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St. Louis Startup LockerDome Announces First Game Built On LockerDome Platform

We’ve been continually covering St. Louis startup LockerDome since April of this year. LockerDome is a venture backed sports social network that allows players of any age and any level to engage throughout their entire career. LockerDome was founded by Gabe Lozano who’s the son of online payment software pioneer Bob Lozano. The elder Lozano helped launch cloud solutions and development firm Appistry as well as PayLinx.

LockerDome is backed by Cultivation Capital as well as Square co-founder and local St.Louis entrepreneur Jim McKelvey.

We’ve had the privilege of talking with Lozano quite a bit over the last six months. In fact he served as an impromptu, remote mentor for one of the teams that participated in Memphis’ Startup Weekend over the summer.

On our last trip to St. Louis Lozano was very excited when he was telling us that they had started to open up the LockerDome platform to developers and some of the ideas that may come out of that. Today they’re announcing the first game/app that has been built on top of the LockerDome platform, “Basketball Memory App by Dime Magazine”.

Dime Magazine is the the basketball lifestyle magazine that’s been around since 2001. The Memory App by Dime Magazine will live on the Dime Magazine Network on LockerDome and leverage LockerDome’s over 2.5 million monthly unique visitors. Users will match the popular basketball lifestyle magazine’s covers featuring the biggest names in basketball as quickly as possible and win cool basketball related prizes. The first of these prizes is a pair of the recently launched “Polarizing Pink” Nike Air Foamposite One shoes provided by Foot Locker.

“We are pleased to be partnering with Dime Magazine and IDC Projects to deliver the first game to LockerDome’s rapidly growing and highly engaged sports audience,” said Gabe Lozano, co-founder and CEO of LockerDome. “This exciting new game featuring the stunning artwork from previous Dime covers and the wonderfully addictive Memory Matches technology represents the next step in the evolution of LockerDome as a sports media platform.”

“We’re excited to use our expertise in mobile games to be part of this synergistic approach to encourage interaction between basketball fans and brands.” said Michael Orlando, CEO of IDC Projects.

“Over the past decade, Dime Magazine’s covers have featured the best basketball players in the word. We’re excited to bring Dime to a robust mobile platform like LockerDome, and to give our fans a fun, new experience through this innovative and wonderfully addictive new game,” Dime Magazine’s CEO and co-founder Josh Gotthelf said in a statement.

Since re-launching in January, LockerDome has been one of the fastest growing sports-specific websites in the world. Many top sports agencies are leveraging LockerDome as a means to maximize their client’s social media efforts on Facebook and Twitter and to better engage their fanbases. The official brands and networks the St. Louis-based company represents includes NBA superstars Blake Griffin, Rudy Gay, David Lee and Stephen Curry, NFL superstars Troy Polamalu, Larry Fitzgerald, Maurice Jones-Drew and Marshawn Lynch, and MLB Legends Pete Rose and Wade Boggs, among others.

Linkage:

Download the game for your iOS device today, here

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17 Year Old Russian Entrepreneur Launches Startup: Hippflow

When you think of people to give you startup advice or to model your startup after you typically think of either high profile VCs or people who’ve had eight to nine figure exits. They must know what’s good for you because they’ve either invested in big deals or had a big deal themselves. That makes perfect sense.

Well a 17 year old entrepreneur by the name of Kirill Chekanov from Moscow has developed a startup called Hippflow which will hopefully help other startups.

How?

Chekanov tells us in the interview below that Hippflow will help entrepreneurs input and track resources, plan work, measure progress and celebrate milestone achievements.

Chekanov knew that for something like this to work he needed to go global from the beginning. He’s already inked partnerships in the US, England, Singapore and China. His latest partnership, is with Chinaaccelerator one of the largest startup accelerators in China.

Internally, his organizational startup has kept him focused and hitting his milestone goals while simultaneously finishing his last year in the Russian equivalent of high school.

Check out the rest of the interview with Chekanov below.

Dallas Startup: VIPOrbit Named Number 1 By i.Business Magazine, To Be Featured At CES

We first reported on Dallas startup VIPorbit back in June as part of our Chicago Tech Week coverage. VIPorbit is a robust relationship management system for iOS devices founded by ACT co-founder Mike Muhney. ACT is the original Customer Relationship Management software, that paved the way for companies like SalesForce.

VIPorbit users organize their entire contact list into orbits, and can add as much or as little relationship management information to each contacts record. Track every conversation, email, activity and more across contacts and orbits. VIPorbit is by far the best mobile CRM solution we’ve tested and we’ve used it consistently since June.

The folks at i.Business magazine must agree as VIPorbit has beat out such widely known enterprise mobile apps as FileMaker Go, Quick Office Pro, DropBox and Evernote to claim the number one spot in the magazine’s “Top 50 Business Apps”. The online version of the latest issue has already hit digital news stands and the hard copy version will come out shortly and be given away free to the hundreds of thousands of attendees of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas in January.

“We are dedicated to providing the most robust relationship management experience available on the iPhone and iPad—not just another useful app but full-featured relationship management software that empowers users to build relationships and grow their businesses,” said Mike Muhney, VIPorbit CEO and co-founder. “VIPorbit gives users instant recall of all past, present, and future activities with those in their network, setting them apart from their competition.”

“We are excited to announce the Top 50 Business Apps Edition of i.Business Magazine, and to name VIPorbit as the number one app on the list. It gives professionals everything they need to stay on top business relationships, a mission-critical business activity. It manages contacts, schedules, tasks, Email, social feeds, and more—all in one easy-to-use app, available for both iPhone and iPad—two platforms widely used by businesspeople,” said Carmine De Santo, founder and publisher of i.Business Magazine

Muhney is a serious influencer in the CRM and mobile CRM business. He also penned this guest post for us here at nibletz.com.

Linkage:

Check out VIPorbit here

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Animate Your Ideas With London Startup Powtoon

There’s another new presentation tool in town. This time it comes to us from across the pond in the UK. The new animated presntation platform is a London startup called Powtoon.

This startup with a silly name, promises to “supercharge your presentations and videos” according to Powtoon co-founder and CEO Ilya Spitalnik. Spitalnik tells sproutsocial.com that the Powtoon team focuses on “less is more” and that their startup has been designed by designers for non-designers.

Many people looking to create presentations either only know the basics for Power Point and Keynote or get overcome with frustration trying to use features to make their run of the mill presentations less run of the mill. Powtoon offers a whole suite of tools that are easy to use and basically “drag and drop”.

While there are alternatives out there to the current presentation programs Spitalnik says they only add a limited amount of features or their non-intuitive and “far too complex”

Powtoon offers users three ways to use the service. You can start with a 14 day free trial, opt for monthly billing or a per use version.

Their monthly plans start at just $9 a month for “fans” without the ability to download, and fully co-branded with Powtoon. An agency can go monthly at a rate of $247 per month.

While no one building a startup wants to pay anything for services, the costs associated with Powtoon are much better than outsourcing a presentation which can run between $5,000 and $20,000 per presentation. The Powtoon website also boasts an educational program and the ability to make some extra scratch by reselling Powtoon’s services.

Powtoon offers even the most non artistic types the ability to create eye popping presentations. When considering the cost of a presentation, also take into consideration the goal of the presentation. Paying under $50 to create a presentation that could yield you an investment of millions of dollars is a no-brainer.

Linkage:

check out Powtoon here

Source: Sproutsocial

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Toronto Startup CountMeIn Is The Next Generation Of Wish Lists & Gift Registries

While it’s not as explosive as the reward and loyalty space, we’ve profiled a handful of gift registry and group gifting startups here at nibletz.com, the voice of startups everywhere else. Monday we brought you the story of a new feature from our friends at Buyvite that allows people to pay back someone on a group gift purchase, socially. This Toronto startup called CountMeIn merges all of that together.

Toronto startup CountMeIn is the next generation of wish lists and gift registries. CountMeIn’s co-founder Israel Schachter, who goes by Yummy (don’t ask), tells us that he came up with the idea for CountMeIn after getting a friend and business associate a $1500 gas grill at Home Depot as a housewarming gift.

Schachter had no plan of action, except getting a commitment from 14 of his closest friends for $100 a piece for the gift. Once he arrived at Home Depot he found the grill and decided that was the gift. Then, he needed to figure out how to get the grill to his buddy’s house in his sedan. Needless to say it was a huge headache, and two years later he’s still collecting money. He thought there had to be an easier way.

While he calls coming up with a startup to solve your own problem “selfish” most of us call it innovative.

Rather than tackling the problem of group collaboration on a gift, executing the gift and collecting on payments separately, he and his team went all out and tackled all three problems in one.

Check out our interview with Schachter below.

Launch Memphis Launches UpStart Women’s Startup Initiative And 48 Hour Launch Dec 7-9

Launch Memphis, one of the key ecosystem drivers for startups in Tennessee, has launched a new initiative aimed at women entrepreneurs and startups. Getting more women engaged in startup communities is a goal that most cities are working on. Driving entrepreneurial growth among women is also a key factor in the overall health and success of an entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Launch Your City and their Memphis arm, Launch Memphis, are no strangers to the startup ecosystem. They’ve been the driving force behind Memphis’ startup and entrepreneurial growth since 2006. Launch Memphis runs a free coworking space; The LaunchPad, curriculum based initiatives through Launch Memphis and a startup accelerator in it’s third year, Seed Hatchery.

With the success of their most recent endeavors, including playing host to over a dozen Global Entrepreneurship Week events, now is the perfect time to announce a women’s initiative.

The kick off event for the women’s initiative, dubbed “UpStart” is a 48 Hour Launch event being held December 7-9th at Emerge Memphis. The three day hackathon style, startup launching vehicle has been so successful in Memphis, the folks in Nashville recently replicated the event for their startup community.

The UpStart 48 Hour Launch is open to both women and men to participate however the ideas pitched will be from women. These women entrepreneurs will drive their teams through 48 hours of hacking, collaborating and building a viable product.

Unlike many of the “official” Startup Weekend events, 48 Hour Launch is coupled with the existing resources of Launch Memphis and Emerge Memphis which serves as the epicenter for startup and entrepreneurial activity in the mid south.

“We recognize that the disparity between men’s and women’s high growth potential startup companies is not unique to Memphis; however, Memphis can be unique in our deliberate approach to close this gap and fuel women’s innovation and entrepreneurship”. Elizabeth Lemmonds, Chief Brand Officer at LaunchYourCity told nibletz.com

Danielle Inez, a successful PR, marketing and event planning consultant in Memphis is anxious to pitch her newest idea at the UpStart 48 Hour Launch in December. Inez was among hundreds who participated in Launch Memphis’ Risk City Field Day event last Friday as part of Global Entrepreneurship Week.

Inez took to Twitter on Tuesday to express her enthusiasm for both events.

Eric Mathews, Co-President and CEO of LaunchYourCity said: “We are making a commitment to cultivate and fund a woman led and majority woman owned startup by the end of the first quarter of next year. We encourage women to reach out and get involved in all levels of our platform as mentors, investors, and of course as potential founders.”

UpStart programming also includes a women’s meetup and plans on being a permanent fixture in the LaunchMemphis programming.

Linkage:

Upstart Memphis is here

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Iowa City Startup: Ready To Go In America Wins Dream Big Contest

A startup that provides a pocket guide and mobile app for international students visiting the United States has won the Iowa “Creative Corridor’s Dream Big Contest”.

Ready to Go In America came away with the $5,000 prize in the contest last Thursday after pitching to a panel of judges. This moved the startup into the next round where they will be competing against other Iowa startups for $10,000 this time around.

The startup was founded by Jeff Owens, Mekinda Mekinda and Bobby Schlichting. Mekinda is an international student currently enrolled in a program at Kirkwood Community College. Owens is a senior informatics and art major at the University of Iowa and Schlicting is a farmer and entrepreneur from Vinton Iowa.

“It’s unreal,” Owens said to Iowa City Area Development. “There was so much competition. I was surprised to win, and having so many people supporting our idea makes me even more excited about it.”

“This is a dream coming true,” said Mekinda, who is orignially from Cameroon. “I’ve always heard the USA is a country of dreams. Now I know it is truly a reality.“

Ready To Go In America beat out 32 other entrepreneurs who competed in the contest that garnered over 10,000 votes. The top five startups in the voting competition squared off in front of the judges and an audience of nearly 100.

While Ready To Go In America was the official winner the judges also liked the pitch and presentation from high school student Eli Shepherd. Shepherd has found an environmentally friendly way to produce skateboards and apparel. He told the judges during his pitch that he needed $300 to fund the buying of equipment to produce his skateboard decks. The judges put the $300 together on their own to help Shepherd get his startup off the ground.

“Seeing so many people and organizations come together to support our region’s entrepreneurs has made the Creative Corridor Dream Big contest an inspiring project to be part of,” said Amanda Styron of Seed Here Studio, the group coordinating the contest and event. “We had a great night at the Live Pitch + Tech Brew! It was the perfect way to wrap-up the contest. I’m totally inspired by our growing community. It was a great night to get inspired, connect with the community and celebrate going big.”

The lead sponsor for the statewide contest is the Iowa Banker’s Association. Iowa is a hub of startup excitement. There are a lot of great startups including Ashton Kutcher backed Dwolla, in the state of Iowa.

Linkage:

Source: Iowa City Area Development

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New Coding School Startup In Colorado Offers Money Back Guarantee

Galvanize, the Denver Colorado startup and coworking space in Denver’s Golden Triangle Neighborhood has a new tenant called gSchool. gSchool joins the onslaught of new coding schools that were brought on by institutions like Code Academy. Coding schools typically teach one thing, coding.

While IT schools are nothing new, in coding schools you’ll find the next generation of technical founders, hipster geeks and hoodie wearing future nerds. They’re a far cry from the pocket protector, briefcase students that roam the halls of ECPI.

gSchool is confident though. They plan on putting their students through a rigorous, fast paced program teaching skills like Ruby on Rails, for around $20,000 a clip. You may have just had a little accident when you read that but here’s the rub. gSchool has a money back guarantee. A good one.

After students complete the gSchool program they guarantee that you’ll get a job earning $60,000 or better or they will refund your $20,000 tuition. Think about that for a second. You’re spending $20,000 to make a guaranteed 300% return, much better odds than those betting on startups in the valley.

Galvanize is home to 27 startup businesses and now the gSchool. Jim Deters a tech entrepreneur and co-founder of Galvanize recruited Jump Start Labs and coding instructor Jim Casimir to teach at gSchool.

gSchool’s intense six month program is designed to graduate high caliber performers, not high caliber beginners, according to Deters.

“They want people who get the ethos and are imbued with the work ethic in startups today,” Deters said to the Denver Business Journal. “It’s fast-paced, and it’s creative.”

Galvanize is about growing talented startups and for that to succeed they need to increase the talent pool available in Denver. That’s the real goal behind gSchool. Growing top tier programmers right in the building will give other building tenants access to the talent they need to succeed.

Deters is working on the second Galvanize a few miles north of the original location. It too will house startups, co-working space, gSchool classrooms and an eatery based on Deter’s first startup the ChoLon Bistro.

Linkage:

Galvanize is here

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Source: Denver Business Journal

Ottawa Startup Suprpod Is An Online Collaborative Space For Marketers

I’ll bet if you were to do the research you would probably find thousands and thousands of conferences and conventions for marketing folks. I seem to get invited to a new marketing conference every other day. But can you believe there’s no social network, community or collaborative space online just for marketers? That was until Ottawa startup Suprpod came along.

The online portfolio and collaboration site exclusively for marketers takes it’s name Suprpod from Dolphins. In an interview with nibletz.com co-founder Jennifer Butson says:

“Superpod is the term given to large groups of dolphins who travel together. Because dolphins are brilliant communicators in the animal kingdom, the term lends well to the group of expert communicators in the human world!”

Which is why their logo is also a dolphin. You should see the tricks their team can do with rubber balls on their noses.

All kidding aside though, collaboration between left brained marketers can be healthy, creative and produce some amazing results. That’s why it’s hard to believe no one had thought of this before.

The site has three basic function areas, browse, share and create.

The browse section is home to curated portfolios from some of the industry’s hottest minds. It’s ripe for the taking right their at Suprpod. PR, and marketing people can check out Suprpod for some of the best marketing ideas out there.

Share is where questions are asked and answered about anything related to PR, marketing and social media.

Create, will allow users to display their work like they’ve never seen before.

Butson has a lot of experience in both marketing and startups. It was working on a different startup that helped he find, hone and craft the idea for Suprpod. We got a chance to talk with Butson, read the rest of the interview below.

Minnesota Startup Jingit Raises $7 Million, Pays Consumers To Watch Ads

Jingit, a startup based in Edina Minnesota, has raised $7 million dollars in investment capital according to a regulatory filing. The startup was founded last year by Joe Rogness, the former CEO of tech consultancy Two Fish and Todd Rooke a former executive with Hewlitt Packard.

Jingit allows ordinary consumers to earn up to $15 per week for watching ads and giving feedback on them. Household brands like Walmart, Hershey and Kraft are in Jingit’s stable of clients.

The company partnered with US Bank last year which issues a debit card on their behalf. Jingit customers’ earnings from ad watching is directly deposited onto the debit cards. Each ad yields the user between $.05 and $.50 cents. Payments vary based on advertiser, market study, and demographics. For instance advertisers may pay more to have an 18 year old watch an advertisement for a video game rather than someone older. Kraft may pay more for people in an older demographic to watch their ad.

Jingit has fail safes in place to make sure that their users are actually watching ads. The ad will stop if another browser window or tab is opened while the ad is playing.

The startup gives advertisers unparalleled ability to drill down to their ideal customer. They’ve found that advertisers are willing to pay more money for this kind of targeted feedback.

Prior to this $7 million dollar round, Jingit had raised $3.5 million dollars.

Linkage

Source: Minneapolis, St. Paul, Business Journal

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Complete Your Lifelong Goals With Help From Bangkok Startup Bucketlistly

It all started when Pete, the founder of Bucketlistly went to Beijing for a Mobile Monday event. While at the event he was intrigued by everything going on around him. He was speaking at the event and wanted to figure out a way to share his own achievements and help others share their achievements as well.

Of course with that and seeing the movie starring Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson, Pete had an idea.

He calls Bucketlistly a social bucket list. The platform allows users to list all the things they want to do in their lives, crowd source ideas on how to achieve those goals, do the impossible and share all of that.

When it’s time to conquer those life long goals users can write stories about them and even include pictures. The website than chronicles the achievements and archives them so the user can reference them later and inspire others.

We got the entire skinny from Pete, check out the interview below.

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.

Ohio Startup: Buyvite Adds “Pay Me Back” Social Payment Product

We’ve been following Brandy Alexander-Wimberly and her Toledo Ohio startup, Buyvite, since last May. Buyvite is a payment tool that makes group buying easy. For example, say you’re having a high school reunion and as a side activity you decide to catch a football game or a few rounds of golf as a group. Buyvite allows all of the group to pay for the excursion without having one person delegated in charge of the money, and risking one, or two people not paying.

Buyvite announced a new product on Monday called “Pay Me Back”. This product works after the transaction is made and is just in time for the holiday gift giving season.

With “Pay Me Back” say you and your family members decided to buy one of your other family members an expensive gift, like an iPad. Once one person makes the initial purchase, Pay Me back can divide the price paid among the others in your family and act as the conduit for the person who “fronted” the money to get paid back easily.

“Pay Me Back” has a variety of great uses. Alexander-Wimberly explains:

“This product was developed to give our partners an easy way to leverage the power of social commerce. Our social payment badges are designed to embed on product pages to promote the application. After the customer makes their purchase, they now have a seamless and social way of showing their friends what they bought, telling them how much they owe and an easy way to get paid back. It’s a perfect fit for any company focused on selling gifts, vacation rentals, event tickets and even works well for fantasy sports leagues and donations.”

Early adopters of “Pay Me Back” include Tiesta Tea, Pledge Music, Tony Packo’s, Swank Martini and payment processing provider E2E Payments of Lombard, IL. E2E President Brad Bialas explains the advantage of offering “Pay Me Back” to his customer base. “Our ecommerce clients are looking for new ways to reach their social audience. Consumers are already locked in to the concept of group purchases and peer-to-peer payments. Buyvite’s “Pay Me Back” product gives our clients a fresh and social way to promote a “crowd funding” model via their websites and ecommerce carts and it’s a proven way to help elevate traditionally group focused purchases like gifts, team costs or event tickets.”

Linkage:

Check out Buyvite here

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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.