500 Startups Dave McClure Headlining Conference In New Orleans April 22-25

Dave McClure the infamous Sith Lord of 500 startups and huge advocate for startups globally, will be the keynote speaker at Pubcon 2013 in New Orleans. The conference focuses on social media and search and is hosted at the state of the art New Orleans Convention Center.

McClure will discuss his vast experience helping to grow and cultivate startups. In addition to being the founding partner at 500 startups he also hosts regular Silicon Valley meetups called Startup2Startup and of course Geeks On A Plane. To date McClure has invested in over 250 startup companies through his 500 Startups fund and their Mountain View based accelerator program which goes out of it’s way to attract talent worldwide. Some of his investments include MakerBot, TaskRabbit, SlideShare,Mint.com and Twillio.

McClure’s experience spans two decades including serving as PayPal’s Director of Marketing from 2001 thru 2004. While in that role he launched the now infamous PayPal Developer Network. He’s also worked with other well known companies like Facebook, LinkedIn, O’Reilly Media, Intel and Microsoft.

“We’re thrilled to feature Dave McClure as a keynote speaker at Pubcon New Orleans 2013, where his unique spin on the role of social media and optimization in Internet startups will make for a fascinating and insightful presentation,” said Brett Tabke, founder and chief executive of Pubcon.

Michael Slaby, the Obama For America Chief Integration and Innovation Officer, will kick off Pubcon. In addition to playing a major role in the 2008 Obama campaign, Slaby has also served as the digital global practice chair at Edelman and chief technology strategist at Tomorrow Ventures, Eric Schmidt’s venture capital fund.

Pubcon promises to announce more high profile speakers in the coming weeks.

You can register for Pubcon here

500 Startups: Markerly Founder Sarah Ware Video Interview

Undoubtedly, unless you’ve been living under a rock, if you regularly read nibletz.com, than you’ve heard of 500 startups, startup, Markerly. The Washington DC startup is in the latest batch of companies being accelerated at 500startups in Mountain View.

Markerly makes easy to use, but robustly analytical publisher tools. Their tools don’t require a widget, great publishers can just insert one snippet of code and do things like share bits and pieces of content across social networks or comment on photos. The best part is that Markerly is free.

Nibletz.com, the voice of startups everywhere else, was the first blog to use Markerly’s tools and we’ve been the beta testing guinea pig throughout their entire experience at 500 startups. Recently they added the voice of Silicon Valley, PandoDaily as well.

The company was founder by Sarah Ware. The New Jersey native, Georgetown graduate and former employee at hot DC startup, LivingSocial, and longtime friend Justin Kline started Markerly as a way to share highlighted content. Since arriving at 500startups the team has found more refined ways to share. They also provide sharing analytics which can be invaluable to a founder.

We got a chance to meet up with the Markerly team at CES 2013 and #nmx Blog World. Check out our video interview below

Ware is one of the lead panelists in the “Kick Ass Female Founders From Everywhere Else” panel at the biggest startup conference in the US, everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference

We Talk With 500 Startups, Madrid Startup, Traity: Recruitment With Trust & Personality

We’ve reported on countless startups that are striving to re-invent the interview and recruitment process. It seems that recruitment may be one of the hottest startup spaces in 2012. How can you separate the good and the bad? Well one way is by knowing that Dave McClure’s 500 startups is backing this Madrid startup, Traity.

Traity is attacking the recruitment space with analytics, data, and endorsement. When you look up a book or something that may be a bit new to you on Amazon.com, you’re a lot more comfortable knowing that the book has 100+ positive reviews right? If you’re like me and willing to take a chance on a book, having 100 reviews either positive or negative is typically an indicator that it’s at least worth a look.

Well that’s where Traity starts. Their recruitment platform reports are made up of endorsements from several people.

The other place where Traity is making a difference is in personality. Traity positions themselves as a personality based engine, personality test or as it suggests on their website, personality game. Traity is measuring the personality strengths in people like perseverance or how proactive they will be. A candidate could look perfect on paper but they could be a bump on a log in real life. These are all factors you need to know when hiring a candidate, that you may not get to see until the interview.

Speaking of interviews, here’s an interview with Juan Cartagena, co-founder of 500 startups, startup Traity

Interview with Japanese 500startups Startup: Language Cloud

According to brothers Billy and John Martyn, language learning and educational technology in Japan needed a big dose of innovation. That’s what their Japanese startup Language Cloud is all about.

The Martyn brothers are half American and half Japanese and spent their lives growing up internationally. They were born in Saudi Arabia, and grew up in Pakistan, France and the U.S. Billy ultimately graduated college from UVA while brother John graduated from George Mason University. To call these two worldly may be a bit of an understatement.

Now back in Japan, both brothers are attacking the problem with technology in language education. We’re not talking about Rosetta Stone here. Language Cloud is a complete educational system that helps teachers teach languages to students better, and helps students learn easier.

“Language Cloud is a learning management system designed specifically for language education. In short, it provides educators and students with an easy to use and more importantly, free, digital platform for managing and enhancing the quality of language classes, while simultaneously promoting student collaboration and enthusiasm for foreign languages through school-based social networking. In addition, the Language Cloud interface has been designed to be both intuitive and simple to use. This allows instructors and students, even those with little tech experience, to confidently begin using web 2.0 technologies in the classroom for educational purposes.” Billy told us in an interview.

Language Cloud has already attracted 7000 students and teachers out of 54 academic institutions including grade schools, private language learning schools and universities.

We got a chance to talk in depth with Billy Martyn. Check out our interview below.

Meet Indian 500 Startups Company TradeBriefs, Email Newsletters Making People Experts

Sree Vijaykumar, the founder of Indian startup TradeBriefs, has turned an email newsletter business into a bonafide startup with big upside potential. Some may think that email newsletters are old school, and that in this age of mobile first startups and apps, apps and more apps, how could there possibly be room at the 500 startups lair for an email newsletter startup?

TradeBriefs is in the current class at 500startups so obviously there’s more than meets the eye with these email newsletters.

“We have managed to silence our naysayers. People didn’t think an email newsletter business could thrive, but we have successfully demonstrated that our formula works.. Our subscribers and advertisers are both happy, which is great and now we are ready to scale.” Vijaykumar told us in an interview. Scaling is what they are focusing on while they are in Mountain View participating in the 500 startups accelerator program.

TradeBriefs is part human editor and part learning algorithm. They say that their newsletters are helping professionals in their concentrated fields become industry experts.

TradeBriefs began with an industry newsletter for India’s retail industry and quickly expanded to four other verticals including; Telecom, Finance, IT and FMCG. They are planning on adding verticals and expanding out of India.

In the US, Fierce has been able to make a viable business out of email newsletters, turned into websites, within the tech industry. Now, in addition to their websites, and newsletters Fierce also hosts major industry events in the telecom, mobile and tech industries. Is it possible for TradeBriefs to do the same thing? Obviously 500 Startups thinks so.

Check out the rest of our interview with Vijaykumar below.

Chattanooga, America’s First Gig City, Welcomes 500 Startups For Will This Float At GEW

One of the biggest misconceptions in the startup and tech space is that Kansas City and Google were the first to offer 1GB Ethernet to businesses and residents. While we love Kansas City startups it’s actually Chattanooga Tennessee that was first with citywide 1gb Ethernet to homes and residences.

Chattanooga has been doing some very big things for entrepreneurs and startups lately. Back in August we brought you exclusive coverage of the GigTank Demo Day. Chattanooga has also been aggressively recruiting entrepreneurs and startups to the region with economic incentives.

Community leaders Sheldon Grizzle and Enoch Elwell haven’t slowed down either. Among other things, including running the Colab space, Grizzle and Elwell have recently been in Chicago, Nashville and Atlanta evangelizing about one of the most truly beautiful places in the world to launch a startup.

In fact it was at the VentureAtlanta event where Grizzle caught the eye of 500 Startups Co-Founder & Sith Apprentice Paul Singh.

500 Startups is the extremely active and diverse vc firm and accelerator in Mountain View. Although the secret 500 startup lair is physically located in Silicon Valley it’s anything but a valley accelerator. Here on nibletz alone we’ve profiled over a dozen 500 startups, none of them have been from the valley.

This week, as the world gears up for global entrepreneurship week so does Chattanooga. Their signature event pits 15 startups against each other this year, in the “will this float” startup competition. The competition, abbreviated WTF, has grown in both the number of participating startups and prize money/investment. The Times Free Press reports that last year’s winner, SupplyHog, is already making money.

This year the contestants include a new startup aiming to help convert streaming music listeners into active music purchasers. Another innovative idea vying for an investment of up to $250,000.

Another startup competing for the gold is looking to turn Farmville into somewhat of a reality. Entrepreneur Troy Cain plans on building an urban farm that is ultimately controlled by mobile devices. Farmers would be able to buy warehouse space where they would be able to plant their own urban farms. Plant watering, and other needs would be monitored and executed via mobile phone commands.

“People want to have a garden and grow their own food, but they don’t have the space or time to maintain it,” Cain said to the Times Free Press. “We’re looking at making it less than the average people spend on food per month,”…”We think it’ll float.”

Entrepreneurs, other startups and the community can come and see the 15 teams pitch live on Thursday at 6pm on the fourth floor of the public library at 1001 Broad Street. They’ll be showing off a new space that’s dedicated to tech work and will even feature things like lights that dance on the walls in response to tweets.

Linkage:

Get your ticket for “Will This Float” here

Source: Times Free Press

No one covers high growth tech in the South East like nibletz.com

We’ll see you in February

500 Startups Company From Buenos Aires, Wideo, Is The Easiest DIY Video Animation Platform

When it comes time for pitch day there’s something that everybody wants, and that’s a good video. Sure most startups will work for weeks on end on the pitch deck, but going to the slide in the deck that has cute little fuzzy things hacking away at computers, the sunshining and little puppies dancing because your go to market strategy is so great, puts you above the rest.

While most startups, businesses and just your every day people, wish they had great animated videos, most aren’t that creative. That’s why animated video houses make the big bucks,and animated videos don’t fit in the lean startup budget.

Have no fear 500 startups startup, Wideo is here.

Wideo is a do-it-yourself animated video platform. You choose the characters, fonts, backgrounds,lighting, color, sound and more. You put it all together on a very easy to use creation tool, share your computer three times and voila, instant animation. You’ll be producing hit Saturday morning cartoons in no time.

All jokes aside though, Wideo is one bad ass startup and anything that can make my life as a startup founder easier, and at very little cost, is something that I like.

Dave McClure must have liked it to because those guys are creating millions of quick animation videos in the top secret 500 startups lair.

Check out our interview with Agu De Marco one of Wideo’s co-founders, below.

500 Startups Unveiled Today: Meet Australian Startup Kickfolio The Easiest Way To Test iOS Apps

The startups that were selected to convene in the top secret 500 startups lair in Mountain View California this fall were revealed today. Dave McClure, the founder of 500 Startups along with Paul Singh have assembled another cohort of ass kicking, startup crushers, including Australian startup Kickfolio.

The rare breed of talent chosen to undergo the top secret 500 startups program come from all facets of the tech world. There are publishing startups, web tools, integrated browser plugins, analytical startups and even developer resources. That’s the category that Kickfolio fits in.

McClure and his team pick startups for a variety of reasons, undoubtedly the fact that this team has a co-founder named Diesel, must play into the flavor of startup monsters McClure is currently working on. Couple that with the fact that these Aussie founders swear Kickfolio is the best way for developers to test iOS apps and you have a recipe for startup inhalation.

We got a chance to talk with that particular founder, yes the one who goes by Diesel. Check out our interview with Diesel Laws below.

Boston 500 Startups Startup: Privy To Make Online Advertising Easier And Transparent

By now every new business owner knows that they need to have some kind of internet presence. Many also know that they need to advertise online. After business owners decide they need to advertise online, where to go and what to do often becomes a headache.

Google’s AdWords product is typically one of the easiest points of entry into online advertising. If you live in a small or medium sized market AdWords can work perfectly for you. However, when you get into larger cities, signing up and using AdWords can be a shot in the dark.

AdWords algorithm based advertising can be confusing to someone with very little online experience. Naturally, the more money you put into a platform like AdWords the better your conversions will be. Or at least that’s what many advertisers think.

When a company with a new online presence sprinkles in social media and other possible revenue streams, the overall plan can become a disorganized mess. It doesn’t take long to lose track of where your ad dollars are going, and how different efforts are paying off.

Boston startup Privy is creating a much easier online advertising platform to use and understand. Privy’s founder Ben Jabbawy is hoping to add a layer of transparency to online advertising that hasn’t existed before. Jabbawy wants to make it easy for local businesses to buy online advertising and know exactly how many customers they get for every dollar they spend.

Sounds easy enough right?

Dave McClure liked the concept enough to bring Privy out to Mountain View California for the current session of 500 Startups. We got a chance to talk to Jabbawy about Privy, his hometown of Boston and what makes advertising work. Check out the interview below.

nibletz.com Becomes The First Site To Integrate With 500 Startups “Markerly”

Markerly founder Sarah Ware has teamed up with nibletz.com as their beta guinea pig

We’ve covered Markerly pretty in depth over the past few months. Their rockstar woman founder, Sarah Ware, will even be a panelist at the upcoming “everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference” event in February.

When we first started reporting on Markerly it was a browser plugin that allowed you to very easily highlight, clip and share any content on any website. Markerly allows you to share to your social networks, email or even your own personal Markerly account so that you can have text later on, and the source information from that text.

We installed the browser plugin a few months back and would share content from nibletz.com and other startup focused online magazines periodically using the Markerly tool.

Well, last month Ware and her DC based startup got accepted into Dave McClure’s 500 startups program in Mountain View California. We have a pretty good relationship with Ware and we weren’t surprised when she called to tell us that just under two weeks into the program they were making a mini-pivot.

We won’t go too much into what that mini-pivot is, we have to save some of the suspense for the 500 startups demo day early next year. But we will tell you that Markerly is now integrated within nibletz.com.

All you have to do is select text like you would to copy and paste, anywhere, in any article within nibletz.com. Regardless of whether you have the browser plugin or not, once you select the text you want a hover button will appear above the text. At the moment the button allows you to share the extracted text to Twitter, Facebook or by email.

When you share your highlight, those who check it out on your social networks will be taken to our original story and they’ll even be able to see the highlighted text within the story.

Markerly is a great tool in that regard. I’m willing to bet on a daily basis someone shares a link with me either by email or instant message and with that link, minimal text. Well the problem arises when I’m sent a link to a 1000 word story. I don’t have time to read 1000 words just to get to what someone else wants me to see. Using Markerly I can see the text that someone wants me to see within the entire body of the story so I can grab the context at my leisure.

While we’ve seen some of our readers adopt the browser plugin Markerly product and share across Facebook and Twitter, the team at Markerly has made it insanely easy for anyone to capture the experience (you see what I did there).

Right now it works on any desktop/laptop/PC/Mac browser and hopefully down the road it will work on Mobile as well.

So go for it, try it, select some text in this story and see what happens.

Markerly is actually solving two problems for nibletz.com. The first is the sharing problem I described above an also the more traditional social sharing problem. We have share buttons at the bottom of each and every story, and we encourage you to use them. However, we know that we have some long stories here at nibletz.com so when you can’t wait to share something, highlight it and send it out immediately using nibletz.com now powered by Markerly.

Linkage:

Check out Markerly here

500 startups here

Everywhere Else here

DC Entrepreneur: Sarah Ware Makes Her Markerly Over 2800 Miles For 500 Startups

Sarah Ware’s mobile office set up in Littleton CO on the way to 500 startups

Nearly two weeks ago the woman behind Washington DC startup Markerly and her gal pal Megan set out on an epic journey. These two twenty something women set on a cross country road trip only rivaled by Thelma and Louise. Except this was 2012, and Ware managed to work throughout the entire trip.

In between camp sites, horseback riding, boating, hiking, and picture taking, Ware was constantly working to prepare her social highlighting startup for the real journey which begins soon in Mountain View California.

Ware and Markerly join a nice sizable handful of startups from the Washington DC area that have caught the eye of Dave McClure and his 500 startups.

While we’re preparing another epic journey of our own to cover a bunch of accelerator demo days from accelerators that have been working all summer long, McClure and the 500 startups fall 2012 class are just starting to arrive. They’re wiping the last bit of sleep out of their eyes and preparing for five months of intense bootcamp style work on their startups.

It may no even be fair o call what they do at 500 startups “boot camp style” some of the startups that have completed McClure’s rigorous program have likened it more to “startup hazing” with a much bigger pay off.

Ware is no stranger to unusually long work days as the 25 year old has managed to graduate from Georgetown, work at DC’s prominent startup, Living Social, and then battle her way through the mine fields of launching her own startup. She’s even had imitators come out of the woodwork already and those who have accused her of imitating.

We’ve tried a few of the highlighting applications out there and nothing is as easy to use or easy to share as Markerly.

As she gears up for 500 startups it’s easy to see why she and her friend decided to drive it across the country. There’s no more rest for the next five months. We will be checking in with Ware periodically over the next 5 months while she’s in the top secret 500 lair crushing it.

Linkage:

Go start using Markerly here

Check out 500 here

Nibletz is the voice of startups “everywhere else” and we want you here

We Speak With Washington DC 500 Startups, Startup: Speek

While a lot of people are talking about TechCrunch Disrupt NY Battlefield winner UberConference when it comes to conference calling startups, another conference calling startup has been brewing in the Washington DC area. We first got to check out Speek back in May at the Capital Connection and TechBuzz conference in Washington DC. After carefully checking out both UberConference and Speek, Speek seems to be the simplest, most easy to understand conference calling solution out there.

It’s no wonder that Speek has everything together, it’s founded by John Bracken the founder of e-vite and Danny Boice who attended Harvard and is a former executive with The College Board.

More importantly though is how easy it is to setup Speek and get started with your own special url.

Speek is working out of AOL’s Fishbowl incubator in the Washington DC area, along another great DC startup CONT3NT. But Boice and Bracken were on the road to startup success even before that.

As Boice tells us in the interview below, Speek was created when two internet entrepreneurs attacked the group calling problem with startup vigor. Both Boice and Bracken had come from big corporate jobs and were always on conference calls. It was the clunkiness that is typical of big conference calls that drove these two to create Speek.

Check out our interview with Boice below:

Washington DC Startup: Contactually Manages Your Relationships Contextually In Your Inbox INTERVIEW

Washington DC startup Contactually launched their contact relationship management tool for email back in January. Contactually is backed by Dave McClure’s 500 startups and has also raised over $200,000 in angel funds.

Contactually’s tool works right in your inbox and connects you and your contacts through email and LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Klout, Quora, Flickr, and more social networks. The service syncs all your contacts relevant data into your new online address book that works seamlessly with GMail and Google Apps.

Contactually provides an easy to navigate contact dashboard which highlights your weekly activity along with your action items. It also sends reminders to you via email based on your action items with your contacts. It’s an extremely useful tool for business professionals, prosumers and even startups who often have a hard time keeping tabs on all the balls they are juggling.

We met some of the nice folks at Contactually when we were in DC for Capital Connection, TechBuzz and the TechCocktail Startup America events last month. Check out our interview below: