startup Archives - Page 56 of 87

Brandery Check In With Louisville Startup Impulcity

Impulcity is an amazing feature packed discovery startup from Louisville, KY. We spoke with Hunter Hammonds the CEO of Impulcity back in June before they had moved into the Brandery. Hammonds was very optimistic about Impulcity and the Brandery. After two weeks in he’s just as optimistic.

Hammonds reports that they’ve trimmed a lot of fat off the app and gotten back down to the core. They have a unique way of presenting discovery so that it’s not just about the actual discovery, it’s both fun and exciting as well. Impulcity is about a lot more than just checking in.

Yesterday we talked with the CrowdHall team at the Brandery. They were still riding high off a win at the BunBury, TechBury Pitch Wars on Friday. The team from Utah took home a $1,000 check and they’re buying lunch for the entire class of the Brandery tomorrow.

Don’t let that full you though warns Hammonds. He and his co-founder Austin arrived at the Brandery a full month ahead of everyone else to get a running start. That strategy may be paying off well for these hard working entrepreneurs from Louisville. Let’s check in with Hunter Hammonds.

Kick Ass Boulder Startup: “Startup The Game” Yes An Actual Mobile Game For Startups

There’s not a lot of downtime in the startup life, in fact there’s virtually none at all. But we all know that at some point there needs to be some release. You need to free your mind from coding, pitching and business developing so your brain doesn’t just totally fry. Some turn to Angry Birds, others turn to SongPop but now, thanks to a Boulder Startup there’s “Startup The Game”.

Startup The Game is a classic video game. You have to capture as many good characters as you can before something bad happens. Good characters in Startup The Game include research,good press,users and venture capital. Bad characters include bugs,bad press, and competition.

The soundtrack for the game is fittingly, “dub step” music which is perfect for startups.

The scrolling game has you jump and crouch to get the things you need and avoid the things that you don’t.

Now the game is about as fun and mind relaxing as that helicopter game or even Temple Run, but that’s just the beginning. Robert Reichs, the founder of “Startup The Game”, has actually added a way for startups to create traction in a fun and competitive way through “Startup The Game”.

When you finish the game you can donate your points to one of the popular startups that’s trending within the game. If your favorite startup isn’t available you can add it, and hopefully your startup will shoot up the ladder and other players will start donating their points to you. Reichs tells us there are already 500 startups signed up within the game.

We wanted to find out just how does someone come up with a game like this. Reichs told us:

“I teach a couse at the university of colorado (CU) Called Startup (http://vimeo.com/32882215) as part of the class i wanted to make sure the basic curriculum being taught allowed the students to create awesome products quickly. So i took the class I was teaching. Startup the game was the outcome.”

Reichs is no stranger to the startup scene. In addition to teaching a class on startups his other credits include; being an entrepreneurial executive with over 15 years experience directing product life cycles from concept, development and launch, to feedback and refinement. Unique blend of creativity, design, strategy and senior executive management skills.He is also the Founder / CEO Openspace Store – social discovery of apps, Founder / moderator boulder denver new tech, Founder / VP Product OneRiot – real time search (sold to Walmart labs),Founder / CEO of Ecosystems – content management software (sold to Me.dium). Reichs is also the Adjunct Professor on Media and Business Design at University of Colorado (CU), named inventor and contributor on 6 patents, advisory board member of Silicon Flatirons, board member Boulder Digital Works at CU, Openspace Store and OneRiot.

While for the most part this is a fun project for Reichs he does plan on adding a store for users to actually buy things with those points.

We’ve been playing “Startup The Game” for a little while and it is a nice break from the big startup game we’re all playing everyday. Check it out at the links below.

Linkage:

Philly Startup: Real Food Works Launches, Finds Out They’re Finalists In IBX Game Changer Challenge

Real Food Works, a startup launched in Philadelphia by entrepreneurs from both Philly and New York, has applied the subscription based model to healthy, plant based, cooked dishes. The startup is up and running and beta testing in the Philadelphia area. If all goes well they will expand to New York City.

The dishes are made by local restaurants, chefs and catering companies and delivered ready to eat and fresh.

Real Food Works is kicking off with a pilot program which is up and running now. For $75 per week you get five entrees delivered to your door. Each member can pick their own menu from the selections provided.

Last Tuesday’s menu included: Lemony Quinoa, salad with grilled tofu over a bed of spinach;Tempeh-Walnut Sliders with Roasted Beet Slices, Cashew Cream Cheese & Arugula, Steamed Shiitake and Tofu Dumplings with Bok Choy & Lemongrass Sauce, Vegetarian Enchiladas with Spinach Salad & Tahini Dressing, Black Bean Burger, Moroccan Spiced Root Vegetables, & Green Beans with Maple Syrup. Even for a meat lover those sound wonderful.

The startup was founded by Lucinda DunCalfe who had a successful exit with ClickEquations a marketing and advertising company that developed a powerful pay per click software which helps agencies manage paid search campaigns more effectively and efficiently. That company was sold to Channel Intelligence in June 2011.

Real Food Works found out Monday that they are one of 15 finalists in the IBX Game Changer Challenge. The challenge is a health and wellness focused startup challenge for a grand prize for up to three startups with $50,000 in funding, mentoring support and access to a network of health care decision makers.

The team from Real Food Works will present next Tuesday to a panel of judges in a 10 minute presentation with 5 minutes of Q&A and the winners will be announced on July 30th.

Linkage:

Check out Real Food Works and their delicious food here

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Interview With Helsinki Discovery Startup Grafetee

The discovery business is a shrewd business these days. It seems every time we go to a pitch event there is the next best discovery app, not to mention the discovery apps we saw at South By Southwest. Discovery is a hot startup space in the US. It’s also hot in Europe but Helsinki startup Grafetee seems to have a new spin on discovery that should help them pull ahead of some of the competition.

Grafetee isn’t just about discovery it’s also about real world location bookmarking. For instance if you’re out and about and you see an interesting landmark you can find out more about it and bookmark it for later. Grafetee also lets you bookmark websites to comeback to later to actually check out in real life. The founders behind Grafetee seem to have a grasp on not just discovery but that online, real world fusion that a lot of startups are targeting as well.

Grafetee is actually the first discovery app startup out of the 10 person team called Rakettitiede. Grafetee adds in elements of augmented reality to make it easier to share, not just the fact that you’re at the local pub, but that you’ve found a new local pub, museum, shop or other place worth checking out. The team considers it a more data driven alternative to FourSquare.

The Rakettitiede team has attracted the attention of the local police department called the Poliisi who are using Grafetee to increase public safety.

“We’re extremely excited to have the Finnish Police on board. Their testing and the ensuing refinements to the app will help us create truly useful location based services on our Grafetee platform.” The company told siliconangle.com

We got a chance to talk to the team. Check out the interview below.

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

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

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

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

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

After First Full Week At Brandery, Startup CrowdHall Is Already Gaining Popularity In Cincinnati

The CrowdHall Team Won The TechBury Pitch Wars Friday (photo: CrowdHall)

We talked with Utah startup CrowdHall a few weeks back. They had been selected for the Brandery incubator in Cincinnati which is one of the most popular incubators in the United States. We got to talk with co-founder Jordan Menzel right before the crew packed it up to move east for three months.

The Brandery’s 2012 session started on July 2nd and last week was their first full week in. CrowdHall has agreed to check in periodically throughout their experience in Cincinnati and at the Brandery. Their first check-in was a little late. Not only has the CrowdHall crew been working around the clock, but they were also busy competing in the BunBury festival’s TechBury pitch wars.

CrowdHall faced off against Brandery alumni VenturePax which we’ve also covered here at nibletz.com. The CrowdHall team rode their bikes through a seedy section of town at nearly midnight, back to their apartment with a $1,000 check,emerging as the winners of the pitch wars.

This is how we described CrowdHall earlier:

Imagine if you could mix a social network, reddit,crowdsourced answers and a town hall meeting into one platform that wasn’t an absolute train wreck. Now imagine if you could use that platform to host virtual conferences, discussions with elected officials, or even with your blog audience (yeah we can’t wait to try it). Now stop imagining because that’s what the founders of CrowdHall are doing.

Here’s what the team has to say after being at the Brandery since July 2

So give us a little insight how was your first full week at the Brandery?

We’re kids in a candy store. As a startup, you learn to get by with limited support, limited resources, and having to fight for mentors’ time. So when we showed up to the Brandery, we were able to turn on fire hose and start drinking. We’ve loved being around the fellow startups, working with fascinating mentors, and of course taking advantage of the nitty gritty legal help. The collaborative office space is great too, and is a vast improvement to our last corporate office (the public library). We’ve quickly seen that workshops, pitches, BBQ’s, ball games, late nights of coding, and 14 hour work days will be our lives for the next few months.

Now that you’re finally at the Brandery what’s one thing that has surprised you guys about CrowdHall?

We are all blown away with how much more we can get done when we are all working in the same space. Early in our development, our team was in DC, NYC, and San Diego. With us all together, the increase in productivity and turn-around is insane. After having worked for government agencies and big companies, nothing is more fun than having an idea in the morning, a team brainstorming session on it over lunch, and testing it out live on the site at night, with no layers of bureaucracy in between.

What’s the best piece of honest feedback you’ve received from either the Brandery folks or a mentor?

With the technology we’ve built, there are literally a hundred different applications and features that we have brainstormed. In addition, every time we talk to somebody new they get excited about some new way they can see themselves using the platform.

When we sat down with our mentor Tim Schigel (Founder of ShareThis and Head of Digital Strategy for the Republican Party), he really pushed us to focus in on one application at a time, and prioritize the development based on working out one functionality, then going to market with that. We can’t try to do everything at once.

Have you pivoted yet?

There is a lot of grey area in that question. We have always been aware of various applications for our large audience moderating features and have generally had a clear strategy on which applications we wanted to focus on first. However, now that we have
met with mentors from Twitter, Anaheiser Busch, ShareThis etc…. we have definitely taken a step back to revisit our development priorities. But in terms of the core product, we are still about allowing crowds to communicate in a democratic and organized manner. Talk to us next week, we’ll probably give you a totally different answer.

What’s on the agenda for next week?

Organization!! With new interns, new mentors, new ideas, and new resources, we are about to dive into improving our teams structure and flow. Nick, our developer, is probably tired of getting pulled away from the code with every single thought/idea/recommendation. While it’s fun to be all in the space, it’s not always the most efficient.

In terms of our product, we are getting ready for a pretty sweet soft beta launch coming up soon so keep an eye on Twitter and Facebook to see what we are scheming.

Is there anything the public can help you guys with?

CrowdHall is coming! Sign up for our beta launch at www.crowdhall.com. Once we launch, you’ll be able to communicate with those already on the site, and also recommend any people/organizations of interest you’d like to have a conversation with. We’ll reach out to them to join CrowdHall as your recommendations draw support.

Has your experience at the Brandery been what you expected so far? Harder? Easier?

It has been more all-consuming than we expected, but in a way, it’s actually easier. We are so excited to be working on the company and seeing how much it progresses with the time we put in, that none of us wants to be doing anything else. So even though the commitment is crazy, it’s only like that because that’s the way we want it. One hilarious experience was competing in the Techbury Pitch Wars at the Bunbury Music Festival, after 5 rounds of pitching against great companies we were stoked to have won, and that meant biking home with a giant novelty check and an unnecessarily large trophy.

Linkage:

See what the talk is all about at CrowdHall’s site here

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Interview With DC Startup Edorati A Beautiful News Sharing Web App

A few months ago on our first leg through Washington DC on the sneaker strapped, nationwide startup road trip, we got introduced to Artie Patel co-founder of DC startup Edorati. When we first met with Patel Edorati was a curated news magazine set up with a newspaper feel and interface. They’ve since pivoted from that, gunning to become your source for news.

Edorati integrates with your Facebook account so you can share what you’ve been reading with your Facbeook friends. They’ve also included a bookmarklet making it as easy as pinning on Pinterest to share a great news story. In fact we encourage you to go ahead and install Edorati onto your Facebook and share away, all the news and interviews from Nibletz.com.

We got a chance to interview Patel, who’s very excited about the new pivot that Edorati has taken and how they hope to become the number one destination for people to share news.

Check out our interview with Patel below.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Estonia Startup: Oddspotter Is A Cool Art Appreciation Game For iPad INTERVIEW

If you’re wondering where the heck Estonia is, no worries they have a thriving startup scene there. In fact when talking with Tanel Teemusk the founder of Estonia based startup Oddspotter, he tells us that Estonia may have the largest number of startups per capita of any European country.

You may be familiar with their biggest startup, it’s called Skype. Of course with Skype, like many other startups that have had huge exits or gone public, they have a venture arm too that’s churning out great startups. One of our favorite European startups Hail-o is also backed by Skype founders.

So what is OddSpotter, it’s an art appreciation game. It’s got great graphics and Teemusk isn’t afraid to call it “edutainment”. Of course we’re not talking about edutainment for kids it’s edutainment for adults, and if you’re not careful playing OddSpotter, you may actually learn something. We did.

We got a chance to interview Teemusk in depth and we’re not going to knock him if he does in fact come and stay in San Francisco for a few months. Oddspotter was raised in Estonia so it’s an international startup from everywhere else.

Check out our interview below:

German Startup: Honestly.de Says They’re The Easiest Way To Give Feedback INTERVIEW

Giving feedback should be easy. When you take into consideration that most businesses that want your feedback have already somehow earned your money, than you want the easiest most simplest way to get that feedback. Even when you get $10 off your next meal or a buy one get one free, many of those surveys at the bottom of receipts are never answered.

Once you’ve been on the phone with a customer service department for 30 minutes the last thing you want to do is take some kind of survey. That may seem easy enough to you, but it’s not.

That’s why German startup honestly.de has come up with what they call is, the “easiest way to leave feedback”. Honestly.de promises that within 30 seconds you’ll be able to leave feedback for any service organization, and reach the pertinent people. That’s a pretty lofty goal, with the two hardest parts being building scale and engagement.

We got a chance to talk to Honetsly.de about their new startup. Check out the interview below:

Indianapolis Startup: Trensy Makes Doing Good Deeds Fun INTERVIEW

A hot new startup in the vibrant startup community of Indianapolis Indiana is gamifying good deeds. The startup, called Trensy, makes it easy to earn points for just about any kind of good deed.

Good deeds ranging from volunteering, to much easier tasks like taking the bus or using a reusable grocery bag at the grocery store can help you earn points on Trensy’s good deed platform.

The platform ties into your Facebook account for 0-auth verification and then a way to share your good deeds socially and invite others to participate as well. One of the cool parts about Trensy is when you sign up and look at the available good deeds, you’ll probably find that you’re doing some to these things already. (if not most of them).

The two founders that met at IU (Alma Mater of Mark Cuban and Nick Tippmann) didn’t set out to do a startup together. They first became roommates and friends, and then went off into the real world. When they realized they wanted to start something, and something good for the community, they naturally turned to each other as co-founders.

Trensy co-founder Kyle Robbins told us:

“After graduating, we both moved to Indianapolis to begin careers and worked independently for several year before connecting on trensy. Bryan worked on the service side of an educational software company and I worked as a developer. The decision to venture together on this journey all came down to the trust and confidence they had in each other. Fate got us together to work on changing the world”

Trensy is available for both iOS and Android. The good deed app platform can be a lot of fun especially when you challenge yourself or friends to get more points.

Here’s our full interview with Kyle Robbins below.

Indian Startup: Resumonk Makes Resumes A Cinch Interview

The most important piece of sales material in anyones arsenal is their resume. Resumes have evolved over the years. First there were typed resumes on fine parchment. Next was the rapid reprinting of resumes via the xerox machine in the copy room. Desktop publishing made resumes look very pretty but formatting could be a real pain in the ass.

Then in came the jobs site and the multiple types of resume files that every job hunter needed. Some job hunters needed to take a class just to learn how to do the proper type of resume file.

The resume has been a pain point that many startups have tried to solve, including Resumonk a startup based in New Delhi.

Resumonk is a DIY platform to build your resume. The company promises that they’ve got the technology, formatting and conversion down pat. All you need to know is your job history and have a decent grasp of the english language.

We got a chance to talk with Resumonk in the interview below:

Rochester Startup: Wi3 Expanding To Hospitality Industry, THANK GOD

We travel an awful lot. Most of our readers know that we’re on a sneaker strapped, nationwide startup road trip, which means we stay in the car a lot, but in hotels a lot too. The biggest challenge in hotels isn’t about bedding, towels, or even what’s on tv. We book rooms based on wifi, availability and pricing. The problem is even when you do a preliminary check on a hotels wifi it’s still slow as molasses and typically a horrible experience.

Outside of bringing our own wifi (which we do as backup) there hasn’t been much change since hotels started offering wifi. Free or not most hotels have less than subpar wifi.

Well a Rochester startup called Wi3 is doing something about that.

We first met Wi3 at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas back in January. They were demoing their innovation award winning WiPNET product. As you can see from the video above, WiPNET in home allows the user to set up access points with the bulk of the load making it from point a to point b over coax. This is ultimately the same thing that cable internet providers are doing from the node to your home.

WiPNET makes sure you have a clear wifi access point with very little (if no) latency or loss of signal from the entry point to the end user. Pretty magical stuff.

Well now they’ve announced that they are offering their product to the hospitality industry (hotels)

WiPNET allows many devices to simultaneously access HD and rich media digital Web content on the same hardwired network using existing coax cable infrastructure and a hardwired access point in every guestroom. This innovative application of MoCA technology eliminates the problem of network buffering caused when several devices are accessing the Web within the same environment. It also simplifies network management and oversight, even allowing hotel owners to create tiered-access services as an additional profit center.

“Serving hotel guestrooms or commercial properties with just one WiFi router or a few WiFi repeaters across a property does not meet the needs and demands of the ever increasing WiFi enabled mobile consumer,” said Wi3 CEO Bill Thompson. “Wi3’s patented in-wall Ethernet and WiFi products enable properties that have coax connections to convert every room or space into a full-bandwidth dedicated access point to satisfy even the most heavy of users, thus simplifying and eliminating today’s singular WiFi router approach.”

Now in a nutshell, every hotel guest in every room will have their own dedicated wifi access point and won’t overload the Belkin or Linksys routers that are typically not so strategically placed in hotels.

Linkage:

Paris Startup: LimeApp Is The Daily Deals Site For Online Services INTERVIEW

There are daily deal sites everywhere. Groupon and LivingSocial started a phenomenon for products, weight loss facilities, canoe trips, adventures and even cupcakes. You can find a daily deal for just about every tangible product known to man, heck you can find 20 deal sites these days.

LimeApp is a daily deals site that’s sole focus is online services. Think apps, cloud based storage, web hosting, things like that. As the LimeApp team told us in an interview, they specialize only in intangible products.

Some of the deals available on LimeApp today include 100 gb of cloud storage from Elephant Drive for $49 (retail value $99), Email marketing from ActiveCampaign for $99 (a $250 value), and professional banner creation from Canned Banners a $90 value for just $59.99

LimeApp tops everything off with a money back guarantee.

We got a chance to talk to the LimeApp people in the interview below.