Conquer Your Bucketlist with South Carolina Startup Bucquistador [video][onespark]

TJ Schallot, an entrepreneur and startup founder from Charleston South Carolina wants you to grab hold of your Bucket List like a bull and take it down. Conquer your bucket list with Bucquistador, that’s the motto at her newly launched startup.

Leading up to the launch of the socially integrated startup that allows people to take things off of their bucket list, Schallot has been hard at work promoting her startup. She was a presenter in the Startup Village at Everywhereelse.co 2013 and now she’s presenting as a creator at OneSpark the World’s Crowdfunding Festival in Jacksonville Florida.

So there are a lot of “bucket list” startups out there, what makes this one different? Schallot told us in an interview, it’s all about conquering your list and involving your socially connected friends. This idea is the foundation for how Schallot even came up with Bucquistador.

Schallot said her friends grew jealous of the fact that she was always doing things on their bucket list. She wanted a way to share with her friends the exciting things that she was doing without spamming them with email or useless Facebook updates. “I tried Facebook but my important posts were getting drowned out by pictures of cats” she told us. Of course we all know that pain.

Now Schallot’s bucket list items are available on Bucquistador for her friends to see and collaborate on. For example if you want to fly in a helicopter through the Grand Canyon on your bucket list, a friend of yours may be going to the Grand Canyon and want to do the same thing, why not knock it out together.

Schallot and her father are manning their creator booth in the SunTrust building in downtown Jacksonville. They’ve brought along a sumo wrestler suit, moonshine, and other items that may be on people’s bucket list. “Who doesn’t want to sumo wrestle in a sumo wrestler suit” Schallot said, now if that’s on your list you can do it right at the Bucquistador booth.

Check out our interview video below and for more info visit bucquistador.com.

In the words of the infamous Billy Mays, but wait there’s more OneSpark coverage here, a lot of it!

Greenville’s Iron Yard Expands Into Digital Health & Education

The Iron Yard is a startup accelerator, co-working space, incubator and educational hub in Greenville South Carolina. They’re also a member of the Global Accelerator Network.

We covered their first session at the Iron Yard accelerator extensively as they neared completion of the first cohort this summer. Companies like Trucky Love (now Locally.fm), MoonClerk, Spent, and RidePost were all featured on nibletz.com the voice of startups everywhere else, back in August.

As the Iron Yard prepares for their next cohort they’re also expanding into the world of digital health and education.

While Memphis TN is home to ZeroTo510, the first cohort based medical device accelerator, Iron Yard is taking a new approach and targeting those in the digital health space.

” Companies building everything from wellness apps to enterprise software can apply, and those accepted will settle into Spartanburg for an intensive program that will shape their idea into a company ready to launch.” Iron Yard’s Kate McCarthy told nibletz in an interview.

McCarthy continued:

“Spartanburg teams will benefit from relationships with top pharma distributors, access to major area hospital systems, connections to global medical research firms, and a world-class line-up of mentors. The accelerator and coworking space will be located in downtown Spartanburg one block from RJ Rockers Brewery. While we don’t list proximity to craft beer as an official “perk” of the program, it certainly can’t hurt. We will begin accepting applications for the digital health program this spring, but applications to the Greenville accelerator (consumer web and mobile) are open through February 8th”

On the education front, Iron Yard is looking to develop more coders and developers in the region. They are offering free programming classes to over 70 kids and they’re going to launch an intensive three month coding course for adults in the Spring.

“At a CoderDojo, young people learn how to code, develop websites, apps, programs, games and even robots- all for free. There are currently three after school classes offered per week and a long waiting list to join the program. Students represent a diverse population: roughly half the students are girls and one class is offered in a low income neighborhood so that students without transportation have access to the courses. Teachers Mason Stewart, Wes Whitesell, Anne Mahaffey, and a handful of volunteers all offer their time and talent to keep classes free.”

“One course focuses on teaching Scratch, HTML and CSS. The other exposes kids to electronics basics, from the circuit board, up. The really cool part: those who have completed the Scratch course can build game controllers for their own video games in the electronics course. That’s made possible by the support of Arduino, who donated Arduino Esploras for the kids to learn on.” McCarthy reported.

You can find out more about Iron Yard and these programs at theironyard.com

Join Global Accelerator Managing Director Pat Riley and Global Accelerator program member accelerators from across the country next month at everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference, ticket sales and Startup Village booth sales closing soon.

This Amazing Hat Called Cynaps Lets You Hear Music From Your Phone Through Your Head

We saw the most amazing hat at CES 2013 in Eureka Park. The hat is called Cynaps and the startup that created it is called MaxVirtual.

Cynaps, uses bone induction technology which when connected to a smartphone or other music player, lets you actually hear the music through the vibrations in hour head. No headset, no earphones and no earbuds required. The sound is conducted directly into your inner ear through vibration.

Our cofounder Nick Tippmann was able to try the Cynaps out and says that it sounds just as good as headphones. The company spokesperson that we interviewed said that it’s perfect for anything requiring headphones. You can listen to music, watch movies, even take a call or skype with the Cynaps hat.

There are a couple buttons built onto the brim that allow the user to end and start calls and playback.

The South Carolina startup is already up, running and selling the Cynaps hat for $60 here.

Cynaps offers a new level of safety when it comes to hands free operation. While you’re hearing the sound coming through your inner ear with the vibration, you can still hear other sounds as well. The main sound source becomes the focal point but if you were driving or biking with your Cynaps hat on you would be able to hear a car horn or other important noises.

Check out Nick’s interview with Max Virtual Below:

Over 130 startups and 2000 attendees from across the country & around the world are headed to this startup conference

South Carolina Startup: OpenMenu Standardizing Restaurant Menu’s Online

It all started over 2 years ago in Columbia South Carolina, over a piece of “death by chocolate” cake. It was Chris Hanscom’s birthday and in like most relationships is wife asked him a simple question, “where do you want to eat tonight?”. It was Hansom’s night and he didn’t really care where he ate, but he wanted a piece of death by chocolate cake.

This search, online and through phone calls, almost brought the death of him (or perhaps his smart phone), but Hanscom was determined to find his favorite piece of cake. What he found was a mess of websites for local restaurants. Some had mobile pages, some had scaled down pages, others had flash that he couldn’t get to load, and still others had text that didn’t look right. When he went to the computer, it was much of the same. There was no consistency in the online menu.

With Hanscom’s battle with the chocolate cake, an idea for OpenMenu was born. Now what Hanscom is proposing is a daunting task and he is well aware of that. He’s hoping to make a platform attractive enough that most restaurants will streamline their menus utilizing the OpenMenu platform.

Lets make this abundantly clear though, Hanscom doesn’t have some groovy restaurant app that he wants to sign restaurants up for, he wants them to JUST streamline their menus. The framework around the websites can remain the same, the graphics are all the restaurants, however the menu part, if streamlined and then tied to an API could become a very welcomed thing for restaurant patrons, and a very lucrative startup for Hanscom.

We got a chance to interview this bold entrepreneur. Check out the interview below:

Iron Yard Demo Day Preview: Greenville Startup Spent

Iron Yard Labs is a 13 week accelerator program in Greenville South Carolina. It’s part of the Global Accelerator Network which was founded by Boulder Colorado based TechStars. The Global Accelerator Network affiliation gives the startup teams participating in the Iron Yard Labs session access to top shelf business benefits like free hosting, legal services, accounting services and more.

The inaugural class at Iron Yard will graduate next week on August 29th with a demo day in Greenville. In the week leading up to demo day we will have interviews with some of the exciting startups accelerating in the program.

We got to kick off this special section with Greenville ride sharing startup Ridepost you can read that interview here.

Next up is Spent.

Spent is an ad platform that targets traditional brick and mortar grocery stores. Co-Founder Andria Trivisonno equates Spent to taking the recommendation engine found in Amazon.com shopping and applying it to traditional grocery stores. Spent is able to achieve this by leveraging a customers buying habits and purchase history.

We got a chance to interview Trivisonno who clearly shows the Global Accelerator Network’s influence in Iron Yards, by referencing “mentor whiplash” a phrase coined by Brad Feld at Foundry.

They don’t get too much into the nuts and bolts of the app itself but from what we’ve heard Spent may actually make some headway in a space that’s being tackled on many fronts. We’ll have more details about Spent after they debut on the Demo Day stage. They are working on their seed round to continue forward with their progress. Check out our interview with Trivisonno below.

Interview with South Carolina Startup: Ridepost

There are a lot of startups out there trying to challenge everyday corporate models like the hotel and the car with peer to peer sharing services. Ridepost, a South Carolina startup incubating at Iron Yard, is looking to enter the world of peer to peer vehicle sharing. Sure there are other startups tackling the same issue, but it’s going to come down to scalability, go to market strategy and execution.

Ridepost will eliminate the need for a taxicab and other for hire vehicle services by connecting passengers and drivers in a safe and social setting.

Ridesharing in this setting isn’t new around the world, just in the US. In fact it was traveling abroad where Ridepost co-founder Marty Bauer, first experienced ride sharing and wanted to bring this money saving way to travel back to the U.S. Bauer realized that ride sharing wasn’t about getting in the car with strangers it was about traveling.

We got a chance to talk with Blair Deckard, Ridepost co-founder and head of marketing, about their startup. Check out the interview below:

South Carolina Startup: 52 Apps Will Produce 52 Apps This Year

Here’s a story that’s just screaming “everywhere else”. Two students who actually hail from Arkansas, Brandon Lee and Chris Thibault are two ambitious young entrepreneurs who have built a startup app studio with a twist. Their startup is working out of an incubator at USC where Thibault was a student.

Their development company, called 52apps, is set out to produce 52 high quality apps over the next year. They hope to produce each app in just five days, presumably cheating the startup culture and taking weekends off, which is ok considering they are also students.

While the 52apps concept isn’t entirely new, the way they’ve set out to find app ideas has an interesting twist. The startup held almost a “pitch” event Friday evening. At the event they took app suggestions from all walks of life at an event with a stage, pitches and brainstorming.

Lee and Tthibault heard a ton of great app ideas at their “Idea Day” that was held immediately following a launch and kick off event for their University of South Carolina, Columbia, based company,

These two aren’t guys who just decided to become app developers in College. Both Lee and Thibault are BFFs from high school, who developed their first app while they were till in high school, with the ambitious idea to make math homework easier and more automated. They were able to achieve that as part of a goal to stop taking backpacks to school.

52apps is just one of 32 resident startup companies at a fairly new incubator at UNC.
“These are two- to three-month projects,” said Steve Leicht, who serves as 52apps’ chief executive and part of the management team put together by the incubator and Columbia venture capitalist Don Tomlin, said Tomthe statee.com. “These folks pull it off in a week.”

The duo has already put out their first iOS app under the 52apps umbrella. The app, called Tap Notes, sells for $2.99 in the iTunes app store and helps students, and business professionals take notes, and record conversations for the notes that can be accessed at specific points rather than having to listen to an entire conversation and then pulling what you need.

Lee and Thibault report that they’ve received over 30 great ideas so far and will start developing straight away.

Linkage:

Check out 52apps at 52apps.com

Source: thestate.com

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Greenville Startups: 12 Software Startups Headed To Greenville SC For NEXT Big Thing

Greenville’s startup community is looking to make their place on the map more defined this summer as 12 software startups head there for the NEXT Big Thing. The three month incubation program will happen at Greenville’s NEXT Center. Journalwatchdog is equating it to ” a sort of a Rocky Mountain Boulder, Colo., in the Blue Ridge foothills”

Kevin Survance former Chief Technology Officer for MapQuest is heading to the NEXT Big Thing to work on a new mobile app for smartphones this summer. Survance told journalwatchdog.com “It has all the marks of putting Greenville on the map as a technology hub…But it won’t happen overnight”

More after the break
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