Brooklyn Startup Kapture Turns You Into A Brand Ambassador

Kapture,kaptu.re, Brooklyn startup,startup interviewA startup in Brooklyn New York, called Kapture is turning people everywhere into brand ambassadors based on the photos they take with their smartphone cameras. Everyone loves sharing pictures over social media, now, when you’re snapping away, and you catch a brand, you could be rewarded.  Kapture is allowing new ways for retail brands, consumer goods, and other businesses to capitalize on pictures being taken of their products, services and businesses already.

When a user shares a Kapture moment with a social network like Facebook, or Twitter they can be instantly rewarded with items that range from discounts to physical goods. Rewards can be redeemed immediately or stock piled for a later date.

Michael Szewcyk, the co-founder and President of Kapture is no stranger to startups. In fact, he was working for a Silicon Valley based startup, Qwiki when he had the idea for Kapture. He quickly moved back to New York and began the launch process.

Kapture started last December with 25 businesses on board in the greater New York area. Rewards including things like a free glass of champagne for users who took a picture at Gansevoort Park’s rooftop Bar. Legendary ping pong club spin, offered a free drink to people who posted pictures of their game.


Kapture also makes it easy for people to find opportunities to earn rewards, which the startup conveniently calls “Photo Ops”. Within the iPhone app, users can find photo ops and then partake in the ones they want to get the prizes for.

We got a chance to talk with the Kapture team. Check out the interview below.

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Brooklyn Startup Launches SwapOMatic The Bartering Vending Machine

swapomatic,bartering machine,nibletz,techcrunch,tech.liJust the other day we were talking about, and tweeting out how hot bartering was. We even ran an interview with the founder of Arizona startup Kwiddy which is an online site to facilitate person to person bartering or trading (as in real life).

Well this Brooklyn startup has taken a concept art piece and turned it into almost a viable startup. The SwapOMatic machine doesn’t accept credit cards, cash or change. Instead, if you see something cool in the machine that you want, you can swap it for something that you’re willing to give up.

For now the machine operates on the honor system and doesn’t give a monetary value to anything in the machine because value depends on how bad someone wants something.

However, with all the publicity and interest the SwapOMatic team has picked up, they are currently reworking it for the next design. This machine is part concept art, but it is an actual working machine. In fact they have it sitting at the Ample Hills Creamery in Brooklyn, where anyone can swap anything for the stuff inside of the machine.

On the company’s website it gives you a text base map of what’s currently inside the machine. Take a look below:

As you can see it’s a wide variety of things. Everything from YiGiOh trading cards to hand written poems have lived in the machine and traded for other stuff.

The SwapOMatic team has a kickstarter project going on now for $135,000 so they can do more research and development on how to actually make this a viable business and a product to promote bartering. They have raised $34,529 (at the time this article was written) of the $135,000 goal. There are 10 days to go.

Bartering is becoming hotter by the minute. Bartering goes back to probably the stone ages where people would trade their goods, like vegetables and milk, for meat and clothing. Bartering has taken on a new life of it’s own thanks to the internet and sites like Craigslist and now Kwiddy which offer online bartering solutions.

The trading and bartering phenomenon is so hot that A&E has just launched a new show called barter kings.

We’re hoping that the SwapOMatic team can either raise this $135,000 or other angel money so they can develop this idea. We could see a day where you could swap your iPad nano for a baseball card you’ve always wanted. Or a stack of cd’s for something else new and more interesting.

Linkage:

SwapOMatic Website

SwapOMatic’s Kickster Page

Source: Tech.li

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