Scholarship Funds Set Up On Indiegogo For Teenage Pennsylvania Heroes

Back in July a 5 year old girl named Jocelyn Rojas was abducted from her Lancaster, Pennsylvania home. Meanwhile an incoming freshman, 15-year-old Temar Boggs, was helping a neighbor move a couch into her home. While they were moving the couch, Rojas’ mother hysterically asked them of they had seen her daughter. Boggs and friend Chris Garcia immediately joined the search for the little girl by foot.

Many sites, like the Huffington Post, reported that the two teenage boys thought it would be more effective to continue the search on their bikes. The neighborhood they all live in is filled with dead ends and strange cul-de-sacs. The local police were already on the scene and congregating at some of the intersections in the neighborhood. This made the abductor drive in and out of the backstreets and look very suspicious.

Boggs saw that suspicious maroon car and kept up with it on his bike for 15 minutes, eventually making eye contact with the suspect and the little girl. The suspect eventually wanted to flee and knew his cover was blown, so he pushed the little girl out of the passenger seat. She ran straight to Boggs. Many news outlets report that once in Boggs’ arms, the young Rojas didn’t want to leave the boy’s protection. He eventually convinced her that it was safe to go with the police.

If you choked up a bit during this story, you did the same thing as Mary O’Donnell, a complete stranger from Dunkirk, New York.

“I just felt like, ‘God, I would love to do something for these kids’,” O’Donnell told Lancaster Online by phone. “And I figured there were probably lots of other people who felt the same way.”

She jumped into action, launching a college fund campaign on popular crowdfunding website Indiegogo. Now we typically cover Indiegogo when someone is creating a new and exciting gadget or product. We’ve even used Indiegogo to crowdfund our sneaker strapped startup road trip. But after seeing how easy it was for O’Donnell to put some action where her mouth was, we found this story about crowdfunding to be an amazing one.

O’Donnell set out to raise $10,000 which she planned to give to Boggs and Garcia’s families for college. However, four days after putting up the site it was already over-funded. In fact with 23 days left, as we publish this story there is well over $15,000 raised. It looks like they’ll have no problem clearing $25,000.

Right about the same time David Reed, a 59-year-old retired pilot from Missouri also established a fund for the boys. He is hoping to raise $100,000.

“I’m sure that’s a lucky expectation, but with the cost of college these days, I figured it would be great to help them out. They certainly deserve it,” Reed said in an interview. His fund has raised over $2500 to date.

Tamika Boggs, Temar’s mother, has also set up a scholarship fund in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. More information on that can be found here.

Crowdfunding will be a hot topic at this national startup conference.

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:

Interview: Outgrow.me is the Marketplace for Products Successful in Crowdfunding

Outgrow.me is one of those startups that we came across and I immediately thought to myself. They are on to something. What is outgrow.me? Are you familiar with kickstarter or indiegogo – have you heard of projects that have Have you ever wondered what happened to that kickstarter or indiegogo project that you heard about weeks or months ago? Where did project end up? Is it possible to find the High Roller Adult Big Wheel or the Pebble after the hype has died down? What option follows a successful crowdfunding campaign?

Those questions are finally being answered with Outgrow.me. It’s the solution that was just waiting to be created. We talked to Sam Fellig the founder of outgrow me read below.

What is outgrow.me?

“Outgrow.me is an online marketplace for successfully crowdfunded projects.”

In layman’s terms, how does it work?

“Outgrow.me picks up where the crowdfunding platforms leave off. It’s a marketplace for successfully crowdfunded projects from all over the web. Outgrow.me offers product designers the ability to further grow their brand by marketing their products to a growing community of shoppers that support innovation, creativity, and small businesses. On the flip side, Outgrow.me offers shoppers a unique shopping experience filled with highly innovative and creative products supported by the online community.”

Kickstarter project: Film Nikola Tesla – Electricity

Electricity: The Story and Life of Nikola Tesla a made for television docudrama is raising funds via Kickstarter. Created by “the creative partnership of Carol Bourgeois, business executive and writer along with Wilhelm Cashen engineering savant and entrepreneur” who began the project in the fall of 2010. The overall business plan for Tesla Productions, LLC includes; “education, film, video, games, broadcasting, human experience, technology and products.”

NIbletz Says Thanks! There’s Still A Little Time

Thank you first off for being readers of nibletz.com the “voice of startups everywhere else”. If our rapid increase in traffic on our website and social media channels are any indication, it seems we’re doing a good, or at least decent job.

We wanted to also say thank you to all of those people who contributed to our indiegogo campaign for phase Deux of our sneaker strapped nationwide startup road trip. We’ve committed ourselves to staying on the road 75% of every month through September 2013. During this time we’re going to be visiting startup focused events, startup weekends, hackathons, incubators, accelerators, startup offices and everywhere else we can pick up the vibe and report on the growing ecosystem of startups “everywhere else”

Before we get too long winded here is the link to our indiegogo page, the video is great our good friend Sean, voice to hundreds of radio and tv stations voiced it (as he does all of our videos) and it’s great. Please check out the video, donate $2 (or more) and share it across social media. The campaign ends at midnight tonight (Eastern time) here’s the link again

About “everywhere else”

We launched nibletz.com last Spring (2011) We were invited to cover TechCrunch Disrupt in New York for our other site and we became so mesmerized by everything there, and all of the passionate startup founders that we created a site to offload those posts off our mobile focused web brand.

We also took on the tag line “small crunchy bytes from the tech and startup scene”. We had a business plan that included becoming a compliment in capsulated form to TechCrunch (hence the crunch and the bytes), we took to Twitter and it was determined in a landslide that “Nibletz” were small crunchy bytes.

Well like every trying, startup we pivoted. We began to notice that startups “everywhere else” weren’t getting the coverage they needed and deserved. We launched the “everywhere else” concept at the new year and ran wild with it at South By Southwest. The response thus far has been phenomenal.

With our media backgrounds we’ve been involved in the tech scene and even researching and scoping startups for a number of years, but we took the blinders off to the rest of the country and WOW is the word that comes to mind.

Let it be known that we have nothing against the valley. San Francisco is an awesome place to visit, the valley is a tech geeks heaven as far as vacations go. Yes our founders have all ridden the bikes on the Google campus, dined at Facebook and even tweeted from Twitter. We’ve got great friends in the Valley and silent advisors who would probably shock some of our readers.

The startups “everywhere else” are like an elephant in the room. Everyone knows that we’re out there but no one is giving them coverage, not like this.

Cameron ran some great statistics this week and we found out that since January we’ve featured over 375 startups from “everywhere else” and the momentum, amount of content and features just increases month over month.

That’s all because of you.

Whether you’re in Boise Idaho, Memphis TN, Florida, Arizona or any of our great 50 states, or London, Israel and even a few countries we’ve never heard of, we’ve got your back. We’ve never purposely turned down any startup who pitches us for coverage at startups@nibletz.com unless of course you’re in the not “everywhere else” part.

We’ve got some really exciting things coming up in the next month or two including a really cool interactive that will help startups like yourselves, and us, crowd source the startup “everywhere else” community to help with their dilemmas, so keep an eye out for that.

We’ve started forging great friendships across the country and around the world and we thank you for that and your support.

We wanted to say thanks to everyone who donated anything on indiegogo from $2 on up. We actually received a donation Thursday that asked to remain anonymous of $1000 you know who you are and we thank you so much.

We also wanted to thank those of you who couldn’t donate but donated your time and your social media space by tweeting about us. We’re a startup ourselves, it’s hard. I could tell you the story about getting coins out of the couch, the seats in the car and off the washing machine to give my daughter $10 for a field trip, it’s real we know it.

Which is actually the reason that we’ve turned down to angel investors and plan to continue to not seek traditional angel and venture funding. We want to stay true to our core of everywhere else and we want to keep our ethics inline as journalists. That’s why crowd funding is so important for us.

We also wanted to point out that there are three other sites that we really like (and there in no particular order) that also cover startups outside of the traditional cities and they are, tech.li , TechCocktail and Beatabeat. So please add them to your readers as well if they’re not already there.

Again thank you so much for reading, contributing and helping out nibletz, the voice of startups “Everywhere Else”

Linkage:

Our indiegogo campaign

Email us your pitches for coverage here

Email us tips here

And watch the video below:

New Hampshire Startup: Regaalo Takes To Indiegogo For Expansion

The student founders of Regaalo (photo regaalo.com)

Stories like this one are a strong indicator that as soon as the SEC figures out the regulations for crowdfunding for startups, it’s going to take off.

Regaalo, a social gifting startup founded by University of New Hampshire (UNH) graduates has taken to crowdfunding site, Indiegogo, to expand their gifting startup to Boston.

Regaalo allows parents and loved ones of college students to send them real gifts using an app on their mobile phones. The service is currently available for UNH students from surrounding merchants. Basically a parent or loved one back home can pay for and send their college student a real gift that will show up on the students mobile phone.

For example parents can order their student a pizza from a local pizza merchant. All the student has to do is pick the pizza up and show them the app on the phone to verify payment.

“The text-messaging gift gives us our edge, it’s what makes us unique,” said Jessica Streitmater, a Litchfield native and one of the student co-founders of the site told the New Hampshire Business Review. “There are quite a bit of people that do care packages, but we do have an edge on that too because we make it customizable.”

The startup is looking for $5,000 on Indiegogo to fund interns in the Boston area so that they can expand their service to Boston University. The company will remain headquartered in New Hampshire. There are incentives on the Indiegogo campaign for donations up to $800. At the time this story was written they’ve raised $975 of their $5,000 dollars with 21 days to go.

“we have a lot of people who are really interested in the company and who would love to help us,” said Streitmater. “They ask, ‘How can I help?’ And we really needed the help… to get to Boston.”

Linkage:

Check Out Regaalo here

Help them out on Indiegogo here

Source: New Hampshire Business Review

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

VIDEO Capital Connection TechBUZZ ’12 Ending Keynote – Steve “Makes Our” Case

(photo: nibletz syndicate)

Capital Connection TechBUZZ ’12 Had Steve Case as the Keynote speaker at the end of the two days. In 1985 Steve Case founded AOL. It was the first internet company to go public, it was the largest media acquisition of its time.

When crowdfunding was brought up he spoke about the ability to raise funds for projects via indiegogo or kickstarter Recently he has been spending a lot of time in Washington DC convincing the US Government to deal with entrepreneurial issues and American jobs. When asked how he feels about crowdfunding (JOBS Act) he mentioned the fact that it has been passed and is waiting for the SEC to finish their part. The law had previously stated that it was illegal to sell private equity to investors online. “You can sell the whole business – 100% but you will go to jail if you sell 1%” Case stated “for the first 6 years it was illegal for us to connect to the internet.” The JOBS act focuses on modernizing an extremely old system.

In this short clip he discusses the benefits he sees in crowdfunding for startups and where it will may have the biggest benefit. As we are well aware, if you are in North Dakota, Philly, St Louis, Chicago, or Everywhere Else – it is very difficult to get covered by media outlets or to raise seed or angel capital. This is where we come in. We are planning on driving across the country for just over a year meeting with startups, incubators, accelerators, and their towns. While we cannot directly assist in helping you raise capital, we are sneaker strapped ourselves, we can help get your names out. We will come to your city and spend time with you. We don’t discriminate against a lack of funds being raised or lack of angels in your region. We only care about meeting startups who are making a go at something new.

We do need some help though, which explains the title of the article, our case has been made by Steve Case himself. Take a look below:

More stories from Capital Connection 2012/TechBUZZ here

What’s this sneaker strapped, startup road trip? Find out here

Nibletz Sneaker Strapped Road Trip Fundraiser, Now That’s More Like It

First off we wanted to thank everyone who contributed to our Nibletz sneaker strapped road trip fundraiser. We appreciate the donations and they are being put to good use on the road.

However it’s no secret that we had no idea what we were doing when we set it up and we had an extremely lofty goal of $25,000 we were hoping to fund the entire 14 month road trip in the bus but as a startup ourselves we’ve realized that was a ton of money and also with $25 the first donation someone could make, that could be even too much for some of our startup friends.

We consulted with a few of the crowd-funding startup founders that we’ve covered so far and some people who’ve been successful at indiegogo and kickstarter as well as some of the people that work for those two sites. We’ve revamped our entire fundraiser. We’ve added a $2.00, $5.00 and $10.00 donation option and decreased our goal to $5,000.

We’ve also worked out some strategic hubs across the country where we could safely park the bus and have friends and colleagues either help us with transportation to surrounding areas or hop on a low fare bus like MegaBus and BoltBus to get to some of the other towns on our journey.

We’ve started our road trip back up again in the Prius. We will immediately move to the bus quasi-full time when we hit our $5,000 goal (within 1 to 2 weeks of funding), and until then continue our mission, goal and project in the Prius.

Thanks for all your feedback. If you want us to come to your city please email us at tips@nibletz.com let us know who you are, and we’ll make a trip of it.

Please check out the new indiegogo page at http://indiegogo.com/everywhereelse and help if you can.

Thanks,

Kyle, Cameron and Brent

Here’s the link again indiegogo.com/everywhereelse

Nibletz Road Trip To Continue This Week

Thanks for checking out Nibletz.com whether you’re new to the site or have us on RSS and come every time there is a new story, thank you thank you thank you.

The feedback to the site and our mission to be the voice of startups “everywhere else” has been met with great enthusiasm from startups we’ve covered, and startups that we haven’t covered to angels, VC’s, incubators, tech enthusiasts, and startup enthusiasts alike.

We’ve actually only had two pieces of bad feedback, both along the lines of “Silicon Valley” is where all the startups are. We actually found out by talking with Jared Konczal Senior Analyst at the Kauffman foundation that, that can’t be further from the truth. There are over 300,000 startup stage companies across the country and only a fraction of them are in the valley.

We love the valley and what it’s done for technology. Our other site wouldn’t be where it is without the valley, but our mission is “everywhere else”.In covering that message we found very early on that the best way to do that is to get in the trenches with all the other startups. We’re a startup ourselves and that kind of coverage has meant sleeping in the car (and a whole lot of Motel 6’s and Red Roof Inns), eating a lot of Ramen and Pop Tarts, going to every mixer with free hor dourves and camping out while covering incubators and co-working spaces so we can really get some work done.

We’re headed back out by car at first, but we’ve been given the opportunity to use a friends 37′ bus as a mobile newsroom, promotional vehicle for our mission and the startups everywhere else, and as a place to sleep and take a shower. Of course that costs money that’s why we have this indiegogo page set up. Please check it out and help if you can.

Over the next three weeks we’re going to be in New Orleans, Chattanooga (again), New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Boston and Connecticut. We’ll be gradually moving west towards Chicago, St.Louis, Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Omaha, Wisconsin, and many more. We are going to be on the road from next week through September of 2013 taking a 5 day break every 3 or 4 weeks to be with our families and rest.

We’re doing this because it’s an explosive time for growth for startups and we’ve made so many great friends along the way. We’ve seen so many great areas and we can’t wait to see more.

So wish us luck and please check out our indiegogo page. Also if you want us to stop in your town please drop us an email at startup@nibletz.com let us know your startup, incubator, co-working space or event and we’ll see if it works in our calendar.

The nationwide startup community everywhere else is great and it’s only getting greater! Here’s another link to the indiegogo page

Thanks,

Kyle, Cameron and Brent

Nibletz “They’re All Over The Place” The Best Compliment Ever

Word got back to the Nibletz headquarters that a colleague of ours based in Silicon Valley told another colleague of ours “Nibletz, They’re all over the place”. That has to be the best compliment about nibletz.com

If this is one of your first trips here, here’s a little bit about is. This is our second new media startup. We soft launched it in June of 2011 basically at Disrupt. Our mobile focused site was doing very well and two of our writers Brent Fishman and Cameron Wright, and I wanted to write about other things outside of mobile operating systems. When Cameron and I went to Disrut in NY we soft launched Nibletz with a lot of that content.

We’ve actually pivoted twice and at South By Southwest our mission became very clear. We were becoming the Voice of startups everywhere else. Our traffic grew over 500% and continues to grow every day/week. After South By Southwest we decided we immediately needed to get in the trenches and live and breathe this thing like a startup, and we are.

We piled into Wright’s Toyota prius with 5 kilos of Mate, peanut butter and jelly, Ramen for the hotels and stay between the car, the rest stops and Red Roof Inns (you know they’ve upgraded a lot of their hotels). We’ve made some awesome friends in our travels and will continue to do so. We plan on staying pretty much on the road through the summer of 2013 (taking 4 or 5 days every 3 weeks to see our families).

We’ve discovered some truly awesome startup clusters in Washington DC, Philly, Richmond, Chattanooga, Birmingham Alabama and many more places. We’ve covered startups all over the place. One thing about this great country, and the world is that there are great ideas EVERYWHERE. Maybe next year we’ll go overseas too.

Now we’ve got the opportunity of a lifetime. A friend of ours, from our first site, has agreed to donate to us, the use of his 37′ bus for the rest of the trip. This means we can stop sleeping in the car and at Red Roofs. We can write more often and stay at stops longer to get even more of the great stories. We plan on going back and forth across the country and into Canada.

We’re turning to our fellow startups, incubators, accelerators, VC’s, angels and everyone in the startup community to help support our efforts. The downside to the bus is that it has a 75 gallon gas tank and goes about 8 miles per gallon. That’s roughly $400 per tank.

We’ve set up an indiegogo page at http://indiegogo.com/nibletz we’ve got some awesome sponsorship packages out there for what well be a legendary trek through America highlighting the best startups in little towns, medium cities and “Everywhere Else”

Our good friend Caleb who has co-woring spaces throughout the country kicked us off last week. Our new friends at LockerDome in St.Louis have also contributed.

Please take a look and support us if you can. We even give hugs and share Mate.

Here’s that link again at Indiegogo