Startups Archives - Page 97 of 144

Interview With Pennsylvania Startup: Mountain Of Agents, A New Kind Of Real Estate Directory

There are several varieties of real estate agent directory web sites out there on the internet. Most of them are either from a realty association, a real estate company or the professional real estate agents themselves. Well a startup in Bucks County Pennsylvania has taken the real estate directory into their own hands by providing a real estate directory for consumers, by consumers. That directory is called Mountain of Agents.

Michael Becker the founder of Mountain of Agents explains that creating a real estate agent directory for consumers by consumers isn’t their only differentiator. Mountain of Agents has simplified the ratings system, which in turn makes it more transparent than other directories.

Mountain of Agents has a simple ratings system that’s done by tally instead of long drawn out text based reviews. Also, in order to rate the agent you must be logged into Facebook making it harder to manipulate the ratings system. The Facebook integration also allows the user/rater to share that rating and their agent on Facebook, which of course is the 2012 equivalent of word-of-mouth, which is the driving force behind good real estate agent relationships.

The main goal Becker is trying to achieve with Mountain of Agents, is the need for transparency. The startup was born out of a bad experience Becker had that ended up delaying his real estate search because they had to fire the agent. He talks more about that in the interview below.

Buyer’s Unite Pitches Reverse Groupon Concept At Startup Weekend Memphis

Chicago startup Groupon has confirmed to the world the power of the group. LivingSocial and countless other startups compete in the same group daily deal model as Groupon with great success.

Joe Kennedy, a self proclaimed serial entrepreneur, has decided to flip that group daily deal model on it’s head. Instead of coming up with the group deal, and having a buy in, his startup puts the group together to form an adhoc buyers group. If you’re not familiar with the buyers group concept the best comparison would be to a food or grocery co-op. This is where communities are able to force a discount by joining together for a group buy.

Kennedy presented the idea at Startup Weekend in Memphis on Friday evening and got more interest from the group in attendance than he thought. Local young entrepreneur Harold Strong from Yadoog, a startup birthed at 48 Hour Launch in June, dove head first into assisting Kennedy and leading the team of 6 into product development.

Kennedy confirmed at press time that they will definitely be ready to show off proof of concept if not more Sunday evening during the Startup Weekend Memphis finals. In addition to reserving their intellectual property, and hashing out the technical infrastructure they also had to come up with the first vertical that Buyer’s Unite would tackle. The concept itself can work on any vertical but the team chose health insurance to insure (see what we did there), easy quick scalability.

Buyer’s Unite will offer several buying groups that their users can join but for the first group they hope to go to insurance carriers with thousands of people in the group ready to buy. That would in effect force the carrier to offer a sizable discount to guarantee that much business.

There are several monetization options and revenue models but Kennedy likes the idea of a very small fee on the transaction once the deal is complete. Paying $3.50-$5.00 for the ability to save over $100 on health insurance is a win win for everyone. We’ll see tomorrow if it’s a win for the judges.

Check out the video pitch below:

Linkage:

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Startup Weekend Memphis: Legacy Interview (Friday Pitch Video)

This is the first time we’ve seen an idea quite like this presented at a startup hackathon. Legacy Interview works off the concept of chronicling a friend of loved ones life through interviews with mini-questions and video interviews. The idea comes after the founder realized that his father may not live forever.

As we get older we get into more in more in-depth conversations with our closest loved ones, as they get older though those conversations get harder and harder to have. The sad realization is that the friend of loved one won’t be here forever and you want them to share their lives with you as long as they can. Hold onto those moments with Legacy Interview and save them down the road for generations to come.

I’m in mid 30’s and I constantly wonder what would life have been like if all of these resources were available since my childhood.

Time capsuling our digital lives is becoming quite popular. My grandchildren, and yours as well will have way more access to our lives and legacies than ever before. Legacy Interview will contribute to that by providing a very easy mobile platform.

Legacy Interview will present on Sunday in the Startup Weekend Memphis finals. We’ll see where this idea goes after Startup Weekend. It would be a shoe in for integration with ancestry.com and even deadsoci.al

Check out the video interview below:

Linkage:

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Startup Weekend Memphis: CoachSpeak (Friday Pitch Video)

Startup Weekend Memphis produced some great ideas. Sunday we’ll get to see how they did with the important part, execution.

One of those ideas is a new startup called CoachSpeak. Coach Speak is a new professional social network aimed specifically at higher level coaches, for example college football coaches. Now that most everyone has a social media account on one of the mainstream social networks like Facebook,Twitter, Google+ or LinkedIn, it’s time to branch back out with niche networks.

Yesterday we brought you the story about Florida startup PitchShark which is a social network specifically for those producing independent films.

CoachSpeak will link coaches together in new ways.

Here’s how the concept was explained and why it makes sense. Let’s say we’re back in December of 2008 and Auburn University has just released Tommy Tuberville. Once they announced Gene Chizik he needed to get moving, he needed to get to Auburn and immediately work on building his staff up.

Now lets say Chizik has a LinkedIn page. Now, after the announcement that he’s headed to Auburn, he is going to be flooded with people who even on LnkedIn’s professional network, are only linking in because he’s the coach at Auburn. He has a lot of people to wade through in order to get straight to other coaches like an offensive line coach, defensive line coach or special teams coach.

If Chizik was part of a closed, professional social network of coaches he could easily access the coaches he knew or had met personally and even coaches that he didn’t know. A niche social network in this case is abetter alternative.

Over the past few weeks I find myself in more and more conversations about niche social networks. Are they over-saturating the social landscape or are they needed?

If you look at professional social networks like CoachSpeak or PitchShark, while they are online and social they are more like professional organizations. So there is a clear advantage to something like CoachSpeak.

Check out the pitch video below.

Linkage:

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Interview With Florida Startup: Yovia, A People Engine

Yovia is a new startup in Jacksonville Beach Florida. They call themselves a people engine that focuses on the people that make social media work.

Yovia takes brands, products, services and leverages them across a network of people who has signed up on Yovia. Yovia users can use their hard earned social capital for good. So how is this achieved?

Well after you sign up for Yovia’s platform you are presented with opportunities to spread the word about products, services and brands across your social graph and are rewarded. Your rewards can be in actual cash or free products or a combination of both. Exploring the Yovia site we found, and participated in several offers. The offers ranged from $6.00 for a 200 word blog entry to $.08 and $.15 for liking something or sharing something across social networks.

Yovia is a great way to drive brand engagement, and social engagement. There were news blogs that needed a like or share, and new services that needed signups. None of the offers seemed too outlandish and so far none have asked for my credit card information. It looks to be on the up and up.

Now eight cents and fifteen cents may not seem like a lot however if Yovia continues to grow quickly it will be easier to find higher paying offers and easier to complete more lower paying offers.

We got a chance to talk to Jalali Hartman, co-founder of Yovia in the interview below:

Startup Weekend Memphis Kicks Off After Four Year Hiatus

The first officially sanctioned Startup Weekend event in Memphis TN was back in 2008. This year Startup Weekend is back in Memphis and has been spearheaded by startup evangelist James Ruffer along with Chris Przybyszewski and Amanda Lewis.

Ruffer and Przybszewski kicked off the event Friday night with some great authentic Memphis Barbecue provided by Baby Jacks. After that the fun and games started with a general overview of the event, the sponsors and of course the prizes.

For this years event there will be three finalists selected who will each receive $1000 in cash, 9 hours of free legal services from Butler Snow and 9 hours of free financial advice from local accounting firm Collins Thomas & Associates. Also the “grand prize” winner will receive consultation services from Southern Growth Studios who are local experts on developing business plans. The national sponsors also kicked in with free cloud based services including the use of AWS for the weekend, should one of the ideas need it.

16 ideas were pitched from a variety of categories including elder care, music education and instruction, services for spanish speaking people, an auction site for nearly abandoned startup ideas and even a web app idea to “Keep politicians on the straight and narrow”.

The four ideas that were selected were, an local event aggregation and discovery app tentatively called “Event Czar”; CoachSpeak a social network for professional coaches; Buyers Unite an almost flash like buyers group; Legacy Interview, a mobile application that lets anyone capture interview vignettes on video question by question in separate files; and Clockout a socially enabled time clock management system for small businesses. Yes that’s five but clockout is a solo entrepreneur who will develop his idea on his own this weekend and compete against the other four teams on Sunday.

Both Ruffer and Przybyszewski are no strangers to entrepreneurism. Ruffer has a variety of entrepreneurial endeavors under his belt. Right now he works in social media security, financial security and online security. This is Ruffer’s 13th Startup Weekend that he’s either attended or help organize.

Przbyszewski (I’m hoping that’s the last time I need to type that), is currently working on his third startup right now down the street at the Launch Memphis, LaunchPad which actually is in the field of veterinary medicine. Their startup is under wraps but the team behind it has a great idea, that’s being tested and will help curb a problem that kills animals, is a big concern for dogs and can affect people as well. It targets one of the top 10 diseases that doctor’s must inform the CDC about, really big impotent stuff.

So with both of this weekends organizers enmeshed in pretty big day jobs they wanted this startup weekend to be a little light, fun and collaborative. In Ruffer’s experience attending 13 Startup Weekend events he’s seen the entire gambit from hardcore, bootcamp style Startup Weekends to the lighthearted and laid back, creative juice flowing weekends like this.

At the end of the day, or actually the end of the weekend, the ideas that want to continue to grow have a variety of resources available to them including Launch Memphis, the Launch Pad and Seed Hatchery. When asked about competing with Launch Memphis’ 48 hour launch event just six weeks ago, Ruffer said that Memphis has grown so much that the city itself can support a variety of events adding “When the tide rises all the ships sail”. At the end of the day it’s about everyone supporting entrepreneurship and startup culture in Memphis.

Linkage:

The official Startup Weekend Memphis landing page

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Interview With Chris West Founder of Memphis Startup: NeedRegistry

NeedRegistry is an original new idea for a startup based in Memphis TN. As you may have guessed it involves a registry, but not like any registry you may have seen before.

When someone goes through a major life changing event, like a bad illness, death in the family member, cancer, or even birth of a newborn, friends and family members inherently want to help. It’s part of human nature. Often times, the person going through the life changing event is too proud to say that they need help or to accept help. Friends and family don’t know what that person’s needs are so they resort to what Chris West, the founder of NeedRegistry, calls “death by casserole”. Friends and family members bring food, and lots of it.

Typically after the initial life changing event occurs, the person that had that event in their lives starts realizing that they do need help with even the basic and simplest of necessities. Perhaps they need someone to cut the grass, clean the house, or even clean the pool. Maybe that life changing event was a long term sickness like cancer, or an injury that has the person off their feet. These easy tasks can mount up quick.

Enter NeedRegistry.

NeedRegistry connects friends of that person with vendors of the services they need. The person that has had the life changing event happen to them can select things like lawn care, then the size of their lawn, the frequency of the lawn maintenance, and then a local service provider.

Friends can then fund the lawn maintenance and when the maintenance is performed the vendor gets paid.

It’s this direct vendor to friend connection that sets NeedRegistry apart from other crowdfunding startups that allow you to collect money for health reasons. With those types of sites you would still have to source out the work itself, get estimates and pay.

As West explains in the video interview, for the vendor its an easy sale and a no-brainer,once the service is ordered they go do the job and get paid.

West is excited about a beta launch in the coming weeks and plans on expanding the platform piece by piece over the next six months.

After the initial NeedRegistry rollout this year, he’ll expand the startup to cover two more markets and then by the end of 2013 he hopes to have a decent sized footprint across the country with a robust network of service providers.

Check out the video interview with West below:

Linakge:

Check out NeedRegistry here

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JustDecide Startup Dilemma Of The Week: Foundersync Founder Wants To Know, Patent or Not To Patent

If you haven’t heard about the JustDecide/Nibletz Startup Dilemma Of The Week then you’ve been missing out on a great feature here at nibletz.com. Every week we partner with crowd sourced decision making platform justdecide.com to help one chosen startup handle an actual real life dilemma that they are going through in the startup process.

There are definitely some great advantages for startup founders in participating in this free feature that takes less than a minute to contribute.

– The founder of the featured dilemma’s startup gets great feedback from members of the startup community
– Members of the startup community get to contribute to a crowdsourced answer from like-minded individuals
– Founders who weigh in on the dilemma may actually be going through the same or similar problem that they can use the same advice for.

This week’s dilemma comes from our good friend Ryan Gambrill the founder of FounderSync in Cleveland Ohio. Fourdersync is a great way for startup founders to get involved and meet other founders whether it be technical founders, biz dev people or other entrepreneurs. From there you can network with great people who are living the same startup lifestyle you are.

Gambrill’s dilemma is actually about a new startup idea he is working on. He has a dilemma that tons of startup founders face, to patent or not to patent. While Gambrill thinks his idea is great, he’s a realist so he knows that it may not take off. If for some reason, the idea doesn’t take off, than Gambrill would potentially be out thousands of dollars in legal and patent fees.

What makes this tough for Gambrill though is he’s a networking pro, a people person and loves to talk. He’s one of those guys that doesn’t believe in “stealth mode” and as such he needs to protect his idea if it’s going to be out there.

A patent isn’t like a copyright. We all know the “poor man’s copyright” and for songs or published works the process takes under $50 and under 15 minutes. A patent can cost thousands. This patent problem of Gamrbill’s is something we hear about all the time on the “sneaker strapped nationwide startup roadtrip” and unfortunately we’ve seen both sides of the issue.

We’ve seen first hand entrepreneurs who have blown their entire savings on a patent for an idea that totally fizzled. We’ve also seen entrepreneurs who went the non patent route and got screwed by a competitor.

What say you startup community?

Weigh in here at justdecide.com

Checkout Foundersync here, sign up it’s free!

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Video Interview With St.Louis Startup: LockerDome

Back in April we asked if St.Louis startup LockerDome was the Groupon for St.Louis,you know the standout startup that stays in their hometown and grows. By all accounts LockerDome is shaping up to be that startup.

LockerDome is a social networking site focused on team sports from just about every level. Whether your son or daughter is on a neighborhood soccer team, you’re a high school athlete playing on the football team or you’re a professional athlete LockerDome allows you to make a profile to correspond with the type of team your on.

With your profile you can keep friends, family, teammates, scouts and anyone interested up to date with how you’re doing as an athlete. For kids, think back to when you had trading cards made with the team photos, now grandma and grandpa across the country don’t need to wait for the mail, they can just go online and check out your profile.

One of the great things about LockerDome is that athletes of all levels can be found on the network. Pro Athletes are often the inspiration for many young athletes and you can find pro athletes from all kinds of sports on LockerDome. Imagine playing pee-wee hockey or pee-wee football and having a LockerDome profile just like your favorite professional athlete.

LockerDome has already attached some major attention. St.Louis native and Square co-founder Jim McKelvey sits on the LockerDome board and has invested into the company through Cultivation Capital. LockerDome has raised $2.1 million to date with their latest round totaling $1.04 million, which closed in June.

Check out our video interview below:

How about some Linkage:

Click here to check out LockerDome, start a profile why don’t ya?

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Interview With California Startup: Bib4Brides

Okay so in a previous life I owned a rather large dj business, you know the type that does weddings, school dances, that kind of thing. We were the biggest in the state of North Carolina and South Carolina as well. I’ve actually been involved in over 1000 weddings, that’s a lot.

When helping brides plan the dj part of their wedding, we had a lot of influence over the schedule and flow. One of the big things that brides and grooms wanted to know was when should they do their special dances, like Father/Daughter, Mother/Son, Bridal Party Dance etc. The question was easy, the answer was some times chuckled at, laughed at and some even found it offensive. We would ask every bride and groom that asked us that question, well “are any of you messy eaters”. Why, because a stain on a tux or wedding dress could ruin the wedding photos the couple is paying thousands of dollars for, and that are precious memories.

Enter in California startups Bib4Brides. Now we know this isn’t a tech startup but as we’ve shown here many times we do tangible startups too and this one was one that couldn’t be passed up.

Bib4Brides founder Sandi Romena has developed a product, essentially a bib for the bride and the groom, that in the long run can save embarrassment, ridicule and a lot of money. Sure the bride keeps her dress forever but Italian sauce isn’t the easiest stain to remove from the tuxedo before you take them back Monday morning.

The Bib4Brides was created after Romena had a little incident at her daughter’s wedding which she describes in the interview below:

Interview With Miami Startup: PitchShark A Social Network For Launching Film Projects

Social networks are a staple in just about everyone’s daily lives. In the Facebook generation it feels like everyone who has any kind of internet access is online and part of some kind of social network. Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ have a strangle hold on mainstream social network needs. LinkedIn has the business sector covered, but now social networks are emerging for specific industries.

We’ve reported on Memphis based “Work For Pie” which is a social network/linked In of sorts for developers, there are social networks for real estate agents and now a social network for those working on films.

When we first heard about Miami startup PitchShark we weren’t exactly clear on the need for a social network, where did the real problem lay? Well co-founder Justin Perez talked with us in the interview below and there are a ton of reasons that PitchShark makes sense.

For instance, casting an indie film or a film not sanctioned by one of the major studios, can be a long and painstaking process. Perez explains in the interview that it’s not just about casting either. There are other resources that film producers need in order to get the project off the ground.

Check out the interview below:

New York Startup: PubSlush Crowdfunding Book Publishing For Good

Writers and authors take heed we found an awesome startup in New York called Pubslush. Not only do they have an uber cool name but what they do is fantastic. We actually get amped up when we find a startup that has a unique idea that doesn’t fall under one of the normal categories like SoLoMo or discovery.

Pubslush is a publishing platform for authors to crowdsource the funds that they need to actually publish their works. Pubslush is building up a healthy following of people who love to read, write and check out new books from new authors. Sure there are authors out there crowdfunding their books on KickStarter and Indiegogo but with PubSlush there’s another great incentive.

With every book sold through Pubslush they donate a book to a child in need. This is perfect for the slacktivist set. You know the type, the people who buy Tom’s because they donate a pair of shoes to charity. Well PubSlush is even better. They’re putting more physical books in the world. Needy children are reading books and passing them along to the other children around them. Great idea right?

Pubslush has a trifecta of problem solving. New authors are getting their works read. Authors are also getting their works funded and books are going to people in need. Add in the fact that Pubslush is putting more books out there in the world at a time when print publishing is down thanks to the advent of e-readers, tablets, Amazon and iPads.

We got a chance to talk with Amanda Barbara the development director at Pubslush in the interview below:

Baltimore Startup: BeerGivr Lets You Send A Beer To Friends Through Your Phone

Back in March we reported that Maryland’s Governor Martin O’Malley was holding a new breed of startup pitch contest. O’Malley held his contest on Pinterest.. BeerGivr, a Baltimore based startup, was the first place winner in the bootstrapped category.

UMBC graduate, Sean Kennedy, is the founder of this innovative, social gift giving startup. As you can probably see from the name, BeerGivr is all about spreading the love via phone in the form of a beer.

BeerGivr isn’t a about virtual beers, drinking emoticons or meme’s featuring that guy from Dolseces, no its about giving your friends or family members ice cole beer, or other libations if they so choose.

So how does it work?

Well if you can’t make it t the afterwork social or your college buddy’s 30th birthday party you can go to BeerGivr’s website, enter your friend phone number, and pay via PayPal for an actual beer. If your friend is drinking at a participating bar or restart ant that establishment then receives the payment. If they’re not drinking at a participating restaurant your friend can redeem that value via PayPal themselves.

Our good friend Molly at inthecapital.com reports that Kennedy is the sole founder and the company’s only full time employee. He has enlisted the help of two friends but right now the brunt of the work falls on Kennedy.

The idea for BeerGivr came after Kennedy graduated from UMBC. He immediately took a job that required him to travel a lot and network with business people he may not likely see again, at least for a while. The traveling was two fold, Kennedy would miss social gatherings back home, and he met some cool people he wanted to stay friends with.

He decided that buying someone a beer from afar was a good idea and got to working on a prototype. Now he’s recruiting participating bars and restaurants and watching his Maryland based users accumulate. Of course after Maryland adopts to the new technology BeerGivr will expand.

Baltimore is turning into a tech hub especially in the mobile space with cool ideas like BeerGivr and ParkingPanda. ParkingPanda allows you to book parking spaces in Baltimore and Washington DC in advance in a similar way to hotels.com.

Linkage:

For more on BeerGivr click here

Check out this cool video on BeerGivr at the source link inthecapital.com

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What The MixTape Is Back? We Interview Los Angeles Startup Mixtaping.FM

Do you remember those late nights you used to sit around your bedroom with your dual cassette deck and make sweet mix tapes for your girlfriend or boyfriend, yeah me neither. (Ok yes I actually do). Well if you were into creating mix tapes for that special someone than Los Angeles based startup mixtaping.fm may be for you.

Mixtaping.fm has taken the concept of making mix tapes and brought them up to date. They offer a cloud based platform that lets you create 30 minute mix tapes, legally.

Edward Chan, the co-founder of Mixtaping.fm realizes that today’s “mix tapes” in the sense we’re talking here, are very similar to playlists but there are problems with playlists. First off everyone’s playlists are on different services. Some services require you to sign up and pay a fee just to listen to the playlist. Other services are so obscure that it’s hard to find anything.

Mixtaping.fm lets you make a custom 30 minute “mix tape” with music that you like, or want to specifically share with someone or a group, and then you can share it easily.

One of the other big things with Mixtaping.fm is that they’ve integrated Facebook and Instagram so not only can you create a “mix tape” but you can also create cover art.

MixTaping integrates with Spotify and has plans to integrate Rdio as well.

We got a chance to talk with Chan in the interview below.