founder interview Archives - Page 2 of 9

Manage Your Personal Web With Michigan Startup: backstitch INTERVIEW

Imagine if HootSuite allowed you to go out of the “social sphere” and customize all the content you wanted across the internet. In a nutshell, that’s exactly what Michigan startup backstitch does. And, they do it well.

Husband and wife co-founders Jordan and Stefanie Warzecha describe BackStitch as a clean and consistent user experience for managing your personal web. Your personal web includes your social media feeds, your favorite news and blog sites and even your favorite daily deals sites. Now with backstitch you can take all of that content and instead of having an unorganized hodge podge of browser tabs open, everything comes together in a nice aggregated dashboard.

Moreso than just organizing all of your favorite web content backstitch actually saves the user a lot of time. Typically everyone has an internet routine. Although most people start their web routine on a smartphone or tablet, once you get to your computer for the day the routine picks up. For me I open up Hootsuite, Google Reader, Nibletz.com, about five other blog sites and a ton of email screens. This is all before 8am. With BackStitch a lot of that content is in one easy to find place.

backstitch comes out of the box with Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Appdotnet. They also have a variety of popular new sites baked in along with all of the popular daily deals sites. They’ve also thought about people who read blogs and sites outside of what BackStitch offers, and allows users to add any site with an RSS feed (although they should add nibletz.com to the catalog).

We got a chance to talk with Jordan. Check out our interview below:

Interview With Techstars Boulder Startup: Birdbox One Place For All Your Photos & Video

A few years back I had stored all of my digital photos on the sonystyle photo sharing website. At some point in the last part of the 2000s Sony decided to shut the site down. Unfortunately, I had used an older email address when signing up for the Sony photo sharing site and missed their 20 or so warnings that the site was shutting down. My photos from that time, were gone forever.

Because of this experience I was reluctant to try any of the newer services like Flickr or even Photobucket. I stored most of my photos (and still to this day) using iPhoto. The problem with iPhoto is if you take a ton of photos the space is eaten up quickly. I love what Apple has done with Photostream but that’s only good for your 1000 most recent photos. As you import more and more photos to Photostream the older ones get pushed out.

These are some major pain points for me personally that TechStars graduate, and Boulder startup, Birdbox will solve. BirdBox is a service that aggregates all of your photos and videos from over a dozen services both local and in the cloud. Once BirdBox imports all of your photos it keeps them in “nests” for you. Birdbox claims to do all the “heavy lifting” for you and they do. What’s even better is they make it a cinch to recall a photo later based on event, hashtag or whatever other cataloging you put into it.

All these features came about after founder Ben Nunez tried to find one single photo to send to his mom on his phone. Unfortunately the photo was tucked away on an external hard drive and he had to wait. Between SD cards, USB flash drives, external hard drives, iPhoto, Picassa (Google+) and now even Flickr, it’s sometimes a pain in the ass to try and find that one photo. Birdbox will make it easy for you.

We got a chance to interview the guys from Birdbox. Check out the interview with this exciting TechStars Boulder grad below:

Vermont Startup: Popngoseek An Event App For Mobile & Pop Up Events

Food trucks, pop up stores, pop up restaurants, and pop up fire sales seem to be increasing in popularity. It’s like the old days of the mystery rock concert where an artist would come and play a show and then they’d have some mystery show and you’d have to listen to the radio station to get clues as to where to go.

Well nowadays these kind of secret pop up businesses tend to take to social media to spread the word. Washington DC, New York, San Francisco and other major cities have had an outbreak of “pop up” restaurants. A lot of times chefs will take over an abandoned or closed down restaurant location for a very limited time. This can be a week, a weekend or possibly a month. They do this to either test the waters with their restaurant idea or just as a temporary way to make people crave even more.

Apple, Samsung and other major electronics manufacturers have been known to set up “pop up” stores at major events. Apple set one up at SXSW in 2011 when the iPad 2 was released. Samsung set up pop stores at the Olympics.

Popngoseek is about unique experiences in unique places. They aren’t looking to be your everyday check out the app and see who’s playing platform. They want to be the go to app to find the really cool once in a blue moon events.

Now when your girlfriends call you and tell you about the awesome pop up store or trunk show a designer did, you won’t miss the tweet or the Facebook post.

Popngoseek has taken to indiegogo for their first round of crowdfunding so if you’re one that doesn’t want to miss out on unique events, you should support these guys here.

We got a chance to interview the team behind Popngoseek. Check out the interview below:

Montreal Startup: GigTrip Social Meets Music Tourism INTERVIEW

Canadian serial entrepreneur and startup aficionado Jean-Pierre Levac is working on solving the pain points involved in musical festivals, tours and shows. To do this right, Levac found early on that all three stake holders would need to be involved. Musicians, fans and venues. Without all three pieces in the process one stakeholder would end up with an unfair advantage, while another may be left out in the cold.

Levac has spent much of his career in the IT Industry, with the last fifteen years spent in startups. He’s always been interested in the music business, but not necessarily the way everyone else is. Levac wants to take his skill sets and those of his co-founder Artem Mindrov, and fix the back end of the music industry.

Levac and Mindrov are attacking the fan angle first. To that end they are looking for beta testers, especially people who attend music festivals and make travel excursions out of them. To us it seems that there are so many people out there attacking the event discovery problem from the aggregation side, Levac and Mindrov seem to be on the right track to integrate all three stakeholders before the events pour into search engines and aggregation apps.

We got a chance to talk with Levac about what they’re working on at GigTrip. Check out the interview below:

Houston Startup: Sports Tradex, The Fantasy Stock Exchange For Sports INTERVIEW

For those of you old enough to remember, back before 9/11 Cantor Fitzgerald was the outfit behind a virtual stock exchange called HSX. HSX stood for Hollywood Stock Exchange and it was one of the first virtual stock exchanges that allowed users to buy and sell celebrities, movies and movie options. Unfortunately after 9/11 and the loss that Cantor Fitzgerald had in the tragedy, HSX faded. It was revived for a short time but not the same way.

Houston Startup Sports Tradex has revived the model except instead of Hollywood it’s all about sports. Sports Tradex gets to the core of the fantasy sports lover with a financial background. It’s the ultimate place to go if you like to armchair quarterback sports and the stock market.

Sports Tradex really heats up when it’s game time. The market stays open throughout a sporting event so traders can trade in real time.

Sports Tradex is the brain child of co-founders Ben Lipson and Omri Buzi, both entrepreneurs. Lipson’s first entrepreneurial experience was actually a root beer company while Buzi has a more traditional background in web development.

We got a chance to talk with Lipson in the interview below:

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UK Startup: omoii (oh my) Is A Disruptive Search Engine INTERVIEW

The search engine is a hard nut to crack. Back in the earliest days of the internet most of us used infoseek, Lycos and then Yahoo. Then, as we all know, two Stanford students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin set out to create Google. Companies both big and small like Microsoft and Duck Duck Go, have all tried to compete with Google.

Some of those competitors have carved out a good niche, more so with Duck Duck Go rather than Bing. Others are trying to attack Google feature by feature. Some search engine competitors are looking to offer an alternative to the way Google serves up results. One of those companies is a startup in the UK called omoii (pronounced Oh My).

Omoii is hoping to go beyond the keyword and offer a more robust, and accurate list of search results. The hope is that by offering a better search results algorithm, web searching will be more targeted and offer advertisers a better audience.

We got a chance to talk with Steve Pritchard the founder and chief architect of this unique new search startup. Check out the interview below:

Interview With Kansas City Startup: Truckily Accelerating At Ark Challenge

Food Trucks are all the rage these days. Most metropolitan areas now have a plethora of delicious food available in converted bread trucks. If you’ve ever been to Austin Texas, especially during South By South West we’re sure you’ve seen some great food trucks. When we were in Chicago for Chicago Tech Week lunch was catered by a dozen delicious food trucks outside the Merchandise Mart.

Aside from big events though, finding your regular food truck can be a tough task, especially when you have a limited amount of time for lunch. Or perhaps you’re in the mood for food truck food but you’re not sure about the cuisine. Well mobile food truck apps are becoming just about as hot as the food trucks themselves. In fact, Pennsylvania startup TruckyLove has incorporated both a food trick finder and a social network surrounding food trucks.

With Kansas City startup Truckily, it’s a little more cut and dry, but the guys behind Truckily have taken into consideration the diner and the driver.

As is with most of the other apps being built in the space, Truckily provides a function that allows diners to locate their favorite food trucks by name, or cuisine. They can also do a generalized browse type function where they can see what food trucks are around them.

On the driver side Truckily provides a function that allows food truck owners to find the best spot to set up shop.

Truckily is based in Kansas City but they’re currently accelerating at the Ark Challenge accelerator in Arkansas.

We got a chance to talk with Derek Kean one of the two co-founders of Truckily. Check out that interview below.

Mediaton & Arbitration Go Online & Social With Toronto Startup: eQuibbly

Move over Judge Judy and Judge Joe Brown, when you have a dispute now, you don’t need a tv show, a judge or a lawyer. Now you can settle your disputes in an online forum called eQuibbly.

eQuibbly is an incredible idea founded in Toronto by Lance Soskin, a lawyer, investment banker and now entrepreneur.

The concept is pretty easy to grasp. eQuibbly is an online forum where two people can post their legitimate disputes. Those involved in the dispute can choose to post their dispute in a private room with just the two parties, an arbitrator or a mediator or, they can take it to the people, socially. The idea behind the public forum isn’t to bash either party but rather to get feedback and constructive ideas on how to solve the dispute.

With eQuibbly, no matter what your dispute is, you can take it to the platform and get people to give their ideas for resolution and then the public can vote on them. Did the plumber do a bad job on your shower and you want a refund? Did the dry cleaners rip your favorite blouse? Is the dog next door barking and driving you crazy?

Both parties in an eQuibbly dispute can state their side of the story and offer resolutions. Then get help from the crowd. It’s a lot easier, and even more fun than wasting lots of money with lawyers and courts.

We got a chance to talk with the team from eQuibbly about this great new Toronto startup. Check out the interview below:

Montreal Startup: MatchFWD Socially Connecting For The Job Market

MatchFWD is a startup based in Montreal that is hoping to change the paradigm in the job hunting game. They want to cut out the middleman by leveraging social media and sharing. MatchFWD provides a platform that allows hiring managers to share new job opportunities with people and then down the social landscape, in a word-of-mouth style that will hopefully connect good candidates with great jobs.

MatchFWD works both ways though, job seekers can leverage the same social media networks to promote themselves to potential hiring managers and jobs. The pinnacle of MatchFWD is when, through social networks, a person that’s seen and shared a job can connect a person that’s looking for a similar job.

While recruiters are sure to frown on the concept behind MatchFWD the power is granted back to the people and the hiring becomes a smoother process. Also, hiring managers benefit by seeing the real time recommendations that are coming through shares.

MatchFWD is using the sharing economy to disrupt the job changing experience and make it a more level playing field. Job seekers will love this platform because they won’t waste their time applying to blind box ads where recruiters are just fattening their talent pool.

The startup launched this sharing platform back in March even before Washington DC based startup “Barrel of Jobs” launched. Barrel of Jobs is also using the social economy to help place candidates but in a different way.

We got a chance to interview MatchFWD co-founder Phil Gauvin about their new approach to the job hunt. Check out the interview below:

Interview With Australian Startup: CheckinLine

CheckinLine is a new Australian startup that gives insight into data from checkins for engagement, promotion and insight. It works by virtually camping out for registered fans and gives access to promotions and engagements to those who deserve it most by way of a daily check-in.

The startup based in Melbourne claims that in their own case studies with their platform the average engagement level in 2011 was 69% which is well beyond the average engagement on any other platform. CheckinLine gives a more accurate picture to their clients because one check in equals one opinion. Their end research is more intimate than most, they liken it to having a one on one conversation with a companies most active customers.

CheckinLine seems to be a lot like SCVNGR where the user completes a task upon check-in rather than a blank check in without engagement. An engaged check-in is much more effective than a non-engaged check-in.

The company describes their camping out philosophy like this: “I’ll hold your place for you, but I need you to come back regularly to let me know you’re still interested. If not, I’ll reward more committed users”.

We got a chance to interview CheckinLine below:

Houston Startup: GoodDeedsGlobal Hopes To Make A Difference

Self proclaimed “Modern Day Renaissance Man” and entrepreneur Corey S. Davis of Las Vegas has teamed up with co-founder Ken Melancon of Houston Texas to create a new social startup called GoodDeedsGlobal network. GoodDeedsGlobal is a cause driven social business that intends to help put money in the hands of those that need “good deeds”.

GoodDeedsGlobal has a request a good deed page which is designed for those with needs to contact the organization. It’s unclear as to what specifically constitutes a need but the site says it can be anything. So if you’re in need, go for it here.

Davis gave us this example of how the platform is designed to work:

“Maybe someone like a single mom who is really struggling to make ends meet and can’t afford to pay all the bills on a particular month, plus on top of that feed and take care of the kids and everything else. If she wrote into our site asking for something like $150 to maybe $300 dollars to help make it through the month and pay a few bills (maybe help to keep the lights on or something like that). Then what we would do is contact her back as soon as possible and verify her situation as best we can, and then simply help her out by fulfilling that request (essentially sending a money order for her to pick up in her local area and/or city)”

Davis says that the GoodDeedsGlobal network is designed to touch one person at a time and is a change agent to promote doing good deeds for each other. He is hopeful that people will use the GoodDeedsGlobal platform to “pay it forward”.

Davis equates it to the “Make A Wish Foundation” for people that are over 17 and not going through the hardship of a life threatening illness.

Perhaps our interview with Davis, below, will provide my clarity.

Swiss Startup: RightClearing Simplifies Right Clearing For Artists INTERVIEW

Most musicians want to do one thing and that is, play music. Some want to play bars and clubs, others want to play in bands and orchestras, and others want to record and sell their music. One of the issues that stands in the way of an artists creativity is clearing their rights to their music. After all they’ve created a song, they want to make sure they get credit for it.

That’s where Zurich Switzerland based startup, RightClearing, comes in. They’ve simplified and democratized the market for music licensing by providing the technological infrastructure for musicians and content users to sell and purchase licenses. The entire process from searching for songs to creating and paying for binding legal licenses has been automated. Independent artists and labels can now earn money with the usage rights to their music. Advertisers, filmmakers or private persons can license songs for their own use with only a few clicks.

When you think about copyrights and music you may not think to the Swiss however RightClearing is planning a global rollout and founder Philippe Perraux is convinced that they have a platform in place that will become a staple in any artists career. When Perraux graduated law school in 2001 he knew he wanted to continue working on copyright law. What he ran into was an old antiquated system that needed innovation. Now, 11 years later he has that system.

We got a chance to find out more about RightClearing in the interview below:

Austrian Startups: GeoPieces GeoTag Your Content On A Map Of The World The Way You Want

An Austrian startup called GeoPieces has come up with a geo-tagged map based platform to share all of your worldly content. Whether you’re traveling to London to take in a football game or Barcelona for a quick romp through Spain you can now take the content that you produce and put it all together on GeoPieces map of the world.

The idea is great for world travelers or anyone who wants to keep a geo based record of everything they’ve done. The advantage to a site like GeoPieces over traditional check-in and discovery apps is that you can share as much or as little as you want, whenever you want and the way that you want. No other site gives you the freedom and flexibility to do this quite the same way that GeoPieces does.

You can also explore the map and see the things that other users are publicly sharing. You could end up finding the next great piece of art worth checking out or a truly great view on a sandy beach somewhere around the world.

GeoPieces was founded by Erich Drazdansky and Jorg Eibl two entrepreneurs who keep the same crazy founder schedule that startups in the states typically keep. Work, no sleep, more work. That shows in the UI of GeoPieces.

We got a chance to talk with the team behind GeoPieces in the interview below:

Put Your Email On Steroids With London Startup: Tray INTERVIEW

London startup Tray is an email companion app that pumps up the productivity of your email. Imagine if when you checked in on FourSquare, your email automatically started delivering your out of office notification. Then, after you checked back into the office your email was restored to normal. That would be amazing wouldn’t it? Well that’s just one of many, many functions that London startup Tray adds to your email.

The functionality that Tray adds to your email is really pretty incredible. You can set rules for email that go well beyond your current email client. For example you can tell Tray, if “John” emails me after 8pm send it to my mobile. You can tell Tray, if Mary, Mike or Stacy emails me a link to read, add it to Pocket so I can read it later. Another example of a very useful Tray rule is, if my email inbox gets too full, send an auto responder saying that it may take a while to get back to people.

Tray began as an idea to make group emailing easier. After talking to email users, Dom Lewis, Rich Waldron, and Ali Russell, the founders of Tray, they decided to make email much more powerful.

We got a chance to interview Dom Lewis about Tray and building a startup in London. Check out the interview below:

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