Interview With Youngstown Ohio Startup: CampusShift.com

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There is over $1 trillion dollars of student loan debt these days and with the economy in the situation that it’s currently in, it’s getting harder and harder for students to manage and payback that debt.

A Youngstown Ohio startup called CampusShift doesn’t have a secret recipe to make that debt disappear, but rather offers a set of tools that will help college students attack the student loan problem from a variety of directions. Whether you’re looking to make college costs more manageable by saving money on textbooks and other supplies. Or if you’re looking to make more money in college by starting your own business (startup) CampusShift has tools to go either route.

CampusShift has four distinct areas. It starts with a place to save money and compare costs on textbooks. There’s a social networking element available to students, that’s free of course. Campus area businesses can offer daily deals, discounts and rewards to students. Finally, CampusShift offers resources to those students that want to try their luck at their own startup business and test it within the confines of the school with minimal risk.

We got a chance to talk with Chris Haynes, co-founder of CampusShift, who was consequently the first one since we started this interview series (with well over 500 startups interviewed) who followed our instructions completely. So it’s with great honor we give you our interview with Chris Haynes of CampusShift.

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West Virginia Startup: Reel Deal LLC Uniting College Students Through A Set Top Box

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Interesting is the first word that comes to mind when checking out a new startup based in Wheeling West Virginia of all places. Reel Deal LLC was founded by Ramee Naja, Broderick Colaner and Phillip Mshelbawla, three students at Wheeling Jesuit University.  These guys obviously aren’t afraid of a big idea. Rather than a straight up online social network, a new movie streaming site, they’re offering will come in the form of a set-top box for college students in the spring of 2013.

Reel Deal is combining a social network of college students, through their University while simultaneously offering over 1000 movies via the set-top box, that college students are known to love. The set-top box will offer ways for students to interact, important classroom and institution information and of course some entertainment content.

Reel Deal plans to offer their service in conjunction with the universities and colleges that sign up. After the partnership is formed the students enrolled at those colleges will be able to access the service through the set-top box that will be a one time $49.99 fee via their technology account.

“Our company is based off our own ideas of what we think would help improve higher education. We focus on giving kids an avenue in which they can receive all their academic and social information, while being rewarded for choosing Reel Deal,” Naja said in a statement.

Beyond the initial $49.99 (which barely covers the hardware) Reel Deal will make money through targeted advertising delivered directly to the set-top box.

We got a chance to talk with Naja about Reel Deal and what it’s like to launch a startup in Wheeling WV. While the Wheeling ecosystem is still in it’s infant stages, they are just 40 minutes away from Pittsburgh which is flourishing.

Check out the interview below:

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Interview With Washington DC Startup: Distil, Content Protection Network

If you have a content based web site on the internet ( and who doesn’t) you may want to pay attention to Arlington based startup Distil.it. Distil focuses solely on protecting website owners’ content from data scraping, content theft, and competitive data mining.

Do you have countless sites just stealing your content with no linkback? Have you ever been totally plagiarized without your knowledge just to find in a Google search content that was obviously lifted from your site? Those are just some of the things that happen when your website content is scraped and your data is mined.

More importantly with the case of content scraping, you can actually lose page-rank and hinder your SEO. Most web crawlers discard duplicate content so sometimes when you’re writing articles to maximize your SEO return, you’ll actually lose that content when it’s scraped and thrown on another site without your permission.

In addition to identifying and blocking malicious content and data scraping Distil also accelerates content through 14 global nodes which improves site load time and reduces server load.

We found out all about this and more when we talked with Distil’s co-founder and CEO Rami Essaid in the interview below:

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Ann Arbor Startup: Seelio Is Connects College Students To Jobs In New Ways

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Seelio, (connecting see and portfolio) is a new startup based in Ann Arbor Michigan connecting college students with employers and job recruiters. Sure there are plenty of employment connection platforms out there but Seelio is serving a few under-served segments.

First off, Seelio is serving the college student to work category which is filled with competition. One of the other big hindrances for college students competing for work is the fact that they’ve been in school the past four years and don’t have real work, resume items. Seelio solves this problem for students by opening up profile space on the service to post academic papers, computer aided designs, art projects, lesson plans, photos, videos, even pitch decks.  Employers can now see a more rounded profile of the applicant and can consider them for positions outside of “entry-level”.

“Instead of sending a stale, black-and-white resume, Seelio lets you bring yourself to life and present yourself in a more holistic way,” said co-founder Moses Lee, assistant director for student ventures at the U-M College of Engineering’s Center for Entrepreneurship to the University of Michigan News Service. “It can help college students get discovered. This is really important, especially in this tough economy, because they don’t have a lot of job experience. But many have done amazing work as a student.”

Seelio is taking an early stage Facebook approach to building scale. They rolled out the platform’s truAPP to students at the University of Michigan, exclusively in January of this year. They quickly saw 1500 students sign up and some big employers as well. Quicken Loans, Teach For America, Compuware, Under Armour and Airtime were all early adopter companies for the platform.  They have since opened up the platform to all students with a .edu email address.

One of the early student adopters that used the service, Lydia Muwanga, recently finished her master’s degree. She was able to use Seelio’s truApp to land a job as an information architect at SapientNitro.  Muwanga reported that after getting her profile posted she applied for five jobs in ten minutes. Less than 24 hours later she had heard back from three companies.

“It helps us more accurately target candidates, allowing us to differentiate between, say, human-computer interface students who love research, versus those who love wireframing,” Kati Llewellyn, creative recruiter at SapientNitro said.

For college students Seelio is a platform that merges a professional social network like LinkedIn with an actual jobs site like Monster.com, it’s quickly becoming a welcomed tool in the college students job application arsenal.

Linkage:

Check out Seelio here

Source: Univesity of Michigan News Service

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Xoogler Spotlight NYC Startup: Flatiron Health

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In 2010 Nat Turner and Zach Weinberg sold their startup Invite Media to Google for $81 million dollars. At that time they were absorbed into Google where they spent the last two years. Now the co-founding team is back at it again, and navigating through unchartered territory.

Their new startup is New York City based Flatiron Health. FlatIron Health hopes to streamline cancer screening for clinical trials. Currently biomarkers among other diagnostics, are used to identify cancer patients for clinical trials however the team told Business Insider they feel that the process could be improved upon and streamlined.

“It’s actually very complicated to find out if you’re eligible,” Turner told SAI. “It’s like 120 variables and there’s no way to know quickly. We hope to speed that up for physicians because clinical trials are huge for cancer. In general, treatments fail and trials are the way to go.”

After both 26-year-old founders had loved ones suffer through cancer they knew their next mission would somehow be related to cancer. They admittedly don’t have their exact product yet however they’ve been holding weekly brainstorming sessions and have a pilot going with some of the major hospitals.

FlatIron Health is a far cry from the ad technology and bid manager platform Turner and Weinberg created with Invite Media. That platform allowed advertisers to manage online campaigns across multiple platforms.

Weinberg and Turner are in a better financial position than most new medical startups. They’re attacking this startup with the vigor of anxious entrepreneurs and aren’t intimidated by the fact that neither founder has any kind of background in medicine, biology or cancer.

“Flatiron Health is either going to be a great success or a horrible failure,” says Turner. “Hopefully we’ll do well by doing good.”

Linkage:

Here are some other Xoogler spotlights at nibletz.com

Source: Business Insider via Fierce

Madison Wisconsin Startup: SnowShoe Validates Actual Check Ins INTERVIEW

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The headline for this story about Madison Wisconsin startup SnowShoe was actually rather difficult. In some ways we wanted to say that SnowShoe brings Foursquare to real life. In essence Foursquare is already in real life and takes people to different spots for check-ins. The next idea was to say that SnowShoe brigns Foursquare off-line, again Foursquare kind of does that, but SnowShoe does it with actual offline objects.

We first met Claus Moberg founder of  SnowShoe when the sneaker-strapped nationwide startup roadtrip cruised through Madison Wisconsin. The team explained that with SnowShoe your phone actually interacts with an aluminum object at the check in establishment, to check-in and receive loyalty points and rewards.

There is definitely value in this “extra step”. When you’re actually forced to check in using, what SnowShoe calls the “SnowShoe Stamp” or if you have to scan a QR code, you get engaged with the establishment and you can’t do the infamous drive-by checkin.  I actually live near a place that has a free breakfast special with 3 check-ins. I live close enough that I can check-in there everyday without actually going, and then on the third day, voila breakfast is free. Some people call it ripping off, others call it gaming the system.

With SnowShoe though, that drive by check-in or checking in while walking by just for the glory or the special is cut out of the equation.

The SnowShoe stamp is literally a block of aluminum with no circuitry, batteries or power of any kind. It does however, have five uniquely arranged capacitive touch points which authenticate the transaction on your smartphone. It’s actually more reliable and better than a traditional QR code on a piece of paper.

Innovative huh?

We got a chance to talk with Moberg more in depth in the interview below:

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Des Moines Startup: Proferral Taking On The Traditional Business Card INTERVIEW

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Earlier this summer, we reported on a young Florida startup called Feathr that’s looking to replace the traditional business card by sending contact information and other relevant professional information via mobile app. Today we turn to the middle of the country and Des Moines IA, and a new startup called Proferral.

Des Moines app development startup iapps24 has designed Proferral to be a business referral app that also looks to eliminate the business card. They also have baked in premium features that will allow you to make calls and set appointments in a mobile CRM style solution that will execute and keep track of the call and appointment.

Proferral also takes into consideration the context for which business cards and contact information are exchanged. An integrated calendar allows users to set follow-up appointments right away.  Other features baked into Proferral include a portal to offer discounts and rewards, a place to publish videos and testimonials, and other tools that help connectors make the most out of the networking experience.

Proferral also offers a rich networking community within the website, Android and iOS apps. Users can join an already existing network or create a new one.

This feature packed app, and thriving app development startup are percolating in Des Moines IA which is a hotbed of new technology startups. We got a chance to interview iapps24. Check out the interview below.

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Find Out Everything There Is To Know About Your Hood With Boston Startup BlockAvenue

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Whether you’re a local history buff, looking to move somewhere new or just want to know what’s up with your block there’s a startup incubating at DogPatch Labs in Boston for you. That startup is called BlockAvenue and it’s going to be your one stop shop for anything and everything about your neighborhood.

BlockAvenue uses a number of ways to find out everything about your block. The startup utilizes geodata, local trends, local happenings and plain old crowd sourced information from your neighbors. This is valuable information for other neighbors, people thinking about visiting, and people thinking about moving to the neighborhood. Sure all of this information can be found on the net, but there’s not one single site that serves it up all together, and quite in the way BlockAvenue will.

We’re sure that BlockAvenue is going to be epic why? Because DogPatch Labs, a Polaris Ventures backed incubator, is also where great startups like Instagram and Apptopia grew up. In fact, BlockAvenue’s founder, serial entrepreneur Tony Longo wrote a blog post about what it’s like to incubate at the dogpatch check that out here.

Dogpatch just oozes startups. The building the Boston Dogpatch is in is One Cambridge Center which also happens to be the address for TechStars Boston. Not including the 13 startups in the current fall class at TechStars the building itself is home to over 50 startups, and is also the Microsoft office for the Cambridge area.

As for BlockAvenue, this is going to be an amazing resource for anyone that wants information on their neighborhood. More and more people are starting to have more civic pride on a hyperlocal level than ever before. They’re taking to other blogs, and social networks to share the kind of information you’ll find at BlockAvenue. Once there’s one place for all that information it will continue to grow as more people get engaged with the service.

We were able to break the BlockAvenue team away from the whiteboards, conference rooms, coding and ping-pong for a short little interview. Check it out below.

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Street Performers Go Virtual With Nashville Startup: Street Jelly INTERVIEW

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Ok so here’s a concept we’ve never seen before and it’s quite interesting. A Nashville startup called Street Jelly has put street performers online for the world to enjoy. But not only that they’ve created a system of using virtual currency called “tokens” so that you can fill up that street performers jar, guitar case, hat or bucket. Yes, any kind of street performer be it a clown, a mime, a great saxophone player, guitar player or any other street performer, can go virtual with Street Jelly.

The street performers can take the “Rocker Pins” that viewers have purchased with tokens and cash them out for real money via PayPal. Now you can sit in the comfort of your own home and watch street performers until your hearts content.

Have you ever come back from a trip and told people about a great street performer you’ve seen? Now you can take them online to Street Jelly and show them first hand.

Street performers add to most cities culture. Most street performers are actually really good and some just prefer to be street performers rather than working late night in smoky dark clubs or trying their luck at studios and record deals. Street Jelly captures the essence of great street performers and puts them online to share with the rest of the world.

This idea was born in Nashville, a city that has no shortage of street performers. In fact Nashville, because it’s Music City USA, has some of the best street performers in the world.

Street performers was founded by serial entrepreneur Frank Podlaha, who’s history with music goes way back to his childhood and playing in the drum line. He’s had some other successful startups which he talks about in the interview below.

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Florida Startup: Path.To Is The E-Harmony For Tech Jobs INTERVIEW

Darren Bounds,the CEO of Jacksonville Florida based startup Path.To considers his startup the “e-harmony” for recruiting tech talent. There is a lot that goes into the backend of this job recommendation platform. Path.to must have something right because well known companies like Eventbrite, Evernote and Vimeo have already used the young startup to recruit tech talent.

When someone with a tech background is looking for their next tech opportunity and creates a profile with Path.To, they add their normal skills, and resume along with information that’s aggregated from their professional social graph including Behance, Dribble, Forrst and Github.  This way a more accurate picture of the candidate is created for those recruiters and HR people looking to fill tech positions. The users score continues to grow as they apply to more jobs and make more choices.

We first covered Path.To when they expanded to Chicago, Boston and New York City. Now they’ve added; Austin, Dallas, Houston, Boulder, Denver, and Los Angeles. They’re adding their service to Philadelphia, DC, and Pittsburgh tomorrow. They’re also adding Silicon Prairie on September 4th and Atlanta Georgia along with Jacksonville Florida on September 12th.

Path.To will email job candidates available positions that the service feels are a good match for them. Path.To users searching for a job can opt out of certain employers if they feel that they aren’t a fit, and of course continue to apply for jobs that they feel are, the perfect fit.

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

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The Friend HookUp Goes Online With DC 500 Startups, Startup Hinge INTERVIEW

Dating sites have been around almost as long as the internet. I remember a time when it was actually odd to try and find a date online. Now it’s pretty much odd to find a date or relationship in real life. One thing that most online dating sites haven’t tackled though is hooking up friends of friends. Now we’re not talking about a one night stand hook up, rather the old school version where you introduce a friend to a mutual friend and voila.

Now Washington DC, 500 startups backed, startup Hinge helps achieve that… sort of.

Hinge uses the Facebook social graph to match users with compatible friends of friends. Now your market of available singles increases from what you normally see from online dating sites to your friends on Facbeook and then your friends’ friends who may be somewhat compatible with you.

What this also means is if your perfect match is single, but not actively pursuing dating or a relationship, you may still meet that person via hinge. You know the same way your buddies or girlfriends introduce you to that perfect someone, that may not actually be looking.

When you actually check Hinge out and what they’re doing, it’s hard to believe no one else has tried to do this. Hinge is a great idea and an awesome Washington DC startup. It’s so awesome that they’ve caught the eye of Dave McClure’s 500 startups.

We got a chance to interview Bennett Richardson, Hinge’s CMO. Check out the interview below:

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Interview With Danish Startup: Rating WorkPlace

Workplace ratings startups are starting to pop up all over the country and now apparently, around the world. Now, thanks to the internet, people who are interviewing for jobs get the opportunity to vet the employer as much as the employer can vet them.

Startups in the United States like California based startup Worker’s Count, allow employees to rate their workplace either by name or anonymously, in hopes that these ratings improve culture and quality of life at the work place. Some workplaces fare well on ratings sites, while others have their dirty laundry aired out amongst millions on the web.

Denmark startup Rating WorkPlace, functions similarly to Worker’s Count. Employees can rate their workplace for culture, benefits, job satisfaction and more. They can choose to do it anonymously or by name. Steven Moller, Rating WorkPlace founder, is hoping that by offering his service, people will no longer work in bad environmens.

We got a chance to interview Moller below. Please note that Moller is from Denmark and English is not his first language.

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California Startup Wants To Put Siri On Your Wrist

(photo: Ian Hamilton, OC Register)

Smart watches have done really well on Kickstarter. We’re all familiar with the millions of dollars that the Pebble watch has raked in and many of us have heard about the Android powered Metawatch Strata which raised three times the $100,000 they were looking for.

A new company called Martian Watches, based in Irvine California recently started a Kickstarter campaign for their smart watch earlier this month. While at this writing the project is still under $100,000 of the $200,000 goal there’s still over 30 days left in the campaign. Once this watch starts picking up momentum it will surely out do Meta Watch’s Strata.

Why? Well for starters Martian Watches is looking to sync their smart watch with the iPhone for the purpose of bringing voice commands and Siri interaction to the wrist. You’ll look like a secret service agent as you speak commands into the watch on your wrist.

According to this story in the OCRegister you’ll be able to pair your watch with your existing, Siri enabled iPhone and speak any normal Siri command into the watch. From there your iPhone will handle the Siri query as usual and give you the information that you’re looking for back as a text message on the watch itself.

The startups founders Jeffrey Hsieh and Stan Kinsey already have a working prototype and showed off a bunch of voice commands to folks at the OCRegister.

“Voice command to us was the ultimate solution for making the watch an extremely useful tool. More so than just trying to replicate what you can do on your phone,” Kinsey told ocregister.com

For now the voice commands work one way which seems to be causing a little bit of concern with the people commenting on the Kickstarter Page, but that shouldn’t effect their $200,000 project goal.  The watch has already received great reviews from TechCrunch, The Verge and the OC Register.

Linkage:

Here’s Martian Watch’s Kickstarter Page

Source: OCRegister

Niblet z is the voice of startups “everywhere else” here are more startup stories from “everywhere else”

Chicago Startup: WalkJogRun Keeps Track When You Walk, Jog Or Run INTERVIEW

Fitness startups are always great. Everyone wants to get fit, stay fit and monitor their fitness regimen. A startup in Chicago called WalkJogRun has a website and app that helps anyone who runs, walks, jogs, hikes and cycles, monitor their exercise, map their routes and track their progress.

As a compliment to their web and mobile app platform WalkJogRun also has a blog and podcast that provides inspiration to those using their platform. They also offer tips, as well as healthy recipes.

Whether you are a casual jogger, mall walker or you’re training for a marathon, WalkJogRun’s robust platform can cover your workout and be your walking, jogging and running companion.

The precursor to what WalkJogRun has become was originally created by co-founder Adam Howitt. Howitt was living in Atlanta and training for the PeachTree 10k when he got fed up with just doing quarter miles in the parking garage. He tells us in an interview below, that he created the first iteration of WalkJogRun in 2002.

Howitt’s co-founder Jeff Kenny redesigned Howitt’s original website as a surprise back in 2003 and then they realized that WalkJogRun could be beneficial to many running enthusiasts. This was of course, way before the fitness app boom, and GPS tracking boom that we’re currently experiencing.

The Chicago based startup has made plenty of refinements over the last 10 years to what the website and app have become today. 

We got a chance to interview WalkJogRun. Check out the interview below:

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