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Video Interview With Memphis Startup Paytopia Making Payments Safer & Easier

There are a lot of payment startups out there today. There are consolidated payment solutions and mobile payment solutions coming out of the woodwork. None of them though are focused on convenience and safety, the way that Memphis startup Paytopia is.

We originally met Mike Hoffmeyer CEO and founder of Paytopia a few weeks back at 48 Hour Launch in Memphis. Hoffmeyer, like many others in Memphis isn’t just a local founder and CEO but he regularly gives back to the local startup community by mentoring, helping with pitches and pitching in at events like 48 Hour Launch. In fact when we met with him at our office hours in Memphis we were talking about the the startups he is helping at ZeroTo510 a medical device and biotech incubator in Memphis.

Hoffmeyer, a graduate of the most recent class at Seed Hatchery, loves helping other startups and of course working on Paytopia.

Hoffmeyer spent most of his career in the payment business. He worked with credit card processing and ACH processing (direct debit and checking account payments). Over the years he figured there had to be a better way then filling out these long, sometimes un-secure forms with all of your important information. Hoffmeyer set out to develop a system that was both easier and faster. That system is Paytopia.

In a nutshell Paytopia works like this.

If you buy something at an online merchant that uses the Paytopia system you will only need your email address and Paytopia pin. From there the merchant will ping your bank via the Paytopia system. Paytopia will send you a message with an authentication code for that transaction either in-app or SMS. You’ll then enter the authentication code into the transaction and voila, paid via your bank account.

Paytopia effectively takes a big bite out of payment fraud in the online environment by having a two step authentication system. The only way that a Paytopia customer could be defrauded was if the person committing the fraud had both the customers Paytopia pin and the authentication code delivered by app or SMS message. If someone tries to make a fraudulent Paytopia purchase the worst that can happen is the customer will get a bunch of text messages with authentication codes. Without that code, the fraudster can’t finish the transaction.

Check out more about this great new way to pay in the video below:

Linkage:

Find out more about Paytopia here at Paytopia.com

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Kansas City Startup: AgLocal Raises $1 Million Dollar Seed Round

We told you about Kansas City startup AgLocal back in April. This innovative startup is connecting meat lovers with real meat, direct from the farm, effectively cutting out the middle man which is commonly the grocery store.

Real true meat lovers want to make sure they have the highest quality cuts of meat without the worry of chemicals involved in processing or trickery used to make the cut weigh more with additives and such that are commonly found in meat packaged at national food chains.

While the vegans and vegetarians of the world may not like the idea behind the Fairway, KS based startup, farmers love it. According to the Kansas City Business Journal, AgLocal has already signed up over 100 farms to be part of it’s direct to consumer network.

Founder Naithan Jones is hoping to grow AgLocal organically (no pun intended) and sees a vision where anyone in the US can pick up their mobile phone and use an AgLocal app to get the best meat delivered to their door.

AgLocal has secured a $1 million dollar seed round led by local investors OpenAir Equity Partners.

Jones left the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundations Aspiring Entrepreneur FastTrac Program to undertake starting AgLocal.

Jones plans on using the money to add more engineers, build out it’s technology platform and increase partnerships with local farmers.

Linkage:

For more on AgLocal visit them here

Here’s an earlier story on AgLocal from Nibletz the voice of startups “everywhere else”

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Wisconsin Startup: WhiteWilly Launches, Barter At The Speed Of Light

A new bartering startup has launched in the great state of Wisconsin. WhiteWilly.com is the newest startup from serial entrepreneur John Bialk who, according to his angel.co profile, has been an entrepreneur since the age of nine.

Bartering is hot these days, in fact it’s so hot that A&E has started a new series called “Barter Kings”. We’ve even featured another bartering startup in Arizona called Kwiddy with the idea behind it to help facilitate actual in person bartering.

Whitewilly is a little different. Whitewilly addresses the biggest problem with bartering. That problem in it’s simplest form is:

John wants the item Tom wants, Tom wants the item that Scott wants, and Scott wants the item that John has.

Before WhiteWilly that typically meant that the barter deal was over. Scott couldn’t get to John’s item because he didn’t have the item John actually wants. However WhiteWilly facilitates all three trades in one click and then tells each member of the trade where to send their item.

So for a little more clarity lets put items with the example:

John has a new iPad but really wants a macbook. Tom has a macbook but doesn’t want the iPad he already has one. What Tom really wants is a DSLR camera. Scott is looking for an iPad but has a DSLR camera that John doesn’t want.

Does that sound confusing enough for you? It is, but here’s what WhiteWhilly does. WhiteWilly allows each member of the transaction to see what items each person is bartering. With one click of a button. So with one click, Scott is told to send his DSLR camera to Tom. Tom is told to send his Macbook to John and John is told to send his iPad to Scott.

You see John didn’t want the DSLR camera that Scott had he wanted the macbook that Tom had. With WhiteWilly everyone ends up happy and the transaction is done.

There are other barter sites out there and of course there is the barter heading on Craigslist.com however with those traditional sites, and with Craigslist, you need to wait for that one in a million opportunity that your exact trade comes up, or settle for something else.

Bartering is free (except for shipping) and can put good used items to use and make many people happy.

Linkage:

Check out WhiteWilly here

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Interview With Indiana Startup BizProps VIDEO

During my nearly 20 year radio career I had one of the ultimate secret weapons, it was called American Hole In One, this company is the company that sponsors the gigantic birthday game heard on many radio stations across the country as well as those hole in one for a million dollar contests that are held often at golf tournaments of any size.

The great thing about that company was that it allowed radio stations of any size to perform gigantic promotions which of course are the catalyst to generating new business and new leads.

An Indiana company by the name of BizProps is doing something very similar with companies and their online marketing. Now we’re not talking about badly written flashy banner ads that say “You’re our millionth customer click here”. We’re talking about a real promotional company with a solid marketing background that works.

Bizprops will help you generate leads, validate your message and amplify your reach through social media channels. To demonstrate the effectiveness of BizProps Tony Monteleone from BizProps ran a campaign surrounded by this past Thursday’s Verge Startups meeting, where they were presenters.

With very little social effort he was able to garner 1000 signups, lot’s of genuine Facebook likes and social media amplification. While Verge Indy startup meet ups sell out and have over 1000 members, they’re relatively small compared to BizProps newer clients like national consumer electronics chain HH Greg and Ford. So as you can see BizProps is making headway with their company.

Don’t let the big names scare you away though BizProps can scale their product to any sized company and they work with small companies all the way up through giant enterprises.

For more information check out the video interview below:

Linkage:

For more on BizProps click here

Check out our video interview with Verge Startups founder Matt Hunckler here

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Toronto Startup: Spongelab Is All About Science And Education INTERVIEW

Sponeglab Interactive, a Toronto based educational startup, celebrated their one year anniversary last month of their free online science education platform called Spongelab.

“In one year, we’ve grown from beluga to blue whale,” says Dr. Jeremy Friedberg, lead designer and co-founder of Spongelab Interactive. “As Spongelab expands, we can better provide state-of-the-art online science education technology to anyone in the world – at no cost.”

The online science learning solution now reaches users in 151 countries and its user registrations continue to grow at a rate of 40 percent monthly. Spongelab’s targeted audience of teachers and students have accessed over 1.5 million pieces of educational content thanks to an expanding library of over 800 games, images, videos, lesson plans and more.

The site now boasts over 800 different pieces of multimedia and interactive content. They’ve also created a variety of educational games like like Dragon Breeder (learn genetic inheritance through dragons breeding!),Knowledge Mine (biology trivia mixed with gem-busting puzzle elements) and the award-winning Build-a-Body (a drag-n-drop human anatomy app), along with hundreds of other interactives all playable for free online.

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

Los Angeles Startup: MoonShark Laucnhes, Founded By CAA & Qualcomm

Creative Artists Agency (CAA) and silicon giant Qualcomm have partner to launch a new mobile game development startup called MoonShark.

The new startup is going to leverage the high level celebrity relationships within CAA and the technical prowess of Qualcomm and the studios developers to make great mobile games, tied in with celebrities.

The CAA roster includes hundreds of the most well known celebrities. At launch, MoonShark is working with movie star and recording artist Jennifer Lopez. MoonShark has released their first game, Dance Pad, in a partnership with Lopez. The game is a finger dancing game reminiscent of dance dance revolution, except instead of using your feet and other body parts, players use their fingers to tap to the music. The game packs over 100 levels featuring a soundtrack with over 30 top artists.

“Moonshark was formed to connect uniquely talented artists with the best independent mobile developers to bring amazing ideas to life as mobile games,” said Matt Kozlov, CEO of Moonshark. “Our mission is to keep the Moonshark pipeline full of creative, addictive titles and give talent the means to share their creativity with fans on cutting edge mobile platforms.”

MoonShark’s second title is being developed in conjunction with LA based developer Mention Mobile and YouTube superstar Philip DeFranco. The company is also partnering for a future title with Hollywood director John Woo and his production company Tiger Hill.

“The collaborative development process at Moonshark has been an outstanding experience,” said Woo. “We worked with Moonshark to find just the right development team to bring these characters and concepts to life in an immersive, engaging game. The early versions of the title look absolutely amazing; I can’t wait until I can share more.”
Source: PR Newswire (http://s.tt/1gc2v)

Linkage:

Checkout MoonShark here

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Washington DC Startup: Contactually Manages Your Relationships Contextually In Your Inbox INTERVIEW

Washington DC startup Contactually launched their contact relationship management tool for email back in January. Contactually is backed by Dave McClure’s 500 startups and has also raised over $200,000 in angel funds.

Contactually’s tool works right in your inbox and connects you and your contacts through email and LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Klout, Quora, Flickr, and more social networks. The service syncs all your contacts relevant data into your new online address book that works seamlessly with GMail and Google Apps.

Contactually provides an easy to navigate contact dashboard which highlights your weekly activity along with your action items. It also sends reminders to you via email based on your action items with your contacts. It’s an extremely useful tool for business professionals, prosumers and even startups who often have a hard time keeping tabs on all the balls they are juggling.

We met some of the nice folks at Contactually when we were in DC for Capital Connection, TechBuzz and the TechCocktail Startup America events last month. Check out our interview below:

Valley Couple Moves To Nebraska To Launch Startup Bulu Box

We hear about startups moving from “everywhere else” to Silicon Valley to build scale and raise funds. Although we are huge advocates of the startup ecosystems across the country, regardless of how big or small, we know this happens all the time.

What we don’t hear of often, are entrepreneurs moving out of Silicon Valley to “everywhere else” to launch their startups. That’s exactly what husband and wife entrepreneurs Paul and Stephanie Jarrett have done.

The Jarrett’s startup, Bulu Box, is a subscription box of vitamins and supplements. The boxes are filled, put together and shipped from the Jarrett’s offices in beautiful Lincoln Nebraska, reports our friends at Silicon Prairie

Bulu Box recieved angel funding from Nebraska Angels. The Jarretts decided that with that commitment from Nebraska Angels and the much easier to manage costs of living, Lincoln was the place to launch.

So far Bulu Box has no direct competitors. Paul Jarrett told SPN that they know of a company doing muscle building boxes. There’s also health & wellness subscription box startup KlutchClub. As for just vitamins and supplements though it seems to be just Bulu Box.

Bulu Box also adds a social element to their subscription box model. The Bulu Box subscribers are part of a community. They can review the products in the box and talk with other users of the products.

Paul Jarrett told SPN that they are doing better than they forecasted in their business plan. They told SPN that their revenues were in the thousands after just one month of being in business and their subscriber number is higher than they thought it would be.

Linkage:

Boulder Startup: LinkSmart Comes Out Of Stealth Mode, Reports $4.7M In Funding

A Boulder startup that promises online publishers a better, smarter way to handle link management, has emerged from the secrecy of “stealth mode”.

LinkSmart announced their concept and product to the yesterday along with the fact that the startup has raised $4.7 million since starting the company in 2009.

LinkSmart’s venture backing comes from Boulder’s The Foundry Group as well as two Silicon Valley area venture groups, Sutter Hill and Costanoa.

Founder and CEO Pete Sheinbaum comes from an online publishing background. He was previously the founder and publisher of DailyCandy.

Text link advertising can be a lucrative source of income, especially for independent online publishers.

Companies like Kontera offer publishers link based advertising that serves up a mini popup hover ad over keywords. One of the pain points with services like these are that readers click out of a website to the ad supported content.

This is just one of the examples of the many things Sheinbaum and the LinkSmart team have been working on since 2009.

“I wanted to build a system for publishers, by a publisher, that satisfies the real business problems” they have with traffic management, user engagement and advertising, Sheinbaum said to the DailyCamera

LinkSmart’s Total Link Management is a SaaS (software as a service) that analyzes readers behavior on websites to serve and suggest more relevant links and keyword suggestions.

This is just the beginning for LinkSmart though they’ve moved into larger office space and plan on working on more publisher centric products and features.

Linkage:

Check out LinkSmart on their website here

Source: DailyCamera

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Seattle Startup: MoxTree The Social Network For Moms INTERVIEW

Whether you’re a brand new mom or a veteran mom, you can always use the camaraderie and advice of other likeminded mothers. If you’ve just had your first child and you have a problem or a question it’s great to have experienced moms to help you out. It’s also great to have new moms to buddy up with and go through the goods and the bads of raising children together.

These are the basic principles around connecting moms to each other, and Mox Tree a social network for moms.

The Seattle startup was founded by 33 year old Victoria Oldridge who is the mom to two children under two and a a half. She was attending different mom groups for play dates and book clubs and found that for some reason or another most of these groups don’t stay together. Obviously the internet and a social network just for moms would be a great place to start.

MoxTree is still prelaunch and they have a sign up bar at the top of the page but Oldridge is very optimistic about meeting the general need to connect for moms.

Sure you can meet moms in the neighborhood or at the park,but we’ve all seen at least one episode of Desperate Housewives. Of course school can be a great place to meet other moms, and it can also turn into a competitive war zone.

Using MoxTree mothers can learn more and more about each other while connecting and forming friendships without these other issues in the way.

We got a chance to talk with Oldridge about MoxTree in this interview:

Madison Startup: My Fashion Assistant, Is Well, Your Fashion Assistant

Nibletz spent Tuesday and Wednesday holding office hours in Madison Wisconsin. The startup scene is thriving as a matter of fact, our good friend Brad at Trinker in Madison helped organize a healthy sized, last minute meet up at the beautiful Union Terrace at UW.

Wednesday we spent some time with the co-working startups at Murfie’s office in downtown Madison.

One of the startups we met with was MyFashionAssistant and co-founder Louie Penaflor. Penaflor has a lot of great stories to tell about his work life in Manhattan at magazine publishing powerhouse Conde Nast which was actually the inspiration for MyFashionAssistant.

At first glance Penaflor does not look like he would be one of the founders of a fashion app for iOS and Android that has over 50,000 users. But boy he knows his stuff. Not only that but like many of the people we met in Wisconsin he is very excited about the Madison startup scene.

As for MyFashionAssistant, it’s a three panel slider app that allows users to take pictures of their wardrobe and then mix, match and mash them up in three sections which are shoes, pants (skirts etc) and tops. Now the beauty of MyFashionAssistant is that since right now most of the content is user generated, a fashion conscious man could easily use the same app.

Penaflor told us that he came up with the idea on many of his subway rides in New York. He noticed that everyone in New York is so laser lined focused on what’s right in front of them. “No one really looks at each other, but they do look at their phones and iPads” Penaflor told us.

On more than one occasion he would see groups of friends breaking the no looking rule to hover over someone’s phone or iPad and flip through pictures. It was that flipping through pictures that made a bell go off in Penaflor’s head and think about what if they could flip through their wardrobe.

Deciding what to wear is a major pain point for some folks. They spend hours thinking about what they’re going to wear. Colleagues of Penaflor’s at Conde Nast would bring up in conversation three days early what they might wear going out Saturday night.

Another major pain point is sometimes people forget exactly how this shirt or blouse matches that pair of pants, but not with MyFashionAssitant.

Users take pictures and catalog as much of their wardrobe as they want. Now when they’re at the mall or a new store they can easily see if something is going to look good on them. They can even open up the app while they’re flipping through magazines.

Right now MyFashionAssistant is supporting itself as it’s a paid app. Penaflor is weighing all of his funding options. He could use MyFashionAssistant’s treasure trove of data and market research as a revenue stream. He could partner with other companies, or even white label the technology for name brand stores.

Penaflor admits there are some apps that match fashion the way his does but he started MyFashionAssistant back when there were just 2000 apps in the Apple app store. Also, most competitors are name brand manufacturers who of course only feature their clothes within the app.

MyFashionAssitant supports thousands of different brands across their user base. Penaflor says he could see possibly doing advertising but not in the traditional way. Brands could pay to have their newest lines included in the app so that potential customers could try out the company’s new designs with the users current wardrobe.

Penaflor likes his app to a virtual fitting room. He said Steve Jobs validated the need for MyFashionAssistant by saying iPhone (smartphones) is a lifestyle device and of course fashion is all about lifestyle.

Linkage:

Check out MyFashionAssistant here at their webpage

Download for Android

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New York Startup: DoGoodBuyUs Charity Made Products Marketplace INTERVIEW

Charitable organizations are producing products all the time with the idea to sell those products as fundraisers. Everything form tie-dyed t-shirts, bracelets, hats,ties, baskets, even custom fitted chair backs have all at one time or another been created for and by charities.

The problem was, until last year, that there wasn’t a central online marketplace to buy and sell these charitable goods. Sure churches, civic organizations, and social activist charities may have sold their wares on ebay, Craigslist or their own personal website, but that still meant only a finite number of people would actually see the products and the charities they support.

Enter Zack Rosenberg and DoGoodBuyUs. Last July when the site launched, Rosenberg told the mother nature network:

“Right now, nonprofts don’t have a central marketplace where they can congregate and maximize awareness,” says Co-founder Zack Rosenberg. “I’ve tried to find a functional ‘marketplace for social good’ out there for aggregating meaningful products, and there just aren’t any adequate commerce platforms for distinguishing nonprofits exclusively.”

DoGoodBuyUs organizes all of their charitable products by type of product and also charity. If you’re looking for something specific it’s easy to find, if you’re looking for a specific cause to support, that too is easy to find. They have a wide variety of products to choose from and an even wider amount of causes to back. One of the most interesting things we found was this hammock for every hammock someone buys, treated mosquito nets are given to families in Africa or a malaria research class is held.

With such an innovative socially conscious idea we had to interview Rosenberg. Check out the interview below the break:

Interview With Chicago Startup: Swapidy

Swapidy is a brand new Chicago startup that just had it’s public launch Monday as part of Startup City at Chicago’s TechWeek 2012.

Swapidy is a pretty cool idea. The startup serves as the go-between for two people looking to swap, or straight up trade items of value or trade up if you want to and can find someone willing. For instance if you had an iPhone and you wanted to trade for the new Nexus 7 tablet by Google, you would be able to list your iPhone in an ebay style listing for trade.

Within the platform you would be able to describe the item, the condition and then say what items you would be willing to trade for. Once someone finds your iPhone and has the item you want to trade for, you set up the trade through Swapidy.

From there the two people trading items would send both items into Swapidy’s headquarters in Chicago. Their the Swapidy team would make sure that the listings matched, the both items worked and in the case of phones, that ESN’s were truly clean and the item was ready to go.

Once Swapidy approves the items for trade they are then sent to their final destinations.

That’s all well and good so far. It’s like an escrow system for trading valuable products. Swapidy brings a new layer of safety and protection to those wanting to trade something with someone not in their immediate area.

At launch though, Swapidy is having both traders pay for shipping along with a fee that gets paid to Swapidy. Swapidy uses that fee to facilitate the trade and then the final destination shipping. Swapidy founder Adam Ahmad suggested in the video below that the entire trade may cost both parties $25.

Now when you’re looking at acquiring an iPhone or a tablet, $25 doesn’t seem like that much money, but in the end it may be frowned upon since none of the money is changing hands from trader to trader.

On the other hand $25 may be worth the piece of mind that you’ll get from completing a trade on Swapidy and knowing that the item you are trading is exactly as it appears. When trading direct with shipping involved there are all kinds of factors that could leave one of the traders either empty handed or with a far inferior product.

We will definitely have to check in with Swapidy in a few months to see how the community of traders is growing and how many trades they’ve successfully enabled.

Check out the video below:

Linkage:

Try Swapidy now at swapidy.com

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Seattle Startup: iHear Network Is Like Your Own Personal News Radio Station INTERVIEW

A Seattle startup is revolutionizing the way you consume news. The startup is called iHear Network and their first product takes your news, tweets and other information and reads them aloud for you. It’s a text-to-speech app that focuses on the news, information and social items you want to hear.

Their first app launched ahead of SXSW 2011 and was designed to read tweets aloud to you. The Seattle based startup, founded by Matt Fitzsimmons, Matthew Markus and Geoff Simons has gone beyond Twitter to news and information.

We got a chance to talk with iHear Network CEO Paul Simons. Check out the interview below the break.