Drones are a hot button discussion these days. Most of the talk has been about non-manned aircraft used for military and surveillance. An Oregon startup called Paradigm in conjunction with Boeing and Oregon State University are preparing to start test flights of Potato Drones.
The Federal Aviation Administration has authorized the use of two remote-controlled aircrafts which will monitor potato fields in Eastern Oregon.
Komonews reports that the drones are about the size of a suitcase and equipped with cameras that can zoom in on a single leaf plant. The drones are expected to be able to determine if the plants are getting enough water and fertilizer. If they aren’t, they will alert the farmers who can take immediate corrective action.
The use of drones is a lot quicker and the technology makes it much easier to see, verses the old fashioned way of walking through the crops to spot plants that need fixing.
The Potato Drones will fly over fields at the Hermiston Agricultural Research Extension Center and also at a private farm west of Boardman Oregon. The group picked potatoes because they are expensive and difficult to grow. Phil Hamm the director of the research extension center said that potatoes cost about $500,000 for the average crop circle.
Trial flights are expected to start Monday weather permitting.
Comments Off on R360UND Is The Ultimate Go-Pro Companion Video Interview At CES 20130LikeLike 2,603
Adrenaline pumping, action sports videos have taken a new place in the active sportsmans life thanks to things like Go-Pro. You could spend months watching GoPro videos on YouTube. You’d see people climbing mountains, surfing big waves, ski-ing, ski jumping, sky diving and more. But even with the best technology, and all the best Go-Pro accessories, a barrel roll looks like a barrel roll on video.
What if you wanted to capture more?
What if you wanted to see how much you were actually rolling, or how high you had actually jumped?
R360UND (Rebound) is a sensor technology that allows the use to take amazing readings while they’re participating in extreme sports. Whether it’s down hill skiing, sky diving, ski jumping, or any other fast paced adrenaline pumping activity, R360UND is the device that you need to compliment the awesome video you took with the GoPro.
The R360UND device can attach to your helmet, snowboard, skis or whatever else you want to attach it to and it captures all the motion. The device can tell how high up you are, where you are, what motions you did and what actions your snowboard or skateboard did. You can then take that data and overlay it on your action video which helps tell a much clearer story of what you just did and it’s great for bragging too.
Check out our co-founder Nick Tippmann’s video interview with Paul from R360UND below.
Comments Off on Portland Startup: Househappy, Pinterest For Real Estate?0LikeLike 2,830
Real estate entrepreneur Kevin McCloskey thinks that shopping for houses online is still very clunky. The current online destinations for house hunters are still very agent driven and confusing for the general consumer who could find themselves on either end of the real estate transaction spectrum, the buyer or the seller.
That’s why he created his Portland Oregon based startup Househappy.org. Rather than looking at sites filled with numbers, charts and graphs, pictures, pictures and more pictures, along with social features and information presented in a much more consumer friendly way should drive people to Househappy.org.
McCloskey plans on rolling Househappy.org out to 60 major markets across the U.S. immediately after launch, with a goal in mind of making real estate on the web friendlier. His mission is “to simplify property search and make information accessible to everyone.”
“We believe Househappy represents the future of real estate search,” said Kevin McCloskey, CEO and founder. “While other real estate sites restrict the user’s experience and are loaded with charts and graphs, our design makes it easy for users to find what they’re looking for.”
While McCloskey never actually said he expects to be the Pinterest for Real Estate, it’s this kind of graphic and photo intensive site that shot Pinterest into popularity.
We got a chance to talk with McCloskey about Househappy. Check out the interview below:
Comments Off on Ever Wanted Your Own Infographic? Oregon Startup Vizify Has You Covered0LikeLike 2,599
If you’ve ever wanted your own infographic, you can have it now thanks to recent TechStars graduate and Oregon startup Vizify. Their exciting new social media tool is more than just a dashboard it gives you a visual glance at the things you’ve got going on in your personal social graph.
Now people can use your interactive infographics from Vizify to figure out what you’re all about.
For instance Emma the chief security at the Portland company likes to talk about squirrels, went to happy-go-lucky kindergarten and tweets pictures of herself. Everything is visual in a graphically appealing UI. Vizify draws out your social web as you can see from the screen shot above and when you click on any of the webs bubbles you can dive more into the content.
Todd Silverstein, Vizify’s co-founder told Mashable that the root of Vizify stems from Zuckerberg’s law. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says that online data about you doubles each year. That makes a total mess of disjointed content about one person. Vizify simplifies that data and makes it pretty, and easy to use.
Another place where Vizify comes in handy is in the job search. Now all of your content is aggregated in an easy to view and easy to navigate platform. Face it every HR person and recruiter in the world is searching for all your social data anyway, now you can just add the url for your Vizify page to your resume and in one click a recruiter can see everything about you and where it fits in to your social graph.
We got a chance to interview Silverstein ourselves, check out the interview below:
Businesses, retail establishments and restaurants have been using the internet for surveys for the past fifteen years. Lot’s of restaurants still resort to printing a phone number to call or a website to go to to enter a code, do a survey and get some kind of discount. The problem with this method of surveying is, despite the reward, there is still extremely low engagement.
Even customer service surveys at the end of a call to a cell phone carrier or cable provider go unanswered, and that’s after you’ve said yes you’ll answer the quick two minute survey. Most travel related surveys that I get in my personal in box go straight to a spam folder and never get completed. In fact the only time I typically fill out a survey is if the customer experience was bad, and there are a lot of people in the same boat as me.
An Oregon startup called Hively is looking to change that for business. They are hoping their platform will have a better engagement rate for two primary reasons. It takes just nanoseconds to complete and they make it happy and fun. Hively just asks one simple question, please provide feedback and with that simple question customers can quickly hit one smiley face, like the ones above, and that’s it.
On the side of the employee, employees who receive good feedback are awarded points that they can accrue for a prize.
We got the chance to interview Hively’s co-founder Jason Lander, check out the interview below:
A conglomerate of online stores is nothing new to the internet, heck Amazon’s been doing it now for over a decade, however WallShops, a Eugene Oregon based startup, has reinvented the online mall. We get pitches 24 hours a day here at nibletz and every single pitch is revolutionizing, re-inventing, has the best ever, the most ever, etc etc etc, so when WallShops said they brought the shopping mall experience to the web, we brushed it off as pure startup talk. That was until we started poking around.
Wallshops has literally brought the mall experience online and it’s really about one simple function, a right left arrow at the top of the page. This feature will most likely take the form of a swipe in a tablet or smartphone implementation of the experience but it’s like you’re walking through the mall.
For instance we started with the category “Action Sports”, first I got QuickSilver then with a swipe (well actually hitting the right left arrow) I was at Vans, Element, Volcom then so on and so forth. Now really this sounds really simple, and it is, but there’s no experience like it just yet.
If you go to any of the major mall companies like Simon Malls, you go to a local mall site and then you’re looking at a list of stores and phone numbers. Other online shopping sites with multiple branded retailers make you sift through back buttons,menus, categories and keywords. The Wallshops experience is simplistic, beautiful and makes you feel like you’re in a virtual mall.
We got a chance to talk with Patrick Millegan, one of the co-founders of Wallshops and actually the only one of the founders not in the Kersey family, the other founders are all brothers. Check out our interview below.
Comments Off on Oregon Business Incubator Offers Online Startup SummerCamp0LikeLike 1,671
An incubator in Bacerton Oregon is offering a new online startup summer camp this summer. The incubator, called The Oregon Business’s Technology Center is offering the online program for eight weeks starting in late June and running through August.
The summercamp program is free to attend online. The sessions will take a startup from idea to pitch.
The OTBC will upload videos offering advice on constructing pitch decks, vetting ideas and preparing entrepreneurs to pitch their ideas to potential investor
Every Thursday, participants are welcome to come to the Oregon Technology Business Center at 8305 S.W. Creekside Place, Suite C in Beaverton to share their experiences with other entrepreneurs participating in the online startup summer camp. The in person sessions will cost $10 to cover expenses.
At the end of the eight weeks three winning startups will be selected. The winners will get the opportunity to pitch their startup to a panel of judges and potential investors for ten minutes. After that they will have the opportunity for a ten minute question and answer session with the judges.
Steve Morris, the director of the Oregon Technology Business Center, is looking forward to entrepreneurs participating in the online startup summer camp, and he’s also looking forward to the entrepreneurs in the community who will be mentoring the participants.
Linkage:
For more information on the OTBC summer camp program click here
A Portland Oregon startup up that specializes in producing smartphone apps for conferences and events, has been acquired by event planning software company Cvent. CrowdCompass is Cvent’s second acquisition in just one week. Last week Cvent, who’s based in Virginia, acquired Austin startup Seed Labs.
“Let’s be clear: We bought this for their people,” said Cvent chief executive Reggie Aggarwal. “We’re going to let the management team run the place they way they’ve been doing it.”
Mobile apps and technology have been changing trade shows, conferences and conventions over the past few years. It’s already been seen that the more robust your tradeshow app is the better. South By Southwest 2012 had a great app that covered every speck of the event officially produced by SXSW. As did the CES app earlier in the year.
Last fall the Oregon company raised $1.3 million led by the Oregon Angel Fund.
CrowdCompass was founded in 2009 and makes apps that connect event go-fers to specific events, other attendees and social media.
CrowdCompass corporate portfolio includes event apps for
E*Trade, Daimler, and Intuit; and meetings industry organizations, like The Meetings Technology Expo; and associations, like the American Bar Association, Association of General Contractors and American Society of Anesthesiologists.
“Cvent’s success is predicated on delivering best-of-breed technology solutions to our event industry clients and partners. This acquisition is an important step to ensuring we continue to lead the industry in the adoption of mobile technologies,” said Reggie Aggarwal, Founder and CEO of Cvent. “We selected CrowdCompass because it was clear that they are a leading developer of native mobile apps for business and association events. With experience building hundreds of apps for a wide variety of mid-to large-sized public and private events, the addition of CrowdCompass gives us unparalleled expertise in creating mobile apps for events. We have offered mobile friendly event web sites for some time, but the CrowdCompass product takes the mobile experience to the next level.”
To date CrowdCompass has produced 435 event apps which have seen over 500,000 downloads for Blackberry,Android and iOS.
“Becoming part of Cvent will allow CrowdCompass to operate on a greater scale than it ever has before,” said Tom Kingsley, Founder and CEO of CrowdCompass. “Our technologies and expertise will be a great fit with Cvent’s unmatched reputation and client base; we’re looking forward to all the services we will be able to develop under the Cvent umbrella.”
“The CrowdCompass app demonstrates the excellence and innovation that attendees have come to expect from the Mental Health and Addictions Conference,” said Courtney Young, Digital and Social Media Specialist at the National Council for Community Behavioral Healthcare. “We had over 3,000 healthcare professionals and administrators in attendance, and the response to the app was overwhelming, with 80% of them downloading it. By offering the CrowdCompass app, we showed our attendees that we are listening to their demands and care deeply about their conference experience.”
Cvent was founded in 1999 by Reggie Aggarwal. Aggarwal took the company from a two person team to a team of over 900 in McLean Virginia, the city that was once home to America Online. Cvent has been profitable over the last ten years.
Comments Off on UPDATED: Oregon Startup: Wild Squirrel Nut Butter Wins Investment On Shark Tank1LikeLike 10,414
(photo Sally Ho/The Oregonian)
We are diligently working on a piece now highlighting a string of investments that the Sharks have pulled out of since the show has aired.
In the case of Wild Squirrel Nut Butter, Shark Barbara Corcoran pulled out of the $50,000 investment for 40% that she had negotiated with the girls on the show.
Keely and Erica penned this tumblr entry after the embargo lifted on Friday highlighting the fact that Corcoran had pulled out of the investment, although they gained a lot of exposure and insight from Ms. Corcoran.
We are going to elaborate in a much larger piece about Shark Tank, which is still my favorite show of all time, however we want to add here that it’s not the fault of the Shark themselves. We hold accountable the producers who know well in advance that a shark has pulled out of the deal before airing. The producers of Shark Tank, Mark Burnett and ABC are doing the viewers, the startups and the sharks an injustice by not providing an update prior to airing that the investment didn’t actually work out.
There is plenty of time between the taping of the episode and the airing of the episode to provide the back story. The sharks are using their own money and they have to do their due diligence. Shark Tank provides a disclaimer in the beginning of every episode announcing it’s the sharks own money and that there is no pitch to the audience. They should also provide the same service at the end of each episode with an update as to what happens.
Below is the original story that we published this morning before being pointed to Keeley and Erica’s blog.
Two college girls from Oregon were featured on this week’s Shark Tank. They were cute, preppy, peppy and a little bit nervous, as anyone would be in front of the Shark’s on Shark Tank.
They came into the episode with their story about drive but didn’t have the numbers to attract an investment from Mr. Wonderful Kevin O’Leary, Mark Cuban, Daymond John or Robert Herjavec however they did catch the eye of real estate mogul turned Shark Tank investor, Barbara Corcoran.
Corcoran had made a gamble on a duo of political workers turned Barbecue company founders last season with their Pork Barrel Barbecue sauce. With the help of Corcoran the duo behind Pork Barrel was able to drastically improve their sales and distribution and they even opened up a restaurant.
The episode featuring Keeley Tillotson and Erika Welsh was taped last September, but as with all reality shows they are under a strict embargo from speaking a word about Shark Tank until after their episode aired. Prior to Friday nights showing, Shark Tank warned the girls to back up their website and expect lots of orders.
Comments Off on Portland Startup: Interview With ShopMyPin, Winner Of Portland’s Startup Weekend0LikeLike 1,947
26 year old Vanessa VanPetten emerged from the chaotic Portland Startup Weekend as the winner with shopmypins (photo: V. VanPetten)
Portland’s sixth startup weekend will go down in history as one of the craziest startup weekend’s ever. If you were checking up on Nibletz over the weekend you would have read this story about a man who was asked to leave Portland’s startup weekend. After he left he started tweeting that he was going to come back with explosives and guns. The organizers of the event increased security and had the event on a near lockdown for the rest of the weekend.
26 year old Vanessa VanPetten emerged from the action packed weekend as the winner with her new startup idea “Shop My Pins”. It wasn’t easy for VanPetten though, even with the disruption on Saturday she was still pitted against 16 other teams.
Game it up, a startup geared at teaching kids coding for video games won the award for “Outstanding Customer Validation”. “Outstanding Business Opportunity/Business Model” went to Matchable, which is a cell phone dating app. “Outstanding Execution” went to 15 year old Jackson Gariety for HashTraffic, a cross platform hashtag maker.
The Williamette Week reports that 15 year old Gariety and his HashTraffic were big hits and that Game It Up had already talked to Nintendo, Electronic Arts and IBM who had already started showing interest.
Imagine if one of your favorite online retailers was having a sale on a new cashmere sweater that you’ve been wanting forever. Imagine if they tweeted that sweater and all you had to do was reply to the tweet with the word “Buy” and in three days you’d have that sweater delivered to your home? Well that’s becoming a reality thanks to Portland Oregon startup Chirpify.
Chirphify’s founder and CEO Chris Teso, who started the company as “Sell Simply” plans on making buying things on Twitter that easy. “Everybody is trying to become that ubiquitous wallet,” Teso told website oregonlive.com.
It works pretty much as I described it above. A Twitter user registers both their Twitter and Paypal accounts with Chirpify. A Chirpify merchant solicits a sale on twitter for example “Red Cashmere Sweater $19.99 delivered” and those with Chirpify accounts can simply reply with “buy” and the transaction is initiated. Chirpify takes a small percentage from the vendor for facilitating the transaction.
Are people using it? Yes, in fact Nestle has been using it to sell PowerBars on Twitter. Teso is hoping to attract independent musicians who could sell downloads via Twitter to their Twitter followers.
Chirpify’s $1.3 Million dollar investment was led by Voyager Capital and included Ryan Holmes, Hootsuite’s CEO. Private investor Geoff Entress, BuddyTV CEO Andy Liu and Rudy Gadre a former Facebook executive participated as well. Angel investors with TIE Oregon also participated. Oregonlive reports that Portland incubator UpStart Labs provided Chirpify with an earlier backing of $50,000.
Comments Off on Chez Gourmet’s Burger Queen Takes Home Top Prize In Angel Oregon Competition0LikeLike 2,286
Yes this is a Veggie Burger by Chez Gourmet, you see why they won now huh?
A woman owned startup in Oregon has taken home the $250,000 first price in the Angel Oregon competition for her startup Chez Gourmet. Chez Gourmet is still considered in the startup stage despite the fact that founder Marie Osmuson first founded the company in 2006.
Osumuson created Chez Gourmet after a friend of hers, who is a well known local real estate agent, Barbara Durrett, sampled one of Osmuson’s veggie burgers at a family birthday party. Durrett encouraged Osmuson to try and sell her veggie burgers in local stores. Durrett also set Osmuson up with a food industry friend who agreed that the burgers were definitely good enough to sell. Durrett and Osmuson became business partners and their burgers started catching on.
Fast Forward to 2012 and Chez Gourmet has just taken home the top prize for the Angel Oregon competition. Chez Gourmet is expected t clear $2M in revenue this year and is on track to grow to $12M in revenue by 2015. Chez Gourmet was one of five companies to present yesterday at the Angel Oregon event held at Portland’s Governor Hotel.
A startup that makes social network analytics software called, Tellagence came in second place winning $94,000. The Portland Business Journal reports that this competition has been around since 2003. The 46 companies that have participated in the competition have generated $121 million in revenue and employ 741 people. They’ve also raised $81 million in venture capital and angel investment.