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Oklahoma Startup: DrinkEasy, Enjoy Your Night Let Your Phone Pick Up The Tab

Mobile payments are becoming more and more popular especially in places where using your mobile phone over a traditional payment method come in handy. One of those places is the bar, the pub or the tavern.

We’ve all had those nights where we plan on having a great time so we leave our credit card and/or our drivers license at the bar and run a tab all night. There are so many risk factors in doing this but we never really take those into consideration.

It’s so easy to sneak a drink on to someone else’s tab. I’ve had it happen to me a bunch of times, and while you may not admit it freely, its probably happened to you. Some cheapskate here’s you tell the bartender what tab to put the drink on and then uses your tab the next time around.

The other big risk factor is forgetting to close out your tab, losing your credit card or losing your drivers license. Now all of those are risky but you’ll have to agree that losing your drivers license is probably the most inconvenient. You can usually call the credit card issuer, report the card lost and have another one sent to you very quickly. Losing your license means digging up documents you haven’t seen in five years, standing in line at the DMV and praying that an entire day isn’t lost in that line.

Most of these things, are factors behind the new Oklahoma startup DrinkEasy. As the name implies, the guys behind DrinkEasy want you to have an easy, laid back time whether your drinking with colleagues at work or having a throw down party after a football game.

DrinkEasy allows you to setup and pay for a tab on your smartphone. This immediately eliminates the risk of leaving your card and license behind. Also, with DrinkEasy no one can add to your tab, except for you.

We got a chance to catch up with Kirk Kaupke one of the founders of DrinkEasy for this quick interview after the break

India Startup: Milaap, CrowdFunded Loaning For India’s People

Milaap is a new startup in India that allows anyone in the world to loan money to people of India for anything from solar power,clean water, building toilets, training and more. What sets this apart from traditional crowdfunding or even donations, is the fact that the money collected is a loan and is actually paid back.

With Milaap’s business plan not only can anyone help make things better for people in India that can’t get traditional loans, but they can recoup their money as well, and then reloan if they wish to.

We got a chance to talk to Shubhashree Sangameswaran about this innovative new international startup, check out that interview below.

What is Milaap?

Milaap (www.milaap.org) is the first online platform that enables anyone from across the world to lend to India’s working poor for causes such as solar energy, clean water, building toilets, vocational and artisanal training. Since it’s a loan, not a donation, you get your money back once the borrower repays.

We believe that while a handout is good, a hand-up is even better. Donations create a huge impact, but their lifespan is short-lived. When you give a loan, on the other hand, you encourage the borrowers to be enterprising and responsible with the money, and if you re-lend the money, it can successively help more borrowers!

Who are the founders and what are their backgrounds?

The founders are Anoj Viswanathan, Mayukh Choudhury and Sourabh Sharma. Sourabh and Anoj have their roots in the same university, National University of Singapore (NUS), and have known each other for 6 years. They are all entrepreneurs; Anoj has worked with SKS Microfinance and D.light Design. Sourabh worked on and sold his first start up, MicroAppli, to OnMobile, while Mayukh has worked with Ernst& Young and D.light design.

Where are you based?

We are based in Bangalore, India, and we are incorporated in Singapore. We fund borrowers from all over India though.

How did you come up with the idea?

The idea for Milaap was born when Anoj, one of our co-founders, saw what a difference solar lighting made to underprivileged households in Orissa while working at SKS Microfinance. He realised that one of the reasons such products failed to make a bigger impact was because loans for these were unavailable at low interest rates. He teamed up with Sourabh (who having sold the product of his first startup was looking to build a consumer-facing internet startup for social impact) and Mayukh (who was trying to build loan programs for small scale retailers and kirana shop owners selling lighting products in rural Uttar Pradesh) and started Milaap in June 2010.

So is the idea behind Milaap to do business loans, general loans or is it more like American cash til payday loans?

Milaap focuses on the huge opportunity to weave microfinance around livelihood services. Our loans focus on bringing financial inclusion to over 700 million Indians who live on less than $2 a day: the people at the base of the pyramid. We hope to create sustainable and increased incomes that provide for their unmet needs through our loans.

What is the problem you are solving?

The people we target, those who earn less than $2 a day, find it difficult to access capital for their needs. The cost of capital from mainstream financial institutions is too high for them to afford, especially on loans for amounts between Rs 5,000 – Rs 50,000.

We provide access to affordable credit at almost 50% less than existing credit sources available to such small value borrowers, ensuring that they see value in the service and maintain their credit worthiness. We eliminate the usual wait associated with grants traditionally, and we enable our lenders and borrowers manage their own requirements as and when needed through a transparent and structured system.

Most importantly, we aim to create economic impact. Each Rs. 1 lent on Milaap creates at least Rs. 9 in economic impact, and helps lift families out of poverty.

What is your secret sauce?

Our secret sauce is that we focus on positive stories and creating opportunites rather than focusing on the problems. Our stories are grounded and we believe in steering clear of romanticism.

Share one or two of your great stories about how Milaap is helping the people of India?

We have seen many stories of change on Milaap, and all of them are dear to us. However, if we just have to pick two, one would have to be Sridevi’s story.

Sridevi is a female entrepreneur from Bangalore. She took a Rs. 50,000 loan to expand her artisan business. She started her business 10 years ago, and has since provided employment to the destitute women of Bangalore’s slums. With her loan, she bought new equipment and is now able to employ 60 people in her unit. You can watch the video here: http://youtu.be/QZDA7p0YgxI

We also have Parameswaran, who had no access to a toilet at his home a year ago. He would carry his disabled daughter everyday so that she could relieve herself. Milaap changed his life. He got a loan of Rs. 10,000 to build a toilet, and now, he does not have to carry his daughter to the fields anymore. You can watch the video here: http://youtu.be/2vAYmtmmlQY

What is your plan to scale up?

We ultimately aim to make microlending a part of people’s everyday life. We plan to tap into social media tools to our advantage. In future, you will be able to browse through borrower profiles right from your Facebook account and make a loan.

We hope to make our presence felt in the retail sectors online and offline as well. While you shop online, recharge you cellphone online, or even eat out at a restaurant, you will be able to lend a few dollars to Milaap.

We have also launched payroll lending with a few corporates wherein employees can simply opt to have a small amount from their monthly pay given out as a loan to Milaap. This is simple and hassle-free. Since this is a loan, 100% of the money comes back to them.

Are credit scores and factors as hard in India as they are in the US? What do you need to do to qualify to get a loan through Milaap?

In India the poor do not have collateral to access loans from banks. The rural poor tend to be excluded from financial banking systems and most of their financial transactions happen informally. Usually for large sums of money, they rely on local moneylenders and lending clubs.

Milaap uses social collateral as an approach to overcome this. Group-based loans where individuals serve as guarantee for each other is an approach we employ. Other mechanisms to ensure repayments are making loans in the name of training institute for an education loan and or the artisan training institute for artisanal loans.

What are the safety features to protect the lender?

Milaap follows strict policy measures to cover all risks to our lenders. Our standards and processes have been laid out with the advice of our highly qualified advisors, who have significant experience in microcredit and financial services.

Our field partners are selected after rigorous due diligence to ensure that they have a grounded understanding of the borrowers needs and capabilities. Our field partners have a strong market presence and over three years of experience interacting with borrowers. As a result, we have been lucky to have a repayment rate of 100% to date.

In the off-chance that a borrower defaults on a loan, we offer a 20% first-loss guarantee through our field partner.

What’s next for Milaap?

Our goal is to redefine the way people think about charitable giving, not a one-time write-off but make it ubiquitous and part of our everyday activities, making it more engaging beyond financial transactions.

On the ground, we hope to expand to offer loans in all parts of India and ultimately make essential services accessible to all. Once the basic needs are taken care of, that’s the beginning of real, positive change.

Where can our Indian readers find out more?

They can visit our site, www.milaap.org, and read our blog: blog.milaap.org for all our updates. We are also on Facebook at www.facebook.com/Milaap.org and Twitter as @milaapdotorg. Be sure to follow these channels and make a loan!

Linkage:

Find out more about Milaap here at milaap.org

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Bloomington Indiana Startup: CheddarGetter To Ring NYSE Closing Bell Today

The New York Stock Exchange has held a contest that’s got a lot of the startup world talking. They’re not giving away a million dollars, or magically making an IPO happen for the startup. The contest? Pick a startup to ring the closing bell.

The winner, a Bloomington Indiana startup called CheddarGetter, will ring the closing bell this afternoon.

CheddarGetter is a startup in the, not so glamorous, online billing space. CheddarGetter will stand alongside two other startups as they ring the bell together.

In an online video posted by CheddarGetter to garner support for their bell ringing conquest, Marketing Director Adam Quirk said:

“There’s a ton of cool tech going on here in Indiana, but you wouldn’t know it if you lived in New York. I lived there for seven years and never heard about an Indiana tech company. So we’d like to ring the opening bell to show that tech startups exist all over this country. There’s a lot of awesome stuff going on here in the Midwest, from Chicago, to Omaha, to Kansas City, to here in Bloomington, Indiana.”

CheddarGetters unique online billing platform has garnered some of the corn belt’s brightest graduates, who may have otherwise moved out of the state. They started as an in house billing solution for tech incubator SproutBox’s startups. Now they boast hundreds of clients in startups, SMB’s and larger business customers.

Congratulations to this startup from everywhere else, ring the bell and make the corn belt proud.

Linkage:

Find out more about CheddarGetter here

Source: InsideIndianaBusiness.com

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5 Trending Angel List (Angel.co) Startups From Everywhere Else

Chances are if you read nibletz.com regularly, you are a startup, accelerator,incubator or angel from “everywhere else” just like us. So I’m sure you’ve probably noticed in your daily check to angel.co that all of the trending startups are almost always from Silicon Valley.

We’ve decided to highlight some of the trending startups from “everywhere else” that can be found on angel.co. So here’s our first list of five.

NetPlenish (Los Angeles)

NetPlenish is an innovative way to keep track of the things you regularly buy from the store, albeit razors, gatorade, coffee, socks, diapers etc. It hold all that information in a list for you in the cloud. NetPlenish then finds the best prices for everything on your list. This could be at K-Mart, WalMart, Target, Wahlgreen’s or which ever NetPlenish merchant partner has the best price.

Then, once a week you’re notified by NetPlenish either with a push notification or email, that they’ve done the research and found the best prices for the items you need. They get each item at the vendor with the best price and then voila in a few days your items are at your doorstep.

Talk about the king of convenience.

Find out more about NetPlenish here.

FormLabs, Boston

FormLabs in Boston is hoping to make 3D printers actually attainable. Right now companies like Makerbot and others have 3D printers that they can sell to you but they are often thousands of dollars.

The FormLabs 3D printer is going to be low-cost and print in 3D right out of the box.

Co-Founders Maxim Lobovsky and David Cranor are hiring right now and we’re hoping for a roll out soon because I want to start making action figures in my basement.

Find out more about Formlabs here

Mile High Organics, Boulder

We all know that Boulder has a thriving tech scene. In fact TechStars is based there and it’s like a little metropolis of all the next best ideas.

Mile High was recently featured in the Wall Street Journal’s Market Watch section as the Nation’s First USDA -Certified Organic Online Grocer.

Mile High Organics is America’s First Certified Organic Online Grocer. Members order online and receive convenient, scheduled home or office delivery of local, organic, non-GMO (non-genetically modified) produce, dairy, meat, seafood, groceries; health, home and beauty products. We have over 500 SKUs and growing.

Mile High is backed by Dave McClure and 500 startups.

If you’re into organic food, now you can order from Mile High, get your every day supplies from NetPlenish and never have to leave the house again, where we know you’re incubating that next big startup.

Startup America Spotlight: Woman Owned, Mytab.co INTERVIEW

Last week Cameron and I attended a TechCocktail event that was keynoted by Startup America CEO Scott Case. We challenged ourselves to get more involved so we decided to start featuring Startup America startups as part of our interview/feature series. If you’re a Startup America member at any of their now 22 partnerships across the country email us at startup@nibletz.com and we’ll see if we can get you into our coverage schedule. (Hint it’s one of the only ways we’ll cover a Valley startup)

For our first Startup America member spotlight we talk with Heddi Cundle the founder of woman owned startup mytab.co. Mytab.co is a unique travel gift card.

The card serves two purposes, it allows you to crowdsource funds for your trip. Take a honeymoon for instance, your friends and family can add to your mytab.co account and you’ll have money for your travels.

The second purpose of the card is discounts and rewards from travel partners. Cundle is working with travel partners all over the world to offer mytab.co members exclusive discounts and deals on travel related costs.

Check out our interview with Cundle after the break

E-vite founder John Bracken Shows Off HIs New Startup Speek VIDEO

Before “Startup” was one word, before Facebook and Google alumni were the “in crowd” in the startup scene, and before everyone had cable internet, a new revolution was happening in the Washington DC area. That revolution was AOL alumni founding startups.

John Bracken is one of those AOL alumni. At the time, the largest consumer online service was based in Northern Virginia. We call it a consumer online service because Steve Case said last week at an event that it wasn’t before AOL turned six years old that the service could actually access the internet. Commercial companies were banned until then.

If you think you’ve heard Bracken’s name before you might have. He was a co-founder for e-vite which was the original online invitation and event service. This was years before Eventbrite.

Well Bracken is back and just like e-vite, Bracken’s new startup self serves a problem that he has had with conference calls. A problem that he knows others have. In fact a startup in the conference call space, UberConference, won the TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield Cup last week in New York.

Bracken’s startup is called Speek and it allows people to initiate conference calls much easier than they could with traditional conference calling methods. With Speek, long gone are the days of tedious 800 numbers to remember, and unusually long codes to remember.

More after the break
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Toronto Startup: SocialBungy Is A DIY Promotional Platform For Social Media INTERVIEW

Canadian startup SocialBungy is a unique do it yourself platform to hold contests, sweepstakes and other engaging promotions across Facebook, Twitter and even micro-sites. SocialBungy promises not to be a template type tool, but offer all kinds of customizable options to help any size business launch promotions with real gaugeable ROI.

As much as we love reporting about startups “everywhere else” we also love it when we can talk with startups that offer a real benefit to other startups like SocialBungy. If you’re a startup and you’ve been evaluating some of the top level PR agencies out there, you’ve probably found that some of them have minimums per month in the tens of thousands of dollars. With SocialBungy you’ll be able to take your own idea and match it up to the services SocialBungy offers and not break the startup bank.

But SocialBungy isn’t just for the startup. They have programs for startups, small businesses, large brand and even agencies. SocialBungy is backed by the marketing and promotional experience of founder Mike Barwick who spent years in marketing and then launched his own social marketing firm.

“Our goal when launching the company was to make campaigns launched online sexy and engaging again – an area I think other like-minded companies are starting to lose focus on,” says founder Barwick said in a statement.

We got a chance to talk with Barwick more in-depth about SocialBungy, check out the interview after the break.

DC Startup: Naaya Great For Kids, Great For Parents VIDEO

Washington DC area serial entrepreneur Amir Hudda is at it again. This time though, he’s created a new startup for his kids. Hudda has had several successful exits bringing tens of millions of dollars in profit to his investors.

The story goes a bit like this. As busy as Hudda is, he and his wife still noticed that his children spend a great deal of time on the computer. Furthermore they spend even more time on iPods,iPads,iPhones and as Hudda puts it “i-everything”. With his background in technology he wanted to do something about this problem but he didn’t want to strip his children of technology.

That’s we he founded Naaya. Naaya is a web and mobile based learning platform that provides a lot more than simple coloring games and match the picture games. The World Of Naaya takes kids through a fully immersive experience where they explore worlds, while learning robust curriculum targeting reading, social studies and 21st century skills.

While there are a lot of companies offering e-learning through the web and mobile Naaya is the first that isn’t targeting just kids and students. Hudda wants parents, teachers and schools to get involved as well.

Naaya features an entire parent portal that will offer reporting to the parent on what the child has been learning, messages they have been sending and receiving, and target areas where the child may need help.

More and video after the break
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Mass Challenge Announces 125 Startups In Third Session

MassChallenge kicked off the week by announcing the 125 startups that have been chosen to participate in it’s third edition of their accelerator program/competition. MassChallenge is the largest accelerator competition on the east coast.

This years class of 125 startups includes 90 startups from the Boston area, with the other 35 coming from all over the country.

There are 46 tech startups, 25 social startups, 21 in bioscience and life science, 11 in clean tech and energy and 22 in miscellaneous categories.

Here is the complete list.

Energy & cleantech

Arbsource
Black Island Wind Turbines
Bootstrap Compost
Dynamo Micropower
HydroConfidence, Inc.
Invisergy
NBD Nanotechnologies
RainBank Inc.
Solar Tri-Gen
TireTech
Zagster

General

ARCBAZAR
Bio-Fiend
CrewTide
Cryoocyte
Fetch Storage
FX Aligned
GG’s Originals
HelmetHub Corporation
JGOOD
LiquiGlide
LittleBonsai, LLC
Memory on Hand
Ministry of Supply Inc.
Modalyst
Pegasus Performance
Roammeo
RouteSprout
Strong Arm Technologies, Inc.
Sweet Corn Tortilla Chips Inc
TableZest
Te Tama
Zoora

High tech

42stats
A.I.type Ltd.
Akselos
Appsembler
Atomic Tower, Inc.
Bottol
Bounce Imaging
Calcbench
Capital Market Exchange (CMX)
Citybot, Inc
CoachUp
Delightfully
Distinc.tt
docTrackr
Dpicd
Drones For Peace
FansFave
Fantasy Politics
HandyBook
iAgree
IntegralReach
Kahnoodle Inc
Kanopy
Kernel Corp. LLC
Klypper Inc.
Lifeables
Magru
MegaMIMO
Mindcrimp
MOVL
Nordic Technology Group (NTG)
Nsyrt Corporation
pymetrics
Recruiterbox
Schmooze Butler
Securigin Inc.
SocialMadeSimple
Stable Solutions
STUI
Texifter, LLC
Tomorrowish
ToolSense
TripReactor (formerly WaySavvy)
Veenome
Vsnap
Wanderu

Life sciences & health care

Akrivis Technologies
Automated Medical Instruments, Inc.
CardioWave
Cellanyx Diagnostics
eTransitions
Guided Surgery Solutions
Imagnus Biomedical
Ionu Biosystems
iSpecimen
Lab Automate Technologies Inc
Nanoly Biotech
Neumitra
Noor Pharmaceuticals
OnDeckBiotech
PhotOral, Inc.
Quantamerix
Sextant Therapeutics Inc
Ubiqi Health
Vaxess Technologies
WindGap Medical Inc.
Yosko

Social impact

ArtPulse
Chartus.org
Design Museum Boston
EcoValuePoints
Freight Farms
Global Research Innovation & Technology
Gradeable
IoVista
Lovin’ Spoonfuls Inc
LuminAID Lab
Market Publique
Native Brain
NBA Math Hoops
Persistence Plus
Prepmatic
Prime Student Loan Guarantor Corp.
Project Dots
RallyPoint Networks, Inc.
Recovers.org
RetiCue
SilviaTerra
Soundfest, Inc.
Spill
TinkerStories
Zimba

MassChallenge has been the catalyst for growth for lots of great startups. We recently interviewed Brass Monkey, a MassChallenge startup at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2012 last week. Good luck to all 125 startups from “everywhere else”.

Linkage:

Source: Boston Business Journal

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Chicago Startups: Catapult Chicago Announces Freshman Class

A new startup accelerator/incubator has announced it’s freshman class. They have 7 startups in this first round, that were selected out of hundreds of applications. According to FoxBusiness, the 7 startups were chosen by their peers, founders of startups themselves.

Catapult Chicago will furnish very reduced rate office and common space, access to resources and mentors as well as equipment and other services that startups need. The seven companies in the first class will also work in a collaborative setting so that they can bounce ideas off of other founders in like minded situations.

The first seven companies have a six month tenancy with the option to renew at the end of the period.

“We interviewed over 100 companies and the caliber of the new startups speaks well of our peer- selection model,”Catapult Chicago Co-Founder Ryan Leavitt told Fox Business. “These companies will add to the spirit at Catapult which, in many ways, acts as one collective startup with 12 different business lines.”

The startups in the freshman class at Catapult Chicago have good pedigrees as well. Mixed in the bunch are graduates of Chicago’s own Excelerate Labs, Techstars Cloud in San Antonio, and BluePrint Health in New York.

Here’s the class:

Dabble, a platform for users to sell in person classes for $20 with a wide range of curriculum available.

Buzz Referrals a marketing promotion platform.

Bucketfeet, an artist designed footwear company.

Kula, a peer to peer mobile market place.

Shiftgig a networking site for the service industry

Temp a Big Data startup.

Precured Health, a Health 2.0 startup that helps hospitals discover and evaluate medical devices.

While a lot of the attention in the Chicago incubator/accelerator scene has been on 1871, Catapult Chicago is a welcomed piece of Chicago’s thriving tech scene. They occupy 12,000 square feet of Class A office space in the River North Area which is the focal point of Chicago’s startup scene.

Linkage:

Find out more about Catapult Chicago here

Source: Fox Business

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DC Startup: Hitch An Uber Alternative To Taxicabs VIDEO

We were asked several times at the TechCocktail event Thursday night who our favorite startup was at TechBUZZ earlier in the week. In my opinion it was a three way tie between Syllabuster, Cont3nt and Hitchrides.com

Hitchrides.com is another alternative source for transportation in the form of an app. It blends crowdsourcing, social networks and transportation. Hitch is good for the environment and for the user.

David H Miller the founder of Hitch says that Hitch is a way for drivers to make money whether they are driving to or from work, down the street, around town or a long ways away. It’s like the ride-share section of Craigslist but safer, more efficient and for money.

more after the break
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DC Startup: Cont3nt.com Was Just About King At Capital Connection TechBUZZ

anton gelman,cont3nt,nibletz.com,capital connection,techcocktail,techcrunch,

(photo: dcfounders.com)

This year at Capital Connection/TechBUZZ in Washington DC, Cont3nt was just about king. Cont3nt is an awesome new platform that helps monetize citizen journalism in new ways. The theme around the site is free press and free money and it’s the brain child of founder Anton Gelman.

Before we dive all the way into the story, this particular story isn’t just about Cont3nt, it’s also about Gelman who’s family came to the United States as refugees, to seek the very freedoms that power Cont3nt. It’s also about Gelman because he is one of the nicest people in the DC startup community and a master networker. While we are in DC quite a bit we’re not based there, yet we manage to bump into Gelman at every single event.

By the time last Thursday night had rolled around we had scene Gelman’s pitch for cont3nt four times, never skipping a beat.

So what is cont3nt? Well you can learn more in the pitch video below but in summary, cont3nt is a platform for free lance semi-pro and pro videographers to post content and monetize it at the same time.

The problem today is that social media is kicking traditional medias ass in sourcing video content for major news events. While it takes major news networks hours if not days to prepare to source a story, and hundreds of thousands of dollars to boot, the citizen journalist and the semi-pro and pro freelancers can jump on the news in minutes. Sometimes, they luck into a story as it unfolds before their eyes.

Using content’s proprietary delivery methods the top traditional media firms in the world can get access to this content in minutes rather than hours or days.

Cont3nt offers a variety of methods for selling content on the site to freelance journalists. The journalist can decide if they want to sell an exclusive piece to one outlet or license it out to several.

While cont3nt bills itself as citizen journalism, by Gelman’s own admission it’s the first market place for freelancers with some experience to get their pieces sold. It almost mirrors the “stringer” system that died sometime in the 90’s. (I used to string for CNN Radio and Gannett).

There are other consumer focused citizen journalism sites out there like rawporter which is designed for anyone with a smartphone to report the news and get paid for it,

People seem to like it. That’s why Cont3nt was just about king at the recent Capital Connection/TechBUZZ conference. Gelman and cont3nt were selected a week before the conference by Startup America as their entry into the TechBUZZ competition. With minimal time to prepare Gelman pitched on Wednesday of last week at TechBUZZ.

Cont3nt was selected as one of the top 3 best of the buzz at TechBUZZ and had to pitch for a second time on Wednesday and then on Thursday again as an entry into the “main stage” pitches as part of Capital Connection.

To top that off, Gelman also pitched one more time on Thursday night at the TechCocktail event featuring a keynote from Startup America CEO Scott Case.

Check out Gelman’s pitch below:

Linkage:

Find out more about Cont3nt here at Cont3nt.com

Check out more of our Capital Connection 2012 coverage here

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NY Startup: LocalBonus Offers Extremely Simple Loyalty Rewards Program

After this years South By Southwest we quickly predicted that the “social discovery” space would become a thing of the past and that “Loyalty Rewards” would take it’s spot as the startup du jour. Now that loyalty and rewards is filling up faster than you can say Groupon, what’s going to set these startups apart is effect on the merchant and ease of use for the user.

NY startup LcoalBonus has both of those factors in check. LocalBonus is one of the easiest reward programs to set up. You simply add an existing credit card account to your LocalBonus account and you’re ready to earn rewards. In fact you can set up all of your credit cards if you choose.

LocalBonus plans a national rollout. They started out in New York and expanded last month into Seattle, Portland, Sacremento and Denver. LocalBonus founder and CEO Derek Webster told us that there are over 800 merchants in the program already.

More + video after the break
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Boston Startup: KontrolTV Is Another Cuban Backed Startup Who Won Another Huge Contest

Daniel Gnecco and his father Juan Pablo Gnecco founders of MOVL/KontrolTV (photo bu.edu)

Just moments ago we wrote about Mark Cuban backed startup Kisstixx out of Utah who just won the United States Small Business Administration Video Contest. Kisstixx was able to convince Dallas Mavericks owner and venture capitalist Mark Cuban to shell out $200,000 of his own money on national tv, for the innovative lip balm startup.

KontrolTV was a little different. As our friends at Bostinno.com report. Daniel Gnecco, a senior at Boston University this past school year, convinced Cuban to invest in his family run startup MOVL. The younger Gnecco is a co-founder in the video startup with his father Juan Pablo Gnecco.

As the story goes, Daniel saw that Cuban would be speaking at an entrepreneurship event at Babson. Daniel was able to get into the event and then have some face time with Cuban after he finished speaking.

Cuban reportedly emailed Daniel later that day and immediately started negotiating a deal with MOVL. The talks were interrupted by the ending of the NBA walkout but once basketball resumed so did the discussions between Cuban and the Boston startup.

According to bostinno.com Cuban invested $500,000 into the startup that lets you link your television experience with your social activity via your mobile device. It’s a little more robust than GetGlue.