Comments Off on Interview With Chicago Startup LineChop0LikeLike 2,905
LineChop Co-Founder Nishanth Samala is all smiles about getting rid of the wait list (photo: nibletz)
Being placed on a waiting list at a restaurant can be one of the most frustrating things in the world. You don’t want to stand around and do nothing, but you don’t want to leave the restaurant in fear that you may miss your call for a seat.
Earlier this month we brought you the story about Pittsburgh startup NoWait, and how they’re providing a turnkey iOS based system for restaurants to manage their waiting list. While at TechWeek in Chicago we met this young group of guys who are still in college, and plan on disrupting the wait list as well.
As LineChop’s co-founder Nishanth Samala told us though, LineChop is different form NoWait because it doesn’t require any specific hardware. The system, for lack of a better word, is cloud based. Samala was quick to point out that a host or hostess at a restaurant could run LineChop on their existing computer, an iPad or other tablet.
The other thing that sets LineChop apart is that they’re plan from the get go is to offer coupons and deals to those customers that are waiting in line.
LineChop has a text or messaging based feature which will allow patrons to be notified when their spot in line is available or they can get notified via the LineChop app.
Check out our video below with Samala who’s very excited about the prospects for his startup:
Comments Off on Australian Startup: iPledj Is A Crowdfunding Platform For Just About Everything INTERVIEW0LikeLike 2,047
Crowdfunding is a really hot space right now. Obviously in the U.S. Kickstarter and Indiegogo were the first to the gate, funding everything from record albums to installation art projects and even startups who’ve gotten creative with their Kickstarter and Indiegogo projects.
Congress recently passed the JOBS Act that’s going to make it possible for ordinary citizens to crowd fund startups for equity up to $1 million dollars.
Overseas though, crowd funding is just starting to take off. Australian startup iPledj is a crowd funding platform for everything from creative projects to businesses. With iPledj just about anyone create a project and just about anyone can fund that same project. iPledg has no medium for crowd funding for equity, but if you’re a business looking to make money for a special project, you may find luck on the Australian site.
We got a chance to talk with iPledj co-founder Brian Vadas about Australia’s biggest crowdfunding startup. Check out that interview below:
What is ipledg?
iPledg is a broad based crowd funding platform on which those with creative, commercial, charitable or community projects can engage their networks (and beyond) to raise the required funds to achieve their initiatives. Whilst largely unheard of in Australia, crowd funding is one of the fastest browing forms of ecommerce on the planet. Since our inception, we have been engaging with governments, universities, industry bodies, businesses and individuals who see this as a efficient, low risk for of raising funds that do not involve loans that need to be repaid or the surrender of equity in the concept or company. The platform not only facilitates the process of crowd funding, but gives clear, concise, and simple guidelines and assistance to help both project creators and those who wish to support projects.
Who are the founders and what are their backgrounds?
Andy Tompkins originated from the UK where he qualified as a Chartered Accountant before spending some time in South Africa and then migrating to Australia at the beginning of 2010. Andy has his own corporate advisory business in Brisbane, Lattice Capital, which was started by his colleague Trevor Cuss in 2008. Andy is also a panel member for the Queensland government’s Mentoring for Growth program, assisting small businesses deal with some of the issues facing them in day to day operations. It was on one of these panels that he met Bryan Vadas.
Even at high school, Bryan demonstrated entrepreneurial flair and a commercial astuteness beyond his years, having become the face of Young Achievers Australia in 1982. Using broad based skills he has assisted business start ups right through to multinationals who require business transformation solutions. In 2002, Bryan teamed up with Steve Flint to form Time Masters (Australia), offering project management, program management, and general management consultancy to small and large businesses, locally and abroad.
Having met Andy at a Mentoring for Growth panel meeting in 2011, Bryan initiated a coffee, at which they both discussed synergies between the businesses they were running. As they were about to leave, Andy casually mentioned to Bryan about an idea he had about starting a crowd funding site. Typical of most people who are unaware of this little known concept (at least at the time), Bryan asked “what’s crowd funding?” at which point the two resumed their seats and spent considerably more time going through the idea. At the end of their lengthy conversation Bryan told Andy “you shouldn’t have mentioned this idea in passing – you know now I’m going to push you to do it” and the rest, as they say, is history.
Both Andy and Bryan quickly recognised the “fit” between their philanthropic endeavours and the general concept of Crowd funding, and iPledg became not just a platform for commercial and business projects, but one for charitable and community endeavours.
Finally, with friends and close family involved in artistic and creative pursuits, Andy and Bryan realised that the passion around the creative space would also lend itself to Crowd Funding (this had been proven for years already and all around the world), so iPledg found its third pillar, that of being a platform for the artistic and creative to raise the funding they require for their projects.
And iPledg was born!
Where are you based?
We are based on the Gold Coast, Queensland, but have established the site as global platform, allowing anyone from anywhere in the world to post a project or pledge their support. We have already had projects and pledges from Australia, the USA, Asia, Europe, and South Africa, so we are already achieving the dream of iPledg being based not in one location, but potentially on every computer and screen around the world
What problem does iPledg solve?
Great for startup capital. Venture capitalists don’t “venture” anymore (availability of venture capital is down by 90% from the figures of 10 years ago). Venture capitalists say they find start-ups, but by nature they don’t – they require proven track record and a history of sales and profit (bringing on the argument that they perhaps should be called Development Capitalists nowadays rather than Venture Capitalists). Crowd funding allows for the funding of what is little more than a good idea, as long as “the crowd” also the crowd also believes that the idea is sound. Small business or start-ups can try crowd funding quickly, at low cost and low risk, and raise funds without taking on loans that need to be repaid or giving away equity in the idea, product or company. They can use such funding for prototyping, proof of concept, affording to bring in skills and knowledge to achieve a particular point in their progress, acquire tools and equipment, or to develop marketing collateral or deliver a product launch. A successful campaign will not only provide the required funding, but support the business with social proof of their concept, which may allow them to acquire greater, more formal funding from traditional sources. In addition, a well promoted, successful crowd funding campaign will not only give exposure to the business and product / service, but is a great way to offer the product / service to the market before getting underway. The founders of iPledg recognised (in their commercial lives prior to iPledg) that there was a yawning gap at the bottom of the funding ladder, whereby businesses with a good idea and little (or no) traction could not attract finance. Crowd funding offer a solution and now fills that gap
How did you come up with the idea?
I wish we could take credit for coming up with the idea of crowd funding, but it was successfully implemented before we came along. Andy know of it and he told me of the concept last year, thinking it would fill the gap of at the bottom of the crowd funding ladder that most of our SME clients were faced with when they went to acquire funding. We were also both heavily involved with charities, and had family and friends involved in the creative and artistic field. We recognized that crowd funding would provide a universal solution in all these areas to allow a new model for raising funds, that would be efficient and effective, and allow for a new voice in the heavily crowded funding area.
What’s your secret sauce?
Broad commercial experience. Strategic alliances with key individuals and organizations that give us reach and add to our credibility. The ability to weather the long road to establishing the critical mass and exposure needed to be a sustainable business model. An undying, never-give-up attitude. A passion for wanting to make a difference, to help small business and charitable / community groups (it is this motivation, what we see as the right motivation, that makes us different, as others are motivated by the financial returns being achieved by other, leading and successful crowd funding platforms. It is passion rather than the want for a quick buck that will see sustainability and success). And, of course, as sense of fun in all we do – we love our job!
What’s one challenge you overcame in the startup process?
As a shoestring startup, we had to get bang for our buck in every respect. We had to build the platform with minimal funding, and that gave us a base platform with which we could launch. This gave us the exposure we were after, which then generated enough income to generate the funds to build the full version we wanted, which launches in early August this year. We got there in the end, but we made do with what resources we had to get underway and achieve traction
What’s next for iPledg?
Continue to build awareness of both crowd funding and of iPledg. Launch iPledg 2.0 with the successful components of the current platform, but with more functionality and flexibility. Continue to work with the regulators with whom we have started speaking about investment crowd funding, and move to review global experience in readiness for acceptance of the same model here in Australia when the regulators are ready to do so,
One of the startups we were very interested in meeting up with in Chicago was KlutchClub. We featured this subscription box for health and wellness startups back in April here on nibletz.com. Even in that short time we saw Klutch Club exploding with growth.
The KlutchClub booth at Startup City during TechWeek was slammed throughout the exhibition. Their card jar was full, yet they didn’t win the People’s Choice award. (we have no faith in that card system). They are definitely one of the top Chicago startups in our book. And, KlutchClub is woman owned.
Founder and CEO Julie Bashkin created KlutchClub out of her own needs. She spent some time in her career in corporate America in a position where she had to trail 4 days out of every 5 day work week. She struggled to find quality health and wellness products that worked, fit her travel lifestyle and were cost effective.
Through her career in marketing she found that vendors weren’t getting to the customers they needed to and customers weren’t finding these manufacturers products. KlutchClub solves that problem as well.
After a couple of years of vetting the idea out, she finally launched KlutchClub to a great reception. Bashkin won’t say how many subscribers she has but she happily reported that they’ve shipped over 15,000 boxes.
Each monthly box contains a minimum of $50 in products and members pay $18 per month. As you’ll see in the video though, this months box is well over $150 with just one of the products retailing at $70. This is a win win for every household.
The original KlutchClub boxes are all geared towards women however with the feedback and subscribers Bashkin has already picked up she quickly set out to design a box for men as well. That monthly subscription will begin in August, and we are definitely getting on that list.
Comments Off on Chicago Startup: Benevolent One Of The Greatest Ideas At TechWeek0LikeLike 1,567
We scoped out Benevolent.net at TechCocktails mixer on Sunday night at TechWeek 2012. We didn’t learn that much about it and they quickly went on the shortlist for Monday. I’m really glad that we did get to spend time withMegan Kashner the founder and CEO of Benevolent.net because what she and her startup are doing is incredible.
Benevolent is a kickstarter like platform for low income people to get things that they need to better their lives. Kashner, a career long Licensed Clinical Social Worker, found that in her days of seeing low income clients that just one extra push like $100 for a pair of glasses and an eye exam, or $200 for a college credit course, could make or break someone trying to rebuild their lives.
Social Workers are always told to try not to bring their work home, and not to mix their personal lives with their work lives, but I know about 5 social workers who work with low income people or people in recovery who take themselves almost to poverty levels by just giving their clients that extra money for that thing that they really need (not want).
Well Benevolent makes helping people with these kinds of needs easier, however Kashner is no fool she has a very serious vetting process for the needs based kickstarter platform. First off, the user who “needs” something needs to be endorsed by a social worker or accredited 501 C3 organization. Kashner and her team make sure that each “endorser” or “sponsor” is fully vetted and that no one is trying to fraudulently rip off people by pulling on their heart strings.
Benevolent is already making a difference. Kashner showed me an example of a young lady who was trying real hard to interview for jobs and she was very self conscious about her thick glasses. She really wanted contact lenses but couldn’t afford the lens exam and that first box of lenses. Her story was endorsed and she quickly received enough donations for the contact lenses. Now at the end of the campaign the funds don’t go to the person that actually needs the item, but rather the social worker or non profit that is the sponsor. This provides an extra layer of security and insures the donators that the money was used exactly for what it was intended.
Comments Off on Startup Interview: Chicago Startup PrepHero0LikeLike 3,975
PrepHero is a new Chicago startup that bills itself as the premiere “social” development network for athletic training. While RocBob, another startup that exhibited at Chicago TechWeek, is about recreational sports, the team and “the game”, Prep Hero is about the athlete.
PrepHero allows the coach and the athlete to keep up with their training regiment, skill sets, areas of improvement and more. The coach can then use the PrepHero platform to keep up with his or her entire team and map the progress of their athletes.
What sets PrepHero apart from other scholastic athlete focused startups is that PrepHero is about the conditioning and developing of the athlete. It’s more invested in the person who is the athlete rather than how many home runs, RBIs, rebounds or free throws they have.
Where some platforms for athletes are about bragging rights and wins, PrepHero is about achievement and progress. In fact those who support the athlete, outside of the coaches circle, are called boosters. Boosters can be dad, mom and other family members, even your grandfather states away.
We got a chance to interview Barry Tarter the co-founder and CEO of PrepHero about this unique new idea. Check out the video below:
Comments Off on Chicago Startup: Shortlist Easy To Use Event Organizer App TechWeek 2012 Interview VIDEO0LikeLike 1,539
We’ve seen recently how important mobile apps are to the event industry. In fact, event software giant Cvent went from never acquiring a company to acquiring two event app development companies within a week. That shows how important mobile apps are to the $263 billion dollar U.S. meeting industry.
A new startup, and recent graduate of Excelerate Labs, Shortlist, has come to the party with a new mobile app solution for any event organizer, big or small.
To compliment matters Shortlist packs a ton of features into a simple to use app from event creation, to end user functionality in a smart, easy to navigate UX.
On the social side, Shortlist is able to connect event attendees to each other using their proprietary “connection engine” algorithms. You’ll get to meet, new and influential people who are attending the same event.
We got to talk to CTO and co-founder Brantley Harris in this quick interview video below. Harris talks about Shortlist and also what they learned in the Excelerate Labs accelerator.
Comments Off on NIbletz Says Thanks! There’s Still A Little Time0LikeLike 1,644
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”
Comments Off on Startup Event: Dallas Prepares For Startup Weekend0LikeLike 1,787
Entrepreneurs, startup founders, and members of the Dallas tech community are preparing for Startup Weekend next weekend. The official startup weekend organization advises those participating to not let their ideas, and plans get sidetracked this week with father’s day. Next weekend means business.
In anticipation of the event the Startup Weekend committee for Dallas has announced some of their mentors that will be helping the teams build their startups over the 54 hours next weekend.
Startup Weekend Dallas will have two lawyer mentors in Danica Mathes and Craig Cox of Bell Nunnally LLP. They will be able to tackle some of the tough legal questions as teams vet out their startup plan.
They’ve got BioTech and NanoTech specialist Phong Le of Marketing in the Life Sciences Group at HPC.
Paul Griffith, Senior Director of Business Development at AOL Inc will be on hand as well Brad Kendall of Great White North.
Rounding out their list of great mentors is Amrit Kirpalani who is the founder of predictive social commerce company called Nectar Online Media.
The mentors won’t be there throughout the entire event, however Startup Weekend Dallas plans to post the hours of their ability at the event so you’ll know exactly when you can get the kind of help you need.
Comments Off on Chicago Startup: Ox&Pen Loyalty & Reward Network INTERVIEW0LikeLike 1,769
Loyalty and Reward startups are hot right now. One thing that some of the newer entries into the space are learning is that people are tired of accumulating points and rewards at one place, that they can only spend at one place. Philadelphia’s Lokalty, DesMoines startup FreeBee Cards and Kansas’ Front Flip are all loyalty reward networks that allow users to earn points in one place and spend them at another.
Chicago’s Ox&Pen takes that reward philosophy and brings it to the bustling city of Chicago. Ox&Pen isn’t just about checkout reward points though. With the OxandPen app you can earn points by checking into network places, socially sharing network places and of course with purchase rewards.
The app is quite robust and feature packed while keeping the UI graphically rich and easily organized. There is also no printing involved with Ox&Pen, everything happens in-app including redemption.
With Ox&Pen once you accumulate enough in network points the rewards are free and require no additional purchase.
The best part about the network? It’s reserved for local, independent, unique merchants. You won’t find deals or rewards for big box national chains on Ox&Pen, but you will find promotions for Vera, The Fifty/50, Krista K Boutique, Bleeding Heart Bakery, Dog-a-holics, Roots Pizza and more (only in Chicago at this time). And, of course, you can earn loyalty points at these placesand redeem them anywhere in the network.
We got a chance to interview Ox&Pen, check out the interview below the break.
Comments Off on Interview With NY Startup Edamam Becoming The Worlds Food Knowledge Base0LikeLike 1,823
Edamam founder and CEO Victor Penev has a lofty goal. He wants his company to become the goto place for food knowledge in the world. While the goal seems quite lofty as I am writing this right now, if you watch the video below you’ll see that Edamam may well be on their way to doing just that.
They launched their consumer facing product, a mobile app which pulls over one million recipes from different sources, at the DEMO conference in April in Santa Clara California. This isn’t just your run of the mill recipes.com app though, the UI is appealing, the navigation is a breeze and you can separate and search through recipes six ways to Sunday.
On the business side Edamam offers an intense, information packed widget for food blogs and websites to tap their vast knowledge base in the same ways as the mobile app and more. They are also offering an API for developer partners to tap that big food database.
In this interview with Edamam they talk about how they plan on being the goto place for food knowledge. In a few years time they hope that the end user will be able to go to the grocery store, by a piece of salmon and get a treasure trove of possibilities wrapped around Edamam information.
Off camera he admitted that he would love to see Edamam being tapped by the users smartphone in the grocery store, and then a smart refrigerator, stove, or other appliance that offers recipes, food guidance, wine recommendations, anything. We’re talking the Jetson’s Rosie in the big data era.
We’ve covered quite a few food startups here at Nibletz, this is the first time that a startup has such a clear path to the future. We really wish these guys well, and after you watch the video you’ll see they have their stuff together and could easily achieve that lofty goal.
Comments Off on Interview With Boston Startup Jaxx, A Social App For Dudes0LikeLike 1,665
Jaxx is a mobile social application just for guys they call it “an app for your entourage”. Jaxx stands by the fact that women and men communicate differently. Where women need face to face interaction men prefer shoulder to shoulder.
That’s why the Jaxx app has three key elements. Jaxx allows men to form entourages of friends. Within the entourage they can “throw down” bets on games, “call out” friends to challenges and “roast” each other.
The roasting part was actually pretty funny. It’s a location portion of the social mobile app which allows you to leave a smack talking roast when your “bro” gets close to that area. For instance if you know your bro is going to play tennis you can leave a roast like “Man you hit like a girl” and when he gets to the tennis court he’ll get that message.
Jaxx launched a beta at TechCrunch Disrupt for iPhone and they plan on launching an Android app as well. They were handing out an investor prospectus at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2012 which said they were expecting major growth in 2013 an d2014 and they were seeking a $500,000 seed round.
At this point in time Jaxx is more of a novelty than anything serious. There are several social networks revolving around sports that men may find a lot more appealing, and a bit more mature. Judge for yourself though, check out the video below:
Comments Off on Austin Startup: BeDJ Bringing Turntable.FM To Real Life, This is Hot! INTERVIEW0LikeLike 1,925
By now most of us have had the great experience that is turntable.fm. Hanging out with friends in a virtual space, and going around the room and controlling the music. You get to be the dj and so do your friends. You get to control the music in the virtual room.
Now imagine if this concept was done in real life. For instance, you and your buddies go to the local sports bar and hang out. Now it’s 2012 so instead of a juke box, imagine if you could control the music in the bar or restaurant using your phone. Sure you can control the tv’s with an IR blaster and you may even be able to hack a stereo system, but imagine if it was encouraged. Imagine if you could BeDJ in real life.
That’s the technology behind Austin based startup BeDJ. It’s so hard for restaurants and bars to control the music in their establishments. They can never appease all of their clientele all the time. That’s why in the 60’s -80’s jukebox bars were hot because the people could put another dime in the jukebox and hear what they want.
BeDJ is offering a system/app for venues that allow their overhead music to be controlled by customers with a controller app. It’s a fermium service where venues will be able to get the music controller app for free, however they can upgrade to offer a more robust user experience and also deliver location based ads to their customers.
Imagine the benefit to a restaurant or bar that says, “select your next song and get half off your next round” well we’re definitely in on that deal even if we’re four or five rounds in. The social, customer, and reward element of BeDJ make it a great model for the establishment.
We got to talk in depth with co-founder Simeon Duong to hear all about this exciting startup. Check out the interview after the break Read More…
At TechCrunch Disrupt we reported on a very cool startup called Snip Snap App. I was so excited about it that I had the first story up before Ted Mann, the founder, got a chance to get off the Disrupt Battlefield stage. While he may feel that larger media outlet coverage is more relevant, we all know the power of nibletz as the voice of startups everywhere else, that’s why after several editorial meetings about this we decided to post the interview anyway, regardless of the founders view on TechCrunch coverage vs Nibletz coverage it’s a damn good product, and heck some people think I’m a total douche, but still read nibletz everyday.
So what is Snip Snap App, it’s an app that’s already saved me $36 and I’ve only had it on my iPhone 4S since last Wednesday. With Snip Snap App you simply take pictures of your print coupons, within the app and voila the rest is magical.
Snip Snap App takes all the useful coupon information like the barcode, promotional codes, and images and makes them easy for the cashier to see at checkout. Now you don’t have to worry about loading down your pocketbook, or purse, or forgetting the Babies R Us coupons, which is consequently why Mann created the app.
Here's our original picture of MC Hammer talking to Mann that was borrowed without accreditation (photo: nibletz syndicate)
But that’s not all…
When you sign up for Snip Snap App you join a community of likeminded couponers who are also posting coupons on a daily basis. You can use a search function or discover function to find coupons that you’ll use in your community, or in your daily travels.
In fact, you don’t even need to upload a coupon to get the benefit of using everyone else’s coupons.
Now, when you try and redeem the coupon there is the risk that the cashier or store won’t take the coupon but more and more stores are getting used to seeing digital coupons. If you successfully redeemed your coupon than you mark it as such after using it. If you pitched a fit and are waiting for the paddy wagon to come and get you for punching the clerk in the face for not taking your coupon, then you mark it as “unsuccessful” (please don’t really do that).
These success ratings give you a better idea going into the store whether or not you’re going to have success. Bed Bath & Beyond, The Gap, Old Navy and Burger King seem to be quite successful thus far. Snip Snap App also has a new exclusive coupon deal with Aeropastle as well so you can use their coupon at any shopping mall in America.
Snip Snap App is going to be more successful than traditional coupon apps because of the discovery, search and sharing functionality. In some cases those gigantic Bed Bath & Beyond coupons that come in the mail are being shared on Snip Snap App with success. This is a feature the other coupon apps don’t have.
So far Mann has seen over 130,000 device downloads after being featured in the iTunes store and over 50,000 repeat users. Why, because it’s really a must have app. Mann reports to our Managing Editor Cameron Wright, that an Android and iPad app can be expected in the coming months.
Mobile payments are becoming more and more popular especially in places where using your mobile phone over a traditional payment method come in handy. One of those places is the bar, the pub or the tavern.
We’ve all had those nights where we plan on having a great time so we leave our credit card and/or our drivers license at the bar and run a tab all night. There are so many risk factors in doing this but we never really take those into consideration.
It’s so easy to sneak a drink on to someone else’s tab. I’ve had it happen to me a bunch of times, and while you may not admit it freely, its probably happened to you. Some cheapskate here’s you tell the bartender what tab to put the drink on and then uses your tab the next time around.
The other big risk factor is forgetting to close out your tab, losing your credit card or losing your drivers license. Now all of those are risky but you’ll have to agree that losing your drivers license is probably the most inconvenient. You can usually call the credit card issuer, report the card lost and have another one sent to you very quickly. Losing your license means digging up documents you haven’t seen in five years, standing in line at the DMV and praying that an entire day isn’t lost in that line.
Most of these things, are factors behind the new Oklahoma startup DrinkEasy. As the name implies, the guys behind DrinkEasy want you to have an easy, laid back time whether your drinking with colleagues at work or having a throw down party after a football game.
DrinkEasy allows you to setup and pay for a tab on your smartphone. This immediately eliminates the risk of leaving your card and license behind. Also, with DrinkEasy no one can add to your tab, except for you.
We got a chance to catch up with Kirk Kaupke one of the founders of DrinkEasy for this quick interview after the break
Kyle
Nibletz
