New Mexico Joins Startup America Partnership With Startup New Mexico

New Mexico marks the latest state to join the Startup America Partnership with their region Startup New Mexico. Startup New Mexico launched on Wednesday evening at an event at the Embassy Suites Downtown Hotel in Albuquerque. New Mexico has a growing ecosystem of startups covering technology, web startups, mobile and tangible products. Now, those entrepreneurs and startups in New Mexico can take advantage of the over 90 member benefits Startup America offers to it’s 9500+ and growing membership. Joining Startup New Mexico and Startup America is free.

“Focusing on high-growth startups is a smart strategy for New Mexico to grow its economy,” said Scott Case, CEO of the Startup America Partnership. “Startup New Mexico provides a state-wide network to help the entrepreneurs building the next great success story to access the opportunities and resources unique to the state.”

There is a hotbed of startup activity in the southwest spanning from southern California including LA’s “Silicon Beach”, through New Mexico, Las Vegas and the southern parts of Texas.

“Given its unique business, research and cultural environment, New Mexico is poised to unleash its potential to become a national leader in startup creation, science & technology commercialization, economic growth, and job creation,” said John Mierzwa, Co-Chairman of the Startup New Mexico team.

Loraine Upham, Startup New Mexico Leadership Team member notes, “As host to the two largest National Laboratories continually generating innovative new technologies and solutions, and as owner of the second largest Sovereign Wealth Fund in the U.S., New Mexico is a cauldron of economic growth potential. Entrepreneurs are the catalysts that can leverage these terrific resources into jobs and value creation. Startup New Mexico can help bring it all together.”

Linkage:

Here’s Startup New Mexico on the web

Join the Startup America partnership here at S.co it’s free

If you’re a startup “everywhere else” you need to make sure to get here.

To Ship Or Not To Ship, That’s This Weeks Just Decide Startup Dilemma Of The Week

As you may already know nibletz.com the voice of startups “everywhere else” has partnered with New York startup JustDecide for the Startup Dilemma Of The Week. In this feature we use a dilemma that a startup from “everywhere else” has faced in the startup process. We then take that dilemma and crowdsource advice for the startup sing the JustDecide platform at JustDecide.com

This week’s Startup Dilemma Of The Week, is a dilemma that many startups face. It has to do with, when do you launch. It was brought to us by Columbus startup Resition which we featured earlier this week. Resition is a web based platform that helps displaced (laid off) workers transition to new positions.

As the startups co-founder, Mike Chapman, has explained; Resition was functionally ready to go. It is also a much needed platform. There is a direct problem, and a growing problem, that Resition handles for displaced workers. The platform runs smoothly but the design is a little rough around the edges and the feature set that Chapman hoped to roll out is still growing.

Startups across the country and around the world face this very problem every day; ” To Ship, or Not To Ship”. With statistics about startups working against all of us, the decision on when to ship your final, consumer facing product, can prove vital to a startups success. You don’t want to leave an “alpha” or a “beta” tag up too long or people grow doubtful that you will ever finish your product.

You also don’t want to pull the trigger to early. An incomplete design or a feature flaw can make a user go away and never come back.

Conversely, pitching your startup to people, crowds and investors can be exhilarating. When an entrepreneur comes up with an idea for a startup and then gets a team to buy into that idea, the internal clock starts ticking immediately. When can I get the product out.

Head on over to the Startup Dilemma Of The Week feature at justdecide.com here and help weigh in on the decision making process. Remember for the purpose of this great educational feature for startups, you need to go here to comment and weigh in. It only takes a minute and you may need the same community help one day and it’s free.

If you have a startup dilemma of the week send it to startups@nibletz.com and we’ll get in touch with you about featuring your dilemma.

JustDecide.com founder Jay Amato is working to perfect justdecide.com and they recently launched this survey, when you have a second weigh in on that as well.

Linkage:

Check out previous startup dilemmas of the week here

Check out the justdecide.com survey information here

Are you a startup “everywhere else” then you need to be here

DC Women Startup Founders Are Old Enough To Be Zuck’s Mom; See What They’re Doing

We’ve had a lot of fun getting to know 68 year old Susan Jones and 54 year old Elizabeth Van Sant. These two mothers, business women and now startup founders in Washington DC are old enough to be Mark Zuckerberg’s moms. Their startup, Quad 2 Quad, was actually created because Van Sant and Jones have become somewhat pro’s at getting their kids off to college. They know the ins, the outs and “the ropes”.

We’ve interviewed and profiled quite a few college bound startups lately. Earlier this week we interviewed Cleveland startup CollegeSkinny who’s platform helps high school students transition from high school to college. We featured CiteLighter which is a highlighting bookmarklet app that allows users to easily make citations in their research. Exceleratr, a New York startup, connects high school students to much needed extra-curricular activities outside of the high school campus. We also recently interviewed Swedish startup Studemia, which is a collaboration tool for students as well as CampusShift, a Youngstown startup looking to take a bite out of college debt.

Jones and Van Sant’s startup aims to help parents of perspective college students, simpli

fy the college visit planning process. Quad2Quad essentially becomes the college visitor’s personal assistant.

Between Van Sant and Jones they have six children, all of whom have either graduated from college or are enrolled in college now. Jones told us in an interview that between her and Liz they visited over 30 college campuses between 1997 and 2011. Things were quite different, even back in the late 90’s. In 1997 it was unheard of to have to go throw hoops and bounds to schedule a visit. Now you need to schedule a tour, but even that’s not the hard part.

Navigating through the college’s rules and even temporary hinderances like for instance an assembly on an off Saturday night may close the important sections of campus off to students. Or some colleges require special access to even eat lunch at the student union.

Quad2Quad consolidates information from hundreds of sources about colleges, when to visit, how to visit, what you can do on the visit and where to go and who to call during the visit.

pandodaily,techcrunch,Quad2Quad,women owned startup,startup,startups,Washington DC startup,startup interview

Quad2Quad provides important information like admission office hours, admission office closures, interview and reservation policies and much more. They currently have 74 of the most sought after colleges in the Quad2Quad system and plan to add 300 more shortly.

In the interview below Jones highlights the community nature of the Washington DC tech community. Both ladies were shocked at how receptive founders half their age were to the Quad2Quad idea and to helping “two geriatric ladies” with their startup.

The fact is Jones and Van Sant are far from geriatric. They’ve both had great careers and are doing something that a lot of people their age would never dream of. I’ve personally been an entrepreneur and startup founder since 2003 and my mother, who is 64 I think (sorry mom), to this day still asks when I’m going to get a job. Both women have found the age barrier to be virtually non-existant in Washington DC and have big plans for their startup. Check out our interview with the golden girls of Washington DC’s tech scene below:

Georgia Startup: FameTube Hopes To Help The Truly Talented With Video Platform

Imagine if YouTube was stripped of all the wannabe’s, all the crappy singers and all the kids who’s parents don’t have the heart to tell them their voices sound like nails on a chalkboard. Imagine if YouTube actually showed the videos from up and coming stars that were truly talented. Well that’s the mission for Georgia startup FameTube.

FameTube’s founders Bryan Cornelius and Brad Buttimer hail from Atlanta and Savannah Georgia respectively. Both entrepreneurs love music, people, and media and bring great experience to the table.

Their new startup actually vets videos from people who claim to be artists and musicians and sometimes they don’t make the cut. Only those people who get past the FameTube team actually get their videos posted. As Cornelius explains in the interview below, once a video makes it onto FameTube artists are encouraged to drive traffic to the site. The community, outside of the artist and their friends and family are more inclined to check out the other artists and interact.

Check out our interview with this exciting startup from “everywhere else” here:

New York Startup: JustDecide.com Needs Your Help Real Quick

Justdecide.com is a truly unique new startup born in Brooklyn New York. The startup headed by long time executive and change agent Jay Amato, is all about helping make decisions and crowd source answers. In fact we team up with JustDecide.com for a regular feature called the Startup Dilemma Of The Week.

Amato and the team at JustDecide are conducting an important, but quick survey, on internet users habits and the way they seek advice and make decisions about their career and their business.

Are your decisions influenced by friends, family members, social networks, colleagues? The series of easy to understand questions will help the JustDecide team to decide which of the many features for their platform they’re going to implement next.

Currently the justdecide.com platform has helped people with a variety of decisions, some easy, some not so much. In our feature, the Startup Dilemma Of The Week, we take a look at issues written in by various startups, that pertain to the way they are setting up their startup, or things that have happened along the way.

Justdecide.com can be about business, relationships, child raising, cooking, heck even one guy is asking advice on cable tv vs a set top box. Another dilemma this week deals with the dilemma on whether the user should pony up full price for the next iPhone or wait for an upgrade.

Any dilemma you’re facing with multiple, clearly defined possible answers will fit in the justdecide.com platform perfectly.

While JustDecide.com is great right now, Amato is looking to make it better and for that he’s turned to the startup community so please take a gander at this quick survey.

JustDecide Quick Survey

Linkage:

Check out justdecide.com here

Here are some of our Startup Dilemmas Of The Week

Are you going “everywhere else” click here

Startup Washington Launches To A Full House

In the past week we’ve seen two new state regions join the Startup America Partnership, a nationwide organization for entrepreneurs and founders of high growth potential startups. The organization provides over 90 member benefits to it’s almost 10,000 member base. Startup America was implemented last year under the Obama administration. AOL Founder and Revolution Founder serves as Chairman of the Startup America board. Scott Case (no relation), the founding CTO of Priceline.com serves as the organizations CEO and national spokersperson.

On September 6th a large and diverse group of Washington State entrepreneurs, innovators, founders and startups gathered at the Intiman Playhouse for the Next 50 Commerce & Innovation Economy Month event alongside the launch of Startup Washington. The event itself sold out in less than two weeks and had over 300 people in attendance. The launch event featured short remarks from Wash. Secretary of Commerce Rogers Weed, Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn, and Startup America national co-founder Pam Contag.

Seattle is a hotbed of innovative startup and entrepreneurial activity in present day and over the past 25 years. The Seattle region plays home to Microsoft, Amazon.com, T-Mobile USA, HTC USA and countless other companies that have driven innovation in mobile and internet over the last 20 years. Seattle also has an incredible local startup and tech website, geekwire.com. In the current wave of startups, StartupWeekend and Microsoft BizSpark are both driving forces behind national innovation and both are also headquartered in Washington state.

Rashmir Balasubramaniam, Founder of Nsansa and MC for the evening, connected and elevated attendees with a playful and engaging tone for the evening.

“Washington State is a melting pot of innovation, entrepreneurship and conscious leadership. Our unique set of industries, ideas, and intentions are coming together to ensure that our people and our environment thrive,” said Balasubramaniam.

“All of us on the Startup Washington team were thrilled to see such an incredible response to this event. We are more excited than ever about celebrating innovation and entrepreneurship in Washington State, and anticipate another 50 years of innovation and entrepreneurial success stories from our region,” noted Lindsay Andreotti, CEO, Brilliance Enterprises and Co-Chair of Startup Washington.

Linkage:

Check out StartupWashington.org here

Check out Startup America here at S.co

Startups “everyhwhere else” check out “everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference” here

Columbus Ohio Startup: Resition Easing The Layoff Process INTERVIEW

Do we even need to say something like “Getting laid off is one of the hardest things in the world”. Probably not. Getting laid off is a fact of life though, especially in these trying economic times. There’s no way to sugar coat the lay off process but what happens immediately afterwards is crucial to the laid off employee.

Historically, the longer a laid off employee waits to start the next job hunt, the harder it gets. As time goes on people who are laid off tend to get disengaged from the work life experience and also disheartened by their lack of leads. Often times this is because people who have been laid off don’t know exactly where to go.

This is where Columbus startup Resition comes in. Resition is a platform created by Mike Chapman (CEO), Chris Domino (CTO) and Walter Akana (COO), to help facilitate a transition to another job and ease the blow of getting laid off. Resition is actually paid for by the company that is doing the layoffs. Adding Resition at the time of separation allows the companies that are laying people off to give those people access to career coaches, mentoring, and a socially driven job search. The companies then get valuable analytic data back from Resition that can help them manage the morale at the company for the remaining employees.

While the job displacement space is definitely not a sexy one, Chapman and his team have left no stone unturned and have made sure that Resition does exactly what they’ve set out to do.

How is it done? We got a chance to interview Chapman. Check out the interview below:

Interview With NY Startup: Marqueed Online Collaborative Visual Platform

If you could have the ultimate interior design online platform you would probably want features like, the ability to pin interior design pictures from the web, adding plans to your interior design, drawing right on top of the plans and pictures, collaborating with designers, getting feedback on your plans online from friends and family, and add comments. The ultimate interior design platform would be Pinterest meets the furniture catalog, Asana, meets Google Wave meets Facebook. Well guess what? That platform is here.

New York startup Marqueed has all of those features in a smart, graphically rich UI that also keeps all of your visual projects together in one organized place. Marqueed can be applied to just about anything visual. You could use Marqueed for do it yourself projects, recipes, landscaping, home alterations, heck even automobile customization.

The core set of functionality behind is a communication and collaborative platform around images. In the interview below with co-founder Zerna Karian she’s quick to point out that Marqueed isn’t about project management, but if enough users like it for that they would integrate with Asana or Basecamp. Karian’s other co-founder is her husband John. Both of them are career long creatives and it shows in the crisp UI and easy to use functionality.

Check out our interview with Karian below:

Put Your Email On Steroids With London Startup: Tray INTERVIEW

London startup Tray is an email companion app that pumps up the productivity of your email. Imagine if when you checked in on FourSquare, your email automatically started delivering your out of office notification. Then, after you checked back into the office your email was restored to normal. That would be amazing wouldn’t it? Well that’s just one of many, many functions that London startup Tray adds to your email.

The functionality that Tray adds to your email is really pretty incredible. You can set rules for email that go well beyond your current email client. For example you can tell Tray, if “John” emails me after 8pm send it to my mobile. You can tell Tray, if Mary, Mike or Stacy emails me a link to read, add it to Pocket so I can read it later. Another example of a very useful Tray rule is, if my email inbox gets too full, send an auto responder saying that it may take a while to get back to people.

Tray began as an idea to make group emailing easier. After talking to email users, Dom Lewis, Rich Waldron, and Ali Russell, the founders of Tray, they decided to make email much more powerful.

We got a chance to interview Dom Lewis about Tray and building a startup in London. Check out the interview below:

Read More…

NY Brothers Create Startup: SwapCycles A Marketplace For Motorcycles

Whether you’re a weekend warrior on a beautiful Harley or you prefer the speed and precision of the latest Honda or BMW bike, you may have noticed one of the things that the interwebs has been lacking is a decent all in one destination designed to help riders buy and sell bikes, and of course show them off.

Brothers Daniel and Myer Amer are your run of the mill Rutgers students, passionate about business and motorcycles (which of course makes them less run of the mill). With the blessing and mentorship of their father. The elder Amer built his own contracting business from the ground up and his business principles, skills and good ole fashion elbow grease have helped the brothers launch their business.

SwapCycles online marketplace allows both power sports dealers and private individuals to list their motorcycles for sale. They’ve also created a show off feature and a social network community for motorcycle enthusiasts who can use the platform to talk shop,sports,sales, even find riding buddies across the country.

Typically when we think Silicon Alley we’re not thinking motorcycles but SwapCycles is right in the thick of it. We got a chance to talk with Daniel and Myer about SwapCycles and growing a startup, outside of the mainstream, in Silicon Alley. Check out the interview below:

St. Louis Startup Connection October 25th

St. Louis is preparing for the next Startup Connection event on October 25, 2012 at the St. Louis Science Center. Arch Grants, Executive Director, Sarah Spear reported in a guest post at the St. Louis Business Journal that the one day event continues to grow.

This year over 50 area entrepreneurs will show off their startups and compete for a variety of cash and prizes totaling more that $20,000.

The sponsor list, supporter list and prize list are like a who’s who of the thriving St. Louis startup ecosystem. It’s this synergy in the ecosystem that’s had Cultivation Capital’s Rick Holten all fires up for months.

The startups features at Startup Connection will be competing for the following prizes:
• People’s Choice Award — $2,500
• BioSTL Awards — $2,000 and $1,000
• Cultivation Capital Award — $2,000
• Mueller Prost PC Award — $1,500
• AEGIS Professional Services Award — $4,000 Legal Credit
• Hostirian — $4,000 Hosting Credit
• Systematic Revenue — $4,000 Subscription Credit

Startup Connection is held twice a year. This fall event will be at the St. Louis Science Center, October 25 from 4:30 to 8:30pm.

Linkage:

Here’s the web page for Startup Connection

Source: St. Louis Business Journal

Nibletz is the voice of startups “everywhere else” we cover St. Louis better than the home team, click here!

Seattle Startup: Zulily, Daily Deals For Kids INTERVIEW

(photo: Zulily/people.com)

So what do two men who have entrepreneurial and technology backgrounds do when they become dads? Create a startup of course. That’s what Darrell Cavens and Mark Vadon have done with Zulily. Zulily is an online marketplace that offers daily deals on stuff for kids.

Zulily offers a variety of products for any kid ages 0-8 and of course starts off with maternity needs for expectant mothers. With their daily deals, parents can save up to 90% on things that they really need for their kids.

A site like Zulily is a recipe for success. Just how successful? Zulily grew so fast last year that Cavens told Xconomy back in May that their backlog of orders was over 300,000 units deep “So we sat down in August of last year and said, `Oh shit—we’re in a world of hurt,’” Cavens told Xconomy. In June Zulily topped Seattle’s list of hottest startups, edging out StartupWeekend, Big Fish Games and even SEOmoz, which powers Zulily.

Zulily already has over 5 million email subscribers that get their deals everyday. They employ over 300 people and add 5,000 products to their private sale site daily. Zulily keeps stock of products in house, which is a definite change from the way that most daily deals sites work. Those sites, when dealing in hard goods, drop ship merchandise via the manufacturer or vendor.

This ride for Cavens and Vadon is so wild that it’s hard to believe we were able to get a chance to talk with a spokesperson from Zulily. Check out our interview below:

$3000 In Parking Tickets Leads To Award Winning Chicago Startup: SpotHero

It’s not often that parking tickets lead to a “good thing”, especially not $3,000 worth. That’s however, not the case for Chicago entrepreneur Jeremy Smith and his cohorts Mark Lawrence and Larry Kiss. Together the three of them have created Chicago startup SpotHero.

At first sight the startup seems very similar to Baltimore startup ParkingPanda, however SpotHero boasts 24 hour customer support and touts that they are superserving Chicago first and building a loyal customer base before eventually branching out. Chicago seems to love SpotHero as well. Since their launch in 2011 the company reports that more than 10,000 people have used their iPhone app and website platform to find parking spots.

SpotHero’s iPhone app allows drivers to reserve parking spots on the go, something that ParkingPanda is just now having developed through MindGrub. ParkingPanda is a web based platform that allows people to book parking spots from either individuals like driveways and curbside spaces, or public lots that have extra spots to rent. Both services allow the user to pick how long and when they want to start the parking spot rental.

SportHero was part of the most recent class at Excelerate Labs one of Chicago’s thriving startup accelerators. SpotHero just recently presented at Excelerate Labs’ August demo day.

The city of Chicago’s government loves SpotHero too. Despite the fact that SpotHero cuts into the Chicago’s own parking revenue from both meters and ticketing, SpotHero recently walked away with a $5,000 prize in the first round of Chicago’s Apps for Metro contest. The Apps for Metro contest was announced in June by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel. The contest is very similar to open data initiatives we’ve heard about in other municipalities, like Madison Wisconsin.

Winning that contest “gives us validation that this is a service that really would be important to the city of Chicago,” Smith told the Chicago Tribune, “There’s a problem with parking, and people want creative solutions. The time is (right) to support new programs.”

While Chicago residents may know the ins and outs of parking in the city, folks from the suburbs that frequent the city many not be as fortunate. Such was the case for Smith; “Growing up in the suburbs, one of the most frustrating parts of coming to the city was parking. For drivers in Chicago, it’s always a hassle finding a spot. SpotHero solves the problem by making parking easy and transparent,” said Smith, “With SpotHero, I don’t have to worry about where I’m going to park because they always have options ready.”

The SpotHero team plans to continue to use open data initiatives from the city of Chicago to continue adding features to the app. One of the features they plan to role out soon would take data from road closure and construction information and add a layer to SpotHero so travelers would know if spots aren’t open or that re-routing may be more trouble than it’s worth.

Smith has confirmed the company plans to roll out more cities in the future. ParkingPanda is available in Baltimore and Washington DC and hopes to add Philadelphia and San Francisco as soon as they’ve built enough relationships with those who hold the key to both apps success, people with parking spots that need to be filled.

Linkage:

For more on SpotHero check them out on the web here

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

Move Over Rosetta Stone, Prague Startup: SpaceTeacher Has A New Way To Teach Languages

When it comes to language learning Rosetta Stone has one of the best reputations and best success rates in town. Well in Prague, David Brhel, Milan Mahovsky and Kamil Mahovsky are three entrepreneurs who hope their startup SpaceTeacher becomes the easiest to use language learning platform in the world.

One of the easiest ways to describe SpaceTeacher is to say that they are crowdsourcing for language. They hope to become the ultimate platform for language learning by crowdsourcing both the content and the teachers.

Co-founder Brhel says that the company is still bootstrapping it but that angels in the area are starting to show interest. The startup is also growing at area accelerator StartupYard.

The core reason for developing SpaceTeacher is that in the CzechRepublic they offer a “one size fits all” type of learning. The shocking statistic is that 79% of the population is not fluent in a foreign language.

We got a chance to talk with Brhel in the interview below.