Startup Interview Archives - Page 18 of 34

Shop, Share, Indulge On The Go With Michigan Startup Ozmott

A new Michigan startup called Ozmott has said they’ve just made shopping more fun. They’ve done this by combining a map of local participating merchants that are part of Ozmott’s loyalty program. Once they get into a participating merchant, Ozmott users can decide which offer they want to purchase and use “Pips” or loyalty points, to help pay for the offer. When a user redeems an offer through Ozmott they earn more points which helps them get top tier “Luxe” offers.

The team behind Ozmott had learned first hand from a local merchant how they actually went upside down on a daily deal. This seems to be a trend with mom & pop shops that eagerly joined the Groupon or Living Social model. It’s why it doesn’t work.

It looks like Ozmott merchants won’t have the same problem, especially after throwing the reward points back in the mix.

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

Baltimore Startup: SickWeather Is Crowdsourcing The Sickness Forecast INTERVIEW

What if you could forecast sickness? What if you could find out what illnesses were going around just as easily as you could find out the weather? Well that’s what Baltimore startup SickWeather is all about.

The concept is a great idea, and while the two co-founders behind SickWeather are smart guys, it’s not like they have some magical powers that allow them to forecast what areas are going to get sick and when. What they have done though, is taken huge amounts of data available via public API’s and turned them into a startup that can tell you what’s going around near you.

It all started when co-founder Graham Dodge was sick with a stomach virus. It was a wicked bad virus and he wanted to see if anyone in his circle of friends was experiencing similar symptoms. Perhaps he wanted to track down the source of the stomach virus, or more importantly, get in contact with someone with the same symptoms and find out how much longer he would be under the weather. Whatever the reason, the idea immediately seemed scalable. With that, SickWeather was born.

Social networks have gigantic heaps of data available via public API. Through proprietary algorithms, SickWeather combs through those mountains of data for status’ like “Just got back from the doctor”, “Can’t get this flu to go away”. When the status on a social network is accompanied by a location marker, it will be plotted on the map. As they continue to work on the data, the team behind SickWeather could even plot out how long people have been sick.

They regurgitate all this data in much easier to read graphics that will ultimately provide valuable information to end users. Is that hacking cough coming from an allergy to a cat, or are you coming down with something?

We got a chance to talk with Dodge about SickWeather. Check out the interview below.

With The Animated Gif Back, DC Startup MyFaceWhen Is Ready

Way back in the 90’s (saying that is so wrong), animated gifs were typically banners that someone who was building a website would use to attract attention to something or another. The more popular animated gifs were dancing bears, christmas lights, and even cars driving along in the middle of the web page.

Nowadays banner ads are fading fast and the animated gif is actually coming back.

Thanks to mobile usage and social networks animated gifs are almost, if not more popular than meme’s. If you want to get your point across in a cute, happy, or even angry way, you can say it with an animated gif. Technology has vastly improved over the past two decades as well, which means better animated gifs.

Of course there are places that are stockpiling cute, one off animated gifs that you can use to send to your friends and family but just like meme’s witty people want to create their own. That’s where Rodney Curl and his startup MyFaceWhen come into the picture.

The Howard University graduate has gotten the creation of animated gifs down to a science. In fact from start to finish you can get an original animated gif ready to send out in under 10 seconds. Curl also tells us if you want to use a stock gif MyFaceWhen will take you out to Reddit where gifs are a plenty.

We’ve seen a vast variety of startups come out of Washington DC. Cur’s MyFaceWhen is a fun mobile app and a nice break from the traditional tech startup.

We got a chance to talk to Curl. Check out our interview below.

Colorado Startup SeedLauncher Joins The Online/Offline Crowdfunding Space

Crowdfunding could have very well been the most popular startup space in 2012. Crowdfunding startups came out of the woodwork for every industry and everybody. Even the porn industry got it’s own crowdfunding startup which we actually covered here.

One of the niche’s within crowdfuding that’s heating up right now is hybrid crowdfuding sites. These are the crowdfunding sites like SockStock and SeedVille, that fit in this hybrid space.

So what’s a hybrid crowdfuding site?

Crowdfunding sites that most people are familiar with function like Kickstarter and Indiegogo. These are sites where people can post whatever project they are working on and the crowd funds those projects. The project creators can be anywhere in the world because everything is done online.

In exchange for funding or a donation if you will, the entrepreneur getting their project or startup crowdfunded, gives the donator, or funder, some kind of perk. The more money that gets donated, the better the perk.

To us, a hybrid crowdfunding site is one that utilizes the internet for the funding but the business is local. Say you have a favorite ice cream shoppe around the corner from your home. The owner of the shoppe wants to expand but doesn’t have the money. He can go to a hybrid crowdfunding site and raise the money, and instead of sending perks in the mail, contributors can come to the local business and get their perk.

That’s exactly what Colorado startup SeedLauncher does. We got a chance to talk with SeedLauncher’s co-founder Jeromy Sonne about crowdfunding and the Colorado startup scene.

Check out the interview below.

Toronto Startup TelChamp Puts Your Existing Phone System On Steroids

When you picked out your phone system, if you didn’t get the features you wanted, there’s no need to worry. Toronto startup TelChamp puts existing phone systems on steroids adding features that everyone wants.

TelChamp is a unified communications system that adds SMS, call forwarding, conference calling, follow me, auto-attendant, web based faxing, and more to your existing phone system. You can try it all out for free.

Two Pakistani brothers, Mustafain (Musti) and Murtafain (Murti) Nasser, are the founders of TelChamp. Both were educated in North America and now Musti manages the North American part of their business from Toronto and Murti handles their Karachi business from Dubai.

Through an alliance with Los Angeles based Allcom TelChamp has been able to come up with the Genie system. This is the cloud based system that provides all of these telecommunications features through a personalized, web based dash board. Genie is also the TelChamp user’s personal, virtual assistant.

This technology allows small business people and even startups, to have a larger more professional phone presence on a laser thin budget.

We got to talk with the TelChamp team. Check out the interview below.

Charlotte Serial Entrepreneur Unveils Soccer Startup Social Network KYCK

Mac Lackey and Ross Saldarini are serial entrepreneurs in Charlotte North Carolina, they’re also soccer enthusiasts. The pair have started several startups and even had a few exits. Their most notable exits were selling internetsoccer.com to a public European media company, and selling Mountain Khakis to Remington.

Now they’re back at it again, infusing their love of startups, social media and soccer into one new company called KYCK. KYCK is a social network, and community for soccer enthusiasts connecting them to each other and an abundance of great soccer related content.

Through a proprietary content delivery system that Lackey calls “media layers” they are able to offer even the most scrupulous of soccer fans the best possible experience through their own personal soccer focused dashboard.

While we’re all familiar with how popular soccer is overseas, a poll conducted by ESPN earlier this year showed that soccer has climbed to the second most popular sport in the United States behind football among those age 12-24 which is one of the most important demographic for professional sports.

(source: ESPN)

With the vast amount of soccer related content, pouring in from across the globe, and the increase in popularity for the sport, KYCK is poised to become the destination for soccer fans around the world.

We got a chance to talk with Lackey about soccer, KYCK and raising a startup in Charlotte, North Carolina. Check out the interview below:

Maryland Startup CoFounders Lab Is Connecting CoFounders

When Shahab Kaviani sat down and had some time to reflect about his previous startup, HyperOffice he quickly realized that the cofounding team behind that startup drove it’s success. He admits that they bootstrapped almost the entire project. He also says in hindsight their timing was lousy, but the cofounding team kept the startup together.

Finding the right cofounders should actually be at the top of the priority list in any startup. CoFounders lab is one of many startups that look to match people with cofounders. FounderSync is one of those startups that uses an online approach. FounderDating uses a hybrid online offline approach merging an online community with in person events.

CoFounders lab also blends online and offline through in person events. We hope that he’s not too late to this party as well. Of course we all know that when the Dodge brothers went to build cars they weren’t worried that Ford was already doing the exact same thing.

Kaviani was fortunate enough to get selected into the Fort accelerator in Washington DC. After graduating from the program the company moved to Rockville Maryland where they are currently based now. They recently pitched the “Pitch Across Maryland” bus as part of Startup Maryland back in September.

We got a chance to talk with Kaviani. Check out our interview below.

Australian Startup Releases New Dual Screen Video Platform For Event Organizers

If you’re throwing a big event, like we are, than you know that the audience at home is just as valuable as the audience on site. Event organizers are constantly looking for the best way to stream their events online and give at home viewers a similar experience to what those on site are seeing.

Australian startup Cogent has launched an exciting new video platform, primarily targeted towards live events. The platform called Eventer, is a dual screen video platform. This allows viewers at home to partake in the direct feed video from the stage and possibly watch the audience or a slide presentation at the same time. There are currently other video startups working in a similar space, but none so focused on events themselves.

Eventer has already been tested in Australia and in the United States. The San Francisco Music Tech event was the first US event to test out Eventer. The event’s co-founder Brian Zisk said that the event saw viewers at home staying engaged for 40 minutes at a time. In Australia, the Sustaining Women In Business conference also tested out the technology and it worked well for them too.

The unique platform delivered by Cogent and Eventer allows viewers to see everything in real time. Viewers at home can see the slide transitions and any special effects that may be happening on stage.

We got a chance to talk to the team from Eventer, check out the interview below.

Build Your Own Video Games With UK Startup Construct 2

Have you ever wanted to build your own video game? Maybe you’re a gamer and thought you’d love your own game but didn’t know an ounce about programming? Well there’s a UK startup that’s come up with a do it yourself platform for creating video games. The startup is called Scirra and their product is Construct 2.

Through Construct 2’s easy to use interface you’ll drag and drop your game characters, game play moves and more to make a fully workable video game via HTML5. After that Construct2 gets you ready to export your new game to a variety of devices and a variety of platforms.

The system that Ashley Gullen and has brother have created makes it possible for people with no programming experience whatsoever to produce “awesome games”.

Construct2 creates Windows based games and was the follow up to Gullen’s 2007 game creation tool now dubbed “Construct Classic”. The classic version allowed people to create games in the DirectX 9 platform.

We got a chance to talk with Ashley’s brother Thomas Gullen. Check out that interview below.

Paris Startup AIRTAG Is All About Mobile Shopping INTERVIEW

A startup in Paris called AIRTAG is offering a complete suite of mobile shopping tools for retailers and e-tailers. The startup was founded by Jeremie Leroyer and Cyril Porteret who also cofounded Haiku which was sold in 2004 for $10 million euros.

AIRTAG’s complete suite of products has every facet of mobile shopping covered. AIRSHOP enables shoppers to order and pay in advance for groceries and fast food using their mobile phone. AIRFID is the rewards and loyalty card arm of the company. AIRPASS is a mobile wallet of sorts adding loyalty cards, gym keytags and even transportation passes. AIRTAG kit is the companies development tool kit for developers to interact with their PayPass applications.

The company’s stable of clients already includes McDonald’s, McCafe’, Reebok, Dior and many other globally well known brands. This has prompted AIRTAG to deploy offices throughout the world including a recently opened office in New York. They plan on adding partnerships in both the US and Canada from the New York office.

Mobile shopping and payments have grown into a huge industry and right now it’s still anyone’s game. Google got off to a very rocky start with Google Wallet. Three of the four major US wireless carriers teamed up to help create ISIS an alternative to Google Wallet which was supposed to have seen a larger national footprint heading into this years holiday season.

According to the co-founders of AIRTAG, Japan is light years ahead of the rest of the world when it comes to allowing smartphones to manage people’s lives. Since selling their first startup to Japanese investors both Leroyer and Porteret have spent a lot of time in Japan where they noticed everyone used their phones for everything including bus fare, key locks, and payments. AIRTAG’s hope is to help replicate that system across the world.

We had a chance to interview the AIRTAG team. Check out the interview below.

Florida Startup: Residency HQ Is your One Stop For All State Residency Requirements

These days there are a whole lot of people living in at least dual residencies. When thinking about dual residencies the most common thought is about snowbirds. This group of people is usually older and migrates south to Florida, for the winter, from their normal homes up north. We’re even in a dual residency scenario ourselves right now.

People who live in dual residences have a hard time keeping up with the residency requirements, laws and taxes surrounding multiple places. Florida startup, Residency HQ keeps up with that for you.

Residency HQ bills themselves as the premiere resource for all state to state residency requirements. It’s a knowledge base of information for the types of people described above and for those looking to possibly relocate to another state. Residency HQ will also help users determine which state is the most advantageous to claim primary residence in.

We got a chance to talk with Residency HQ co-founder Mat Franken. Check out the interview below.

The Kolo Project Is Building A Startup Community In Saskatchewan, Canada

There’s been a lot of talk about startup communities these days. Most of it has been fueled by Brad Feld’s latest book in his startup revolution series “Startup Communities”. In the book he outlines what it takes to build great startup communities like the one found in Boulder Colorado, where Feld is based.

Of course communities across the country are taking heed. Most of the startup community stake holders I know personally were either downloading or buying Feld’s book back in September when it was published. What’s great about Feld’s book and startup communities in general is that they are popping up everywhere.

When most people think about startups and startup communities in Canada we look to Toronto, Ontario, Calgary and even Vancouver. Well the Kolo Project is a startup in itself, that is laying the foundations for a startup community in Saskatchewan.

Taunya Woods-Richardson is just one of the entrepreneurs that’s leading the efforts in Saskatchewan and she refuses to consider herself the founder. After all it’s a community they are building.

We got a chance to talk with Woods-Richardson about the Kolo Project and what’s going on in Saskatchewan. Check out our interview below.

Connecticut Startup Deets: Create And Interact Groups From The Best Place Possible

Everyone likes groups. Whether you’re old enough to remember the days of MMC groups on AOL or you came along at Yahoo Groups or even Google Groups, groups make it easy to keep like minded people together to share important information, and nowadays photos, events and content.

I love what you can do with the groups that are automatically built around Facebook events. You can communicate with those people going to an event, plan the event, interact with people at the event and then after the event. You can share videos and photos with these people and share your important contact information with the entire group or individually.

A startup in Connecticut with a great entrepreneurial/startup pedigree has set out to build a mobile platform that lets you take those same qualities that make Facebook groups and events so great and productive, and applied it to the most important list of people that you have, your contacts.

Deets was founded by Linda Miller who was the first in at Priceline and Hotwire where she was instrumental in building the foundation that we all use today to book hotels. The other co-founder is Luke Scott who has a creative background with top clients like Kraft, Bob Greene and HobNob Wines.

When you put the two together you get a very robust, but aesthetically appealing app and web based platform that is intuitive, and easy to use.

Deets breathes the same life and functionality you get from Facebook groups and other popular social sites right into your list of contacts. It basically gives your contact list/address book a new life, a new purpose and a new meaning.

Now you can set up groups of family members, friends, colleagues or event attendees. If you’re getting married and want to set up a group for the bridal party, go for it. If you’re releasing a record and want to set up a list of fans and promoters, done. Not only are these groups set up for sharing the same way you can socially, but it’s done from the privacy of your computer or smartphone and from there you can set up your degrees of privacy. It’s one of the most robust platforms for sharing we’ve ever seen.

Forget about the 850 friends you have on Facebook, we’re going to go out on a limb and say that you actually know the contacts in your contact list and now you know your deets.

We got a chance to talk with Scott about deets. Check out the interview below.

Auburn Startup Get Charitable Prepares For Demo Day In OKC

One day over a cold draft I’ll tell you the great story behind Michael Isaacs and Kyle DeTullio, their Auburn startup Get Charitable and just how they got into the BluePrint For Business Startup Accelerator in Oklahoma City at the last possible second. Once they made it in though, this duo is looking more like the 2010 Auburn Tigers rather than the Auburn Tigers of today (what a difference a little time makes).

Isaacs and DeTullio met at Auburn University as pledge brothers in 2008 at Sig EP.

Isaacs and DeTullio had been thinking about socially conscious startups last fall. Over Thanksgiving break last year, Michael thought that if they could leverage smartphone markets, they might be able to make a little difference with a startup. If they could use advertising revenue, Michael realized, they could possibly feed one child per day for every person that would download their app. But to make sure they could get this revenue to feed the child daily, the advertisement would have to be outside of an app that the user would have to open. That’s when Michael knew they had to bring the advertisement to the user, so everyone could work together to make a difference for each child. The wallpaper and notification menu were the perfect place.

Auburn is a college town built on steadfast traditions. Auburn is a nice town, with a huge swell when class is in session. When it’s not it shrinks down to a small town atmosphere. It’s very old school when it comes to business. If you were going to open a new restaurant you could easily get the townspeople on board. A startup, not so much. A tech startup, even more not so much. A social startup, fuggedabout it.

That’s why the duo started looking for an accelerator outside of Alabama and landed on Blue Print for Business. BP4B is a member of the Techstars/Global Accelerator Network and their first class is graduating on Thursday.

Check out our interview with Isaacs below.