California Startup Archives - Page 4 of 5

Kansas City Startup: Divshot Wins $25k in crowdfunder’s Crowdstart Contest In LA

Los Angeles based crowdfunding startup crowdfunder just completed their first Crowdstart contest. The seven week contest drew over 700 submissions, 74 contestants and 10 finalists. Kansas City startup Divshot emerged as the winner, taking home the $25,000 prize.

While we all know that the JOBS act was passed earlier this year and crowdfunding for equity won’t be implemented until the end of the year or early next year, Crowdfunder didn’t want to wait to start helping startups raise invaluable funds. For the prize money they teamed with Right Side Capital Management.

Divshot is a company that provides web designers with drag and drop tools for rapidly prototyping websites and designs. The concept was born just 90 days ago at a Startup Weekend event in Kansas City, home to the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, who is the major backing behind the Startup Weekend brand of events.

“Opportunities for local fundraising are limited, not just here in Kansas City but everywhere around the country,” said Jake Johnson, Divshot co-founder. “Crowdfunder will enable us to tap into capital, education and resources through their online platform. What’s good for us is good for our local economy. We’re excited to be part of making a positive economic impact here in our own backyard.”

Now that the Los Angeles contest has come to a close, crowdfunder has just kicked off their Crowdstart Las Vegas contest. This time though, half a million dollars is up for grabs. The contest kicks off tonight at Startup Weekend in Vegas.

“We’re thrilled to be able to support entrepreneurs and innovation here and throughout the country,” said crowdfunder CEO Chance Barnett. “Divshot is just the beginning of the kind of nurturing, education and support that crowdfunder intends to provide. That’s why we’re hosting another startup contest, Crowdstart Las Vegas, which kicks off today at Vegas Startup Weekend where $500,000 is up for grabs by the Vegas Tech Fund.”

Linkage:

Check out Crowdfunder here

Check out Divshot here

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Interview With California Startup: At The Pool, Casual People Discovery Platform

People discovery is a hot startup space this year. As you’ve heard time and time again it was the startup space dejour at South By Southwest back in March. Startups like Ban.jo, Glancee, and Highlight ruled the roost on the streets of Austin during the interactive festival.

Now four months later, Glancee has been purchased by Facebook and the others are getting just passive traffic (I know some may disagree). One of the problems with people discovery applications are the in your face constant notifications that occur when you’re logged into one of the services. You get inundated with notifications about people you don’t know and sometimes don’t even want to know. There has to be an easier way.

Enter “At The Pool”

The Los Angeles startup offers you a once a day match based on interests and things you may want to do off line. Are you looking for new rock climbing buddies? Maybe you’re looking for new friends to start some pick up hockey? Maybe you’re looking to talk startups or even build a startup? Well At The Pool says there’s a pool for that.

Just what does that mean? Well we talk with At The Pool’s co-founder Alex Capecelatro to find out about their pool party. Check out the interview below:

Interview With California Startup: RewardMe

Loyalty and reward is the hottest space for startups right now. Within a years time (probably by the next sxsw) many of the loyalty and rewards startups out there will have disappeared and only the brightest and best will survive. One of those is California based startup RewardMe.

RewardMe was founded by four friends that were college buddies from UCLA. The company provides a point of sale based loyalty and rewards program that provides great information back to the business owner. RewardME rewards those loyal customers but it can also assist in bringing lost customers and sales back into the retail store or restaurant.

One of the unique things about RewardMe is while you can get incentives, messages and discounts via your smartphone or regular mobile phone, a smartphone isn’t required.

RewardMe’s merchant dashboard is available to any user anywhere. This is great for when the owner or manager goes out of town or if you’re managing multiple locations from one centralized office.

RewardMe has thought of everything that should be built into a solid reward and loyalty program. We got a chance to interview the guys behind RewardMe. Check out the interview below:

Chicago Tech Week: We Talk Raved Social Discovery & Recommendation INTERVIEW

If you weren’t sure about how hot the Chicago tech and startup scene is, then this may validate it even more. Raved, a Sunny Vale California startup, so yes from the Valley, made the trek all the way to TechWeek in Chicago to show off their social mobile discovery recommendation startup.

We talked with Director of Marketing Bill Porter, about their new mobile app, which he assures us is going to serve up only the best results from your actual friends.

What sets Raved apart from other social mobile discovery recommendation apps is the fact that it’s more of a layer than an actual social network. You’re using recommendations based on your current friends and followers without having to join and keep up with just another network.

The team of engineers at Raved are rolling the app out in the coming weeks to both Android and iPhone.

Raved is going to serve up results about restaurants, stores, and other places that your friends “Rave” about. You won’t get the clutter of the bad stuff, and it won’t be as noisy as other similar apps.

It’s no secret though that social mobile discovery recommendation apps are becoming a very crowded space. For Raved’s sake we are hoping that people will flock to the app because of it’s crisp and clean UX and because it promises to be less noisy.

Check out our video interview below:

California Startup: PortfolioDashboards Helps Investors Manage Startup Investments

If you’re an angel investor, venture capitalist or have any other kind of hand in investing in startups and early stage companies, than you know that tracking your investments isn’t as easy as you would like it to be. That is until now.

Orange County California based startup PortfolioDashboards offers something that angel investors and VC’s have been longing for. Their problem, was to find a better way to track investments in startup companies and they’ve done it.

PortfolioDashboards was founded by Ancestry.com alumnus Kerry Kane. Kane ran digital marketing at Ancestry.com and has had his hand in many different startup companies. Ancestry.com alumni are starting all kinds of companies. Just over a week ago we interview Jesse Gant, also an ancestry.com alumni who started Recmnd.Me

We got a chance to interview Kane about PortfolioDashboards. Check that interview out, after the break.

LA Startup: 12 Society Offering Hot Subscription Box Of Celebrity Endorsed Goodies

We’ve all seen so many varieties of the subscription box model. We’ve got birch box for health and beauty, Chicago’s Klutch Club for health and wellness products, England’s Flavor Box for monthly flavors, Houston’s Whimsey Box for craft goodies and countless others.

12 Society is offering something really cool. We don’t want to call it the dudes equivalent to a Birch Box because there are definitely geeky, gadget and fun loving women who will love the stuff they can get from being a 12 society member. The best part about 12 Society though is that you’re getting products that are endorsed by celebrities like Nick Cannon, Nas, Tim Linecum, Michael Strahan, Blake Griffin and Kevin Love.

12 Society offers top notch gadgets, gear and fun. Their website shows off a pair of headphones, remote controlled helicopter and a nice Spalding basketball as some of the things you could get delivered for your $39 subscription, monthly.

12 Society promises between four and six premium products from tech,athletics,fashion and apparel.

Co-Founder Nasir Jones (Hip Hop legend Nas) says on the company’s website:

“I’ve been blessed to lead a lifestyle that allows me to experience the pinnacle of creation and innovation, and I have always wanted a way to share this with the people that I love. That’s why I’m teaming up with some of my favorite athletes, entertainers, musicians and thought-leaders to start 12Society.

Our celebrity style board will give you an inside look into the latest trends in tech, fashion, popular culture and athletics that are impacting and improving our lives. We’ll turn you into a taste-maker and trend-setter by picking out products every month that we love and use, all while giving you a great value on gadgets, gear, apparel, accessories and more! We are award-winners, world champions, entrepreneurs, music legends, dunk masters and sack-artists – and we’re here to hook you up.”

Nas’ co-founder and CEO of 12 Society is Sameer Mehta a 2009 graduate of Carnegie Mellon. Mehta was also the co-founder of Mark Cuban backed Jungle Cents which had raised $1.5 million before selling the assets off to Cuban to found 12 Society.

Linkage:

Check out or sign up for 12 Society here

Nibletz is the voice of startups “everywhere else” here are more stories from “everywhere else”

California Startup: Recmnd.Me The People Recommendation Site, Interview

Recommendation startups are hot right now. It seems that every time you turn around there is another startup or app recommending something or other. Now Jesse Gant, who has a lengthy resume in some big startups like Ancestry.com, has invented the people recommendation startup.

Now we all know that LinkedIn offers referrals and references, but those are all from your top tier contacts. I couldn’t tell you how many times a friend of mine, or even a nodding acquaintance has asked me to write a referral or reference for them on LinkedIn. A few I’ve done, others I’ve passed on. Most hiring people and recruiters know the value of a LinkedIn referral, which is about as valuable as your LinkedIn password was yesterday.

Recmnd.Me allows you to post a profile for yourself and once you’ve signed up people can decide on their own with just a click if they’re going to recommend you or not. Gant told TechCrunch that he had seven references on LinkedIn throughout his entire career, but on recmnd.me he already had 21.

The other piece for Recmnd.Me is that if you’re looking to fill a position or need, and you search, say, “software developer” Recmnd.Me is going to rank the software developers in the network for you to see and choose.

Through one of our great friends in Utah we were introduced to Gant who took the time to do an interview with us. The interview is after the break.

June Is California Month At Startup America

If you’re a startup and you’re not already taking advantage of the benefits from a free Startup America membership you’re cheating yourself.

Startup America is a nationwide cooperative partnership that helps support startups through their national organization and 22 (current) partnerships across the country. The organization, led by CEO Scott Case, who was the founding CTO of Priceline.com, holds lectures, seminars, webinars, events, summits and much more. They also give away stuff that’s useful to companies just starting up.

Startup America has three main goals; to provide valuable resources and connections to help companies grow, support regional startup ecosystems throughout the country, and to recognize startups as the drivers of our economy and their founders as American Heroes.

They’ve assembled over $1 billion dollars in commitments from partners to support the growth of startups.

Startup America holds national events, like the event they held at South By Southwest, Regional leader summits and more. They also hold big kickoff events for each regional partnership and then they also partner with other events as they did with Capital Connection/ TechBUZZ in Washington DC and as they are doing with the We Own It Summit June 28th and 29th in New York City.

They’ve been rapidly deploying regional partnerships across the country. They have 22 regions already and by the end of this month they will have 25. Three new partnerships are kicking off in California this month.

San Diego on June 9, 2012

Orange County on June 13, 2012

Los Angeles June 16, 2012

If you’re in any of those areas, click on the links above to find out more about the kick off events for those regions.

For more information on Startup America visit their extremely easy to remember website at s.co

LA Startup: Lovvvit Video Interview With Founder Max Gotlieb At TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2012

Hollywood producer turned startup founder Max Gotlieb had a genius idea in his head and started developing it into what is now known as Lovvvit. We reported on Lovvvit earlier this year. It’s a video review/recommendation platform for people to pronounce their love for their favorite things.

After a few minutes with Gottlieb I quickly grabbed hold of the concept and it’s indeed genius. I thought back on the past seven years (the youtube years) and how many videos I’ve taken and shared from my favorite places. The number is quite large, but none of them ever talked about the places I actually love.

Sure there are birthday party videos, bachelor party videos, playing around videos and other funny stuff at my favorite haunts but not once did I walk in and do a video saying, “I love this place”. Imagine how cool it would be to have crowd sourced video reviews of peoples’ favorite places. It would be genuine, and engaging for both the loyal customer and the merchant.

Right now merchants are growing tired of the group-coupon (Groupon) deal space. Merchants are finding that they are losing their ass in margin to attract one time customers. Now they want better tools to target their frequent customers. Lovvvit provides a platform for just that, and it’s engaging, innovative and fun.

There’s a reward benefit on both sides of the platform as well. If you’re the customer and you do a video review of your favorite places you can earn Lovvvit dollars and upgrade to a premium status. As with any site the more reviews you do of your favorite places, the more trusted you become in the Lovvvit community.

On the side of the merchant, they are granted access to the videos in Lovvvit. They can share them across their own websites and their other social media channels. They can also add coupons and deals to the videos as well.

All of that makes Lovvvit a three fold community of reviewers, people looking to discover places and the merchants.

Check out our video interview with Gottlieb below:

Check out more of our TechCrunch Disrupt NY coverage here

California Startup: Smule Releases Hit App Songify To Android

At CES 2011 (last years CES not this years) hip hop producer/artist T-Pain told us personally and on video, that the “I am T-Pain” app would be coming soon to Android. Well for whatever reason that didn’t happen. But, there’s good news from the same startup developer Smule.

In addition to crafting the “I am T-Pain” app for iOS, which makes anyone sound like T-Pain, Smule has released a handful of other, intensely popular, interactive “music” apps, including Songify. If you’re an Android user and you’ve every seen or played with Songify on a friend’s iOS device then you know how addicting creating your own songs with the app can be.

What makes Songify so great? Well we had a chance to talk with Smule ahead of today’s announcement and here’s what they said:

“Songify has reached 9MM users on iOS and over 120MM songs have been created to date. We get multiple requests a day for users asking us to release Songify on Android.

Our “secret sauce” is using sophisticated artificial intelligence technology to make music creation accessible to non-musicians. Anyone can make music with Songify. Just talk into the phone, and Songify turns your speech into melody. We also made the user interface super-simple, so everyone from the ages of 3 to 93 can (and do!) use the app with ease. When you make music creation so easy, it gives people a powerful new mode of self-expression. “

That’s a lot of user created songs.

It’s been no secret that with midi api’s gone from Android since the release of Android 2.0, Android has lacked in the music creation category. Until now, all the cool creative music apps were on iOS only.

Smule released their popular Songify app to the Google Play store this morning. In addition to Songify and I am T-Pain, Smule is the developer of other hit music apps for iOS like Magic Guitar, Ocarina, Glee Karaoke and Magic Piano (which will hit Android next month)

If you can’t wait to try it, grab it here https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.smule.songifyin the Google Play Store.

San Diego Startup: Monster Offers Releases 18 Localized Daily Deals Apps

San Diego based Monster Offers has teamed up with app development studio Iconosys to release 18 new daily deals apps to Android powered smartphones.

The 18 daily deals apps go by the name of Monster Dealies and Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, New York, Orange County, San Diego, San Francisco, and Seattle.

Last June Inc magazine said the daily deals space could be worth $3 billion dollars this year in revenues. A BIA/Kelsey estimate suggests the revenue could reach $4 billion dollars by 2015. It’s also been revealed that a lot of consumers who aren’t taking advantage of daily deals sites and apps are leaving a lot of money on the table.

“The new ‘Monster Dealies’ apps bring to your Smartphone or Smart device those killer discounted Daily Deals that are specifically tailored for your local market or GPS-designated location. In view of the now huge size of the Daily Deal market, we think an app like this makes abundant sense, as it scours the landscape to highlight what you care about and what you want to see, while cutting out the noise and the deals that are clearly outside your particular target area. Why should you ever pay full price for a meal, massage, movie or show ticket again in your local area? Our Monster Dealies apps bring the best discounted deals to your Smartphone or Smart Device, so you are plugged in and ready to save money 24-7.” says Paul Gain Monster Offers CEO

More after the break
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HealthTech Startup In California Attracts NFL Champion Investors

Former Denver Broncos Terrell Davis and Byron Chamberlain with Credential Protection co-founder Jeffrey Fricher (photo Andrew Foulk for the Californian)

Former Denver Broncos players Terrell Davis and Byron Chamberlain have invested in a health tech startup in Temecula California. The startup called Credential Protection LLC is taking a different stab at the doctor review space.

Credential Protection LLC is using a mix of on the ground, in the office data along with online data to build a more dependable review database for doctors. The Credential Protection system actually begins in the doctors office with surveys given to patients. Doctors can join credential protection in a variety of plans that range from $195 a month for surveys and assessments to $1495 per month for a package that includes overall social media management for the physician.

The need for services like this is what drove Chamberlain and Davis to invest in the company that was founded by Jeffrey Frichner.

As an ex-football player, people want to know where you get the best doctor because they assume we had the best in the NFL,” Davis said to North County Times.

Davis had a stress fracture in his shin, late in his football career that took to long to diagnose. Davis also said that he was looking for a doctor to help him diagnose memory loss, mood swings and headaches, conditions Davis feels may have come from his football playing days. Although he did suggest they just may be from getting older.

“I love the fact that Credential Protection not only protects the doctor, but the public,” Chamberlain said. Chamberlain had a ruptured tendon in his hand that never quite healed right

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L.A. Startup: BuzzMob Is First Company In MWW Ventures

MWW is one of the largest PR firms in the country with a global presence. Their client list includes some of the top tier companies in their industries. Nikon and Samsung Mobile are both represented by MWW among a long list of familiar brands.

MWW just announced a new venture capital project spearheaded by their global head of technology and digital content, Ephraim Cohen. MWW ventures is incubating startups that advance media, marketing and public relations industries by investing firm resources in exchange for equity.

Cohen told Nibletz.com that MWW Ventures was developed by he and MWW Group CEO Michael Kempner who is a serial entrepreneur. With the verticals that the MWW Group is involved with Cohen says they come across great startups all the time. With MWW Ventures, the MWW Group will invest and incubate companies that will help them stay on “…the cutting edge of technology”.

Buzzmob, a Los Angeles startup was announced as MWW Ventures first portfolio company last week. Buzzmob is a mobile app for live events that forms location based social networks in real time and on the fly.

More after the break

California Company Creates New Search Startup Called Gooey Search INTERVIEW

Google is the goto search for most of the people out there on the internet. Sure there is Bing and Yahoo (powered by Bing) that we use occasionally but we tend to default to Google. However, we’ve all noticed as Google grows bigger and bigger, and now especially after the implementation of Google+ in the search results, searching isn’t as accurate as it used to be.

Couple the accuracy issue with privacy concerns, and you may be looking for a new search engine. Privacy is a growing concern for many. While there is a novelty in searching for something and seeing like ads on the side bar, sometimes the ads get in the way and feel downright stalkerish.

All of those reasons are why San Luis Obispo, CA based company Visual Purple is bringing their Gooey Search product to market. GooeySearch is an app that compliments your Google experience. We got a chance to talk with GooeySearch for an interview here it is:

What is Gooey Search and Visual Purple

“Like most people, Google is our go-to search engine and we love the iPad.” Heinbockel says, “With the exception of PageRank, search has changed little compared to other technologies over the years and has yet to successfully venture beyond 10 blue links. That inspired us to optimize for the iPad our proven, professional-grade search technology for analysts and researchers, GisterPRO. Gooey makes search fun and brings a new dimension of accuracy, privacy, anonymity and content transparency to Google searches. We have set out to make an app for the iPad that will allow you to interact and explore Google results like never before.” The search app is slated to launch December 2012, pending full funding from Kickstarter supporters.

David Ostby and Ed Heinbockel were founding figures when Visual Purple. The Company has enjoyed being an industry leader in intelligent training simulations and technologies throughout the Virtual World, Embedded and Decision-Based training sectors. In 2011, Visual Purple publicly introduced GisterPRO, a Cloud-Powered Exploratory Search Tool that delivers precision, high-quality search results while often revealing unanticipated yet highly insightful concepts and relationships. The tool has been in continuous use since Fall 2010.

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