Alexia Tstotis sat down with a pretty powerful VC panel at TechCrunch Disrupt NYC 2013 on Tuesday morning. The panelists were Mike Abbott (Kleiner), Aaref Hilaly (Sequoia), Naval Ravikant (AngelList) and David Tisch (Box Group, former Techstars NY). Tstotis asked some great questions of the panelists and overall the panel shed a lot of light on the world of VC, especially for young entrepreneurs and startups.
Tstotsis final question revolved around women in technology, startups and entrepreneurship. Everyone wants to know what will help even out the amount of venture capital going to women founders, as their male counterparts.
Overall the number of women involved in VC and angel backed startups has been increasing. Lot’s of attention lately, has been focused on women run, and founded startups. We even feature a “Bad Ass Start Up Chick” on a regular basis here at nibletz.
At the panel though David Tisch, who’s known for speaking his mind and off the cuff, got applause from the audience when he talked about one of the biggest problems women face when in the meeting, pitching the VC.
“VC’s that tell a woman founder, let me ask my wife…It’s total bullshit” and he’s right. For years there have been women led companies, women focused brands, and women focused technologies, this is nothing new. Tisch felt it was off-putting and a total cop out for VC’s to say this, but as he points out, it happens all the time.
Check out the video clip from this morning’s panel below.
There are haters everywhere, or at least that’s how the song goes. Lord knows I have a bunch. That’s why Jake Banks created Los Angeles startup Hater. It’s the world’s first social network surrounded by things people hate.
The social network is alive and growing at a very quick rate. People are finding lots of commonalities over the things they hate. It can be anything from hating the New York Yankees to hating pickles on a Big Mac. It can even be hating your ex-girlfriend. But, co-founder and Chief Marketing Officer Andrew Batey says “It’s not about bullying”.
Hater App works on your mobile device. Download it from the app store and you can immediately start identifying the things you hate and identifying with the people who hate similar things. If a person becomes the subject of too much hate, or things get inappropriate (to a degree) they will get filtered out.
To date there’s been nothing available like Hater, and it’s caught the eye of celebrities like Teyana Taylor, Wiz Khalifa and Fat Joe who will feature the app in his next show. “Fat Joe’s people found out about Hater and reached out to us” Batey explained to nibletz.com at TechCrunch Disrupt NY.
Hate isn’t always used as a bad thing though. Batey explains that there are celebrities that are getting together over issues like global warming and getting users to say why they hate global warming. “Users may say things like I hate global warming because I can’t breathe” Batey said. It’s a great awareness tool and it’s blowing up.
Hater launched at SXSW and since then Batey and Banks have been hard at work promoting their startup globally. They recently did New York Tech Day, TNW in Amsterdam and now TechCrunch Disrupt 2013.
“You don’t always have to like something, and the option to hate or dislike has been missing out there. Everyone has something they hate; now you can and it’s better than therapy.” Banks said in a statement.
Mashable recently featured Hater in “8 standout apps from March” which is a particularly big honor considering how many apps were released at SXSW which fell during that month. They’ve also been featured on Wall Street Journal live. People are quickly beginning to see that Hater app is a lot deeper than you may think.
Companies like Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hulu have started making a dent in traditional cable tv consumption. More and more people, globally, are watching tv shows and movies on other screens like, laptops, mobile phones and tablets. This has caused most cable companies (especially in the US) to move to other sources for revenue like telephone lines and cable internet.
Hulu, Amazon, Netflix and other similar companies are offering shows and movies a la carte and on demand. You subscribe to one of these services for a nominal fee and you can access whatever programs you want to watch, when you want to watch them. This model is working very well for many consumers, but the space as a whole is gearing up for another disruption.
There are some startups like, Jacksonville startup whata.tv, that are hoping to reinvent tv by allowing users to subscribe to one channel a la carte and get the entire programming from that channel in real time or on demand. Many analysts have suggested that this kind of model is where tv is heading.
On the other hand, you have startups like Sweden’s Magine, which is a full fledged cable operator, delivering the same programming, and functionality as traditional cable companies, on multiple screens and with even more features.
Magine allows viewers to watch programs in real time or on demand, without the need for a dvr. Magine, of course allows you to watch the content on any connected device.
With the stranglehold that the US cable operators have, it’s not likely that Magine will ever find it’s way onto US soil, but people in Europe love the freedom that the service is giving them. Beta testers, including TechCrunch’s Frederic Lardinois, love Magine, and of course we see why.
Check out our interview with Simon at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013, below.
AppArchitect is an idea that was actually born at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2011. It was there, at the Disrupt Hackathon, where the first lines of code were written.
Over the last two years the team behind AppArchitect has been refining the product. They’ve also been through the DreamIt Ventures accelerator in Philadelphia and raised $325,000 from Actinic Ventures, BHV, DreamIt and other angels.
They finally went live just before 4:00pm on the Battlefield stage at Disrupt 2013. Co-Founder Ilya Zatulovskly took to the stage and showed off what could be the easiest platform ever to build a native iOS app. AppArchitect sets itself apart from other DIY app generators because it’s not template based and not just a “wrapper”.
Users who want to create a new app simply need to know how to drag and drop things, to create an app using AppArchitect. Zatulovskly says “if you can build a slide deck you can build an app”.
It’s such an easy platform that Zatulovskly created an app during the quick Battlefield presentation.
That may not have been enough to wow the judges in their Battlefield session called “Get Things Done”. The judges: John Frankel, Hilary Mason, Megan Quinn, and Sam Yagan seemed to take notice that the competitive landscape in the DIY app creation space were plentiful. They also weren’t exactly sure who the end user was.
Naturally, the end user is anyone who wants to build an app. However, design agencies and advertising firms are already employing developers and DIY app creation tools that have already been on the market. With over 1 million apps across all of the app stores, it’s getting harder and harder for any app to stand out.
AppArchitect could come in handy for mom and pop shops, small restaurants and small businesses who are looking to get into the app world with something specific for their business.
Regardless, Zatulovskly and the AppArchitect team are hoping to use this experience, coupled with the knowledge and experience gained at DreamIt, to raise another round of capital and continue building AppArchitect.
Check out our video interview below and for more info or to try it out yourself you can find AppArchitect here.
Brazilian startup Peela is getting some major traction in it’s native country. Peela is a reusable giftcard app and platform that allows users (buyers) to purchase physical or virtual gift cards that can be reloaded from the stores, restaurants and businesses that they were purchased for.
Peela patners with major merchants and vendors to offer the gift card, but more importantly, with reloadable gift cards, they offer a loyal customer. Perhaps your dad really loves the coffee shop he goes to every day, now everyone in the family can continually reload his card, it’s almost like a prepaid credit card for one place.
Peela has three main marketing channels, retail, e-commerce and businesses. So far it’s taking off, Peela’s Executive Director Guilherme Coelho, showed us a map detailing Peela’s penetration across every city in Brazil.
They are looking to expand the platform and were part of the Brazilian pavilion at TechCrunch Disrupt NYC 2013. Check out our video interview with Coelho below and for more info you can visit them at peela.com.br
Croatian startup MediaToolKit started as a social media monitoring web app targeted towards journalists. Journalists from blogs, newspapers, video outlets and other media resources can tap into MediaToolKit and discover trending content on Facebook and other sources from their competitors. Southeast Europes netocratic.com called it a “spy tool”.
Media Toolkit’s Ivor Bihar was on hand at TechCrunch Disrupt New York after the startup competed in the WebUp startup competition as part of the webfest.me conference last fall and won a trip over to the United States to present MediaToolKit to the US here at TechCrunch Disrupt.
Over the last few months MediaToolKit has continued to iterate. Now they offer a suite of tools for journalists, hence the name Tool Kit, including press clippings and alerts. The startup comes out of Zagreb based social media agency iStudio.
Check out our video interview with Bihar below and for more information you can check out mediatoolkit.com
One of my favorite messaging apps is Voxer. Voxer allows me to send and receive voice messages, much like an old audio pager or Nextel’s two way radio function used to work. Now imagine if Voxer had a video element. That’s what you would get from Israeli startup Glide.
Glide allows multiple people to have two way video messaging over mobile device in extremely close to real time. You can have a two way conversation, ala Facetime or you can send a video message and the recipient can get back to you when it’s convenience for them. The big differentiator though is time.
Adam Korbl, the co-founder and CMO at Glide explained that these video messages and sent and received within fractions of a second. It doesn’t take that 8-10 seconds you will find trying to get a Skype going and the waiting you sometimes get from Facetime.
Being on the road all the time, I’ve found a new love for Facetime. When I’m on the road I’m constantly Facetiming with my five year old daughter. Glide will give us the option of having a two way conversation or if one of us is busy we can leave the equivalent of a video voice mail message.
According to TechCrunch Glide has raised seven figures to date from stakeholders including; Orey Gilliam, former CEO of ICQ and AOL IM and Philippe Schwartz the founder of ooVoo.
We’ve seen Wyclef get behind some great things. New York startup Fliqq is the latest.
Fliqq is a platform that allows people to “move in groups” around a piece of video content. It spun out of their original concept which was to move people around the internet in a group. Using Fliqq’s technology a group of friends, a class, a group of colleagues in the same industry or even a family could move across the web from site to site at the same time. Think screen sharing in a much better looking wrapper with a lot more features.
Fliqq’s CEO and co-founder Christian Bendixen explained to us that Fliqq had a great idea and people were using it, but what they found was that most people were using it for video. So they decided to make a half pivot and have Fliqq center around media. At the same time they saw the power in taking it to mobile.
While Bendixen admits they haven’t tested Fliqq to the limit, you could easily use it with groups as large as 50,000. This will make this a great service for concert-goers, people watching plays or fans of an artist, like Wyclef who will partner with Fliqq to use their technology.
Bendixen explains in the video that Wyclef’s fans will be able to get on the platform, and he will be able to share whatever media he wants with them, all at the same time. This could prove to be a very valuable tool.
Imagine going to a tech conference like TechCrunch Disrupt or everywhereelse.co and the keynote speakers could instantly share the slide decks, videos and other images with the entire audience. Or, you could go to a huge concert and the artist could share a sneak preview video halfway through the show. This is the foundation of what Fliqq us all about.
We got to talk with Bendixen in the Startup Alley at TechCrunch Disrupt NYC 2013. Check out the video interview below:
Daniel Kim and Bhupinder Singh were at TechCrunch Disrupt NYC’s starutp alley on day one. Their startup DEJED is a new digital goods market place that Kim describes as “ebay for digital goods”.
They are hoping to bring together creators, marketers and buyers in one platform that allows people to find the digital content they need and for creators, and affiliates to get paid.
In an untraditional model the duo are attracting third party people with social clout to help market the digital goods that the creators are selling. This may offer DEJED the biggest competitive edge over competitors. Singh is very excited about this aspect of the business, he told us during an interview that someone with tens of thousands of followers could easily make good money helping to bring buyers to digital goods.
DEJED hopes to become the go to place to buy and sell music, videos, ebooks, apps, plug-ins, code, models, icons, avatars, class notes, games, pictures, animations, how to’s, comics, coupons and any other good that has digital delivery.
On the buyer side DEJED will offer lifetime cloud access for all of the purchased digital goods as an archive to save everything someone buys using the DEJED platform.
Check out our video interview below and for more info visit dejed.com.
Before Monday April 15th FourSquare founder Dennis Crowley was looking forward to running the Boston Marathon with his girlfriend and family. They would take a quick jaunt up from New York, have a great time and get some great exercise. Obviously, as a co-founder of FourSquare, Crowley is a busy guy so he seemed to be looking forward to just having fun.
Also as co-founder of FourSquare he wanted to take advantage of their technology throughout the race. “I set up FourSquare to automatically check me in as I passed each mile marker”.
As the events of April 15th took a turn for the worst, Crowley was still informing his social media followers via FourSquare that everything was A-Ok. As we all know cell phone service was shut down, but luckily Crowley tells TechCrunch’s Colleen Taylor that he was able to get a few texts and tweets out.
Sure Crowey’s phone was still passing check points but people were worried about how he was actually doing.
Before Taylor and Crowley turned to talking about FourSquare and rumors of buyouts and their latest round of funding, they talked about the Boston Marathon. Check out our video below.
Community service and helping people have been what Brittany Fitzpatrick’s life’s work have been about. But what makes this Memphian even more amazing is that she left a position with one of the most prestigious, well known brands in the non-profit space, Ronald McDonald House Charities, to start something of her own, again in community service.
As the communications coordinator for Ronald McDonald House Charities of Memphis, Brittany took the passion and drive she’s had since high school and through college at Howard University and Memphis University, and combined it with the tools available in recent day to double the groups social media reach. Ronald McDonald House Charities of Memphis works with the most well known children’s research facility in the world, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
Over the last six years, Brittany has been a mentor and helped other mentor’s in a variety of programs. Through her work with Ronald McDonald House Charities and other stops along the way, she found that mentorship was a great thing, but flawed in many ways.
(Brittany’s first pitch at 48 Hour Launch)
When she first pitched the idea for her startup “Mentor Me” back in December at a women focused 48 Hour Launch, she revealed that most mentor orgranizations spend more money re-placing mentors and mentees than they do setting up original pairs. Brittanny quickly realized if someone could fix the initial matching proces than these programs could focus on their original goals and save a lot of money.
That’s where her startup Mentor Me comes in. Mentor Me is a mentor and mentee online matching service that uses a variety of information given from both parties and an algorithm to make more successful matches. While Brittany is hesitant about using the verbage “e-harmony for mentor”, at the core that’s what it is and that’s why it’s going to be so successful.
(Here’s Brittany’s second pitch from 48 Hour Launch)
But the biggest factor in the success of Mentor Me is going to be a combination of the technology and the founder. Brittany is a dynamic young woman. Back in December, the prize for the 48 Hour Launch competition was a startup village booth at everywherelse.co. When Brittany came in second place she decided to crowdfund the people in the audience so that she too could have a booth for her startup. Within minutes her mission was successful.
We got to interview Brittany as she prepares for demo day at SeedHatchery, where she tells us about her latest venture into crowdfunding and what she’s learning at the Memphis startup accelerator:
So tell us what is Mentor Me?
There are 3 million kids in the U.S. being mentored. Yet, there are another 15 million waiting for mentors. Sadly, half of all matches between mentors and youth end within months – which does more harm than no mentoring at all. One of the top reasons for these pairs falling apart is poor matching.
Mentor Me provides cloud-based mentor matching and management tools that make mentoring more efficient and effective for both programs and mentors.
How did you come up with the idea?
The idea came from my own experiences as a mentor. I’ve been mentoring for 6 years now and have been through the process of getting matched with a mentee several times. Through these experiences, I’ve learned just how much of an impact mentoring can have for both the kids who are being mentored and for the mentors themselves. But, as with any process, there are things that can be improved and there are ways to use technology to make the process better for everyone.
Who else is on the team?
My Co-Founder and CTO is Sean Lissner.
Sean has a Bachelor’s Degree in both Mathematical and Computer Science from the University of Memphis. Sean’s specialties include: mobile applications, web applications, web services, distributed computing, embedded systems, cloud architecture, machine learning, and wireless sensor networks.
Before joining the Mentor Me team, Sean worked with large-scale, enterprise level application development projects, including FedEx’s Android mobile application. In addition to his passion for improving communities, Sean brings more than a decade of coding experience and a usability-centered design focus to the Mentor Me team.
Our advisors are: Austin Baker, President and Chairman of the Board of HRO Partners and Co-Founder of the University of Memphis MILE Mentoring Program; Jenny Koltnow, Executive Director of the Memphis Grizzlies Charitable Foundation; Emily Yellin, Customer Experience Consultant
What made you decide to apply for an accelerator?
I knew that going through Seed Hatchery would give me the best chance for success. With accelerators, you’re given a strong network of support through the staff and through the network of entrepreneurs who have gone through the program before you. The support of one’s fellow cohort-members is also invaluable. And of course the fact that they are mentor-driven is also innately appealing to me.
What have been your three biggest take-aways so far from Seed Hatchery?
My three biggest take-aways from Seed Hatchery thus far have been:
The importance of investing in yourself: I left my job right before Seed Hatchery to go all-in on my startup
You have to practice how you play.
Iteration trumps perfection
While some accelerator startups just sit around and wait for investor day, you’re out there fundraising now, tell us a little bit about your crowdfunding?
We kicked off a crowdfunding campaign to match our $15,000 investment by May 16. We’re about 10% of the way there. Our crowdfunding page is at www.gofundme.com/MentorMe.
What’s the reaction to Mentor Me been so far?
The reaction thus far has been positive. We already have our first paying customer and we’re in the process of getting more organizations on board for our beta test this summer.
One thing you learned about yourself in the accelerator?
I’ve learned so much about myself through this process. I think above all I’ve learned how to push myself outside of my comfort zone. I actually look for those types of opportunities now.
What happens May 17th?
The grind continues. Investor Day is just the beginning.
The Brandery, the Cincinnati based, top 15 startup accelerator, has announced a new partnership with the E.W. Scripps Company and the Scripps Howard foundation, one of the most historic names in U.S. media, to offer two journalistic startups entry into the highly coveted summer time accelerator program.
The Brandery is heavily focused on branding, hence it’s name. It’s situated in the branding capital of the world, Cincinnati Ohio, home to Proctor & Gamble, the biggest branded company in the world. Cincinnati is also home to household names like Federated/Macy’s, and Kroger.
The Brandery has been very successful in preparing startups for the next level. 2012 class member FlightCar just raised over $5 million dollars in venture funding. The Brandery took three scrappy teenage dropouts from MIT and helped groom their idea of peer 2 peer car renting at airports into a startup that made it into Y Combinator.
ChoreMonster closed down a round of venture funding earlier this year and Pingage, co-founded by Brandery graduate Michael Wohlschlaeger also just announced major funding.
The Brandery’s strong core focus area and their even stronger mentor network attracted Brooklyn serial entrepreneur and founder of Brooklyn based Dumbo Startup Lab, to work on his startup, Off Track Planet.
Now, through this unique partnership, the Brandery will offer the chance for journalistic focused startups to go through their intensive program, have access to their mentor network and pitch at their very well attended investor day in the fall.
“Scripps is making an investment in the future of journalism with a fresh approach to news gathering and new products for news consumption,” said Adam Symson, chief digital officer for Scripps and a Foundation trustee. “This partnership with The Brandery is a great way for the Foundation to engage the broader entrepreneurial community in creating media-related businesses.”
The Foundation’s financial support includes a $3,500 stipend for each of two founders of the company to cover their living expenses while they spend the summer in Southwest Ohio, developing their businesses and networking with consumer-oriented businesses. The funds will supplement the Brandery’s $20,000.
You can apply for the Brandery’s traditional program or their Scripps Howard fellowship now through May 1st at brandery.org
Last week at OneSpark, the World’s Crowdfunding Festival, a big blue tardis served as a beacon saying something nerdy was going on at the Dalton Agency building in downtown Jacksonville. Perhaps nerdy was the wrong word. The correct word would be Nerdular.
Nerdular was one of seven startups in attendance at OneSpark from the St. Augustine based “Factory” accelerator.
The Florida startup put their best foot forward at OneSpark and hosted an opening party on Wednesday night, and of course the tardis, ready for anyone who wanted to take a picture like Doctor Who.
So what is Nerdular? Well when we first heard about it, it was described as a marketplace for nerd stuff. You know, video game t-shirts, Doctor Who gear, nerdy memorabilia and crafts. We immediately thought,ThinkGeek. ThinkGeek is the powerhouse e-commerce site that sells a lot of that same stuff.
So what’s different about Nerdular?
According to one of their biggest mentors and supporters Jeremy Vaughn, co-founder of the Factory accelerator, Nerdular will be part ebay, part etsy and part community. Think of it essentially as a “merch” room at Comicon or Dragoncon. A big gigantic, organized, flea market of all things nerdy. There will be professional full time vendors selling anything from t-shirts to swords, to steam punk gear, and those hobbyist store owners with handmade wares.
The other thing that is going to drive Nerdular is the social community that will form around the site after it debuts later this year. Nerds from across the globe will be able to talk about all things nerdy in rooms, across status messages and even on pictures of items. So yes, add an element of Pinterest as well.
As for ThinkGeek, it’s strictly a traditional e-commerce site. ThinkGeek contracts with all their vendors, the same way Amazon or Best Buy does. They then house everything in their own warehouses and distribute it as things are sold.
The bad ass software developers at feature[23] are feverishly working on an online platform that bridges all of these ideas together. The Florida software development firm that Vaughn owns is also the backbone for The Factory accelerator. All of the Factory’s companies can draw from the experienced team at feature[23]. The developers know that the nerd audience can be very critical, especially when something is designed specifically for them.
Check out our interview video below you can find out more at nerdular.com
We met Jacksonville serial entrepreneur Damien Robinson, the founder of 1 Smart Tech, at OneSpark last week. If you’re an avid reader of nibletz.com the voice of startups everywhere else, you probably know how we feel about the startup vs small business debate.
I love entrepreneurship in any form but nibletz is about startups everywhere else, doing disruptive, innovative or challenging things, going against the grain. So when I hear about an IT company, or IT service provider, I instantly turn to the small business category. I’ve got a lot of great friends in the IT world that are small business owners. If we wrote about small businesses our pages would be filled with them.
Some of you may even remember how I called out this urban farm as a small business and not a startup at a weekend startup hackathon a few months later. In most cases I chalk IT companies up the same way I do rental property owners, as small businesses.
Now don’t get me wrong there is absolutely nothing wrong with small businesses. They too are the fabric of the new economy, creating jobs and helping people in their hometowns. They just aren’t startups. One thing I’m often found saying when I’m out speaking is that every startup founder is an entrepreneur but not every entrepreneur is a startup founder.
So now let’s talk about Damien. He’s on his second official company. His first company was a small business marketing, engagement and consulting company. Pretty much a small business. He was goot at what he did and has built a great network in Jacksonville based on those services. Now he’s looking to leverage what he gained from that small business to 1 Smart Tech, his latest endeavor.
1 Smart Tech is an online offline community, or collective, of curated “smart people” or tech specialists. Robinson is hoping to create a hybrid model of employment agency, IT outsourcing agency and on-off line community to constantly provide the best of the best tech services in Jacksonville and then eventually build scale.
Engineers, software engineers, developers, designers and other specialists that join up with 1 Smart Tech will be the best of the best. Robinson will have his network and be able to refer them out to businesses in need and help the network members find work with his curated group of clients, essentially pitting together the best of the best.
He hopes to disrupt traditional out-sourced technology companies by providing complete assesments and solutions and then scaling the concept outside of Jacksonville.
After all that am I 100% sold that 1 Smart Tech is a startup, nope. But I liked the guy, he’s sharp as a tack, and maybe he has just found the new model for out-sourced tech companies.
Kyle
Alexia Tstotis sat down with a pretty powerful VC panel at TechCrunch Disrupt NYC 2013 on Tuesday morning. The panelists were Mike Abbott (Kleiner), Aaref Hilaly (Sequoia), Naval Ravikant (AngelList) and David Tisch (Box Group, former Techstars NY). Tstotis asked some great questions of the panelists and overall the panel shed a lot of light on the world of VC, especially for young entrepreneurs and startups.
Guest
