With The Animated Gif Back, DC Startup MyFaceWhen Is Ready

Way back in the 90’s (saying that is so wrong), animated gifs were typically banners that someone who was building a website would use to attract attention to something or another. The more popular animated gifs were dancing bears, christmas lights, and even cars driving along in the middle of the web page.

Nowadays banner ads are fading fast and the animated gif is actually coming back.

Thanks to mobile usage and social networks animated gifs are almost, if not more popular than meme’s. If you want to get your point across in a cute, happy, or even angry way, you can say it with an animated gif. Technology has vastly improved over the past two decades as well, which means better animated gifs.

Of course there are places that are stockpiling cute, one off animated gifs that you can use to send to your friends and family but just like meme’s witty people want to create their own. That’s where Rodney Curl and his startup MyFaceWhen come into the picture.

The Howard University graduate has gotten the creation of animated gifs down to a science. In fact from start to finish you can get an original animated gif ready to send out in under 10 seconds. Curl also tells us if you want to use a stock gif MyFaceWhen will take you out to Reddit where gifs are a plenty.

We’ve seen a vast variety of startups come out of Washington DC. Cur’s MyFaceWhen is a fun mobile app and a nice break from the traditional tech startup.

We got a chance to talk to Curl. Check out our interview below.

Colorado Startup SeedLauncher Joins The Online/Offline Crowdfunding Space

Crowdfunding could have very well been the most popular startup space in 2012. Crowdfunding startups came out of the woodwork for every industry and everybody. Even the porn industry got it’s own crowdfunding startup which we actually covered here.

One of the niche’s within crowdfuding that’s heating up right now is hybrid crowdfuding sites. These are the crowdfunding sites like SockStock and SeedVille, that fit in this hybrid space.

So what’s a hybrid crowdfuding site?

Crowdfunding sites that most people are familiar with function like Kickstarter and Indiegogo. These are sites where people can post whatever project they are working on and the crowd funds those projects. The project creators can be anywhere in the world because everything is done online.

In exchange for funding or a donation if you will, the entrepreneur getting their project or startup crowdfunded, gives the donator, or funder, some kind of perk. The more money that gets donated, the better the perk.

To us, a hybrid crowdfunding site is one that utilizes the internet for the funding but the business is local. Say you have a favorite ice cream shoppe around the corner from your home. The owner of the shoppe wants to expand but doesn’t have the money. He can go to a hybrid crowdfunding site and raise the money, and instead of sending perks in the mail, contributors can come to the local business and get their perk.

That’s exactly what Colorado startup SeedLauncher does. We got a chance to talk with SeedLauncher’s co-founder Jeromy Sonne about crowdfunding and the Colorado startup scene.

Check out the interview below.

Startup First! Memphis Startups Pitch Federal Court Judge As Part Of Amazing Risk GEW Event

Screwpulp,GuildLocal,Memphis Urban Farm School,Launch Memphis,Memphis startup,startups,Judge Fowlkes, startup pitch

Memphis startup founder Rich Billings pitches ScrewPulp to Federal Court Judge John Fowlkes

For the third year running the state of Tennessee has held the most officially sanctioned Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) events with 91. One of those events as part of Memphis’ GEW activities is the Amazing Risk scavenger hunt.

A call was put out a month ago for startups to apply to compete in the Amazing Risk challenge. The field was narrowed down to three startups; Screw Pulp, Guild Local and the Memphis Urban Farm School. These three startups are competing for $10,000 in cash and prizes (services).

The three startups began the day at Risk City Field Day in midtown Memphis. At 10:00am all three teams were given clues to what they had to do to earn up to 1100 points. At the end of the day the team with the most points will win the prize pot.

The participants had to go to local eatery South Of Beale and pitch one of the waitresses. They also had to pitch Marvin Stockwell the Marketing Director at one of Memphis’ big social entrepreneur examples, the Church Health Center.

Finally the last clue had the teams headed to the Memphis Civic Center downtown which is the collection of state, local and federal buildings. From there they needed to interrupt President Barack Obama appointed Federal Court Judge, John Fowlkes, and again give their pitch.

Judge Fowlkes is no stranger to the Memphis entrepreneur community. His oldest son Andre Fowlkes is the Co-President of Launch Your City, the startup and entrepreneurial epicenter for Memphis Tennessee. While Judge Fowlkes was in on the contest, no one else in the courthouse was, which made the experience a bit challenging at first.

Once each of the three startups arrived in the court room, jitters and nervousness went on extra high. It’s one thing to pitch a room from of entrepreneurs and startup leaders. It’s another to pitch a sitting Federal Court Judge, in open court.

The first startup to arrive in Judge Fowlkes’ courtroom was, publishing alternative startup, Screw Pulp. Screw Pulp is a web platform that allows independent publishers to publish their books. Their book is originally given out free to a certain amount of readers who agree to review the book. After the first hundred copies are given away and reviews are accumulated ScrewPulp then begins to sell the book online in a more traditional manner.

Check out the ScrewPulp Pitch here:

Wes the founder of Memphis Urban Farm School was next to pitch in the courtoom. Judge Fowlkes and his clerks had plenty of questions for Wes.

Just before the judge’s lunch break the team from Guild Local arrived. They did a decent job of describing their startup but Judge Fowlkes still had questions.

We’re pretty sure this is a first for any startup to have to go and pitch a judge, much less a Federal court judge. Later in the day we’ll find out which team won the most points in the Risk City, Amazing Risk Challenge.

Linkage:

Launch Memphis is here

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Toronto Startup TelChamp Puts Your Existing Phone System On Steroids

When you picked out your phone system, if you didn’t get the features you wanted, there’s no need to worry. Toronto startup TelChamp puts existing phone systems on steroids adding features that everyone wants.

TelChamp is a unified communications system that adds SMS, call forwarding, conference calling, follow me, auto-attendant, web based faxing, and more to your existing phone system. You can try it all out for free.

Two Pakistani brothers, Mustafain (Musti) and Murtafain (Murti) Nasser, are the founders of TelChamp. Both were educated in North America and now Musti manages the North American part of their business from Toronto and Murti handles their Karachi business from Dubai.

Through an alliance with Los Angeles based Allcom TelChamp has been able to come up with the Genie system. This is the cloud based system that provides all of these telecommunications features through a personalized, web based dash board. Genie is also the TelChamp user’s personal, virtual assistant.

This technology allows small business people and even startups, to have a larger more professional phone presence on a laser thin budget.

We got to talk with the TelChamp team. Check out the interview below.

Seattle Startup Zulily’s Valuation Reaches $1 Billion Dollars

Back in September we brought you this interview with Zulily co-founder Darrell Cavens. Zulily is an online marketplace featuring daily deals for kids,mom’s and women. The company started out with just kids stuff and then expanded and started offering women’s clothing and accessories along with housewares.

It was announced on Thursday that the Seattle based startup has raised $85 million dollars from Andreessen Horowitz, one of the top valley venture capital firms that holds interests in companies like Instagram and Skype.

Jeff Jordan the former CEO of Open Table and partner at Andreessen Horowitz, characterized Zulily as an example of “e-commerce 2.0″ in a blog post. He also said that Zulily was part of a renaissance in innovation among e-commerce players.

That wasn’t all that attracted Andreessen Horowitz to Zulily. The company’s founding team that’s already had tremendous success in the e-commerce arena in a niche market. Mark Vardon and Darrell Cavens were also the team behind Blue Nile which is the largest online retailer of certified diamonds and other fine jewelry. Jordan also cited the fact that Cavens was the head of both technology and marketing, ” a combination of functions I had never encountered before as an internet executive”, he wrote in the blog post.

Zulily has been very successful in carrying goods from lesser known designers who lacked distribution and then spun it into a business with over 10 million customers to date.

Last year Zulily raised $43 million dollars at a valuation of $750 million dollars. Although they didn’t report a valuation with today’s round, Business Insider quotes Fortune’s Dan Primack valuing the company at $1 billion dollars. This puts Zulily in the same company as other startups like Square, FourSquare and Airbnb.

Linkage:

Check out Zulily here

Here’s our interview with Zulily

Source: BI

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Charlotte Serial Entrepreneur Unveils Soccer Startup Social Network KYCK

Mac Lackey and Ross Saldarini are serial entrepreneurs in Charlotte North Carolina, they’re also soccer enthusiasts. The pair have started several startups and even had a few exits. Their most notable exits were selling internetsoccer.com to a public European media company, and selling Mountain Khakis to Remington.

Now they’re back at it again, infusing their love of startups, social media and soccer into one new company called KYCK. KYCK is a social network, and community for soccer enthusiasts connecting them to each other and an abundance of great soccer related content.

Through a proprietary content delivery system that Lackey calls “media layers” they are able to offer even the most scrupulous of soccer fans the best possible experience through their own personal soccer focused dashboard.

While we’re all familiar with how popular soccer is overseas, a poll conducted by ESPN earlier this year showed that soccer has climbed to the second most popular sport in the United States behind football among those age 12-24 which is one of the most important demographic for professional sports.

(source: ESPN)

With the vast amount of soccer related content, pouring in from across the globe, and the increase in popularity for the sport, KYCK is poised to become the destination for soccer fans around the world.

We got a chance to talk with Lackey about soccer, KYCK and raising a startup in Charlotte, North Carolina. Check out the interview below:

Maryland Startup CoFounders Lab Is Connecting CoFounders

When Shahab Kaviani sat down and had some time to reflect about his previous startup, HyperOffice he quickly realized that the cofounding team behind that startup drove it’s success. He admits that they bootstrapped almost the entire project. He also says in hindsight their timing was lousy, but the cofounding team kept the startup together.

Finding the right cofounders should actually be at the top of the priority list in any startup. CoFounders lab is one of many startups that look to match people with cofounders. FounderSync is one of those startups that uses an online approach. FounderDating uses a hybrid online offline approach merging an online community with in person events.

CoFounders lab also blends online and offline through in person events. We hope that he’s not too late to this party as well. Of course we all know that when the Dodge brothers went to build cars they weren’t worried that Ford was already doing the exact same thing.

Kaviani was fortunate enough to get selected into the Fort accelerator in Washington DC. After graduating from the program the company moved to Rockville Maryland where they are currently based now. They recently pitched the “Pitch Across Maryland” bus as part of Startup Maryland back in September.

We got a chance to talk with Kaviani. Check out our interview below.

Australian Startup Releases New Dual Screen Video Platform For Event Organizers

If you’re throwing a big event, like we are, than you know that the audience at home is just as valuable as the audience on site. Event organizers are constantly looking for the best way to stream their events online and give at home viewers a similar experience to what those on site are seeing.

Australian startup Cogent has launched an exciting new video platform, primarily targeted towards live events. The platform called Eventer, is a dual screen video platform. This allows viewers at home to partake in the direct feed video from the stage and possibly watch the audience or a slide presentation at the same time. There are currently other video startups working in a similar space, but none so focused on events themselves.

Eventer has already been tested in Australia and in the United States. The San Francisco Music Tech event was the first US event to test out Eventer. The event’s co-founder Brian Zisk said that the event saw viewers at home staying engaged for 40 minutes at a time. In Australia, the Sustaining Women In Business conference also tested out the technology and it worked well for them too.

The unique platform delivered by Cogent and Eventer allows viewers to see everything in real time. Viewers at home can see the slide transitions and any special effects that may be happening on stage.

We got a chance to talk to the team from Eventer, check out the interview below.

The Altsie Report: Summary Of A Startup That Didn’t Quite Work Out Part I

Editor’s note: We covered Altsie, a Minneapolis startup that helped promote and drive independent films and local commerce around the films. During that time we got to know Lucas Rayala, the startups founder. A few weeks back Rayala announced that he was shutting down Altsie and shared his thoughts on it with TechCrunch. Rayala wanted to give other startup founders an inside look at a startup that “didn’t quite work out”.

His insightful report is very valuable to any startup founder and we will be publishing the report in four parts over the next two weeks. Anyone that feels this information is mission critical and would like the entire report in a downloadable format can simply email startups@nibletz.com and we will gladly send it to you.

Overview:

What’s Altsie?

Altsie was a new way to go to the movies. Altsie partnered with hip neighborhood businesses across the country to create alternative screening venues and bring customers a new, exciting theater experience. Using some web 2.0 magic, businesses could, in minutes, set up a profile and schedule show times through our site. Altsie’s vision was to disrupt the old Hollywood theater model; with the help of overnight shipping, we had the ability to create a hundred micro theaters overnight.

It just didn’t work out that way.

Incorporated as a Minnesota LLC, Altsie showed films from April to November of 2012. During that time, Altsie partnered with seven businesses across three states and has had thirty screenings of seven award-winning films. Altsie made money through online ticket sales.

We closed in November of 2012 for various reasons, including a need to reinvent the original idea, a lack of funds to do so, and other personal reasons.

This paper describes some market observations we made during our short existence, some of the problems we ran into, and potential areas we think other startups might be interested in exploring. This paper is written from our limited perspective, but we believe that a perspective from someone with their boots on the ground is pretty valuable.

Market Summary:

The Universe of Theater Ticket Sales and the Cost of a Theater

The MPAA Annual Report states that in the US/Canadian market, theater admissions were 1.3 billion in 2011, totaling $10.2B in sales ($32.6B worldwide sales). Attendance has fallen steadily over the last decade, down from 1.6 billion admissions in 2002, while sales have remained relatively stagnant due to increased ticket costs. 1

We wanted to position Altsie as a nationwide alternative to traditional big-box theaters, and we believed we had a significant cost advantage. To put things in perspective, an owner today will spend $2M to build and equip a standard movie theater2. For $2M, a business like Altsie could install HD projectors, screens, and speaker equipment in one thousand businesses across the country. That would instantly make that business, by location, the largest theater system in the United States, surpassing Regal and AMC combined.3

There’s a lot of power in small.

Competitors

Altsie was the first company to partner with small businesses to create ticketed screenings on any scale. We were excited to be the first to explore this space. Other companies license films for non-theatrical venues, but securing the rights to show a movie through these companies is a byzantine and expensive process. Swank and The Criterion Collection are the two main competitors in this arena. Neither site caters to small businesses. Both are built for larger organizations like cruise lines, colleges, and prisons. These larger clients are allowed to screen movies concurrent with a film’s normal theatrical release; however, neither Swank nor Criterion will license a film to a small business until after it has been released to DVD.

Small businesses we spoke to did not like to work with either Swank or Criterion. They’re too expensive, starting at $175 to license a movie for a single showing. This makes it difficult for businesses to break even on an event. Small businesses have limited time and resources to procure films—Altsie knew this and made procurement easy, licensing straightforward, and event-creation a snap.

Altsie Audience Demographics

The majority of Altsie’s customers were between 20 and 40 years of age. Anecdotally, they almost all attended our events as a “date night,” and the majority of tickets were purchased by women. Customers generally bought meals and drinks at our showings—this is in line with industry studies, which show that 43% of moviegoers go to a sit-down or fast food restaurant immediately before or after their movie.4

Footnotes:

1 MPAA Annual Report, Theatrical Market Statistics, 2011, http://bit.ly/HH1VzH

2 Reed Construction Data, Movie Theater: Construction Cost Estimating, http://bit.ly/P7E68B

3 As of this writing, Regal and AMC are the two largest theater systems in the US, with 548 and 378 locations, respectively. http://bit.ly/dFuOQP

4 The Arbitron Cinema Advertising Study: Appointment Viewing by Young, Affluent, Captive Audiences, 2003, http://bit.ly/NGo3gO

Market Summary Continued:

This was a big sell to businesses who wished to partner with Altsie, and locations that paired specials with their showings were effective at pushing food sales. Our first show had 35 guests and created the highest Sunday-night sales “in memory” for The Nicollet’s owner, Jeremy Konecny, whose café did record pizza sales because of the special he offered with his tickets. While Altsie used group buying to get the word out about our service, for our business customers, Altsie wanted to position itself as an alternative to services like Groupon or LivingSocial.

What market trends made us believe Altsie would succeed?

Decreasing Number of Theaters

The high cost of showing a movie in a traditional venue has led to fewer, larger theaters as owners consolidate costs. The number of indoor movie theaters has gone from 7,151 in 1995 to 5,561 in 2009, a 22% decrease5. The decrease in locations means, necessarily, that theaters are moving farther away from customers. You can quote any number of theories as to why attendance has decreased, but increased travel-time will limit physical attendance. However, because of the unchallenged position this model has in the live-screening market, theaters have been allowed to continue this unhealthy pattern. And this trend isn’t stabilizing, it’s accelerating. At a minimum of $65K per projector, the conversion to digital will be the final straw for many small theaters. “Convert or die,” is a maxim repeated by John Fithian, CEO and president of the National Association of Theater Owners (NATO), the largest exhibition trade organization in the world. He’s right, for the traditional market. Large distributors will soon discontinue using film as a medium—Fox Pictures intends to do so in the next two years. NATO estimates that 1,000 venues will go under as other distributors follow suit, eliminating another 20% of our nation’s theaters. 6

This trend is sad, but the gaps left by the retreating theaters leave room for a new business model. Altsie wanted to be a model that brought movies back into neighborhoods, at a reasonable price and cost structure. There’s another growing trend we tried to take advantage of to do this.

Increasing Number of Films

There are over 10,000 films created in North America every year. The Sundance Film Festival reports 12,000 submissions (both national and international) to their contest annually. Of that, they screen 200.7 In 2009, only 3 films that participated in our nation’s flagship festival were offered theatrical release, as reported in a roundtable discussion by industry experts in McSweeney’s San Francisco Panorama. 8 The discussion participants went on to talk about the need for a new method of distribution for this growing market. As the costs to create a film decrease, they note, directors do not need to rely as heavily on production companies. The sheer number of films now available made it relatively easy for Altsie to find quality work for our audiences.

Footnotes:

5 National Association of Theater Owners website, http://bit.ly/5lxs5

6 Hurley, Michael, We’re About to Lose 1,000 Small Theaters That Can’t Convert to Digital. Does It Matter?, IndieWire, Feb. 23, 2012, http://bit.ly/AzLtuB

7 Sundance Film Festival Website, Film and Events page, http://bit.ly/gckpzb

8 McSweeney’s San Francisco Panorama, Jan. 1, 2010, http://bit.ly/ntA8sT

Market Summary Continued

Decreasing Projection Costs and Changing Markets

While professional equipment has gone up in price, home theater equipment has decreased in price and increased in quality. Six years ago, a high definition 1080P projector cost over $10K. Today, higher quality units are around $900. The rapidly decreasing cost presents an inevitable problem for the film industry. It’s a problem the record industry was caught famously unprepared for with the rise of MP3s—technology has created a new method for distribution, and unless a business model exists to harness this new technology, illegal screenings will become more common. Altsie, of course, hoped to head off that trend and meet the market need.

Increased Online Buying and “Going Local”

Concepts which would not have been possible ten years ago have become realities because of a recent critical mass of internet users and the expansion of mobile. “Local” is the new buzzword for internet businesses. Customers are excited to use the internet to discover new adventures in their cities, as exemplified by the rapid adoption of services such as Groupon, FourSquare, Yelp, and more. Groupon’s 2011 Letter to Shareholders states that they have 33 million active users worldwide who purchased 170 million deals last year.9 “Going local” works, and there is a large market for online and social purchasing that Altsie tried to tap into. To do this, Altsie used its website as a tool to automatically organize businesses and show times, creating a flexible framework for event creation that made it easy for consumers to get local, find relevant information, and minimizes the number of clicks necessary to purchase a ticket.

Rural and Underserved Markets

Finally, not every city has an independent theater, and rural markets are underserved with respect to movie theaters in general and independent films in particular. This opens up several opportunities. Certain geographies cannot support traditional movie theaters. Altsie wanted to bring a theater experience to smaller geographies by partnering with pre-existing businesses. There is less competition with other entertainment options in these regions. Altsie saw rural communities as a major expansion point for our business and believed this had the potential to be our largest market.

There’s a second market consideration with regard to rural communities. Altsie spoke with distribution companies interested in expanding their footprint beyond the indie theaters they’re currently restricted too. They do not, of course, want to cannibalize or otherwise compete with established markets, but they see value in a separate market offering outside the urban areas. We believe this is a still an area of growth.

Footnote

9 Groupon 2011 shareholder letter, http://bit.ly/KoqnIL

We will continue to bring the rest of this report to you over the next few days! If you would like the report in it’s entirety simply email us at startups@nibletz.com

Los Angeles Startup: Smarter Stand, Works For iPad Mini Too

Dotan Saguy, the founder of Los Angeles startup Smarter Stand, has just written in to tell us that his unique device works for iPad Mini as well.

We reported about the Smarter Stand over the summer when it had surpassed 10x it’s funding goal on crowdfunding site Kickstarter. When all was said and done Smarter Stand received over 15x the original amount they had hoped for. The best part, the Smarter Stand is one of the simplest little iPad accessories ever produced.

Essentially what Saguy has done, is created a clip that holds Apple’s optional smart covers in place at one of the creases. Without the Smarter Stand, the smart covers fold like an accordion of sorts. With the Smarter Stand in place, the material and hard material under the cover remains in place and the smart cover can be converted into a stand with many different angles.

When Saguy had heard about the release of the iPad Mini he couldn’t want to get his hands on one to see if the Smarter Stand would work on the smaller smart covers. He is happy to report that it does.

If you were lucky enough to get a Smarter Stand from the original Kickstarter campaign and have since bought an iPad Mini go ahead and try it out, it works great. If you just purchased an iPad Mini and a smart cover and want the Smarter Stand all you have to do is go to smarterstand.com

Linkage:

Get a Smarter Stand today at smarterstand.com

Here are more startup stories from “everywhere else”

We hope to see YOU here!

Atlanta: Points Of Light, Starbucks & Village Capital Announce Social Startup Accelerator

Points of light, the world’s largest organization dedicated to volunteer service along with Village Capital have teamed up to launch a social entrepreneurship focused startup accelerator in Atlanta.

10 social startup teams have been selected and are coming together this week in Atlanta for an intense 12 week accelerator bootcamp. The 12 startups will receive access to mentoring, education, peer support and networking. Along with that each team has received a $10,000 seed investment. At the end of the session, the 10 startups will choose two startups from their peer group to receive additional $50,000 investments to help bring their startups to life.

The 10 startups kicking off the accelerator’s first class are:

AltruHelp (Boston) is building a software solution and online community to increase volunteerism and millennial civic engagement.
Bould (Denver) connects students with the real-world experience necessary for green careers.
CareerVillage (Boston) helps working professionals provide career information and advice directly to students.
Generation Citizen (New York) empowers young people to become engaged and effective citizens.
GivKwik (San Francisco) is a social, mobile and web platform that inspires impulse philanthropy.
HopeMob (New York) unites strangers to rally behind people with pressing needs.
Moneythink (Chicago) makes financial literacy relevant and fun for urban 11^th and 12^th graders.
MyMaryland (Silver Spring, Md.) is democracy’s first 24/7 online town hall.
Smallknot (New York) is a community crowd-funding platform for small business.
UBELONG (Washington, D.C.) provides high-impact, affordable international volunteering opportunities.

PwC Charitable Foundation and the Starbucks Foundation are also supporting the socially driven accelerator.

“Supporting productive and disruptive innovators in the research and design of sustainable, scalable programs that drive charitable endeavors is an important part of our giving philosophy,” said Chris Simmons, president, PwC Charitable Foundation, Inc. “We congratulate the 10 start-ups selected for the accelerator and look forward to seeing their individual plans to catalyze social change through innovation in the areas of education and humanitarianism.”

“At Starbucks, we believe strongly in the power of the entrepreneur and the opportunity for businesses to be the catalyst for change in their communities,” said Adam Brotman, chief digital officer, Starbucks. “We are honored to support this program and look forward the success of these ventures.”

“Entrepreneurs are bringing new thinking and innovative business models to the critical work of helping others,” said Ayesha Khanna, president of Points of Light’s Civic Incubator. “We are pleased to help these 10 promising teams successfully launch civic ventures to drive social good in communities across the country.”

“Over the next three months, these enterprises will get the best support and the toughest criticism they’ve ever received from their peers,” said Ross Baird, executive director of Village Capital. “We’ll focus on everything from customer validation to board-building to fundraising to financials, and we expect that the collaboration of these amazingly talented people will be a force multiplier for their success.”

Linkage:

Find out about Points of Light here

Here’s more startup news from “everywhere else”

Several Atlanta startups will be here, will you?

Build Your Own Video Games With UK Startup Construct 2

Have you ever wanted to build your own video game? Maybe you’re a gamer and thought you’d love your own game but didn’t know an ounce about programming? Well there’s a UK startup that’s come up with a do it yourself platform for creating video games. The startup is called Scirra and their product is Construct 2.

Through Construct 2’s easy to use interface you’ll drag and drop your game characters, game play moves and more to make a fully workable video game via HTML5. After that Construct2 gets you ready to export your new game to a variety of devices and a variety of platforms.

The system that Ashley Gullen and has brother have created makes it possible for people with no programming experience whatsoever to produce “awesome games”.

Construct2 creates Windows based games and was the follow up to Gullen’s 2007 game creation tool now dubbed “Construct Classic”. The classic version allowed people to create games in the DirectX 9 platform.

We got a chance to talk with Ashley’s brother Thomas Gullen. Check out that interview below.

Paris Startup AIRTAG Is All About Mobile Shopping INTERVIEW

A startup in Paris called AIRTAG is offering a complete suite of mobile shopping tools for retailers and e-tailers. The startup was founded by Jeremie Leroyer and Cyril Porteret who also cofounded Haiku which was sold in 2004 for $10 million euros.

AIRTAG’s complete suite of products has every facet of mobile shopping covered. AIRSHOP enables shoppers to order and pay in advance for groceries and fast food using their mobile phone. AIRFID is the rewards and loyalty card arm of the company. AIRPASS is a mobile wallet of sorts adding loyalty cards, gym keytags and even transportation passes. AIRTAG kit is the companies development tool kit for developers to interact with their PayPass applications.

The company’s stable of clients already includes McDonald’s, McCafe’, Reebok, Dior and many other globally well known brands. This has prompted AIRTAG to deploy offices throughout the world including a recently opened office in New York. They plan on adding partnerships in both the US and Canada from the New York office.

Mobile shopping and payments have grown into a huge industry and right now it’s still anyone’s game. Google got off to a very rocky start with Google Wallet. Three of the four major US wireless carriers teamed up to help create ISIS an alternative to Google Wallet which was supposed to have seen a larger national footprint heading into this years holiday season.

According to the co-founders of AIRTAG, Japan is light years ahead of the rest of the world when it comes to allowing smartphones to manage people’s lives. Since selling their first startup to Japanese investors both Leroyer and Porteret have spent a lot of time in Japan where they noticed everyone used their phones for everything including bus fare, key locks, and payments. AIRTAG’s hope is to help replicate that system across the world.

We had a chance to interview the AIRTAG team. Check out the interview below.

New Orleans Car Advertising Startup Advercar Raises $2 Million In Seed Round

Advercar is a New Orleans based startup that lets people make money by wrapping or putting other advertisements on their vehicle and driving around.

The startup was founded by Neil Turner who was the former Chief Strategy Officer at iSeatz. Advercar pays drivers to put advertisements on the front, sides and backs of their cars. It’s very similar to taxicab advertising except on private vehicles. The company charges advertisers $280 per month which is roughly the same amount charged by taxi cabs.

Advercar passes up to $100 per month to the driver. They also say that some advertisers give drivers the opportunity to make more than the $100 per month.

Advercar’s $2 million dollar seed round was led by Canaan Partners. 1-800-Flowers, Branford Castle Private Equity, New Orleans Startup Fund, Jit Sexana and TiE Angels Boston also participated in the round. With this round 1-800-Flowers CEO Jim McCann and Canaan partner Deepak Karma have joined Advercar’s Board of Directors.

The startup’s idea was originally pitched last year during New Orleans Entrepreneur Week as part of their Power Pitch competition where they won first place.

Advercar already has 5,000 drivers. The company tracks their drivers with a GPS tool that allows them to report back to advertisers and show them where their ad was seen. They also use a calculation method set forth by the Traffic Audit Bureau that allows them to calculate, roughly, how many people saw the ad. Advercar has a special group of AdverMoms that allows advertisers to reach other moms.

TechCrunch’s Anthony Ha asked Turner if it felt strange for an Advercar driver to drive around with advertising on their car. Turner replied;

“You notice for your first 20 minutes, but after that you forget they’re on. You do notice if you go to a grocery store, because people will be staring at your car.”

Linkage

Find advercar online here

Source: Silicon Bayou TechCrunch

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