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Interview with Toronto, Ontario & New York Startup RemoteStylist

Interior decorating can be a pain in the ass. You normally have to go from store to store and showroom to showroom. Not to mention the fact that you’ve got to deal with a pushy sales person at each showroom and each store. It’s more of a pain than it’s worth. That’s why so many interior decorating and interior design projects get put on hold. Or worse, people spend thousands of dollars on something they don’t necessarily like, just to get the process over with.

That’s where Toronto, Ontario and New York based startup RemoteStylist comes in. With RemoteStylist you simply sign up for your own free profile and then you can coordinate your style for your interior project with one of RemoteStylists’ interior designers.

As you work with your stylist from RemoteStylist you’ll see your rooms come together right before your eyes. If something doesn’t look right on the screen you can simply send your stylist back to the drawing board and they’ll continue to work, change and revise until you have the room you’re looking for.

Once the painful part is over, you’ll be completely satisfied with what you selected. Then the second magic part happens. Everything you liked is purchased for less than retail prices and then delivered and installed in your home. Yes 99% of this entire process can happen at your desk, in bed or at the kitchen table. RemoteStylist founder Kelly Fallis and her team have made sure that the interior design process is simple, and easy and that in the end the customers are happy.

We got a chance to interview the folks at RemoteStylist check out the interview below:

Steve Case To Keynote Startup Hawaii Event August 2

AOL co-founder, and current Startup America partnership Chairman Steve Case is heading to Hawaii next week. He’s not going for vacation though, he’s going as the keynote speaker of the “Accelerating Hawaii’s Startup Innovation” event.

Accelerating Hawaii’s Startup Innovation is being held next Thursday August 2nd at the Sheraton Waikiki from 9:00am-4:00pm. The cost is just $35.

Steve Case will be the features speaker with the topic “Igniting A Startup Revolution” which will be hosted by Howard Dicus. Case will discuss his work as Chairman of the Startup America Partnership. He’ll also talk about how the JOBS act will open up more opportunity for startups and entrepreneurs. Finally he’ll discuss how the innovative entrepreneurs that he works with are building disruptive companies.

The other topics for the one day conference include:

Building an Ecosystem: Hawaii’s Support Stories, moderated by HTDC
Short overviews showcasing how local organizations are helping to ignite innovation in Hawaii, featuring Steve Sue, Lemonade Alley; Paul Quintiliani, Kamehameha Schools Endowment; Barry Weinman and Omar Sultan, UPSIDE Fund; Andrew Betz, HiTIP; and Bee Leng Chua, HiBEAM.

Impact of Accelerators on Local Ecosystems, moderated by HSDC
Mainland accelerator managers discuss how startup accelerators can impact a local economy, featuring George Kellerman, 500 Startups; Jennifer Judge, Global Accelerator Network; Amanda Chocko, Start Garden; Sam Teller, Launchpad LA; and Donna Harris, Startup America Partnership.

Startups to Watch: Hawaii’s Next Generation of Businesses, moderated by Startup Hawaii
Short stories highlighting the efforts of Hawaii’s modern crop of game-changing startups, featuring Holland Wood, Ikehu Natural; Ace Lee, NoJuice; Jason Cutinella, Nella Media Group; Hoala Greevy, Undefeated Games; and Ryan Esaki, Ukulele Underground.

Innovation Expo Networking Lunch, sponsored by HiBEAM
Speakers, panel participants, and examples of Hawaii’s startup ecosystem host
conversations on how we can all work to enhance local startup potential.

Corporate Collaboration: Developing Partnerships to Enhance Our Startup Ecosystem, moderated by Donna Harris of Startup America
Steve Case joins a panel of corporate and startup CEOs to discuss how business can help build, grow, and support our local startup economy, featuring:
• Art Ushijima, President, The Queen’s Health System
• Kevin Miyashiro, Founder/President, TeraSys Technologies
• Mark Dunkerley, President & CEO, Hawaiian Airlines
• Tina Fitch, Founder, ezRez Software (now Switchfly.com)
• Richard Rosenblum, President & CEO, Hawaiian Electric Company
• Darius Monsef, Founder & CEO, ColourLovers.com and CreativeMarket

After the speakers there will be a networking event that is sponsored by the Hawaii Angels who are celebrating their 10th year of funding innovation in Hawaii.

For more information or to get tickets for this great event click here

Linkage:

Startup America Partnership

Startup Hawaii

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Interview With Atlanta Startup StoryMark, A Novel Idea For Photo Sharing

I was just telling StoryMark founder Dana McIntyre the story about when my mom turned 60 five years ago how all the kids got her one of those groovy digital photo frames that allowed 30 second narration on each photo. It was a cute idea and we were able to get photos from each couple in our family and the grandkids. We were then able to narrate what the photo was about.

Well, the reason we are writing about another photo sharing app is because StoryMark does virtually the same thing, but now instead of a clunky novelty digital photo frame, it’s on your iPhone or Android device where it will be way better utilized. In fact this year in September we are getting my mom an iPhone (yes she’s ready) and StoryMark will definitely have a place on her phone.

StoryMark allows you to take photos and then add up to 30 seconds of audio to send with the photo. It’s great for pictures that tell a story. Say you go on vacation you can send those loved ones back home a great photo and an audible description. Maybe your son or daughter is just laughing away, now with StoryMark you can audibly annotate the photo for years to come.

StoryMark has so many use cases it’s absolutely ridiculous (in a good way) McIntyre tells us in the interview below you can use it for those family moments, doctors can use it to get advice and collaborate with other doctors, even the know it all leader of your neighborhood organization can use it to audibly talk about how your grass is a smidgeon too high. Teenagers could use it to pitch their parents on that must have shirt, sweater, or video game at the mall. Again this is one of those ideas so good you think, “why didn’t I think of that” well that’s because McIntyre did.

Check out the interview below

Startup Weekend Memphis: And The Winner Is…. CoachSpeak

Startup Weekend Memphis saw some great ideas formulated from the Friday pitches. The four finalist teams were: BuyersUnite, Capta Vita (Legacy Interview), RightNowPal (Event Czar) and CoachSpeak. After Saturday evenings gut check all four finalist teams and the three individual entrepreneurs that would pitch on Sunday started to hunker down and focus on the prize at the end of the weekend. Three startups would walk away with $1000 cash, 9 hours of legal services and 9 hours of accounting services. One team would walk away victorious as the winners of Startup Weekend Memphis 2012.

By 10pm Saturday night the 7 presenting startups had pivoted a total of 24 times (seriously). The mentors had been in for hours on Saturday and everyone was scrambling. Around nine PM I checked in with Derek Chapman and Joseph Dees the two guys behind CoachSpeak and they were in an intense debate on several different key issues. We put in a call to a good friend of Nibletz.com Gabe Lozana the founder of St. Louis startup LockerDome who agreed to a quick by phone mentoring session.

That late night phone call sure paid off as CoachSpeak came in first place with the judges on Sunday evening.

Chapman walked the judges through the concept, the revenue and the execution of CoachSpeak which is a social network for professional coaches and athletic personnel from the high school level on up.

Chapman, who is the founder of CoachSpeak, demonstrated a great use case for when coaches change jobs and cities and need to fill coaching team positions very quickly. Startup Weekend Memphis judge, and entrepreneur, Ekundayo Bandele threw Chapman a curve ball asking what happens if a collegiate coach moves his whole team from one school to another, doesn’t that make the service irrelevant.

Simple answer, that never ever happens, but more so Chapman was able to explain how if that did happen that would leave openings to fill at the school the coach came from. More important than that though is that CoachSpeak is already up and running and has 120 professional coaches in their network.

The network isn’t just about filling jobs, it’s about sharing information, camaraderie between coaches, sharing scouting information, job hunting, vendor placement and more.

Dees, who is a financial advisor at Regions Bank in Birmingham Alabama had come into Memphis for his first Startup Weekend. Since graduating from UAB Dees had always had a knack for creating business plans and has actually consulted on several successful business plan. He was the perfect partner for Chapman who had ironed out the entire concept except for the revenue streams and subscriber base.

Obviously the judges liked the collaborative effort between the two!

Chapman plans on continuing to build out CoachSpeak and will probably go to some of the judges who are local entrepreneurs eager to invest in the latest tech startups brewing from Memphis.

LaunchMemphis/SeedHatchery’s Elizabeth Lemmonds was on-site Sunday evening for the final pitches and actually enjoying attending an event that she didn’t have to organize. Prior to her taking a position with Launch Your City (Launch Memphis/Seed Hatcher’s parent) Lemmonds would attend entrepreneurial events in Memphis.

As we reported on Friday, this Startup Weekend was organized by local entrepreneurs James Ruffer and Chris Przybyszewski who are not affiliated with any other organization. The two of them organized this Startup Weekend as a fun and laid back way to spur more startups and entrepreneurship in Memphis. Ruffer, Przybszewski and Lemmonds let all of the finalists know along with any attendees that the resources of Launch Your City, Launch Memphis (and if they apply) Seed Hatchery are all available to these new startups and entrepreneurs at Emerge Memphis.

The LaunchPad free drop in co-working space and Launch Memphis were sponsors of Nibletz coverage of this Startup Weekend.

Here’s yo links:

Check out the winning team’s startup at CoachSpeak.com

For more information on LaunchMemphis, Seed Hatchery, and the LaunchPad Click here

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Idaho: Treasure Valley Angel Fund Takes Over Where Boise Angel Fund Left Off

While Boise Idaho isn’t synonymous with startups they do have quite a few great tech companies on their hands. Part of that was because of the $1 million dollar Boise Angel Fund which has recently shut down.

A new group of angels have banded together in Idaho to again spur innovation, startups and small businesses. The Treasure Valley Angel Fund has announced that they’ve raised $750,000 of the $2 million dollars they are looking to invest in Idaho startups.

“The Treasure Valley Angel Fund is the kind of jobs-and opportunity-creating machine that will help accelerate Idaho’s economic growth through the skill and experience of proven business leaders and the creative energy of entrepreneurs,” Gov. Butch Otter said in a news release.

Earl Sullivan who is the chairman of “The Core” a medical technology industry cluster in Meridian, is backing the Treasure Valley Angel Fund and is the interim chairmen however he has already said that he’s turned over control of the fund to the members.

“Members of the Core, who are committed to building out a core competency in Idaho in health care, health research and innovation, are energized by the response of investors to grow the base of capital on which Idaho’s growing economy is built,” Sullivan said to the Idaho Statesman.

Loon Creek Capital will administer the Treasure Valley Angel Fund. Kevin Learned, the co-founder of Loon Creek and also the co-founder of Learned Mahn, one of Idaho’s first software companies said: “Idahoans have known for more than a century when to make an investment to prime the pump, and they have done it again,”

Linkage:

For more on the Treasure Valley Angel Fund Click Here

Source: The Idaho Statesman

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Disgraced Yahoo CEO,Scott Thompson, Now CEO At Pennsylvania Startup ShopRunner

Last week Yahoo announced the ultimate in poaching executives attracting longtime Google Executive,Marissa Mayer to the open CEO position. Yahoo had been looking for a CEO to replace Scott Thompson after he was ousted for fabricating a Computer Science degree on his resume.

After leaving Yahoo it was unclear what he would do next. Today, several news sites including siliconvalley.com have reported that Thompson is now the CEO of Pennsylvania startup ShopRunner.

ShopRunner is based in Conshohocken Pennsylvania with a satellite office in Silicon Valley’s Meno Park. Thompson will most likely spend a lot of time at the Menlo Park location. He has been based in the Valley throughout a large portion of his career. Prior to the Yahoo appointment, Thompson was a high ranking executive at EBay owned PayPal.

eBay also owns a portion of ShopRunner, a service that provides shopping perks to a number of paid subscribers at various website e-commerce partners.

With Thompson’s experience at PayPal he should do very well at ShopRunner.

“Joining ShopRunner is a tremendous opportunity to build on the strong foundation that the company has already established. While PayPal and ShopRunner are fundamentally different businesses, there are similarities in each of their success,” Thompson said in the company’s news release.

Siliconvalley.com did notice that the news release announcing Thompson’s hiring made no reference about his educational background. It’s obvious that ShopRunner is not concerned about it.

“We are thrilled that Scott has taken us up on our offer to lead ShopRunner’s continued growth,” ShopRunner co-founder and its current CEO Mike Golden said in Monday’s news release. Golden will continue as president of the company.

Linkage:

Find out more about ShopRunner here

Source: siliconvalley.com

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St. Louis Startup Event Attracts Sports Stars And Sharks

Former NFL football player for the San Francisco 49ers, St.Louis Rams and the apittsburgh Steelers, Brandon Williams is a native of St. Louis and passionate about the entrepreneurship and startup movement brewing in the city.

Williams alongside his business partner, Lance McCarthy, have organized a two day startup and entrepreneurship showcase, exhibition and pitch event called the Venture Draft Conference. The conference will be held at St. Louis University August 10th and 11th.

The tickets are $300, however in the world of startup and tech events thats a slim price t pay for the exposure to the resources that both Williams and McCarthy have assembled.

Williams has invited some of his professional sports colleague who are also interested in entrepreneurship as well as some local angels and venture capitalists.

One of the main attractions though will be the keynote provided by Daymond John the founder of FUBU and a shark investor on ABC’s Shark Tank. John is passionate about entrepreneurship. He recently spoke at Black Enterprise Magazine’s Entrepreneur’s Conference In Chicago. John also recently held a hangout on Google+ for high school age business students across the country.

The Business Journal reports that 10 lucky startups will pitch in front of a panel of judges including John in a similar manner to the way that contestant entrepreneurs pitch on Shark Tank. 15 notable sports figures and venture capitalists will be at the event which is sponsored by St. Louis University, the Information Technology Entrepreneur Network (iTen) and the Missouri Venture Forum.

Tickets are still available here.

Linkage:

Source: Business Journal

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Nashville Startup: InQuicker Gets You In The ER, Well Quicker, INTERVIEW

If it’s the weekend and you break your arm, or your toe, perhaps your nose or have some semi-emergency that requires you visit the ER but isn’t life threatening than I’m sure you’ve experienced the extremely long wait time that is the ER waiting room. Whatever the reason you’re in the ER, I’m sure you’re experiencing some kind of discomfort and ER waiting rooms are far from comfortable. What if you could use a web app to speed up the ER waiting process.

Well Nashville startup InQuicker is here to help. InQuicker is an online waiting room. In conjunction with their hospital partners someone who needs the emergency room services and is not in a life threatening emergency can sign in at the InQuicker online waiting room. InQuicker gives the patient a projected wait time. When the patient arrives at the hospital or clinic they are greeted by a healthcare provider.

InQuicker reports that eight out of ten patients that use InQuicker get seen within ten to fifteen minutes of the time they arrive. For just a rough idea on the value of InQuicker, they recently ran a study with their ER partners and found that patients can wait up to 208 minutes to get into the ER to see a doctor. That’s a lot of time you could be nursing your injury or ailment in the comfort of your own home.

InQuicker is very beneficial in the emergency room, but they also work with doctors offices as well.

We got a chance to interview InQuicker. Check out that interview below:

Interview With Austin Startup: NOOM, Next One’s On Me

Late last week we brought you the story about Baltimore startup BeerGivr which allows people to buy their friends beer using their mobile phone from a remote location, at participating beers. The concept is easy, if you can’t join your friends at the bar you can still pick up a round or buy the birthday girl/boy a shot or beer. You sign into the app, and let it know how many beers and voila its done. BeerGivr has partnered with bars in their hometown for testing. If you buy a friend a beer and they’re not at a participating bar or restaurant they can have that beer converted into Paypal dollars.

Well an Austin startup has taken a similar concept and expanded it to a wide variety of offerings primarily in the under $10 arena. With NOOM (Next One’s On Me), you can buy a gift for a friend using your mobile phone. Ideas include cupcakes,coffee, beers, lunch etc. You simply send your friend a virtual gift certificate through NOOM and they actually get the gift.

NOOM co-founder Sara Rodell gives us a great use case example in our interview below. Say you just met a great new friend or business colleague, it would be very awkward to shake hands and give them $5 or $10 and say “hey the next coffee is on me”, but with NOOM it’s a gesture appreciated, and used.

Right now NOOM is available in the Apple iTunes store and exclusively for Austin area merchants however they are expanding quickly and plan on bringing Houston on in the very near future. NOOM currently has 20 Austin area merchants participating including bakeries, ice cream shops, coffee shops, restaurants and bars.

Check out our interview with Rodell below

Interview With Pennsylvania Startup: Mountain Of Agents, A New Kind Of Real Estate Directory

There are several varieties of real estate agent directory web sites out there on the internet. Most of them are either from a realty association, a real estate company or the professional real estate agents themselves. Well a startup in Bucks County Pennsylvania has taken the real estate directory into their own hands by providing a real estate directory for consumers, by consumers. That directory is called Mountain of Agents.

Michael Becker the founder of Mountain of Agents explains that creating a real estate agent directory for consumers by consumers isn’t their only differentiator. Mountain of Agents has simplified the ratings system, which in turn makes it more transparent than other directories.

Mountain of Agents has a simple ratings system that’s done by tally instead of long drawn out text based reviews. Also, in order to rate the agent you must be logged into Facebook making it harder to manipulate the ratings system. The Facebook integration also allows the user/rater to share that rating and their agent on Facebook, which of course is the 2012 equivalent of word-of-mouth, which is the driving force behind good real estate agent relationships.

The main goal Becker is trying to achieve with Mountain of Agents, is the need for transparency. The startup was born out of a bad experience Becker had that ended up delaying his real estate search because they had to fire the agent. He talks more about that in the interview below.

Buyer’s Unite Pitches Reverse Groupon Concept At Startup Weekend Memphis

Chicago startup Groupon has confirmed to the world the power of the group. LivingSocial and countless other startups compete in the same group daily deal model as Groupon with great success.

Joe Kennedy, a self proclaimed serial entrepreneur, has decided to flip that group daily deal model on it’s head. Instead of coming up with the group deal, and having a buy in, his startup puts the group together to form an adhoc buyers group. If you’re not familiar with the buyers group concept the best comparison would be to a food or grocery co-op. This is where communities are able to force a discount by joining together for a group buy.

Kennedy presented the idea at Startup Weekend in Memphis on Friday evening and got more interest from the group in attendance than he thought. Local young entrepreneur Harold Strong from Yadoog, a startup birthed at 48 Hour Launch in June, dove head first into assisting Kennedy and leading the team of 6 into product development.

Kennedy confirmed at press time that they will definitely be ready to show off proof of concept if not more Sunday evening during the Startup Weekend Memphis finals. In addition to reserving their intellectual property, and hashing out the technical infrastructure they also had to come up with the first vertical that Buyer’s Unite would tackle. The concept itself can work on any vertical but the team chose health insurance to insure (see what we did there), easy quick scalability.

Buyer’s Unite will offer several buying groups that their users can join but for the first group they hope to go to insurance carriers with thousands of people in the group ready to buy. That would in effect force the carrier to offer a sizable discount to guarantee that much business.

There are several monetization options and revenue models but Kennedy likes the idea of a very small fee on the transaction once the deal is complete. Paying $3.50-$5.00 for the ability to save over $100 on health insurance is a win win for everyone. We’ll see tomorrow if it’s a win for the judges.

Check out the video pitch below:

Linkage:

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Nashville Startup: ClockOut Gamifying Taking Off From Work, Small Business Will Love This

The Startup Weekend Memphis team has taken a few solo entrepreneur projects and given them a spot to present in tomorrow’s finals for $1000 a piece. One of those solo entrepreneurs Brandon Heller from Long Island NY by way of Nashville.

Heller is working on ClockOut. When pitched Friday night it was a simple app to take the process of asking off a shift at work and making it social. Through the ClockOut app smaller restaurants, franchisees, bars and small businesses, with shift type work, would have the ability to let their employees take ownership of swapping shifts.

With the app, integrated through Facebook, two employees could swap shifts, or get a shift covered, have a historic log of it on a private Facebook network, and then inform the manager. This way the manager knows the shift is covered, and everything goes on like a well oiled machine.

To take any need for fees away from the small business Heller also decided (with the help of one of the Startup Weekend coaches) to ganmify the process. Now employee A who needs a shift covered pays $5.00 to ClockOut. ClockOut holds onto the $5.00 less their fee. Now employee B who picks up the shift gets a point for every shift they covered. When employee B has covered 10 shifts they get all the remaining money in that pot of $5.00 payments.

For some shift workers $5.00 may be a little steep but it also may be worth it for whatever reason they are calling out. The $5.00 shift covering game encourages people to pick up shifts, knowing that when they’ve covered enough shifts they’ll get the money they earned plus an incentive from ClockOut.

Definitely an interesting concept. Check out the initial pitch video from Friday below:

Linkage:

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Startup Weekend Memphis: CoachSpeak (Friday Pitch Video)

Startup Weekend Memphis produced some great ideas. Sunday we’ll get to see how they did with the important part, execution.

One of those ideas is a new startup called CoachSpeak. Coach Speak is a new professional social network aimed specifically at higher level coaches, for example college football coaches. Now that most everyone has a social media account on one of the mainstream social networks like Facebook,Twitter, Google+ or LinkedIn, it’s time to branch back out with niche networks.

Yesterday we brought you the story about Florida startup PitchShark which is a social network specifically for those producing independent films.

CoachSpeak will link coaches together in new ways.

Here’s how the concept was explained and why it makes sense. Let’s say we’re back in December of 2008 and Auburn University has just released Tommy Tuberville. Once they announced Gene Chizik he needed to get moving, he needed to get to Auburn and immediately work on building his staff up.

Now lets say Chizik has a LinkedIn page. Now, after the announcement that he’s headed to Auburn, he is going to be flooded with people who even on LnkedIn’s professional network, are only linking in because he’s the coach at Auburn. He has a lot of people to wade through in order to get straight to other coaches like an offensive line coach, defensive line coach or special teams coach.

If Chizik was part of a closed, professional social network of coaches he could easily access the coaches he knew or had met personally and even coaches that he didn’t know. A niche social network in this case is abetter alternative.

Over the past few weeks I find myself in more and more conversations about niche social networks. Are they over-saturating the social landscape or are they needed?

If you look at professional social networks like CoachSpeak or PitchShark, while they are online and social they are more like professional organizations. So there is a clear advantage to something like CoachSpeak.

Check out the pitch video below.

Linkage:

See more of our Startup Weekend coverage here

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Startup Weekend Memphis: Event Czar Pitch Video

Sure I’ll go ahead and acknowledge the elephant in the room right now, event apps are becoming a dime a dozen. However it looks like Event Czar has a different idea in the event space.

Event Czar wants to be your event aggregator and discovery engine on a local level wherever and whenever you’re going out looking for anything to do. Event Czar plans to do this by leveraging big data, data mining and an algorithm that will match your interests up with events that may appeal to you.

Say you’re not in the mood for your “normal” time event, you’ll be able to see all the events in the area as well.

Event Czar is also going to cut out some of the noise associated with more traditional platforms for finding events, for example when conversations start diluting the results, and when there is chatter coming from a future event. Event Czar wants to be you’re right now app (although you will be able to see events in the future to plan accordingly).

This was by far the biggest team at the end of Friday night and they hope to have a proof of concept if not an MVP by the end of the weekend.

Check out the original idea pitch for Event Czar below:

Linkage:

Check out more of our Startup Weekend coverage here

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