Startups Archives - Page 72 of 144

Pittsburgh Startup Songwhale Born From Beowulf! INTERVIEW

A Pittsburgh startup with a funny name is engaging customers from brands across multiple touch points. SongWhale specializes in taking customer engagement to a new level using the web, text, pay and direct solutions.

The unique company offers multiple products to drive engagement and even a pay product of their own called PayWhale which offers the ability to text a payment. Paying via text is very popular in emerging countries but no one in the US has really embraced the technology. It’s actually one of the easiest ways to pay.

While interactive engagement may not seem sexy some of the things SongWhale is doing are. Not only that but the story about how Songwhale came about is one of the most interesting ones we’ve heard.

Songwhale’s four core business areas, Web, Text, Pay and Direct can be summarized like this:

Web: Songwhale can get a companies brand or message through the web on any screen; smartphone, tablet, or computer all optimized for each size.

Text: Songwhale offers engaging SMS campaigns including games, and interactives.

Pay: Songwhale’s Paywhale product offers a text payment solution that is possibly the easiest form of mobile commerce and one wildly adopted in emerging countries.

Direct: Songwhale offers direct branding and engagement campaigns that encompass web, text and pay solutions.

We got a chance to interview Songwhale. Check out the interview below:

Mother & Daughter DC Startup Dormify, Changing Dorm Rooms Everywhere

What can you do with the limited space of a dorm room, or shared living space while you’re in college? Well unless you’re an interior designer for Ikea you may think your options are limited. That’s not the case thanks to the mother and daughter team of Karen Zuckerman (mom) and Amanda Zuckerman (daughter).

The Zuckerman’s have created a new Washington DC startup called Dormify that looks to serve those college age students with ideas, and tools to help transform their living space for their four years of college life. Everything from crafty ideas, to room furnishings, trinkets and even college flair can be found on the Dormify site.

Dormify gives college students everywhere the freedom to stop combing the aisles of Ikea and Target in hopes to find some idea that all the other students aren’t using.

Towels, pillows, home furnishings even stylish school supplies and sweets can be found on the Dormify website.

As you can imagine Dormify came about when Karen was helping Amanda move into her first dorm room at Washington University in St. Louis. Both Zuckerman women have been known for their creativity throughout their lives and the neon colored towels, matching trash cans, rug mats and computer chairs on sale at Target weren’t going to do the trick.

After shopping for Amanda’s dorm room at a variety of boutique shops in downtown St. Louis, a look Amanda could live with was born. The Zuckerman women realized that there is no centralized place to build looks like this, so they did what any entrepreneurs would do and built it themselves.

We got a chance to talk with Dormify’s employee #1, Nicole Gardner, who tells us more about Dormify, below:

Miami Startup: Kipu Systems, Transforming The Substance Abuse Industry

Tobias Franoszek, the CTO and Co-Founder of KIPU Systems, a cloud-based records management system for the substance abuse industry, is no stranger to startups and technology. In the mid-nineties he achieved great success with CONCEPT!, a Frankfurt stock exchange digital interactive agency, were as Client Services and Technical director he led the technological growth of the company from 4 to 250 employees. At the turn of the decade, Concept identified the growing Latin-American Tech Sector in Miami and he was delegated as the Managing Director for the Region. As history goes, not long after he began his tenure the burst of the dot come bubble occurred. He endured it after obvious adjustments, and then adopted Miami as his hometown transitioning into technological consulting and various other digital service offerings.

In the beginning of 2012 Tobias was contracted by The Right Place Residential Detox center to evaluate electronic medical records systems. After reviewing more than 30 vendors he couldn’t recommend any of the solutions evaluated and instead offered to create one – and so the journey to create KIPU SYSTEMS began.

Not surprisingly, Tobias witnessed huge inefficiencies while studying the procedures in place and it became a big motivating factor for him, as he says: “to begin with, the detox industry is not easy to manage because each patient is different and the procedures change according to the type of addiction, age, sex, consent of guardians, you name it, and it’s not easy for the caregivers to keep up with all the paperwork, so it became an opportunity to improve upon an antiquated system.” Today KIPU is completely functional at The Right Place Residential Detox center where it has proved that its implementation reduces Initial Evaluations, Patient Intake, and Doctor Review times by more than 50%.

And the reasons for this improvement can be seen at the center on a daily basis. Now caregivers use an iPad with the Kipu software to process sign-in information and every other procedure they implement on their daily routine, whereas before the norm was endless paper handling. But one of the most impressive achievements of the KIPU team is the transition from manual “bed boards” into “electronic bed boards” (this boards show the current census, bed assignments, and incoming and leaving patients, at any given moment). This means caregivers no longer have to write and erase information on whiteboards; instead the system creates the electronic version in real time. No wonder KIPU is the subject of adoration at the center.

Knoxville Startup: Credit Virgin To Educate And Protect Young Adults From Credit Whoas

Nate Buchanan a graduate of the University of Tennessee and the founder of a new startup called “Credit Virgin” is looking to help as many young people, and college students make their credit lives easier. The Knoxville news reports that when Buchanan and a friend went to rent an apartment, the friend couldn’t get approved for the apartment because he had no credit history. It didn’t matter that the friend worked fll time and both perspective tenants made more than enough to afford the apartment. Because Buchanan’s friend hadn’t established any credit they were turned away.

Of course Buchanan knows that as young adults between 18-24 credit can be a double edged sword. Although it’s not as prevalent as it was in the late 90’s and early part of the 2000’s, there are still plenty of credit card companies and other finance companies that prey on college students who are already racking up enormous amounts of debt with student loans.

According to the UT Federal Credit Union, the average college student graduates with $8,000 in credit debt,outside student loans.

Through Credit Virgin, Buchanan hopes to first educate college students and young adults on the pro’s and cons of credit and how to establish credit via videos delivered on the startups website. He hopes to also integrate the site with a credit card evaluation tool which will compare terms and conditions as well as interest rates and other need to know information about credit cards typically offered to college students.

Buchanan hopes to also offer a credit monitoring service for students and their parents so they can monitor their credit together.

Credit, when used responsibly, can be a tool for young adults starting to establish themselves.

“Younger people don’t realize the implications of that until they go to buy a car and they have to get a loan, or they try and buy a house and don’t have a down payment,” Melinda Wood, Vice President of Marketing at the UT Federal Credit Union said to the Knoxville News.

Linkage:

Source: Knoxville News

Find out more about CreditVirgin here

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Purdue Startup: FoundOps Wins Startup Bowl At Indy Powder Keg Conference

photo: TechCocktail

Last week downtown Indianapolis and Lucas Oil Field (home to this years Super Bowl) played host to the first Powder Keg conference.

Powder Keg piggybacked off Connections 12, ExactTarget’s annual conference for their digital marketers.

The signature event for this year’s Powder Keg conference was the first ever Startup Bowl. The Startup Bowl pitted 12 regional startups against each other in a traditional pitch contest. To put a very cool spin on it, conference organizer Matt Hunckler, held the Startup Bowl at Lucas Oil Field.

Derek Pacque and his startup CoatChex was among one of the 12 contestants. Pacque is somewhat of an Indy startup celebrity. He turned down a $200,000 investment from Mark Cuban in the first episode of Shark Tank Season 4.

Pacque’s mini celeb status wasn’t enough to thwart a duo of entrepreneurs from Purdue though. It was their startup, FindOPS, which took home a prize package worth $15,000.

FoundOPS founders, Jon Perl and Oren Shatken admit that their startup isn’t the sexiest. FoundOPS is a useful mobile app that offers route optimization, data collection and GPS tracking.

FoundOPS is in the hot enterprise space, targeting field services. Companies with field workers will take advantage of the many features found in FieldOPS mobile app.

What were the judges looking for?

“What’s their go-to-market strategy? Have they identified their market correctly? Where do they fit, versus their competition?” Judge Christopher Day, Managing Principal at the Nabudar Group told the Indianapolis Business Journal.

FoundOPS had all the components the judges pool were looking for. Startup America CEO and Founding CTO of Priceline.com, announced the winning team at the end of the event.

Linkage:

Source: IndyStar

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Photo: TechCocktail

37 Startups, So Far, Vying To Compete In Invest Maryland Startup Competition

Like most state governments Maryland is taking startups seriously. The state’s economic development arm is doing whatever it can to support local startups in the state and attract new startups to come to the state to develop. One of the biggest initiatives to come out of Annapolis is the Invest Maryland Challenge, startup competition.

The challenge opened up to applicants last month and the application process continues through December 13, 2012.

The basic requirements is that your startup has less than 25 employees and less than $1 million dollars in annual revenue. The startups also have to be in the tech or life sciences industry.

Applicants are competing for $300,000 in grant money and business services. Startups must either already be based in Maryland or plan to relocate to Maryland to grow. Also, all startups must be legal entities and in good standing in the states where they are based.

While the Baltimore Sun seems to be concerned with the fine print, it’s pretty standard for economic development contests where grant money and relocation is involved. So far all of the 37 startups that have applied are either based in Maryland or the immediate surrounding areas (Northern Virginia and DC). Take a look at the list of the startups that have applied so far:

1. Direct Dimensions Inc, Owings Mills, MD

2. MyoTherapeutics , Silver Spring, MD

3. Handteq, LLC, Baltimore

4. Parking Panda , Baltimore, MD

5. ClickMedix, LLC , Rockville, MD

6. Tots2Tweens, Frederick, MD

7. SIALUU, Baltimore MD

8. KneeBouncers.com , Sykesville, MD

9. Omic Biosystems, Inc., Rockville, MD

10. Closing the Gap, Lanham, MD

11. Brain Biosciences, Inc., Bethesda, MD

12. StudyHall, Washington DC

13. Firejack, Inc. , Columbia, MD

14. WeLearn Educational Software, Baltimore, MD

15. B’more Organic, Baltimore, MD

16. Family Business, Rockville, MD

17. Clear Guide Medical, Baltimore, MD

18. Shreis Scalene Sciences, Gaithersburg, MD

19. Stupil, Laytonsville, MD

20. Rafagen, Inc., Rockville, MD

21. FiberCell Systems Inc., Frederick, MD

22. ConverGene, LLC, Gaithersburg, MD

23. Printless Plans, Baltimore, MD

24. Juxtopia, Baltimore, MD

25. Solar System Express, Baltimore, MD

26. Internet Security Advisors Group, Severna Park, MD

27. TDP Biotherapeutics, Inc., Gaithersburg, MD

28. Green Gap Solutions, Rockville, MD

29. Athena Energy Corp, Bowie, MD

30. Subject7, Potomac, MD

31. Paniagua’s Enterprises Inc. , Baltimore, MD

32. NuSomnea, LLC, Severna Park, MD

33. DioGenix , Rockville, MD

34. zeroK NanoTech, Montgomery Village, MD

35. Car Fare Compare Inc. , Crownsville, MD

36. Fiteeza, Fairfax, VA

37. Differential Dynamics Corporation, Owings Mills, MD

The contest is also open to startups outside of Maryland who are willing to relocate.

Linkage:

Apply here today

Source: Baltimore Sun

Here’s something fun.

MadeInTx.co To Serve As Directory & Hub For Texas Startups

Colleen Brady, a Texas entrepreneur is on a mission. The mission she’s chosen is one she plans to launch without immediate plans for a profit.

Brady has started MadeInTx.co, a site she hopes will serve as a directory of Texas startups and eventually a centralized hub for Texas startup information.

MadeInTx.co looks to be the builtinchicago.com for the state of Texas. This is no east feat as Texas is both the second largest state in the country and the second most populated state in the country.

Texas also has multiple “startup communities”. Dallas, Houston, and Austin serve as major hubs of innovation. Austin also plays hole to south by southwest, the annual festival in March that serves as the launching ground for startups all over the country.

Brady admits that there are several startup and entrepreneurial resources throughout the state, but none quite like this.

“It’s something I thought was missing, so I decided to go ahead and put it together,” Brady said to the Austin Business Journal

Brady continued:

“Talking with startups here [in Texas], I found there were great resources, but something was missing. I wasn’t finding a good place to do research on [local] startups”

Molly Ryan, a reporter for the Austin Business Journal, validated the need for MadeinTx.co:

” have looked, but I have yet to come up with an online list of local startups either. Sure, there are networking groups, incubators and online forums — but not a single site where I can find a clean-cut list of when startups were founded, where they are located, etc.” Ryan said.

Brady plans on officially launching MadeinTx.co next month. She already has 40 startups in Texas that have submitted information.

Linkage:

MadeinTx.co

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California Startup: Bubbs Connects You To Charitable Products INTERVIEW

A new Orange County startup called Bubbs is looking to become the go-to place to find products that are being sold to benefit charities and causes across the globe. When you go to mybubbs.com you’ll see a familiar online mall experience, except in this case all the products are benefiting some kind of charity.

Bubbs is somewhat similar to DoGoodBuyUs, a New York startup that we covered back in June. The main difference is that DoGoodBuyUs connects products that were specifically made for charity whereas most of the Bubbs products are more traditional in nature but somehow proceeds are benefiting charity.

Red Beats By Dre headphones, where $5.00 of the purchase goes to AIDS research, can be found on Bubbs. An iPad case which gives a week’s worth of HIV medicine to someone living in Africa can also be found on the page. Clothing, food, other gadgets and even makeup with a purpose can be found on the mybubbs site. Now you can shop for charity in one spot rather than scouring the internet looking for charity kick backs, site by site.

We got a chance to talk to Atila Lotfi the founder of Bubbs, check out the interview below:

Kauffman Foundation Official Leaving To Launch Match.com For Teachers

The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation is known for their vast support of startups and small businesses across the country. Through multiple sponsorships, partnerships, research, data initiatives and educational information, the Kauffman Foundation serves as the backbone to a web of startup events, and evangelical efforts across the country.

Munro Richardson, is stepping down from his position as the vie president of education at the Kauffman Foundation to pursue a startup of his own. According to the Kansas City Star, Richardson is teaming up with Alicia Herald the Executive Director of Teach for America in Kansas City, to launch what is essentially a match.com for teachers.

The startup is called myEDmatch.com and is expected to be a national job site with a social focus, and profile/resume highlights specifically for educators.

“It’s a mashup of LinkedIn, CareerBuilder and eHarmony,” Richardson said of the startup to the Kansas City Star. “It’s right at the intersection of education and entrepreneurship. It’s a for-profit opportunity that actually could be important in addressing a real problem.”

The key problem is that primary and secondary schools are spending too much time and resources on trying to fit teachers with their missions. They could be using that time for educating. With myEdmatch.com schools and teachers would have a better platform to see if they’re a better fit and use less resources.

So far there’s nothing quite like it on the internet. Teaches will be able to focus their efforts on finding real jobs in education and educators will be able to view teachers resumes and weed out candidates they may find on other sites that aren’t as qualified .

Both Richardson and Herald have the educational background to back this venture. Richardson is a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University as well as a PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Herald holds an MBA from Washington University.

Richardson has been at Kauffman since 2002. He helped develop the Kauffman Scholars program and also helped launch the charter school. His last day at Kauffman is October 31st.

Linkage:

Stay up to date with myEdmatch.com here

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19 Year Old Entrepreneur Poised To Take On Big Data With His St.Louis Startup

St. Louis startup Evtron, and it’s pair of founders still too young to drink alcohol, are looking to take on stage server hardware space.

The story of Evtron co-founders Andrew Mayhall and Kyle Goeken, will be one for the entrepreneurial history books, if their innovative startup takes off. To kick off their story though, they went on a road trip.

Mayhall and Goeken had received the almost golden ticket. Their startup was selected to pitch at the recent DEMO conference at the Santa Clara convention center in Silicon Valley. We say “almost golden ticket” because they weren’t quite lucky enough to get one of the highly coveted “scholarship” spots, but nonetheless the opportunity to pitch that crowd is one you can’t pass up.

Now most bootstrapped startups have a hard enough time coming up with the $8,000 to just get on the stage at DEMO, (that’s why conferences like everywhereelse.co charge much less). Combine that with the fact that Mayhall is only 19 and Goeken is just 20 and that’s a lot of lawns to mow and burgers to flip.

Regardless of the hardwork the duo had to put in to raise the $8,000 the story of their road trip hardly ends there. The St. Louis Post Dispatch reports that to save money they elected to drive from St.Louis to Silicon Valley. Surely that’s no big deal for two young adults but the Post Dispatch continues on to report that the folks at DEMO mistakenly double charged the teams debit card, rendering them completely broke in route.

Goeken was able to save the day because he luckily had a Shell gas card. So with a card for fuel and all the beef jerkey and other great gas station food they could buy, the two would finally make it to the conference.

Mayhall is one of those prodigal entrepreneurs. He began tinkering with computers when he was 8 or 9. He dropped out of high school to attend college early and then dropped out of college to work on his own ideas.

One of those ideas is Evtron. Mayhall synced up with now Evtron’s Chief Technology Officer, Brady O’Brien to revolutionize the server industry. Evtron has found a way to stack server hard drives vertically instead of horizontally. They also found a way to use the base as a “heat sink”. When coupled together the Evtron server uses 45% less electricity, generates 38% less heat and takes up 66% less space. When considering huge data centers the size of say Google’s (that were revealed to the public earlier this week) you’re talking about savings in the tens of millions.

While we are constantly covering the St. Louis startup scene , St. Louis isn’t known for being a hardware town.

Brian Matthews a local St. Louis tech entrepreneur who’s been advising Evtron, agreed that St. Louis isn’t a hardware town.

“If it’s really going to scale up and mass-produce data servers, Evtron will need two things that are hard to find here: money and an experienced management team” Matthews told the Post Dispatch.

As St. Louis’ startup community continues to grow, hopefully Evtron will be able to find a fit, and a way to stay in the city. Mayhall said that is one of his goals.

Linkage:

Check out Evtron the next generation storage platform here.

Here are more startup stories from St. Louis

Source: St. Louis Post Dispatch

We hope to see you here

Seattle Startup: WompMobile Promises Easy Web To Mobile Conversion

One of the most frustrating things for some web publishers is exactly how they’re going to get their sites onto mobile devices. Some choose to go with a native mobile app, meaning that a mobile app is created for each smartphone platform from scratch for the site. Others choose to use WordPress plugins or other competing platforms. We’re fortunate that our site scales to mobile nicely.

Seattle startup WompMobile is hoping to make the process much easier for their web publishing clients. WompMobile uses their own proprietary design engine to scale a desktop website to mobile maintaining the integrity of the desktop design. They promise to make “going mobile easy”.

While their process takes just under ten days, once the WompMobile team has run your website through their engine, every update the publisher makes to their website is instantly updated on the mobile version.

Madison Miner the company’s founder, says that their secret sauce is in their conversion engine. Things like fonts, styles, and branding remain consistent from web to mobile and the publisher doesn’t need to sacrifice their web presence by using a generic mobile format.

We got a chance to talk to Miner about WompMobile and the Seattle startup scene in the interview below.

Santa Monica Startup: DocRun To Challenge Legal Zoom, And Do It Better?

If you were to hear a pitch from a legal startup that planned to offer do it yourself access to legal forms, you would immediately think of LegalZoom right? Who would enter into a space crowded by a giant like LegalZoom? That would be as asinine as pitching an online auction site for collectibles, clothing, accessories and every day junk right?

Well Santa Monica based startup DocRun is doing just that. Of course their position is that they’re going to do it better.

DocRun has positioned itself to become the site to go to when small companies, and even startups need legal documents that may otherwise cost them thousands of dollars. When a user goes to the site they can create highly customizable, attorney level legal documents by answering a handful of relevant questions.

DocRun isn’t your run of the mill startup though. The company’s founder is Jennifer Reuting a nationally known expert on small business and corporate structuring. She is the author of the book “Limited Liability Companies For Dummies”.

This is also not her first foray into web platforms for small businesses. Reuting created InCorp.com the third largest registered agent service provider in the country and MyLLC.com a business entity formation service. Reuting has baked patent pending “artificial intelligence” into DocRun. This technology trumps LegalZoom’s one size fits all legal document service.

We got a chance to interview DocRun check out the interview below.

OpenTable And Fishbowl Veterans Join DC Startup Venga’ Rebrands To My Loyal Family

Back in March we brought you the story of Washington DC startup Venga. Venga began as a more traditional restaurant discovery platform similar to the likes of Urban Spoon. While they were accelerating at The Fort in Washington DC they pivoted to a more restaurant centric focus.

During their customer discovery they went to restaurants and talked to the owners to see what they really needed in an app.

When founders Sam von Pollaro and Winston Lord took to the streets to talk with the restaurants themselves they found that while traditional restaurant discovery apps could provide spikes in traffic, they weren’t receptive to the restaurant themselves. Apps like Open Table weren’t talking to the restaurant point of sale systems so there was no way the restaurants could take advantage of the well procured background data on the users.

Venga, with the help of Fortify, embarked on a new product to create mobile centric loyalty programs for customers. Now surveying customers on exits, and even rewarding them isn’t new however working it all back into a mobile focused program to benefit the customer and the restaurant is. Venga now has a tool that helps restaurants keep track of customers, their likes and dislikes and their service experiences. The restaurant takes that information, along with order information and then they can send each customer more targeted offers via email rather than a generic email blast.

Venga had already started picking up traction with their new product and have found that it was a great space to be in. Venga is data driven and pulls from customers previous checks to create detailed profiles, letting restaurant owners and marketers know exactly what hits their customers buttons and what will bring them back in for more.

The company has started ramping up their staff and with that they’ve brought on Fishbowl’s former Regional VP of Sales, Bob McKay as Vice President of Sales. Michelle Baker has also joined Venga as an account executive. Her experience includes marketing positions with Fishbowl and Open Table. They’ve also rebranded their consumer facing product as MyLoyalFamily.

“Bob and Michelle’s passion and demonstrated knowledge of the hospitality industry and its distinctive needs will be an invaluable asset to Venga as we continue to expand.”von Pollaro, said in a statement. “With Michael, we are getting one of the top software engineers in the area with expertise in scalability, which is critical in a business that collects and processes as much data as we do.”

Venga also beefed up their tech team by adding Michael Dumont as Lead Software Engineer.

Linkage:

Check out Venga here

Check out their consumer facing site here, MyLocalFamily

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Chicago Startup: clickInterview The Latest To Join Video Interview Space

A startup in Chicago called clickInterview is the latest to offer a video solution to recruiters, HR folks and perspective employers. clickInterview, like PitchPick in Austin among others, lets job candidates answer pre-screening interview questions in the comfort of their own home or wherever they happen to be when they feel like answering.

Legacy human resources folks aren’t entirely sold on the idea of pre-screening or interviewing candidates with pre-recorded videos. Naturally the candidate will only do the video at the best opportunity for them and of course they can prepare for the interview. It takes out some of the spontaneity of the interview.

Now with clickInterview and the other startups in the space no one is suggesting that they completely replace the actual in person interview, but rather use it in the first preliminary phase, eliminating the need to accommodate on site interviews.

Max Sperando, founder of clickInterview says that his secret sauce is in the design and ease of use. One check of their site and you’ll agree that it’s pleasing to the eye and simplifies the process.

Sperando is also hoping to give the candidates a little more control of their interview situation, again the part that “old school” HR folks don’t like.

clickInterview definitely has a chance to take over the video interview space if they can scale right. We got a chance to interview Sperando, check out the interview below.