startup Archives - Page 43 of 87

Frequent Traveler Creates Siesta Pillow Startup In Los Angeles INTERVIEW

California based serial entrepreneur and frequent traveller Mark Hill is looking to re-invent the travel pillow. As we all know, most travel pillows are shaped like a U and designed to go around the neck. They are ugly, awkward and have no reasonable place to store them. When you travel with a travel pillow you’re locked into it’s clutches. For many it’s more discomforting that sleeping on a plane or train with no pillow at all, or worse, the “free pillow”.

So on a return flight from Hawaii one day Hill decided he was going to do something about it and did it. Hill knows his market is ripe with over 730 million passengers who boarded domestic flights.

Hill’s pillow is different. He’s found, and many agree, that the most comfortable position to sleep on in a plane is leaning forward. This also goes for buses and trains as well. You pretty much rest your head in your hands or on the seat in front of you. This process can get complicated and uncomfortable for many reasons.

First off the person in front of you controls where their seat is positioned. They could, in mid flight, train ride or bus ride, decide to recline the seat or put it back to it’s upright position, which would discomfort you a great deal. Next, on a plane and some trains there is a tray table in front of you which means your forehead or the top of your head is vibrating against a large plastic or metal object, again not worth the pain that’s going to come from riding that way.

Hill’s pillow is designed to make that position comfortable and insures great rest while traveling. Hill is a serial entrepreneur who’s tried his hand at technology startups and hard goods including water bottles with removable bottoms. This latest invention/startup, Hill is confident will be a big winner.

Check out our interview with Hill below:

Meeting Burner Partners With Startup America For New Member Benefits

The member benefits that Startup America members get when they sign up for Startup America are plentiful. There is a wide range of great businesses resources, tools, literature and more available to Startup America members at deeply discounted rates and sometimes free. Microsoft, Dell and American Airlines are just some of Startup America’s large corporate member partners that are hoping to spur innovation by providing their hardware, and services at discounted rates. (did we mention signing up for Startup America is free?)

The latest company to join the ranks of Startup America member benefits partners is MeetingBurner.

The Startup America partnership has been using MeetingBurner’s platforms to host their educational webinars with top startup ecosystem advocates across the country. Here’s a short list of just a handful of people featured in Starutp America webinars hosted on the MeetingBurner platform:

SEOmoz CEO Rand Fishkin
Rebecca Corliss (Head of Social Media at HubSpot)
Eric Jackson (CEO CapLinked/PayPal),
Jason Best & Sherwood Neiss (founders of Startup Exemption and two of the key guys who pushed the Crowdfunding bill through Congress)
Ingrid Vanderveldt (Entrepreneur and Dell’s first Entrepreneur in Residence)
Don Charlton (CEO The Resumator)
Tristan Walker (Andreesen Horrowitz/Former BD at Foursquare),
Tony Tjan (Founder CueBall VC firm/HBS Author)

Now, Startup America member companies can use the same webinar platform for their own webinars and web meetings. MeetingBurner is offering a 25% discount on MeetingBurner Pro or Premium for Startup America members.

To get started just sign up for Startup America at their website s.co and if you’re already a member look for it in your member dashboard alongside the numerous other great benefits.

Linkage:

Meetingburner is here

StartupAmerica is here

And we’re “everywhere else”

Uber Hits Mega Capacity In Charlotte At The DNC 2012 And Issues Uber Users Credits

As our long time readers know Uber is the only Valley based startup that we cover on nibletz.com we do this because they are building out their business across the country and around the world, and each new Uber city is treated as it’s own business. We’ve got great ties to Uber in Washington DC, and New York as well as in San Francisco.

So picture this, we were at the huge StartupRockon, Startup America party last night featuring The Roots and Uber started tweeting away from their special Uber DNC Twitter account. Uber isn’t officially in Tampa or Charlotte but they’ve put together “pop up” Uber shops for both the DNC and the RNC (last week in Tampa).

Anyway, back to the story. I was standing in line and I was actually next for a Taxi when low and behold a small group of people runs out in the street and jumps my cab. When I confront the gentleman in the group about taking my cab he politely tells me to use Uber and gives me one of their “black cards” that we’ve come to know and love here. Well, ok I’ll take that $20 Uber trip and use it in DC or New York. As for tonight though, I found it alarmingly odd that the Uber team was getting in a yellow taxi.

As I had found out earlier in the day Uber was extremely backed up. Around 2pm on Monday afternoon I was able to get an Uber ride with minimal effort and a mild 40 minute wait. Last night though at midnight we started getting messages that Uber was way over capacity and they were sorry.

An email from Max arrived in my box with an additional credit for trying to use Uber last night and failing miserably.

Of course the story here is the great job, no make that phenomenal job Uber has done looking after their customers (except for jacking my taxi last night). It’s that same die hard enthusiasm for their customer base that has them fighting cities around the country so that they can deliver an uber good Uber experience.

As for getting Uber at the convention, it may be tough, but this morning I waited two hours for a cab so do whatever you can and stay hydrated.

Linkage:

More DNC 2012 coverage from Nibletz here

Follow Uber’s pop up shop here @uber_dnc2012

Here’s Uber’s DNC 2012 page

Swedish Startup: Studemia Is A Collaboration Platform For Students INTERVIEW

We are finding more and more great educational, student facing startups, are coming from overseas. Take Prague startup MySchoolNotebook for instance. Their platform allows students to easily take notes, share notes, sync notes and reference notes on and offline, digitally, in a super easy to use platform and a graphically appealing UI.

Today, we’ve got an interview with Swedish Startup Studemia which allows students to collaborate in a Google Wave/Asana type fashion with the focus being on students in either college or high school.

Now you can collaborate with friends and schoolmates in the same class or across the ocean. As they explain in the interview below it’s a seamless sharing platform for students to share resources and keep projects organized.

Studemia allows students to organize projects by project or by course. Also, just about any kind of media can be uploaded to the platform.

They’ve built the platform for students by students. Studemia’s co-founders; Vilhelm Josander, Per Almhorn and Markus Sackemark are all students themselves and realized the need for a platform like this, specifically geared towards students, quickly and have been working on it ever since.

Check out our interview below:

Lithuanian Startup: Vidiget, Teach Or Learn Anything INTERVIEW

Lithuanian startup Vidiget is all about peer to peer learning. Whether you have a skill you want to learn or you have a skill you want to teach, Vidiget is the platform to help do that.

In this day and age it’s so hard for people to take courses after work. Now it’s easier to learn and teach things online where you can have 1:1 time with the teacher and at the same time you don’t have to leave the comfort o your own home. Whether you’re looking to learn how to crochet, make biodiesel fuel, the importance of Twitter, how to draw, how to play guitar or any other form of learning and teaching, Vidiget is the platform to do that.

In the U.S. we have California startup TeachMeo doing just about the same thing. It will be interesting, to say the least, to see what happens if Vidiget expands outside of Europe.

The idea for Vidiget came when Vidiget’s co-founder Vytis Duknauskas was teaching himself how to program. He wanted to teach himself all kinds of programming but found he could also benefit from legitimate courses. However, what he found was either too expensive or didn’t pass his litmus test for a course he could take and the learn something.

Check out our interview with Duknauskas below:

Find The Best CrowdFunding Site Using Columbus Startup: StandOffer

CrowdFunding is taking the world by storm. There are traditional crowdfunding, artist crowdfunding, project crowdfunding, tuition crowdfunding, civic crowdfunding, fundraising crowdfunding sites popping up everywhere. We’re expecting even more crowdfunding concepts to come out of the woodwork in the next two years. There are even crowdfunding sites to invest in startups, starting pop up now in anticipation of the JOBSAct regulations that should be released around the first part of the year.

A startup based in the “Cool Tech” city of Columbus Ohio, called StandOffer, is setting out to make the troves and troves of crwodfunding sites easier to navigate. Using their proprietary algorithmic system, dubbed “crowd control” StandOffer is going to connect users with the crowdfunding site that will work best for them and their needs. You may think your project is great for Kickstarter, but StandOffer may know there’s a different site out there for it. StandOffer would then show you what to do to move forward.

The founding team at StandOffer has been working closely with crowdfunding startups everywhere to insure that they offer the best, most up to date data, and an easy way for people to apply for crowdfunding across multiple sites that fit their goals.

StandOffer is like a hotels.com for crowdfunding sites and it could not have come at a better time.

We got a chance to talk with Mason Estep the founder of StandOffer in the interview below:

Swiss Startup: bguided Is Your Social City Guide INTERVIEW

Zurich startup bguided is a social city guide for urban dwellers and visitors. The young but healthy startup is a personalized recommendation engine which combines social graph data mining and machine learning. bguided helps people find, organize, and share the cool places they love all in one place. It’s part discovery, part recommendation and part social local mobile.

We got a chance to have a quick interview with bguided founder Andreas Lorenz, check out the interview below:

Interview With Chilean Startup: Imatag

If you own a blog or any other web-based business that produces content than you may want to pay attention to what Chilean startup Imatag is doing. Imatag is making it as simple as it is to tag photos on social networks like Facebook on your WordPress, blogger, or other blogging website,

You may want to tag people from your company, celebrities, dignitaries or others and now you can with the ease and simplicity of Imatag.

The second part of the Imatag platform is a robust analytics set that allows you to track tags and see directly how people are interacting with your web content. This startup based in Santiago Chile and was founded by Nicolas Valenzuela, and Magdalena Maino.

We got a chance to interview Valenzuela. Check out the interview below:
Read More…

Humanity.TV Named Finalist In Startup America Contest INTERVIEW

Startup America teamed up with American Airlines for a huge contest. The grand prize in Flights, Camera, Action is a prize package which includes 80 round trip flights. Of course for any startup or entrepreneur this would be a great prize. Most startups need flights to get to important conferences or investor meetings. Humanity.TV, a New York startup, has something else in mind.

Humanity.TV is a technology startup that’s using technology, specifically video, to travel around the country and around the world and show the human side of life in the 21st century. They take a brief look into the lives of fascinating people. Obviously that seems like a daunting task.

“Our messaging and overarching goal is authenticity. We try to find people that have intriguing lifestyles and live passionately, regardless of their popularity or fame. Ultimately, we want to inspire people to visit countries around the world and get off the beaten tourist path to encounter unique experiences with people that will have long-lasting impacts on them.” Humanity.tv co-founder Gaston Blanchet told nibletz.com in an interview.

Humanity.tv strives to capture the lives of fascinating people in obtrusive ways, for a more natural look at the world we live in today.

Of course with a startup like this the lack of capital to travel is definitely a hardship (we know about that first hand). They’re hoping that if they win the Startup America/American Airlines Flights, Camera, Action contest, they can use the flights to continue working on their story telling video platform.

The contest kicked off in July with a video from Startup America CEO Scott Case. The contesting period went through August 20th and the finalists were announced earlier this week.

We got a chance to interview Blanchet their startup as well as the contest and the Startup America partnership. Check out the interview below:

Interview With Youngstown Ohio Startup: CampusShift.com

There is over $1 trillion dollars of student loan debt these days and with the economy in the situation that it’s currently in, it’s getting harder and harder for students to manage and payback that debt.

A Youngstown Ohio startup called CampusShift doesn’t have a secret recipe to make that debt disappear, but rather offers a set of tools that will help college students attack the student loan problem from a variety of directions. Whether you’re looking to make college costs more manageable by saving money on textbooks and other supplies. Or if you’re looking to make more money in college by starting your own business (startup) CampusShift has tools to go either route.

CampusShift has four distinct areas. It starts with a place to save money and compare costs on textbooks. There’s a social networking element available to students, that’s free of course. Campus area businesses can offer daily deals, discounts and rewards to students. Finally, CampusShift offers resources to those students that want to try their luck at their own startup business and test it within the confines of the school with minimal risk.

We got a chance to talk with Chris Haynes, co-founder of CampusShift, who was consequently the first one since we started this interview series (with well over 500 startups interviewed) who followed our instructions completely. So it’s with great honor we give you our interview with Chris Haynes of CampusShift.

JustDecide Startup Dilemma Of The Week: Work Visas And Startups

A lot of my friends who are startup founders, developers or designers happen to be Asian, Indian, and even Russian. Many of them have either immigrated to the United States, work remotely and come here occasionally and a handful are actually working illegally. Now this isn’t the forum for an immigration debate but if a foreigner comes over to the US and wants to start a startup, more power to them it’s not like their startup is taking away jobs from Americans because their startup is their idea. Even better, when their startup gets bigger they’ll hire Americans.

So our Startup Dilemma Of The Week, this week, comes from a guy in Washington DC. He’s currently here on a work visa and working for a major corporation.

The dilemma comes in because he has a great idea for a startup, one that’s not really being done anywhere just yet. He wants to move to Silicon Valley but isn’t sure if he should move and work for a different startup or just venture out on his own.

This is obviously a dilemma with a bit of a legal issue in the background. Here’s the dilemma from justdecide.com

The Details:I am currently on my work visa with a corporate company working in the Washington D.C. area. I really want to move to Silicon Valley, but am unsure if I should try to find a job at a startup or start my own company. Because I am on my work visa establishing my own in the US isn’t that straight forward. But I know eventually that’s what I want to do. I am a web developer and you can find my portfolio at http://www.webileapps.com/ for which I am one of the Co-Founders and manage the App development, Customer Acquisition & Growth.

You can help him with this dilemma by submitting your answer here. There are four possible outcomes to choose from.

Linkage:

Weigh in on this weeks Startup Dilemma Of The Week, Here

See past dilemmas here

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

We Speak With Washington DC 500 Startups, Startup: Speek

While a lot of people are talking about TechCrunch Disrupt NY Battlefield winner UberConference when it comes to conference calling startups, another conference calling startup has been brewing in the Washington DC area. We first got to check out Speek back in May at the Capital Connection and TechBuzz conference in Washington DC. After carefully checking out both UberConference and Speek, Speek seems to be the simplest, most easy to understand conference calling solution out there.

It’s no wonder that Speek has everything together, it’s founded by John Bracken the founder of e-vite and Danny Boice who attended Harvard and is a former executive with The College Board.

More importantly though is how easy it is to setup Speek and get started with your own special url.

Speek is working out of AOL’s Fishbowl incubator in the Washington DC area, along another great DC startup CONT3NT. But Boice and Bracken were on the road to startup success even before that.

As Boice tells us in the interview below, Speek was created when two internet entrepreneurs attacked the group calling problem with startup vigor. Both Boice and Bracken had come from big corporate jobs and were always on conference calls. It was the clunkiness that is typical of big conference calls that drove these two to create Speek.

Check out our interview with Boice below:

West Virginia Startup: Reel Deal LLC Uniting College Students Through A Set Top Box

Interesting is the first word that comes to mind when checking out a new startup based in Wheeling West Virginia of all places. Reel Deal LLC was founded by Ramee Naja, Broderick Colaner and Phillip Mshelbawla, three students at Wheeling Jesuit University. These guys obviously aren’t afraid of a big idea. Rather than a straight up online social network, a new movie streaming site, they’re offering will come in the form of a set-top box for college students in the spring of 2013.

Reel Deal is combining a social network of college students, through their University while simultaneously offering over 1000 movies via the set-top box, that college students are known to love. The set-top box will offer ways for students to interact, important classroom and institution information and of course some entertainment content.

Reel Deal plans to offer their service in conjunction with the universities and colleges that sign up. After the partnership is formed the students enrolled at those colleges will be able to access the service through the set-top box that will be a one time $49.99 fee via their technology account.

“Our company is based off our own ideas of what we think would help improve higher education. We focus on giving kids an avenue in which they can receive all their academic and social information, while being rewarded for choosing Reel Deal,” Naja said in a statement.

Beyond the initial $49.99 (which barely covers the hardware) Reel Deal will make money through targeted advertising delivered directly to the set-top box.

We got a chance to talk with Naja about Reel Deal and what it’s like to launch a startup in Wheeling WV. While the Wheeling ecosystem is still in it’s infant stages, they are just 40 minutes away from Pittsburgh which is flourishing.

Check out the interview below:

Maryland Startup: Beagle Takes Zaarly, On Craigslist And TaskRabbit On Campus

Beagle, a startup born at the University of Maryland, is quietly taking on the likes of Zaarly, Craigslist and TaskRabbit on college campuses. By offering the Beagle service only to college students with .edu email addresses they harness the power of the highly coveted college consumer.

Traditionally college students are often early adopters, and when they like something they share it on social media networks faster than others. It’s also only natural that Julian Capps, Philippe Azimzadeh, Asif Jamil and Adeel Khan the co-founders of Beagle were college students when they launched the service. In addition to the University of Maryland, Beagle is also available on the campuses of MIT, Harvard and Boston University.

With Beagle, students can order up simple, easy to do favors and other students are the ones who perform the errands for a little extra cash. Delivering a Starbucks, lending class notes, hitching a ride to the airport or home, running to get printer ink and many more little tasks that college students need to get done can happen using Beagle.

Capps says that Beagle being only available to college students makes it a bit safer than other services. Knowing that both users in a transaction need to be actual students means at least they were vetted in the college application process. Beagle also protects both users and forces feedback by holding onto the funds until both users have left feedback, an indicator that the errand has been done. Users can use cash if they prefer.

Beagle says that ease of use is what sets Beagle apart from the likes of other similar services. “There’s a quick, easy feel of the process,” Capps told our friends at Bostinnodescribing what sets Beagle apart from other companies like TaskRabbit, Zaarly, Peddl or Craigslist. “Quick and easy tasks is what it’s optimized for.”

Linkage:

Check out Beagle here

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