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$3000 In Parking Tickets Leads To Award Winning Chicago Startup: SpotHero

It’s not often that parking tickets lead to a “good thing”, especially not $3,000 worth. That’s however, not the case for Chicago entrepreneur Jeremy Smith and his cohorts Mark Lawrence and Larry Kiss. Together the three of them have created Chicago startup SpotHero.

At first sight the startup seems very similar to Baltimore startup ParkingPanda, however SpotHero boasts 24 hour customer support and touts that they are superserving Chicago first and building a loyal customer base before eventually branching out. Chicago seems to love SpotHero as well. Since their launch in 2011 the company reports that more than 10,000 people have used their iPhone app and website platform to find parking spots.

SpotHero’s iPhone app allows drivers to reserve parking spots on the go, something that ParkingPanda is just now having developed through MindGrub. ParkingPanda is a web based platform that allows people to book parking spots from either individuals like driveways and curbside spaces, or public lots that have extra spots to rent. Both services allow the user to pick how long and when they want to start the parking spot rental.

SportHero was part of the most recent class at Excelerate Labs one of Chicago’s thriving startup accelerators. SpotHero just recently presented at Excelerate Labs’ August demo day.

The city of Chicago’s government loves SpotHero too. Despite the fact that SpotHero cuts into the Chicago’s own parking revenue from both meters and ticketing, SpotHero recently walked away with a $5,000 prize in the first round of Chicago’s Apps for Metro contest. The Apps for Metro contest was announced in June by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel. The contest is very similar to open data initiatives we’ve heard about in other municipalities, like Madison Wisconsin.

Winning that contest “gives us validation that this is a service that really would be important to the city of Chicago,” Smith told the Chicago Tribune, “There’s a problem with parking, and people want creative solutions. The time is (right) to support new programs.”

While Chicago residents may know the ins and outs of parking in the city, folks from the suburbs that frequent the city many not be as fortunate. Such was the case for Smith; “Growing up in the suburbs, one of the most frustrating parts of coming to the city was parking. For drivers in Chicago, it’s always a hassle finding a spot. SpotHero solves the problem by making parking easy and transparent,” said Smith, “With SpotHero, I don’t have to worry about where I’m going to park because they always have options ready.”

The SpotHero team plans to continue to use open data initiatives from the city of Chicago to continue adding features to the app. One of the features they plan to role out soon would take data from road closure and construction information and add a layer to SpotHero so travelers would know if spots aren’t open or that re-routing may be more trouble than it’s worth.

Smith has confirmed the company plans to roll out more cities in the future. ParkingPanda is available in Baltimore and Washington DC and hopes to add Philadelphia and San Francisco as soon as they’ve built enough relationships with those who hold the key to both apps success, people with parking spots that need to be filled.

Linkage:

For more on SpotHero check them out on the web here

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Move Over Rosetta Stone, Prague Startup: SpaceTeacher Has A New Way To Teach Languages

When it comes to language learning Rosetta Stone has one of the best reputations and best success rates in town. Well in Prague, David Brhel, Milan Mahovsky and Kamil Mahovsky are three entrepreneurs who hope their startup SpaceTeacher becomes the easiest to use language learning platform in the world.

One of the easiest ways to describe SpaceTeacher is to say that they are crowdsourcing for language. They hope to become the ultimate platform for language learning by crowdsourcing both the content and the teachers.

Co-founder Brhel says that the company is still bootstrapping it but that angels in the area are starting to show interest. The startup is also growing at area accelerator StartupYard.

The core reason for developing SpaceTeacher is that in the CzechRepublic they offer a “one size fits all” type of learning. The shocking statistic is that 79% of the population is not fluent in a foreign language.

We got a chance to talk with Brhel in the interview below.

Share Your Predictions For The Future With Syracuse Startup: PsyQic

It’s not everyday that you find a startup that wants to help you predict the future and share your predictions. That’s of course as long as you throw all the “weather” startups to the wayside. PsyQic a startup from Syracuse New York, does just that.

PsyQic is an iOS app that makes it easy to proclaim and than share your predictions. Do you have a prediction for next week’s NFL football games? Do you see something in the future that not everyone else sees? This may be just the app for you.

PsyQic goes beyond the predictions themselves and gamifies the process by giving you points when your predictions comes true. The points are called Qi’s which is actually a Chinese word for “spiritual energy”. Founders Gabrielle Gosselin and Keisuke Inoue wanted to design something different and fun. PsyQic fulfills just that.

Inoue and Gosselin are currently incubating their startup in upstate New York at the Syracuse Tech Garden after graduating from the Syracuse Student Sandbox this summer.

We got a chance to talk with the team behind PsyQic in the interview below:

Cleveland Startup: CollegeSkinny Gives You The Skinny To Apply To College

The college application process can be a long and daunting task. Yesterday we brought you the story about a startup in New York that helps high school students prepare for college by offering a platform to find extra-curricular activities outside of the school. Today, while this story is about a college focused startup, it to is more about pre-enrolled high school students.

Cleveland based startup CollegeSkinny provides incoming students everything they need to know about the colleges they want to apply to. It also helps them keep all their prospective college applications and information organized so that they can continue to access it until the time comes to make a decision.

According to founder and CEO Bryant Hardy:

“Students browse colleges and Universities hosted on the CollegeSkinny network and learn everything from How to Apply all the way to the specific Greek Life organizations on campus and everything in between. We also provide interactive tools for the schools themselves to recruit and connect with potential students.

Our features include: How to Apply, Important Dates, Where to Live, What’s on Campus, College Process, Greek Life, Packing Checklist, Meal Plans, Things to Know, and The CollegeSkinny Connection (feature that provides a link between a student and the University).”

The entire focus of CollegeSkinny is to help transitioning high school students, pick and then transition into college. To get a better perspective on what CollegeSkinny is all about we interviewed Hardy below:

Easily Make Citations For Your Research With NY Startup: Citelighter

We’ve been having a lot of fun using Washington DC highlighting startup, Markerly. Markerly is a simple, easy to use browser plugin that allows anyone to highlight virtually anything on the web. From there you can share it six ways to Sunday and beyond. IT’s a great platform for grabbing pieces of text and sharing them with your friends, colleagues and social networks.

New York based Citelighter works similarly to Markerly in that it allows you to highlight text on the web. Now though, instead of sharing that Citelighted content with your friends, and social networks, Citelighter compiles a bibliographical style note sheet for the end user to reference back. Citelighter is a great companion for anyone who is going to highlight something and then reference it later on.

Citelighter joins the browser plugin and highlighting space at a great time, as everyone is seeing what web browser plugins actually meet their needs.

We got a chance to interview Citelighter cofounder Lee Joki. Check out our interview below:

New York Startup: Exceleratr Finds Extra Curriculars For High School Students INTERVIEW

High school students applying for college are finding more and more that extra-curricular activities within the walls of the high school they’re attending are no longer adequate when it comes to moving your college application up the chain. Sure class president, yearbook, and maybe a high school Habitat for Humanity project are great, but more and more high school students are gravitating towards extracurriculars outside of the school.

These extra-curricular activities can include anything from unique volunteer opportunities to internships in a career field that the student wants to study. There are a broad range of extra-curricular activities for high school students out there, but until now Google was the easiest way to find them.

A new startup called Exceleratr, based in New York, has designed a platform to link high school students to extra-curricular activities that make a difference in both their lives and their college applications. Ezra Mosseri, one of the co-founders of Exceleratr warns though, if you’re a high school senior this year, it could be too late.

The Exceleratr platform is aimed at high school students of any age and of course the earlier you start racking up your extra-curricular resume the better.

Whether you’re looking for a traditional high school internship, an academic program, or a non academic program, Exceleratr covers all the bases.

With Exceleratr students can create profiles, and manage their extra-curricular applications the same way you might if you were looking for an actual job. Of course there are a lot of job platforms out there. There are also a fair amount of startups out there catering to college students looking for internships, however Exceleratr is the first platform designed specifically for high school students looking to add to their pre-college resume.

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

London Startup: EmbedTree Gives You A Bird’s Eye View Of Web Content INTERVIEW

We live in a world of social media. Nowadays sifting through all the tweets, instagrams, YouTube videos and other social content can take hours if not days. Many people have turned to one social media dashboard or another in hopes of procuring the content you actually want to see. A London startup called EmbedTree is hoping to make that process easier for you.

EmbedTree says they give users a bird’s eye view of the web. Their unique platform serves as a filter for social media sites like Twitter. They liken themselves to a hybrid between an aggregated content blog and a “handsome Twitter feed”. The EmbedTree platform takes the cluttered mess of tweets and sorts them out in a way that makes more sense.

The startup is still in it’s early stages, but they offer a great demo of what EmbedTree will look like, here. For their demo they’ve aggregated content from TED,Mixcloud,Instagram and YouTube and made it much more visually appealing and easier to interact with. In fact the two co-founders, Richard Morgan and Matt Rawson met while working at Mixcloud.

We got a chance to interview the team from EmbedTree. Check out the interview below:

We Caught Up With Charlotte Startup Rawporter At The DNC 2012

While we were at the DNC 2012 we got the opportunity to crash at the Rawporter crib in Uptown Charlotte. Rawporter co-founder Kevin Davis, recently relocated to New York to help grow the citizen journalism startup. Rob Gaige, the other Rawporter co-founder remains in Charlotte to continue their grassroots efforts in their hometown.

For those of you who aren’t aware, or for those of you who hear the name Rawporter on our videos, Rawporter is a social e-commerece platform for citizen journalism.

On Tuesday evening in the thick of an enormous rain storm, and just before the evening session at the DNC where First Lady Michelle Obama brought the house down, I actually got to join Gaige and Davis for a meal at the Dandelion Market in Uptown Charlotte (that’s their downtown), which is the restaurant where Rawporter was born. It was while eating at Dandelion that Gaige and Davis witnessed a horrific car accident. Like any event like this in 2011, people quickly emerged from every establishment on the block with their smartphones, and immediately started shooting pictures and videos.

Davis and Gaige both noticed that it wasn’t until after the emergency personnel had left and the wreckage was almost cleared that the news trucks began to arrive. When the Rawporter duo got back home and watched the news, sure enough there were no pictures or videos of the actual wreckage.

Sure national cable networks like CNN and Fox News, encourage their viewers to send in videos, but there had to be a way for citizen journalists, and the average people to get their videos to news outlets. In effect there needed to be a crowdsourced video news platform. So Rawporter was born. Davis and Gaige also decided to add another spin and make an e-commerce platform for the buying and selling of these videos and photos.

On the e-commerce side it was quickly discovered that Rawporter was a great way for bloggers with a small staff, or even newspapers and other media outlets with bare bones staff and bare bones budgets, to utilize the platform for great content.

Now news editors and the like can sift through and buy uploaded files, but what’s even better is they can commission a Rawporter user to actually do the work they need. For instance, if there is a convention or conference that the news outlet can’t get to, they can post an “assignment” with what they are willing to pay and the Rawporter community can bid for the assignment. Rawporter even facilitates the transaction.

Naturally with the Democratic National Convention in their back yard, it was an excellent venue to show off their product.

The Rawporter team also pitched at DEMO this past spring and Chicago TechWeek back in July.

Check out our video interview below:

Linkage:

Check out Rawporter here

Here’s more of our DNC 2012 coverage

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Arizona State Startup G3Box, Finalist In Dyson Competition

An Arizona State University startup in the colleges Edison student entrepreneur initiative, has been selected as a finalist in the global James Dyson Awards Competition.

The startup, called G3Box, has done something amazing for healthcare in rural areas. G3Box is converting freight shipping containers into small medical clinics. G3Box provides engineering design and manufacturing towards the conversion of steel shipping containers into durable, semi-mobile, stand-alone facilities that are ideal for remote environments.

“G3Box is honored to have been selected as one of the 10 U.S. finalists in the Dyson awards. From the start, G3Box has been about solving problems specifically in healthcare provision,” said Susanna Young, Co-founder and CEO of G3Box. “The Dyson awards are, at the core, about solving problems with new and creative ideas. We do that with a commitment to integrity, humility, and collaboration.”

Of course the Dyson Awards competition is held annually by Jes Dyson’s charitable trust. Dyson being the inventor and founder of the vacuum cleaner company with his same name.

The James Dyson Award is open to product design, industrial design and engineering university-level students or recent graduates who have studied in countries including the USA, Australia, Canada, Germany, Japan, and the UK. The James Dyson Award supports students not only with monetary prizes, but also by promoting and recognizing good quality entries. The US winner will be announced later this year.

Linkage:

Find out more about G3box Here

Find out more about the James Dyson Award here

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Startup America Quarterly Survey Shows Growing Faith In Economy & More

The Startup America Partnership released the results for their first quarterly optimism survey. The survey is being conducted quarterly in conjunction with global management consulting firm Oliver Wyman.

The survey results from this quarter were released on the heels of two major mini conferences Startup America partnered with StartupRockon to host at the Republican National Convention and the Democratic National Convention. Both events highlighted the role that startups play in the U.S. economy.

The results of the survey echoed the importance and highlighted the resurgence of faith in the US economy from the membership of Startup America. The fact that so many entrepreneurs have faith in the direction the country is going, restores confidence all around. Nearly 50% of the survey respondents indicated they were more confident now, about the U.S. economy.

With unemployment at a rate of 8.1% right now in the United States, the most encouraging find in the Optimism Survey was that 85% of Startup America members plan on hiring in the next 12 months. This speaks to the core of the Startup America mission to serve as a resource, and organization for high growth potential startups that will ultimately add more jobs to the economy.

Out of the 85% of Startup America members that said they would be hiring in the next 12 months 42% said they would add between 3-10 employees. 11% said they would hire ten or more employees. This supports data from the Kauffman Foundation that’s said between 1980-2005 companies that were less than five years old accounted for nearly all of the net job growth in the U.S.

“As young companies grow and generate revenue they hire more employees, creating more job opportunities,” said Scott Case, CEO of the Startup America Partnership. “Our members are comprised of amazing startups from every region in the country and we encourage everyone to connect with startups in their local community in order to meet the real heroes of the economy.”

The Optimism survey will be conducted quarterly to have a pulse on where startups stand in regard to the economy.

Linkage:

Startup America Optimism survey page is here

Here’s the PDF with the raw data

Here’s more Startup News from Nibletz.com

Can’t Wait To Crowdfund Your Startup? Try London Startup: Up And Funding

Crowdfunding is all the rage these days. Kickstarter seems to be one of the quickest way to get a tangible product startup, movie, or book off the ground. The downside to Kickstarter is that you can’t invest in businesses and startups.

The JOBSAct was passed earlier this year and the SEC is currently working on the rules and regulations that will apply to those crowdfunding their startups. Until the JOBSAct, to legitimately invest in a startup as an accredited investor you typically had to have a net worth of over $1 million dollars excluding your residence. This made it tough for those that wanted to invest in startups but didn’t monetarily qualify from an accreditation standpoint.

There’s no doubt that crowdfunding for startups will be hot but truthfully it probably won’t officially roll out until the spring of 2013, regardless of what others are saying.

If you’re jonesing to get started with crowdfunding your startup, you could incorporate across the pond and then use UpandFunding which is a UK based crowdfunding site that’s starting to pick up some serious traction.

UpandFunding isn’t just about startups though, you can also invest in established businesses and establishes businesses can go to upandfunding.com to raise capital at anytime for any need. UpandFunding, because they are based in the UK, can already allow small, crowdfunded investments for actual equity.

We got a chance to talk to UpandFunding in the interview below:

Boston Startup: Energy Harvesters Is Putting Recharging Power In Your Feet INTERVIEW

A startup based in Boston and Rochester is tackling the personal energy harvesting market with gusto. This new way of generating energy for the purpose of recharging your personal electronics has taken many forms. With Energy Harvesters the form is the “Walking Charger”.

The Walking Charger allows the user to charge their mobile electronics anytime and anywhere just by walking.

Energy Harvesters is building their charging products into OEM branded footwear and to insoles for shoes that allow the energy from walking to be converted into real power for dead phones. As they tell us in the interview below their technology is also able to power things like foot warmers and GPS locators without the need for traditional batteries.

A while back we brought you the story of some South Carolina engineers who were working on a way to charge your cell phone via your t-shirt. While that technology is still some time away, we could see the ability to charge your phone through your shoes in the next year or so.

Check out this interesting Boston Green (but possibly not so clean since it’s shoes) startup below.

23 Year Old Peter Johnston Catching The Eye Of The Worlds Top Ad Agencies With London Startup: Hedgehogg

To get in the door at the world’s top agencies like Ogilvy, Weber Shandwick, TBWA Chiat Day and M&C Saatchi you have to be the cream of the crop. To join one of the top agencies in their design arm you have to know design, really know design. That’s why at 23 years old, having Weber Shandwick on his resume gives Peter Johnston some credibility, especially because at Weber Shandwick he was a Senior Digital Designer.

While Johnston has a keen eye for design and he can create pretty things, he noticed, what a lot of others have started to notice, and that’s that it’s very hard to procure content that’s of equal caliber. It’s not that there aren’t great content producers out there. The world is filled with bloggers, writers and journalists. The problem seems to come from a lack of time and focus.

Hedgehogg is a new platform that cures the problems created from lack of time and focus. Hedgehogg does this through a managed crowdsourcing platform of professionally created content. All this, the brainchild of 23 year old Johnston.

Hedgehogg, which is based in London, puts content creators together with content users and vice versa. However, Hedegehogg limits your writing topics to just three. This way the creators only write on three focused topics, presumably the ones they know the most about.

The platform is a two way street as well. Today’s creator may be tomorrows user and vice versa.

Johnston described it like this:

“There is a colossal amount of information available online and I struggled daily to find relevant information quickly that I could actually rely on as being credible. It’s a really simple concept, write on three topics you are professionally versed in, and follow others who write on similar, we aren’t the only ones who need a platform like this.”

Each user has a dashboard where they manage their topics and can only write on three topics. Apart from the usual social channels links, the interface is minimal, offering users two choices, to create and discover. Users can post articles on their chosen topics, including image and video. They can then search the database of articles via topic or tags. Plain and simple, right?

After talking to agencies and professionals, the team at Hedgehogg realized that there was a need for an internal content sharing tool also. Leo Ryan, Group Head of Social@Ogilvy said “we are excited about the potential Hedgehogg has, we are working closely with the team to see where this product can go, it is a what-you see-is-what-you-get platform, and is seamless and easy to use”. Social@Ogilvy are now using Hedgehogg to take applications from start-ups wanting to attend their Social Spin event at this year’s Social Media Week by asking start-ups to write an article.

Hedghogg is currently in private beta but it’s definitely a startup worth watching in 2013.

Linkage:

Check out Hedgehogg here at hedgehog.gg

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Memphis Startup Accelerator ZeroTo510 Sets Record With Over 80% Follow On Funding In Less Than 30 Days

That headline is a true testament to the power of the cohort based ZeroTo510 startup accelerator in Memphis Tennessee. Five of the six startups in their recently graduated class received $100,000 or more in follow on funding from MB Ventures and Innova Memphis.

Four of the startups received follow on funding to continue acceleration of their businesses. Those four companies were:

BioNanovations has developed a device that uses bionanotechnology for rapid diagnosis of bacterial infection.
EcoSurg has developed an environmentally friendly alternative to traditional foam patient positioners used in surgeries.
Nanophthalmics has developed, through the use of nanotechnology, a surgical device to more effectively treat corneal abrasions.
Urova Medical has developed a minimally invasive treatment to address feminine stress urinary incontinence.

“In each case, we believe these four companies have shown the progress, the growth and proof-of-concept that were expected to move to the next phase of funding,” said Allan Daisley, director of innovation and sustainability initiatives for Memphis Bioworks Foundation and program director for ZeroTo510. “It is extremely rewarding to us as an organization, because the funding of four companies exceeds what we considered to be a measure of success when this program was launched.”

The fifth startup to receive follow on funding was Restore Medical. Restore Medical wowed the audience when Co-Founder Shawn Fynn announced during their presentation that they had already secured a purchase order valued at $3.75 million dollars pending 510k approval. In the case of Restore Medical, they decided to skip the acceleration investment and went directly to a Series A round. MB Ventures and Innova Memphis are leading that Series A round with an undisclosed investment, assumed to be more than the $100,000 Restore Medical would have received with the acceleration funds.

Handminder, a startup that has developed a rehabilitation device for people who have suffered a stroke, to regain use of their hands, did not receive follow on funding.

With an 80% success rate, by the standard of “follow on funding” Zeroto510 is the most successful accelerator in Tennessee.

Zeroto510 is a joint venture between Memphis Bioworks with cohort based accelerator programming provided by SeedHatchery a product of LaunchYourCity.

LaunchYourCity CEO & President Eric Matthews said: “The results speak for themselves. 35 companies have entered our incubators because of our efforts. EmergeMemphis has a waiting list for the first time. We have invested time and money in 12 promising startup technologies at our research institutions, two of which have started up as new companies. Over 20 companies have received pre-seed capital of $50,000 or less. Of those 8 have received follow-on capital of $100,000 or greater.”.

In addition to Zeroto510 and SeedHatchery LaunchYourCity has a sister program for independent filmmakers called “FuelFilm”. Also the local music incubator, The Memphis Music Foundation, has replicated some of the LaunchYourCity programming into their music resource offerings.

Linkage:

Check out LaunchYourCity at LaunchYourCity.com

Zeroto510 site is here

Nobody covers the Southeast like we do, more here

Nibletz is the voice of startups “everywhere else”