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New Orleans EdTech Startup Dash Technologies Releasing Dash For Teachers App Interview

Three educators in New Orleans have teamed up to form Dash Technologies a new startup focusing on educational apps for teachers. Their first app “Dash For Teachers” will hit the Apple iTunes app store on Wednesday.

Dash4Teachers is almost like a CRM app for teachers to keep tabs on students performance, log that performance and than generate a quick speed dial list so that teachers can make those ever important calls to parents. With the Dash4Teachers app, when the student’s performance is logged the app knows what parameters are set that distinguish parents that need to be called over parents of students who’s performance is up to par.

This is a valuable tool for busy teachers and busy parents. It also increases the communication between teacher and parent for the students benefit.

We had a chance to interview Dash Technologies about their exciting new app. Check out the interview below and look for the app in the iTunes app store tomorrow.

Interview With California Startup: At The Pool, Casual People Discovery Platform

People discovery is a hot startup space this year. As you’ve heard time and time again it was the startup space dejour at South By Southwest back in March. Startups like Ban.jo, Glancee, and Highlight ruled the roost on the streets of Austin during the interactive festival.

Now four months later, Glancee has been purchased by Facebook and the others are getting just passive traffic (I know some may disagree). One of the problems with people discovery applications are the in your face constant notifications that occur when you’re logged into one of the services. You get inundated with notifications about people you don’t know and sometimes don’t even want to know. There has to be an easier way.

Enter “At The Pool”

The Los Angeles startup offers you a once a day match based on interests and things you may want to do off line. Are you looking for new rock climbing buddies? Maybe you’re looking for new friends to start some pick up hockey? Maybe you’re looking to talk startups or even build a startup? Well At The Pool says there’s a pool for that.

Just what does that mean? Well we talk with At The Pool’s co-founder Alex Capecelatro to find out about their pool party. Check out the interview below:

Chicago Startup: EcoResume Offers Job Hunters An Easy & Green Way To Hand Out Resumes INTERVIEW

Whether you’re actively searching for a job or you’re just passively looking, chances are you’ve been to a conference, networking event or other meetup and needed your resume close by. Now without bringing a briefcase or worse, a book bag, to every professional outing you take, carrying your resume with you can be cumbersome, often times resulting in a crinkled up, less professional looking representation of yourself.

Well a startup in Chicago, called EcoResume has a solution for you that solves this particular problem and makes things a little greener.

With EcoResume you upload your credentials and resume information to their website. From there the folks at EcoResume create a virtual business card for you, complete with the bullet points from your resume and links to your supporting documents. You can easily send this eco friendly card with resume highlights to anyone that you come across at a meeting, or professional event from your smartphone or when you get back to the office.

Sure there are other ways of doing this, including getting your own blog site, or custom url but EcoResume has it all figured out in a nice looking site that’s both easy to navigate and easy to find.

We got a chance to interview the founder of EcoResume Efrem McGruder. Check out the interview below.

Washington DC’s Startup Kitchen Narrows The Field To Three

The first food industry startup incubator the “Startup Kitchen” is the brainchild of Washington DC restauranteur Kera Carpenter. She opened Domku an East European influenced restaurant in the revitalizing neighborhood of Pentworth in the district in 2005. It was overcoming the difficulties of not only starting here own business, but a restaurant at that, that inspired Carpenter to team up with Think Local First DC to create the “Startup Kitchen”.

Now we’re not talking a show you would see on the food network, we are talking about full on restaurant idea businesses. The food startup founders were narrowed down to three finalists which will pitch on July 18th. The winner selected out of the finalists will have six weeks to work on their concept with the help of mentors, and then Carpenter will donate space for the winner to open up a “Pop up restaurant” once a week in Domku’s space at 821 Upshur Street NW in Pentworth.

Hopefully after the six week period and then the pop up restaurant period that entrepreneur will be able to transition their startup to their own space in the district.

The three finalists, as reported by the Washington Business Journal are:

Worthwhile Meats and Provisions founded by Julien Shapiro. Her business idea is a specialty butcher shop showcasing the whole animal.

Chaya, a restaurant concept focused on cuisines featuring plants, legumes and whole grains. This is the idea of Bettina Stern and Zusanne Simon.

DC Dosa, a restaurant idea that would serve Dosa’s which are south Indian pancake snacks. Their plan is to serve them late night and at lunchtime. Think along the lines of crepe stands.

The three semi-finalists will pitch next Wednesday and the winners will be announced on Friday the 20th. That’s a big week for startups in DC as the 20th is also pitch day for TechStars Patriot Bootcamp.

Linkage:

Here’s the Startup Kitchen blog

Source: Washington Business Journal 1 2

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Virginia Startup: SpydrSafe Launches First Scalable DLP Solution For Enterprise

As more and more people fall into the BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) category, the need for enterprise solutions for multiple managed devices has risen. Security is an issue that’s paramount to companies allowing employees to bring their own device to work. Security can also be a headache for IT departments.

Data loss is one of the main security threats that enterprise IT professionals are concerned about with people bringing their own devices to work. Before the rise in popularity of bringing one’s own device, IT departments could control the flow and security of data, especially in a Blackberry enterprise server dominated world. Now with BYOD the main element of security is gone and IT departments need to find a solution that will secure their data no matter who owns the device.

A Virginia startup called SpydrSafe is addressing that problem for people that are bringing their own Android devices to work. SpydrSafe Mobile DLP™, safeguards against data loss with innovative technology that delivers app-level protection on Android smartphones and tablets.

“Protecting corporate information on mobile devices presents enormous challenges for enterprise IT departments. The risk of data breaches is no longer solely an external threat as more employees use their own personal devices in the workplace (BYOD).” said Michael R. Pratt, Chief Executive Officer of SpydrSafe Mobile Security. “SpydrSafe Mobile DLP™ addresses the issues created by BYOD by providing enterprise IT the tools necessary to safeguard data that is accessed and used by mobile apps.”

The SpydrSafe solution consists of two main parts:

SpydrSafe Mobile DLP™ is an advanced mobile data loss prevention solution comprising SpydrSafe Mobile DLP™ for Android and SpydrSafe Security Manager™. The SpydrSafe Mobile DLP™ for Android app is available on either Google Play or Amazon Appstore for Android.

SpydrSafe Security Manager™ is a SaaS (Security-as-a-Service), cloud-based security management console used by IT administrators to add and enroll new users, assign users to groups, assign policies and access audit and reporting information.
About SpydrSafe Mobile Security, Inc.

Linkage:

Check out SpyderSafe here at their website

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Chicago Startup: SocialKaty Is Social Media Marketing For Everyone Else INTERVIEW

Enthusiastic and Scottish. Katy Lynch took her personality and social media skills from a hobby to creating a thriving venture backed company is less than two years. With a goal of providing result driven social media services for companies, she founded SocialKaty in August 2010.

SocialKaty is a full-service social media marketing firm employing 29 “social media assassins” who create and manage content for brands (big and small). Simply, they’re a one stop shop for social media who maintain and create content on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Blogs and even develop tabs and apps for Facebook.

Why start SocialKaty?
1) Companies are struggling with creating and managing effective social media campaigns.
2) There are no real pure play social media firms out there. (There are marketing and PR agencies that offer social media as an “add on” service, but not as their core offering.)

What’s interesting is the diversity of companies and industries they service. To name a few – funded startups, bars, restaurants, retailers, non-profits, and heck even energy companies. It’s no wonder they’ve been profitable since day one, grown to a 29 person team and raised a Series A round from Lightbank.

We caught up with Katy last week during Techweek Chicago:

Links we’ve got em:

SocialKaty Is Here

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Spanish Startup: ChattyBuy Is Turning Tweets Into Cash INTERVIEW

Back in April we reported on a Portland startup called Chippify that is enabling people to send money using Twitter. Using their service, sending a payment is as easy as replying to a tweet.

On the other side of the Twitter payment spectrum is ChattyBuy who is turning people’s tweets into cash, well at least legitimate discounts saving you cash. ChattyBuy is based in Alicante Spain, where they’ve already partnered with merchants and social media mavens to create a platform that, in some capacity pays you to Tweet, in discounts.

We got a chance to interview Alex Aitkenhead the co-founder and CEO of ChattyBuy about his unique new startup.

What is Chattybuy?

Chattybuy is a social network that turns communication into savings.

How? By rewarding users with discount points for chatting, sending “tweets” and
following businesses that they exchange for the coupons they want!

Who are the founders & what are their backgrounds?

Alex Aitkenhead Founder & CEO

Founder of www.quedescuentos.es an e-coupon directory in Spain.

Silvia Sanchez Co-founder

Working as sales representative for large multinationals

Alex Fernandez Communication

Recently graduated from university qualified in grafic design and communication.

Where are you based?

Chattybuy is a startup based in Alicante, Spain. The founder is Scottish but has lived in Spain for over 19 years.

What problem is Chattybuy solving?

More than solve a problem it’s about creating a new solution. No Social network wards users for chatting, why not be the first? Cash back sites are complex and you have to buy, in chattybuy WE reward you for using us to communicate and YOU decide where to exchange your points!

What is your secret sauce/competitive edge?

Our secret sauce is the simplicity of the product. We have turned online communication into something extra, helping user save money doing what the do most, chat, send tweets and use coupons!

What is the startup culture like in your town?

Unfortunately the startup culture in our town in non existing, in Spain most startups como from Barcelona, Madrid or Valencia. This is especially so when we are looking at technology startups.

What is one challenge you’ve overcome in the startup process?

The main challenge was being able to produce a fully functional beta version with such a limited budget and no external investors, they are really lacking in Spain it’s always the same 4-5 people.

What is next for Chatty Buy?

The next step for chattybuy is crowd funding to help create our mobile apps and improve systems. We want the public to decide if they think chattybuy is a great concept and reward them for backing us up from just $1.

We also want to setup chattybuy as a business in NYC or London ideal cities to grow as a company and hire the best.

Hit the links:

For more on Chattybuy find them here at chattybuy.com

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Chicago Funds 25 Startups For $188 Million In Q2 2012 Smashes Q1

Chicago recently played host to a great regional tech and startup conference called TechWeek 2012. Judging on the activity at the conference and the legendary after parties it should be no surprise that startup activity in Chicago is big. How big? Try $188 million dollars big of 25 startup companies. Two companies; Dealstar and Tribeca Flashpoint Acacdemy also exited in Q2 without disclosing financials behind their deals.

GoHealth received the most money in Q2 2012 with $50 million by Norwest Equity Partners. Valence Health came in second place with $30 million. In the tech space Singlehop led with $27.5 million. Total Attorneys was second in the non health space with $15 million.

Chicago’s startup de jour, Belly, pulled in two rounds of funding in Q2 for a total of $12.5 million. Lightbank Capital and Silicon Valley Bank teamed up for a $2.5m round for Belly in April and Silicon Valley powerhouse firm, Andreesseen Horowitz invested $10m in May.

The bigger story for Chicago is that in Q1 2012 there was just $33 million in funding split between 17 companies.

Here’s the complete list of companies funded in Q2 from BuiltinChicago.com

Arroweye $3 million
Belly $12.5 million
BenchPrep $6 million
BrightTag $15 million
Dabble $140,000
Elevate Digital $2.7 million
Future Simple $6.8 million
GoHealth $50 million
gtrot $920,000
Journatic $3.2 million
Kapow Events $700,000
Mediafly $200,000
MentorMob $150,000
Monthlys not reported
Neighborhoods not reported
New Futuro $1.3 million
Open Kennel $440,000
Restaurant.com $8,000,000
Singlehop $27.5 million
SocialKaty $300,000
Tempo $750,000
Total Attorneys $15M
Unmetric $3.2M
Valence Health $30M

Linkage:

Source: Built In Chicago 1 2

Check out Nibletz’ coverage of Chicago TechWeek 2012

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Dutch Startup: MeeChannel One Dashboard For All Your Media, INTERVIEW

The Netherlands apparently has a much bigger startup scene than we had first imagined. On Friday we brought you an interview with the Dutch startup “ShowDates” today we’re talking with the founder of MeeChannel.

MeeChannel is a new aggregator that brings all of your photos,videos, rss feeds and other online content into one simple, easy to navigate dashboard. Once you have all of your “channels” in one place you can share your favorite content from any channel, be it vimeo, YouTube, Flickr, Picasa or any one of hundreds of other sources that you subscribe to, and share them with your friends.

MeeChannel is currently in Beta and still entirely in Dutch, however the user interface makes it such that you may have no problem navigating it even in a foreign language. Pieter Havermans, MeeChannel’s founder and managing director is looking forward to expanding the service globally, after the initial beta version is released to the public and they start building scale.

They’ve actually done a really great job with the ux on the site. The concept has been done before but as with a lot of startups it’s now all about the execution.

We got a chance to talk to Havermans, check out our interview below:

St. Louis Startup: NorseCorp Lands Huge Deal With Global eTelecom

NorseCorp is a technology startup located in St.Louis that specializes in fraud detection. The company was one of the first startups to receive funding and mentorship as part of the first Capital Innovator’s program in St. Louis last fall. As part of the program NorseCorp received $50,000 in seed funding along with free office space. They also presented during Capital Innovator’s first demo day last December.

Two weeks ago the startup, led by CEO Sam Glines, a 1995 graduate of Saint Louis University, reported a major deal with one of the largest electronic check and ACH payment processors in the U.S. Global eTelecom has over 55,000 merchants nationwide that will rely on NorseCorp’s IPViking software to provide another layer of protection for their customers.

NorseCorp has developed a technology that assists in online transactions by spotting for high risk, fradulent transactions. “Our eCommerce Fraud Prevention service works seamlessly at the payment gateway level to identify and block high-risk transactions before they occur,” said Skip Foss, NorseCorp chief operating officer said in a statement. “The service addresses two essential aspects of effective fraud prevention. It offers accuracy in evaluating the legitimacy of the IP address behind any transaction, and it delivers that information in real time for automated decision-making, not manual review.”

Linkage:

Check out NorseCorp here

Source: St. Louis Business Journal

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Interview With California Startup: RewardMe

Loyalty and reward is the hottest space for startups right now. Within a years time (probably by the next sxsw) many of the loyalty and rewards startups out there will have disappeared and only the brightest and best will survive. One of those is California based startup RewardMe.

RewardMe was founded by four friends that were college buddies from UCLA. The company provides a point of sale based loyalty and rewards program that provides great information back to the business owner. RewardME rewards those loyal customers but it can also assist in bringing lost customers and sales back into the retail store or restaurant.

One of the unique things about RewardMe is while you can get incentives, messages and discounts via your smartphone or regular mobile phone, a smartphone isn’t required.

RewardMe’s merchant dashboard is available to any user anywhere. This is great for when the owner or manager goes out of town or if you’re managing multiple locations from one centralized office.

RewardMe has thought of everything that should be built into a solid reward and loyalty program. We got a chance to interview the guys behind RewardMe. Check out the interview below:

Interview With Aaron Gray Founder Of Atlanta Startup The Legacy Movement

As a youngster growing up almost Asian (Hawaiian) I sort of fell into a minority category. As my career in media, first in radio and then later in tech media, flourished I was no longer in the minority. Especially in the tech scene. However in our plight to cover startups “everywhere else” we also try and highlight those startups that are women owned, black owned and latino owned, because those entrepreneurs are underserved.

In fact, when we did office hours a little over a week ago in Memphis Tennessee we met the co-founders of BioNannovation a startup currently participating in the zeroto510 incubator in Memphis. The companies co-founders, Charleson Bell and Andre T Stevenson are both in their twenties and black. Both of them appeared similar to any of the other young black guys I have hung out with near my home in Baltimore. However they may both have been the smartest two guys I have ever had the chance of meeting. Bell, a Phd candidate, had discovered a nanoparticle that could change the way doctors find, track and treat virus’ and infection and Stevenson had discovered the biomarkers for cancer, before it manifests. (see what I mean BRILLIANT). Now these two on smarts alone should have no problem bringing their ideas to market, but that’s not the case for everyone.

Take another good new friend of ours, Harold, his startup Yadoog is one of the best photo-sharing ideas we’ve seen in years. Harold is really friendly, outgoing and has ideas pouring out of his brain at a mile a minute. He’s also in his twenties and black, and admittedly a little rough around the edges. He’s got another great startup as well.

This is where Aaron Gray and his Atlanta based startup “The Legacy Movement” comes into play. Gray, like many

Aaron Gray founder of Atlanta based Legacy Movement

entrepreneurs, fell into the world of corporate America early in life but had an itch that needed to be fixed. Actually, two itches, that Gray is hoping to solve with one startup.

The Legacy Movement, he hopes, will become the Linked In for anyone who wants to do deals. Anyone who wants to buy or sell a company, or launch a new company will come to the Legacy Movement they way you go to LinkedIN for talent.

His second itch, helping the underserved entrepreneur ecosystem in America, will also be solved by the same startup.

Gray filled us in on The Legacy Movement, check out the interview below:

Austin Startup: VolunteerSpot Raises $1.5 Million From Nebraska New York & More

Whether you’re in charge of volunteers at a school’s PTA, your local church, civic organization or even the boy scouts, organizing volunteers can quickly turn into a big mess. Everyone typically means well when you first call out for volunteers and you end up with more than you need. Then, when it gets to be crunch time, people are too busy with other things or forget what their volunteer job was. This can lead to a chaotic mess for any volunteer coordinator or event organizer. Until recently, even the most organized of volunteer coordinators often pulled off a great event with a gigantic headache.

Karen Bantuveris, the founder and CEO of VolunteerSpot said enough was enough and took this problem into her own hands. She solved it by creating an online platform to manage volunteers. The service has taken off with over 1.5 million volunteer users already using the free platform. What’s even better is the fact that there’s been no real marketing. The startup has survived off word-of-mouth advertising and some social media.

Last week VolunteerSpot announced that they’ve raised $1.5 million dollars in a round of funding that they plan to use to bolster their marketing efforts.

The round was led by FF Venture Capital out of New York. The Central Texas Angel Network, the Baylor Angel Network and Angel List also participated in the round. But those aren’t the only angels Bantuveris was able to woo.

The Nebraska Angels ponied up $450,000 in the round. 14 of the Nebraska Angels contributed $25,000 or more towards that $450,000. Nebraska Angels Vice President Steve Clinch told SiliconPrairieNews that he liked Bentuveris from the minute he picked her up from the airport because of her “go-getter” spirit.

“We like to look at scalability. Does it have that?” Clinch said. “VolunteerSpot, from my investment standpoint — and I think I speak for a lot of other angel investors — does.”

Bart Dillashaw, President of the Nebraska Angels told SPN “The Nebraska Angels are excited about the investment in VolunteerSpot. VolunteerSpot provides a fantastic service to an attractive demographic, and we were incredibly encouraged by the strong loyalty and support of their users.”

“Until this point, we’ve grown almost entirely by word of mouth,” said Bantuveris told the Austin Statesman. “Now, with formal marketing money, we’ll be able to reach a wider group of power moms, teachers and community coordinators who drive the lion’s share of volunteer activities in this country.”

VolunteerSpot is one of the most scalable startups we’ve seen in quite sometime. Every kind of organization from gymnastics clubs to habitat for humanity can, and do use VolunteerSpot, and of course there are volunteer organizations in every town, city and state in the U.S.

Linkage:

Check out Volunteerspot here

Source: SiliconPrairieNews, Austin Statesman

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New Startup WarSocial Is A “Risk” Like HTML 5 Game, Interview Here

If you spent hours as a kid, or even a teenager planning, strategizing and taking over the world in the game Risk then you’ll be happy to know that two entrepreneurs have started something called WarSocial which is an HTML 5 game based on the fun, and strategy behind the game Risk.

The game was born out of another game that Bill Franceschine and his co-founder Dustin had played but was pretty much abandoned by it’s founder. They put their heads together and expanded that idea to form WarSocial. Now with one game out under their belts they may continue to develop other group played social games using HTML 5.

As a kid I played a lot of Risk, after graduating from Stratego. While many think of big multiplayer online and mobile games being fantasy, or science fiction based, it’s nice to see a startup bringing back a real thinker’s game.

We got a chance to interview Franceschine. Check out the quick interview below:

What is warsocial?

An HTML5 social game inspired by Risk.

Who are the founders and what are their backgrounds?

Bill: Serial web entrepreneur with a deep background in poker. There is your hint about what our next game might be!

Dustin: Software engineer who was previously CTO of a venture backed startup.

Where are you based?

Distributed team: Bill in California, Dustin in NYC, contractors in Canada and India.

How did the idea for WarSocial come about?

Dustin and I met playing a simliar game. A game the creator has all but abandoned the last few years but which still has a very loyal following who play it many hours per week for years. We both saw the potential for the game to be very popular if done correctly so we decided to do it.

Briefly tell us how the game is played?

2-7 players can play. Each is randomly assigned lands on a map and those lands are randomly assigned dice. Players attempt to win the whole map by attacking the lands of other players.

Can people win prizes? Money? Virtual goods?

We are currently giving away $500 per season (roughly six weeks) in cash prizes to the top ten on our leaderboard.

Tell us one of the challenges you faced in the startup process?

Our biggest challenge thus far has been onboarding additional programmers. The game is very popular with engineers so recruiting talented developers is easy. Indeed many people reach out to us volunteering to help. However since we use a number of cutting edge technologies onboarding them has been a challenge. They have to setup a Ruby on Rails environment to work with Redis, Heroku, Pusher, HTML5 and in the near future probably also Node.js. This isn’t an easy task.

Whats next for War Social?

Continue quickly iterating based on user feedback and growing the community. Bringing the game to Facebook, iOS and Android are also top of mind. Once we are ready we’ll be using our platform to launch additional games as well. We could easily launch most turn-based games.

Linkage:

Wanna play? Check out WarSocial here

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