There are a ton of startups these days entering the hiring and recruitment space. Most of them have to do with the actual hiring and recruitment process. There are startups like Houston Texas’s Job Plotter which helps applicants plot jobs on a map to know if they are close enough to their homes to apply. Another great startup in the job’s space is PitchPick an Austin based company that helps the pre-screening process with a video platform.
Pleekant is equally as useful to HR folks and recruiters. The London based startup provides a platform to better track job applicants. If you are running a good sized HR department you may have 20 positions open and hundreds of applicants to track. That’s where Pleekant comes in.
With Pleekant, companies can keep tabs on applicants,resumes, applications, notes and what position the applicant is applying for. Pleekant also makes it easier for recruiters within an organization to collaborate with each other. If your company has a multi interview process Pleekant makes it easy for each interviewer to keep their notes and records from the interview in one easy to find record, accessible to everyone in the hiring chain.
Pleekant’s founder Ramario Depass describes his startup as “A content management system for hiring employees, making life easier for recruiters. He’s identified Resumator as one of his key competitors but feels that Resumator is clunky, and has an early 2000s feel to it.
Depass’ description of Pleekant is rather fitting. It feels like a content management system where the assets are the job applicants.
We got a chance to interview Pleekant. Check out the interview below:
Startup Weekend Cincinnati came to a close on Sunday evening with 9 great pitches in front of the judged who were: Dave Knox, CMO at RockFish and Co-Founder at The Brandery (we love the Brandery); Tarek Kamil, Executive Director at InfoMotion Sports Technologies; Dov Rosenberg, Director at Allos Ventures; Rahul Bawa, Director of Digital and Software at CincyTech; and Jeff Weedman CEO at Centrifuse and VP of Global Business Development at this little company called Proctor & Gamble. In addition Kamil’s daughter helped judge as did Dave Knox’s dog.
The nine teams that were selected:
SportsGamr- an online platform for virtual sports betting which provides a venue for sports fans to bet on their favorite sports and a venue for advertisers to clear premium content ads.
ProBakery- Is a startup similar to pro-flowers or ftd.com that provides an online portal to traditional bakeries that may or may not have access to e-commerce and also provides a conduit for taking delivery orders for premium baked goods.
Homework Hustlers- is an online platform for college students to outsource their homework. During their pitch they said that 61% of college students admit to cheating and that 80% of the people they surveyed when doing customer validation, revealed that they would most likely share the idea with a friend, whether they used it or not.
3DLT is a template market place for 3D printer templates. Their revenue model was solid, they said they could take between 30 and 60% commission off each template.
Revolent is a new idea to provide better reviews of products by matching product reviews up to the reader. They called it the match.com for reviews.
Email Diet was probably the idea I liked the least. It’s an email analytics startup that will provide information to employers on how much wasteful email there actually is. I didn’t like it because truth be told email is an integral part of my work day. While the founder was pitching how wasteful email is, I still believe phone calls can lead to a much more wasteful use of time.
ArtsSeen was an arts event aggregator that provided the end user with information about the arts scene in Cincinnati right now along with reviews, recommendations and a social aspect that allow users to connect over these kinds of events. In essence it was Impulcity for the arts.
BringSomeFood: I really liked this one even though it wasn’t picked as a winner. The idea is great its like a potluck party event organization app. The judges had asked them if it could be incorporated into an e-vite or eventbrite and the answer was no. This particular platform allows you to pick your party theme, suggests a menu, lets you invite attendees, organize attendees and assign food items for the attendees to bring. I’m hoping they continue this project.
The overall winner was Project Blue Collar
This startup is a for profit that is looking to spread the word about dogs coming from rescues and shelters. Their motto “support the underdog”.
the idea is great and there may be a profit mechanism built in somewhere. One things for sure and that’s that dog owners and animal lovers will love the mission behind the idea.
Project Blue Collar is about raising awareness for dogs and animals that are adopted out of shelters to make sure resources are provided for those dog owners and to let potential animal owners know that shelters are a great way to get a new family companion for life. It all focuses on the blue collar which is similar to the yellow “live strong” bracelets. Dog owners with rescue dogs will buy the collars to promote that their dog is a rescue. Blue Collar Project is also considering a companion bracelet in the same blue to show that the wearer is a proud owner of a rescue dog.
Here’s our interview with the founder of the winning team Project Blue Collar.
Comments Off on The Brandery’s Rob McDonald & Mike Bott Explain Why Their Program Works VIDEO0LikeLike 3,627
The Brandery, an incubator founded in 2010 in Cincinnati is uniquely different from most of the incubator’s across the country. A blanket description of what an incubator does for startups wouldn’t justify what co-founder; Rob McDonald, Dave Knox and JB Kropp have put together at 1411 Vine Street in Cincinnati’s Over-The-Rhine neighborhood (Voted Cincinnati’s best neighborhood in 2011 and 2012)
First off The Brandery is in what appears to be a traditional older storefront in a building dating back to the 1860’s. The building the Brandery is in as well as the surrounding buildings typically housed a storefront on the bottom floor and then residential units above. In the case of the Brandery, the first floor has been converted to bull pen style desk space where each of the 11 startups in this session can collaborate, bounce ideas off of each other and inspire each other through competition.
The second floor houses a group classroom like area and the third floor is what Brandery GM Mike Bott says they’re informally calling the “alumni penthouse”.
We got the chance to have an in-depth interview with Bott and McDonald who are very proud of what they’ve built so far. While the Brandery runs a familiar model, which most of the Global Accelerator Network accelerators utilize, there are things about the Brandery which are inherently different, that make it a special place to grow a business.
First off the Brandery is a non-profit organization. Yes the companies selected for the program give up six percent equity for a $20,000 seed investment. However, that investment is coming from the Brandery, and not the founders, or investors. In other words, as Bott confirmed, when Brandery alumni start to make big exits, the money goes back to the Brandery directly to run the program and invest in more worthwile startups.
Next, the Brandery keeps the class size small. This year there are only 11 companies. Companies move in at the start of the session. They have three months of vigorous boot camp style work, training, seminars and business education, but after Demo Day they don’t move out, in fact they are encouraged to stay around where they still get the benefits of the mentors who show up to the Brandery for basketball, beer pong and the latest new and interesting lecture.
Even after the first year, alumni companies can pay very minimal rent and move up to the alumni penthouse.
The Brandery companies are also encouraged to play a big role in the Cincinnati entrepreneur and startup community. For instance, just after arriving in Cincinnati this year, all of the Brandery companies participated in the BunBerry TechBurry Pitch Wars, which 2012 Brandery company Crowd Hall actually won. But what’s great about that event was that all three Brandery classes were represented there.
Also at Startup Weekend Cincinnati all of the Brandery companies have been given a free pass to help Startup Weekend teams, and were even encouraged to pitch. In fact, CrowdHall’s Austin Hackett pitched one of the ideas that’s being built this weekend. While there was a lot of banter on Impulcity about Hackett and his Startup Weekend venture, he assured us that his team is 100% committed to Crowd Hall and we’re working on that all weekend too. Even Brandery co-founder Rob McDonald was an official mentor for Startup Weekend as well.
The involvement with the community works both ways though as Bott explained later on. For instance 11 different local advertising agencies in Cincinnati have donated time to work with each of the Brandery companies. There are also a lot of area mentors who work closely with each Brandery company.
Check out our indepth video interview with Rob McDonald and Mike Bott here:
Comments Off on Scottish Startup: Tummy With Mummy A Great Product For Tummy Time INTERVIEW0LikeLike 2,271
The first thing I thought when I heard the name of this Scottish startup is, what in the world is a Tummy With Mummy and what is Tummy Time. Well Tummy Time is the activity where babies essentially lay face down on the floor and scoot around on their tummy’s or play with toys in this position.
It turns out that Tummy Time is an essential part of the development of a baby’s motor skills and the most critical time for this to occur is between zero to 6 months.
Well sometimes Tummy Time doesn’t work out. Parents are often scared that the baby will hurt themselves on a hard wood floor and sometimes it doesn’t really look comfortable to see a new-born facedown, you worry if they are ok.
Tummy With Mummy is a patented product made by Scotish startup called TWM Productions. Tummy with Mummy is a baby seat that allows baby’s to play in the Tummy position with a parent or loved one or by themselves. It keeps the baby’s in the best position for Tummy Time and then it folds completely flat for storage and to fit in the trunk of a car.
TWM Productions is actually part of the Entrepreneurial Spark program which provides resources to growing startups in the UK. Tummy With Mummy’s co-founder Dave Abrahams says that Entrepreneurial Spark actually instills North American values in some of the UK startups.
Check out our interview Abrahams below. He tells us all about this new startup that was actually followed by his mum and is now a family business.
Comments Off on Startup Weekend Cincinnati: 3D Printer Template Platform Chosen To Present On Sunday0LikeLike 1,737
3D printing has really surged into popularity lately. There are 3D printers now printing everything from models for architects to toys and even chocolate.
Some industry experts are expecting the cost of 3D printers to come down enough that they will still be pricey but somewhat attainable by consumers and small businesses. The problem with that is, that designing for the 3D printer still requires a lot of skill and it’s not skills that are easy to learn.
One of the ideas pitched on Friday was to make printing in 3D as easy as using 99designs to rebrand your image. The idea is to make a platform where 3D printer templates are bought, sold and exchanged, much the way that you can buy logo templates, website templates and even Word Press templates.
This startup could easily make it out of Startup Weekend Cincinnati. The only caveat is that it has to come out fast because we’re sure with the rise in 3D printing over the last year and a half or so, someone else is working in their basement or at their development house on this exact same idea.
Comments Off on Startup Weekend Cincinnati: A Platform For Buying Your Homework Being Built0LikeLike 1,869
If you’re an entrepreneur or a startup founder chances are you were the guy or gal, that sold their homework, or maybe even made a few bucks doing someone else’s homework. Whether it was in high school or college, there is always a market for homework. Parents and teachers don’t want to admit it but it’s there. It may borderline on plagiarism but heck they’re hoping to build a startup that’s out in the open.
One of the Friday pitches that was chosen to build is a startup that is a platform for people to outsource their homework to somebody else. It’s a fairly simple idea and regardless of what it is on the surface, if implemented correctly there is a market for it and they’ll have no problem cornering the market.
When the idea was pitched it was brought up that we currently outsource every kind of work there is except homework, so why not outsource homework.
Check out the pitch video below and stay tuned to nibletz.com Sunday evening to see who wins Startup Weekend Cincinnati.
Impulcity is one of the standout startups at The Brandery in Cincinnati. We finally got a chance to talk with Hunter Hammonds and Austin Cameron face to face about the disruptive mobile app they’re building.
When someone who does what I do hears the words “location” and “discovery’ we automatically think FourSquare, Google Places, and checking in. We think the space is crowded. We think “sure you’ve got something different”. Well with Impulcity, Hammonds and Cameron have something different. As soon as we arrived at the Brandery Hammonds immediately set up the private beta on my phone and for the rest of the evening I got a guided tour on Impulcity right from the co-founders.
After a night on the town, Hammonds challenged me and our co-founder Cameron Wright to name one event discovery mobile app, that served up local events, allows you to check into them, invite friends, and had a great UI. We couldn’t even name one, not like this.
As you can see they have a great visual user experience. From the main screen you see a highlighted event in visual form and then a grid of similar pictures promoting events around you. The top featured event can be swiped from left to right so that you can see all the highlighted events.
Once you’re in the event you can do a number of things which are all explained in easy detail. There are big inviting buttons for sharing, and what network you want to share with. There is a timeline feature for each event where people can chime in on their experience at the event and share pictures and text.
While Impulcity is from Louisville and building at the Brandery in Cincinnati they’ve already got over a million events in their database that will populate in the same beautiful visual way.
Impulcity says they help you discover, attend and interact with events around you and that’s certainly true. But you can bet on our road trip that we will continue to test and use Impulcity.
Comments Off on Startup Weekend Cincinnati: Blue Collar Project, Selected To Build0LikeLike 1,663
Here’s a great Friday pitch video from Startup Weekend Cincinnati. Blue Collar Dog is an idea we haven’t seen before. It borderlines on non-profit which are typically hard to win when it comes to Sunday pitches because the investors can’t get a return on a non-profit, it’s more of a donation.
Nonetheless the idea is great and there may be a profit mechanism built in somewhere. One things for sure and that’s that dog owners and animal lovers will love the mission behind the idea.
Blue Collar Dog is about raising awareness for dogs and animals that are adopted out of shelters to make sure resources are provided for those dog owners and to let potential animal owners know that shelters are a great way to get a new family companion for life.
What do you think of this idea, let us know in the comments. Watch the video below:
Startup Weekend Cincinnati kicked off tonight at the Startup Mall in downtown Cincinnati. Yes they’ve turned a mall into startup space. As traditional retailers exit their hoping to fill the space with startups. The main festivities kicked off in the offices of Black Book HR which looks coincidentally like a Banana Republic because that is who was in the space before them.
Chris Ostorich the founder of Black Book HR is the person who is organizing and pushing startups to move into the mall space. The mall is in one of the oldest buildings in Cincinnati and Ostorich is hoping to spur innovation and low rent to support Cincinnati’s thriving startup and entrepreneurial ecosystem.
After the pitches were selected for the weekend the startups were able to work on their ideas in the Black Book space along with a vacant Victoria’s Secret and another retail space on the third floor of the mall to build out the startups.
28 total pitches were made on Friday night to a full house of developers, founders, and entrepreneurs. Here are the startups that were picked to build:
Pro Bakery
Bring Some Food
Life Miner
Sports Addict Nation Party
Art Loyalty
Revelant
Project Blue Collar
Do My Homework
3D Printing
We’ll have video and more later today as Startup Weekend Cincinnati continues.
Comments Off on DreamIt Ventures Expands South To Austin Texas0LikeLike 2,430
DreamIt Ventures, the Philadelphia based accelerator, that was recently ranked one of the top the incubators in the country by Forbes magazine, has announced that they’re expanding into Austin Texas.
DreamIt is Philadelphia based, which is where they set up their initial accelerator program. They then expanded to New York City. Last year they also opened up shop in Israel with a program that currently feeds into New York but could feed into their Philadelphia program next year.
Kerry Rupp, a Philadelphia transplant from Austin Texas was overseeing the DreamIt program in Philadelphia. They recently announced the appointment of Karen Griffith Gryga as national director based in Philadelphian which frees Rupp up to return to Austin and launch their Austin program.
Austin is a great place to expand for DreamIt. There is a lot of innovation happening in Austin and the other DreamIt locations will be able to leverage their Austin based program to show off other DreamIt startup graduates at South By Southwest Interactive next year.
“We’ll be able to use it to showcase all of the other DreamIt companies that are out fundraising” when SXSW is held, Rupp said to the Austin Business Journal
As of April 2012 65 companies have successfully gone through the DreamIt program. DreamIt also has a program targeted towards minorities called DreamIt Access, that first class has 15 startup participants.
DreamIt Ventures New York program finishes with a Demo Day on August 8th. Philadelphia’s program kicks off the weekend of September 6th and 7th. The Philadelphia class will hold Demo Day December 5th. Austin’s program will start on December 14th which times the ending right up against SXSWi 2013.
Comments Off on 3 Ann Arbor Michigan Startups Get $600K Investment0LikeLike 1,704
Ann Arbor’s Michigan Pre-Seed Capital Fund is on a roll this year as they’ve already invested $2.6 million dollars into Michigan’s growing startup ecosystem. The fund is administered by AnnArborSPARk and according to semichiganstartup.com another six to ten startups may still see investment funds from the group that invests in pre-seed stages of high growth potential startups.
The fund has just announced that they’ve invested $600k in three area startups; FlockTag, Larky’s and FreeStride Therapeutics.
FlockTag is a mobile application in the loyalty and reward space targeting quick-service restaurants and connecting their loyal customers with deals and rewards.
FreeStride Therapeutics is a bio-medical startup working on therapies for bone related conditions.
Larky’s is also in the hot loyalty space. Their app helps consumers manage discounts, rewards and other loyalty perks. It helps increase customer loyalty and drive merchant profit.
So far the Michigan Pre-Seed Fund has invested $16.5 million dollars in 75 area Startups and helped to create 120 jobs in Michigan.
Comments Off on Miami Startup: Sumpto It’s Like Klout For College Students, But Better INTERVIEW0LikeLike 2,301
Klout is still a big mystery to most, how do you get those crazy Klout scores. If you know how it’s really calculated feel free to send me an email. Klout Perks is a great program that puts manufacturers products into peoples hands. They presumably want the cream of the crop when it comes to Klout, but we have no idea who that really is.
Sumpto is looking to do something along those lines when they launch next week. They’re going to match products to college students with influential social graphs. Sumpto will rank a college students social clout (with a c not a k) and then link manufacturers with college brand ambassadors who can presumably get the word about those products out to the masses.
Manufacturers love it when they can get exposed to people with real influence. Ranking that influence can be a challenge but Sumpto’s Founder and President Ben Kosinski seems to have figured out the magic formula. Yes, Sumpto’s partners will most likely reach the hands of the right people.
The college demographic is a hard one to crack, with free stuff though it may be easier. When you add the free stuff to an exclusive layer of folks, your destined to gain exposure down the lines to the masses. That’s exactly what Sumpto is going to do.
We got a chance to interview Kosinski check out the interview below:
Comments Off on Interview With Romanian Startup: MonitorBacklinks0LikeLike 7,807
Don’t you just love it when a startup comes up with an idea and the name of the startup directly reflects that idea. Such is the case with Romanian startup MonitorBacklinks. Founder Razvan Girmacea has created MonitorBacklinks to make it easier for any publisher, webmaster, or blogger to monitor their backlinks.
Girmacea’s software checks all of a websites backlinks and then sends a notification when the status of a backlink changes, for example if it disappears, reappears or moves.
When vying for pagerank backlinks play a big part into the SEO of any website.
In the interview below Girmacea talks about MonitorBacklinks and how easy he has made it for the end user. He also sheds some light on the budding entrepreneurship and startup scene in Romania.
Comments Off on Startup Weekend Cincinnati Is This Weekend0LikeLike 1,722
Baby if you’ve ever wondered, wondered whatever became of me, I’m building a company in Cincinnati, at Startup Weekend Cincinnati
A little background on the altered quote up there. If you’ve been reading nibletz.com for a while and you’ve been watching our videos you may have noticed that while we’re on the road trip we like to use “old school” hip hop from the city we’re in for our video intro. Like in Memphis we use Tennessee by Arrested Development and Twerk by Three Six Mafia. In New Orleans we use any vintage Cash Money Millionaires. In St. Louis we’ve got Nelly. Sorry Cincinnati but we can’t find a decent song by Hi-Tek and don’t want to embarrass anyone by using 98 degrees.
I can tell you first hand that Cincinnati’s startup scene is umpteen million times more innovative than their history with popular hip hop and pop music. That’s why we’re really excited that Startup Weekend is back in Cincinnati this weekend.
The 54 hour hackathon style startup building contest puts people from all over the place together to build startups and compete in a nice little pitch fest on Sunday evening. Startup Weekend’s are exciting, innovative, and usually bursting at the seams with good food.
The event kicks off on Friday when all those signed up for Startup Weekend will pitch their ideas in a 60 second quick pitch contest. After the pitches the crowd will vote on the startups that will be built over the next 53 hours.
Mentor’s from Cincinnati’s thriving tech and business scene will be on hand throughout the weekend to help the teams in just about every aspect of building a business. Cincinnati’s mentors for this weekend include: Robert W. McDonald, an attorney at Taft and co-founder of The Brandery (we love the Brandery); Bob Gilbreath, Entrepreneur in Residence at CincyTech; Bill Cunningham, Co-Founder at OneMorePallet.com; James J Cunningham, Executive Director of C-Cap.net and Ryan Walker, Founder at Engagement.iO. Of course nibletz.com will be around most of the weekend too and we typically get roped into helping out (no really we love to help).
A couple of gut checks later, gallons of caffeine and typically as much pizza as you can eat later, the teams assemble on Sunday evening to pitch their final projects to the judges. It’s best to have a great pitch deck, minimum viable product, mock up and make sure you’ve tested the viability of your concept.
Cincinnati’s judges are: Dave Knox, CMO at RockFish and Co-Founder at The Brandery (we love the Brandery); Tarek Kamil, Executive Director at InfoMotion Sports Technologies; Dov Rosenberg, Director at Allos Ventures; Rahul Bawa, Director of Digital and Software at CincyTech; and Jeff Weedman CEO at Centrifuse and VP of Global Business Development at this little company called Proctor & Gamble.
Entrepreneurs, developers, founders, as you can see you’ve got your work cut out for you. If you haven’t signed up yet you better head here now. The event takes place at the Startup Mall (Carew Tower). Registration is at 6:30pm. Good Luck.
Kyle
There are a ton of startups these days entering the hiring and recruitment space. Most of them have to do with the actual hiring and recruitment process. There are startups like Houston Texas’s Job Plotter which helps applicants plot jobs on a map to know if they are close enough to their homes to apply. Another great startup in the job’s space is PitchPick an Austin based company that helps the pre-screening process with a video platform.
