democratic national convention Archives

Video Interview With Charlotte Startup: WeRX Winners Of The StartupRockon Contest At The DNC

Just prior to the StartupRockon kickoff part at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte North Carolina we got to meet Amir Khoshnevis the Chief Strategist for Charlotte startup WeRx.org. They were one of the three finalists for the $5,000 StartupRockon grant contest. The winner was announced just before The Roots took the stage.

WeRx.org is an innovative crowdsourcing platform that would definitely be considered in the social entrepreneurship space. Khoshnevis and his co-founders discovered that people are paying way too much for their medication. Of course we’ve known this for years but what the WeRx team found was something that will blow most people’s minds away.

Take Lipitor for example. In it’s generic form the WeRX team found some pharmacies sold the drug for $11 and on the high end, $180 and that’s right in the Charlotte metro area. The unfortunate reality is that most people who require medication may do a limited cost comparison, and if they do they check the few pharmacies close by. If they can’t afford the cost of the medication close by they often decide to not take it. This can ultimately lead to death.

As another example Khoshnevis and the WeRx team found that in West Charlotte diabetes medications cost two to three times as much as they do in the Ballentine suburb of Charlotte. Why? Because the demographics skew more diabetic in West Charlotte.

So what did they do about this problem? They created WeRx which is a platform that allows people to crowdsource prescription prices. WeRx encourages those taking medications to input what they paid for it. Then then end users can geo-discover the best prescription prices and make the trip to another pharmacy to get the best price.

Ultimately the idea is to build such a large platform that big pharmacy companies bring their pricing system back inline with each other.

WeRx gives those that report prices a feel good “pill heart” so they know they’ve done their part to help people find the medications they need and hopefully drive the cost of prescriptions down.

This idea was so good that the startup that launched just last week, won the $5,000 StartupRockon grant contest. There win was announced Monday evening at the StartupRockon party featuring The Roots.

An ecstatic Khoshnevis tracked me down by the bar so proud that such a socially important startup won the contest. They plan on putting the $5,000 right back into the company that they’ve been bootstrapping since inception. Check out a video interview below with Khoshnevis just prior to the start of the party:

Linkage:

Check out WeRx here at werx.org

Here’s more DNC 2012 coverage brought to you by rawporter.com, and kiwi.ly

Nibletz is the voice of startups “everywhere else” and we’re on a sneaker strapped road trip “everywhere else” more info here.

DNC2012: National Comedian Tone X Needs Help Getting Obama Tickets VIDEO

I remember the feeling like it was yesterday, standing in line at the Obama Inauguration freezing my butt off at 4am on K Street in DC. People everywhere were still looking for tickets to get up close and see Obama get sworn into office. Or perhaps you were looking for an Obama ticket 4 years ago at the DNC.

Well critically acclaimed national comedian ToneX turned to @startuptechguy and @nibletztweets to spread the word. He is a sharp dressed, articulate brother that wants to be in the house Thursday night to see Obama deliver his address to the delegates.

With a plea like this we’re sure if you know someone you’ll help him out. You can tweet to him at @tonexcomedy or just drop us a line at info@nibletz.com and we can get a message to Tone’s people.

ToneX brought the house down at the PPL headquarters at the Packard building downtown which is serving as our center of operations today for our DNC coverage. We’re headed to the big StartupRockon party next. It’s refreshing to be here. Here’s ToneX is message, and he approved it himself.

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More nibletz DNC coverage here

Nibletz Is At The DNC And We’re Using Nashville Startup: KiWi

The Obama Administration continued to pave the way for Startups all over the country with the creation of Startup America, the passing of the JOBSAct and many other initiatives that have been it in place to help entrepreneurs and startup founders across America.

Thats why it’s our honor to cover the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte North Carolina. We’ll be partnering with Startup America and the guys at StartpRockon.com to bring you guys everything there is about Startups at what’s sure to be one of the best DNC’s of our time.

We’ve got some great access to bring the best coverage for Startups across America.

We’ll be representing one of the best states “everywhere else” for Startups and entrepreneurs and that is Nibletz home state, the great state of Tennessee. Not only that but starting Tuesday we’ll be using one of the exciting new startups that just graduated from JumpStart Foundry’s 2012 class, KiWi,

We got off to a rough start with KiWi after their founder ad libbed at the end of his presentation. Since then KiWi and it’s co-founder Jayme Hoffman has come highly recommended by Michael Burcham, Vic Gatto and Marcus Whitney,

Hoffman and his team couldn’t catch a break after demo day as they’ve been working tirelessly since then to make sure we’ve got something great to use at the Democratic National Convention.

KiWi is like Instagram except instead of photos you are taking short videos. The UI is extreme

As for Demo Day, Hoffman had said that he would be looking for term sheets in Nashville for thirty days. It came off to me that he was giving Nashville an ultimatum, give us a term sheet in 30days or we’re leaving. That was far from the case. Hoffman was trying to convey that things have been moving so fast for the KiWi team that an opportunity for local investors to get in at the ground level may not exist in 30 days. Of course we may speed that process along this week.ly user friendly. Filter selection is topnotch and from capture to share, the experience is fast and fluid. It’s actually not nearly as clunky as SocialCam.

We’re looking forward to the next few days here in Charlotte representing our home team: LaunchMemphis,LaunchYourCity,Launch Tennessee and Startup Tennessee.