Startup Interview Archives - Page 32 of 34

Interview With Atlanta Slacktivist Startup: SocialVest

Before we dive into a great interview with an awesome Atlanta based startup, I get applause and a lot of flack from the term slacktivist. It’s definitely not a bad thing, and actually I’m hoping the term gets picked up. As busy as people are in 2012 “slacktivist” are the things that people can do without any additional, trying to actually contribute back to the community. Tom’s shoes for instance is a great example of slacktivism. Pubslush is also another great example of slacktivism.

I certainly don’t have the time to get out there and participate in relay for life races anymore or bake sales, although I am looking forward to selling girl scout cookies with my daughter. In the meantime though I am definitely a proud slacktivist and I love platforms like SocialVest. I’m that guy that always rounds up at GoDaddy and at Petco, why because it’s super easy and it helps. So check out this awesome Atlanta startup.

SocialVest is probably the easiest platform for a slacktivist or ok you don’t want to be a slacktivist, how about it’s the easiest platform for anyone who wants to make sizable contributions to a cause through shopping. After all you can only buy so many Live Strong bracelets at Radio Shack (are people still doing that these days?).

Once you register for an account at Slacktivist you accrue cash back awards from the 100s of retailers that are partnered with SocialVest. Then you take that reward money and select one or as many causes as you would like, out of over 1.5 million causes, to receive that bonus. Socialvest calls it “Purchase On Purpose” and it’s really really easy.

As they explain in the interview below, partner retailers give back up to 35% of a purchase (based on the retailer and their agreement with Socialvest) that money than goes into your reward account and is given to the causes of your choice at the intervals and amounts you choose. The more you shop online the more you contribute to the causes that matter most to you. Without doing an extra thing, period.

Pretty awesome right?

Check out the interview below and don’t kid yourself if you don’t have time to get out and do the volunteer things you want or write that check to the cause you love, sign up for Socialvest. It’s easy.

Interview With New Jersey Startup: Clipix, Pinterest For Everything

Bookmarklets are nothing new, however Pinterest turned the concept of bookmarkletting into a world wide phenomenon. Pinterest has turned itself into a company with an astronomical valuation and no direct revenue, by simply bookmarkletting “Pinning” photos on interest boards. Heck even President Obama and Mitt Romney are doing it.

But what if you wanted to go beyond just pictures. What if you wanted to pin websites, articles, heck even word documents and pdfs? Well you would turn to Fort Lee, NJ based startup Clipix. The company, founded earlier this year has already attracted the attention of both TechCrunch and Mashable and now we’ve had the chance to interview them.

For starters they’re very very feature rich and the features don’t just sound great they work great. One of their most popular features is “Price Drop”. Clipix knows when you’ve clipped something that’s from a retail website and notifies you at set variables when they price either drops by percentage or to a certain dollar amount. Sure there are other services that do this but it’s all in one.

The other big feature is the ability to clip things from documents and pdf’s which can come in handy later on. Then you can view the items you’ve clipped via mobile device. It’s actually rather amazing.

You’ll see in the interview below, why Clipix is considered the “Pinterest for the real world”.

Interview With Turkish Startup: Count.ly

New Turkish startup Count.ly has introduced a new analytics platform for mobile apps. Count.ly offers simple easy to understand analytics for game studios, marketeers, agencies, operators and anyone with a mobile app trying to track engagement and loyalty.

Countl.y is a real-time, open source mobile analytics application. It collects data from mobile phones, and visualizes this information to analyse mobile application usage and end-user behaviour. We opened up shop with a deep belief that even boring-looking analytics can be fun to learn, use and experience, without compromising great features.

Count.ly’s dashboard is easy to read but robust and provides a lot of information to any sized mobile app developer.

They’re entering into a crowded space but Count.ly seems to know what they’re doing and ready to take on the big boys. Check out the interview below:

StampedeCon Big Data Conference In St.Louis Next Week, Interview Here

We’re very glad to be involved with next week’s StampedeCon Big Data conference in fact Nibletz.com is the official national media sponsor of the event that happens August 1st in St.Louis.

The StampedeCon Big Data Conference will feature a whole day of great speakers about one of the fastest growing segments of technology, big data.

StampedeCon founder Gary Stiehr, has put together a great program featuring ReadWriteWeb’s David Storm, Rob Peglar of EMC/Isilon, Bill Eldredge of Nokia, Frank Cotignola of Kraft Foods, Eric Hochmuth of Monsanto, Scott Fines of NISC, Alex Miller of Revelytix, and Jim Duey of Lonocloud.

In addition to the content packed feature speakers there will be a vendor exhibit area and a ton of great people to network with. People are coming from across the country to participate in the first ever StampedeCon and Stiehr tells us he hopes to do more of them. We got to talk to Stiehr in the interview below:

Interview with Toronto, Ontario & New York Startup RemoteStylist

Interior decorating can be a pain in the ass. You normally have to go from store to store and showroom to showroom. Not to mention the fact that you’ve got to deal with a pushy sales person at each showroom and each store. It’s more of a pain than it’s worth. That’s why so many interior decorating and interior design projects get put on hold. Or worse, people spend thousands of dollars on something they don’t necessarily like, just to get the process over with.

That’s where Toronto, Ontario and New York based startup RemoteStylist comes in. With RemoteStylist you simply sign up for your own free profile and then you can coordinate your style for your interior project with one of RemoteStylists’ interior designers.

As you work with your stylist from RemoteStylist you’ll see your rooms come together right before your eyes. If something doesn’t look right on the screen you can simply send your stylist back to the drawing board and they’ll continue to work, change and revise until you have the room you’re looking for.

Once the painful part is over, you’ll be completely satisfied with what you selected. Then the second magic part happens. Everything you liked is purchased for less than retail prices and then delivered and installed in your home. Yes 99% of this entire process can happen at your desk, in bed or at the kitchen table. RemoteStylist founder Kelly Fallis and her team have made sure that the interior design process is simple, and easy and that in the end the customers are happy.

We got a chance to interview the folks at RemoteStylist check out the interview below:

Florida Startup: Sprigster, Crowdfunding For Veterans Looking To Start Franchise Businesses

There’s an alarming statistic when it comes to unemployment in our country and that is the fact that veterans who have moved from military to civilian life are one of the highest groups that are unemployed. That’s one of the reasons that TechStars just concluded their Patriot bootcamp to help and inspire veterans with ideas for startups to get started on their plans.

Sprigster, is a startup we actually heard about first back in April. Sprigster is a crowdfunding startup where several people can come together (as with any crowdfunding model) and support a franchise or business project for veterans.

CEO Mark Mohler likens crowdfunding to “Barn Raising”, back in the day towns would rally around their neighbors if one of their neighbors lost a building or had some other need. The townspeople would have a fundraiser in a barn to give money to the community member. With crowdfunding this is all done online and meant to help our military neighbors.

Ideally the platform is meant for former military who are now civilians who would like to hire themselves as the owner of a franchise business. Mohler explains why franchising is a better model for this platform than traditional startups in the interview below.

Startup Interview With Chicago Startup: The Plastic Bag Solution

The Plastic Bag Solution is a green startup located in Chicago IL where the issue of plastic bags is actually becoming a hot button topic among residents, environmentalists and government officials. In fact 1st Ward Alderman Proco Joe Moreno introduced a ban in 2011 of single use plastic bags. The legislation is still waiting to be heard in the Health and Environment Committee. If the legislation is passed Chicago will be the largest city in the country to enact such legislation.

Plastic bags clog sewers,drains,cause animals to suffocate, and take hundreds of years to decompose. The Plastic Bag Solution provides an alternative to the plastic bag that is 100% compostable and great for the environment.

The Plastic Bag solution provides their compostable bags at a fraction of the cost as traditional plastic bags and also educates consumers, business owners and government officials on the use and benefits of their solution to plastic bags.

We got a chance to talk with Coleman Franklin, Co-Founder and Vice President of The Plastic Bag Solution about what their startup is all about and what they’re doing in Chicago.

Check out the interview below:

Nashville Startup: InQuicker Gets You In The ER, Well Quicker, INTERVIEW

If it’s the weekend and you break your arm, or your toe, perhaps your nose or have some semi-emergency that requires you visit the ER but isn’t life threatening than I’m sure you’ve experienced the extremely long wait time that is the ER waiting room. Whatever the reason you’re in the ER, I’m sure you’re experiencing some kind of discomfort and ER waiting rooms are far from comfortable. What if you could use a web app to speed up the ER waiting process.

Well Nashville startup InQuicker is here to help. InQuicker is an online waiting room. In conjunction with their hospital partners someone who needs the emergency room services and is not in a life threatening emergency can sign in at the InQuicker online waiting room. InQuicker gives the patient a projected wait time. When the patient arrives at the hospital or clinic they are greeted by a healthcare provider.

InQuicker reports that eight out of ten patients that use InQuicker get seen within ten to fifteen minutes of the time they arrive. For just a rough idea on the value of InQuicker, they recently ran a study with their ER partners and found that patients can wait up to 208 minutes to get into the ER to see a doctor. That’s a lot of time you could be nursing your injury or ailment in the comfort of your own home.

InQuicker is very beneficial in the emergency room, but they also work with doctors offices as well.

We got a chance to interview InQuicker. Check out that interview below:

Interview With Austin Startup: NOOM, Next One’s On Me

Late last week we brought you the story about Baltimore startup BeerGivr which allows people to buy their friends beer using their mobile phone from a remote location, at participating beers. The concept is easy, if you can’t join your friends at the bar you can still pick up a round or buy the birthday girl/boy a shot or beer. You sign into the app, and let it know how many beers and voila its done. BeerGivr has partnered with bars in their hometown for testing. If you buy a friend a beer and they’re not at a participating bar or restaurant they can have that beer converted into Paypal dollars.

Well an Austin startup has taken a similar concept and expanded it to a wide variety of offerings primarily in the under $10 arena. With NOOM (Next One’s On Me), you can buy a gift for a friend using your mobile phone. Ideas include cupcakes,coffee, beers, lunch etc. You simply send your friend a virtual gift certificate through NOOM and they actually get the gift.

NOOM co-founder Sara Rodell gives us a great use case example in our interview below. Say you just met a great new friend or business colleague, it would be very awkward to shake hands and give them $5 or $10 and say “hey the next coffee is on me”, but with NOOM it’s a gesture appreciated, and used.

Right now NOOM is available in the Apple iTunes store and exclusively for Austin area merchants however they are expanding quickly and plan on bringing Houston on in the very near future. NOOM currently has 20 Austin area merchants participating including bakeries, ice cream shops, coffee shops, restaurants and bars.

Check out our interview with Rodell below

Interview With Pennsylvania Startup: Mountain Of Agents, A New Kind Of Real Estate Directory

There are several varieties of real estate agent directory web sites out there on the internet. Most of them are either from a realty association, a real estate company or the professional real estate agents themselves. Well a startup in Bucks County Pennsylvania has taken the real estate directory into their own hands by providing a real estate directory for consumers, by consumers. That directory is called Mountain of Agents.

Michael Becker the founder of Mountain of Agents explains that creating a real estate agent directory for consumers by consumers isn’t their only differentiator. Mountain of Agents has simplified the ratings system, which in turn makes it more transparent than other directories.

Mountain of Agents has a simple ratings system that’s done by tally instead of long drawn out text based reviews. Also, in order to rate the agent you must be logged into Facebook making it harder to manipulate the ratings system. The Facebook integration also allows the user/rater to share that rating and their agent on Facebook, which of course is the 2012 equivalent of word-of-mouth, which is the driving force behind good real estate agent relationships.

The main goal Becker is trying to achieve with Mountain of Agents, is the need for transparency. The startup was born out of a bad experience Becker had that ended up delaying his real estate search because they had to fire the agent. He talks more about that in the interview below.

Interview With Florida Startup: Yovia, A People Engine

Yovia is a new startup in Jacksonville Beach Florida. They call themselves a people engine that focuses on the people that make social media work.

Yovia takes brands, products, services and leverages them across a network of people who has signed up on Yovia. Yovia users can use their hard earned social capital for good. So how is this achieved?

Well after you sign up for Yovia’s platform you are presented with opportunities to spread the word about products, services and brands across your social graph and are rewarded. Your rewards can be in actual cash or free products or a combination of both. Exploring the Yovia site we found, and participated in several offers. The offers ranged from $6.00 for a 200 word blog entry to $.08 and $.15 for liking something or sharing something across social networks.

Yovia is a great way to drive brand engagement, and social engagement. There were news blogs that needed a like or share, and new services that needed signups. None of the offers seemed too outlandish and so far none have asked for my credit card information. It looks to be on the up and up.

Now eight cents and fifteen cents may not seem like a lot however if Yovia continues to grow quickly it will be easier to find higher paying offers and easier to complete more lower paying offers.

We got a chance to talk to Jalali Hartman, co-founder of Yovia in the interview below:

New York Startup: PubSlush Crowdfunding Book Publishing For Good

Writers and authors take heed we found an awesome startup in New York called Pubslush. Not only do they have an uber cool name but what they do is fantastic. We actually get amped up when we find a startup that has a unique idea that doesn’t fall under one of the normal categories like SoLoMo or discovery.

Pubslush is a publishing platform for authors to crowdsource the funds that they need to actually publish their works. Pubslush is building up a healthy following of people who love to read, write and check out new books from new authors. Sure there are authors out there crowdfunding their books on KickStarter and Indiegogo but with PubSlush there’s another great incentive.

With every book sold through Pubslush they donate a book to a child in need. This is perfect for the slacktivist set. You know the type, the people who buy Tom’s because they donate a pair of shoes to charity. Well PubSlush is even better. They’re putting more physical books in the world. Needy children are reading books and passing them along to the other children around them. Great idea right?

Pubslush has a trifecta of problem solving. New authors are getting their works read. Authors are also getting their works funded and books are going to people in need. Add in the fact that Pubslush is putting more books out there in the world at a time when print publishing is down thanks to the advent of e-readers, tablets, Amazon and iPads.

We got a chance to talk with Amanda Barbara the development director at Pubslush in the interview below:

Interview With San Diego Startup Recovery Brands, Disrupting The Addiction Treatment Space

The addiction treatment space is a $16 billion dollar industry. When you or a loved one needs an addiction treatment center, finding the right center can be an overwhelming experience, especially when coupled with helping the addict. Often times, it’s too late when you actually need the services of a treatment center, to do the mounds of research.

There are lots of factors that go into finding the right treatment center. Will my insurance cover it, how far is it from home, is it a lockdown program, can we visit, how much is it? Sure there are sites out there with directories of treatment centers and they are great. Many recommend getting treatment out of state.

Even with centers charging $25,000 to $50,000 per person per month, there are many treatment centers out there that aren’t reaching profitability. Some of the profitable centers aren’t reaching their desired goals for treatment. Through Rehab Brands services they hope to help treatment centers become more profitable, help rehabilitate more people who need it and educate addicts and their families in a better way. Some of the smaller centers are also being hurt by the fact that many recommend getting treatment out of state, and that is lost income as far as they are concerned.

This startup has a very interesting story and we were able to get more of it in the interview below.

Florida Startup: Vaultbox Is An Excellent Way To Manage Home Inventory INTERVIEW

How many of you have a comprehensive home inventory? Taking home inventory is a pain in the ass but it’s a necessary evil. You never want to get to the point where it’s too late, and you’ve been robbed, or had a natural disaster destroy your home, to start calculating what you’ve lost, especially when an insurance company is involved. So if you don’t have a home inventory yet than perhaps you should read this story and then get off the computer and take one.

Vaultbox is a new startup in Miami Florida that assists with your home inventory and then keeps it in the cloud where it’s actually safer. You actually might run into a problem if your house was robbed and your laptop was stolen with the home inventory on it. Or worse, if your home was destroyed by fire, tornado or other natural disaster. By keeping this data in the cloud, you can access it later, when you need it, from anywhere.

Vaultbox makes it simple to email your complete home inventory to your insurance agent, friends, family or law enforcement. It also makes it easy to add things, and subtract them, from your home inventory as you upgrade the things in your home, or clean out the clutter.

There are hundreds of reasons that a comprehensive home inventory is important for everyone. Whether you have home owners insurance, renter’s insurance or no insurance (which you should get) a home inventory is a life saver in certain circumstances.

We got a chance to talk with Jacob Israel from vaultbox. Check out the interview below: