New York Startup Skedj Makes Your Schedule Social, And Really A Lot of Fun

If you’re a long time reader of nibletz.com The Voice Of Startups Everywhere Else, you know that we’re a little under enthused about “event discovery” and “social calendar” startups. Our good friend Danny Nathan at iwannanom a New York startup we profiled earlier this year, knows how we feel about “event discovery” and “social calendar” but still brought us Jason Horowitz and Skedj. We’re glad he did.

Horowitz is no stranger to startups and no stranger to the fact that we need another event discovery startup like Governor Chris Christie needs another extra large pizza. To that end Horowitz told us:

“I know event discovery, event sharing and social calendaring don’t sound like new territories to conquer. We believe Skedj takes a unique approach to these challenges and, consistent with the way we plan our lives, strikes a balance between personal and social. The result is one personalized stream of your plans and possibilities, making discovering things you want to do, and keeping track of the things you need to do, easier than ever before.”

After checking out Skedj ourselves we agree. One of the things about Skedj that resonates with me from the start is that Skedj is learning my schedule not suggesting I go see every country music show just because I happen to like one song by Sugar Land. Of course many of you know the story about one “social/event discovery” app that suggested a bunch of great dog parks because at one time in my life I had liked Mark Zuckerberg’s dog.

Whether it’s the intent or not, Skedj takes into consideration the primary user FIRST and the social discovery/sharing part second. That’s why nearly 300 words later we’re still talking about it. In fact, we interviewed Horowitz. Check out the interview below.

Yahoo’s First Mayer Acquisition, New York Startup Stamped

Last April we brought you the profile of New York startup Stamped. Stamped, which is made up of a team of 11 with five being Xooglers, created a recommendation platform that allowed users to put their “stamp of approval” on their favorite places and things.

Stamped offers a unique value proposition by having a quick, easy to understand way of providing recommendations without having to read 1500 word reviews. It’s the recommendation platform for those on the go.

Stamped marks the first Yahoo acquisition under the leadership of new CEO Marissa Mayer who took over the helm at Yahoo six weeks ago after a thirteen year stint at Google.

Prior to this announced acquisition, Stamped had already attracted the attention and investment from Bain Capital Ventures and Google Ventures. Their first round of funding was $1.5 million dollars. They also have rockstar advisors like Instagram founder Kevin Systrom and food personality Mario Batail.

Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Mayer made it clear that acquisitions were part of Yahoo’s strategy going forward, in her first quarterly earnings call earlier this week. Several tech and startup focused sites have been speculating on some of the other possible target startups in Mayers cross hairs.

On Tuesday we brought you the story about the hot and heavy rumor that Yahoo may be looking to acquire Baltimore mobile ad startup Millennial Media.

Like Millennial Media, Stamped is a natural fit for Yahoo who hasn’t had a good review product, much less a mobile product for reviews. Mayer also said that mobile was one of the key focuses for Yahoo going forward as well.

Yahoo Senior Vice President Adam Cahan told the Associated Press that Stamped would be “a great asset as we expand Yahoo’s mobile efforts and build a world-class mobile development organization.”

Stamped issued a statement on their website today that said:

“We’re excited to start work again on something big, mobile, and new — but we can’t discuss the details just yet. And we’re really stoked to be able to hire lots of talented engineers and designers for this new project.”

Linkage:

Stamped is here

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New York TechStars Startup Condition One Raises $2.35M From Mark Cuban And More

New York Techstars alum Condition One has just closed a seed round at $2.35 million. The round was led by Dallas Maverick’s owner and billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban as well as Manilla CEO George Kilavkoff and more. Cuban initially invested $500,000 in the immersive video startup earlier this summer.

Academy award nominated photographer and videographer Danfung Dennis has seen his work in Newsweek and the New York Times. He’s been hailed for shooting some of the best war footage ever seen. That’s in part because Dennis has found a new way to capture more of what we see in video.

Humans actually see a wide range of things in their peripheral vision and then adjust based on what’s interesting in their range of vision. Video isn’t that way. Video can actually see what’s shot straight on, but then, because of the way us humans see, it doesn’t feel as natural.

Dennis has created Condition One to capture and share things that typical video misses and includes a 180 field of vision. Condition One is software that takes that warped 180 degree footage shot with a fisheye lens and then translates it back into a clear flat image that we see. It’s somewhat like the Lytro that lets you shoot out of focus photos now and focuses them in later.

Even with Shark Tank, people know that Mark Cuban isn’t typically an investor at seed stages of the game. However, in addition to the Maverick’s Cuban’s other large business is HDTV which was just rebranded as AXS TV. This is where Condition One makes a lot of sense. Cuban’s AXS TV is known for it’s live concerts and events. Condition One’s technology is perfect for capturing events and putting them into a better viewing perspective.

“Our technology is going to enable some amazing new concert experiences where the user can pan back and forth between the stage and the crowd, between the drummer and guitarist, or between the action onstage and what’s going on backstage,” Condition One COO Andrew Chang told The Verge.

Condition One allows viewers to take videos of concerts, and sporting events and then pan back to the action that they really want to see, bringing into focus the parts that are most important to them.

“My work has been an evolution from still images to video and now into immersive experiences,” said Dennis. “Yet, I’m still motivated by the same idea: that the future of storytelling will be driven by technology.”

Linkage:

Check out Condition One here

Source: TC Verge

Huh a Startup Conference where we can exhibit for less than $400?

A Travel Startup For The Young Sexy & Broke NY Startup: Off Track Planet

Brooklyn based entrepreneur Freddie Pikovsky is no stranger to startups. Pikovsky is the founder of Brooklyn’s Dumbo Startup Labs, a hot spot for entrepreneurial and startup activity in Brooklyn. In fact our good friends at Justdecide.com work out of Dumbo Startup Labs.

In a true testament to the power of The Brandery startup accelerator in Cincinnati, Pikovsky, who could have easily gotten his latest startup into any incubator or accelerator in the New York region, applied to, and got accepted at, The Brandery. It was The Brandery’s focus on marketing and branding that Pikovsky was hoping would help shape Off Track Planet. It’s apparent that his decision to take a 3 months sabbatical from Dumbo Startup Labs and head to Cincinnati paid off.

Off Track Planet, in it’s 1.0 form, had already attracted the attention of young, broke, millennials who loved to travel. Pikovsky knows this market well. In fact he worked alongside Diego Saez Gil, founder of inbed.me which for politically correct reasons became wehostels. Pikovsky ventured out on his own with Off Track Planet to target a different segment of the $108 billion dollar a year travel industry.

Off Track Planet targets the millennial generation by offering great content on the best places to travel to, affordable things to do, even great swag and gadget ideas for the millennial traveler.

“In order to change the world, we must see the world first. The new Off Track Planet makes it easier to explore, plan, share, and experience the world in a way that makes sense to our generation.” Pikovsky said in a statement.

In addition to a relaunch of the Off Track Planet online offering, Pikovsky has added a traditional print magazine and has also written a book that will be available at Urban Outfitters. The attraction to the millennial traveler is definitely there. In his introduction of Off Track Planet at the Brandery Demo Day, OTP Mentor and DFJ Mercury Managing Director, Blair Garrou said:

“Off Track Planet is not for the 80 million baby boomers but for the 80 million millennials.”

Check out Pikovsky’s pitch video below from The Brandery’s Demo Day:

Linkage:

Find Off Track Planet here

Brandery here

Everywhere Else Here

New York Startup: AppBoy Is A Must Have For App Developers INTERVIEW

The app economy is exploding, and as this global phenomena continues more and more app developers have turned from “Fred in the shed” developers to serious (or semi-serious) startups.

App developers are realizing though, to make it in this global app economy they need to have access to the best tools available to them. More than ever, app developers need to know their users. App developers need access to every piece of analytical data available to them. With over a billion apps available across all ecosystems, app users have an element of choice they’ve never had before. App developers need to make sure that they can hold onto that user for as long as they can. Once you lose a user it’s hard to get them back.

All this analytical data is what Mark Ghermezian and his New York startup Appboy, specialize in. But one thing that Appboy odes that separates themselves from just another app developer dashboard, is they bring the data back to app developers in a clean, visually appealing UI and data that’s easy to understand and interpret even for beginning app developers.

Appby is about more than just data though. Ghermezian understands that app users are customers, and as such Appboy positions itself as the first app CRM solution.

We got a chance to talk to Ghermezian about Appboy. Check out our interview below:

New York Startup: Greatist The Go To Place For Health & Wellness Info INTERVIEW

I’m one of those people that thinks in order to be the best you need to think like you are the best, it’s a motivational mantra that’s driven me since my childhood. Such is the case with Derek Flanzraich and his health and wellness, socially driven info startup Greatist. This New York based startup is a destination site for original, amazingly good health and wellness content. It must be because they’re currently seeing 1.5 million uniques a month, which according to Flanzraich makes Greatist the fastest growing site in the health space.

Whether you’re looking for great healthy recipes, workout tips or even how to get over a hangover, Greatist offers a great variety of wellness and health related content.

While the content on Greatist.com is overflowing, the team at Greatist encourages their users to take it slow, one week at a time. The startups mission is to inspire and inform the world to make at least one healthier decision per week. Whether you want to lose weight, eat better, get stronger, get motivated, relieve stress, or just start working out, greatist.com offers the content you need, in an easy to read format for all of their users.

Flanzraich has been an entrepreneur since his first “lemonade stand” startup dog walking business. All the while friends, family members and new acquaintances would ask him what drove him and one of those main ingredients was health and wellness. That’s why he created Greatist.

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

New York Startup: Sonar Officially Goes Android

One of our favorite startups in New York is Sonar. It may have to do with the fact that Founder and CEO Brett Martin and I grew up in the same area, or it may just happen to be that Sonar is an amazing startup. We’ve covered Sonar since their finalist appearance at TechCrunch Disrtupt 2011 and then caught up with Martin for a pretty lengthy interview a year later at TechCrunch Disrupt NYC 2012.

During our interview back in June Martin told us off the record that they were really close to an Android app that he was happy with and feature packed. He promised us we’d see it before the end of the summer, and low and behold he made it.

If you’re not aware of Sonar, it’s a people discovery app that helps you find and organize your people locally. They added some great functionality to the app this year which helps folks automagically do some amazing things. For instance Martin explained that with the newest iteration of their iPhone (and now Android) app Martin checks in on Sonar after he gets off of the subway. When he passes the Sonar office for the coffee shop his co-workers are alerted and they can put together their coffee order for Martin without texting or calling. Pretty magnificent huh.

Of course it’s not all about coffee. Sonar comes in really handy when you’re at a conference or convention with colleagues. We use it all the time and through Sonar we can tell when our press colleagues are near by at events.

Android has been part of the plan since Sonar’s inception however Martin and the Sonar team wanted to make sure that the app was just right. They began beta testing it in the spring and our old site was part of that beta test.

On the news of the Android release into the Google Play store Martin told nibletz:

“Launching in Google Play is a huge milestone and an amazing opportunity, with the 500M total Android activations and 1.3M more that are added daily. Sonar is the best way to connect and share with friends and interesting people nearby. We combine proprietary and third-party data to give you the best, most relevant results. By launching in Google Play and localizing in so many new countries, we’re enabling a huge new audience to spend more time connecting with their friends face-to-face.”

Now if you’re an iPhone or an Android user you can experience Sonar.

Linkage:

Sonar in the Google Play store

More about Sonar here at their website

Nibletz is the voice of startups “everywhere else” here’s more startup news from “everywhere else”

To Ship Or Not To Ship, That’s This Weeks Just Decide Startup Dilemma Of The Week

As you may already know nibletz.com the voice of startups “everywhere else” has partnered with New York startup JustDecide for the Startup Dilemma Of The Week. In this feature we use a dilemma that a startup from “everywhere else” has faced in the startup process. We then take that dilemma and crowdsource advice for the startup sing the JustDecide platform at JustDecide.com

This week’s Startup Dilemma Of The Week, is a dilemma that many startups face. It has to do with, when do you launch. It was brought to us by Columbus startup Resition which we featured earlier this week. Resition is a web based platform that helps displaced (laid off) workers transition to new positions.

As the startups co-founder, Mike Chapman, has explained; Resition was functionally ready to go. It is also a much needed platform. There is a direct problem, and a growing problem, that Resition handles for displaced workers. The platform runs smoothly but the design is a little rough around the edges and the feature set that Chapman hoped to roll out is still growing.

Startups across the country and around the world face this very problem every day; ” To Ship, or Not To Ship”. With statistics about startups working against all of us, the decision on when to ship your final, consumer facing product, can prove vital to a startups success. You don’t want to leave an “alpha” or a “beta” tag up too long or people grow doubtful that you will ever finish your product.

You also don’t want to pull the trigger to early. An incomplete design or a feature flaw can make a user go away and never come back.

Conversely, pitching your startup to people, crowds and investors can be exhilarating. When an entrepreneur comes up with an idea for a startup and then gets a team to buy into that idea, the internal clock starts ticking immediately. When can I get the product out.

Head on over to the Startup Dilemma Of The Week feature at justdecide.com here and help weigh in on the decision making process. Remember for the purpose of this great educational feature for startups, you need to go here to comment and weigh in. It only takes a minute and you may need the same community help one day and it’s free.

If you have a startup dilemma of the week send it to startups@nibletz.com and we’ll get in touch with you about featuring your dilemma.

JustDecide.com founder Jay Amato is working to perfect justdecide.com and they recently launched this survey, when you have a second weigh in on that as well.

Linkage:

Check out previous startup dilemmas of the week here

Check out the justdecide.com survey information here

Are you a startup “everywhere else” then you need to be here

New York Startup: JustDecide.com Needs Your Help Real Quick

Justdecide.com is a truly unique new startup born in Brooklyn New York. The startup headed by long time executive and change agent Jay Amato, is all about helping make decisions and crowd source answers. In fact we team up with JustDecide.com for a regular feature called the Startup Dilemma Of The Week.

Amato and the team at JustDecide are conducting an important, but quick survey, on internet users habits and the way they seek advice and make decisions about their career and their business.

Are your decisions influenced by friends, family members, social networks, colleagues? The series of easy to understand questions will help the JustDecide team to decide which of the many features for their platform they’re going to implement next.

Currently the justdecide.com platform has helped people with a variety of decisions, some easy, some not so much. In our feature, the Startup Dilemma Of The Week, we take a look at issues written in by various startups, that pertain to the way they are setting up their startup, or things that have happened along the way.

Justdecide.com can be about business, relationships, child raising, cooking, heck even one guy is asking advice on cable tv vs a set top box. Another dilemma this week deals with the dilemma on whether the user should pony up full price for the next iPhone or wait for an upgrade.

Any dilemma you’re facing with multiple, clearly defined possible answers will fit in the justdecide.com platform perfectly.

While JustDecide.com is great right now, Amato is looking to make it better and for that he’s turned to the startup community so please take a gander at this quick survey.

JustDecide Quick Survey

Linkage:

Check out justdecide.com here

Here are some of our Startup Dilemmas Of The Week

Are you going “everywhere else” click here

Interview With NY Startup: Marqueed Online Collaborative Visual Platform

If you could have the ultimate interior design online platform you would probably want features like, the ability to pin interior design pictures from the web, adding plans to your interior design, drawing right on top of the plans and pictures, collaborating with designers, getting feedback on your plans online from friends and family, and add comments. The ultimate interior design platform would be Pinterest meets the furniture catalog, Asana, meets Google Wave meets Facebook. Well guess what? That platform is here.

New York startup Marqueed has all of those features in a smart, graphically rich UI that also keeps all of your visual projects together in one organized place. Marqueed can be applied to just about anything visual. You could use Marqueed for do it yourself projects, recipes, landscaping, home alterations, heck even automobile customization.

The core set of functionality behind is a communication and collaborative platform around images. In the interview below with co-founder Zerna Karian she’s quick to point out that Marqueed isn’t about project management, but if enough users like it for that they would integrate with Asana or Basecamp. Karian’s other co-founder is her husband John. Both of them are career long creatives and it shows in the crisp UI and easy to use functionality.

Check out our interview with Karian below:

NY Brothers Create Startup: SwapCycles A Marketplace For Motorcycles

Whether you’re a weekend warrior on a beautiful Harley or you prefer the speed and precision of the latest Honda or BMW bike, you may have noticed one of the things that the interwebs has been lacking is a decent all in one destination designed to help riders buy and sell bikes, and of course show them off.

Brothers Daniel and Myer Amer are your run of the mill Rutgers students, passionate about business and motorcycles (which of course makes them less run of the mill). With the blessing and mentorship of their father. The elder Amer built his own contracting business from the ground up and his business principles, skills and good ole fashion elbow grease have helped the brothers launch their business.

SwapCycles online marketplace allows both power sports dealers and private individuals to list their motorcycles for sale. They’ve also created a show off feature and a social network community for motorcycle enthusiasts who can use the platform to talk shop,sports,sales, even find riding buddies across the country.

Typically when we think Silicon Alley we’re not thinking motorcycles but SwapCycles is right in the thick of it. We got a chance to talk with Daniel and Myer about SwapCycles and growing a startup, outside of the mainstream, in Silicon Alley. Check out the interview below:

Share Your Predictions For The Future With Syracuse Startup: PsyQic

It’s not everyday that you find a startup that wants to help you predict the future and share your predictions. That’s of course as long as you throw all the “weather” startups to the wayside. PsyQic a startup from Syracuse New York, does just that.

PsyQic is an iOS app that makes it easy to proclaim and than share your predictions. Do you have a prediction for next week’s NFL football games? Do you see something in the future that not everyone else sees? This may be just the app for you.

PsyQic goes beyond the predictions themselves and gamifies the process by giving you points when your predictions comes true. The points are called Qi’s which is actually a Chinese word for “spiritual energy”. Founders Gabrielle Gosselin and Keisuke Inoue wanted to design something different and fun. PsyQic fulfills just that.

Inoue and Gosselin are currently incubating their startup in upstate New York at the Syracuse Tech Garden after graduating from the Syracuse Student Sandbox this summer.

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

Easily Make Citations For Your Research With NY Startup: Citelighter

We’ve been having a lot of fun using Washington DC highlighting startup, Markerly. Markerly is a simple, easy to use browser plugin that allows anyone to highlight virtually anything on the web. From there you can share it six ways to Sunday and beyond. IT’s a great platform for grabbing pieces of text and sharing them with your friends, colleagues and social networks.

New York based Citelighter works similarly to Markerly in that it allows you to highlight text on the web. Now though, instead of sharing that Citelighted content with your friends, and social networks, Citelighter compiles a bibliographical style note sheet for the end user to reference back. Citelighter is a great companion for anyone who is going to highlight something and then reference it later on.

Citelighter joins the browser plugin and highlighting space at a great time, as everyone is seeing what web browser plugins actually meet their needs.

We got a chance to interview Citelighter cofounder Lee Joki. Check out our interview below:

New York Startup: Exceleratr Finds Extra Curriculars For High School Students INTERVIEW

High school students applying for college are finding more and more that extra-curricular activities within the walls of the high school they’re attending are no longer adequate when it comes to moving your college application up the chain. Sure class president, yearbook, and maybe a high school Habitat for Humanity project are great, but more and more high school students are gravitating towards extracurriculars outside of the school.

These extra-curricular activities can include anything from unique volunteer opportunities to internships in a career field that the student wants to study. There are a broad range of extra-curricular activities for high school students out there, but until now Google was the easiest way to find them.

A new startup called Exceleratr, based in New York, has designed a platform to link high school students to extra-curricular activities that make a difference in both their lives and their college applications. Ezra Mosseri, one of the co-founders of Exceleratr warns though, if you’re a high school senior this year, it could be too late.

The Exceleratr platform is aimed at high school students of any age and of course the earlier you start racking up your extra-curricular resume the better.

Whether you’re looking for a traditional high school internship, an academic program, or a non academic program, Exceleratr covers all the bases.

With Exceleratr students can create profiles, and manage their extra-curricular applications the same way you might if you were looking for an actual job. Of course there are a lot of job platforms out there. There are also a fair amount of startups out there catering to college students looking for internships, however Exceleratr is the first platform designed specifically for high school students looking to add to their pre-college resume.

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