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5 Angel.Co Startups From Everywhere Else: Nashville Edition

Nibletz.com is the voice of startups “everywhere else” and your source for Tennessee startup news. As many of our readers know we’ve been working on a series called “5 Angel List Startups From Everywhere Else”. It stems from the weekly traction email that most angel.co members receive. We’ve noticed time and time again that the “trending” startups on the Angel List email are predominantly from Silicon Valley. This of course isn’t the fault of angel.co it’s an amazingly great resource. But here you’ll find five startups profiled from “everywhere else”.

Since it’s Demo Day Month in Tennessee we thought what a great time to do “5 Angel List startups from everywhere else, Nashville Edition” if you’re looking for the Memphis edition, you can find it here.

Wannado

Let’s kick this thing off with one of the Jumpstart Foundry graduates from 2011. The startup called “wannado” is your guide to everything you wanna do. Great name, great concept.

We actually got to see a preview of wannado the other night in Memphis and it blew me away. The app has a robust feature set, yet an aesthetically pleasing user interface. It simply does exactly as they say it will, it tells you what’s available around you to do. If you’re looking for a show or a concert, it’s there. If you’re looking for a business networking event, it’s there. If you’re looking for a cooking class, a lecture, a speaker, a book club, they’re all there for you and everything is served up according to your preferences.

Wannado has an amazing sharing circle breakout piece which allows you to easily share an event any way you like. They also allow you to share events with friends that don’t have the wannado app without having to download the wannado app. They’re given a text message which takes them to a landing page for that event with an equally pleasing user experience.

Truth be told they weren’t on the Angel.co site but we like them that much so check it out here. They are still in private beta but sign up for an update and you’ll be the first person on your block to know wannado. (you like what we did there)

Find wannado on the web here and if you’re reading this wannado, you may want to sign up for the Angel List it’s free.

The next two entries come from the same entrepreneur. Phillip Maddox is the co-founder of Deedsy and VenueBlast.

Deedsy

Deedsy is a good deed engine. The premise is simple, do good deeds, and earn points. A good deed can be anything from a hug to house sitting, to picking up trash. Whatever good deed you do, with Deedsy you earn points.

You can create deeds for others to do and look for a “do gooder” to do that deed for you and then they’ll earn points. It’s a great feel good startup that will promote doing good in your life and community.

You can start off with 25 points if you head over here to the deedsy site and add your name to their LaunchRock.

Here’s a link to their Angel List page

VenueBlast

VenueBlast is the other entry from founder Phillip Maddox. VenueBlast is your ticket to live music online. Basically it’s a video streaming venue for live music and entertainment productions. For the end user they promise great quality productions that can be found in streaming or even pay per view offerings.

For the client they offer a robust set of features that can be delivered to the end user in a variety of ways. Their feature set is constantly evolving to stay up to date with the changes in streaming technology optimized for concerts and live entertainment. They also offer the ability for companies to sponsor live concerts and streaming events and offer analytics back to the customer.

Earlier this week VenueBlast reported that they’re working on some exciting new features and they hope to rollout to the public soon.

Find VenueBlast on the web here and on the Angel List here

Populr.me

Populr.me is the easiest way to quickly crete a great looking micro-site that the Nashville startup calls “pops”. Within minutes you’re able to create,deliver and manage your microsite for whatever the function.

One of their users, Jason Moore, is in the healthcare industry uses Populr.me to create microsites to push out to their healthcare industry partners in hospital and provider systems. Moore said that their custom communication via a secure portal is a game changer.

Populr.me offers a simple drag and drop layout engine making editing and publishing a cinch. They also offer unlimited custom domains with analytics available as well.

Populr.me is so popular that they won the 2012 Governor’s Innovation Conference and the $5,000 check to go along with it.

Here’s Populr.me’s website and here is their Angel List page

Meevl

Meevl is a Slovakian startup that graduated from Jumpstart Foundry in the 2011 class. They’ve actually relocated back to Slovakia but nonetheless they appear under Nashville on the Angel List.

Meevl is a unique startup. The Meevl platform easily allows employees to participate in reporting company news, typically a task handled by a PR person or team in large companies. With Meevl when an employee gets recognized for an achievement, has a baby, or maybe an employee related policy changes, Meevl crowdsources the news from the company employees.

“Currently, social media management platforms are mostly for small teams, where members watch their company’s presence on social media channels like Facebook, Twitter and so on,” Vladimir Tucek told BetaKit. “Even if it’s a really huge company, [social media] is managed by a very small team, and all content is produced by that team. We’d like to involve more employees in this process.”

By virtue of the employee participation in the Meevl platform companies can crowdsource news from their employee base, possibly reduce the PR budget for inhouse news and employee morale would stand to improve.

We’re on an international sneaker-strapped startup roadtrip here’s the details, we could use your support

Three Free Things Every New Startup Should Do

Do you remember when you used to be able to go to the school nurse and get three for free? Never mind.

Here are three things that every new startup should do when they first start out. It actually shocks me when I get into serious discussions with startup founders who have a pitch deck, a website, a social media presence, but neglect these three free things.

CrunchBase

Regardless of how you feel about Silicon Valley the biggest source for startups on the planet is CrunchBase. This data base of startups, entrepreneurs, founders, venture capitalists, angel investors, incubators, accelerators, and other startup related people in resources is amazing.

Creating a profile is free. The profiles have to be approved but that process usually takes less than 24 hours. Once approved though your profile as an individual and as your company has a place on CrunchBase.

This is where all the significant news and milestones is compiled “for the record”. When you have news of new top level executives, a funding round, a pivot etc you can add those entries to your CrunchBase profile.

CrunchBase is free. It’s a service of AOL (since the TechCrunch sale to AOL in 2010). Really every semi-serious startup needs a CrunchBase profile.

Angel.co

We give the Angel List (angel.co) a hard time because 90% of their trending news is based in the Valley, 5% in New York and the rest everywhere else. We do report on companies on the list form everywhere else. But again, like CrunchBase it’s free.

Angel.co does a great job of showing what’s hot and what’s not, and it’s actually not the founders of angel.co’s fault that startups “everywhere else” don’t trend. It’s not a matter of what they think, it’a all about traction and how many people endorse you, give you references, invest in you and follow you.

Naturally with the startup ecosystem in the valley they have more startups on the list, and hence trend better.

Regardless of the trending though you really need to register, again it’s free.

FounderSync

FounderSync is a startup themselves and based in Cleveland. It’s another great free resource for startup founders.

Once you sign up for FounderSync you can network with other founders across the country. It’s also not exclusive like FounderDating, and being that they’re from “everywhere else” they encourage startups from “everywhere else” to join the site.

Collaborate with founders, find your technical founder, get recommendations for developers, designers, make new friends and network network network.

So on our road trip if we meet you, do office hours with you, or judge a contest that you’re part of, please make sure you’ve done these three things.

Linkage:

Crunchbase

Angel.co

Foundersync

Nibletz needs your help, here

Arkansas Startup: Rebounces Puts The Green Back In The Tennis Ball

In our endless quest to look past the trending (read valley based) startups on the Angel List (angel.co), we came across one that is sports related, fun, green (environment) and green (money). The startup is called reBounces and they are based in Harrison Arkansas.

Arkansas has a bubbling startup scene and we’ve covered a handful of startups from Arkansas here at nibletz.

So what is reBounces?

Well Rebounces was founded by Bill Dirst and Cannon Fletcher. The company uses a gas based mixture technology invented by Dirst to put the bounce back into flattened tennis balls.

Typically when a tennis ball has been used over and over again they start to deflate. Even if you are only a casual tennis player you’ve probably noticed this deflating. Normally when a tennis ball deflates the natural reaction is to go buy another can of balls. While that’s all well and good, the tennis balls are not biodegradable and even in their flattened state they go into the landfill.

With the reBounces technology tennis balls are dumped into the Green Tennis Machine. After the machine is sealed and the balls sit for three days they enviro-magically have their bounce back. The balls have the same bounce as balls that just came out of a fresh can and they are back to regulation.

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5 Trending Angel List (Angel.co) Startups From Everywhere Else

Chances are if you read nibletz.com regularly, you are a startup, accelerator,incubator or angel from “everywhere else” just like us. So I’m sure you’ve probably noticed in your daily check to angel.co that all of the trending startups are almost always from Silicon Valley.

We’ve decided to highlight some of the trending startups from “everywhere else” that can be found on angel.co. So here’s our first list of five.

NetPlenish (Los Angeles)

NetPlenish is an innovative way to keep track of the things you regularly buy from the store, albeit razors, gatorade, coffee, socks, diapers etc. It hold all that information in a list for you in the cloud. NetPlenish then finds the best prices for everything on your list. This could be at K-Mart, WalMart, Target, Wahlgreen’s or which ever NetPlenish merchant partner has the best price.

Then, once a week you’re notified by NetPlenish either with a push notification or email, that they’ve done the research and found the best prices for the items you need. They get each item at the vendor with the best price and then voila in a few days your items are at your doorstep.

Talk about the king of convenience.

Find out more about NetPlenish here.

FormLabs, Boston

FormLabs in Boston is hoping to make 3D printers actually attainable. Right now companies like Makerbot and others have 3D printers that they can sell to you but they are often thousands of dollars.

The FormLabs 3D printer is going to be low-cost and print in 3D right out of the box.

Co-Founders Maxim Lobovsky and David Cranor are hiring right now and we’re hoping for a roll out soon because I want to start making action figures in my basement.

Find out more about Formlabs here

Mile High Organics, Boulder

We all know that Boulder has a thriving tech scene. In fact TechStars is based there and it’s like a little metropolis of all the next best ideas.

Mile High was recently featured in the Wall Street Journal’s Market Watch section as the Nation’s First USDA -Certified Organic Online Grocer.

Mile High Organics is America’s First Certified Organic Online Grocer. Members order online and receive convenient, scheduled home or office delivery of local, organic, non-GMO (non-genetically modified) produce, dairy, meat, seafood, groceries; health, home and beauty products. We have over 500 SKUs and growing.

Mile High is backed by Dave McClure and 500 startups.

If you’re into organic food, now you can order from Mile High, get your every day supplies from NetPlenish and never have to leave the house again, where we know you’re incubating that next big startup.