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Dave McClure, The King Of Everywhere Else, Makes First German Investment: Versus IO

While here at nibletz we are the “voice of everywhere else” Dave McClure, Sith Lord at 500 Startups and founder of Geeks on A Plane, is the reigning king of “everywhere else”, to prove that his first investment in a German startup has just been revealed. McClure has invested $100,000 in comparison platform Versus IO.

We’ve been covering the German startup since earlier this year and even had the opportunity to interview their CEO Ramin Far, earlier this month.

Versus IO in it’s simplest form is a comparison engine that allows you to compare two different things side by side. With Versus IO you can compare gadgets, electronics, and even cities. They are quickly ramping up to having 640 different comparison verticals.

It’s not just a “hot or not” style comparison either, for instance in their cities comparisons they use over 100 different factors including: education, crime rates, climate, infrastructure, safety, economy, business, culture, people and a whole lot more. What makes the platform truly unique is the fact that they aren’t in the business of selling things so there’s no chance that the comparison’s get skewed over things like price, discount and offer.

“We’re extremely excited about the investment from Dave and the role he will play in helping to take VERSUS IO to the next level in terms of what we offers users and the direction of the business”, Far, said in a statement. “Dave’s experience of working with growing companies will be invaluable for us moving forwards. 2013 has the potential to be huge for us to be even more successful than 2012 has been.”

This $100,000 investment is the first for McClure in a German company and it appears that it’s separate from the 500startups fund.

Linkage:

Check out VersusIO here

Here’s Dave McClure’s blog

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Memphis Bioworks’ ZeroTo510 Class “All In” On Everywhereelse.co Startup Conference

The Memphis Bioworks Foundation’s partnership program with Seed Hatchery, called Zeroto510, is all in for the upcoming everywhbereelsse.co The Startup Conference event in February in Memphis Tennessee.

All 6 teams that participated in the summer acceleration program housed at Memphis Bioworks Foundation in Memphis’ Medical District, have committed to “Startup Village Booth Space” where they will pitch their companies to over 400 investors coming from out of town. They’ll also get the chance to talk about the most successful acceleration program in the United States with over 85% of the initial class receiving follow on funding.

The program was spearheaded by Steven Bares, President and Executive Director of the Memphis Bioworks Foundation, Lauren Bigger, Program Manager of Bioworks Business Association, Allan Daisley Director of Entrepreneurship and Sustainability for the foundation and Eric Mathews and Andre Folkes, Co-President’s at Launch Your City, the Seed Hatchery arm of the program.

Innova, an early stage investor group and MB Ventures, both of Memphis, were also major partners for the ZeroTo510 program.

The success of the Memphis Bioworks, Seed Hatchery joint venture has trickled across the country an around the globe. That prompted Dr. Laura Faulconer who runs an incubator program in Australia, to recently visit the Memphis Bioworks Foundation and spend some time learning from Daisley as well as some of the Seed Hatchery team.

Bionanovations, HandMinder, NanOpthalmics, Randall Surgical, Restore Medical and Urova Medical will all be present during the everywhereelse.co conference where attendees, investors and other startups who may be looking to go the medical device route, will get a chance to speak with the founders. Many of whom, uprooted themselves from other cities like Atlanta, and Durham NC to work with the likes of Daisley and the Memphis Bioworks Foundation.

Shawn Flynn, co-founder of Restore Medical Solutions, a company that just raised a $2.5 million dollar Series A round, will speak on a panel at the conference called “Raising Money Everywhere Else”.

Bioworks has already said they plan on running the Zeroto510 program again in 2013 but may change the focus slightly to another medical related vertical that’s exploding in the region.

Memphis Bioworks, which serves as the epicenter for biosciences entrepreneurs, startups and acceleration functions to address three very important areas in a community that thrives with Biosciences innovation. Those areas are: Building Infrastructure, Growing The Workforce, and Promoting Entrepreneurship.

One thing that you rarely hear with an accelerator is that 100% of the teams that built their businesses during the ZeroTo510 program at Bioworks, have stayed in Memphis to continue to grow their businesses. While HandMinder has roots in the Memphis area, the rest of the teams have had at least one co-founder that’s relocated to the area.

Linkage:

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Boston Military Startup: RallyPoint Raises $1.55 Million

Rallypoint, Boston startup, Military startup,startup,startup news

RallyPoint co-founders Yinon Weiss and Aaron Kletzing (photo: time.com)

A Boston startup called RallyPoint has just announced that they’ve raised $1 million dollars from angels in Boston, Washington DC and London reports the Boston Business Journal.

The military focused startup bills itself as “LinkedIn for military”. Currently serving members of the armed forces can create an individual profile and grow their professional network within the military. It’s a great way to connect service men and women with others they may have served with at different bases and on different tours. It’s also a great way to keep up with those folks as service men and women move about the country and around the world.

RallyPoint officially launched on Veterans day with a warm reception across the country. In fact, there’s been a major push to encourage military men and women to become entrepreneurs and launch their own startups.

Earlier this year Techstars held a “Patriot Bootcamp” in Washington DC which recruited military men and women to have a three day crash course in entrepreneurship and starting up at Georgetown University.

Startup America also launched a veteran’s initiative on Veterans day, spearheaded by a leadership team which includes veteran and Apprentice 2 star Kelly Perdew alongside other influencers in the military startup community.

Since launching earlier this year RallyPoint has raised a total of $1.55 million dollars. They raises $550,000 prior to launch back in April. In October they won $100,000 as part of the MassChallenge program and now they’ve raised another $1 million dollars.

“Some of the new investment funds will help us spread the word to active U.S. military personnel about RallyPoint’s value proposition, accelerate RallyPoint member acquisition, and also expand our efforts to partner with trusted employers, academic institutions, and brands to connect them more precisely and cost effectively with the right service members at the right time,” RallyPoint CEO Yinon Weiss told the Boston Herald.

Linkage:

Check out RallyPoint here

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Durham Name Your Price Startup BuyStand Raises $450,000 Looking To Raise $2M More

Durham startup, BuyStand, that is brining the name your price, Priceline, model to retail buying has just raised $450,000. WRAL Techwire is reporting that the company is looking to raise $2.5 million dollars in a mix of debt, options and warrants.

They’ve also added a new CFO, Charlie Farrell, who was most recently a financial executive at Edmunds.com

BuyStand is the latest startup from North Carolina serial entrepreneur, Joe Davy, His most recent startup EvoApp failed, of course as any good founder and entrepreneur knows failure leads to success. Failing fast is just one of the methodologies entrepreneurs in 2012 live by.

BuyStand is completely different than Davy’s previous startup.

For concept demonstration purposes Davy used one vertical market, outdoors. Obviously the platform will work for any retail good but outdoors was a great place to start.

As you can probably imagine, reading this far, BuyStand takes the “name your price” concept and applies it to outdoor goods. Whether you’re looking for the latest running shoes or the best all terrain jacket or back pack, you’ll find it at BuyStand. But you won’t find a typical priced out click through e-commerce portal.

With BuyStand the user selects the item that they want, names the price they’re willing to pay and then BuyStand sets that payment aside. Once a buyer has named a price, the BuyStand system lets the buyer know they have a taker and from there the “bid” is either accepted or rejected. If the “bid” (price) is accepted than BuyStand pays the vendor and the buyers product is shipped to their home.

It’s a two click process, name your price and click.

Davy says the need for BuyStand arises from the fact that buyers waiting for items and buying them second hand, used or “off the truck” at sites like e-Bay and Craigslist account for $200 billion dollars in lost profit.

“BUYSTAND solves this problem by eliminating the price and creating an open, efficient, free market.” Davy told the CED Start Something Blog.

Davy joined BuyStand as CEO in September. The startup was originally launched by Ted Kraus in 2011.

Linkage:

Find BuyStand on the web here

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Philly Startup SnipSnap Reaches 350K Users For Mobile Couponing App That Works

We started using Philadelphia startup SnipSnap’s mobile couponing app after we saw it at TechCrunch Disrupt NY back in May.Just prior to Black Friday, we had saved over $500 using the app.

SnipSnap app allows you to clip actual printed coupons, take pictures of them and then save them, share them, or both within the app. You can find deals from just about every major retailer, food chain and even several regional businesses within the app. Perhaps the best thing we like about SnipSnap app is that you see coupons from all over the country. As you may know, sometimes a coupon for a retailer may be different in one part of the country than it is in another.

While it’s explicitly explained to app users that these photographed mobile coupons may not work every time, there is a rating system that allows users to share how successful they were. As more and more retailers embrace mobile, more and more businesses are accepting coupons on smartphones. We rarely get turned down these days and we’ve used SnipSnap at ToysRUs, Old Navy, Best Buy, PetCo, Burger King, and Sephora just to name a few.

We first reported on SnipSnap back in May at TechCrunch Disrupt NYC. We were so excited about it that we published this story from TechCrunch Disrupt before founder Ted Mann has even had a chance to finish his onstage pitch. We also immediately got this interview with Mann, when he made it back to his startup alley booth.

By June 2012 the app had reported 150k users and most recently, Betakit has reported that SnipSnap has over 350k loyal users.

“We grew pretty quickly and we’re just now trying to get everything to the place where it can turn from an app with a few hundred thousand users to a few million users,” Mann said in an interview.

In addition to the apps clipped by the user community, SnipSnap has partnered with seven major retailers including; Sears, Aeropastle and KMart which allows SnipSnap to display their store coupons. The app doesn’t currently cover manufacturers coupons but Mann is reportedly working on that feature.

One of the other main features of the app is that it serves up coupons that are relevant to you and it also uses your geolocation to remind you that you have coupons clipped for stores nearby.

Since launching last spring SnipSnap 4.5 million coupons have been saved in the app. 470,000 coupons are original coupons uploaded by the apps user base. They’ve raised $1M in seed funding and plan on a Series A round early this year.

Linkage:

Download Snip Snap here

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With A Little Help From Brad Feld, Montana To Host First Startup Weekend

Sure Montana isn’t the first state that we think about when talking about startups and startup communities, but obviously there is something going on there as well. The most exposure many “techies” have gotten to Montana was the episode of Big Bang Theory where Sheldon Cooper runs away to Bozeman Montana after his apartment is robbed.

Well according to Bob Clay, the lead organizer for Startup Weekend Missoula, and the CEO of SameSky Systems, he personally accepted a challenge from startup community evangelist Brad Feld, when Feld was speaking at a Montana Programmers Meetup over the summer. Feld told the programmers that they should do a Startup Weekend event in Montana. A week later, Clay reached out to Feld who then put him in touch with Startup Weekend CEO Marc Nager.

Startup Weekend is the Kauffman Foundation backed, “official” three day hackathon event to build companies. During a 54 hour period beginning Friday evening and running through Sunday evening, founders, entrepreneurs, coders, developers, business development people and others pitch ideas for companies and than work all weekend to make viable business models.

The Startup Weekend organization has put on or helped facilitate hundreds of Startup Weekend events across the country and around the world.

Greg Gianforte, the founder of Right Now Technologies, a startup that sold to Oracle for $1.8 billion, will be the keynote speaker for Startup Weekend Missoula on January 18th.

Registration will begin on Friday evening at 6:00pm at The Life Long Learning Center, 310 Curtis Street, Missoula MT 59801. That will be followed by great networking dinner where attendees will be able to size up the competition and the possible teammates for the weekend. The Keynote presentation will begin at 7:15pm. At around 8:00pm the “Friday Night” pitches will begin. We’ve covered a lot of startup weekends and you can see plenty of Friday night pitches here at nibletz.com.

The Friday night pitches are 60 seconds and hard timed by a Startup Weekend official. In that 60 seconds you need to sell the audience your idea and why it should be built over the next 53 hours. After everyone who wants to pitch has been given the opportunity, community voting will commence. It’s a rather diplomatic process. Usually the pitchers will hold up a sign with their startup name on it and attendees will put a sticker on the idea they like the best. At the end of the process, those with the most stickers will have their ideas developed.

Friday evening typically tops off with team selection and then some icebreaker time with the teams. From there the teams break off and start working on the startup idea.

Saturday, the community coaches come into play. These seasoned entrepreneurs and local business folks are there to help answer questions for each team and provide ideas and suggestions. The coaches for Startup Weekend Missoula are; Michael Fitzgerald, CEO of Submittable; Wes Hunt, Founder of Armigent; Jason Lengstorf, Senior Developer, Copter Labs; Trevor Loy, General Partner, Flywheel Ventures; Clyde W. Neu, Venture Partner; Doug Odegard, Consultant & Software Engineer; and Harold Shinsato, Senior Software Dev Engineer, SAP.

Saturday is also the day that most teams take to the streets, the phones, the emails and the interwebs to get customer validation on their startup project. All the while designers, developers and coders are working on pitch decks, wire frames, prototypes and products.

Sunday is the day the teams put the finishing touches on both their products and their presentations. At 5:00pm and not a second later, the selected teams will have five minutes to pitch their idea and have a brief Q&A with the judges. Startup Weekend Missoula judges have not been announced yet.

Linkage:

Find out more about Startup Weekend Missoula here

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LockerDome The Hottest Startup In St. Louis

Sports social networking startup LockerDome is the hottest consumer facing internet startup in St. Louis and probably the hottest sports startup period. The social network that allows anyone at any age to build a profile at their level, continues to grow at a rate reminiscent of a Silicon Valley startup.

Just two weeks ago we reported that LockerDome, founded by Gabe Lozano, had surpassed 3 million monthly unique visitors. Now they’re reporting that they’ve topped 4 million monthly unique visitors (MUV).

LockerDome continues to grow at a rate of 14% week over week since their launch in January of this year. They passed the 1 million mark in June, two million in early October, three million in late November and now four million. LockerDome experienced more growth on one single day in December than it did in the first 12 weeks of the year combined (5.6%). At the pace they’re at they are poised to be a top 10 most visited sports site within the next 12 to 18 months.

Their growth is fueled by the fact that LockerDome allows anyone to jump on the platform wherever they’re at in their sporting life. Founder Gabe Lozano explained to us back when we toured the LockerDome offices earlier this year, that everyone has three basic lives, work life, personal life, and for many, sports life.

Whether you’re the parent of a child playing tee-ball or 5-6 year old basketball, a semi pro baseball player or even a pro athlete you can join LockerDome and become part of your teams network and the network of other teams, including professional teams and players that you’re a fan of.

LockerDome is designed to be the one single sports social networking destination for their user throughout their entire sporting life. If someone starts out as a young tee-ball player and in 15 years becomes a pro baseball player, the network is robust enough to grow throughout that career. If a pee wee football player plays college ball and then becomes a coach, LockerDome can handle that path as well.

Even if after playing in a competitive city league and ending your sporting career, you can continue on with LockerDome as a fan, keeping your entire sporting life history in your profile.

Pro Athletes including Memphis Grizzlies’ Rudy Gay, six time PGA Tour Winner Dustin Johnson and NFL All Pro Larry Fitzgerald are all participants in LockerDome.

“Every professional athlete needs to be on LockerDome. By leveraging LockerDome as the social media hub for my personal brand, I’ve been able to better engage my fans and grow my entire social presence across Facebook, Twitter, and LockerDome,” said Larry Fitzgerald, All-Pro NFL wide receiver with the Arizona Cardinals. “From a content standpoint, I use LockerDome not only to host unique fan giveaways, but also as a daily source to post behind the scenes, interactive content.”

“This is just the tip of the iceberg for LockerDome. As explosive as LockerDome’s growth has been in 2012, we will undoubtedly be even more dominant in 2013,” commented Gabe Lozano, co-founder and CEO of LockerDome. “The overwhelming demand for LockerDome by professional athletes, media partners, brands and the targeted audiences these publishers reach, and the subsequent meteoric growth from that demand, is a clear indication that the LockerDome platform will only continue to strengthen.”

Linkage:

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DreamIt Ventures Philadelphia Graduates 15, Here’s A Song About it

Earlier this month DreamIt Ventures graduated their fall Philadelphia class. DreamIt Ventures holds accelerator programs in their hometown of Philadelphia, New York, Israel and a new program that started this year in Austin Texas. The fall Philadelphia class was their 7th class to graduate the program.

Here’s a list of all 15 startups that pitched at Investor Day:

Altair Prep: An SAT tutoring service that remotely connects students with leading tutors.
Applique: A drag-and-drop tool for creating mobile apps.
Betterific: Helps you share and find ideas to improve product development.
Brideside: An online boutique that helps brides build up their wedding experience together with their wedding party.
CallGrader: Lets companies collect marketing data and analytics from phone calls.
Charlie: Prepares you with information about a contact before you meet up with them.
Cloudamize: Offers tools to help companies manage and optimize their cloud services.
FlagTap: Helps websites increase user engagement, and tells them exactly what their visitors are doing.
Mor.sl: A combined recipe and grocery delivery service.
NinjaThat: An online marketplace that lets businesses outsource tasks to students.
PeerActive: Brings together game dynamics with e-commerce.
Spruceling: An online marketplace for parents to sell their kids’ used clothes.
TrendBent: A personal style engine for men.
Vizy: Lets you record and store virtual memories in physical places.
ZenKars: Offers a peaceful online marketplace for buying used cars.

Philadelphia’s class ended demo day with a song. Check out this awesome video below courtesy of TechnicallyPhilly’s YouTube Channel.

Linkage:

Check out DreamIt Ventures here

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Boston Startup Pingup That Allows Consumers To Text Businesses Raises $4M

A Boston area startup called Pingup aims to help cure the frustration from dealing with customer service agents and being put on hold by resorting to text messages. PingUp allows consumers to text businesses messages pertaining to their accounts and the nature of the company’s business.

For example, a cable company could use PingUp to allow their customers to text simple items like “Cancel HBO” or “Add Showtime” they could even go further and assist in scheduling appointments or set up a call back time so that the customer doesn’t have to wait.

The company was founded when co-founder and CEO Mark Slater had to spend an ungodly amount of time holding with his cable company for a question that required no more than two minutes to handle. It’s those kind of issues that drive call center frustration and customer frustration up.

We got a chance to interview Slater earlier this year.

PingUp has signed up over 550 businesses in the Boston area where it initially rolled out. They also have apps in both the Apple iTunes App Store and the Google Play store.

Cab companies, restaurants and service businesses across Boston have responded well to PingUp and have already implemented the service. A few different cab companies allow customers to book their cabs using PingUp rather than having to talk to a dispatcher. This of course makes it much easier to insure that the cab is going to go to the right location.

Restaurants allow customers to use PingUp to make reservations or get on call ahead seating lists. Other businesses use the service for customer service issues.

PingUp has just raised $4 million dollars in an equity round led by original investor Avalon. They plan on using the capital to expand to other markets including New York and San Francisco. PingUp already offers service in Miami in addition to the Boston area where they are based.

Linkage:

Check out PingUp here

Source: TNW

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Baton Rouge Startup: LocalMed To Create 52 New Jobs

Louisiana’s Economic Development Secretary, Stephen Moret and startup LocalMed CEO Keith English, announced last week that his company would be creating 52 new direct jobs in Baton Rouge. The new jobs will support LocalMed’s continued growth in their online and mobile technology platform that allows doctors, dentists and patients to handle appointment scheduling, management and reminders 24 hours a day.

The average salary of the new jobs will be $52,000 dollars a year and they will also include benefits. The Louisiana Economic Development Commission estimates that another 53 new indirect jobs will result as well bringing the grand total to over 100.

LocalMed was created by twin brothers Daniel and Derek Gilbert after Daniel had to deal with more than 8 doctor’s appointments per week while battling cancer. Once the cancer went into remission the brothers teamed up to create this new platform for better self management of appointments. They launched LocalMed in 2011.

LocalMed began attracting investors including English who joined as CEO in May. LocalMed’s platform will also be added to over 2000 Stay Healthy Kiosks nationwide in stores like Kroger. The kiosks will provide patients without their own access to mobile devices and the internet to make and keep up with appointments. The company plans to announce even more strategic partnerships in early 2013 as well as introducing Android and iOS apps.

Gov. Bobby Jindal said, “LocalMed is a homegrown, ‘made-in-Louisiana’ story that makes us proud. LocalMed is an extremely attractive, high-tech venture that could have chosen other states to build its headquarters – the company even looked at establishing its offices in Texas or Florida before choosing Louisiana. The company’s decision to come to Baton Rouge is the latest example that our state is becoming a beacon for the digital media and technology industries. We have a proud heritage of supporting jobs in the oil and gas industry or the chemical industry, but now we are diversifying our economy, and cities like Baton Rouge are becoming the next Austin and the next Silicon Valley where entrepreneurs and risk-takers are coming to change the face of technology and create good-paying jobs for our people.”

“We are pleased to welcome LocalMed to Baton Rouge,” said Mayor-President Melvin “Kip” Holden. “This innovative and new software development company truly exemplifies the Creative Capital of the South. We look forward to helping them grow and expand their business in the Capital Region.”

Linkage:

Find out more about LocalMed here

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Austin Startup: Heyride Wins Startup Texas Competition

Startups pitching at stadiums seems to be a really cool thing this year. Startups in Indianapolis pitched at Lucas Oil Field during the PowderKeg startup event earlier this fall. The graduating class at the Brandery in Cincinnati pitched at the Great American Ball Park where the Cincinnati Reds play, for investor day. Last week Startup Texas hosted a statewide competition at Cowboy Stadium.

The pitch contest, which pitted startups across the entire state of Texas, gave startups the chance to pitch in front of Startup Texas, Startup America and influential entrepreneurial leaders like Steve Case (Founder of AOL), Scott Case (Founding CTO at Priceline) and Carl Sparks (CEO at Travelocity). The winning team won a consultation with one of the three iconic leaders, facilitated by the Startup America Partnership.

Austin startup Heyride was the overall winner in the competition. Heyride is a peer to peer ride sharing app, which is a hot space right now. Users are able to find on demand rides from drivers based on competing offers. The app gives the user the option of riding or driving and it’s peer to peer, so presumably less expensive than Uber or Taxi Magic.

Ridesharing is huge overseas and there are several startups popping up across the country like Greenville SC startup RidePost which completed the Iron Yard accelerator program back in August.

Heyride has prepared itself for the hurdles they could face operating a ride sharing startup and dealing with the public at larges. It was recently reported that private car hailing startup Uber, had a Washington DC based driver accused or Rape, last week.

Heyride offers three types of driver verification including social drivers, community verified drivers and background verified drivers. In a driver’s profile, the level of verification that they’ve completed can be found in an icon next to their name, giving riders a better piece of mind.

Of course drivers are also star rated so that the more successful rides they give the better their rating.

The company has also developed a payment conduit which allows the rider and driver to exchange a frictionless and cashless payment at the onset of the ride so that they don’t have to haggle about price at the end.. It’s also safer for both the riders and the drivers to not have to carry cash.

Heyride is currently only available in Austin Texas which should be great for the tens of thousands converging on the city in March for SXSW. They do plan on expanding outside of Austin eventually.

Linkage:

Check out Heyride here

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Chicago Startup: SpotHero Raises $2.5 Million

A Chicago startup that was developed after the cofounders had received over $3,000 in parking tickets, has now raised $2.5 million dollars. SpotHero, an app that allows users to find parking spots on their smartphone, was well received by the city of Chicago.

At first sight the startup seems very similar to Baltimore startup ParkingPanda, however SpotHero boasts 24 hour customer support and touts that they are superserving Chicago first and building a loyal customer base before eventually branching out. Chicago seems to love SpotHero as well. Since their launch in 2011 the company reports that more than 10,000 people have used their iPhone app and website platform to find parking spots.

SpotHero’s iPhone app allows drivers to reserve parking spots on the go, something that ParkingPanda is just now having developed through MindGrub. ParkingPanda is a web based platform that allows people to book parking spots from either individuals like driveways and curbside spaces, or public lots that have extra spots to rent. Both services allow the user to pick how long and when they want to start the parking spot rental.

SportHero was part of the most recent class at Excelerate Labs one of Chicago’s thriving startup accelerators. SpotHero just recently presented at Excelerate Labs’ August demo day.

“How many times have you been frustrated by parking? We created SpotHero to solve this problem by helping drivers get the right spot with just a few clicks” says SpotHero CEO and Founder Mark Lawrence.

Battery Ventures, 500 startups, David Cohen’s Bullet Time, e.Ventures, OCA Ventuers, New World Ventures, Light Bank and Draper VC all participated in the round led by Battery.

Part of the attraction to investors is that SpotHero has already brought in over $2,000,000 in revenue to parking operators at some of the largest national parking companies. “Our parking partners know that their customers are online and looking for convenience, that is what we deliver – while helping the lots fill their unused spaces with paying customers ” says Lawrence

Linkage:

Check out Spothero here

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Lookout Amazon, Google Acquires Waterloo Startup BufferBox

Anyone who’s followed mobile technology over the last 18 months or so knows that Google and Amazon are in an all out war .When Amazon launched their Kindle Fire tablet, loosely based on the Android operating system, they immediately set up a walled garden ecosystem to provide Amazon content to the tablet device.

Amazon has been in the online e-commerce business a lot longer than just about everybody else. For that they are one of the most trusted names in e-commerce. They’ve also built up a huge collection of content that fuels everyone’s taste in movies, music and of course books.

Many feel that Google’s Android powered tablets, dubbed “Nexus 7 and Nexus 10” are direct competitors for Amazon complete with their own media and app store called “Google Play”.

Now it looks like Google is planning on expanding their click and mortar business to directly compete with Amazon. The acquisition of Waterloo based BufferBox is just another indicator of what Google may have planned in the not so distant future.

BufferBox preceded “Amazon Lockers” by over a year.

When BufferBox co-founder [Mike McCauley] first heard about Amazon Lockers he was disheartened and felt their idea had been ripped off. He was later able to turn it into a much more positive spin when he said: Amazon “put credibility behind the technology,” McCauley said. “Now there’s a big new market Amazon has created. Because Amazon controls 30% of the e-commerce market, you need a third party to offer the service for everyone else.” to the Wall Street Journal read more at http://markerly.com/p/_ZhMm73

The concept is simple, BufferBox lockers are placed in high traffic businesses. Customers of e-commerce shopping sites that have partnered with BufferBox can use the lockers for a safe, secure, and sometimes 24 hour a day place to receive packages. With BufferBox and the Amazon Lockers, long gone are the days someone has to worry about their purchase becoming lost, stolen or damaged, waiting in an overnight carriers pick up location or on the front step.

We’ve even heard from several sources that Memphis based FedEx is working on a similar locker based system that will solve a billion dollar problem with drivers having to attempt a delivery to the same address multiple times a week. This will also solve problems for e-commerce customers who may not get off work until after their local delivery service closes for the day.

Late last month Google announced that they had acquired BufferBox. The team at BufferBox will all be joining Google in the acquisition but they don’t have to move far. Google’s Waterloo offices are on the upper floor of the building where BufferBox is based.

It’s obvious from our interview with BufferBox co-founder Mike McCauley that the small startup is looking to disrupt the way that packages everywhere are delivered. Now they’ll get to do that on a huge scale as part of Google.

“Being a small company and a startup, there’s obviously a lot of challenges,” BufferBox chief executive Mr. McCauley said in an interview with the Financial Post

“So us being able to work very closely with someone like Google allows us to leverage their resources and share vision and combine thoughts and talent together to really make something a lot bigger than we ever would have imagined. We’re really excited to be able to build out that vision quite a bit quicker than we otherwise would have without them onside.”

Linkage:

Source: Financial Post

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DC Uber Driver Accused Of Rape

The unthinkable, that some opponents of private car hiring app Uber have been anticipating, has finally happened. According to our good friends at In The Capital, a DC Uber driver has been accused of raping a customer.

The accusation comes by way of the Cleveland Park Email listserv. Cleveland Park is a neighborhood in Washington DC. The Cleveland Park list serv post says the crime was caught on tape.

In The Capital is reporting that Metropolitan Police Department spokesperson Hugh Carew, has confirmed they are investigating forcible sexual abuse case in Cleveland Park that occurred on December 8th. There are conflicting reports between the actual police report which suggests the attack happened on a Friday while the police report says it happened on a Sunday.

Uber DC General Manager issued a statement saying:

“We cannot comment on an ongoing criminal matter, but it is our policy to deactivate the driver account of someone if we receive information that they have been suspected of committing a crime,”

The email on the listserv reports that the crime was actually captured on the family’s home security cameras, with a clear shot of the perpetrator.

Here is the complete email:

A woman’s teen-age daughter used Uber car serve to return to her home
last night after a late evening. The car drove up the family’s driveway
around 3:30 AM. The girl walked to the door but the driver called her
back. When she went back, the driver struck her on the head and raped
her.The family has a security camera in the driveway. The camera showed the
driver carrying the girl’s limp body back to the house. She is now at
home, trying to rest. The entire family is of course very shaken.

Because of the cameras, they know who did it. As of this morning, he had
not yet been arrested, but many officers are involved and he will be.

Linkage:

Source: In The Capital

Uber on nibletz.com

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