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Startups Everywhere Else See 65% Of US VC Money In Q3 2012

The latest Dow Jones VC Edge report for Q3 2012 was just released. Overall, venture capital investment across the globe has declined 20% quarter over quarter. Deal flow on a global decreased as well by 11% with 1341 deals in Q2 2012 and only 1189 deals in Q3 2012.

Fred Wilson, the Principal at Union Square Ventures, weighed in on the Dow Jones report in a blog post on Sunday. Most notable to Wilson was that VC funding of consumer web and mobile companies was down 42% for the first 9 months of 2012, when compared to the same 9 month period in 2011. He’s careful to note that the decrease has come in follow on funding and not seed funding.

Wilson highlights three trends in consumer based web and mobile companies that are worthy to note. The most important being that mobile first startups need to spend more to simultaneously bring products out across iOS, Android and the web. It also seems that some startups are having a hard time building scale after their mobile products are built.

The Dow Jones VC report said that IT still received the most venture funding with $3 billion dollars spent in the quarter which is still a decrease of 10%.

In overall venture funding the US was the strongest region even with a 17% drop in investment. Israel saw an increase of 43% with $263M invested in Q3.

Source: Dow Jones’ Venture Source

As for the United States, Silicon Valley still commanded 35% of the venture pie, while startups “everywhere else” drew 65% of the venture capital. Dow Jones highlighted the Los Angeles metro (3%), Seattle metro (2%), Chicago metro (4%), Boston metro (10%), New York metro (9%), and Potomac with (3%). All the other US cities that weren’t broken down accounted for 32% of funding.

Wilson’s interpretation of the critical piece of data surrounding follow on funding was spot on. The Wall Street Journal noted that companies that had a seed round in 2007 and 2008 were more successful in raising follow on funding than those who received a seed round in the following years. There was also more money up for grabs just 5 years ago. The median seed round in 2007 and 2008 was $4 million, while today that’s shrunk to $2 million.

Linkage:

Get a free tour of Dow Jones’ Venture Source here

See this Wall Street Journal piece

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Washington DC Startup: MBA Project Search Connects MBA’s & Businesses For Short And Long Term Projects

We’ve reported on several job and recruitment based startups. Most of these startups are attacking problems with hiring and recruiting with technology like video and social media. Some employment based startups, like Memphis startup Work For Pie, are honed in on specific markets like developers. A new Washington DC startup, MBA Project Search, is connecting businesses of any size with MBA students or alumni.

MBA Project Search is getting it’s start out of the Washington DC area and is tapped into the MBA scene at Georgetown University. They’ve also secured relationships with every Ivy institution as well as MBA equivalents internationally.

On the startup side, MBA Project Search is great for startups that need MBA caliber talent but don’t want to hire someone on full time or do some kind of equity for work scenario. With MBA Project Search startups can hire MBAs for short term projects at an affordable rate.

Currently MBA Project Search is free for both businesses that need to hire an MBA and for MBAs to apply for projects and positions. There are no other hidden costs involved either.

The MBA Project Search team says that for students, it gives them the kind of hands on experience a doctor would get from a $100/hr residency or a lawyer would get from a $50,000 internship. They’re giving MBA students and graduates another resource to find post graduate work that encompasses the degree they studied long and hard for.

We got a chance to talk with MBA Project Search co-founder Rasheen Carbin, check out our interview below.

Startups Need A Product Model Rendered? Try Romanian Startup Renderstreet

If you’re a startup, or any company, looking to have a 3d product rendered than Romanian startup Renderstreet may be just what you’re looking for. This is the latest startup for Romanian startup serial entrepreneur Sorin Vinatoru who was also behind the Romanian startup Pagepeeker, that we profiled back in August.

RenderStreet is an easy and affordable render farm for 3D projects. The startup is also priding itself on great customer support so when you turn to RenderStreet for a project, they will hold your hand through the development.

Vinatoru has already had some success raising money for RenderStreet. He’s looking to announce a seed round in the coming weeks.

3D rendering requires immense amounts of computing power that isn’t often available to just anyone. That’s where render farms like RenderStreet come in handy.

We got a chance to talk with Vinatoru about RenderStreet. Check out the interview below.

Everywhereelse.co Becomes The Largest Startup Conference In The Country

It’s hard to believe the headline above but it’s true. With over 1100 tickets sold and over 400 accredited vc’s and angels from across the country, who’ve already purchased tickets, by attendance everywhereelse.co is the largest startup conference in the history of startup conferences. Less than 10% of the tickets sold zipcode to the state of Tennessee.

We’ve got attendees and startups in our Startup Village from as far away as Israel, Romania, Lithuania and Buenos Aires. Of course we have investors and startups from just about every state in the country as well.

We had 104 startups in the village. Two have upgraded to larger booths, and one is going to launch on the stage at everywhereelse.co we’ve also weeded out a few that weren’t going to be ready by February 10th. That leaves a handful of spots in the village open but they will go incredibly fast.

Startup Village startups will be eligible for three different startup contests with over $50,000 in cash and $100,000 in other prizes up for grabs.

There’s no other conference in the world that will give you this level of access to the investor community. We’ve actually been shocked at the caliber of investors coming to the conference who love the idea to increase their deal flow from outside the normal entrepreneurial and startup hubs.

We’ve got a handful of speakers that we can’t contractually reveal until ticket sales are over. We’re hoping to sell out during the month of December and let everyone know the few top shelf speakers that have already committed.

Of course we all know we’ve got Scott Case,Bill Harris, Tracy Myers, several startup founders from YCombinator and 500 startups and many many more.

The schedule keeps on growing and the parties are even getting better. This will be one event you don’t want to miss.

Here’s the site for the conference

Here’s the link for tickets and Startup Village booth space

Black Friday’s Over, Continue To Save Money With Philly Startup Snip Snap App

Back in May we brought you the story about Philadelphia startup Snip Snap App. We were so intrigued with the concept behind Snip Snap, that we actually posted this story, before founder Ted Mann got off the stage at TechCrunch Disrupt NYC.

Snip Snap App has saved me over $400 personally since last May. The concept is simple, it’s a wallet for your print coupons that allows you to crowdsource print coupons from other users. Now if you’re a real coupon king, or coupon queen, then you know that different regions have different coupons. With internet coupons on the rise, and more and more stores accepting coupons on phones, Snip Snap App is poised to save consumers hundreds of dollars.

Snip Snap App allows you to take photos of the coupons out of your local inserts, post them to the app and the community and then report on their success rate in usage. Gigantic nationally known chains like Kohl’s, Best Buy, Target, Old Navy, Aeropastle, Toys R Us and several fast food chains honor electronically stored coupons from just about anywhere, even if they say “some restrictions apply”.

If you’ve snipped a coupon that doesn’t work on redemption you simply report that in the app for others to know. Users can search coupons by name, location and more and they can see how successful those coupons have been by others that have actually used them.

With the biggest shopping day of the year behind us, we thought it was a great time to check in with Mann about Snip Snap and see what, if any, surge he saw in Black Friday.

Swedish Startup Truecaller Global Directory App For Anyone In The World

A startup based in Stockholm Sweden, called Truecaller, says they are the global phone directory linking you to anyone in the world. If you get a call from a number you don’t know you should be able to tap into Truecaller and find out who is actually calling you. In addition to traditional reverse directory information, Truecaller also says they have millions of prepaid phone users in their directory as well.

By coupling existing directory information and crowdsourcing their user-bases contact lists (opt-in) they create a hybrid of publicly available data and crowdsourced information to put together the TrueCaller directory.

Truecaller is a great way to prevent spam from sales calls and others that users don’t want to talk to.

The founders of Truecaller originally started the idea as a side project. They were tired of missing calls from people who were important but necessarily in their contact list already. As they tell us in the interview below, they released the original, rough version of the app and saw over 10,000 downloads immediately. That’s when they realized they should push forward and turn Truecaller into a real startup.

This is the third startup for founding duo Alan Mamedi and Nami Zarringhalam who met while studying at the Royal Institute of Technology.

We got a chance to interview Mamedi, check out the interview below:

Tennessee Startup: MDSave Raising $1 Million To Connect Self Pays To The Best Care

A Brentwood Tennessee startup called MDSave is connecting self pay patients with a choice in healthcare that they hadn’t had before. Doctors who use the MDSave platform share their prices and extend deals to self pay patients and those with high deductible health insurance plans.

MDSave doesn’t only provide more options for those self pay patients, but in turn they help keep the emergency rooms and urgent care clinics less crowded. Perusing the MDSave website you can find that doctors are competing for those self pay patients so they keep their services affordable.

The doctors on the platform pay a small subscription fee. Patients on the other hand, use the platform to search for the type of medical service they need by zipcode. Once they’ve selected a participating doctor they pay in advance through the MDSave platform and they’re giving a voucher to see the doctor they selected. The voucher is redeemed at the appointment to cover the cost. This way, not only are self pay patients getting much needed healthcare the doctors are eliminating the risk associated with collections and the messy process it can be to collect from a self pay patient at the end of the appointment.

MedCitynews is reporting that a SEC filing has revealed that MDSave is in the middle of a $1 million dollar equity raise.

MDSave’s founder and CEO Paul Ketchel is a former member of former Tennessee US Senator Bill Frist. Ketchel is also the son in law of Tennessee Representative Marsha Blackburn.

According to MedCityNews the capital raised in this round will be used to expand MDSave outside of Tennessee.

Linkage:

Check out MDSave here

Source: MedCityNews

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St. Louis Startup LockerDome Announces First Game Built On LockerDome Platform

We’ve been continually covering St. Louis startup LockerDome since April of this year. LockerDome is a venture backed sports social network that allows players of any age and any level to engage throughout their entire career. LockerDome was founded by Gabe Lozano who’s the son of online payment software pioneer Bob Lozano. The elder Lozano helped launch cloud solutions and development firm Appistry as well as PayLinx.

LockerDome is backed by Cultivation Capital as well as Square co-founder and local St.Louis entrepreneur Jim McKelvey.

We’ve had the privilege of talking with Lozano quite a bit over the last six months. In fact he served as an impromptu, remote mentor for one of the teams that participated in Memphis’ Startup Weekend over the summer.

On our last trip to St. Louis Lozano was very excited when he was telling us that they had started to open up the LockerDome platform to developers and some of the ideas that may come out of that. Today they’re announcing the first game/app that has been built on top of the LockerDome platform, “Basketball Memory App by Dime Magazine”.

Dime Magazine is the the basketball lifestyle magazine that’s been around since 2001. The Memory App by Dime Magazine will live on the Dime Magazine Network on LockerDome and leverage LockerDome’s over 2.5 million monthly unique visitors. Users will match the popular basketball lifestyle magazine’s covers featuring the biggest names in basketball as quickly as possible and win cool basketball related prizes. The first of these prizes is a pair of the recently launched “Polarizing Pink” Nike Air Foamposite One shoes provided by Foot Locker.

“We are pleased to be partnering with Dime Magazine and IDC Projects to deliver the first game to LockerDome’s rapidly growing and highly engaged sports audience,” said Gabe Lozano, co-founder and CEO of LockerDome. “This exciting new game featuring the stunning artwork from previous Dime covers and the wonderfully addictive Memory Matches technology represents the next step in the evolution of LockerDome as a sports media platform.”

“We’re excited to use our expertise in mobile games to be part of this synergistic approach to encourage interaction between basketball fans and brands.” said Michael Orlando, CEO of IDC Projects.

“Over the past decade, Dime Magazine’s covers have featured the best basketball players in the word. We’re excited to bring Dime to a robust mobile platform like LockerDome, and to give our fans a fun, new experience through this innovative and wonderfully addictive new game,” Dime Magazine’s CEO and co-founder Josh Gotthelf said in a statement.

Since re-launching in January, LockerDome has been one of the fastest growing sports-specific websites in the world. Many top sports agencies are leveraging LockerDome as a means to maximize their client’s social media efforts on Facebook and Twitter and to better engage their fanbases. The official brands and networks the St. Louis-based company represents includes NBA superstars Blake Griffin, Rudy Gay, David Lee and Stephen Curry, NFL superstars Troy Polamalu, Larry Fitzgerald, Maurice Jones-Drew and Marshawn Lynch, and MLB Legends Pete Rose and Wade Boggs, among others.

Linkage:

Download the game for your iOS device today, here

Nibletz is the voice of startups “everywhere else” here are more startup stories from St. Louis

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17 Year Old Russian Entrepreneur Launches Startup: Hippflow

When you think of people to give you startup advice or to model your startup after you typically think of either high profile VCs or people who’ve had eight to nine figure exits. They must know what’s good for you because they’ve either invested in big deals or had a big deal themselves. That makes perfect sense.

Well a 17 year old entrepreneur by the name of Kirill Chekanov from Moscow has developed a startup called Hippflow which will hopefully help other startups.

How?

Chekanov tells us in the interview below that Hippflow will help entrepreneurs input and track resources, plan work, measure progress and celebrate milestone achievements.

Chekanov knew that for something like this to work he needed to go global from the beginning. He’s already inked partnerships in the US, England, Singapore and China. His latest partnership, is with Chinaaccelerator one of the largest startup accelerators in China.

Internally, his organizational startup has kept him focused and hitting his milestone goals while simultaneously finishing his last year in the Russian equivalent of high school.

Check out the rest of the interview with Chekanov below.

Dallas Startup: VIPOrbit Named Number 1 By i.Business Magazine, To Be Featured At CES

We first reported on Dallas startup VIPorbit back in June as part of our Chicago Tech Week coverage. VIPorbit is a robust relationship management system for iOS devices founded by ACT co-founder Mike Muhney. ACT is the original Customer Relationship Management software, that paved the way for companies like SalesForce.

VIPorbit users organize their entire contact list into orbits, and can add as much or as little relationship management information to each contacts record. Track every conversation, email, activity and more across contacts and orbits. VIPorbit is by far the best mobile CRM solution we’ve tested and we’ve used it consistently since June.

The folks at i.Business magazine must agree as VIPorbit has beat out such widely known enterprise mobile apps as FileMaker Go, Quick Office Pro, DropBox and Evernote to claim the number one spot in the magazine’s “Top 50 Business Apps”. The online version of the latest issue has already hit digital news stands and the hard copy version will come out shortly and be given away free to the hundreds of thousands of attendees of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas in January.

“We are dedicated to providing the most robust relationship management experience available on the iPhone and iPad—not just another useful app but full-featured relationship management software that empowers users to build relationships and grow their businesses,” said Mike Muhney, VIPorbit CEO and co-founder. “VIPorbit gives users instant recall of all past, present, and future activities with those in their network, setting them apart from their competition.”

“We are excited to announce the Top 50 Business Apps Edition of i.Business Magazine, and to name VIPorbit as the number one app on the list. It gives professionals everything they need to stay on top business relationships, a mission-critical business activity. It manages contacts, schedules, tasks, Email, social feeds, and more—all in one easy-to-use app, available for both iPhone and iPad—two platforms widely used by businesspeople,” said Carmine De Santo, founder and publisher of i.Business Magazine

Muhney is a serious influencer in the CRM and mobile CRM business. He also penned this guest post for us here at nibletz.com.

Linkage:

Check out VIPorbit here

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Animate Your Ideas With London Startup Powtoon

There’s another new presentation tool in town. This time it comes to us from across the pond in the UK. The new animated presntation platform is a London startup called Powtoon.

This startup with a silly name, promises to “supercharge your presentations and videos” according to Powtoon co-founder and CEO Ilya Spitalnik. Spitalnik tells sproutsocial.com that the Powtoon team focuses on “less is more” and that their startup has been designed by designers for non-designers.

Many people looking to create presentations either only know the basics for Power Point and Keynote or get overcome with frustration trying to use features to make their run of the mill presentations less run of the mill. Powtoon offers a whole suite of tools that are easy to use and basically “drag and drop”.

While there are alternatives out there to the current presentation programs Spitalnik says they only add a limited amount of features or their non-intuitive and “far too complex”

Powtoon offers users three ways to use the service. You can start with a 14 day free trial, opt for monthly billing or a per use version.

Their monthly plans start at just $9 a month for “fans” without the ability to download, and fully co-branded with Powtoon. An agency can go monthly at a rate of $247 per month.

While no one building a startup wants to pay anything for services, the costs associated with Powtoon are much better than outsourcing a presentation which can run between $5,000 and $20,000 per presentation. The Powtoon website also boasts an educational program and the ability to make some extra scratch by reselling Powtoon’s services.

Powtoon offers even the most non artistic types the ability to create eye popping presentations. When considering the cost of a presentation, also take into consideration the goal of the presentation. Paying under $50 to create a presentation that could yield you an investment of millions of dollars is a no-brainer.

Linkage:

check out Powtoon here

Source: Sproutsocial

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Toronto Startup CountMeIn Is The Next Generation Of Wish Lists & Gift Registries

While it’s not as explosive as the reward and loyalty space, we’ve profiled a handful of gift registry and group gifting startups here at nibletz.com, the voice of startups everywhere else. Monday we brought you the story of a new feature from our friends at Buyvite that allows people to pay back someone on a group gift purchase, socially. This Toronto startup called CountMeIn merges all of that together.

Toronto startup CountMeIn is the next generation of wish lists and gift registries. CountMeIn’s co-founder Israel Schachter, who goes by Yummy (don’t ask), tells us that he came up with the idea for CountMeIn after getting a friend and business associate a $1500 gas grill at Home Depot as a housewarming gift.

Schachter had no plan of action, except getting a commitment from 14 of his closest friends for $100 a piece for the gift. Once he arrived at Home Depot he found the grill and decided that was the gift. Then, he needed to figure out how to get the grill to his buddy’s house in his sedan. Needless to say it was a huge headache, and two years later he’s still collecting money. He thought there had to be an easier way.

While he calls coming up with a startup to solve your own problem “selfish” most of us call it innovative.

Rather than tackling the problem of group collaboration on a gift, executing the gift and collecting on payments separately, he and his team went all out and tackled all three problems in one.

Check out our interview with Schachter below.

Exclusive: Nashville Startup RentStuff Acquired

We’ve been covering the wild, but awesome ride that Nashville startup RentStuff has been on since May. RentStuff is a 2011 graduate of the JumpStart Foundry startup accelerator in music city.

Over the summer the Nashville startup relocated to the 1871 startup incubator in Chicago.

RentStuff started off as a peer to peer rental platform. Got a lawn mower rotting away in the garage. You could use RentStuff to rent it out to someone who needed it for a few days. Items like iPads, DSLR cameras and even powerful leaf blowers could be found at RentStuff.

In August the RentStuff team, led by Chris Jaeger, pivoted away from that model in favor of a more traditional rental search utility. Jaeger told us then that they would continue to support both platforms however the original model, despite rave reviews, wasn’t scaling fast enough. You could find a lawnmower for rent in Nashville and a DSLR camera in Pennsylvania, with the people who actually wanted to rent them hundreds of miles away.

Today we found out that RentStuff has been acquired by RentalCompare, the largest searchable database of things to rent across the country. Terms of the sale were not disclosed by press time.

Jaeger has always been a big proponent of the Nashville startup scene, especially the Entrepreneur Center and JumpStart Foundry. Tennessee venture firm Solidus backs several Tennessee accelerators including JumpStart Foundry and also participated in a follow on round for RentStuff.

RentStuff alerted their user base to their acquisition with the message below posted on their Facebook page:

Tennessee is a great place to startup, apply now for the Seed Hatchery accelerator click here

Linkage:

Find RentStuff Here

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Launch Memphis Launches UpStart Women’s Startup Initiative And 48 Hour Launch Dec 7-9

Launch Memphis, one of the key ecosystem drivers for startups in Tennessee, has launched a new initiative aimed at women entrepreneurs and startups. Getting more women engaged in startup communities is a goal that most cities are working on. Driving entrepreneurial growth among women is also a key factor in the overall health and success of an entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Launch Your City and their Memphis arm, Launch Memphis, are no strangers to the startup ecosystem. They’ve been the driving force behind Memphis’ startup and entrepreneurial growth since 2006. Launch Memphis runs a free coworking space; The LaunchPad, curriculum based initiatives through Launch Memphis and a startup accelerator in it’s third year, Seed Hatchery.

With the success of their most recent endeavors, including playing host to over a dozen Global Entrepreneurship Week events, now is the perfect time to announce a women’s initiative.

The kick off event for the women’s initiative, dubbed “UpStart” is a 48 Hour Launch event being held December 7-9th at Emerge Memphis. The three day hackathon style, startup launching vehicle has been so successful in Memphis, the folks in Nashville recently replicated the event for their startup community.

The UpStart 48 Hour Launch is open to both women and men to participate however the ideas pitched will be from women. These women entrepreneurs will drive their teams through 48 hours of hacking, collaborating and building a viable product.

Unlike many of the “official” Startup Weekend events, 48 Hour Launch is coupled with the existing resources of Launch Memphis and Emerge Memphis which serves as the epicenter for startup and entrepreneurial activity in the mid south.

“We recognize that the disparity between men’s and women’s high growth potential startup companies is not unique to Memphis; however, Memphis can be unique in our deliberate approach to close this gap and fuel women’s innovation and entrepreneurship”. Elizabeth Lemmonds, Chief Brand Officer at LaunchYourCity told nibletz.com

Danielle Inez, a successful PR, marketing and event planning consultant in Memphis is anxious to pitch her newest idea at the UpStart 48 Hour Launch in December. Inez was among hundreds who participated in Launch Memphis’ Risk City Field Day event last Friday as part of Global Entrepreneurship Week.

Inez took to Twitter on Tuesday to express her enthusiasm for both events.

Eric Mathews, Co-President and CEO of LaunchYourCity said: “We are making a commitment to cultivate and fund a woman led and majority woman owned startup by the end of the first quarter of next year. We encourage women to reach out and get involved in all levels of our platform as mentors, investors, and of course as potential founders.”

UpStart programming also includes a women’s meetup and plans on being a permanent fixture in the LaunchMemphis programming.

Linkage:

Upstart Memphis is here

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