First Round Capital Shares Their Expertise With First Round Review.

First Round Review, First Round Capital, Philly startup,startups, Josh Kopelman

Josh Kopelman, the founder of Half.com and the founding partner at Philly and New York-based First Round Capital, has been a big supporter and encourager of startups. In addition to First Round Capital, he’s been very active in the Philadelphia and New York startup scenes.

Kopelman is active on the Philly Startup Leader’s list, and he’s also the founder of the Dorm Room fund. He’s particularly active in startup events that cater to young entrepreneurs, like nvigor’s student startup summit.

First Round Capital has participated in over 100 funding rounds from seed to series D. They also recently expanded their dorm room fund by $500,000 to spread that fund to Silicon Valley.

Kopelman and the team at First Round Capital have been quietly working over the past four months to take their vast knowledge to the Internet and share it with entrepreneurs and founders everywhere. Their newest product is called “First Round Review,” and it’s dubbed “Actionable Insights for Technology Entreprenerus”

“There is no shortage of media available on startups – every day there are dozens of stories talking about what startups are doing – the funding rounds, product launches and latest tech rumors and trends. Yet there are so few stories talking about how they are doing it, ” Kopelman said in an email to the Philly Startup Leaders listserv.

Startup tips and startup advice are very popular. Some of our best stories here at Nibletz fall into that category. Kopelman takes that notion a few steps further by offering insight that only an angel investor or venture capitalist with over 100 investments could offer.

They’ve already published 30+ articles in a wide range of topics.

Kopelman explained in this First Round Review post how they differ from other startup blogs:

“We know we’re a venture fund — not a publishing company. But many venture capitalists have published amazing content in their personal blogs before. The difference is that while other VCs have done a great job sharing their personal observations of the market and their personal thoughts on how to build and finance companies, we’re going to be primarily focused on sharing actionable knowledge from the best practitioners – those actually in the trenches building. So one day it might be a piece on how to interview product managers and the next featuring how to build high performance teams with the Chief Talent Officer of Netflix.”

The very first article they published was: “How Estsy Grew Their Number of Female Engineers by Almost 500% in One Year”

Check out First Round Review here.

 

Now sign up for the biggest startup conference in the US dedicated to startups “everywhere else”

serious

AppArchitect Could Be The Easiest Way To Build An App [interview][disrupt]

AppArchitect,Philly startup,startup,techcrunch disruptAppArchitect is an idea that was actually born at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2011. It was there, at the Disrupt Hackathon, where the first lines of code were written.

Over the last two years the team behind AppArchitect has been refining the product. They’ve also been through the DreamIt Ventures accelerator in Philadelphia and raised $325,000 from Actinic Ventures, BHV, DreamIt and other angels.

They finally went live just before 4:00pm on the Battlefield stage at Disrupt 2013.  Co-Founder Ilya Zatulovskly took to the stage and showed off what could be the easiest platform ever to build a native iOS app.  AppArchitect sets itself apart from other DIY app generators because it’s not template based and not just a “wrapper”.

Users who want to create a new app simply need to know how to drag and drop things, to create an app using AppArchitect. Zatulovskly says “if you can build a slide deck you can build an app”.

It’s such an easy platform that Zatulovskly created an app during the quick Battlefield presentation.

That may not have been enough to wow the judges in their Battlefield session called “Get Things Done”. The judges: John Frankel, Hilary Mason, Megan Quinn, and Sam Yagan seemed to take notice that the competitive landscape in the DIY app creation space were plentiful. They also weren’t exactly sure who the end user was.

Naturally, the end user is anyone who wants to build an app. However, design agencies and advertising firms are already employing developers and DIY app creation tools that have already been on the market. With over 1 million apps across all of the app stores, it’s getting harder and harder for any app to stand out.

AppArchitect could come in handy for mom and pop shops, small restaurants and small businesses who are looking to get into the app world with something specific for their business.

Regardless, Zatulovskly and the AppArchitect team are hoping to use this experience, coupled with the knowledge and experience gained at DreamIt, to raise another round of capital and continue building AppArchitect.

Check out our video interview below and for more info or to try it out yourself you can find AppArchitect here.

More startup coverage from TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013 here. 

Disrupt-BD

Philly Startup SnipSnap Reaches 350K Users For Mobile Couponing App That Works

SnipSnap,Philly startup,startup,startup newsWe started using Philadelphia startup SnipSnap’s mobile couponing app after we saw it at TechCrunch Disrupt NY back in May.Just prior to Black Friday, we had saved over $500 using the app.

SnipSnap app allows you to clip actual printed coupons, take pictures of them and then save them, share them, or both within the app. You can find deals from just about every major retailer, food chain and even several regional businesses within the app. Perhaps the best thing we like about SnipSnap app is that you see coupons from all over the country. As you may know, sometimes a coupon for a retailer may be different in one part of the country than it is in another.

While it’s explicitly explained to app users that these photographed mobile coupons may not work every time, there is a rating system that allows users to share how successful they were. As more and more retailers embrace mobile, more and more businesses are accepting coupons on smartphones. We rarely get turned down these days and we’ve used SnipSnap at ToysRUs, Old Navy, Best Buy, PetCo, Burger King, and Sephora just to name a few.

We first reported on SnipSnap back in May at TechCrunch Disrupt NYC. We were so excited about it that we published this story from TechCrunch Disrupt before founder Ted Mann has even had a chance to finish his onstage pitch. We also immediately got this interview with Mann, when he made it back to his startup alley booth.

By June 2012 the app had reported 150k users and most recently, Betakit has reported that SnipSnap has over 350k loyal users.

“We grew pretty quickly and we’re just now trying to get everything to the place where it can turn from an app with a few hundred thousand users to a few million users,” Mann said in an interview.

In addition to the apps clipped by the user community, SnipSnap has partnered with seven major retailers including; Sears, Aeropastle and KMart which allows SnipSnap to display their store coupons.  The app doesn’t currently cover manufacturers coupons but Mann is reportedly working on that feature.

One of the other main features of the app is that it serves up coupons that are relevant to you and it also uses your geolocation to remind you that you have coupons clipped for stores nearby.

Since launching last spring SnipSnap 4.5 million coupons have been saved in the app. 470,000 coupons are original coupons uploaded by the apps user base.  They’ve raised $1M in seed funding and plan on a Series A round early this year.

Linkage:

Download Snip Snap here

Most startup news from everywhere else can be found here

Find out why everybody is talking about everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference

 

Black Friday’s Over, Continue To Save Money With Philly Startup Snip Snap App

Snip Snap App,Philly startup,startups,startup, Black Friday, Retail, Couponing, Startup interview Back in May we brought you the story about Philadelphia startup Snip Snap App. We were so intrigued with the concept behind Snip Snap, that we actually posted this story, before founder Ted Mann got off the stage at TechCrunch Disrupt NYC.

Snip Snap App has saved me over $400 personally since last May. The concept is simple, it’s a wallet for your print coupons that allows you to crowdsource print coupons from other users. Now if you’re a real coupon king, or coupon queen, then you know that different regions have different coupons. With internet coupons on the rise, and more and more stores accepting coupons on phones, Snip Snap App is poised to save consumers hundreds of dollars.

Snip Snap App allows you to take photos of the coupons out of your local inserts, post them to the app and the community and then report on their success rate in usage. Gigantic nationally known chains like Kohl’s, Best Buy, Target, Old Navy, Aeropastle, Toys R Us and several fast food chains honor electronically stored coupons from just about anywhere, even if they say “some restrictions apply”.

If you’ve snipped a coupon that doesn’t work on redemption you simply report that in the app for others to know. Users can search coupons by name, location and more and they can see how successful those coupons have been by others that have actually used them.

With the biggest shopping day of the year behind us, we thought it was a great time to check in with Mann about Snip Snap and see what, if any, surge he saw in Black Friday.

Read More…

Philadelphia The Founder City, To Invest $3.5 Million In Startups

Philadelphia Mayor Michael A Nutter announced today that the city of Philadelphia and the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation has created a joint two-tiered investment and grant making initiative called “Startup PHL”. Philadelphia is looking to spur more innovation and encourage startups to move to the city of brotherly love.

In a video Nutter talks about Philadelphia being home to the most important startup of all , the United States of America. Now 200 years later Nutter is looking to attract more founders to the city.

To do this Philadelphia is issuing an RFP for a private investment firm to match and manage a $3 million dollar investment from the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation to establish the Startup PHL Seed Fund. The RFP deadline is December 7th. Those startups receiving investment from the Startup PHL seed fund will either need to be in Philadelphia or relocate to Philadelphia to meet a yet to be established residency requirement.

The other $500,000 will come in the form of grants. For that, the City’s commerce department has put out a call for ideas. They’re looking for “innovative, exciting proposals for ideas and programs that support startups and entrepreneurs of all stripes in Philadelphia” In a release they said:  “the goal of this fund is to make grants to proposals that enhance collaboration in the startup community; attract new entrepreneurs from both within and outside the city; foster networks for entrepreneurs to collaborate with each other, mentors, talent and investors and ultimately lead to more business and job creation in Philadelphia.”

In the government/private partnership for the Startup PHL seed fund the private firm will handle all of the investment decisions. Longtime Nutter aide Luke Butler says he hopes that the seed fund will start making it’s first investments as early as summer 2013.

It’s obvious that this is a “startup community” initiative as much as it is a technology investment initiative. It’s evident that Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh’s “Return of Community” is starting to pop up in other cities.

“We have broader goals than a return on investment, but we’re hoping to leverage a relatively small public investment that generates more private capital that highlights this important sector and conveys momentum here,” Butler said. “The tech sector is an important part of our economy in that it’s going to be a driver of job creation and is [a way of] keeping college grads here,”

New York, Boston, Austin, Seattle and Baltimore all have government/private partnerships in one form or another to drive early stage investments in startups and keep them in their cities. Las Vegas has a $350 million dollar private initiative from Hsieh to revitalize the downtown area through startups, tech, education and real estate to make downtown Las Vegas a more serendipitous place for entrepreneurs and recently relocated Zappos employees.

Local startup investor and supporter Brad Dennenberg of Seed Philly told nibletz in regards to today’s announcement:

“Today’s announcement marks a significant step towards putting Philadelphia’s startup ecosystem on the national map.  Philly is now one of just a few cities in the country with city-backed funding, proving the area’s dedication to growing and retaining high growth (and high paying) companies. With the cost of launching a minimum viable product now lower than ever before, this fund should make a significant impact in a short period of time. I couldn’t be more excited! “

While technology is typically the focus in startup initiatives like this Butler says they want to hear everything.

“If you have an idea, an organization or individual, that supports growing business, jobs in the city, we want to hear it, whatever it is,” he added Technically Philly Reported.

Linkage:

Startup PHL is here

Startup PHL’s call for ideas is here

Everywhereelse is here

 

Drexel Students Launch Philly Startup: Tagitbest

Nicholas Pirollo, a self proclaimed serial entrepreneur and an undergraduate student at Drexel University and his team have launched a new and exciting SEO product. Sure you’re saying what’s new and exciting about an SEO product? Well first off Tagitbest is about Twitter and Instagram, moving SEO to two of the hottest spaces on the planet right now.

Rather than search engine optimization Tagitbest is a “hashtag optimizing engine”. Tagitbest is actually solving a huge problem for people. Take the DNC for instance. We’re on the ground in Charlotte NC operating out of Startup Hub “Packard Place” at the PPL blogger/online journalist lounge. Now in a room full of 500 journalists no one could tell us the “official” hashtag for the DNC on Monday morning. Some are using #DNC2012, some are using #DNC12, Some are just using #DNC and then some are using #obama and #4moreyears.

If you head upstairs to the official Politico convention studios and hub they use their normal tag #Politico and then a different tag for each event that they’re hosting which has been a minimum of 4 events per day. All of these various tags can get a bit confusing, and that’s just for this one event.

Tagitbest will optimize your content, whether it be a picture, tweet or other piece of media and tell you what tag will be best to get your content in front of the most people.

Tagitbest comes in three flavors, web, iOS and Android and you can find their app in both the Google Play Store and the iTunes app store.

The interface is easy to use and as long as you know what a hash tag is you’re in business. Now if you’re a developer they do offer an API as well so that developers can embrace their new backend technology.

Linkage:

Check out Tagitbest here

Nibletz is the voice of startups “everywhere else” here are more startup stories from “everywhere else”

We’re on a nationwide, sneaker-strapped nationwide startup road trip, wanna help?

 

Philly Startup: Real Food Works Launches, Finds Out They’re Finalists In IBX Game Changer Challenge

Real Food Works, a startup launched in Philadelphia by entrepreneurs from both Philly and New York, has applied the subscription based model to healthy, plant based, cooked dishes. The startup is up and running and beta testing in the Philadelphia area. If all goes well they will expand to New York City.

The dishes are made by local restaurants, chefs and catering companies and delivered ready to eat and fresh.

Real Food Works is kicking off with a pilot program which is up and running now. For $75 per week you get five entrees delivered to your door. Each member can pick their own menu from the selections provided.

Last Tuesday’s menu included: Lemony Quinoa, salad with grilled tofu over a bed of spinach;Tempeh-Walnut Sliders with Roasted Beet Slices, Cashew Cream Cheese & Arugula, Steamed Shiitake and Tofu Dumplings with Bok Choy & Lemongrass Sauce, Vegetarian Enchiladas with Spinach Salad & Tahini Dressing, Black Bean Burger, Moroccan Spiced Root Vegetables, & Green Beans with Maple Syrup. Even for a meat lover those sound wonderful.

The startup was founded by Lucinda DunCalfe who had a successful exit with ClickEquations a marketing and advertising company that developed a powerful pay per click software which helps agencies manage paid search campaigns more effectively and efficiently. That company was sold to Channel Intelligence in June 2011.

Real Food Works found out Monday that they are one of 15 finalists in the IBX Game Changer Challenge.  The challenge is a health and wellness focused startup challenge for a grand prize for up to three startups with $50,000 in funding, mentoring support and access to a network of health care decision makers.

The team from Real Food Works will present next Tuesday to a panel of judges in a 10 minute presentation with 5 minutes of Q&A and the winners will be announced on July 30th.

Linkage:

Check out Real Food Works and their delicious food here

Nibletz is the voice of startups everywhere else, here are more startup stories from everywhere else

We’re on a sneaker-strapped startup road trip, and could use your help here

 

Philly Startup & Tech BBQ July 18th

20120628-181712.jpg

The Philly Startup Listserv and other leaders in the Philadelphia area startup and entrepreneurial community are holding a relaxing shindig on July 18th.

The event,being dubbed the “PSL Summer BBQ Bash” is happening from 6-8 pm on Wednesday July 18th.

The event is open to PSL members and anyone in the Philly startup and tech community.

The $25 ticket covers drink tickets, delicious food and a fun time for all. It’s a pitch free networking and fun weekday event.

With the time and being on a weekday there’s no excuse to not come and hangout with great members of the Philly tech and startup scene.

And of course Philly’s own TicketLeap is handling the ticket sales here

Novotorium & SeedPhilly Call Lights Out For Summer Camp

20120626-142733.jpg

We received some disheartening news this morning from our friends at technicallyphilly.com . Apparently Entrepreneur Summer Camp, a joint venture between Novotorium and Seedaphilly has been cancelled due to lack of Internet.

We’ve been big supporters of both Novotorium, SeedPhilly and the Philly tech scene, especially because our co-founder Cameron is based in Philly.

We are members of the Phily listserve and we’ve seen a mixed bag of talk about Philly’s startup community. There are those like Novotorium Mike Krupit who are big advocates of growing startups right in the city of brotherly love.

On the flip side the are those who wallow suggesting that there’s not enough funding available in Philly. Some of these folks actually commute to New York in hopes of having a more successful launch in the big apple.

As for Entrepreneur Summer Camp, both Novotorium and SeedPhilly along with others in the Philadelphia startup ecosystem put together a great bunch of programming that was to occur over the summer, with nominal fees for space, food and drink and overall costs.

After the first event though Kuprit found that there just wasn’t enough traction and interest from entrepreneurs, Startups and the tech community. We found from our analytics that all of the stories we’ve used to promote this series of events had a good deal of interest. Whats wrong with you people, support your local tech ecosystem if you want it to grow.

Kuprit is still feeling positive about this weeks “not a hackathon” 36 hour event. Rather than using the 54 hour hackathon style model, this event is for Startups a little further along to get mentor ship and help around the clock. Think of it as 36 straight hours of office hours.

Kuprit beefed up the prize money and this event is still on. You can find out more about the sleepover event here

As for summer camp Kuprit told technicallyphilly “Philly takes the summer off,” he said, comparing our scene to New York’s and California’s. “We need to raise the bar.”

Philly’s entrepreneur summer camp isn’t the only signature event on the east coast this summer to get cancelled. Earlier this month we reported that the Startup BeachHouse event was cancelled when the group putting it on we’re repeatedly denied beach house rentals because ignorant beach house owners thought the event would be like the show The Jersey Shore.

Linkage:

Source: technicallyphilly

Check out Novotorium here

Check out SeedPhilly here

Nibletz is the voice of Startups “everywhere else”

Philly Startup: TicketLeap Kills The Frog

20120626-001154.jpg

Back in April we reported that Philly event ticketing startup TicketLeap was the first ticketing company to offer reserved seat ticket mapping for user created events.

On Monday evening an alarming post came across the Philly startup listserv. TicketLeap CEO Chris Stanchak announced that “the frog is dead”. What? The frog is dead I thought to myself. Was TicketLeap shutting down, we’re they acquired?

After reading the post thoroughly TicketLeap has gone through a rebranding and with that they killed off their mascot frog. The Kermit’s of the world wept in a moment of silence. Actually, though, this is good news for Stanchak and the team.

Stanchak said in his note to the Philly startup and tech community:

As many of you know, we’ve been quite busy working on our platform over the last two years since we relaunched it in the cloud on AWS. Our product team continues to astound me and I couldn’t be prouder. We are a product first company, but we felt like it was time to catch up some other areas.

So……I’m happy to say that we’ve taken another big step on this great ride and launched a new brand identity for TicketLeap – we feel it best reflects us as a company….and in order to do that we had to kill the frog (gasp!).

The new logo accompanies a relaunch of the TicketLeap website, iPad, iPhone and Android apps. Key elements of the new redesign include making the site more social, user friendly and adds the ability for event organizers to add mobile box office, a feature that Eventbrite released last year.

The new social initiatives include deeper integrations with Facebook and Twitter which allow people to socialize around a certain event. VentureBeat also reports that TicketLeap will be able to pull valuable demographic analytics about events set up through the service.

Unfortunately for the frog though, it looks like he’s going to be somebody’s fried frog legs dinner sometime soon.

Linkage:

Check out TicketLeap’s relaunch here at TicketLeap.com

Nibletz is the voice of Startups “everywhere else” here are more stories from “everywhere else”

Help us stay on the road covering the best Startups everywhere else here’s the link

Startup Beach House beaten up by Jersey Shore’s Reputation – Cancelled for 2012

<sarcasm font> Thanks MTV for ruining the beach </sarcasm font>

Back in May we covered the Startup Beach House – “The basic concept was to bring about 5 startup teams to the beach house for a week to see what they could build. We would then film it to document the week and what came of it.”

Originally they had leased a house in Avalon New Jersey but in their words:

In March, we secured a house in Avalon, which was perfect. After a news story ran dubbing the Startup Beach House the “Jersey Shore for geeks” (or something of that nature), which the owners of the house saw, they immediately cancelled the lease in fears of all things “Jersey Shore.”

So in April they managed to find a house in Stone Harbor, NJ.  but again ran into issues because of the Jersey Shore “reality” show.  Again, Startup Beach House explains,

Another news story came out, again making an association to the reality show “Jersey Shore.” The realtors of the initial house saw the story and sent it to the realtors of the Stone Harbor house saying something along the lines of “we wanted to make sure you are aware of what these guys are doing.” This caused alarm for the new realtor and the owners of the Stone Harbor house, they wanted to immediately cancel the lease over concerns of the type of people at the house and any filming that would take place. After explaining in detail what we were planning to do, they hesitantly agreed to rent us the house with added stipulations, however, we did not want to work in such a non-supporting environment.

They have chosen to shutter the plan for Startup Beach House 2012 because it became nearly impossible to find an appropriate unit and speaking from personal experience in South Jersey Shore vacation homes – even if they could locate a house the price would be significantly higher.  Their post explaining all of what transpired ends with:

We sincerely want to thank the hundreds of entrepreneurs and the startup community in general who have supported and promoted this effort. Also we are looking for a beach house owner or sponsor who is willing to work with us to further our goals of promoting the entrepreneurial spirit in the Philadelphia area.

We also want to thank those who have applied to be part of the inaugural Startup Beach House and encourage them to work on their ideas, even without the Startup Beach House. When we launch in 2013 we hope to have you all on board!

So there you have it.  Jersey Shore, a “reality” show that personally I feel describes (to a T) the failures of American “pop” culture, has indirectly ruined another American culture, albeit in an incredibly small physical area.  It is disheartening that 10-15 entrepreneurs and the three men behind Startup Beach House are left to deal with consequences of the actions of morons who are getting rich by dumbing down America.  I’ll leave you with this thought.

“I know he’s a nice guy … he’s gotta be clean.” – Snooki, on her friend Keith

Linkage:

Startup Beach House

Indiegogo: We’re going back on the road to spread the word about startups Everywhere Else.  We’ve got a $2 perk = Ramen or a $10 perk – Shower at a Truck Stop (Gotta be clean like Keith) – We could use your support.  If you can’t afford $2 sharing the Indiegogo campaign is still free. :)

 

background layer of image courtesy of this site

Philly’s Novotorium Hosting “Not A Hackathon” Entrepreneur Sleepover June 27 & 28th

Mike Krupit and the crew at Novotorium are holding a really cool event June 27th and 28th in Philadelphia. The event, that they’re calling the “Not a hackathon” Entrepreneur Sleepover. The event is not a “build a startup in 48 hours” type event. Rather it’s more like a weekend worth of valuable office hours to refine your startup, develop your product, work on your marketing and pick the brains of Krupit, and other great mentors.

Novotorium promises 36 straight hours of “eye popping, brain swelling, undulterated business progress”


There is a $20 participation charge which of course will cover things like fuel (food and red bull) along with other considerations. But not only that, there will be a $2,000 prize. Krupit told Nibletz.com the companies won’t do “pitches” but their progress throughout the weekend will be judged by the Novotorium and SeedPhilly team. Both Novotorium and SeedPhilly will meet with each startup individually.

The best part of the entire process is that everyone will be on hand all 36 hours, so if you’re knee deep into problem solving at 3am you’ll be able to get a mentor to help you solve your problem.

Krupit responded to criticism on the Phily Startup Leaders List Serv saying:

“We know that there are entrepreneurs are reluctant to attend hackathons or startup weekends because they don’t own what the community helps them produce. That’s why we called this a “Not-a” hackathon – to demonstrate its approach from another perspective. We added the cash prize as an incentive to those who maybe weren’t purely in it for the community, learning, and fun.

 The $20 registration is a token to basically ensure that people show up. It’s even lower than other similar events.
This model isn’t for everyone – and we never intended for it to be. There are already a number of registrants, so I’m assuming some find it interesting. For those that do, we’ll build some good business models and product, build more community, and have a good time.”
We totally get it here at nibletz, as we said the best way to describe it is 36 straight hours of office hours type access to some of the best mentors in the Philadelphia area to help any startup who registers, work on their business.
Linkage:
Find out more about this event here
Find out more about Novotorium here and Seed Philly here
This is part of Philly’s Entrepreneur Summer Camp, more here
Nibletz, the voice of startups “everywhere else” could use your support, check this out

Philly’s Novotorium And Seed Philly Announce Entrepreneur Summercamp

Philly’s startup scene is becoming hotter and hotter everyday. With incubators and accelerators like DreamIt Ventures, Novotorium and Seed Philly, it seems that nothing is holding back the city of brotherly love.

We reported on Novotorium back in April when they were bringing their second startup, Inhabi under their umbrella.

Now, both Novotorium and Seed Philly are teaming up to make it a summer to remember for startups in the Philly area. The two incubators are partnering to kick off the summer with an event called “The Infonautics Team and a Generation of Startups”. This event is getting a lot of play in the philly startup listserv and it looks like the whole city is behind it.

According to Mike Krupit of Novotorium, “The Infonautics Team and a Generation of Startups” will show how a dynamic entrepreneurial culture at one startup helped generate a stream of successful startups, ventures and careers.

“We’ve seen tremendous collaboration, innovation and camaraderie through the years by the people who were part of Infonautics,” Krupit said. “We are now experiencing a resurgence of the entrepreneurial community in Philadelphia, so the timing is excellent to help a new wave of entrepreneurs learn from pioneers and see how and how much we have already achieved in our region, and the possibilities for the future.”

Seed Philly founder; Brad Denenberg added: “There are so many great things happening in the entrepreneurial community throughout the Philadelphia region that we don’t always take time to look back, understand how we got here, and appreciate it,” Denenberg said. “By collaborating, Novotorium, Seed Philly and numerous successful entrepreneurs are aiming to bring focus to the power of entrepreneurship in Philadelphia and help build the overall community.”

More after the break
Read More…

Interview With A Founder: Philly Startup Snip Snap App

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.

Watch this video than download it:

Linkage:

Check out Snip Snap App in the iTunes App Store 

See more of our TechCrunch Disrupt Coverage of startups “everywhere else”

We’re on a sneaker-strapped, nationwide, startup roadtrip find out more here