name, as well as misquoted the number of years it can take a grower to identify a wrong specimen and said that nurseries buy all year round.