startup Archives - Page 82 of 87

Little Rock’s Verve Solutions, Offering Complete Energy Assesments, Wins Gone In 60 Pitch Contest

Over 200 entrepreneurs, startup founders and technorati turned out for a Gone in 60 seconds pitch contest Monday night in Little Rock. The contest was part of a tour that was created by Innovate Arkansas. Innovate Arkansas is a partnership that works with new technology based entrepreneurs to turn inventions and startups into viable businesses.

The Gone in 60 pitch contest, or G60 as it’s affectionately known in Arkansas, is a 60 second elevator pitch contest. The Little Rock event was held at Vino’s and saw about 20 pitches compete for prizes. The top prize was $1,000.00 and won by Verve Solutions.

Verve Solutions is an energy assessment, and efficiency solution provider based in Little Rock. The company was founded by Lolisa Crowe and Brian Broussard both twenty something entrepreneurs who both happen to be RESNET certified energy auditors. Also, both have a long history of energy conscious environmental leadership. Crowe was a volunteer with Americorps through the Clinton Foundation. Boussard has worked on earth day projects as well as on the campaign of environmentally conscious and landscape architect turned State Representative Mark Robertson.

The winning pitch was focused on how the current residential building was inefficient in terms of both environment and energy consumption. Home owners will have the ability to pursue energy efficiency improvement in a more affordable way thanks to Verve solutions.

So far the G60 has been to Fayetteville, Fort Smith and Rogers. The next stops are in El Dorado, Texarkana, Jonesboro and Conway.

For more information on G60 visit Innovate Arkansas

For more info on the winner of the Little Rock competition visit Verve Solutions

source: Arkansasbusiness.com

Kansas Startup Front Flip Takes Their Virtual Scratch Card Platform National

In Overland Park Kansas, home to Sprint, a new startup called Front Flip has been trying out a new and fun way of engaging customers and increasing loyalty in Kansas, Chicago, Columbia, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, New York, Orlando, Phoenix, Philadelphia, San Antonio, and St. Louis. As we’ve reported with startups like Lokalty and FreebeeCards the loyalty, rewards and engagement space is heating up big time right now. Part of the reason is because local merchants are becoming tired of killing their margins with daily deals sites that only attract a customer one time, and that one time is typically at a loss.

That’s one of the reasons why Front Flip co-founder and CEO Sean Beckner created Front Flip.

“The market is ready for a change. Daily deal programs aren’t building customer engagement or rewarding loyalty — in fact, they have rather the opposite effect,” Beckner said in a release. “Front Flip’s mission is to help businesses engage with their customers in a fun and exciting way both inside and outside the store by increasing understanding and building customer loyalty.”

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Startup Kentucky Preparing For Take Off On Friday

Scott Case and Startup America are going to Kentucky Friday to launch the Startup Kentucky initiative. Startup Kentucky, like the other Startup America partnerships around the country, will draw from the resources of the nationwide organization of volunteer entrepreneurs. Startup America is totally free and we are members with Startup Maryland.

If you’re in Kentucky the festivities will be held at Nucleus: Kentucky’s Life Sciences and Innovation Center LLC, 201 E. Jefferson Street. Joining Startup America CEO (and founding CTO of priceline.com) Scott Case, will be the Start Up regions managing director Donna Harris.

The launch events are great because entrepreneurs and startup founders from across the state turn out for a great speech from Scott Case and networking that can’t be beat at a grass-roots level. Did we already mention that joining Startup America is free. Case is no stranger to Startups, in addition to launching 18 Startup Partnerships across the country, Case was on hand when President Obama signed the JOBS Act into law on April 5th.

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3 Fort Lauderdale Entrepreneurs Launch MyNyte A Mobile Nightlife Social Startup

Three young entrepreneurs in Ft. Lauderdale have teamed up to launch an innovative new social mobile startup called MyNyte. The focus is to answer the question “What are you doing tonight” and then team up with your like-minded friends to do the same thing. Essentially, the app helps eliminate the hours of planning, phone tag, text tag, email tag, voicemail tag and any other kind of tag you can play as you plan your evening.

This app is pretty hot, how hot? Well Tyrese for one has been tweeting about it. MyNyte’s co-founder Jimmy Caylor says that Tyrese isn’t the only celebrity that’s checked out the app. A social mobile startup like this could not have picked a better market to introduce itself in as south Florida. We all know that Miami, South Beach and Fort Lauderdale are the hubs for night-time entertainment.

The three guys that founded MyNyte are no strangers to nightlife and the partying scene. Through their own personal experiences and the experiences of their friends they’ve made sure that MyNyte has everything taken care of.

Planning your night- MyNyte helps you scout the perfect places. Whether you’re looking for an upscale night of martinis, cocktails and lounging or you’re looking for the hottest clubs with the best people MyNyte uses your profile to match you up with the action.

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Madison WI Based Digital Estate Planning Startup Entrustet Acquihired By Largest Competitor SecureSafe

A big problem that many of us will face in the next 50-60 years is one that hasn’t been around before. That is, what happens to all these accounts, all these cloud stored files and all this data when we pass away. Nobody likes to face mortality but it’s definitely something you want to keep track of.

That masterful idea you’ve been working on your whole life, will it be buried with you? Will your legacy be carried out? What about all those passwords for your bank accounts and credit cards? What if you use online desktop office software like Google Docs. Heck I haven’t used Office since the beta of Google Docs. What if my life was cut short, where does the data go?

Companies like Madison Based WI startup Entrustet have been working on that. Entrustet was founded by Jesse Davis and Nathan Lustig with a vision to give users a piece of mind when it comes to your data. They want to allow people to quickly, easily and securely prepare last wishes for their digital assets.

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MA Startup: Copiun Closes $5M Series A Round For Entreprise Alternative To DropBox

Cloud based storage is a hot topic these days. We’re all anxiously awaiting for Google’s product in the space, said to be called Google Drive. The top contenders in the space already are the popular Dropbox and equally as popular Box.com. Both services offer user the ability to store any kind of file they’d like in their own personal space on the cloud. Both are also using promotions with vast amounts of free storage to attract personal users. However some IT departments don’t feel that traditional cloud based storage offerings are adequate for enterprise.

That’s where Massachusetts based Copiun comes in. Founded by CEO Puneesh Chaudhry and plans to tackle cloud based storage secure enough for corporate IT departments. Chaudhry has found that many people like DropBox however they want it more secure.

“They are saying, can you make my corporate data accessible on these devices, in a secure way,” he told the Boston Business Journal.

While making cloud based data services more secure for enterprise they are also tackling the BYOD market of prosumers as well. More and more people are choosing to bring their personal device to work. There are a variety of software solutions that allow IT departments to securely allow those employees to use a separate “area’ of their phone for business and another for personal.

“You could be sitting in a Starbucks and not connected to the corporate network, and whatever data your company has authorized to be accessible on a device, you can access it, edit it and sync it back. And it only goes to the corporate repository,” Chaudhry said in the same interview.

Copiun’s current $5 million dollar series A round was led by Maryland Venture Capital Firm Novak Biddle Venture Partners. They previously received $1.86 million dollars in a 2010 round led by Boston venture groups; Hub Angels, Launchpad Ventures and Beacon Angels.

Source: Boston Business Journal

European Startup King.com Beats Out Electronic Arts On Facebook

While we admit we are skeptical on the fact that king.com calls themselves a startup, they do so to that end we will as well. Outside of them being a startup though, this little known game development studio in London has overtaken Electronic Arts in terms of daily app users for their Facebook games.

Admittedly, they aren’t anywhere near eclipsing Facebook giant Zynga but they have their sites set on Zynga. According to this report from the Chicago Tribune, king.com’s game Bubble Witch Saga has more daily active players than Zynga’s smash hit Farmville. Impressive. But not quite the 65 million daily users Zynga has across all of their titles.

King.com’s most recent launch, a game called Candy Crush Saga, has already crossed the half a million daily users threshold. That game just debuted last week.

“Our ultimate ambition is to be the leader in our segment of games for the casual social player, mainly female, social and mobile,” King.com’s Chief Executive and co-founder Riccardo Zacconi said in an interview with Reuters. He continued, “Our target is to reach Zynga.”

Across Facebook and other channels King.com reports that they have 2.5 billion games played per month. Although they started out before Facebook gaming became popular a lot of their game plays comes from Facebook. Zynga has been reportedly looking at options outside of Facebook and King.com says they are looking at other places to host their casual games as well.

King.com lacks in the mobile world and plans to change that this year by introducing their most popular titles to iOS and Android. That’s a space where EA and Zynga have already been successful.

source: ChicagoTribune

Chicago’s Groupon Acquihires Ditto.Me

Lately the news about Groupon hasn’t been the good news we’re used to hearing. First, there is a group of investors that are suing Groupon suggesting that the Chicago based startup had cooked the books. Also over the weekend Groupon disappeared from Apple’s iTunes app store.

That hasn’t stopped them from making acquisitions though. Social check in, recommendation, chat with friends app Ditto.me was just acquired by Groupon. Terms of the deal were not disclosed however a post on Ditto.me’s website clearly indicates that this is a total acquihire.

Ditto’s founder and CEO Jyri Engestrom posted this on ditto’s website:

“We can’t reveal what we’ll be working on at Groupon but we are excited to give it 100% – to enable this, we’ll be winding down Ditto. On April 30th we’ll switch off the service and remove the app from Apple’s and Nokia’s stores*. We think you’ll love what we and Groupon dream up next.”

If Groupon manages to come out of the investor lawsuits unscathed and whatever this issue is with the Apple iTunes app store they have their work cut out for them. As a pioneer in the daily deals space, they are just like FourSquare. FourSquare was a pioneer in the check in space, but then after checking in that was it. The same thing holds true for the original Groupon, you’ve got group deals, and daily deals, everyone has those now.

Groupon may be using this acquihire of Ditto.me to make their daily deals and group buying app more social. Perhaps share deals with friends and then go in together? The technology is definitely there as is the technical know how from Engestrom.

We’ll be watching this one closely.

source: Forbes

Omaha: Food Fight App For Restaurant Ratings Wins Hack Omaha

Quick take every preconceived notion you have about a restaurant ratings app and throw it out the window. We’re not going to be talking about the next Urbanspoon or Open Table or even the next Venga. But to set the stage we need to talk about Hack Omaha first.

The Hack Omaha challenge was this past weekend in Omaha Nebraska. The event was a three-day event, similar to a startup weekend, which started on Friday and ended this past Sunday at 6:00pm. During this time the “hacker” teams needed to use some portion of publicly available government data and turn into something useful, or in Omaha Food Fight’s case, useful and fun.

While you’re probably thinking crime prevention heat maps, city park guides, community planning apps, and things like that, those were all represented but Omaha Food Fight took the cake (you see what we did there?).

The other teams were:

Safeomaha.org- An interactive crime heat map.

Omaha Bounty Hunter- “The Price Is Right” for stolen property values.

Play Safe Omaha- Map of safe places for kids to play.

Valuation and Comparison Interface: a property value comparison app.

HSW Project- relationships revolving around campaign finance.

Slum Lord Next Door- Search neighborhoods for major code violations

Is It Clean- is the place you’re going to eat at safe.

Voting Registration app- needs no description.

Omaha Food Fight- The winner.

(source: SPN)

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Miami Startup: YourListen Crosses 100,000 Audio Uploads

Audio sharing site Yourlisten.com, founded by Scott Goodman, hopes to become the audio version of Youtube. They are well on their way as they recently announced their 100,000th audio upload. That’s definitely not too shabby for an audio file sharing site not based in Silicon Valley, and having to deal with the fallout from sites like MegaUpload.

Yourlisten.com is a free user-generated network that allows flexibility for uploading just about any kind of audio file. You’ll find a variety of music, podcasts, ringtones, interviews, soundbytes and other audio files on Yourlisten.com. The user can share the audio on the site, with friends and across social networks.

You would be surprised at the types of audio files that you can find on yourlisten.com. It’s not the site of the day out there to replace sites like megaupload. There are a lot of spoken word poetry pieces, international interviews and songs by new and undiscovered artists. A quick perusing of the site found that WTOP radio in Washington DC (one of the top billing radio stations in the country) uses Yourlisten.com to host interviews for people to listen to if they miss them during the original broadcast.

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Durham NC Startup: School House Apparel; Collegiate Home Grown Apparel With Purpose

Duke University Alum Rachel Weeks set out on a mission to create a line of fashion apparel that’s socially conscious. School House started when Weeks went to Sri Lanka in 2007 on a mission to build a socially responsible clothing company. She was able to do that with her first college t-shirt from her alma mater Duke University.

The first School House line was manufactured in Sri Lanka and it helped support a living wage factory there. While she was maintaining an ethically social responsible clothing line while using a living wage factory in Sri Lanka she found the opportunity to come full circle in 2011 and brought her clothing line back home to North Carolina, but that wasn’t before Weeks was able to triple the wages in that Sri Lankan factory.

While Weeks felt great about what she was doing for the Sri Lankan factory she found out later on that the factory had taken on more and more orders from other companies and the School House orders were getting pushed to the back. With an angel investment Weeks was able to hire textile and apparel expert Susan Williams who had over 25 years of experience with brands like Jockey, Levi Strauss and the Gap. The two of them together did a cost analysis and decided that home was where School House needed to be.

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Kansas City Entrepreneur Inspires Startups To Get Fit With New Fitness Startup Blog

The managing partner and co-founder of Think Big Partners, Herb Sih, has launched a new startup of his own called “Startup Your Fitness”. The new media startup (blog) aims at giving startup founders and entrepreneurs who live the workaholic startup lifestyle fitness and living tips that fit into their busy lives.

The site, which launched on the first of April, was no April Fool’s joke. “Startup Your Fitness” offers exercise tips, diet tricks and health advice that can fit into a busy lifestyle. Sih created the startup because as a serial entrepreneur he found himself drifting further and further away from being in shape.

“I know many other entrepreneurs who are in the same boat as me,” says Sih. “They’re passionate and committed to their dreams, but struggle finding time for exercise and living a healthy lifestyle. So, I’m challenging them to join me in my next venture in building an exercise regimen that works for entrepreneurs just like me.”

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Birmingham Alabama Hosting A Startup Day On April 24th

They don’t have a Startup America affiliation yet and they haven’t had a formal 3 day 54 hour startup weekend, however Birmingham Alabama has a growing startup scene. Birmingham has an active startup Twitter account called StartupBirmingham and they have a startup day coming on April 24th.

The all day event will be held at Birmingham’s WorkPlay theater and the organizers are calling the event the Startup Summit. The organizers are Jonathan Sides the CFO of Daxlo and Tony Summerville the founder of his own startup called Rarestep which makes Fleetio a web based solution for fleet management.

As with all great startup events Sides and Summerville have enlisted the help of some of the top entrepreneurs in Birmingham’s startup ecosystem as well as community business leaders. More than 100 startup founders and entrepreneurs will attend the event. Sides and Summerville promise in addition to the content, lectures and panels there will be several networking coffee breaks, a networking lunch and an after event party where startup founders can network with each other. As we know that’s an integral part to any startup event.

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Chattanooga Entreprenuers’ Pure Soda Works A Huge Hit In Chattanooga Expanding To Retail Location

In our quest to be the startup voice from “everywhere else” we sometimes come upon hard goods startups that have a great story. Pure Soda Works is one of those startups. We learned about Pure Soda Works when our startup road trip brought us to the thriving community in Chattanooga TN. While Pure Soda Works isn’t “on the gig” they’re certainly quenching the thirst of those that are.

Pure Soda Works is the brain child of husband and wife team Matt Rogers and Tiffany Rogers who’ve already had success with their all natural bath and body company called Everday Eclectic. While we would hardly call Chattanooga a “hippie town” their residents are passionate about the environment, natural products, eating healthy and the environment. In a story or two about our trip to Chattanooga we’ve talked about how we saw electric car charging stations about the town. It’s really a great place.

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