startup Archives - Page 84 of 87

Los Angeles Startup PayDragon Launches: Simple, No Frills Order Your Food & Pay App

A new startup has entered the mobile payment arena called PayDragon. PayDragon was founded by Hamilton Chang who also serves as the startups CEO. Chang and his team were also behind the QR code pioneer Paperlinks.

Chang soft launched the PayDragon app in Austin Texas at South By Southwest and decided to do its full launch in LA where the company is based. Chang has eliminated a lot of intense restaurant focused graphics and superfluous extras in the UI to offer an easy order, pay, get receipt transaction system on the mobile phone.

Customers who use PayDragon will order their food from the participating restaurant of their choice, pay for the food, and then get notified by push notification when the food is ready to be picked up. They can also elect to get a receipt sent back to their mobile phone. Chang elected to keep PayDragon as simple as possible and his feedback thus far has proven that point.

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Rawporter Roadshow: We Stop In Chattanooga, TN To Talk Gig City And Gig Tank

Chattanooga TN is quickly becoming know for a lot more than just their “Choo Choo”, there is a tech scene forming in their close-knit community that plans to disrupt the rest of the U.S. One of the backbones to their tech scene is “the gig”. That’s how the Chattanoogians refer to their 1gb fiber optic internet that already covers 150,000 homes and businesses and 600 square miles. It’s big and it’s fast.

The “Gig” gives Chattanooga a one up over many other areas. In fact San Francisco doesn’t even have 1gb internet yet.

That’s why they’ve formed “The Gig City” and this summer they are hosting the “Gig Tank”. The Gig Tank is part summer camp, part startup contest and it’s open to entrepreneurs and students. There are two tracks and cash prizes for both.

Last month we wrote about the Gig Tank here on Nibletz. Check out the video, we talk with Brian who sits on the Gig Tank committee and is planning on a great event. Nibletz will be on hand for the kick-off of the Gig Tank and then we’ll check in with participants halfway through and the wrap up demo day event at the end of the session.

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Boulder Mobile Food Startup: Splick-It Adds Meal Ticket For Charity

Splick-it a mobile app startup based in Boulder Colorado has added a community minded touch to its app that allows customers to skip long lines and order ahead at area restaurants.

Customers who use the Splick-it app to order their favorite food can now round their order up to the nearest dollar which will in turn benefit Community Food Share. It’s a very easy process. Customers using the Splick-it app can change their donation settings in the settings menu and then forget about it. It’s that easy.

Splick-it is available on Android and iOS.

“Community Food Share can distribute four meals for every dollar donated,” said Jim Baldwin, chief executive officer for the 31-year-old charity. It distributes more than 7.5 million meals annually through a network of more than 50 member agencies and two direct service programs which target specific at-risk populations in Boulder and Broomfield counties.

Splick-It was founded by Trish Groom and Rob Taylor after Groom, who at the time owned a coffee shop, found that there was a giant obstruction in the form of a 10 foot beam that blocked the entrance to her shop and the counter. Groom found that she was missing customers. Taylor, a regular at Groom’s establishment, suggesting taking text-based orders and allowing those people to fly past the line and just pick up their order.

After the all too familiar bad experience with outsourcing development for their new app to Indian developers, Taylor and Groom happened into Adam Rosenthal from New York who eventually became their third co-founder and co-CTO. Today Splick-it has an Android app, iOS app and hundreds of area businesses participating in their community. It’s only fitting that they are trying to make giving back to the Boulder community an easy experience for their users.

source: Boulder County Business Report

Seattle Daily Deals Site Tippr Gets Proactive; Refunds Customers For Possible Fake Bose Headphone Purchase

Every daily deals site’s worst nightmare recently came true for Seattle-based Tippr, however their handling of the situation saved face and customers.

One of Tippr’s merchants recently ran a deal for a pair of Bose headphones at the low-cost of $49. The merchant had said that the headsets were genuine and that they were authorized to sell them. However as Tippr CEO Martin Tobias told Geekwire they started to have their doubts and then worked with Bose directly to vet the validity of this deal.

“Upon further investigation and in partnership with Bose Corporation, we were unable to verify the merchant’s inventory levels nor the authenticity of the product to our satisfaction,” Tobias tells GeekWire in an email. ”There are apparently quite good fake versions of these headphones in the market and we were concerned that the merchant may have been attempting to ship knock-offs instead of factory authorized product. So out of a preponderance of caution, and looking out for the interest of our Tippr customers, we decided to refund all customer’s money rather than risk them getting a potentially faulty or poor quality product.”

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Philly Entrepreneurs Unveil The Startup Beach House

Now before we get too far into the story we are well aware that there are no “beaches” in Philadelphia however that’s not stopping Greg Berry (founder of Municibid), Mike Bianchini (Municibid CMO) and Dave Drager (Razorserver’s VP of Technology) from hosting the first ever Startup Beach House. Like most Philadelphians, the Startup beach house will be on the Jersey Shore.

The group is taking applicants now and plans to host five startups in a 6 bedroom 18 bed beach house in Avalon, NJ. The Startup Beach House will take place from August 11th to 18th and is open to anyone, not just those in Philadelphia.

“We’re more concerned with the quality of teammates than the idea,” Berry told technicallyphilly.com. “Mostly looking for people who share the same passion for entrepreneurship that we have.”

Will it be hard to focus on building a startup when you’re surrounded by miles of open beach and an awesome beach mansion? Maybe, but Berry is hoping that the next Instagram could come out of this experience.

If you’ve got what it takes to work in the startup beach house applications are being taken through May 31st Here. Good Luck.

Source: TechnicallyPhilly

Massachusetts Startup: 7 Lunches Brings Lunch Specials Right To Your Email Or Phone

The daily deals space is blowing up like crazy. Other than social discovery apps, daily deals has to be the hottest app platform out there right now. It’s getting crowded, but every once in a while something different comes along in the daily deals space worth mentioning.

7 Lunches is one of those things. With the hustle and bustle lives we all live these days, the cost conscious business professional doesn’t have time to comb through lunch specials on restaurant websites. They also don’t have the time to cruise down to their local hot spot to just “see” if there is a good special. We need to know the specials and we need to know them now.

That’s how co-founder and co-creator of 7 lunches, Ryan Maturski came up with the idea for 7 lunches. He was eating in a local sub shop in North Adams, MA and he told the owner that he should send his daily lunch specials out via email. Voila. Marturski and co-founder Jeff Lee set out to do just that, not just with the sub shop but with every restaurant that they could get to participate.

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LA Startup: EventUp Really Let’s You Party Like A Rockstar

You can rent this home once owned by Joe DiMaggio for your party with Eventup (photo: eventup.com)

Former Myspacer Tony Adam has put a new spin on the event app. If you’ve ever wanted to party like a rockstar than Eventup may be exactly what you’re looking for.

Adam has procured celebrity homes in major cities like New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Through partnerships with the home owner, his company Eventup rents the houses out for parties and events. You could have a pool party at the Entourage mansion or propose like the bachelor. You could hold your first CD listening party at the home of Bob Dylan and countless others.

The prices are set by the home owner and range from $1,000 (a non celebrity castle with a moat) to $5,000 (Eric Clapton’s pad) to even more pricey like the East Village walkup Lady GaGa lived in before becoming a star ($12,000) and up. The possibilities are endless and more and more celebrity homes are coming available.

Imagine throwing your son’s Bar Mitzvah reception at the home of Joe Dimaggio or your daughter’s Bat Mitzvah reception at the home of Marilyn Monroe (same venue) well Eventup has that venue starting at just $1000.

As with the castle with the moat though, if you’re not looking for a celebrity pad but somewhere ultra cool for a theme party Eventup has those kinds of venues for you as well.

The renters are responsible for the rental fee, cleanup fees and insurance but other than that the place is yours for your event.

“On most real estate or house sites you can only look,” Adam told the New York Daily News, who launched eventup.com in February. “This goes beyond real estate voyeurism. For not much money in some cases, you can grab some friends and throw an event at these spaces.”

source: NY Daily News

Cincinnati Based Startup: SimpleRegistry Raises $150k To Ramp Up Registry For Everything

With Spring in full swing and May and June just ahead of us, wedding season is also in full bloom. We’re sure that means that while many of you are perusing tech sites like nibletz.com you’re also checking out gift registries, signing up for wedding sites and taking the telxon to Target’s aisles. Well STOP!

SimpleRegistry, a Cincinnati based startup has a solution for registries for everything. Whether you need a wedding registry, baby registry, honeymoon registry or heck you just want a bunch of gifts, you can use SimpleRegistry’s tool to create your registry and than take monetary gifts to get the things that you want.

The startup was founded by Brandon Warner, Chris Kolik and Tony Alexander. Alexander got the idea for SimpleRegistry after he launched his first registry related startup called “Traveler’s Joy” with a focus on creating honeymoon registries.

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Seattle Based Startup Wavii: Finally An Easy To Use News Feed

When you look at Facebook you see the latest news from all your friends carefully curated over time and managed by your friends. Your friends post what they want you to see and you can keep up with them. It’s really great when you think about it.

I connected over the weekend with a friend that I hadn’t seen in person in over a decade. We had been friends on Facebook for two years and we were both pretty caught up on the small talk when we met up. Imagine if something as simplistic as your Facebook feed could be utilized for the news that you get off your RSS reader.

We’ve looked at a lot of news aggregation programs and Wavii, a Seattle-based startup may be the easiest to absorb to date. You login to Wavii via your Facebook account and it immediately populates sources that the system thinks may be of interest to you. You can then click on those sources to add them to your feed.

In about five minutes I created a Wavii feed based on articles I need to keep up with for Nibletz. Naturally every other news reader I’ve got has Android stories and I’ve been looking for something more effective than Google Alerts. I created my account with Facebook and was quickly adding topics that interested me like, Venture Beat, TechCrunch and even Anderssen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital and Greylock Partners, yes Wavii allows you to get that specific.

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NY Startup Birch Box Teams Up With Gossip Girl XO XO

Birchbox is a women owned startup in New York that’s received a lot of traction. They are a monthly subscription club where their club members receive a box every month filled with the latest and greatest in cosmetics and pampering gear.

Subscription based clubs have been great for people with a hustle and bustle lifestyle. Nowadays you can find a subscription club for everything from shoes, to fashion, to cosmetics. We even profiled Chicago based KlutchClub earlier this year, they offer health and wellness products monthly.

Birchbox had two major pieces of news this week. First off they’ve introduced the Birch Box for men which comes complete with colognes, after shaves, and other pampering products that men love (but sometimes don’t like to shop for).

Their other announcement is that they’ve teamed up with the CW hit show “Gossip Girl” for their season finale.

The May Birchbox theme is “Gossip Girl” Birchbox founders Katia Beauchamp and Hayley Barna have teamed up with Amy Tagliamotti the shows department head for makeup and Jennifer Johnson the shows department head for hair. Tagliamotti and Johnson helped inspire the treats that will be in this months Birchbox.

“We’re all really big fans of Gossip Girl,” Beauchamp told Betabeat.com “The idea was to help the audience basically engage deeper with the show by getting a look into some of the looks from the show.”

Gossip Girl chronicles the lives of the upper east sides debutantes and their soap opera centric lives. “Gossip Girl” is a secretive blogger who posts the gossip that’s happening around the shows main characters. It airs on the CW network and is about to go on their season break.

source: Betabeat

Rawporter Roadshow: We Talk With Ric Fleisher about Urgnt.ly And The DC Startup Scene

As the Rawporter Roadshow continues we got a few minutes to sit down with serial entrepreneur Ric Fleisher about his latest startup urgent.ly. Fleisher has had several successful exits and is proudly working on his current startup that came about out of necessity.

Fleisher found that as more and more location based service startups came out they were all focusing on what they believe people want. Urgnt.ly is a new kind of location based app that focuses on what people need.

As the story goes it was a Friday evening and Fleisher had just finished doing the dishes. Before he went to bed he set the dishwasher to run overnight. He was awakened Saturday morning by his son that told him there was water in the kitchen. Fleisher got dressed and went downstairs expecting to find a puddle of water. Instead he found that his entire kitchen and surrounding areas in his home had been completely flooded by a dishwasher that was still spewing water.

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Las Vegas Startup: Hangover Heaven Hopes To Drip You Back To Life

This story has been making it’s way around the interwebs. It’s been vetted now, a number of times and while this may seem like something out of a movie, Hangover Heaven is very real.

A Las Vegas anesthesiologist, Jason Burke, came up with the idea for Hangover Heaven after realizing that most of the effects of a “hangover” are things that he regularly sees in a recovery room after surgery. Burke decided that he could use mild doses of the drugs used to revive patients after surgery to get people back on their feet after a night of card playing and binge drinking.

Hangover Heaven has a fleet of IV equipped buses that will be strategically placed throughout Las Vegas’ infamous strip. They’ve already been approved for pickups at The Cosmpolitan, Hard Rock Hotel, The Paris and The Bellagio.

After you’ve been drinking and you need a little pick me up, simply board the bus and fork over Dr. Burke’s fee. There are three different plans available; the Redemption, Salvation and then In Room Treatment. The latter will set you back just $500 for the first person and $375 for each of your other drunk buddies. They are discounting the Salvation package to an introductory price of just $150.

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Xoogler Spotlight: Powhow Learn New Hobbies In The Comfort Of Your Own Home

Former Googler Viva Chu has come up with something that hasn’t been done before. His new, New York based startup, PowHow allows people to take classes via webcam from the comfort of their own home.

Whether you want to learn how to knit socks, make fancy gift wrap or take a fitness class, there’s no need to comb the internet to find out when the next local class is happening. There’s no need to worry whether the class will be canceled because the instructor’s kids are sick. Powhow brings the class to your PC or Mac.

The classes cost each participant between $10- $30. Powhow takes a flat 30% fee off each “ticket” sold and the teacher gets the rest of the money. Simple enough right?

Now, all those great crafters on Pinterest could make a couple bucks sharing their knowledge using Chu’s new platform. It’s like Google Hangouts meets Pinterest for money.

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Yes Ashton Kutcher Did Invest In Des Moines’ Startup Dwolla

Most people in tune with the startup community have heard of Ben Milne and his payment startup Dwolla. Milne founded Dwolla in Des Moines and has no plans to take it elsewhere.

Dwolla is making a name for itself by providing a payment system that isn’t dependant on a traditional banking system or credit card backing. It’s this innovative approach to payments and the fact that they’re based in Des Moines that attracted actor and tech investor Ashton Kutcher and his A-list venture fund to Dwolla’s latest Series B round (announced in February).

Although announced in February Kutcher wasn’t formally announced as an investor until earlier today at Startup City Des Moines.

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