Startups Archives - Page 95 of 144

Startup Weekend Cincinnati: A Platform For Buying Your Homework Being Built

If you’re an entrepreneur or a startup founder chances are you were the guy or gal, that sold their homework, or maybe even made a few bucks doing someone else’s homework. Whether it was in high school or college, there is always a market for homework. Parents and teachers don’t want to admit it but it’s there. It may borderline on plagiarism but heck they’re hoping to build a startup that’s out in the open.

One of the Friday pitches that was chosen to build is a startup that is a platform for people to outsource their homework to somebody else. It’s a fairly simple idea and regardless of what it is on the surface, if implemented correctly there is a market for it and they’ll have no problem cornering the market.

When the idea was pitched it was brought up that we currently outsource every kind of work there is except homework, so why not outsource homework.

Check out the pitch video below and stay tuned to nibletz.com Sunday evening to see who wins Startup Weekend Cincinnati.

Here’s the video:

Check out more Startup Weekend coverage here

Nibletz is the voice of startups “everywhere else” here are more startup stories from “everywhere else”

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Louisville Startup: Impulcity Smooth As Butter Event Discovery Now In Beta

Impulcity is one of the standout startups at The Brandery in Cincinnati. We finally got a chance to talk with Hunter Hammonds and Austin Cameron face to face about the disruptive mobile app they’re building.

When someone who does what I do hears the words “location” and “discovery’ we automatically think FourSquare, Google Places, and checking in. We think the space is crowded. We think “sure you’ve got something different”. Well with Impulcity, Hammonds and Cameron have something different. As soon as we arrived at the Brandery Hammonds immediately set up the private beta on my phone and for the rest of the evening I got a guided tour on Impulcity right from the co-founders.

After a night on the town, Hammonds challenged me and our co-founder Cameron Wright to name one event discovery mobile app, that served up local events, allows you to check into them, invite friends, and had a great UI. We couldn’t even name one, not like this.

As you can see they have a great visual user experience. From the main screen you see a highlighted event in visual form and then a grid of similar pictures promoting events around you. The top featured event can be swiped from left to right so that you can see all the highlighted events.

Once you’re in the event you can do a number of things which are all explained in easy detail. There are big inviting buttons for sharing, and what network you want to share with. There is a timeline feature for each event where people can chime in on their experience at the event and share pictures and text.

While Impulcity is from Louisville and building at the Brandery in Cincinnati they’ve already got over a million events in their database that will populate in the same beautiful visual way.

Impulcity says they help you discover, attend and interact with events around you and that’s certainly true. But you can bet on our road trip that we will continue to test and use Impulcity.

Linkage:

Find out more about The Brandery here

Nibletz is the voice of startups “everywhere else” and we’re road-tripping everywhere else click here

Startup Weekend Cincinnati: Blue Collar Project, Selected To Build

Here’s a great Friday pitch video from Startup Weekend Cincinnati. Blue Collar Dog is an idea we haven’t seen before. It borderlines on non-profit which are typically hard to win when it comes to Sunday pitches because the investors can’t get a return on a non-profit, it’s more of a donation.

Nonetheless the idea is great and there may be a profit mechanism built in somewhere. One things for sure and that’s that dog owners and animal lovers will love the mission behind the idea.

Blue Collar Dog is about raising awareness for dogs and animals that are adopted out of shelters to make sure resources are provided for those dog owners and to let potential animal owners know that shelters are a great way to get a new family companion for life.

What do you think of this idea, let us know in the comments. Watch the video below:

Linkage:

Here’s more startup weekend coverage from nibletz.com

Nibletz is the voice of startups “everywhere else”

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DreamIt Ventures Expands South To Austin Texas

DreamIt Ventures, the Philadelphia based accelerator, that was recently ranked one of the top the incubators in the country by Forbes magazine, has announced that they’re expanding into Austin Texas.

DreamIt is Philadelphia based, which is where they set up their initial accelerator program. They then expanded to New York City. Last year they also opened up shop in Israel with a program that currently feeds into New York but could feed into their Philadelphia program next year.

Kerry Rupp, a Philadelphia transplant from Austin Texas was overseeing the DreamIt program in Philadelphia. They recently announced the appointment of Karen Griffith Gryga as national director based in Philadelphian which frees Rupp up to return to Austin and launch their Austin program.

Austin is a great place to expand for DreamIt. There is a lot of innovation happening in Austin and the other DreamIt locations will be able to leverage their Austin based program to show off other DreamIt startup graduates at South By Southwest Interactive next year.

“We’ll be able to use it to showcase all of the other DreamIt companies that are out fundraising” when SXSW is held, Rupp said to the Austin Business Journal

As of April 2012 65 companies have successfully gone through the DreamIt program. DreamIt also has a program targeted towards minorities called DreamIt Access, that first class has 15 startup participants.

DreamIt Ventures New York program finishes with a Demo Day on August 8th. Philadelphia’s program kicks off the weekend of September 6th and 7th. The Philadelphia class will hold Demo Day December 5th. Austin’s program will start on December 14th which times the ending right up against SXSWi 2013.

Linkage:

Check out DreamIt Ventures here

Source: Austin Business Journal

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3 Ann Arbor Michigan Startups Get $600K Investment

Ann Arbor’s Michigan Pre-Seed Capital Fund is on a roll this year as they’ve already invested $2.6 million dollars into Michigan’s growing startup ecosystem. The fund is administered by AnnArborSPARk and according to semichiganstartup.com another six to ten startups may still see investment funds from the group that invests in pre-seed stages of high growth potential startups.

The fund has just announced that they’ve invested $600k in three area startups; FlockTag, Larky’s and FreeStride Therapeutics.

FlockTag is a mobile application in the loyalty and reward space targeting quick-service restaurants and connecting their loyal customers with deals and rewards.

FreeStride Therapeutics is a bio-medical startup working on therapies for bone related conditions.

Larky’s is also in the hot loyalty space. Their app helps consumers manage discounts, rewards and other loyalty perks. It helps increase customer loyalty and drive merchant profit.

So far the Michigan Pre-Seed Fund has invested $16.5 million dollars in 75 area Startups and helped to create 120 jobs in Michigan.

Linkage:

Source: semichiganstartup.com

Nibletz is the voice of Startups “everywhere else”

We are on a sneaker-strapped nationwide startup road trip through September 2013 (that’s next year)

Meet TellBob He’s A Canadian Startup Rewarding People For Taking Surveys On Their Mobile Device

Getting customer feedback can be tricky. Almost every kind of survey engagement tactic has been tried time and time again. It’s hard to get someone to take a survey for a chance to win $10,000 or even a free meal the next time you visit a restaurant. Companies need this valuable data, and the survey platform that can pull it off is going to win.

That’s where TellBob comes in. This Canadian based startup with a really cool name is all about having customers take surveys on their smartphone and then getting rewarded instantly for participating.

So TellBob isn’t really a guy named Bob in fact it’s two guys Trevor Howie and Dan Renaud. They came up with the idea back in 2007 after visiting a Home Depot and thinking how great it would be if you could get some kind of instant gratification for completing their customer service survey.

With TellBob’s reward program the customer is rewarded instantly and they can save or trade their rewards with their friends and even share the entire experience on Facebook. It’s a win for their survey customers as well. TellBob can give back some great information and even confirm that the person completing the survey was actually at the location.

We got a chance to interview TellBob, well actually Howie, check out that interview below.

Miami Startup: Sumpto It’s Like Klout For College Students, But Better INTERVIEW

Klout is still a big mystery to most, how do you get those crazy Klout scores. If you know how it’s really calculated feel free to send me an email. Klout Perks is a great program that puts manufacturers products into peoples hands. They presumably want the cream of the crop when it comes to Klout, but we have no idea who that really is.

Sumpto is looking to do something along those lines when they launch next week. They’re going to match products to college students with influential social graphs. Sumpto will rank a college students social clout (with a c not a k) and then link manufacturers with college brand ambassadors who can presumably get the word about those products out to the masses.

Manufacturers love it when they can get exposed to people with real influence. Ranking that influence can be a challenge but Sumpto’s Founder and President Ben Kosinski seems to have figured out the magic formula. Yes, Sumpto’s partners will most likely reach the hands of the right people.

The college demographic is a hard one to crack, with free stuff though it may be easier. When you add the free stuff to an exclusive layer of folks, your destined to gain exposure down the lines to the masses. That’s exactly what Sumpto is going to do.

We got a chance to interview Kosinski check out the interview below:

Interview With Romanian Startup: MonitorBacklinks

Don’t you just love it when a startup comes up with an idea and the name of the startup directly reflects that idea. Such is the case with Romanian startup MonitorBacklinks. Founder Razvan Girmacea has created MonitorBacklinks to make it easier for any publisher, webmaster, or blogger to monitor their backlinks.

Girmacea’s software checks all of a websites backlinks and then sends a notification when the status of a backlink changes, for example if it disappears, reappears or moves.

When vying for pagerank backlinks play a big part into the SEO of any website.

In the interview below Girmacea talks about MonitorBacklinks and how easy he has made it for the end user. He also sheds some light on the budding entrepreneurship and startup scene in Romania.

Startup Weekend Cincinnati Is This Weekend

Baby if you’ve ever wondered, wondered whatever became of me, I’m building a company in Cincinnati, at Startup Weekend Cincinnati

A little background on the altered quote up there. If you’ve been reading nibletz.com for a while and you’ve been watching our videos you may have noticed that while we’re on the road trip we like to use “old school” hip hop from the city we’re in for our video intro. Like in Memphis we use Tennessee by Arrested Development and Twerk by Three Six Mafia. In New Orleans we use any vintage Cash Money Millionaires. In St. Louis we’ve got Nelly. Sorry Cincinnati but we can’t find a decent song by Hi-Tek and don’t want to embarrass anyone by using 98 degrees.

I can tell you first hand that Cincinnati’s startup scene is umpteen million times more innovative than their history with popular hip hop and pop music. That’s why we’re really excited that Startup Weekend is back in Cincinnati this weekend.

The 54 hour hackathon style startup building contest puts people from all over the place together to build startups and compete in a nice little pitch fest on Sunday evening. Startup Weekend’s are exciting, innovative, and usually bursting at the seams with good food.

The event kicks off on Friday when all those signed up for Startup Weekend will pitch their ideas in a 60 second quick pitch contest. After the pitches the crowd will vote on the startups that will be built over the next 53 hours.

Mentor’s from Cincinnati’s thriving tech and business scene will be on hand throughout the weekend to help the teams in just about every aspect of building a business. Cincinnati’s mentors for this weekend include: Robert W. McDonald, an attorney at Taft and co-founder of The Brandery (we love the Brandery); Bob Gilbreath, Entrepreneur in Residence at CincyTech; Bill Cunningham, Co-Founder at OneMorePallet.com; James J Cunningham, Executive Director of C-Cap.net and Ryan Walker, Founder at Engagement.iO. Of course nibletz.com will be around most of the weekend too and we typically get roped into helping out (no really we love to help).

A couple of gut checks later, gallons of caffeine and typically as much pizza as you can eat later, the teams assemble on Sunday evening to pitch their final projects to the judges. It’s best to have a great pitch deck, minimum viable product, mock up and make sure you’ve tested the viability of your concept.

Cincinnati’s judges are: Dave Knox, CMO at RockFish and Co-Founder at The Brandery (we love the Brandery); Tarek Kamil, Executive Director at InfoMotion Sports Technologies; Dov Rosenberg, Director at Allos Ventures; Rahul Bawa, Director of Digital and Software at CincyTech; and Jeff Weedman CEO at Centrifuse and VP of Global Business Development at this little company called Proctor & Gamble.

Entrepreneurs, developers, founders, as you can see you’ve got your work cut out for you. If you haven’t signed up yet you better head here now. The event takes place at the Startup Mall (Carew Tower). Registration is at 6:30pm. Good Luck.

Linkage

Here’s the Cincinnati Startup Weekend site

Here’s The Brandery site (We love The Brandery)

Here are some stories about Super Nick

and here’s our pitch to crowdfund our road trip

Interview With Canadian Startup Hashcaster

Back in June we brought you this story about Canadian startup Hashcaster. Hashcaster provides a curation, and measurement (analytics) platform for event coordinators to manage their social media graph. It really comes in handy when gauging the effect of marketing, press and media efforts on behalf of an event just about any size.

At Social Media Camp in June not only was Hashcaster used by the event organizers but they also received a “Coastie” for “Most Innovative Social Media Product or Technology”.

Event organizers everywhere are counting on social marketing efforts more and more everyday as traditional marketing has fallen to the wayside. Organizers need to be able to capture tweets, likes, and mentions and then aggregate them, and analyze them to make sure the cohesive message is getting across. They also want to know who their top influencers are and what kind of impact any paid social marketing may have had.

All of these things are why Geoff Clendenning and Paul Vet created Hashcaster.

Now social media dashboards are nothing new but this particular use case is. Hashcaster also takes into consideration that the social graph of a particular event is going to swell as the event draws closer. When you’re at a popular event, especially one with a social media focus, tweets, likes and mentions can come in a matter of seconds.

We got a chance to interview Clendenning about Hashcaster, check out the interview below:

Los Angeles Startup: Smarter Stand Sees 10x Goal On Kickstarter

Dotan Saguy, a Los Angeles entrepreneur figured out that if you add two little clips to either side of an iPad’s Smart Cover or Smart Case you can add several different viewing angles and positions to your iPad which make it more convenient and equally as sturdy.

The magnetic Smart Cover and Smart Case for the iPad currently offer two positions for resting your iPad. One of the positions makes the iPad sit up too straight andouille the other one lays it down too flat. As you an see from the graphic above, Saguy’s Smarter Stand clips allow for several more positions. Most of the positions could be achieved with an additional $40 stand.

Saguy was hoping to raise $10,000 with a Kickstarter campaign. With that money Saguy planned on doing a limited production run for those who were interested in the product. Saguy hit the $10,000 mark on the first day of his campaign and now has 7,120 people interested in the product.

“I can’t thank my Kickstarter supporters enough for their kind words, encouragement, and pledges to make this dream a reality,” says Saguy. “The outpouring of support simply justifies that sometimes the simplest ideas are the most useful, and having forums like Kickstarter is an incredible way to get the word out.”

The Smarter Stand clips can be mixed and matched with 10 different, iPad matching colors available. The clips live on the smart cover or smart case so you always have a stand one stand by.

The Smarter Stand clips will retail for $20 per pair or you can preorder them with a discount by pledging on KickStarter.

Linkage:
Check out the Smarter Stand Kickstarter Page Here

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South Carolina Startups Get New Innovista Center For Product Realization

South Carolina startups now have another new exciting resource to tap into. The University of South Carolina has announced it’s plans to open the Innovista Center for Product Realization or ICPR. The main funding for the new center is coming from a $645,000 five year federal grant. The main purpose is to help startups with product development.

The center will be available to students, alumni and residents who are working on a startup based in South Carolina.

One of the major constraints facing firms outside of regions like Silicon Valley is access to sufficient capital and talent to achieve critical mass and scalability for their product offerings,” said Don Herriott, director of Innovista. “ICPR will provide the infrastructure, resources and collaborative relationships that capital-starved startups require to take their idea or technology to the next level.” reports the SC-Israel collaboration.

Startups that utilize the center and it’s resources will be able to tap into the expertise of USC faculty at the College of Engineering and Computing, the Darla Moore School of Business and the university’s Office of Technology Commercialization.

“The product realization center is yet another example of the university’s commitment to cultivating innovation, entrepreneurship and technology commercialization,” Herriott said. “It furthers Innovista’s mission of attracting and growing new high-tech businesses to our community and across the state.”

We’ve recently reported on two exciting startup ideas brewing in and around the University of South Carolina. The first was a report on two engineers working on developing a t-shirt material that could charge phones directly from the shirt itself. The other 52 apps, is an innovative app development startup that will release 52 apps a year by vote (we reported on them 4 weeks before mainstream media).

Individuals and startups looking for more information on ICPR should reach out to Lauren Edwards at (803)777-9796 or by email at laurene@mailbox.sc.edu

Linkage:

Source: SC-Israeli collobaration

Nibletz is the voice of startups “everywhere else” here are more startup stories from “everywhere else”

We’re on the road, on a sneaker-strapped nationwide startup road trip through September 2013, more here

Interview With Portland Oregon Startup: Hively, Easy Engagement Feedback Platform

Businesses, retail establishments and restaurants have been using the internet for surveys for the past fifteen years. Lot’s of restaurants still resort to printing a phone number to call or a website to go to to enter a code, do a survey and get some kind of discount. The problem with this method of surveying is, despite the reward, there is still extremely low engagement.

Even customer service surveys at the end of a call to a cell phone carrier or cable provider go unanswered, and that’s after you’ve said yes you’ll answer the quick two minute survey. Most travel related surveys that I get in my personal in box go straight to a spam folder and never get completed. In fact the only time I typically fill out a survey is if the customer experience was bad, and there are a lot of people in the same boat as me.

An Oregon startup called Hively is looking to change that for business. They are hoping their platform will have a better engagement rate for two primary reasons. It takes just nanoseconds to complete and they make it happy and fun. Hively just asks one simple question, please provide feedback and with that simple question customers can quickly hit one smiley face, like the ones above, and that’s it.

On the side of the employee, employees who receive good feedback are awarded points that they can accrue for a prize.

We got the chance to interview Hively’s co-founder Jason Lander, check out the interview below:

Interview With Atlanta Slacktivist Startup: SocialVest

Before we dive into a great interview with an awesome Atlanta based startup, I get applause and a lot of flack from the term slacktivist. It’s definitely not a bad thing, and actually I’m hoping the term gets picked up. As busy as people are in 2012 “slacktivist” are the things that people can do without any additional, trying to actually contribute back to the community. Tom’s shoes for instance is a great example of slacktivism. Pubslush is also another great example of slacktivism.

I certainly don’t have the time to get out there and participate in relay for life races anymore or bake sales, although I am looking forward to selling girl scout cookies with my daughter. In the meantime though I am definitely a proud slacktivist and I love platforms like SocialVest. I’m that guy that always rounds up at GoDaddy and at Petco, why because it’s super easy and it helps. So check out this awesome Atlanta startup.

SocialVest is probably the easiest platform for a slacktivist or ok you don’t want to be a slacktivist, how about it’s the easiest platform for anyone who wants to make sizable contributions to a cause through shopping. After all you can only buy so many Live Strong bracelets at Radio Shack (are people still doing that these days?).

Once you register for an account at Slacktivist you accrue cash back awards from the 100s of retailers that are partnered with SocialVest. Then you take that reward money and select one or as many causes as you would like, out of over 1.5 million causes, to receive that bonus. Socialvest calls it “Purchase On Purpose” and it’s really really easy.

As they explain in the interview below, partner retailers give back up to 35% of a purchase (based on the retailer and their agreement with Socialvest) that money than goes into your reward account and is given to the causes of your choice at the intervals and amounts you choose. The more you shop online the more you contribute to the causes that matter most to you. Without doing an extra thing, period.

Pretty awesome right?

Check out the interview below and don’t kid yourself if you don’t have time to get out and do the volunteer things you want or write that check to the cause you love, sign up for Socialvest. It’s easy.