Florida Startup: Moasis, Geo Local Mobile Targeted Advertising INTERVIEW

It seems like local mobile is all the rage these days. We’ve run so many stories about social, local, mobile (SoLoMo) startups lately. Another industry that’s taking advantage of local and mobile is advertising. That’s what West Palm Beach startup Moasis is doing for advertisers. In a nutshell they’ve setup a very targeted hyper local geo-fenced platform for advertising.

There are huge benefits to geo-fenced advertising. Of course adwords has the ability for advertisers to drill down and purchase local clicks, but the benefits to doing it mobile are ten fold.

Anyone who’s read Nibletz, the voice of startups everywhere else, for any amount of time knows that we’re on the sneaker strapped nationwide startup roadtrip which means we travel a lot. There are so many instances where we’ve done internet searches on the phone to find something close by, be it a pizza place, drug store, Best Buy, or other store, the mobile device is quickly becoming the place for search.

The father and son team of Steve and Ryan Golden along with Jason Mascari founded Moasis to take advantage of the endless possibilities that come from the power of delivering targeted local ads to the mobile device.

We got a chance to interview Moasis. Check out the interview below:

Give Your Photos A Voice With Orlando Startup Picvoice INTERVIEW

Now that I’m in my 30’s it seems that every time I go home to visit my parents I go through photo albums and unless the photo is blatantly obvious, you know like the Magic Kingdom castle is in the background, I have no idea the context for the photo. Mom did a decent job of handwriting notes on the back but that still doesn’t give the photos a real good back story.

Fast forward to the internet age and I’ve got digital photos going back to the mid 90’s. All in all I probably have near 100,000 photos. I’m a big picture taker. The problem is, just like with those traditional photo albums, I have no idea the context on lots of them.

Imagine if the photos talked? Well they can now thanks to Orlando startup PicVoice. Currently PicVoice is a web application that allows you to sign in through Facebook, upload photos and then add up to 30 seconds of audio to accompany the photo. Now your photos can really tell a story.

As we learned in our interview below with Founder and CEO Matt Andrews, they’re working on a mobile app right now. They aren’t alone in this space though. Atlanta startup StoryMark also allows you to add audio to photos. They went the other route and put together a great mobile app first, without a web app. That makes StoryMark great for taking photos and posting them with audio. PicVoice on the other hand is great for people who have thousands of photos that are just waiting for a story.

Check out our interview with Andrews below:

Florida Startup: Seek.ly To Launch Online Speed Dating At DEMO

Online speed dating isn’t a new concept however it’s one that could use some definite improvements. Online dating sites typically bury their users with superfluous messages. They also give off false positives by matching users with people that aren’t interesting or compatible.

Florida startup Seek.ly plans will eliminate those problems and others to make online speed dating more spontaneous the way that it is when you go to an in person speed dating event at a local restaurant, bar or singles meet up.

Profiles be gone!

While at first this may seem like a crazy idea, one way that Seek.ly puts that spontaneity back into online speed dating is by eliminating profile pictures, and questions. To often people eliminate potential dates by profiles. The other down fall is that profiles are often blown up or only show the absolute best a person has to offer (or what they perceive is their best). With Seek.ly there’s no BS around the profile, more time is spent focusing on getting to know the person.

“Seek.ly does not have profile pictures, questionnaires or compatibility testing because we know that at the end of the day those processes just can’t take the place of human interaction. By eliminating these crutches, seek.ly users are more inclined to get to know the person and not the profile. I’m very excited about our public launch and validating these ideas.” said Susie Steiner, Founder of Seek.ly.

Steiner and co-founder Kim Randall will launch Seek.ly today at the fall DEMO conference in Santa Clara California. They’ll have six minutes to wow those in the audience and those watching from home. Online speed dating needs a makeover and Seek.ly is confident they’ll deliver.

“We are ready to take Online dating to the next level and I am very excited that we are launching our video speed dating platform at DEMO Fall 2012,” said Kim Randall, Co- founder of Seek.ly LLC.

Linkage:

Check out Seek.ly here at seek.ly

Check out DEMO here

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Florida Startup: EarlyShares Acquires HelpersUnite, Well, Early!

Crowdfunding has exploded onto the scene and it’s not entirely ready from a regulatory standpoint. Earlier this year the JOBSAct was passed and with that the SEC has been diligently (we hope) working on regulations that will allow the general public to invest in startups via crowdfunding, up to one million dollars. As soon as the JOBSAct looked like it was going to pass, shingles for crowdfunding startups went up everywhere.

One of our favorite startups in the crowdfunding space is EarlyShares. First off EarlyShares is based in Miami Florida so of course it’s an “everywhere else” startup. Secondly, CEO and founder Maurice Lopes has decided not to sit on his ass and wait out the SEC, which could go into the early part of this year. While most of the crowdfunding startups loaded up a back end, and a launch rock page they’ve, for the most part been waiting.

Lopes has actually been proactive about promoting EarlyShares, but moreso promoting the entire concept of crowdfunding. He’s in the midst of a nationwide road tour, offering free workshops about exactly what crowdfunding is, how to do it and the ramifications of it. We’ve seen Lopes in Chicago at TechWeek and in Memphis for one of his road trip work shops(we like road trippers). Getting in the trenches with other entrepreneurs and startups is definitely going to work to Lopes’ advantage when it comes time to officially startup crowdfunding.

Apparently while Lopes and EarlyShares have been on the road they’ve also been very busy. They announced earlier this month that they had acquired HelpersUnite. HelpersUnite is a crowdfunding portal dedicated to artistic and cause related projects. This is a milestone in the crowdfunding industry as it’s the first reported acquisition and it comes before crowdfunding for equity has officially been released.

The year old HelpersUnite is the world’s first platform to combine artistic creativity, entrepreneurial crowdfunding and event ticket sales, with charitable giving. It raises money, increases awareness, and generates an audience for special events all at once in one place. To date, HelpersUnite has assisted more than a 100 artists and entrepreneurs in funding their dream projects while also providing access to more than 1,000,000 U.S.-based charities.

“We investigated several potential partners and HelpersUnite was by far the best,” said EarlyShares co-Founder and CEO, Maurice Lopes. “HelpersUnite was attractive, because we wanted to be able to operate in the crowdfunding space, while the SEC writes the rules governing Equity Based Crowdfunding.” Lopes continued “Through this acquisition, EarlyShares will expand its capabilities and continue the great work done by HelpersUnite,”

Linkage:

Check out EarlyShares here

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Florida Startup: Path.To Is The E-Harmony For Tech Jobs INTERVIEW

Darren Bounds,the CEO of Jacksonville Florida based startup Path.To considers his startup the “e-harmony” for recruiting tech talent. There is a lot that goes into the backend of this job recommendation platform. Path.to must have something right because well known companies like Eventbrite, Evernote and Vimeo have already used the young startup to recruit tech talent.

When someone with a tech background is looking for their next tech opportunity and creates a profile with Path.To, they add their normal skills, and resume along with information that’s aggregated from their professional social graph including Behance, Dribble, Forrst and Github. This way a more accurate picture of the candidate is created for those recruiters and HR people looking to fill tech positions. The users score continues to grow as they apply to more jobs and make more choices.

We first covered Path.To when they expanded to Chicago, Boston and New York City. Now they’ve added; Austin, Dallas, Houston, Boulder, Denver, and Los Angeles. They’re adding their service to Philadelphia, DC, and Pittsburgh tomorrow. They’re also adding Silicon Prairie on September 4th and Atlanta Georgia along with Jacksonville Florida on September 12th.

Path.To will email job candidates available positions that the service feels are a good match for them. Path.To users searching for a job can opt out of certain employers if they feel that they aren’t a fit, and of course continue to apply for jobs that they feel are, the perfect fit.

We got a chance to interview Bounds, check out the interview below:

Tampa Startup Banyan Wins Entrepreneur Track At Chattanooga’s Gig Tank

Over 500 people came from across Tennessee and across the USA to Chattanooga TN Wednesday and Thursday for GigTank’s Demo Day.

GigTank is a 90 day accelerator program based in Chattanooga with an emphasis on using Chattanoga’s 1GBPS internet. Chattanooga was the first city in the United States (edging out Kansas City and Google by a year), to implement 1gbps internet. Every resident and business in a 600 square mile radius has 1gbps fiber optic line straight to their home or business.

Chattanooga was able to set up the 1gb fiber by rolling out a smart grid that provides communications from utility meters at every home and business back to a central location. Citizens of Chattanooga can elect to get data and tv services from the 1gb fiber pipe in their homes on a monthly subscription based model.

Chattanooga’s GigTank accelerator featured two separate tracks. The entrepreneur track was a traditional 3 month accelerator model with a seed investment, and access to services, mentors, office space and other resources. The student track was similar to the entrepreneur track but without the seed investment. Students participated in a pitch contest in Chattanooga Thursday where they competed for a $50,000 prize.

The winner of the entrepreneur track was a Tampa Florida startup called Banyan. The Banyan team was Toni Gamayel, Travis Staton and TJ Weigel.

Banyan is a cloud based collaborative research system. This allows researchers who are working on the same project to keep their research together. It also solves major pains for those managing the research.

During Gamayel’s pitch he brought up an instance where two students at the University of Kentucky were working on the same exact research one floor above each other and didn’t even know it. With Banyan the research manager would have easily been able to identify this duplicate research.

In another instance a Stanford professor had been working on some research. The need arose to validate that the particular research he was working on was being performed at the school rather than at home or another lab. With Banyan they could have easily identified the source of the actual research.

Banyan took a $100,000 check back to Tampa where they plan on using it to beef up their development and marketing. Gamayel is very active in the Tampa startup community. He was a judge for a recent Startup Weekend in Florida and is well known as a resource and mentor in the region. In fact he has provided mentorship to Feathr a Gainesville based startup that is working on eliminating the paper business card.

Check out Banyan’s complete pitch below:

Linkage:

Check out Banyan’s website here

Here’s more of our GigTank coverage

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Tampa Startup: Citizinvestor Looks To CrowdFund Neighborhood Projects

Digital strategist turned entrepreneur Jordan Raynor of Tampa Florida is working on a new and exciting startup in the crowdfunding space. I’m sure you’re wondering how can anyone be working on something “new and exciting” in the crowdfunding space, well read on and you’ll understand.

The first thing you need to know about Raynor is that he is a realist of sorts. Check out his personal website here and you’ll see that Raynor doesn’t pull any punches and he’s not wrapped up in self loathing bull shit. Most of his career as a digital strategist has been spent solving problems in government and politics through technology, which is exactly what he’s doing with his new startup Citizinvestor.

After being tipped off about Citizinvestor it was Raynor’s description of the platform that easily brought the idea home for me. Remember those days when a neighborhood would hold a yardsale, bake sale or spaghetti dinner to get new playground equipment, street signs repainted, or trees planted? Well Citizinvestor takes those ideas and puts them on the web for 2012. In the same manner that traditional, self crowdfunding takes panhandling to the internet.

There are so many civic projects that get shelved for one reason and one reason only, and that’s because they can’t get funded. Some new data analysts needed to crunch the numbers of how many Coke bottles vs how many Pepsi bottles were recycled last month’s salary is more important than replacing that slide that’s been ripping holes in the skin of the towns children for months. (boy that was a run on sentence).

The mulch at the neighborhood entrance that hasn’t been replaced in 12 years somehow keeps ending up on the bottom of the budget list.

So Citizinvestor has a couple of really cool purposes.

1. The platform helps raise the money for the projects that really matter to the people.

2. It puts the power in the hands of the people. If people stand up and donate for the new playground equipment, the city manager can’t take that money and buy more sticky notes.

3. It empowers the people.

Of course some may be outraged by this idea for crowdfunding civic projects. They may feel that it’s the responsibility of the government using the tax money they provide to the government. With that mentality though, projects will continue to get shelved so that more “important” budget line items can use those tax dollars.

I think as far as playgrounds, parks, library books are concerned, when people use Citizinvestor for those projects they’ll take ownership of them. After the slide and the swings are replaced, the townspeople may see how easy it is to come together and get things done and that the bureaucracy, while needed, can be cut through like a large ginsu knife on a stick of melted butter, when people ban together using Citizinvestor.

Linkage:

Check out Raynor’s personal blog here, it’s actually pretty good.

Here’s the link for Citizinvestor

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Can This Florida Startup Feathr, Get Rid Of The Traditional Business Card?

A gang of young twenty somethings from Florida have started a new startup to eliminate the business card. CEO, Aidan Augustin, along with cohorts Neal Ormsbee and Gabriel Busto are in the process of launching an app called Feathr.

Augustin says that while he was interning in Silicon Valley he attended a networking mixer with young entrepreneurs. Admittedly the attendance was the top echelon of future entrepreneurs, millionaires, Stanford students, graduates and drop outs. Augustin said in an interview that none of these young professionals had a traditional business card. By the end of the evening they were trying to take each others information down by downloading bump, passing phones around to input information and any other means that they could. It seemed ridiculous that there was no app to handle this process, so they created it.

Feathr allows the user to create an interactive virtual business card, that can link to a persons website, portfolio,email address, phone number, social networking channels and more. Then, through a graphically pleasing UI, users can share all or as much of the information they want with someone new.

The real benefit to Feathr lies in the fact that both parties don’t have to have the Feathr app installed in order to exchange Feathr cards. Augustin explains that if the receiver doesn’t have the Feathr app they get a text message with a link to where the virtual business card resides in the cloud. This is one of the big differentiators between Feathr and other similar apps in the space.

Another big difference between Feathr and their competitors is that most other apps in the business card, and networking space are about input and intake of information. Feathr is focused on sharing.

On the user side, once you’ve got someone’s Feathr card in your Feathr contact list, you have one click access to whatever means you want to communicate with that person. If you want to Tweet to them you can. If you want to send a text message you can. If you want to call you can. You can even view their portfolio and flip through their work. It’s that robust and at the same time that easy.

Feathr is still in private beta. You can follow the link below to request early beta access.

Linkage:

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Miami Startup: Sumpto It’s Like Klout For College Students, But Better INTERVIEW

Klout is still a big mystery to most, how do you get those crazy Klout scores. If you know how it’s really calculated feel free to send me an email. Klout Perks is a great program that puts manufacturers products into peoples hands. They presumably want the cream of the crop when it comes to Klout, but we have no idea who that really is.

Sumpto is looking to do something along those lines when they launch next week. They’re going to match products to college students with influential social graphs. Sumpto will rank a college students social clout (with a c not a k) and then link manufacturers with college brand ambassadors who can presumably get the word about those products out to the masses.

Manufacturers love it when they can get exposed to people with real influence. Ranking that influence can be a challenge but Sumpto’s Founder and President Ben Kosinski seems to have figured out the magic formula. Yes, Sumpto’s partners will most likely reach the hands of the right people.

The college demographic is a hard one to crack, with free stuff though it may be easier. When you add the free stuff to an exclusive layer of folks, your destined to gain exposure down the lines to the masses. That’s exactly what Sumpto is going to do.

We got a chance to interview Kosinski check out the interview below:

Florida Startup: Sprigster, Crowdfunding For Veterans Looking To Start Franchise Businesses

There’s an alarming statistic when it comes to unemployment in our country and that is the fact that veterans who have moved from military to civilian life are one of the highest groups that are unemployed. That’s one of the reasons that TechStars just concluded their Patriot bootcamp to help and inspire veterans with ideas for startups to get started on their plans.

Sprigster, is a startup we actually heard about first back in April. Sprigster is a crowdfunding startup where several people can come together (as with any crowdfunding model) and support a franchise or business project for veterans.

CEO Mark Mohler likens crowdfunding to “Barn Raising”, back in the day towns would rally around their neighbors if one of their neighbors lost a building or had some other need. The townspeople would have a fundraiser in a barn to give money to the community member. With crowdfunding this is all done online and meant to help our military neighbors.

Ideally the platform is meant for former military who are now civilians who would like to hire themselves as the owner of a franchise business. Mohler explains why franchising is a better model for this platform than traditional startups in the interview below.

Interview With Florida Startup: Yovia, A People Engine

Yovia is a new startup in Jacksonville Beach Florida. They call themselves a people engine that focuses on the people that make social media work.

Yovia takes brands, products, services and leverages them across a network of people who has signed up on Yovia. Yovia users can use their hard earned social capital for good. So how is this achieved?

Well after you sign up for Yovia’s platform you are presented with opportunities to spread the word about products, services and brands across your social graph and are rewarded. Your rewards can be in actual cash or free products or a combination of both. Exploring the Yovia site we found, and participated in several offers. The offers ranged from $6.00 for a 200 word blog entry to $.08 and $.15 for liking something or sharing something across social networks.

Yovia is a great way to drive brand engagement, and social engagement. There were news blogs that needed a like or share, and new services that needed signups. None of the offers seemed too outlandish and so far none have asked for my credit card information. It looks to be on the up and up.

Now eight cents and fifteen cents may not seem like a lot however if Yovia continues to grow quickly it will be easier to find higher paying offers and easier to complete more lower paying offers.

We got a chance to talk to Jalali Hartman, co-founder of Yovia in the interview below:

Interview With Miami Startup: PitchShark A Social Network For Launching Film Projects

Social networks are a staple in just about everyone’s daily lives. In the Facebook generation it feels like everyone who has any kind of internet access is online and part of some kind of social network. Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ have a strangle hold on mainstream social network needs. LinkedIn has the business sector covered, but now social networks are emerging for specific industries.

We’ve reported on Memphis based “Work For Pie” which is a social network/linked In of sorts for developers, there are social networks for real estate agents and now a social network for those working on films.

When we first heard about Miami startup PitchShark we weren’t exactly clear on the need for a social network, where did the real problem lay? Well co-founder Justin Perez talked with us in the interview below and there are a ton of reasons that PitchShark makes sense.

For instance, casting an indie film or a film not sanctioned by one of the major studios, can be a long and painstaking process. Perez explains in the interview that it’s not just about casting either. There are other resources that film producers need in order to get the project off the ground.

Check out the interview below:

Florida Startup: Vaultbox Is An Excellent Way To Manage Home Inventory INTERVIEW

How many of you have a comprehensive home inventory? Taking home inventory is a pain in the ass but it’s a necessary evil. You never want to get to the point where it’s too late, and you’ve been robbed, or had a natural disaster destroy your home, to start calculating what you’ve lost, especially when an insurance company is involved. So if you don’t have a home inventory yet than perhaps you should read this story and then get off the computer and take one.

Vaultbox is a new startup in Miami Florida that assists with your home inventory and then keeps it in the cloud where it’s actually safer. You actually might run into a problem if your house was robbed and your laptop was stolen with the home inventory on it. Or worse, if your home was destroyed by fire, tornado or other natural disaster. By keeping this data in the cloud, you can access it later, when you need it, from anywhere.

Vaultbox makes it simple to email your complete home inventory to your insurance agent, friends, family or law enforcement. It also makes it easy to add things, and subtract them, from your home inventory as you upgrade the things in your home, or clean out the clutter.

There are hundreds of reasons that a comprehensive home inventory is important for everyone. Whether you have home owners insurance, renter’s insurance or no insurance (which you should get) a home inventory is a life saver in certain circumstances.

We got a chance to talk with Jacob Israel from vaultbox. Check out the interview below:

Tampa Startup: Muzime Is A Spotify For Indie Artists That Kicks Ass

Music sharing startups are popping up all over the place. A lot of them would qualify as “a dime a dozen” but that’s not the case with Florida based Muzime. Joel Fenelon tells the FloridaTechnologyJournal that while he was in college his studies pivoted from business to music. After that he studied and became a conductor, eventually leading to an offer to conduct overseas.

While building up his musical repertoire he realized that his works were his and filled with emotion. He also realized he didn’t want anyone else to own his music, he wanted to own it, perform it and share it with who he wants to when he wants to. That tiny idea eventually evolved into what today he is calling Muzime.

Muzime is a familiar idea, a music sharing platform ala the newest iteration of MySpace and of course social music powerhouse Spotify. However those comparisons just about stop after the “shared music” anomoly.

Muzime,Tampa startup,Florida startup,startups,music startup,independent artists,Joel Fenelon

Joel Fenelon CEO & Founder Muzime (photo: 84degrees.com)

What separates Muzime from the Spotify’s of the world, is that the platform is entirely about indy artists and musicians, like Fenelon, who hold onto the rights of their music.

The service is free to sing up for both artists and music buffs. Artists can create a profile page and share snippets of their songs on their pages. In fact they can upload as many songs as they like. From there, Muzime charges $.89 for the user base to download songs. Of that, the musician gets $.69 while Muzime holds onto $.20 from each track, to keep the servers running .

One of the great features about the site itself is that music lovers can stream each song two times. After the second time they can get a :30 clip of the song or download it for the $.89.

Muzime catalogs the music by artist, title, genre and mood. If you’re feeling happy, sad, angry or any other mood you can select music that way as well.

Muzime has a wide variety of music from just about every genre. We checked out “Jam Bands”, Hip Hop, Jazz and Classical all offering a good sized list of songs and artists. Also each song and artist have their own page where you can get lyrics, read stories about the song and artist and interact with the artists. Muzime is an incredibly robust platform especially considering it’s made up of just independent artists.

The real beauty behind this innovative Florida startup is that Fenelon is not just looking to expose new artists to more people, he’s looking to help artists monetize on their works, which is obviously a win-win for everyone involved.

Linkage:

Check out Muzime and sign up here

Nibletz is the voice of startups “everywhere else”

source: FloridaTechnoloyJournal

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