WILD Is the Original Mountain-To-Bar Company

wild

WILD Outdoor Apparel could be considered the local craft beer of clothing.

Some people really don’t want to dress like everyone else, but few outdoor clothing companies cater to them. WILD is changing that by producing limited batch performance clothing.

Check out our Q&A with WILD below:

What is your startup called?

WILD Outdoor Apparel

What does your company do?

WILD makes Limited Edition runs of independently minded apparel for independently minded people who don’t follow the crowd. All WILD products are designed driven and performance oriented constructed from very unique high quality fabrics for all of your Mountain to Bar endeavors. WILD brings style and performance together in numbered editions designed and manufactured in Portland Oregon USA. For example, the style/color edition of a given design might be150. Each piece is hand numbered 1/150, 2/150… up to 150/150. After the edition number is reached that style/color will never be produced again assuring your item will be only one of 150 anywhere in the world.

Who are the founders, and what are their backgrounds?

Dan Tiegs… Owner/designer/product developer/sales

I am a veteran of 15 years in the apparel business. I have worked for some large apparel companies like Nike and Columbia Sportswear as well as some smaller niche performance apparel companies. I have operated my own apparel consulting business since 2009 and started WILD after doing floor cleaner to desert topping projects as an independent consultant.

Where are you based?

Portland Oregon

What’s the startup scene like where you are based?

Portland is a very DIY town. From high tech to music to food to beer to bikes to apparel Portland has a scene for it all. We take pride in our boot strapping ways looking to keep it local and original.

What problem do you solve?

WILD Products liberate people from the same old world of mass produced apparel. WILD protects an individual’s individuality. WILD takes you from the Mountain to the Bar with aplomb. WILD delivers limited edition, design driven performance apparel made locally for what many brands charge for mass produced goods that are made in Asia.

Why now?

There are people who do not aspire to dress like everyone else and do not aspire to a corporate message. These people are served much better by the fashion market than by the performance market. WILD looks to change that by melding the fashion and the performance worlds. This is possible now because of our development of the local manufacturing base. The small limited edition WILD runs are a direct response to people looking for a more crafted way of doing things. A local brew pub instead of Anheuser -Busch if you will.

What are some of the milestones your startup has already reached?

WILD launched the Men’s Park Place Snap Front Down Shirt and the Women’s Sweet Sister Down Hoodie already.

What are some of your next milestones?

The next milestone is the Crowd Supply sale of the WILD Burnside Alpha jacket which is the debut product of the WILD Made In Oregon line.

Where can people find out more? Any social media links you want to share?

Please check out the WILD website, Facebook page….

http://www.wildoutdoorapparel.com/

https://www.facebook.com/WildOutdoorApparel

Portland’s Money Ball Customer Intelligence Startup Lytics, Raises $2.2M Seed Round

By now we all know about the movie MoneyBall that chronicled the way an economist set forth a new analytical approach to scouting vs the gut instinct of decades past. Being Memphis-based we’re seeing that all with our own Grizzlies, who’ve gone the analytical route. Although the naysayers in Memphis doubted this method last February when our star was traded to the Raptors, the team finished with the best record in franchise history. Does that method work, absolutely.

Now what if you could take that analytical approach and use it with almost any data point in customer analytics?

“We built the first cloud-based platform that collects and integrates digital and offline data to create the most comprehensive view of your customer,” James McDermott, CEO of Lytics said in a statement. “Effective marketing is built on organizations’ truly understanding their consumers – from their engagement across digital channels to previous purchases, and we deliver the most definitive and actionable customer record marketers have ever had access to.”

Using the Lytics tools, users can dive deeper into the view of their own customers, rather than taking a tiny sample of data and moving forward with a marketing campaign, direct mail, or engagement on a hunch.

Lytics collects, analyzes, and consolidates data from web, mobile, email, social, or any integrated system such as ExactTarget, SalesForce, Eloqua, SendGrid, Urban Airship, Push.io. The result is a powerful solution that enables marketers to segment data from any source, create targeted audiences and trigger highly relevant interactions with consumers in real time.

“Connecting our key platforms to derive customer insights from SalesForce, Eloqua and Netsuite is an inefficient and cumbersome process,” Jascha Kaykas Wolff, CMO of Mindjet said in a release. “With Lytics, we can finally create a customer gold record that you don’t need a PHD to understand. Lytics gives our global marketing organization meaningful intelligence about our customers and makes it even easier to orchestrate a great experience, with our current marketing tools.”

This powerful and intelligent data form was enough to garner a $2.2 million dollar seed round lead by Rembrandt Venture Partners. Voyager Capital also participated in the round.

“The shift in technology purchasing from CIOs to CMOs has created an immediate need for a new kind of digital CRM to transform customer data into a meaningful timeline that marketers can use to manage a lifecycle,” said Scott Irwin, Rembrandt Venture Partners in a statement. “Lytics has a stellar team and their new data platform is solving a big problem. We’re excited to invest and accelerate their innovation to build a solution that is helping brands strengthen customer relationships.”

One of the top cable providers and two major retailers are currently in a private beta with Lytics. The company plans to use the funding to hire staff, accelerate development, support, and grow customers.

You can find out more about Lytics here at lytics.io

Portland Startup AboutUs’ Founder Finds Greener Pastures In The TLD Space

Ray King, a life long technology nut and a prominent Portland entrepreneur is venturing out on his latest startup.

King is the founder, and still a board member for AboutUs. When the site launched it was an editable encyclopedia of websites across the world, somewhat similar to Wikipedia. With a great domain name and a successful entrepreneur at the helm AboutUs was able to raise $5.1 million dollars from backers including Voyager Capital.

Despite putting his best effort forth, and getting funding, King wasn’t able to find the sweet spot for a scalable AboutUs to become a sustainable business. It pivoted several times and now AboutUs is a service that helps businesses evaluate their online marketing strategies.

“We were never able to get the formula right,” King said to OregonLive.com. “I was not able to get it to break out in the way that I had hoped.” King continued, “I was gradually getting into a more conservative mindset,” and added, “and maybe not the right guy to bring it forward.”

King’s latest venture is a new company called Top Level Design. He is hoping to ultimately become a domain registrar for the new top level domains that are waiting for approval. King has applied for .blog, .gay, .photography and .wiki. Based on the success of these top level domains, we will probably see King’s company apply for even more.

“It’s going to change the complexion of the Internet,” he said, “at least the naming complexion of the Internet, quite a bit.”

Source: OregonLive

This startup will help you conquer your bucketlist

Portland Opens Up Applications For Startup PDX: Challenge

Portland Oregon’s Portland Development Commission has kicked off a new initiative to lure startups to the Central Eastside part of town. The new program called the Startup PDX Challenge is a non-equity based grant program that will give up to six startups $10,000 grants and free office space for a year in what once served as Mayor Charlie Hale’s campaign office.

The office space is located in what most people in Portland know as “Produce Row”. It’s for the most part, an industrial area that the city is trying to revitalize with new types of restaurants, businesses and now technology startups.

There are several equity based tech incubators in the Portland area. This program is the first of it’s kind where the money comes with no strings attached (other than working in the office space). The PDC has a budget of $150,000 for the project which includes the grant money as well as money to make improvements to the building where the startups will be housed. In consideration for the improvements the landlord is not charging the tenant startups rent this year.

In addition to the cash and office space, startups selected for the program will also have access to services donated by Portland area law firms, accountants and human resources services according to Oregon Live.

The Startup PDX challenge has already lined up several sponsors including; Perkins Coie; Davis Wright Tremaine LLP; Perkins & Co; Trupp HR; Xenium; Lewis & Clark Bank; Business Accelerator at Portland State University; Pie; Portland Seed Fund; Technology Association of Oregon; Portland Development Commission; Oregon Entrepreneur Network and Transfer Online.

Applications are due April 4th and can be filled out here.

How Are People, Places & Things Connected? Portland Startup Wikisway Shows You

Most people believe that everyone is connected somehow and some way. Like six degrees of separation, when you start looking at who yo know and how you know them you typically find connections. Portland startup Wikisway believes that people are connected to more than just other people. That’s why Wikisway is the ultimate way to find out how people, places and things are connected.

Did you meet a new friend at the mall? Then the two of you are connected to the mall. Did you meet your wife at a restaurant? That’s your place now. What things are you connected to? What things are your friends connected to? All of that is intertwined in this very different spin on a social/event discovery app hybrid.

With Wikisway they hope to show you how everything is connected. You could even use Wikisway to find out what startups are connected to what investors and vice versa. Wikisway promises to be a very robust platform, specifically for showing connections.

We got a chance to talk with the Wikisway team. Check out the interview below.

Portland Startup: Househappy, Pinterest For Real Estate?

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:

Ever Wanted Your Own Infographic? Oregon Startup Vizify Has You Covered

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:

Portland Startup Hively Teams Up With TangoCard To Reward Great Customer Service

Last week when we brought you our interview with Hively co-founder Jason Lander, we knew we were going to hear an announcement regarding a partner for customer service rewards. Now we hear about rewards startups all the time and loyalty and rewards programs. Hively is a little different, they’re taking the responsibility for a great customer service interaction back into the providers hands. Quite frankly, the way it should be.

Customer service is the number one driver of loyalty. It’s what turned Sprint around when Dan Hesse took over. It’s why I stayed with T-Mobile for years (not anymore as their customer service slid), it’s why I try to stay at Drury when I can. All of these companies have had superior customer service. In fact, several studies have shown that customers will pay a premium, or maybe a little more for a product or meal from a place where they know they are going to receive great service, than go for a deal with places that have bad customer service.

Customer service and rewards for good customer service are the foundation for Hively.

In our interview Lander told us that they were soon going to unveil a way for customer service people to redeem points from good one click reviews. Now we’ve found out what the customer service people can do with the points. They can get “stuff” from TangoCard’s network of retailers.

Three things happen in the Hively model:

A customer service agent focuses on their quality of service using the incentivized program. This way, even in non commissioned sales environments, agents and sales people can earn something “more”,and it’s not even based on a sale. With the improved customer service the sales will flow in, just ask Sptrint.

A customer service agent/sales rep will encourage customers to use the one click method of rating their service. They obviously want their points and the establishment wants the feedback.

Sales are driven by better customer service.

We love startups that turn an industry on it’s head.

“We believe that the right rewards given at the right time will drive significant and valuable results,” said David Leeds, CEO and founder of Tango Card. “We’re excited to partner with Hively to source and fulfill their program requirement for digital rewards.”

“Hively has always been about gathering and measuring customer happiness,” said Jason Lander, co-founder of Hively. “Since virtual rewards can quickly lose their appeal, our customers have asked for a way to more tangibly recognize colleagues and top performers. Our partnership with Tango Card is the perfect solution.”

Linkage:

Hively is here

TangoCard is Here

Nibletz is the voice of startups “everywhere else” send your startup news to startups@nibletz.com

We need your help on the sneaker-strapped worldwide startup roadtrip here

Interview With Portland Oregon Startup: Hively, Easy Engagement Feedback Platform

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:

Portland Startups: Portland Seed Fund Graduates 9 In Second Class

The Portland Seed Fund has graduated nine startup companies out of their second 90 day incubator program. Portland Seed Fund held a demo day this past Wednesday to unveil the efforts of all nine startups to an audience of west coast angel and venture capital investors.

All nine startups, call Portland home, and are at varying stages in development. Most of them are either web or mobile based startups. Each startup received a seed investment of $25,000 along with mentoring, services, and help with development.

“These companies have made major progress in 90 days, not just on their products but on their approach to revenue and customers as well,” said Angela Jackson, co-managing director and co-founder of Portland Seed Fund with Jim Huston. “Many of these companies have already raised additional seed capital during the 90-day period, getting a big head start on life after Portland Seed Fund,” said Huston.

Take a look at the nine companies:

Beeminder tracks your goals and makes you stick to them. It plots your progress along a Yellow Brick Road and if you go off track, they take your money. Founded by computer scientists with backgrounds in data analysis and incentive systems, Beeminder has thousands of devoted users. @bmndr

Cloudability is the simple way to track and control cloud costs across all of your IaaS, PaaS and SaaS. Just a year old and based in Portland, OR Cloudability already has 3,000 users in 80 countries managing $75M – and growing daily – of cloud spending. @cloudability

Gliph allows you to connect with others safely online without having to share personal and private information. @gli_ph

Globesherpa – Secure, convenient mobile ticketing for transit commuters and more. Secure, convenient mobile ticketing for transit commuters and more. @globesherpa

Good Works Now produces cloud-based solutions to modernize the infrastructure for non-profits to increase revenue, donor base, board accountability, and online reputation management. @goodworksnow

Indow Windows – the only non-tech or mobile company this term, Indow Windows makes thermal window inserts that press into place on the inside of window frames, offering double pane window performance without the hassle and price tag. It has developed a custom IT system for managing all aspects of the value chain: estimation, window measurement, and manufacturing. @indowwindows

SERPs.com is a search engine optimization monitoring dashboard. It deeply enhances Google Analytics with link, social & keyword data for daily insights to improve traffic. Early customers include simple.com and customink.com. @scottkrager

ShowKicker enables fans to crowd-source events on the web, capturing more money for artists and venues and gets fans into the right shows. It delivers pre-sold audiences for promoters and reduces their risk. ShowKicker makes the shows venues want to book and that people want to see. @ShowKicker

Superb.ly (formerly Tell it in 10) is an SaaS platform for investors, lawyers and entrepreneurs to collaborate on deal documents and due diligence. @superb_ly

Linkage:

For more on the Portland Seed Fund visit their site here

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

Like what we do, please hit the donate button on the right side of the page

Portland Startup: Interview With ShopMyPin, Winner Of Portland’s Startup Weekend

Vanessa VanPetten, Shopmypins, Startupweekend portland

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.

More after the break
Read More…

Portland Startup: Churchkey Can Company Gets Tech Investors For Their Nostalgic Beer

This isn’t the first time that tech investors have backed a food and beverage startup. Tech Investors came out in droves to back Jonathan Kaplan, the creator/founder of the Flip video camera with his chain of grilled cheese restaurants called “The Melt”.

Entourage star Adrian Grenier and former Nike designer, Justin Hawkins have teamed up to found the Churchkey Can Company. Churchkey makes what’s being dubbed a “Pacific Northwest brewed Pilsner style craft beer”, however it’s not the beer itself that has everybody talking, but rather the can it’s packaged in. Churchkey Can Company is putting their beer into a flat topped churchkey opening can.

Before pull back lids you may remember having a can opener in the house that had a diamond shaped end on it. You would puncture the soup can on both sides and pour the soup our of one of the triangle shaped openings. The opposite opening made sure that the soup poured out smoothly. That’s the same idea behind Churchkey Can Company’s flat can. A style of beer can that dates back to the 1930’s.

ChurchKey Can Company’s flat top steel cans are made out of all recycled steel. Grenier and Hawkins turned to the Ball can company to manufacture the cans for them. According to some, the flat top can and the church key opening actually locks in the freshness.

“It’s about the joy of drinking good beer – from the people you drink it with, to where you drink it, and with this unique package, how you open it,” said Justin Hawkins, Churchkey’s co-founder and creative director. “We didn’t make these traditions, but are keeping them alive with Churchkey.”

More after the break
Read More…

Portland Startup: Chifpify Raises $1.3 Million For It’s Twitter Commerce Platform

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.

Linkage:
Find out more about Chirpify here

Nibletz is the voice of startups everywhere else, check out these new stories

We’re on a sneaker strapped road trip, check it out and support us here

Source: OregonLive

Chez Gourmet’s Burger Queen Takes Home Top Prize In Angel Oregon Competition

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.

Here’s the linkage:

To find out more about Chez Gourmet visit their site here

Nibletz is the voice of startups everwhere else check out more stories here

Help us get on the bus, check this out and spread the word

Source: Business Journal