Comments Off on Nebraska Startup: Footwork To Take Some Of The Pain Out Of Political Canvassing0LikeLike 1,726
A startup in Nebraska is looking to optimize the footwork of door to door canvassers for political campaigns. The startup, appropriately called Footwork, couldn’t come at a better time as the United States prepares for a Romney vs Obama battle for the Presidency.
If you’re thinking that footwork takes canvassing to the Internet, you would be incorrect. Political candidates and those behind political causes know that in order to really make an impact, door to door canvassers are still a huge part of the equation.
Instead, Footwork helps organizers of canvassers optimize the canvassers route. In the past the door to door canvassers would typically have to jump out of a van, take a clipboard with the par affiliation data and find the house numbers that match printouts. With Footwork the data about the resident’s party affiliation is plotted on a mobile app on a smartphone typically supplied to the canvasser.
Now, with Footwork in hand there’s no need to match addresses over 100 sheets of paper.
Tegan Snyder and Phil Montag are the co-founders of Footwork and both gentlemen have lots of experience in grass roots political canvassing.
“When a canvasser is going door to door in today’s world they get a map and a list of voters by street. It’s up to them to determine what path to take and which houses to hits first,” Montag said to Betakit.com
Although most people who get involved in political canvassing do it for the cause itself, more and more political action committees and candidate campaigns have resorted to sites like Craigslist to recruit temporary workers. This sometimes results in canvassers pencil whipping signatures for a petition, or lying about actually visiting a house, or block of houses, just to get paid.
Footwork provides real time location monitoring for the canvass team leaders so you know that the paid canvassers are actually out the knocking doors and meeting people and not just pushing a button on an app.
The final piece to Footwork is social integration. Canvassers can now share their location is their social media channels which can at times spark conversation and awareness of the campaign.
Footwork charges 1 cent for every house that the canvassers visit using the app. Snyder and Montag say that with Footwork in hand canvassers are seeing up to 30 houses per hour, thus making it cheaper than mailings, traceable and mor efficient.
There are some competitors out there but none seems to incorporate all three functions in such a robust way.
Footwork is in Beta now, and plans to be in a full public release in August when the election races begin to heat up, and also just ahead of the Republican and Democratic National Conventions, which will have a huge startup presence this year
Comments Off on Boston Startup: Abroad101 Moves Out Of The Nest INTERVIEW0LikeLike 2,566
Back in April we reported on an innovative EdTech startup in Boston called Abroad101. Abroad101 is like a travelocity of sorts for those students looking to study abroad.
Abroad 101 allows users to review just about every aspect of a study abroad program. With the real feedback from students who’ve been through the study abroad programs, you can find out how the teaching staff and curriculum are, how the shopping in the city is, how the nightlife is and even if it’s safe to walk from the car to the classroom by yourself at night. The idea behind Abroad101 was an untapped space and the Boston company and MassChallenge graduate are doing a great job of filling it.
So great in fact, it’s time to leave the safety and security of the MassChallenge nest and branch out on their own.
We got to talk with the guys from Abroad101 about just that, see the quick interview below the break
Comments Off on New York Startup: Padcaster Turns Your iPad Into A Production Studio0LikeLike 2,129
While to most the iPad is a truly magical device, what makes the iPad even more magical is the amount of accessories available for it. The iPhone has equally as many (if not more currently) cool accessories as well.
You can turn your iPad into an arcade machine, amplifier, guitar teaching tool, midi throughput device, turntables and now an on the go video and photo production studio.
Josh Apter, founder and president of Union Square based Padcaster, created the Padcaster out of necessity.
The Padcaster is an invention born out of my own needs as a filmmaker. I was shooting interviews with an iPad 2 about a year ago and was frustrated that there was no way to mount it onto a tripod. That’s when I decided to build something myself,” said Josh Apter, founder and president, The Padcaster, LLC. “Now, just about a year later, we have the Padcaster. I’ve been testing the prototype and I have to say, I’m quite pleased with the results. Not only can I record high-quality footage right from the iPad, but I can also cut, add effects, and upload it to our Twitter, Facebook, Vimeo and blog feeds simultaneously – all from the same device, almost instantly.”
The Padcaster is house in an aluminum frame that allows itself to be mounted to after market lenses, microphones, and other accessories needed for great photographs and great videos. It also has a tripod mount on the bottom which means you can mount the secure Padcaster to any tripod, monopod or other device with a tripod mount.
Apter created an accessory called the Lenscaster that is sold separately from the Padcaster and allows the ability to hook the Padcaster up to cinema style lenses and other lenses that connect via a 35mm lens adapter (not included)
Both the Padcaster and the Lenscaster help move the iPad from consumer device to a more professional on the go photo and video studio.
Comments Off on Pennsylvania Startup: Dollar Rubber Club, What Do You Think They Do? Interview0LikeLike 2,509
You may be surprised to find out that grown men still get school girl giddy about buying condoms at the local drugstore. I’m in my thirties and still see the discomfort that some of my friends my age have going into WahlGreens and buying condoms. The experience is compounded when you have to ask the pharmacist or store worker where the condoms are located.
There’s a chance that you could bump into your ex-girlfriend, your girlfriends mom, someone you went to school with or someone that knows your parents. Even in you late 20’s and 30’s this can be a source of embarrassment or at the least, a slightly uncomfortable situation.
Picture this scenario, you go into your local CVS thinking that tonight may be the night you have sex with your new girlfriend for the first time, and then when you’re coming down the condom aisle, purchase in hand, your new girlfriend shows up to pick up a prescription. These things happen all the time.
That’s why Dan Elwell and Anthony Eagleton, the co-founders of “Dollar Rubber Club” have gone head first into the condom by mail business.
Dollar Rubber Clubs condoms are priced competitively, come in discreet packaging and are even sent with a little silk bag that you could keep in your sock drawer.
In the interview below the break Elwell explains why the condom business, and how they stockpile condoms and turn orders around same time to keep the customers satisfied.
If you live in a big metro area or one of those areas like Hampton Roads Virginia that’s like nine cities built into one, than a job search can be painful based on the geography alone. Take Houston for example, a quick internet search revealed hundreds of jobs in Houston, most of the ads without addresses. Hmmm, what is someone to do, especially someone that doesn’t drive.
Never fear, a Houston entrepreneur has set out to solve that problem with a very interesting startup that meshes job searching and Google Maps. The startup, called JobPlotter, does exactly what you’d imagine with the background info we’ve provided, it plots available jobs on a Google Map.
Why didn’t you think of that? That’s easy because Paul Chittenden did. After experiencing the pain of looking for a job and then locating the job prospects on a map, in Houston.
In the interview below the break, Chittenden explains how he came about the idea for JobPlotter and how they are integrating job data into a Google Map. Now, JobPlotter users can find jobs, and then find where the job actually is.
Comments Off on 5 Great Angel.Co Startups From Everywhere Else: Minnesota0LikeLike 2,634
A few weeks ago we started a series here on nibletz.com of startups from everywhere else that appear on the Angel List (angel.co). We get a weekly email from angel.co, and while they’ve been getting better, typically they are dominated by startups from Silicon Valley and New York. In our series we feature a handful of startups that appear on the list, that aren’t necessarily trending by angel list standards, but are growing as startups from “everywhere else”.
So for this installment we’re exploring five startups from Minnesota.
Mashalot
Mashalot is a social shopping website. It combines the power and influence of Facebook, daily deals, group buying, and the “negotiator” concept from price line.
Late last year Mashalot co-founder John Marino told Minnesota’s Fox 9 that the more influence you have the better your negotiation will be. Marino explained that if you saw a great deal on something like a Black Friday deal or a Cyber Monday deal, you could take it to the merchant (if they are a member of Mashalot) and see if they’ll give you the product for that price. It’s up to the merchant to honor that price or not.
This is where your social influence comes in via Facebook. Naturally if you’re one of those people with thousands of friends on Facebook, the merchant may respond favorably because of your influence, and the fact that Mashalot will post your deal (with your permission) to Facebook.
Along the way you can earn badges and more influence the more you use the service.
They launched Mashalot on 11/11/11 and have since taken down the 1.0 site while they retweak it for a 2.0 launch.
This Minneapolis startup has been hailed as the “E-harmony of home services” by local tech publication tech.mn basically it’s a mobile app and website to help you find the best person for that in home job.
Think Craigslist vs Angies List vs Zaarly vs a date or recommendation site.
The Heroic engine combines recommendations and referrals from a service providers previous clients along with friend recommendations to serve up the top list of people for a job. Things like painting, cutting the grass, gutter cleaning, basic carpentry and most in home jobs are all featured on Heroic.
Co-Founders Justin Barrett and Dan Linstroth know that people nowadays don’t have the time, to interview and weed through hundreds of possible people to do a job. They also know that if you bid a job out on Craigslist half of the respondents are in Nigeria.
With Heroic you can find service providers in your neighborhood that have good ratings and can get your job done on your time line.
Tech.mn reports that Heroic received a $600k seed round from a network of angels in the Minneapolis area. They are rolling out the service in Minneapolis, Denver and Chicago to start and hope to raise a Series A round in the not so distant future to expand into another five markets.
Nothing is more effective for a business than word of mouth. When you combine word of mouth with the power of social media and the internet you’ve got a force to be reckoned with, if you execute correctly. Enter in Hypespark.
Hyperspark is a Minneapolis based startup that incubated at Project Skyway. The idea behind HypeSpark is phenomenal. Local businesses get great advertisement by social endorsement from loyal customers. The local businesses get an endorsement every time the customer shares anything on the web. The customer gets big deals and discounts for being the businesses personal advertising vehicle.
On the surface HypeSpark is a short link service with a micro ad in front of it. Say Lori loved her local bike shop and her local bike shop was on HypeSpark. If Lori agrees to be their endorser, every time she shares a web site link, youtube video or any other url with her friends or social network a real quick micro ad for the bike shop shoes up saying that Lori endorses that company.
It’s kind of like bread with most of the work already done.
I’m always looking for things to replace the pure bull crap that is Klout. I’ve found a really great social media filter in Friendsignia, and now I’ve found Minneapolis based Proliphiq, which offers incredible social media analytics, recommendations and information on social media, influence and content. I’m not sure if it’s free because they are still in beta but right now I can say that with all the social media dashboards I’ve checked out in the last two years, this one offers the most information I’ve ever seen for free.
When you go to Proliphiq’s website at Proliphiq.com you can search for a person by their name, social media identity or a topic.
Searching a name or social media identity will show you their recent posts across networks, content, and their influence on the topics they know the most about. From there you can even add topics that you find that person is a valuable source on. Or, conversely you can give them a thumbs down. This crowd sourced rating is 10x better and more effective than the pulling numbers out of ones posterior end that Klout uses.
For topics you can find the most influential people for your topic and from there you can follow them and keep them in your feed to stay on top of information that’s relevant to you.
Finally you can tweak your own profile and tell the Proliphiq community what you’re all about.
Women owned startup RockYourBlock is the LinkedIn spot for teens. Teens in the twin cities can create a RockYourBlock profile via their Facebook account for the purpose of sourcing jobs for teens. These jobs can be odd jobs, paper routes, internships and other teen type jobs.
The site also allows the teens to create a resume based on the work experience they have along with any accolades that they’ve scored in the RockYourBlock network.
“Teen unemployment is at an all-time high right now across the nation, three times the national rate. The majority of people and companies want to help the next generation learn the value of hard work and responsibility in addition to create job opportunities for them but don’t know where to begin.”
Young’s strategy is to widen their reach to markets like Milwaukee and Chicago later this year and then expand nationwide in year three.
While there have been plenty of teen focused social networks this is the first time that teenagers have had a social network devoted to their lives in the work force. Hopefully they will create a way to export their RockYourBlock page to LinkedIn when the teen crosses over to the real world. This is a really innovative startup in a unique space.
Ed Gandia of Atlanta, nailed it on the head when talking about Toursphere’s Boston Tourguide app to the Boston Herald. Gandia said “In tours there’s always that annoying person in the crowd asking too many questions.
The other part of that is there’s always that person in the tour, besides the guide, that seems to know everything about the location, buddy either get a job as a tour guide or GTFO.
Those are just some of the problems that South Boston based startup, Toursphere, is solving. Toursphere is exactly what you’re thinking an app that takes you on a tour, in this case in Boston Massachusetts. Toursphere’s Boston Insider’s tour takes tourists on a tour of historic downtown Boston by some of Boston’s notable celebrities like Dicky Barrett of the Mighty Mighty Bosstones. Author Michael Patrick MacDonald has also gotten into the narration for Toursphere.
Tour apps are getting heavily criticized in most cities that use them. People seem to think they have no personality and are dull and mundane. That’s not necessarily the case with Toursphere.
While some appreciate a chummy tour guide who’s hitting you over the head with barely funny jokes and “charming” personality, others think that app guided tours are great.
One of the main benefits to an app guided tour is the ability to go at your own pace. I mean imagine taking a tour down Beacon street and deciding that you want to try some cute little coffee shop, or cupcake shop, and you want to do it now. The tour guide isn’t going to stop, however you can always resume the tour later.
Admittedly, Toursphere isn’t for everybody, however people in other cities are flocking to Toursphere and founder/CEO Rob Pyles. Pyles has created an electronic system where other companies can create their own tour guide apps easily. That system has already been implemented in Chicago, Miami, New Orleans and Washington DC as well as other major cities.
I travel a lot and at sporadic times. I also don’t like having to fork over $40 for a tour and then have to tip the guy. I’m more of a tour at my own pace kind of guy, so Toursphere would definitely work for me. Pyles has developed a monthly subscription rate for businesses that utilize the tour app, making it free for the user. Free is good. Boston is all about Free-Dom you know that Tea and all that, yeah you can hear more about that on the tour.
Comments Off on Virginia Startup: SynkMonkey Keep Your Friends, & Your Plans In Sync INTERVIEW0LikeLike 2,048
We are all very aware of how difficult it is to keep plans in sync when it comes to life on the go running through a smartphone. Whether you’re a group of high school students, fraternity brothers or even golfing buddies, keeping your entire group “in sync” can be a challenge.
Now there’s of course Facebook and Facebook events but one of the huge disadvantages to Facebook is how hard it is to get distracted. I couldn’t tell you the number of times I needed an events address or to ping a friend for somewhere to go and then got sidetracked from my other notifications or even my wall. On the iPhone, iPad or Android phone this can be a wreck.
Enter Charlottesvile Virginia startup SyncMonkey. They combine three very key and important elements in events, activities and staying in sync. Those elements are calendars, mapping and friends. Using this app over traditional event apps keeps you in close contact with everyone that’s supposed to be there.
We got a chance to talk with Hunter Murchison of SyncMonkey about their excited startup, application and some big news, that they’re finally ready for Android. Check out the interview after the break and check out these great interviews, after this one.
Comments Off on Detroit Accelerator: TechTown Hosting Startup Soup August 3rd0LikeLike 2,282
The creativity in pitch events gets better and better. We’ve all heard of the Startup Bus to Austin’s South by Southwest Festival. Several cities have had Startup Trains, where people work on startups on a day long train ride, we’ve even heard of a Startup Beach House (that was unfortunately cancelled).
Now, Wayne University’s TechTown Accelerator is hosting Startup Soup.
The event is open to the public and will be held on August 3rd. Startups that want to pitch must register at the link below before July 31, 2012.
The pitches will be five minutes and there doesn’t seem to be a theme for the pitch contest. There is a nice $1500 cash prize along with 5 free TechTown seminar passes for the winner. The winner will be chosen by a panel of local tech community judges.
The finalists will all receive complimentary tickets to 2 future TechTown events. The events at TechTown are all meant for startup enrichment and offer valuable business resources and continuing education.
After the pitches and the winners are selected there will be an evening of networking, and you guessed it… soup.
The event starts at 5:30pm August 3rd at TechTown 2051 Rosa Parks Boulevard in Detroit.
Comments Off on Portland Startup: Overhead.FM Making Headway At Home0LikeLike 2,149
2012 Brown University graduate Stephen Hebson and his co-founder and fellow Brown graduate Parker Wells have developed a new startup called Overhead.fm. The company has decided to tackle a market that hasn’t had much disruption in a number of years. That market, is over head music at venues like restaurants, coffee shops and some retail outlets.
While many may think that business owners just hook up a sirius satellite radio, mp3 player or cd player, there can be serious ramifications to that. While they don’t wear uniforms or carry badges, “inspectors” for lack of a better word, from ASCAP and BMI are constantly visiting businesses to see what type of music they are playing overhead. If a business owner isn’t paying for licensing of music being played for the “public” they can find themselves staring down the barrel of a business life threatening lawsuit.
Muzak, one of the world’s leaders in overhead music charges establishments by their capacity and traffic. Restaurants and businesses can pay anywhere between $30 a month to nearly $200 to play music overhead. While it may seem logical to just not play music, music keeps patrons in their businesses longer and spending more money.
According to Mainebiz, Hebson had received some insider knowledge on the ins and outs of overhead music by first working at a coffee shop and then holding an internship at ATO Records in New York. After learning how high the fees were for licensing music he thought there had to be a better way, thus overhead.fm was born.
Hebson and Wells are building up a great library of music that is heavily weighted by more successful local acts in Portland and Providence. The company is offering the bands a great value proposition by allowing them access to analytics for plays, locations, frequency and more in exchange for licensing their music. The band wins by getting access to the proprietary information that overhead.fm collects. Overhead.fm wins by not having to payout actual fees.
Overhead.fm is going to start curating more “paid” for music shortly. They recently won the student track in the 2012 Rhode Island Business Plan Competition. With that honor came a prize package of $40,000 including some seed capital and legal services to the tune of $10,000.
Hebson told Mainebiz that they plan on using some of those legal services to construct a contract for licensing music to the company.
Hebson feels that businesses will enjoy overhead.fm because of it’s eclectic library featuring local artists. Right now in their test phase, the service starts off as a 30 day free trial and then goes to a $25 per month subscription model. Now remember that may be a little heavy for a streaming service on a personal side but it’s quite affordable when it comes to music being used for overhead systems in businesses.
We are treating [Providence and Portland] as test markets. We know these cities have pretty big independent music and retailer cultures and are small enough that we can get a lot of saturation pretty quickly and use that data” to build out the model, says Hebson said to MaineBiz. “We’ve already had a lot of success at businesses that are already playing off the independent or local vibe already,” he says.
Comments Off on TechStars Announces Two Scholarships To Fall DEMO Event In October0LikeLike 1,976
If you’re a currently unfunded startup or student run startup there are 20 spots available for the DEMO scholarship (read free) program. DEMO is one of the most lucrative pitch events held in Silicon Valley and startups from “everywhere else” always attend.
During the most recent session, this past spring, we saw Rawporter pitch. Rawporter is a citizen journalism startup based in Charlotte NC. They were one of the scholarship recipients at the last event. We talked with co-founder Kevin Davis after DEMO who provided us with this interview.
Smurks, a Chicago startup also pitched at Demo and we ran this story about the startup that puts the “heart” in the machine. Smurks has found a way to offer a quantified analysis of peoples feelings. Really impressive stuff, check it out here.
TechStars, the nationwide “everywhere else” incubation program has announced that they have two scholarship spots available for the fall DEMO session October 1-3 in Silicon Valley.
The first recipient will be an unfunded TechStars company. The second spot will be for a student run TechStars company.
If you think you’ve got what it takes, you should definitely consider pitching for a spot here.
A Portland Oregon startup up that specializes in producing smartphone apps for conferences and events, has been acquired by event planning software company Cvent. CrowdCompass is Cvent’s second acquisition in just one week. Last week Cvent, who’s based in Virginia, acquired Austin startup Seed Labs.
“Let’s be clear: We bought this for their people,” said Cvent chief executive Reggie Aggarwal. “We’re going to let the management team run the place they way they’ve been doing it.”
Mobile apps and technology have been changing trade shows, conferences and conventions over the past few years. It’s already been seen that the more robust your tradeshow app is the better. South By Southwest 2012 had a great app that covered every speck of the event officially produced by SXSW. As did the CES app earlier in the year.
Last fall the Oregon company raised $1.3 million led by the Oregon Angel Fund.
CrowdCompass was founded in 2009 and makes apps that connect event go-fers to specific events, other attendees and social media.
CrowdCompass corporate portfolio includes event apps for
E*Trade, Daimler, and Intuit; and meetings industry organizations, like The Meetings Technology Expo; and associations, like the American Bar Association, Association of General Contractors and American Society of Anesthesiologists.
“Cvent’s success is predicated on delivering best-of-breed technology solutions to our event industry clients and partners. This acquisition is an important step to ensuring we continue to lead the industry in the adoption of mobile technologies,” said Reggie Aggarwal, Founder and CEO of Cvent. “We selected CrowdCompass because it was clear that they are a leading developer of native mobile apps for business and association events. With experience building hundreds of apps for a wide variety of mid-to large-sized public and private events, the addition of CrowdCompass gives us unparalleled expertise in creating mobile apps for events. We have offered mobile friendly event web sites for some time, but the CrowdCompass product takes the mobile experience to the next level.”
To date CrowdCompass has produced 435 event apps which have seen over 500,000 downloads for Blackberry,Android and iOS.
“Becoming part of Cvent will allow CrowdCompass to operate on a greater scale than it ever has before,” said Tom Kingsley, Founder and CEO of CrowdCompass. “Our technologies and expertise will be a great fit with Cvent’s unmatched reputation and client base; we’re looking forward to all the services we will be able to develop under the Cvent umbrella.”
“The CrowdCompass app demonstrates the excellence and innovation that attendees have come to expect from the Mental Health and Addictions Conference,” said Courtney Young, Digital and Social Media Specialist at the National Council for Community Behavioral Healthcare. “We had over 3,000 healthcare professionals and administrators in attendance, and the response to the app was overwhelming, with 80% of them downloading it. By offering the CrowdCompass app, we showed our attendees that we are listening to their demands and care deeply about their conference experience.”
Cvent was founded in 1999 by Reggie Aggarwal. Aggarwal took the company from a two person team to a team of over 900 in McLean Virginia, the city that was once home to America Online. Cvent has been profitable over the last ten years.
Comments Off on London Startup: StreetPin Takes The Community Bulletin Board Mobile0LikeLike 2,489
By a show of hands who’s old enough to remember the community bulletin board at the grocery store? Sure there are probably some grocery stores that still have them, but they don’t fill up like they used to. Everyone has resorted to some kind of app or some kind of social network.
Well London startup StreetPin is looking to bring the community bulletin board back in a social, mobile sort of way. It’s actually a novel concept. They are of course building it in London and hopefully they will scale up large enough to adopt here in the U.S.
Now we know that Craigslist has a community section but StreetPin is more about short little pin up notes that are looking for reaction, remedy and answers as quick as possible. It’s kind of like a simplified version of both Craigslist and Zaarly all rolled up into one with a sense of urgency and immediacy about it.
We got a chance to talk with StreetPin co-founder and CEO Tim Buick about StreetPin. He gives some great examples of how to use the new service in the interview below the break.
Comments Off on We Interview Ari Rashti Of StartEngine And Angel Vision Investors0LikeLike 2,125
Over the past weekend, I was able to interview Ari Rashti, from StartEngine and Angel Vision Investors. We where able to talk to him about how the Los Angeles Tech Scene has come and gone, and then coming back again. Along the same lines we dug deeper into why LA hasn’t seen as many hot startups come from here, as well as the valuation disparity we have from the Bay.
Kyle
Nick Tippmann