Ohio Startup Crowdentials Launches Crowdfunding Compliance Platform

Crowdfunding is the hottest space for startups right now. And now, with changing regulations, it could get even hotter.

The Jumpstart Our Business Startup Act was passed over a year ago, paving the way for crowdfunding startups to offer equity. After the bill passed in both the Senate and the House it was then referred over to the Securities And Exchange Commission (SEC) to come up with the regulations for crowdfunding.

The JOBS Act has a lot of regulations to follow, including the fact no individual making less than $100,000 can invest more than $2000 or 5% of their net worth. Crowdfunding is going to spawn a whole new type of investor and there are currently no regulatory software programs out there. That’s the guts behind Crowdentials.

Richard Rodman, the cofounder of Crowdentials, spoke about crowdfunding in February at the Everywhereelse.co Startup Conference in Memphis. He founded the company with Chief Operating Officer Rohan Kusre and Chief Technology Officer Max Heckel. The three came up with the idea for Crowdentials in April and were recently accepted into the Cleveland-based FlashStarts’ startup accelerator program.

While the SEC is still finalizing its regulations, the Crowdentials technology is ready to go. “Our compliance solution is all variable-driven and will adapt to any regulations put forth,” Rodman said in a statement. Once the regulations are officially complete, the entrepreneur plans to launch “within minutes.”

In the meantime, Crowdentials is preparing a collection of multi-media resources and guides for both crowdfunding rookies and experts. In addition to teaching the basics, the comprehensive suite will cover the nuances, regulations, risks, and opportunities associated with equity crowdfunding.

Crowdentials’ technology ensures that investors, businesses, and platforms are following the SEC’s rules. According to Rodman, “Crowdentials is the vital link between the SEC regulations and all crowdfunding parties”.

Individuals who gain compliancy through Crowdentials can trust that they are abiding by the regulations, and startups can feel confident that they are raising money through compliant individuals. Rodman believes the SEC’s regulations are meant to protect the new crowdfunding population from fraud and financial distress. “That’s why compliance is so important,” the entrepreneur said. “When everyone is aware of their level of compliance, we can make more educated investment decisions.”

Crowdfunding has spawned hundreds of crowdfunding sites that will help connect would-be investors to startups and other small businesses’ needing funds. Now startp founders are finding ways to support the crowdfunding economy. Cowdfunding vetting companies, insurance companies, and even discovery companies have all popped up over the past year with more expected when the rules change to allow equity investments.

In the meantime feel free to check out Crowdentials at crowdentials.com

7 key elements of a successful crowdfunding campaign.

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Ohio Startup: 530Funds, Sorting Out The Crowdfunding Space For Everyone Else

Ever since the first non music related project went on the Kickstarter platform, crowdfunding has grown to new heights. After the JOBS act was passed last year, it became a blistering inferno of new startups, companies and websites. If you were looking for a good crowdfunding solution on Google you would come up with over 9 million results. Now there are new startups out there like StandOffer, and Athens Ohio startup 530Funds which are helping to make the crowdfunding space, easier to navigate.

530Funds opened up their beta on November 12th and are continually iterating to make the site exactly what the crowd needs, offering good information about available crowdfunding options. One of the main obstacles they have to overcome in building a platform like this is that every time they release another version, 10 more crowdfunding sites have popped up.

Also, at the present time, crowdfunding for equity is still not legal. Although the legislation is passed we are still waiting for the SEC to develop the regulations around crowdfunding for equity up to $1 million dollars. We interviewed a startup last Friday, from Richmond, called LendingClouds, that has sidestepped the SEC by offering royalties instead of equity.

We spoke with Richard Rodman, the founder of 530Funds. Check out the interview below.

Ohio Startup: Buyvite Adds “Pay Me Back” Social Payment Product

We’ve been following Brandy Alexander-Wimberly and her Toledo Ohio startup, Buyvite, since last May. Buyvite is a payment tool that makes group buying easy. For example, say you’re having a high school reunion and as a side activity you decide to catch a football game or a few rounds of golf as a group. Buyvite allows all of the group to pay for the excursion without having one person delegated in charge of the money, and risking one, or two people not paying.

Buyvite announced a new product on Monday called “Pay Me Back”. This product works after the transaction is made and is just in time for the holiday gift giving season.

With “Pay Me Back” say you and your family members decided to buy one of your other family members an expensive gift, like an iPad. Once one person makes the initial purchase, Pay Me back can divide the price paid among the others in your family and act as the conduit for the person who “fronted” the money to get paid back easily.

“Pay Me Back” has a variety of great uses. Alexander-Wimberly explains:

“This product was developed to give our partners an easy way to leverage the power of social commerce. Our social payment badges are designed to embed on product pages to promote the application. After the customer makes their purchase, they now have a seamless and social way of showing their friends what they bought, telling them how much they owe and an easy way to get paid back. It’s a perfect fit for any company focused on selling gifts, vacation rentals, event tickets and even works well for fantasy sports leagues and donations.”

Early adopters of “Pay Me Back” include Tiesta Tea, Pledge Music, Tony Packo’s, Swank Martini and payment processing provider E2E Payments of Lombard, IL. E2E President Brad Bialas explains the advantage of offering “Pay Me Back” to his customer base. “Our ecommerce clients are looking for new ways to reach their social audience. Consumers are already locked in to the concept of group purchases and peer-to-peer payments. Buyvite’s “Pay Me Back” product gives our clients a fresh and social way to promote a “crowd funding” model via their websites and ecommerce carts and it’s a proven way to help elevate traditionally group focused purchases like gifts, team costs or event tickets.”

Linkage:

Check out Buyvite here

Here are more startup news stories from “Everywhere Else”

Buyvite is one of over 100 startups that are going to be here, are you?

Ohio Startup Huddlewoo Wants To Know What You’re Extraordinary At? Launches Today

A new startup based in Columbus Ohio and Phoenix Arizona, called Huddlewoo, is launching today. This video platform gives ordinary people like me and you access to people we admire. Huddlewoo also lets ordinary people show off the things that they are extraordinary at.

Through Huddlewoo’s unique platform you can schedule 1:1 video conversations with people that you may not get the opportunity to meet in person.

Huddlewoo users create a profile and highlight what they are extraordinary at. The user than sets up an availability calendar through a tool within the web app. Once those two things are in place the user can set a price for their time, they can then decide if they want to make a little extra income or donate the fees from the video sessions to charity.

Are you a Zen SEO master and want to share a few tips in private settings? How much do you think that information is worth? You can set the price and the times and wait for people to line up to have Huddlewoo sessions with you. Maybe you’re a great baker and want to share some kitchen tips for making the best cupcakes, you can do that too. Whatever you are extraordinary at and willing to share (even for money) can be added in your profile and easily discovered by other members of the Huddlewoo community.

This unique video, mentoring, online class hybrid, startup opens up in alpha today. We got a chance to talk with the Huddlewoo team as they prepared for their alpha launch.

Check out the interview below.

Sports Fans Find Your Out Of Town Bar With Cleveland Startup: BackerBar

You see the tweets, Facebook mentions and Google+ messages all the time, someone in your timeline is out of town and wants to catch their favorite game at a team friendly bar. After all you don’t want to go into just any sports bar in Baltimore Maryland and ask to put on the Steeler’s game. Those special bars are what this Cleveland startup refers to as “BackerBar’s” which is where their name came from.

The team at BackerBar came up with this clever little definition:

backerbar: [n.] /ޖbakər/ bär/ – a bar that supports, or ‘backs’, a team foreign to the local market. Support can range from just a banner or two hanging up, or on game days packed wall to wall with fans wearing the teams’ jerseys…even the bartenders! Bar owners can choose to support a professional and/or college team. Examples include an Ohio State BackerBar in Chicago, Dallas Cowboys BackerBar in Los Angeles, or USC Trojans BackerBar in Boston. The combinations of teams/cities can be endless. We cover the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, as well as NCAA football and basketball.

As you can see if you’re a sports fan this is a very important startup. BackerBar has developed a gigantic database and interactive web based platform so that any traveling or transplanted sports fan can find out where their team’s “backer bar” is. They also told us in the interview below, that naturally a mobile app is in the works. No more worries about getting laughed, at made fun of or even injured for supporting your own team. You’ll find that special backer bar with BackerBar.

In the interview below BackerBar co-founder Michael Stratis talks about their startup and also building a startup in Cleveland which has become a town full of startups and innovation. In fact one of the biggest organizations that supports startups and entrepreneurs, Jumpstart Inc, is also based in Cleveland.

Check out the interview below:

Columbus Ohio Startup: Resition Easing The Layoff Process INTERVIEW

Do we even need to say something like “Getting laid off is one of the hardest things in the world”. Probably not. Getting laid off is a fact of life though, especially in these trying economic times. There’s no way to sugar coat the lay off process but what happens immediately afterwards is crucial to the laid off employee.

Historically, the longer a laid off employee waits to start the next job hunt, the harder it gets. As time goes on people who are laid off tend to get disengaged from the work life experience and also disheartened by their lack of leads. Often times this is because people who have been laid off don’t know exactly where to go.

This is where Columbus startup Resition comes in. Resition is a platform created by Mike Chapman (CEO), Chris Domino (CTO) and Walter Akana (COO), to help facilitate a transition to another job and ease the blow of getting laid off. Resition is actually paid for by the company that is doing the layoffs. Adding Resition at the time of separation allows the companies that are laying people off to give those people access to career coaches, mentoring, and a socially driven job search. The companies then get valuable analytic data back from Resition that can help them manage the morale at the company for the remaining employees.

While the job displacement space is definitely not a sexy one, Chapman and his team have left no stone unturned and have made sure that Resition does exactly what they’ve set out to do.

How is it done? We got a chance to interview Chapman. Check out the interview below:

Interview With Youngstown Ohio Startup: CampusShift.com

There is over $1 trillion dollars of student loan debt these days and with the economy in the situation that it’s currently in, it’s getting harder and harder for students to manage and payback that debt.

A Youngstown Ohio startup called CampusShift doesn’t have a secret recipe to make that debt disappear, but rather offers a set of tools that will help college students attack the student loan problem from a variety of directions. Whether you’re looking to make college costs more manageable by saving money on textbooks and other supplies. Or if you’re looking to make more money in college by starting your own business (startup) CampusShift has tools to go either route.

CampusShift has four distinct areas. It starts with a place to save money and compare costs on textbooks. There’s a social networking element available to students, that’s free of course. Campus area businesses can offer daily deals, discounts and rewards to students. Finally, CampusShift offers resources to those students that want to try their luck at their own startup business and test it within the confines of the school with minimal risk.

We got a chance to talk with Chris Haynes, co-founder of CampusShift, who was consequently the first one since we started this interview series (with well over 500 startups interviewed) who followed our instructions completely. So it’s with great honor we give you our interview with Chris Haynes of CampusShift.

Toledo Ohio Startup: Buyvite Closes Funding Round Looks Forward To Expansion

Our good friend Brandi Wimberly and her group buying startup, Buyvite, have just finished closing a funding round. This unique startup makes creating makeshift buying groups easy to do and easy to collect.

No we aren’t talking about some crazy Groupon, group buying platform, we’re talking a much more practical use. Picture you and your cousins, uncles and aunts, brothers and sisters are all putting their money together to buy grandma and grandpa an anniversary cruise. You know how this traditionally goes, one coordinator puts their money on the line for the entire trip and all of a sudden everyone has a problem making the payment.

ANother great example is say you and your college buddies decide to take a group trip to a baseball game. Same thing, one person is holding the bag. No longer, not with BuyVite.

Buyvite lets you pull money together for one thing, it makes collecting the money a cinch and then one administrator can take the collected money for the group purchase. Pretty smart huh?

That’s what the investors must have thought because Wimberly reports that she has closed a funding round and plans to expand Buyvite’s markets infrastructure, mobile platform and management team.

“Now that we have successfully closed this round of financing, we can aggressively and confidently pursue retail partners who are interested and willing to participate in this socially relevant and expanding piece of the marketplace in which to further drive their products and services to and through. Buyvite is a new and exciting way to capture this evolving and growing segment of the social payments audience and we are extremely confident that the retail community will seize and embrace this new opportunity. We’re also excited to be approaching some new high growth market opportunities that have so far been largely ignored by the social commerce space.” Wimberly said in a statement.

“Our recent investment will also allow us to add new functionality and pivot our product to more closely align with consumer and retailer feedback and feature requests. Our investors and advisors are very focused on retail business development and brand building but also respect the technology we are crafting and overall product execution. Among our investors and advisors are experienced business leaders with a wide range of talents that can help us achieve our goal of being the leading group payment platform for retailers. We are lucky to have such an amazing group of people helping to build this company.” Wimberly added.

Buyvite also announced the addition of Bob Mallo and Brad Bialas to the management team. Mallo will assist in strategic formation, operational direction and company wide execution. Most recently Mallo was the Group President of Follett Educational Distribution Group and President of Follett Educational Services prior to that. Bialas will help develop sales, marketing, and pricing models as well as strategic partners. Bialas has been in the payments space for 12 years, most recently as the President of BluePay (a large payment processing software provider) where he helped the company grow from 3 employees and nominal revenue to over $100MM in annual sales. Buyvite Advisors include Vijay Raghavendra of IBM, Balaji Gopinath of Turner Broadcasting and Media Camp, Jacob Tell of Oniracom and Poornima Vijayashanker of Bizeebee Software.

This undisclosed funding round was led by Rocket Ventures.

Linkage:

Check out Buyvite here

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Columbus OH Startup: Brand Thunder Connects Brands With Fans’ Browsers

As the smartphone gains popularity more and more smartphone users are making their phone more personal with themes, wall papers and skins. Sure you can change your computer wallpaper, and you’ve been able to forever, but with smartphones, themes became totally immersive. Now all of the sudden your favorite sports teams, celebrities and even brands took over.

A Columbus OH startup called Brand Thunder, is creating that experience for your web browser. Now a fan of just about anything can trick out their FireFox,Chrome or even Internet Explorer (people still use that?) browser. The background, buttons and just about every corner of your browser is transformed into the theme of your choice. The only browser they don’t currently support is Safari.

While Brand Thunder offers themes from most of the major sports teams, celebrities, news, and holidays, what they also offer is the ability to brand businesses in a new and immersive way. Now a really cool startup or company can use BrandThunder to make their own custom theme that doesn’t just turn the browser into a great advertising and branding vehicle, but it also allows end users to connect with information in a variety of ways for the brand.

We got a chance to interview Brand Thunder, check out the interview below:

JustDecide Startup Dilemma Of The Week: Foundersync Founder Wants To Know, Patent or Not To Patent

If you haven’t heard about the JustDecide/Nibletz Startup Dilemma Of The Week then you’ve been missing out on a great feature here at nibletz.com. Every week we partner with crowd sourced decision making platform justdecide.com to help one chosen startup handle an actual real life dilemma that they are going through in the startup process.

There are definitely some great advantages for startup founders in participating in this free feature that takes less than a minute to contribute.

– The founder of the featured dilemma’s startup gets great feedback from members of the startup community
– Members of the startup community get to contribute to a crowdsourced answer from like-minded individuals
– Founders who weigh in on the dilemma may actually be going through the same or similar problem that they can use the same advice for.

This week’s dilemma comes from our good friend Ryan Gambrill the founder of FounderSync in Cleveland Ohio. Fourdersync is a great way for startup founders to get involved and meet other founders whether it be technical founders, biz dev people or other entrepreneurs. From there you can network with great people who are living the same startup lifestyle you are.

Gambrill’s dilemma is actually about a new startup idea he is working on. He has a dilemma that tons of startup founders face, to patent or not to patent. While Gambrill thinks his idea is great, he’s a realist so he knows that it may not take off. If for some reason, the idea doesn’t take off, than Gambrill would potentially be out thousands of dollars in legal and patent fees.

What makes this tough for Gambrill though is he’s a networking pro, a people person and loves to talk. He’s one of those guys that doesn’t believe in “stealth mode” and as such he needs to protect his idea if it’s going to be out there.

A patent isn’t like a copyright. We all know the “poor man’s copyright” and for songs or published works the process takes under $50 and under 15 minutes. A patent can cost thousands. This patent problem of Gamrbill’s is something we hear about all the time on the “sneaker strapped nationwide startup roadtrip” and unfortunately we’ve seen both sides of the issue.

We’ve seen first hand entrepreneurs who have blown their entire savings on a patent for an idea that totally fizzled. We’ve also seen entrepreneurs who went the non patent route and got screwed by a competitor.

What say you startup community?

Weigh in here at justdecide.com

Checkout Foundersync here, sign up it’s free!

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Ohio Startup: Venturepax, Adventurers This Site Is For You INTERVIEW

If you’re an outdoor enthusiast of any kind than there is a one stop place for you called Venturepax. Whether you’re into skydiving, rock climbing, leisurely strolls through the woods, hiking, mountain biking or anything else outdoors, adventuring is always more fun when you can share it with others. It’s fun to brag, share ideas, and of course best practices.

Are you longing for a new adventure? Venturepax is great for that too, there are great ideas from Diving the Florida Springs to climbing up Arthur’s Seat and everything imaginable in between.

There are a few other notable outdoor sites out there but the user experience at Venturepax is appealing and the community is strong.

We got a chance to interview Venturepax. Check out the interview below.

Ohio Startup: Fundable Launches CrowdFunding Startup For Startups

Exciting news in Ohio today as Fundable, a crowd funding source for startups, after seven months of work, and making sure the Jobs Act passed, Fundable is open to the public. They are dubbing themselves the Kickstarter for startups.

If you’re not aware, Kickstarter doesn’t let you fund startups. We’ve tried several project ideas surrounding our “sneaker-strapped nationwide startup road trip” and all were rejected by Kickstarter. We then switched to Indiegogo which we used twice. The first time we raised $300 and the second we didn’t raise a dime. That’s despite the fact that literally hundreds of people looked at the page, showed interest and asked us via email, Twitter, Google+ and Facebook.

After Congress passed the JOBS act it went over the the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The SEC has until July 4th to set the rules up for crowdfunding. Crowdfunding means that the public at large can invest in a “startup” or other company, or product through crowdfunding sources in exchange for equity.

Startups and small businesses can receive up to a million dollars with this form of funding.

Fundable (if approved as a broker by the SEC) will become one of the first startup funding crowdfunding websites. They opened up for business two weeks ago with a “reward” model similar to kickstarter but devoted to startups and businesses.

The Fundable website outlines what kind of businesses they want on the site as it first rolls out. Fundable is targeting startups in the fields of gadgets, technology,apparel food and sports. John’s dry cleaners, or a franchise of pizza hut isn’t going to get approved. At this time they are also not handling charities or a “Clown suit franchise” (damn there goes that idea).

The other great thing about Fundable is it’s not a place for artists, either the painting kind or the musical kind, and it’s not for crafters there are plenty of sites out there for that.

Fundable is a great way to fund a startup and good ideas are going to shine through on the site (we’ve submitted an application for nibletz and hope it’s approved and you’ll support us).

Since their launch, Fundable startups have already raised $40,831 (at the time of this writing). In fact Elevation Training Mask 2.0 is already 115% funded at $11,506.

If you’re a startup with a good idea, you definitely want to consider Fundable.

Linkage:

Get funded with Fundable here

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Get your startup covered email startup@nibletz.com

Ohio Startup: Whotever, A New Social Website To Discover Whotever You Want

After South By Southwest in Austin Texas earlier this year, the last thing people want to hear about is a new “discovery” app or platform. It seems everyday another startup is launching to help discover people socially. Well this startup, based in Ohio, called Whotever is hoping to fix that problem.

As more and more social discovery sites pop up, actually using the web or your mobile to discover information on the things you actually want to know about gets harder in harder. Even with basic search engines like Google, the results you get today are much more polluted than the results of say a 2005 Google search.

That problem became evident to Timi Azeez and the other co-founders of Ohio based startup Whotever, 8 years ago. Azeez told nibletz.com:

“About 8 years ago, the three of us were in a heated debate and it prompted us to confirm our facts/findings on the internet. During the research online, we discovered that we could not find exactly the information we needed for our debate. Instead, we spent hours sifting through the data page by page defeating the purpose of the discussion. We realized the internet experience was more hectic than fun and this precluded us to start Whotever.com. It was the first step to improving the users’ experience on the internet.”

That’s the foundation for this new startup that they hope to launch later this year. We got a chance to talk a little more in-depth with Azeez about whatever.

More after the break
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Cleveland Startup: Foundersync Helps Startups Everywhere Find Co-Founders

You may have heard about the exclusive and very cliquish, Silicon Valley based Founderdating. The site suggests they connect the best of the best to founders in the Valley and a handful of other cities, but what about everywhere else? Well there’s a company in Cleveland Ohio has you covered.

The problem with the founderdating site is it bleeds the mantra that everything that happens in the Valley is better. However with over 300,000 startups across the country there are plenty of great ideas, great founders and great startups, well “everywhere else”. Foundersync will of course connect valley startups to founder and other resources, but they definitely realize the growth of startups on a nationwide level.

Foundersync is a startup itself, they started in 2011. Foundersync deals in a pretty easy to understand idea, there are plenty of business oriented social sites that connect you with people that you do know, or are connected somehow. Foundersync connects you with people that you SHOULD know.

Foundersync’s mission is “To ethically and efficiently help entrepreneurs reach their potential by providing a conduit to the resources that will best serve their needs.”

They achieve this mission with their combined mixed experience in marketing, design and development. The four co-founders, Ryan Gambrill, Nick Pavlak, Robert Clark and Todd Goldstein met by accident in 2011 and immediately clicked. They are all entrepreneurs in their own right and wish that they had a service like Foundersync when they were getting started.

If you’re idea driven, a workaholic entrepreneur that bleeds ideas than you need to register for a Foundersync profile. On their website they also offer some great startup advice on their blog page like, exercise before pitching.

If you’re tired of the snobbery from sites like founderdating we’re sure you’ll benefit from the community of founders being built at Foundersync

Linkage:
Go get a foundersync profile

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