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Knoxville Startup: Virtuous Products Wins Business Plan Competition

Imagine if you could take recycled bottles and turn them into flooring, countertops and even outdoor casual furniture. Well you don’t have to imagine it anymore because Mark Wassenaar and his startup Virtuous Products Inc, have created it. Well at least the business plan for it.

The material called Sedonite uses recycled glass with the strength and look of resin or cement based products at a fraction of the cost, and much greener.

“We were impressed by all the entrepreneurs who took part in this competition,” Todd Napier, executive vice president of The Development Corporation of Knox County and co-presenter of the program with the Knoxville Chamber and Tech20/20 said. “Virtuous Products shows an enormous amount of promise and the judges indicated they expect big things from the start-up in the years to come.”

The Knoxville Chamber Business Plan Competition actually started back in April. That’s when Wassenaar submitted his original business plan. He was able to survive four rounds of judging which included written summaries and in person proof of concept presentations.

Tabletops made out of recycled glass and "sedonite" are why Virtuous Products won the Knoxville Chamber Competition (photo: Sedonite.com)

As the winner of the competition Virtuous Products wins:

$10,000 grant for start-up costs
$15,000 potential investment: Tech 20/20 Venture Start-up Fund
One-year’s rent at the Fairview Technology Center
Accounting services provided by Rodefer Moss & Company
Business coaching provided by CEO Advisors
IT Hosting/Services by The IT Company & Digital Crossing Networks
Legal Services by Kathleen Zitzman
Chamber membership by the Knoxville Chamber
Business coaching by Tech 20/20

Wassenaar has plans to use the prize money to purchase a glass crusher, which will allow him to take recycled beer bottles and smash them into a sand-like consistency. From there, his company takes the material and can put it into a molding with a proprietary bonding agent that creates a faux stone surface that is as strong and less expensive than most competitors on the market today.

“I’ve been in manufacturing my whole life. I try to get out but it just keeps coming back because there is so much creativity involved. I literally lie awake at night thinking of new ideas,” Mark Wassenaar, the founder and CEO of Virtuous Products said. “This competition, even if I didn’t win, it would have been an unbelievable opportunity because the competition really helped me along the way.”

Linkage:

Find out more about Sedonite and Vertous Products here

Find out more about the Knoxville Chamber here

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Lithuanian Startup: GigBasket Moves To US To Launch Job Pinning Site INTERVIEW

The two Lithuanian co-founders behind startup GigBasket have moved to the United States to launch their job “pinning” platform. GigBasket allows users to save job openings to a users GigBasket account from virtually any site in the world.

If you’re familiar with Pinterest and the “pinning” concept of being able to go to any website and “pin” something which then posts that something to Pinterest, then you will automatically understand how GigBasket does the same thing for jobs.

The platform works in two different ways you can add a job manually that you may have seen online, or you can add the bookmarklet to your browser by simply dragging it to your bookmarks bar and then hit the GigBasket button anytime you see a job you find worthy of applying for.

GigBasket allows you to create your own profile after logging in using your linked in account. GigBasket also pulls through data from your LinkedIn account to make keywords for your job search.

Rounding out the simple, but feature packed site are an interview calendar and a dashboard that shows you what jobs you’re “tracking” and what jobs you’ve “applied to”. It makes it extremely easy to remove a job if you’ve either lost interest or the job has been filled.

We got a chance to speak with Eddy Balcikonis, co-founder and CEO of GigBasket in the interview below. He tells us about the GigBasket platform and why he and his co-founder Eugene, moved to America to launch this very useful startup.

So What’s The Big Deal About Amsterdam Startup: Karma

(photo: TheVerge)

The tech based interwebs typically go hog wild anytime Josh Topolsky and the crew at The Verge write about anything. It’s just about the same reaction when Michael Arrington suggests something on Twitter. 90% of the time both Arrington and the Verge are right about what they are writing about. But as far as I’m concerned, not this time.

An Amsterdam based startup called “Karma” was in the spring class of TechStars New York and presented on Thursday morning during TechStars NY Demo day.

Their product was actually pretty cool, and under a different set of circumstances, or maybe two years ago, it would have been a game changer. But really, it’s not. Combine that with the fact that they lied on stage during their demo day presentation and we’re quickly called out by Uber’s CEO Travis Kalanick, and well, maybe they should just go back to Amsterdam.

But before we get into the lies, the cars and the planes… let’s talk about why fundamentally this is a stupid idea, in 2012.

Karma is a “hot spot” sharing startup. According to their pitch deck they promote what they are calling “social telecom”. It works like this. The actual user purchases a re-packaged Sprint/Clearwire Overdrive miff portable hotspot for $69 from Karma. They then pay as they go $14 per gig for internet.

Then, they share their wifi with complete strangers. Now it’s pretty secure that’s not the issue. When a sharer signs onto XX persons Karma mi-fi they are taken to an “about” page about the owner of the hotspot, perhaps you can do some of your own advertising or invite them to see pictures of your dog.

The “sharer” signs into the miff using their Facebook and they are given 100mb of internet on that particular mifi. The person who’s miff they are on is given a matching, free 100mb. So potentially if you let 10 people sign on per week through their Facebook you’re earning an extra GB in free internet from Karma.

Now statistics show that the average Joe uses 221mb of internet a month so it’s really not a bad deal on the surface.

Why don’t I like it? Well first off it’s Clearwire’s WiMax service. In June 2012 unless you live under a bridge in the arctic circle you know that Clearwire nor Sprint is taking on the daunting task of building out any more wi-max network. That faux G is over and making way for LTE.

Clearwire most likely has no interest in this partnership with Karma for their LTE product which is still a good ways away.

Now secondly, it may be against something you didn’t read in the Clearwire TOS, in fact it probably is, but there’s nothing that says you can’t sell your wifi/mifi password for say $2.00 or $5.00 to a colleague or friend. If you get a couple of those guys, then you’re paying your whole internet bill in no time.

Then there’s that whole issue of Facebook, and tracking and data going back to Facebook, Karma, Clearwiere and everybody’s partners.

Next is, how do you go about sharing this anyway. Do you sit down in Central Park and say “Hey Bro, you can get on my wifi, all you gotta do is sign in through Facebook”, yeah that doesn’t sound the last bit shady.

Now we may not have to worry about Karma. They lied on the stage at TechStars Demo day today and it didn’t slip past the great crew over at Betabeat.

Reportedly (and now admittedly), Karma’s CEO Robert Gaal, stood on the stage at Demo Day and said that they had already forged partnerships with ride sharing startup Uber and American Airlines. Whoops….

Apparently their partnership with Uber was a total lie and Kalanick quickly took to Twitter to correct Mr.Gaal with these tweets (source:BetaBeat)

Gaal failed miserably at trying to diffuse the situation and then eventually took to Tumblr to all but admit he was lying and not just about Uber about American Airlines too. Gaal said on Tumblr:

We apologize profusely for claiming Uber and American Airlines are working with us – a statement we never received explicit permission to use. And we apologize to TechStars and the whole TechStars community. We did not mean to overstate anything or unfairly take advantage of the network and the opportunities it has opened up for us.

The Verge and their comment community hypothesized that for Karma to be truly successful in the United States, they would need to partner with one of the major carriers, after today’s spectacular Demo Day performance, that’s not likely happening.

Linkage:

I mean if you want to, you can check out Karma here

Here’s the source piece from the Verge

And the story about the mistruths from BetaBeat

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Brother can you spare a Big Mac?

Nebraska Startup: Arch Get Photo & Video Answers To Your Questions From Anyone

A Nebraska based startup called “Arch” has a different spin on the recommendation space. With Arch, you join the ArchCrowd network and then you are tasked with the duty of helping your fellow Arch network members with their requests for information, pictures and video.

Suppose you live in Kansas and you’re about to partake on your first trip to our nation’s capital in Washington DC. If you sign up for Arch you can ask questions, like “what is there to do in Washington DC”. From there Arch will find someone in the Arch network in Washington DC who can answer your question.

The Arch person answering your question can take photos or videos of things to do in DC and send them back to you. You’ll receive a push notification when a fellow Arch member has responded to your request. As more and more Arch members arrive in Washington DC to start their day or what have you, they will also get a notification to answer your question. Soon you’ve crowd sourced a bunch of things to do in Washington DC.

Arch makes it easy to supply answers via photos, videos or even just text. If you’re looking for things to do, hotels to stay at, places to eat, places to walk or just a quiet corner to read a book on a trip, Arch lets you connect with real people who have decided they want to help people, by signing up for Arch.

The Arch platform at archcrowd.com is still in private beta. In fact Co-founder Joe Smith attended Apple’s WWDC conference in San Francisco CA this week and was fielding Arch requests from the San Francisco area all week long.

The Arch team of four co-founders spoke last month at Cornstalks a monthly forum for individuals interested in high growth entrepreneurship.

The team includes: (from their website)

Tim Hermanson: (top left) Arch project manager – Tim received a B.S. in business administration/finance from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 2006. Tim has over 5 years of experience managing various projects at a large, local bank with a focus on compliance and operations.

Mike Ackerman: (top right) Webserver architecture and API specification for Arch – Mike graduated from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 2006 with a B.S. in Computer Engineering and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering. He has since worked in Industrial Automation and Software Engineering focusing on .NET.

Joe Smith: (bottom left) Mobile client application design and implementation – Joe received a B.S. in Computer Engineering from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Joe has 6+ years experience as a software engineer designing and implementing both server-side and user-facing software projects using a variety of technologies and platforms.

Kari Petsche: (bottom right) Arch graphic design lead – Kari graduated from The Art Institute of Pittsburgh with a degree in graphic design in 2001. In the past ten years, Kari has won several design awards working with clients such as Tim Burton, Warner Brothers, NFL, MLB, NHL, NBA, 20th Century Fox, Tavern On The Green & The Bonnaroo Music Festival.

Linkage

Check out Arch at their website here

Follow them on the Angel List here

Big props to our homies at Silicon Prairie For this story and that pic we borrowed

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Boston Startup: PingUp, Text Messaging Businesses INTERVIEW

When Boston startup PingUp, co-founder and CEO Mark Slater was onhold for an ungodly amount of time with his cable company for a two minute conversation a lightbulb went off in his head. He thought to himself, “wouldn’t it be great if I could text the cable company”. That’s where the idea for Pingup came from, as we’ll learn in just a few minutes in our interview below.

Imagine the ability to text in a tee time at your favorite golf course, or text the auto shop to see if your cars done. Now there’s no need for waiting on hold forever or miss-communicating information with a third party in trying to find out basic information.

Imagine if you could text the restaurant to say you’re running five minutes late. Maybe you would want to text your favorite clothing store to see if they have the pants you love in your size.

None of these elements of conversation take more than a minute on the phone, and even less time via text message. While some people I know don’t get the inherent idea about why texting is such a great method of communication for business, it is.

Texting has become such a natural way of life and as millennials pour into the work force a shift will come and texting will continue to trump actually talking on the phone. Sure people rather hear voices for context in some situations but, “do you have the new jordans in a size 12” doesn’t really require much for context.

All of this is why PingUp will most likely do great. Check out our interview with Pingup below the break.

Australian Startup: Attendly, CEO Offers Infographic: What Founders Should Be Able To Do

Attendly is an event registration and ticketing platform focused on the needs of event managers and web developers. It’s fully white labeled so the event organizer can adopt Attendly’s technology as their own and let Attendly run the background for any well attended event.

The Melbourne Australia based startups CEO and founder, Scott Handsaker is a world traveler, black belt in Taekwondo, sky diver, and he doesn’t eat meat or fish. More importantly he is an entrepreneur and a founder himself. As such he has developed this inforgraphic to show the things that Founders of any startup should be able to do.

The highlights include, understanding a term sheet, cold calling c-level executives, and writing a novel. Check out the info graphic below and see how you measure up to this interesting infographic.

Linkage:

Check out Attendly here

Help a brother out here

Toronto Startup: Kytephone Is A New Android UI Just For Kids

A Toronto startup, that was also a member of the winter Y-Combinator class, is hoping to lure parents who are equipping their children with Android powered smartphones. The startup is called Kytephone and it provides a new “launcher” or “UI” to Android phones that it is installed on, with parental controls, great kid friendly graphics and access to apps and functions that children of any age could use.

The best part about Kytephone is it’s customization ability. What Kytephone does, is it allows parents to lockdown certain things on their children’s Android phones. In some cases it could be for younger children so they don’t go off and dial 900 numbers by accident and in other cases it can be customized for tweens or teens to restrict access to features that could get them in trouble.

Kytephone allows the parent to customize access to just about every function of an Android phone. For instance Kytephone could be set up for a younger child, say 4-7 who could use the Kytephone UI to make calls to mom, grandma and brothers and sisters. They could also have access to the phones camera for taking pictures, and maybe a few games.

For tweens and teens, Kytephone allows the parents to set parameters for texting times, and even game playing times. When time is up, the child could be restricted to just texting mom and dad, and they may have to wait until the next day to finish that level on that game they played for an hour.

Kytephone has also found that some of their users are installing the Android app onto phones of senior citizens and elderly folks who may not want the bells and whistles of a full fledged Android smartphone.

There are all kinds of companies out there that are offering some sort of software, similar to Kytephone however it seems that in customization and design Kytephone may have a leg up. In fact one of the competitors, Play Safe, has very similar functionality to Kytephone because their founder, Beakit.com reports, was in the Y-Combinator class with Kytephone co-founder Renat Gautaullin.

Kytephone has since graduated out of Y-Combinator and moved back home to Canada where they are part of the RyersonDMZ Incubator.

Overall Kytephone seems a little more customizable and a lot more robust than competing products. It’s also not tied exclusively to a carrier which means down the road if a user got a new Android phone on a different carrier they could just download Kytephone again and reuse it.

Kytephone is available free in the Google Play store. Gautaullin reports that they are working on some premium features, like timers to close off certain types of apps like games, and other things in the pipeline.

Linkage:

Find out more about Kytephone here

Download it here in the Google Play Store

Source: Betakit

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New York Startup: SinglePlatform Acquired By Constant Contact For $100M

Another New York startup has just had a really big exit. This time it was, web and mobile advertising specialists SinglePlatform. As the name implies, SinglePlatform is one centralized robust advertising platform that allows advertisers to update their advertising in one centralized location.

Our friends at tech.li report that SinglePlatform estimates their reach to be 200 million people every month. SinglePlatform allows the management of advertising space both big and small.

“SinglePlatform lets small businesses quickly distribute rich content so that consumers can find it at the very moment they are looking to make a purchase decision,” Constant Contact said in a press release. “The SinglePlatform offering complements the current Constant Contact suite of online engagement marketing tools by helping small businesses reach and engage their next customer even earlier in the customer lifecycle.”

Forbes reports that the deal was structured as $65 million in cash, $5 million in cash and equity for retention purposes, and up to $30 million based on performance over the next two years, for a total of $100 million.

The company expects the deal to contribute $10 million in 2013 and adds that it should be accretive in late 2013 to early 2014.

Linkage:

Chicago Get Ready For TechCocktail June 24th

The other TC (TechCocktail) will be holding one of their great mixer events in Chicago on June 24th as part of the TechWeek celebration.

This event takes the shape of their normal TechCocktail mixers which means plenty of networking, casual pitches and cocktails of course. You’ll be able to meet Frank Gruber and the entire TechCocktail team at the event being brought to you in part by the fine folks at Motorola Mobility.

They also have a little known soft drink company called Coca Cola sponsoring as well. Yes, us non drinkers can perpetrate a great TechCocktail fraud at the event.

If you’re a startup in the area you can apply for a demo spot here

If you’re a tech enthusiast you can get a ticket here

TechWeek badge holders will get in free but need to RSVP here

Ethics statement: We love Frank and the staff at TechCocktail for their commitment to tech and startups all over the country. We don’t do events ourselves but love to hang out at all the TechCocktail events we can, we’ll see you there.

New York Startup: Return On Change Crowd Investing For High Impact Startups INTERVIEW

As we get closer and closer to the SEC’s July 4th deadline to come up with rules for crowdfunding startups, we’re likely to see more and more crowdfunding startups emerge. Earlier this month we reported on Ohio crowdfunding startup Fundable who has already opened for business, with a more traditional Kickstarter, Indiegogo model until the crowdfunding rules are announced and brokers are approved.

A New York startup called Return on Change LLC, has also thrown their hit in the crowdfunding arena. They’re now in a private beta and promise to provide a way for investors to connect with game-changing startups.

“The timing could not be better,” said Sang Lee, founder of Return on Change. “We saw the huge potential in crowdfunding, and now, with the signing of the JOBS bill, look forward to connecting investors with ventures that can make a real difference.”

RoC also announced a contest that provides incentives for startups to register. The first 100 startups that meet RoC’s criteria will have the opportunity to win one of three $1,000 funding prizes. The company is seeking startups in the areas of clean energy, biomedical, social ventures and technology.

With all this excitement about crowdfunding we got a chance to speak with Sang Lee, one of the founders of Return On Change. Take a look at the interview below the break.

Toronto Startup: Hashcaster Receives Top Honor At Social Media Camp

I remember the days as a kid at Pine Forest Camp in Greeley Pennsylvania. At the end of the 8 weeks of sleep away camp we’d all gather around the Netsie Playhouse to see who won the coveted camper awards. Fast forward to 2012 and we’re not talking about a nice sleep away camp for jewish boys and girls, we’re talking about a cutthroat and fierce competition between social media companies, called Social Media Camp.

The awards at Social Media Camp are called “Coasties” and they were presented Friday night by Erica Ehm. The Social Media Camp is the largest gathering of social media talent in Victoria British Columbia, eh? (I couldn’t help myself)

The event received more than 100 nominations that began with a public vote and concluded with a panel of expert judges from around the country evaluating the finalists in each category. The judges panel included: Jay Baer, Convince and Convert; Sean Moffitt, Wikibrands; Raul Pacheco-Vega, PhD., hummingbird604.com; Simon Salt, The IncSlingers; Scott Stratten, UnMarketing; and Angela Crocker, Beachcomber Communications.

Out of all the entries Hashcaster was named the “Most innovative social media product or technology”.

In a nutshell Hashcaster is a Twitter and hashtag management platform and dashboard specifically catering to the event marketer. Think trade shows, demo days, forums, discussions, sporting events, big conventions etc, they would all benefit from Hashcaster.

Why? Because Hashcaster makes sense of the quickly flowing hashtags. It provides real time analytics for the hashtags that you’ve created for your event and captures tweets that often scroll to quickly across a screen, Twitter wall or smartphone, to make any real use out of them.

Trust, me if there’s one thing I know about, with over 100k followers on Twitter, is Twitter and hash tagging.

Hashcaster also makes it easy for you to manage hashtag variations. Usually leading up to a major event like CES, Comiccon or SXSW, the “official” hash tag and the “unofficial” hashtags get mixed up into a hodge podge of hard to manage tweets. HashCaster allows the event organizers to keep tabs on their major hashtags and variations there of.

In addition to winning the aware Hashcaster actually kept up with the event itself.

Referred to as a “Hashcast”, the platform curates in real-time photos, videos and stories from the event’s hash tag community as it trends on Twitter. It then pushes this content to an event branded web site and advanced in show Twitter wall where participants and visitors from around the world can experience the event virtually. Finally, the platform determines “who and what” is most important to the hash tag community; making highly valued content more visible and helping the community connect with top influencers.

Linkage:

Find out more about Hashcaster here

See Social Media Camps Hashcaster here

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Three Free Things Every New Startup Should Do

Do you remember when you used to be able to go to the school nurse and get three for free? Never mind.

Here are three things that every new startup should do when they first start out. It actually shocks me when I get into serious discussions with startup founders who have a pitch deck, a website, a social media presence, but neglect these three free things.

CrunchBase

Regardless of how you feel about Silicon Valley the biggest source for startups on the planet is CrunchBase. This data base of startups, entrepreneurs, founders, venture capitalists, angel investors, incubators, accelerators, and other startup related people in resources is amazing.

Creating a profile is free. The profiles have to be approved but that process usually takes less than 24 hours. Once approved though your profile as an individual and as your company has a place on CrunchBase.

This is where all the significant news and milestones is compiled “for the record”. When you have news of new top level executives, a funding round, a pivot etc you can add those entries to your CrunchBase profile.

CrunchBase is free. It’s a service of AOL (since the TechCrunch sale to AOL in 2010). Really every semi-serious startup needs a CrunchBase profile.

Angel.co

We give the Angel List (angel.co) a hard time because 90% of their trending news is based in the Valley, 5% in New York and the rest everywhere else. We do report on companies on the list form everywhere else. But again, like CrunchBase it’s free.

Angel.co does a great job of showing what’s hot and what’s not, and it’s actually not the founders of angel.co’s fault that startups “everywhere else” don’t trend. It’s not a matter of what they think, it’a all about traction and how many people endorse you, give you references, invest in you and follow you.

Naturally with the startup ecosystem in the valley they have more startups on the list, and hence trend better.

Regardless of the trending though you really need to register, again it’s free.

FounderSync

FounderSync is a startup themselves and based in Cleveland. It’s another great free resource for startup founders.

Once you sign up for FounderSync you can network with other founders across the country. It’s also not exclusive like FounderDating, and being that they’re from “everywhere else” they encourage startups from “everywhere else” to join the site.

Collaborate with founders, find your technical founder, get recommendations for developers, designers, make new friends and network network network.

So on our road trip if we meet you, do office hours with you, or judge a contest that you’re part of, please make sure you’ve done these three things.

Linkage:

Crunchbase

Angel.co

Foundersync

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Cornell University Startup: Empire Robotics Wins Five Minute Pitch Contest

A robotics startup founded by Cornell University students in Ithaca New York took home the top spot in the recent Worcester PolyTechnic Institutes Venture Forum Five Minute Pitch Contest.

The young entrepreneurs are hoping to develop their robotic gripper technology, think those wild orange gripper things, that functions robotically.

According to the Worcester Business Journal
The gripper is a ball-shaped elastic membrane filled with granular material attached to a robotic arm. The air pressure inside the ball is manipulated to adjust the softness or hardness of the gripper, allowing it to conform around and squeeze objects.
This exactly the kind of tech that’s missing for bringing more agile manufacturing to the United States, to automate manufacturing lines in the United States, and that’s exactly what we intend to do with this patent pending technology,” John Amend, the company’s chief technology officer told a roomful of businesspeople, investors and others gathered in the school’s campus center Tuesday evening.

The team took home a prize of $2500. While they aren’t breaking the bank with that kind of prize money, they are getting invaluable exposure from the investor community.

A company called SafeSiren which makes a safety device for school students took home the second pace prize. Other ideas presented included a better way to sterilize catheters, an energy management system for hotels and a blue tooth device designed to replace hearing aids. Check out the source link below for more on those companies.

Source: Worcester Business Journal

Startup America Partners With Startup RockOn For DNC RNC Events

Startup America and Startup RockOn have announced that they are partnering for some very exciting events this year.

Startup RockOn is a collaborative effort of fast growing Startups, Event Farm, HyperVocal, and Fighter Interactive. Together they are putting together mini festival style events at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) on September 3, 2012 in Charlotte North Carolina and the Republican National Convention (RNC) August 27th in Tampa Bay.

The events will highlight America’s thriving startup culture, have interactive displays and sessions and feature musical performances, including the group The Roots who have agreed to headline the events.

Startup America CEO, Scott Case, stated, “As the RNC and DNC capture the attention of the country, it’s imperative to highlight the importance of startups to our national economy, and we’re incredibly excited to partner with EventFarm, HyperVocal and FIGHTER Interactive — three hard-working startups themselves — to do just that.”

The StartUp RockOn leadership team stated, “From a garage band to culture-shifting software, from next-generation media companies to 21st century energy solutions, the greatest American success stories start (and will start) through ingenuity, creativity, hard work and perseverance. StartUp RockOn honors the entrepreneurs of America’s bright future.”

Startup America is now 23 regional partnerships strong and has already hosted or partnered for a bunch of great events including a Startup America event at the Hilton in Austin during South by Southwest Interactive.

This new partnership will spur even more interest in Startups, entrepreneurism and technology in the United States, regardless of political affiliation.

Linkage: