startup Archives - Page 75 of 87

NY Startup: We Talk With Three Ring The Winners Of Best Education Startup At New York Tech Day

At the recent New York tech day a startup called Three Ring walked away with the best education startup award. In short three ring provides a platform that makes it incredibly easy to digitize students work. The backbone of the Three Ring system functions as a portfolio or digital filing cabinet.

Teachers can use an iPhone or Android phone and take a photo or video of a student assignment. From there they can organize the entries by tags including student name, class, assignment and other core parts of the assignment which makes it incredibly easy to recall for later use.

Teachers can use the assignments stored in Three Ring to provide assessments of the students work, go over the assignment more in depth with students and easily recall assignments for things like parent teacher conferences. Three Ring is currently in beta and only for teachers however Three Ring plans to incorporate a parent, student and administrator component.

In the future a parent module or student module could easily be the remedy for “the dog ate my homework”. The possibilities with all four components are endless. Later on, Three Ring could be a way for students to submit an assignment to a teacher once completed. Imagine uploading the assignment to Three Ring and even if the student couldn’t make it to school, got sick before class, or had to leave early for a football game an assignment could be turned in to a teachers Three Ring account and the student could still get credited on time.

There are several tools out there in the digital world for teachers. Three Ring makes is an extremely easy to use tool that can be adapted to several scenarios.

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Dallas Startup: Ustream’s Brad Hunstable Joins GuideHop’s Advisory Board

Texas native and co-founder and CEO of the world’s most popular live streaming network Ustream has, Brad Hunstable has joined the advisory board for Dallas startup Guidehop.

Guidhop allows users to create and market custom tours and experiences and share them with an online community.

For example, Aaron B, who is a founding member of Guidehop, offers a scooter tour of Austin. One of his tours on Guidehop is “Ride With a Scooter Gang”. For $40 a person he will take people on a scooter tour of downtown Austin. His tour is flexible, you can ride with him on his scooter, or he’ll get you your own to rent and lead you on the tour. If you don’t have any experience on a scooter he will take you to a school parking lot first to practice before hitting the sites. Not bad for $40 a person it’s comparable to what you would pay to rent a scooter in Miami without the tour.

In San Francisco, Ligia C will take you on a legends of Rock tour for $100 a person. The four hour tour includes the homes of Janis Joplin, Jerry Garcia and Jimi Hendrix.

These aren’t professional touring companies these are user generated experiences, which makes Hunstables appointment to GuideHops advisory board even more meaningful. Hunstable’s Ustream is all about user generated streaming content.

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NY Startup: Fancy Attracts Silicon Valley Backers For Social, Reverse Groupon Platform

If you like something, fancy it? Feeling kind of British? Well it’s not a British thing it’s an internet thing and it’s a new startup in New York that’s attracting some investors from the Valley.

Even though he didn’t get Instagram, that hasn’t stopped Twitter (and Square) co-founder Jack Dorsey from investing in an innovative disruptive new social platform. It’s also attracted the likes of Chris Hughes( Facebook) and Maynard Web of Ebay.

Although he hasn’t invested yet, Fancy has struck the Fancy of Ashton Kutcher. Kanye West, Bar Rafaeli and Selma Hayek have all become celebrity activists of this new kind of e-commerce platform.

So what is it? Fancy is part store, blog, magazine and wishlist. Anyone can join Fancy and when they do they can share the things they love and like with others. When their social friends across Fancy, like something, merchants can step in and offer a “Groupon in reverse type deal”. This is going to create a new, disruptive and competitive e-commere market place.

Fancy has 500,000 users across their web app, iOS app and recently introduced Android app. It’s great for users because they can see all the things their social friends like. It’s great for merchants because they know what’s in demand.

Fancy is free to join and get started. As Fancy tells Nibletz.com everything that you see on Fancy is either for sale or can be for sale.

Linkage:

Check out Fancy here at their website

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Arizona Startups: Peoria Getting New Biotech Incubator “BionInspire”

Peoria Arizona is preparing for a new biotech incubator called Bioninspire. The incubator will launch next month and is a partnership between the city of Peoria and BioAccel and Plaza Companies a real estate firm.

BioAccel is a Phoenix Arizona based non profit that works in life science technologies. Plaza Companies specializes in medical and technology real estate. BioInspire will focus on medical device technologies. The incubator will operate out of 6800 feet that will encompass office space, lab space, conference rooms and more.

The city will support BioInspire with an aggressive marketing campaign.

For selected biotech startups BioInspire could provide up to $300,000 in seed investment along with free office space, free lab space and mentoring. Mary Ann Guerra, Chief Executive of BioAccel said that she hopes to bring in the right people that want to succeed and plans to do this with a vigorous vetting process.

The Bionspire Incubator will have an advisory council that includes; Russ Yelton, President of Northern Arizona Center for Emerging Technologies; John Lineham, a biomedical engineer professor at Northwestern University; and Enrico Picozza, director of SensAble Technologies.

The city is hoping that the incubator will help fuel the local economy and that the companies incubated there will stay in the area and continue to grow.

Linkage:

Source: AZ Central

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Israeli Startup: “Pops” Makes Android Notifications Pop

Remember when downloading ringtones was the hottest thing on the planet? Then after that ringback tones became popular. Well at one time Ringtones was a $7 billion dollar industry world wide. Now, it’s less than a billion. They just went out of style I guess.

Israeli startups have been really good at harnessing the power of the mobile device. Recently we featured SellARing which is an Israeli company that is selling the ringback tone as advertising. Rather than listen to 10 seconds of ringing, you get to hear an ad, get a discount and engage.

This Israeli startup called “Pops” is making notifications more interesting by bringing all kinds of customizable content to notifications. Pops allows you to customize any kind of Android notification that you could possibly have and use content you like to pop up, wake your phone up and alert you of your new message, Gtalk, Text, email or a host of other notifications.

When we talked with the co-founder he told us in addition to major brands like Rovio Mobile’s “Angry Birds”, they are in negotiations with record companies to produce customized “Pops” from users favorite artists.

Pops is free in the Google Play store. Their monetization is through a customized app store where you pick your pops content. A lot of the “pops” are free but there are some premium “pops” available now.

Check out the video below:

Linkage:

Find Pops in the Google Play Store here

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Baltimore Startup: Parking Panda Expanding To Philly & San Francisco

The genius parking startup out of Baltimore Maryland, Parking Panda, has announced that now that they’ve rolled out service in the nation’s capital, the next cities on the list are Philadelphia and San Francisco.

Parking Panda CEO and Co-Founder, Nick Miller, has reported that they’ve closed one $250,000 round of funding and have another one in the works.

The service works similarly to the way that hotels.com works. Users logon to their website at parkingpanda.com and they can browse the available parking spots in the city they are looking at. The spots are a variety of vacant spots in parking garages and also individual driveways and business lots.

The user can pay for the current day, a future date or a range of dates. They prepay using their credit card and are guaranteed a parking spot in the facility they selected. Parking spots range anywhere from $5.00 on up.

Parkingpanda goes one step further and lets users know what the parking spot they are looking at is near. In Washington DC Parkingpanda tells the user the nearby attractions like museums and metro routes. In Baltimore, Miller reports that a lot of people are renting their driveways on Ravens and Orioles game days.

There’s been no date announced for the expansion but it looks like it will be sooner rather than later. Miller told BmoreMedia that they are working on finding the parking spaces in both Philly and San Francisco.

Linkage:

Check out ParkingPanda here

Source: BmoreMedia

Nibletz is the voice of #startups “everywhere else” check out these new stories

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St.Louis Startup: BonFyre Brings Social Network Back To Campus, Attracts Square Co-Founder Jim McKelvey

Last month we brought you the story of LockerDome a social network for amateur athletes based in St.Louis. LockerDome was able to attract some key investors and advisors. One of those is St.Louis native Jim McKelvey who just happens to be the co-founder of the widely popular mobile payment startup, Square. McKelvey co-founded Square with Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey.

Another social networking startup has also received backing and advice from McKelvey. McKelvey sits on the board of Off Campus Media LLC, the paurent company to the BonFyre app.

BonFyre was founded by Mark Sawyier, a graduate of Washington University. The app is a social media and location sharing app aimed at college students looking to plan what’s next with friends, find out what’s hot and save money around campus.

One of the main concepts behind Bonfyre is to take the social network back to students. We all remember the days when Facebook was exclusive to students with a college email address. While everyone wanted to join this exclusive club (and we all eventually did), the exclusive college nature of Facebook at the time, made it more about sharing social events with friends and then getting out and doing stuff together.

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Miami Startups: Herald Announces Winners For 2012 Business Plan Competition

The Miami Herald newspaper just announced the winners of their 14th annual business plan competition contest. The contest had several tracks including a high school track and the winners came from a variety of categories. Yes you read that correctly while many cities are just now working on their inaugural business plan competitions, and others have contests less than five years old, the Miami Herald has been promoting startups through the contest for fourteen years.

All of the contestants were judged by entrepreneurial experts from the Miami area as well as successful entrepreneurs, investors, consultants and academics. The Herald also has a “People’s Pick” category that was voted on by video. The contest is sponsored by Florida International Univerity’s Eugenio Pino and Family Global Entrepreneurship Center.

The winner of the community track was a winery experience for cruise ships called Blend Craft Wines. Blend Craft Wines also won the “People’s Pick” category, which was the first time in the last six years that the same startup has won both categories.

A mobile couponing Android app called Geopon won the FIU track in voting. Other startups that ranked in the top included: Agape Marine Ventures, LegalFileIt, BidThatProject and WedWu.

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Denver Startup: DailyCloset To Open Monday

A new woman owned, Denver startup in the daily deals space is slated to open tomorrow. The #startup called DailyCloset, is going to offer daily deals on a variety of women’s clothes and accessories.

DailyCloset realizes that the daily deals space is getting crowded. They plan on differentiating themselves by making their #dailydeals more socially appealing to their users. Users will be encouraged to comment and share the deal of the day via their Facebook account.

“In addition to providing a product for purchase, we utilize the featured item as a centerpiece that engages visitors and stimulates conversation,” said Charles Cunningham, Chief Marketing Officer with Dailycloset.com. “We want to see users talking about the product and respectfully share their opinions, whether good or bad.”

DailyCloset is going to kick off their site tomorrow morning at 9am EST at dailycloset.com their first deal will actually be free while supplies last. DailyCloset has teamed up with AJ Morgan to give away hundreds of free sunglasses. Each user will be able to get one pair of free glasses and all they have to do is pay DailyCloset’s flat rate shipping fee. After they run out of the initial free pairs they will have more available for $4.00. The deal lasts for 24 hours like all the deals on DailyCloset.

DailyCloset will also have a weekly drawing for a free handbag tied in with liking the site on Facebook. Every day at 5pm EST DailyCloset will post a new daily deal. The deal will end at 4:59pm the next day.

The free deal starts at 9am Monday.

Linkage:

Check out DailyCloset.com here at their website

Nibletz is the voice of startups “everywhere else” check out these new stories

We’re on a sneaker strapped nationwide road trip, check it out and support us here

Nibletz Road Trip To Continue This Week

Thanks for checking out Nibletz.com whether you’re new to the site or have us on RSS and come every time there is a new story, thank you thank you thank you.

The feedback to the site and our mission to be the voice of startups “everywhere else” has been met with great enthusiasm from startups we’ve covered, and startups that we haven’t covered to angels, VC’s, incubators, tech enthusiasts, and startup enthusiasts alike.

We’ve actually only had two pieces of bad feedback, both along the lines of “Silicon Valley” is where all the startups are. We actually found out by talking with Jared Konczal Senior Analyst at the Kauffman foundation that, that can’t be further from the truth. There are over 300,000 startup stage companies across the country and only a fraction of them are in the valley.

We love the valley and what it’s done for technology. Our other site wouldn’t be where it is without the valley, but our mission is “everywhere else”.In covering that message we found very early on that the best way to do that is to get in the trenches with all the other startups. We’re a startup ourselves and that kind of coverage has meant sleeping in the car (and a whole lot of Motel 6’s and Red Roof Inns), eating a lot of Ramen and Pop Tarts, going to every mixer with free hor dourves and camping out while covering incubators and co-working spaces so we can really get some work done.

We’re headed back out by car at first, but we’ve been given the opportunity to use a friends 37′ bus as a mobile newsroom, promotional vehicle for our mission and the startups everywhere else, and as a place to sleep and take a shower. Of course that costs money that’s why we have this indiegogo page set up. Please check it out and help if you can.

Over the next three weeks we’re going to be in New Orleans, Chattanooga (again), New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Boston and Connecticut. We’ll be gradually moving west towards Chicago, St.Louis, Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Omaha, Wisconsin, and many more. We are going to be on the road from next week through September of 2013 taking a 5 day break every 3 or 4 weeks to be with our families and rest.

We’re doing this because it’s an explosive time for growth for startups and we’ve made so many great friends along the way. We’ve seen so many great areas and we can’t wait to see more.

So wish us luck and please check out our indiegogo page. Also if you want us to stop in your town please drop us an email at startup@nibletz.com let us know your startup, incubator, co-working space or event and we’ll see if it works in our calendar.

The nationwide startup community everywhere else is great and it’s only getting greater! Here’s another link to the indiegogo page

Thanks,

Kyle, Cameron and Brent

NY Startup: MOWA Launching Today, We Find Out What It Is In This Interview

A new startup in New York City is launching today. The startup called MOWA tells Nibletz.com that they are producing the ultimate social game to win unique and exclusive prizes. Sure the social gaming space is a bit crowded but with a unique name and a unique plan we’re hoping MOWA has a successful launch.

Now just as a quick note this isn’t the full launch but it’s a start. We got a chance to interview MOWA on this momentous day for them. Here’s that interview:

What is Mowa?

MOWA is the ultimate social game to win unique and exclusive products.

MOWA is mobile social game with challenging daily missions about fashion, beauty, food, sports and events. It is played by sharing pictures that respond to the challenge of the daily mission. The most voted picture of the day wins coveted prizes sponsored by trendy and high-end brands.

“So, you wake up in the morning and before anything else you grab your phone, just like most of us do. You read MOWA’s mission of the day which might read something like: ‘Who doesn’t love a lazy Sunday? We sure love kicking back and making the most out of the day off. Show us your lazy Sunday pajama and we just might hook you up with some PJs that are even more comfortable.‘ And the mission will show you what is the final prize. After that you snap a picture of your lazy Sunday PJs, and post it up on MOWA. You can promote your pic as much as you want, because in the end it’s all about other people voting for your picture. The picture that receives the most votes wins.”

Who are the founders and what are their backgrounds?

The founder of MOWA is Matteo Franceschetti. He’s an Italian serial entrepreneur, passionate about conceiving and developing business opportunities and always focused on what’s next.

He’s most recent venture, before entering the tech industry, was GIR, an international group operating in the renewable energy industry with a main focus on solar energy.

Matteo’s passion for business and start-ups has motivated him to keep developing projects and mentoring young talents, which is a key element for him when putting teams together.

(you can read more information about Matteo on his site:www.matteofranceschetti.com)

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Chicago Startup: PortaPocket Has A Safe Place For Your Stuff INTERVIEW

We recently brought you the story of the innovative JoeyBra. The JoeyBra is obviously for women and it incorporates pockets in the sides of the bras to hold anything from your credit cards and cash to your cell phone. The JoeyBra was recently featured in a Seattle area tech event and has now been featured all over the internet.

It’s actually that story that led us to meeting Kendra Kroll. Kroll is also a woman entrepreneur and her innovative product called PortaPockets add a pocket for you to carry your stuff even if you don’t have pockets. They’re perfect for running, beach days, or just as an extra place to keep your cell phone, cash, and other personal items.

The biggest difference between the PortaPocket and the JoeyBra is the fact that men can use it too. Kroll launched her company, Undercover Solutions in 2007 and has recently added a new bling line. She’s still pretty much self funded. A few years later, and with this recent boom in smartphones, it’s time for PortaPocket to shine, because it is a great idea.

We got a chance to interview Kroll, so let’s see what she says about Under Cover solutions and her invention, the PortaPocket.

What is portapocket?

PortaPocket is a patented strap-onto-the-body carrying case system that makes life easier and brings peace of mind…it’s THE solution for pocket-challenged outfits everywhere.

Wrap the lightweight neoprene PortaPocket band around your thigh, calf, ankle, arm or waist and wear under or over the clothing. It’s detachable, interchangeable and easy to use. So comfy you almost forget it’s there. Pockets attach onto the band and swap out to carry the things you need on any given day. Perfect for small valuables and essentials like ID, cash, cards, keys, cell phones, lipstick, tampons, cameras, passports, insulin pumps, inhalers, epipens, more. Use ’em solo or even WITH that stylish bag or purse to keep more important items closer. Never risk theft, loss and inconvenience that comes with keeping things apart from your person. Now you can lose the worry… not your stuff! Ideal for working out, going out, travel and every day.

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Cleveland Startup: Foundersync Helps Startups Everywhere Find Co-Founders

You may have heard about the exclusive and very cliquish, Silicon Valley based Founderdating. The site suggests they connect the best of the best to founders in the Valley and a handful of other cities, but what about everywhere else? Well there’s a company in Cleveland Ohio has you covered.

The problem with the founderdating site is it bleeds the mantra that everything that happens in the Valley is better. However with over 300,000 startups across the country there are plenty of great ideas, great founders and great startups, well “everywhere else”. Foundersync will of course connect valley startups to founder and other resources, but they definitely realize the growth of startups on a nationwide level.

Foundersync is a startup itself, they started in 2011. Foundersync deals in a pretty easy to understand idea, there are plenty of business oriented social sites that connect you with people that you do know, or are connected somehow. Foundersync connects you with people that you SHOULD know.

Foundersync’s mission is “To ethically and efficiently help entrepreneurs reach their potential by providing a conduit to the resources that will best serve their needs.”

They achieve this mission with their combined mixed experience in marketing, design and development. The four co-founders, Ryan Gambrill, Nick Pavlak, Robert Clark and Todd Goldstein met by accident in 2011 and immediately clicked. They are all entrepreneurs in their own right and wish that they had a service like Foundersync when they were getting started.

If you’re idea driven, a workaholic entrepreneur that bleeds ideas than you need to register for a Foundersync profile. On their website they also offer some great startup advice on their blog page like, exercise before pitching.

If you’re tired of the snobbery from sites like founderdating we’re sure you’ll benefit from the community of founders being built at Foundersync

Linkage:
Go get a foundersync profile

Nibletz is the voice of startups “everywhere else” check out these new stories

We’re on a sneaker strapped nationwide road trip, check it out and support us here

Pennsylvania Startup: PrizeMonkey Lets You Win Free Snacks From Vending Machines

Wait free snacks? Yes free snacks!!!! Brad Thorne, the founder of PrizeMonkey is a true startup entrepreneur and founder. He told an awesome story to the StartupAmerica partnership website.

But first lets dive into what PrizeMonkey is. As we just said, Thorne is a true #startup founder and entrepreneur, in otherwords he’s poured his heart and soul into an excellent idea and for the time being he can’t even afford snacks in a vending machine, so he created a platform that solves that problem.

PrizeMokey gamifies the vending machine. Through Thorne’s innovative technology your wi-fi enabled smartphone connects with the wi-fi enabled, and PrizeMonkey enabled snack machine. Now, instead of paying for snacks, you can play sponsored games for your chance to win free snacks. Again, for emphasis, you play games on your smartphone and instead of racking up virtual points, you can win free snacks.

You’ll be able to pick from your choice of Reeses Peanut Butter Cups, Lays Potato Chips, heck even rice cakes if their in the machine. Whatever’s in the machine that’s Prize Monkey enabled can be yours for winning these games.

It’s a win-win for the end user and the game sponsor. The sponsor wants to engage the end user and what better way then with candy and snacks.

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