Baltimore Startup: Woofound Launches Gamified Recommendation App For iOS

Woofound is a Baltimore based startup in the recommendation space. Since we hail from Baltimore and Philly, this is exciting news for our area, and of course “everywhere else”.

Woofound matches your personality to things you want to do. Woofound was actually built in conjunction with psychoanalyst and psychotherapist Dr. Noreen Honeycutt from Baltimore Maryland. This is actually the second startup in just as many days that we’ve reported on that dives much deeper than the surface to serve up recommendations or discoveries. The first was London based ColourDNA which uses the psychology of colours in it’s discovery platform.

Our friend Sarah Pereze over at TechCrunch reports that Woofound co-founders Dan Sines and Josh Spears founded the company last year after Spears was set up on a blind date. The two friends thought, wouldn’t it be great if there was a way to match up interests based on personality traits?

Like Parking Panda, (another Baltimore startup) Woofound’s launch centers around Baltimore and DC, however today’s launch brings online the 70 top metro markets. Perez pointed out that most of the recommendations in her hometown of Tampa were things she was already familiar with. I had much better luck in Atlanta this early morning.

There’s not much mention of how deep the personality integration goes however they are going to develop a version of Woofound for the Univesity of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) that will help students with career path goals.

The interface is nice and it has this simple feel to it. The user simply rates things “Me or Not Me” reminiscent of the hot or not days.

The iOS version launched today with Android in the coming months.

Linkage:

Check out Woofound here

Source: TechCrunch

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Baltimore Startup: Need Beta Testers? Beta Punch Has You Covered

Ross Nochumowitz, is a bail bondsman by day and a startup founder by night. His startup called Beta Punch seeks to make the beta testing process more productive for startup founders and software launchers.

Beta Punch is a community of beta testers, almost a social network of beta testers if you will. There are other companies out there that promise and deliver beta testers for startups but with Nochumowitz’ Beta Punch, the beta testers themselves are ranked by startups and have their own competitive network within the community.

The other day I heard someone say if you  show your startup off to everyone and they love it you’re doing something wrong. Nochumowitz echoes that philosophy telling tehccoktail.com:

“The biggest mistake that startups make while beta testing is asking the wrong people for feedback for their startup. Often times startup founders want to show their family or friends their next big idea, and no matter what it is ,they are going to tell you they like it.”

The other popular course for the beta test is LaunchRock. If you’re a startup or into the startup scene then you’ve probably seen one too many Launch Rock pages. While it’s a great concept and does work for some, many startups wait months and months to accumulate email addresses and then when it’s time for the beta people have forgotten about the startup or even worse, they’ve already tested a competing product.

Beta Punch has over 500 testers and has already worked with over 150 startups.

One thing about Beta Punch though is that the testers will give real feedback. I overheard someone at a startup event in New Orleans talking about “I don’t want to get bad feedback” whoa those guys need to go back to the workforce. Beta Punch is definitely worth checking out if you’ve got a startup product ready to be tested.

Linkage:

TechCocktail the source for this story is holding an awesome event in DC learn about it here

Here’s that source piece from TechCocktail

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Baltimore Startup: Parking Panda Expanding To Philly & San Francisco

The genius parking startup out of Baltimore Maryland, Parking Panda, has announced that now that they’ve rolled out service in the nation’s capital, the next cities on the list are Philadelphia and San Francisco.

Parking Panda CEO and Co-Founder, Nick Miller, has reported that they’ve closed one $250,000 round of funding and have another one in the works.

The service works similarly to the way that hotels.com works. Users logon to their website at parkingpanda.com and they can browse the available parking spots in the city they are looking at. The spots are a variety of vacant spots in parking garages and also individual driveways and business lots.

The user can pay for the current day, a future date or a range of dates. They prepay using their credit card and are guaranteed a parking spot in the facility  they selected. Parking spots range anywhere from $5.00 on up.

Parkingpanda goes one step further and lets users know what the parking spot they are looking at is near. In Washington DC Parkingpanda tells the user the nearby attractions like museums and metro routes.  In Baltimore, Miller reports that a lot of people are renting their driveways on Ravens and Orioles game days.

There’s been no date announced for the expansion but it looks like it will be sooner rather than later. Miller told BmoreMedia that they are working on finding the parking spaces in both Philly and San Francisco.

Linkage:

Check out ParkingPanda here

Source: BmoreMedia

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Baltimore: Betamore Plans To Launch Charm City’s 3rd Tech Focused Co-Working Space

Co-working spaces are hot. With the rise in startups and entrepreneurship cities everywhere are finding themselves home to these new centers. We’ve visited a bunch of co-working sites up and down the east coast as part of our sneaker strapped start up road show.

Three Baltimore entrepreneurs, Greg Cangialosi, Mike Brenner and Sean Lane have teamed up to bring Baltimore’s third tech focused, incubator, accelerator co-working space to life. The space is called “Betamore” a rather clever name don’t you think. Betamore joins the Emerging Technology Center and a forthcoming space which is a partnership between Loyola and Wasabi partners, now that’s hot (you see what I did there).

Betamore is part Hybrid Accelerator, Incubator and co-working space says the website Citybizlist Baltimore.

The space is 8,000 square feet and will feature two large classrooms, dedicated office space, conference room space and a co-working space. If you’re not familiar with co-working spaces, think the lunch table at your high school, just much longer with plugs and internet. Oh and of course toss out the gossipy drama because one thing is proven about co-working spaces and that is that people love to talk about startups and people actually help each other.

More after the break
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Baltimore Startup Parking Panda Launches Service In Washington DC

(photo: Baltimore Sun)

One of the things Cameron and I noticed when we were in Washington DC as part of our nationwide startup road trip, was that their parking meters were equipped for internet payment. That meant we could refill our parking meters while we were meeting with some great startups all over town, and not have to run back to the meter. Convenience had it’s price but we needed to do what we needed to do.

If you don’t want to mess with the high tech innovative meters in DC, or the hassle of finding a space, Baltimore Startup Parking Panda has you covered. Parking Panda works with owners of un-utilized parking spaces. These could be in the form of small lots of the side of buildings, or parking company owned lots that have spaces that aren’t used on a regular basis.

Parking Panda Users can rent spaces using the service and basically pay in advance for a guaranteed spot. This really comes in handy, especially in a city like Washington DC where street parking, even at the meter, can be scarce.

“A city resident myself, I know that finding available parking can be maddening, expensive, and sometimes almost impossible,” said Nick Miller, CEO of Parking Panda. “Parking Panda takes the hassle and expense out of searching for a parking spot. Parking in D.C. will no longer be such a time-consuming, daunting task because people can reserve spots ahead of time and for less money.”

More after the break
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