startups Archives - Page 75 of 75

St Louis Start Up Spotlight: Passer.by Now Anyone Can Invest In A Movie

Are you old enough to remember the days of HSX.com, before 9/11 it was the place to go to invest virtual money into real life actors, actresses and movie projects, called the Hollywood Stock Exchange. Now this wasn’t real you weren’t really investing money in a movie it was more of a game, kind of like fantasy baseball. If the movie did well the actors and actresses did well and then you made more virtual money.

Well shove all that aside because a St. Louis startup called passer.by is working on a crowdfunding website for real movies. Passer.by was founded by childhood friends Todd Metheny and Josh Clayton. Clayton has some experience in the film business but for Metheny it’s a new venture based on a love of movies.

Passer.by will be a way to get film projects off the ground with the help of many people, from friends and family. They have several funding options and plans they are working on. Metheny says they are riding out the “JOBS act” and the SEC to see if the entire crowdfunding model will be a go.

As for how much it costs for the film maker, right now they are launching the first 20 films with the film makers “paying what they choose”.

“It’s certainly a risk, but it’s exactly the kind of risk that we’re excited to take,” Passerby CEO
Todd Metheny said. “Some people will choose to pay nothing, but it’s a matter of trust. Our
mission is to be the crowdfunding option that puts filmmakers first, and to do that we need to
create a relationship with our users that is built on trust.”

CCO Josh Clayton is exciting to see how filmmakers react to the “pay what you choose”
option. “We’d love to be ‘pay what you choose’ forever, and we very well might be,” he
said. “We just need to make sure it’s possible to cover the expenses related to running the
platform at that level. We believe it’s a favorable experiment for the filmmaker.”

We spent some time talking with Metheny about passer.by check out the interview below the break.

DC Mayor Vincent Gray Makes Tax Changes To Attract Tech Companies & Startups

Washington DC Mayor Vincent Gray has announced some tax changes that are designed to keep the districts budding tech scene building to scale. The changes he outlined recently will be formally announced to the city council on April 17th.

The first tax change is that District residents who invest in technology companies or take on equity as part of their employment would be subject to a 3 percent capital gains tax that they hold on investments they hold for two years or longer.

Gray’s other tax plan for DC is to do away with the borders for the tax technology zones. As it stands now there are certain areas within the district where companies have no income tax for five years from the time they register with city offices. Gray has decided to make this a city wide tax break

“We want to make sure it’s as easy as possible for tech entrepreneurs and business people to set up their business in the city without worrying about which streets are in and which streets are out,” said David Zipper, the city’s director of business development and strategy.

These tax breaks are designed to grow the number of early stage investors who reside in the city. and encourage startups to remain after they cash in.

source: Washington Post

Rockstar Start Ups: Yup See It In An Infographic

A really cool infographic has come to us by way of alltopstartups.com. The infographic conceptualizes the startups journey from assembling the team, to retiring and becoming an investor, through the looking glass of a rockband. I know with our extremely long nights, crazy off the wall times for meetings, and being fueled by Ramen and Monster, start ups (including us) feel like Rock Stars now we can see it.

You don’t believe Tech Startups and Rockbands are alike? South by Southwest obviously does.

Shane Snow, curator and designer of this fine infographic, hits the nail on the head. Read through it real quick it’s greatness.

This Week In Funding 25 March 2012

This Week In Funding we have seen over $78 million dollars in investments go to Startups. They have raised it in all different ways, some going after big name Hollywood types like Ashton Kutcher. Or the more traditional rout with rounds Andreessen Horowitz leading the way. Everything from a Series A round to an E round happened. Bellow are a list of some of those that brought in investments this week.

Startup Quick Byte: Share Magnet

For Startup Quick Byte we’ll take a look at Share Magnet, a company based out of Los Angeles, Ca. Share Magnet system enables users who register on the site to get paid for personally recommending relevant items to their friends, family and social connections. The revenue source comes from companies that wish to reward individuals who recommend their products, services, online links, and entertainment such as games, music, films, etc. In other words, you’ll be our advertising and we’ll pay you for sending links out to your friends.

Our mission is to bring consumers together through common interests, and reward them for sharing the things they like.

Startup Spotlight: Los Angeles Based Incubators

For years, Silicon Valley has been the first thought when someone says Startups and Incubators, however Los Angeles is trying to change that. In this Start-Up Spotlight, we’ll be featuring three LA Based Startup Incubators trying to change that. While Los Angeles may be famous for Hollywood, Crips and Scientology, companies such as MySpace, Helio, and Picasa have all started here as well.

Nibletz: What’s That Small Crunching Sound? Get My Start Up Featured

Nibletz was launched in the summer of 2011. We’ve been here ever since and have seen some phenomenal growth as of late. What’s a niblet? It’s a small crunchy byte from the tech and startup scene.

We’re here to bring you news and news bytes from around the startup and tech world. You’ll see stories here from the hot startup pockets like Silicon Valley, Silicon Alley, Silicon Beach and other places that don’t have Silicon in the name like the GigCity (Chattanooga), New Orleans, Austin, Syracuse, London, Berlin and more.

In these economic times more and more people are trying to find security in themselves and taking their ideas to the next level. Many fail, while many succeed and we’ll continue to bring you those stories from start-ups next door and start-ups across the globe. If it’s interesting, we’ll run it and the editorial team at Nibletz finds many things interesting.

We love to talk to people and want to hear about your startup so if you have a startup or know of an interesting startup send us an email at startup@nibletz.com we also like talking to people on the phone and we have a bad ass phone number for that (202)-NIBLETZ (2O2) 642-5389 it’s real easy to remember.

Another great thing about Nibletz is that we want our readers to understand the news and the lingo in and outside of the valley so you won’t find stories that are backed by old Silicon Valley urban legends. We’ll source stories from everywhere.

We read TechCrunch and PandoDaily, well Daily so we won’t do a lot of regurgitating from those sites, keep visiting them as well. But make sure you add nibletz.com to your RSS reader and drop us a line or a phone call.

If you’re not sure if you have startup news or you know you’ve got some cool tech tip for us send that email to tips@nibletz.com oh and our phone number again is (202)-NIBLETZ (2O2) 642-5389