bringhub Makes Brick & Mortar As Easy As Ecommerce

As if startup life isn’t crazy enough. The Pantelides brothers decided to build the alpha product of their social marketplace from 3 different cities in 2 different countries.

Now they’re all in the same city–LA–and looking forward to the launch of bringhub, a platform that allows shoppers to discover local shops while enjoying the ease of online shopping and same day delivery. They will be launching a private beta later this month in LA, but they have ambitious expansion plans after they prove their model.

bringhub could be the bridge between the local movement and the “now economy.”

Check out our Q&A with cofounder and COO Philip Pantelides:

What does your company do?

Discover, Shop, Deliver

bringhub is a social marketplace that enables people to discover the best shops in their city, share with communities they trust and purchase products, delivered conveniently on the same day.

We connect shops in cities with their interest groups through a unique social networking experience. Our platform is developed around a social interest graph built specifically for shopping, so users & shops can make recommendations to people who are the most interested. Shops can have closer interaction with their customers, who have a more immersive online purchasing experience. Our beautiful SHOP WINDOWS marketplace lets users experience the store in the next best way to a real visit & gives retailers a new distribution channel to showcase their store.

Our positioning as an aggregator for courier partners both offline (Local courier companies) & online (e.g. postmates, deliv, Uber, Lyft…) allows us to offer same day delivery at an affordable price to customers (starting at just $6.99). We utilize existing infrastructures & improve the productivity of individual retail locations, making them more profitable & therefore bringing back revenues to the region. Our approach allows these local retailers to compete with national e-commerce companies due to the effective use of a location-based distribution tool, negating the need for high warehousing overheads. The supply chain becomes more efficient, resulting in the acceleration of delivery times for customers.

Who are the founders, and what are their backgrounds?

We are the Pantelides brothers: Dominik, Oliver & Philip.

As brothers we have naturally known each other for a long time & as a result work exceptionally well together. Previously, each of us took a separate path, gathering extensive experience in different areas. Now with bringhub our combined and complementary skill sets, passion and love for creativeness are our driving force to success.

We bootstrapped bringhub & built an alpha version of our product from three different cities and two different countries, all with the power of online collaboration tools – proving our team dynamics & productivity.

Where are you based?

We are based in and will be launching bringhub in Los Angeles, CA. Due to the lack of public transportation, a spread out & diverse population, & a large number of great shops, LA is the perfect starting point for bringhub. We hope to bring revenue back to regional retail through the convenience of same day delivery, a more immersive online shopping experience, & the social discovery of shops in the city.

What problem do you solve?

It is difficult to discover great shops around us – current platforms such as yelp are ineffective at showcasing stores in a way that is satisfactory to retailers & ratings can be easily swayed by paid for or fake reviews. People want an emotional online shopping experience, convenience & faster product delivery – people expect convenience & a great product experience as standard with the development of the “Now Economy”. Social e-commerce is still not a personal experience and does not represent real life buying behaviors. City retailers are looking for new distribution channels to compete with e-commerce & need a better way to communicate with their customers online. The courier industry is in need of new business revenues, with the decline of document delivery.

Why now?

Shopping promenades, malls and high streets have steadily decreasing revenues due to e-commerce becoming simple and comfortable. We are bringing back business to our cities through a new kind of social marketplace combining community and convenience.

Currently, people have limited options for shopping and sharing stores & products with people they trust in their cities. Although there is a current focus on location-based online shopping, flash sales or discount models are proving to be unsustainable & no one has quite found the secret sauce to represent stores online. Price value is the key & great physical stores always offer a more personal buying experience than traditional e-commerce.

There are two facets of localized retail: Customer service values & high quality products. Social e-commerce is the solution to transfer this experience from brick & mortar to the web. Retail marketing through current social media channels does not have a good ROI due to the message being lost in the noise. With bringhub stores & brands can target marketing to the people who are most interested in purchasing products to achieve better conversions. Same day delivery has been dubbed the savior of brick & mortar. However current models based on high courier commissions or in-house delivery fleets are unsustainable. bringhub makes same day delivery affordable, scalable & sustainable.

What are some of the milestones your startup has already reached?

bringhub is proud to partner with laedc.org & the Los Angeles Chambers of Commerce who endorse our vision of bringing revenue back to local retail. We have recently partnered with on of LA’s largest couriers Now Courier Services. bringhub now has access to over 300 couriers to execute same day delivery in the Los Angeles area ready for launch. bringhub is currently selecting & partnering with the best stores in LA. If you have a recommendation for a store you love please tweet us @bringhub or email us at hello@bringhub.com. If your store would like to be showcased on bringhub for free please visit http://bringhub.com/Partner/ for further details.

What are your next milestones? Where can people find out more? Any social media links you want to share?

bringhub will be launching in Los Angeles this Fall please sign up at http://bringhub.com/ to be the first to #shopyourcity.

In the mean time connect with us on fb.com/bringhub or tweet us@bringhub and tell us how much you #loveyourcity. To follow the bringhub journey please check out http://blog.bringhub.com/.

bringhub is currently raising a seed round for details please visit https://angel.co/bringhub & spread the word.

Powersharing Bringing the Positivity from Pasadena [Interview]

Pasadena startup Powersharing is a network of people who are working together to lift each other up. When asked what their secret sauce is they did not respond with “if we told you our secret sauce then it wouldn’t be secret; now would it?” Instead they responded with,

Our secret sauce is not that secret at all. We love our members. Love is the most powerful force in the universe and when it is unleashed, nothing can stop it. In our community, our members give each other a boost in motivation, inspiration, and hope for a brighter future. We give them incentives, resources, and new, creative ways to share the power in their lives. Our partner organizations, businesses, and governmental bodies benefit from our growth and success.

They hope to bring people together to help solve everyday issues, raise money, support individuals and organizations, and to spread positivity around.

Live Broadcast From Silicon Beach Fest Of Demo Day And More

Tomorrow at 2pm PST we’ll be broadcasting live from SBF Demo Day presented by StartEngine. As well as broadcasting from other events live throughout the whole event that starts tomorrow. Panels ranging from Meet The Accelerators to How To Hire A Developer. Into coding and actually products, don’t worry as StartEngine has you covered with a full 48 hours Hackathon going on throughout the event. Quick hint, teams from Disney are among those who’ll be showing up to show us what they can do.

Silicon Beach Fest What To Look Forward To On The 21st

Over the past weekend both Kyle and I were at startup events, and if you think with all the events so far this month the two of us have been covering is enough you’d be wrong. Later this month I’ll be covering Silicon Beach Fest in Santa Monica California from June 21-23rd. Organizes by Kevin Winston formally of MySpace, and current CEO of Digital LA. Jason Crilly, CEO and Founder of Pagewoo and Efren Toscano. Founder of TechZulu an independent news organization delivering an insightful story of the technology industry by showcasing the very people creating it. Brought together he top Startup Incubators in the Los Angeles area such as Start Engine, io/LA, Idealab, Amplify and others. For this start studded event. When Kevin Winston was questioned about what brought him to creating Silicon Beach Fest, he mentioned to me.

Hollywood Hack A Day, Final Recap

“It’s like a party, you are afraid that no one will show up”

Rahim Sonawalla mentioned to me about his fears about putting together Hollywood Hack A Day. But boy did they show up. While Kyle was in Memphis for a Launch event this past weekend, I was on the West Coast. More specifically Hollywood California to witness Hollywood Hack Day taking place at io/LA which was nice enough to provide their location to use for the weekend. Put together by Ryan Chisholm, Rahim Sonawalla and Abe Burns, this weekends event expected around around 70 developers, graphic artist, and visionaries to show up. Battling 80 degree crystal clear skies, developers spent all weekend from 0900 on Saturday to 6pm on Sunday putting together not only presentations but working projects as well.

Day 2 Has Started At Hollywood Hack Day At io/LA

We are here at Hollywood Hack Day, on a gloomy Sunday in Hollywood California covering what has turned into 70+ programmers from all over So Cal into one place. The idea behind Hollywood Hack Day was to bring Media and Tech together into one. With sponsors like Rovi, ToxBox, Mashery, Rdio, Spotify just to name a few, the programmers here have been coding all throughout the night.

We’ll be covering all the goings on today as well as later tonight and tomorrow have full videos on all the pitches and the winners as the night goes on.

We’ll Be Live At io/LA Covering Hollywood Hack Day

This weekend, while Kyle will be on the East Coast at another Startup event. I’ll be at a Hackathon on the West Coast covering the Hollywood Hackathon. The event, which has moved to io/LA’s venue near the famed Hollywood and Highland intersection in the middle of Hollywood. Will be filled with those trying to make it into the entertainment field by way of Tech.

5 Trending Angel List (Angel.co) Startups From Everywhere Else

Chances are if you read nibletz.com regularly, you are a startup, accelerator,incubator or angel from “everywhere else” just like us. So I’m sure you’ve probably noticed in your daily check to angel.co that all of the trending startups are almost always from Silicon Valley.

We’ve decided to highlight some of the trending startups from “everywhere else” that can be found on angel.co. So here’s our first list of five.

NetPlenish (Los Angeles)

NetPlenish is an innovative way to keep track of the things you regularly buy from the store, albeit razors, gatorade, coffee, socks, diapers etc. It hold all that information in a list for you in the cloud. NetPlenish then finds the best prices for everything on your list. This could be at K-Mart, WalMart, Target, Wahlgreen’s or which ever NetPlenish merchant partner has the best price.

Then, once a week you’re notified by NetPlenish either with a push notification or email, that they’ve done the research and found the best prices for the items you need. They get each item at the vendor with the best price and then voila in a few days your items are at your doorstep.

Talk about the king of convenience.

Find out more about NetPlenish here.

FormLabs, Boston

FormLabs in Boston is hoping to make 3D printers actually attainable. Right now companies like Makerbot and others have 3D printers that they can sell to you but they are often thousands of dollars.

The FormLabs 3D printer is going to be low-cost and print in 3D right out of the box.

Co-Founders Maxim Lobovsky and David Cranor are hiring right now and we’re hoping for a roll out soon because I want to start making action figures in my basement.

Find out more about Formlabs here

Mile High Organics, Boulder

We all know that Boulder has a thriving tech scene. In fact TechStars is based there and it’s like a little metropolis of all the next best ideas.

Mile High was recently featured in the Wall Street Journal’s Market Watch section as the Nation’s First USDA -Certified Organic Online Grocer.

Mile High Organics is America’s First Certified Organic Online Grocer. Members order online and receive convenient, scheduled home or office delivery of local, organic, non-GMO (non-genetically modified) produce, dairy, meat, seafood, groceries; health, home and beauty products. We have over 500 SKUs and growing.

Mile High is backed by Dave McClure and 500 startups.

If you’re into organic food, now you can order from Mile High, get your every day supplies from NetPlenish and never have to leave the house again, where we know you’re incubating that next big startup.

We Are At CityGrid Hackathon LA All Weekend Long

This weekend, we’ll be at the CityGrid Los Angeles Hackathon which brings together people of all different backgrounds, in a move to make local discovery better via both the Web as well as the Mobile space. From Friday the 27^th of April till Sunday the 29^th individuals who’ve never meet will take part in build products for the future.

Kansas City’s Hallmark Acquires L.A. Startup Spirit Clips

U.S.greeting card giant Hallmark has acquired Los Angeles based video startup SpiritClips.

SpiritClips was founded in 2007 by Academy Award winning producer and studio executive Rob Fried who’s credits include the hit movies “Hoosiers” and “Rudy”. The company makes heartwarming short films and movies that will compliment Hallmark’s similar offerings and give Hallmark customers access to a variety of video content.

Fried said in a statement:
“It’s a dream come true for SpiritClips to be part of the digital future of so esteemed an organization as Hallmark.”

Hallmark CEO Donald Hall Jr said “It is a superb brand fit for Hallmark, with each story delivering compelling emotional content, positive family values and meaningful life lessons,”

No terms of the deal were announced.

Source: siliconprairie

When Hollywood And A Tech Incubator Have A Baby They Called It io/LA

Just steps away from the famed Hollywood and Highland intersection is LA’s newest Startup Incubator io/la. Mixing Hollywood and Tech like never before, io/LA tries to infuse old Hollywood with new Tech in a way we’ve never seen. In an attempt to break the stigma that the Bay is where you want to be io/LA invites those with a Hollywood aspirations and a Tech way of thinking. The newly launched Incubator is the brain child of former MySpace CTO Aber Whitcomb, Donovan Leitch and Chris Gartin.

Startup Quick Byte: Share Magnet

For Startup Quick Byte we’ll take a look at Share Magnet, a company based out of Los Angeles, Ca. Share Magnet system enables users who register on the site to get paid for personally recommending relevant items to their friends, family and social connections. The revenue source comes from companies that wish to reward individuals who recommend their products, services, online links, and entertainment such as games, music, films, etc. In other words, you’ll be our advertising and we’ll pay you for sending links out to your friends.

Our mission is to bring consumers together through common interests, and reward them for sharing the things they like.

Startup Spotlight: Los Angeles Based Incubators

For years, Silicon Valley has been the first thought when someone says Startups and Incubators, however Los Angeles is trying to change that. In this Start-Up Spotlight, we’ll be featuring three LA Based Startup Incubators trying to change that. While Los Angeles may be famous for Hollywood, Crips and Scientology, companies such as MySpace, Helio, and Picasa have all started here as well.