Knowledge and learning are big markets in the startup space. One Forte, is a Jacksonville based startup, that’s a market place for knowledge. OneForte
Using One Forte’s platform anyone can sign up and say what their skills are. Skills can be anything from guitar playing to tax accounting and anything in between. After a person adds themselves to the One Forte platform and lists what they have knowledge in they can offer online classes via video chats.
The “teachers” or “knowledge providers” can set their rate for how much a 1:1 session is going to cost, or they could decide to do it pro-bono and not charge anything at all.
One Forte makes the entire process easy by allowing knowledge providers to have profiles, and users to search for the skills they’re looking for. Once the two hook up One Forte provides an easy way to handle the billing and takes a small percentage of the fee that the teacher sets.
This scalable platform is going global out of the gate, hoping that a cook in London could provide lessons to someone who wants to learn about cooking in Boise Idaho. All of the lessons are done online through a video platform that’s also administered by One Forte.
Check out our interview with Gary below and for more info visit OneForte.com
Florida Green Records is an incredible green record label. The record label operates two brick and mortar recording studios, one in Jacksonville and one in Key Largo.
At both recording studios, they try and be as green as possible through efforts like using digital recording versus pressing CDs, they use environmentally friendly paper and try and conserve energy. Now they’ve taken their green efforts a step further by creating a mobile recording studio that is powered by a bicycle. The mechanism for converting the bicycle energy into usable energy for the studio is able to attach to anyone’s bicycle.
Florida Green Records’ mobile recording studio is complete with computers running pro-tools, an isolation booth that can accommodate vocalists, guitar players and even a drum kit, and a working air conditioner that operates off of ice water. To power the studio someone rides a bike, and their power system, designed by the team at Florida Green Records, stores the energy in old UPS batteries. The batteries can run the studio for up to 3 hours, with the AC going.
While we stayed away from saying what our favorite creation at OneSpark, the World’s Crowdfunding Festival, was, the pedal powered recording studio is definitely in our top 3.
Throughout the five day festival Florida Green Records recorded some of the musical creators for free, and of course it was all powered by the bike. They also encouraged folks to bring their bikes out and help power the recording sessions.
Check out our video interview and a quick walk through of the studio in the video below.
Michael Fogg is one of those fun loving guys that loves the adrenaline rush of surfing in Costa Rica or Hawaii and riding his motorcycle wide open through the rocky mountains. He’s also a smart guy who loves life, and people.
In 2008 Fogg, a life long motorcycle rider, decided to take his Harley Davidson half helmet and do some customizing too it. Rather than stickers, or engraving, he had a face mask, the kind you would find on a football helmet, mounted to his helmet. It seemed like a natural thing to do for safety.
Millions of people have broken bones, ribs and other injuries riding motorcycles. Without proper training and driving safely people wreck, its a fact of life. Well when you break your leg, foot or arm it’s going to heal and then get covered up with clothing. No one is going to see your scars, unless you want them to. When you hurt your face though, that’s a different story.
Fogg knows a fellow rider who broke his bottom jaw almost off and now has to wear a veil. If he had one of Fogg’s FoggFace helmets his jaw would still be intact.
Fogg hopes that in ten years people will look back in disbelief knowing that before the FoggFace helmet, motorcycle riders had no facial protection. Sure there are street style helmets with a full plexiglass piece that comes down across the face but those helmets can be distracting, and sometimes dangerous.
Using a football style masking the FoggFace helmets don’t look awkward. In fact whenever Fogg goes to biker events and sits his helmet on a table, people gather around to hear all about it and ask how to order it. One woman who rides a scooter to work everyday said she would love to buy a FoggFace helmet in designer colors like pink. Fogg is hoping that after OneSpark and getting his business plan rolling, he will be able to offer that.
He’s also hopeful that he’ll be able to create helmets for skateboarders, bicyclists and scooter riders.
Sounds like a multimillion dollar idea right? While the money doesn’t hurt, Fogg is doing this so people don’t get hurt. “It’s really all about safety” he told us at his creator booth at OneSpark on Friday.
To get a better idea of what the FoggFace helmets are all about check out the video below.
The OneSpark staff just announced the day 2 biggest movers in the crowdfunding voting for the crowdfunding festival. Over 500 creators are competing for there share of a $250,000 pot that will be distributed on Sunday to help launch these creations and take these projects, businesses, startups and inventions.
There are 4 main categories: Art, Music, Science and Technology there’s also a 5th “other” category,
Oooworldcoop, a technology startup trying to mesh Facebook with EBay in a social marketplace platform, as a co-op was the biggest mover in the tech category today.
The sunny skies of Hollywood California, celebrities, and power events, with a startup, that would be the ultimate goal for many people who love startups and working for them. Well for Cara VonderBruegge, who worked in that exact position at the Los Angeles office of Living Social, that wasn’t enough.
Blasphemy!
VonderBruegge (don’t even try and pronounce it), was looking for something more and wanted to move back to St. Louis, closer to her family. From a distance, off in Los Angeles, VonderBruegge saw the explosion of growth that St. Louis’ startup scene was having and she wanted to be there.
While the world knows that Living Social hasn’t been in the best financial place lately, after a series of layoffs it looked like VonderBruegge and her LA based position had survived, and it had. However in a by-chance meeting with Ray Gobberg, co-founder of Bonfyre, they struck up a good conversation. Gobberg explained that he worked at a startup in St. Louis and VonderBruegge told him that she worked for Living Social, itself still a startup.
By chance VonderBruegge called Gobberg just to catch up right when they had a project manager opening, and boom, the job was hers. So she did the reverse, packed up her car and moved to St. Louis.
While an official events coordinator may be in the works down the road for BonFyre, VonderBruegge has her hands full with several other “top secret” projects for the BonFyre crew, and she’s instrumental on their events side too.
VonderBruegge has been on the job for about six weeks and we got a chance to catch up with her at OneSpark in Jacksonville. VonderBruegge knows her stuff, startups, events, networking and Bonfyre. Her bright personality is definitely a perk for the mostly male dominated Bonfyre team.
Check out our interview with our latest “Bad Ass Startup Chick” below, and check out Bonfyre here.
There is no way that I can spin this into a startup story,except for the fact that Ron “BoneShaker” Schroer, is participating in OneSpark, the World’s Crowdfunding Festival.
Schroer spent many years working in animatronics, designing and creating Disney like animatronics for theme parks, and interactive exhibits for kids. The lifelong Jacksonville resident heard about the OneSpark festival and had to be part of it.
“There has been nothing like OneSpark before in Jacksonville and I wanted to create something for it”, Schroer harnessed his creative brain and his experience in animatronics and started to think about what to create. He had a ton of old fencing on his property so he proceeded to create “Ol Fence”.
“So I looked into my cupboard to see what I might bring. Thinking about how to incorporate my many Florida experiences, I realized how integral to the southern image is fencing- weathered wood, rolling and undulating, almost alive with personality- and thus was born Ol’ Fence- folk art meets process control. Ol’ Fence has 40 individual motions that can be combined for a wide range of actions. His ‘speech’ is created live with a talking drum, bowed and struck.” Schroer said in his OneSpark creator bio.
Combine all that with the fact that Florida probably has the most animatronics per capita of any state in the US, and you’ve got a match that is very creative, eye catching and perfect for OneSpark.
Kids passing through the Jacksonville Public Library where Ol’ Fence is on exhibit, are taking pictures with him in droves. Schroer has even opened up the back side of Ol’ Fence to show passerbys how the animatronics works.
He also has a work in progress on display, a time machine of sorts.
Schroer’s enthusiasm for the OneSpark event is infectious and it echoes what many Jacksonville residents have expressed about the inaugural festival since we’ve been on the ground here on Wednesday. Schroer has been reminding people to sign up and vote. He doesn’t care if he wins or not but he wants to see as many people as possible vote for something, to show how much of the community supports the event.
TJ Schallot, an entrepreneur and startup founder from Charleston South Carolina wants you to grab hold of your Bucket List like a bull and take it down. Conquer your bucket list with Bucquistador, that’s the motto at her newly launched startup.
Leading up to the launch of the socially integrated startup that allows people to take things off of their bucket list, Schallot has been hard at work promoting her startup. She was a presenter in the Startup Village at Everywhereelse.co 2013 and now she’s presenting as a creator at OneSpark the World’s Crowdfunding Festival in Jacksonville Florida.
So there are a lot of “bucket list” startups out there, what makes this one different? Schallot told us in an interview, it’s all about conquering your list and involving your socially connected friends. This idea is the foundation for how Schallot even came up with Bucquistador.
Schallot said her friends grew jealous of the fact that she was always doing things on their bucket list. She wanted a way to share with her friends the exciting things that she was doing without spamming them with email or useless Facebook updates. “I tried Facebook but my important posts were getting drowned out by pictures of cats” she told us. Of course we all know that pain.
Now Schallot’s bucket list items are available on Bucquistador for her friends to see and collaborate on. For example if you want to fly in a helicopter through the Grand Canyon on your bucket list, a friend of yours may be going to the Grand Canyon and want to do the same thing, why not knock it out together.
Schallot and her father are manning their creator booth in the SunTrust building in downtown Jacksonville. They’ve brought along a sumo wrestler suit, moonshine, and other items that may be on people’s bucket list. “Who doesn’t want to sumo wrestle in a sumo wrestler suit” Schallot said, now if that’s on your list you can do it right at the Bucquistador booth.
Check out our interview video below and for more info visit bucquistador.com.
In the words of the infamous Billy Mays, but wait there’s more OneSpark coverage here, a lot of it!
We ran into Amanda from Burro Bags, who’s OneSpark project was set up at the Jacksonville Landing plaza. Burro Bags has been in business manufacturing bicycle accessories and messenger bags for the past five years.
Now though, they’ve introduced a new line called Impakt. With this line they are taking used promotional items and upcycling them into a variety of products. You’ll find handbags, messenger bags, and other accessories in their new line.
They showed off the creations they made using the flag pole signs for the recent Jacksonvilel Jazz festival. The banners are made of high quality, durable, vinyl and PVC. Typically after an event these things get tossed aside, or if they’re lucky, upcycled into things like drop cloths for painting.
Burro Bags found the value in the materials and the artwork itself and made an entire line out of it.
With all the signage in the downtown area for OneSpark, there is sure to be a nice OneSpark line for Impakt next year.
Although this falls outside the realm of startups, Burro Bags is crowdfunding here at OneSpark the inperson crowdfunding festival and it’s a great example of the variety you’ll find amongst the 464 official creators.
Who’s ever gone to the bathroom at a public place only to sit down and find there’s no toilet paper in the toilet paper dispenser? Or you go through a beautiful looking store or a great restaurant and find paper towels all over the floor and a trashcan that looks like it hasn’t been dumped in days?
Well if you said yes, you’re not alone. These problems happen to millions of people every week at a variety of restrooms across the country. Going into a dirty, filthy or not well stocked bathroom affects businesses in ways you wouldn’t believe. One survey said that 94% of respondents said that a non well kept bathroom would make them leave an establishment.
Some believe that when going to restaurants a dirty restroom is a signal that the kitchen may not be that clean either. While there are people who will speak to a manager or an employee about the cleanliness of the bathroom, others are embarrassed to do so, or sometimes so grossed out they just want to leave.
Well now there’s an app for that. The multi-platform Restroom Alert, is a way for customers to anonymously report to a manager, owner or other employee that their restrooms need some attention.
It’s pretty simple. A business, small, big or gigantic, can sign up for Restroom Alert for $5 per month per room. The establishment will get signs that can easily be affixed to mirrors or walls with a short code to send a text message about the restroom. Does it need toilet paper? Do the sinks need cleaning? Is the trashcan overflowing? Is the toilet stopped up? All of these things and more can be reported anonymously via the text code.
On the business’ side, they get a text message as well saying what needs to be fixed. At that point a timer begins and the platform records how long it takes to go fix the problem.
The system can also alert owners, managers or employees when the restroom hasn’t been cleaned or checked in the allotted time. This wipes out the need for clipboards and paper restroom checklists, which often go unused.
Restroom Alert even supplies analytics detailing the restroom problems, how often they’re stocked and checked and other key factors. A clean restroom is just another way a business owner can provide excellent customer service.
Restroom Alert can be used by small mom and pop shops all the way up to Fortune 500 companies. The owner, or person in charge of such things, can get reports based on their entire network of restrooms. This way they can deal with employees that don’t give a crap about the way the restroom looks (you see what I did there).
While there are plenty of apps that can find you a restroom on the road, this seems to be the first startup to modernize the restroom checklist.
We got a chance to check out Restroom Alert one of the 464 projects found at OneSpark in Jacksonville.
Check out our video interview with Rod Dornsife one of the co-founders of Restroom Alert below.
Angel Ayala Torres pitches Aurora At OneSpark (photo NMI 2013)
Aurora is a new Jacksonville Florida based startup that is looking to connect two mobile experiences in one cool functioning app. By using the Aurora app, people will be able to rediscover a city through that cities local artists. This app combines location discovery with artist discovery in a way that actually makes sense.
Creator Angel Ayala Torres took to the Hemming Plaza Pitch Deck stage on Wednesday afternoon to pitch Aurora to an enthusiastic audience.
I actually heard the pitch about an hour earlier in the day at the OneSpark food village when I bumped into Torres and at that time I didn’t totally understand the concept. Now, after watching him pitch and downloading the app, it makes a lot of sense. It’s perfect for local people and local artists.
As he says in the video, take downtown Jacksonville for instance. When you open up Aurora downtown it will immediately start streaming a local downtown Jacksonville artist. If you hear a slow song and you’re briskly walking or jogging and “shake” your iPhone it will change the song and match it to your “mood” they call this “mood swings”.
Now if you venture to the beach area of Jacksonville or even New York City, you’ll get artists that are local to those areas. The Aurora team calls those “Echoes”. In New York you’ll hear New York echoes and in Jacksonville you’ll hear Jacksonville artists.
Aurora is working on a market place where users can purchase the songs to keep on their phone. This way you could listen to the artists wherever you go.
Local Jacksonville artists are jumping at the chance to have their music in the Aurora platform. Really this is a great idea for local music discovery. Just think of the music you would get in a city like Memphis, Nashville, New Orleans or Seattle. Every city has it’s own unique music scene and through Aurora you can easily discover it.
Comments Off on Houston Startup: Mrked Buy A Cell Phone Case, Teach A Girl To Read0LikeLike 3,224
I technically got out of the cell phone accessories writing business last year when we sold Thedroidguy, however in Austin at SXSW we met Akil Momin the founder of Mrked.
Mrked offers 5 stylish and protective collections of iPhone cases; Crayon Box, Double Dutch, Honor Roll, Classroom and Jungle Gym. Their protective cases have an element of style that you don’t find in run of the mill cases.
What makes Mrked worthy of the pages at nibletz.com the voice of startups everywhere else, is the social spin they put on their company.
The young Houston based startup set out when they built their accessory company to do something social with it. That’s why they partnered with Room To Read an organization that provides education to girls in Asian and African countries.
“We believe in investing in the future, this is why we are supporting the works of Room to Read to help provide access to quality education to girls in Asian and African countries. Education empowers and enlightens people of all genders, and this brings about positive changes in many areas. Statistics show that educated parents raise educated children and that mothers are especially influential in this process. Educated women are able to live productive and enjoyable lives and raise families that do the same. This means that providing girls with proper education is the single most vital tool in eradicating inequality and poverty in the short and long term.” Momin says on the company’s website.
All three founders of Mrked have parents that migrated from South Asia to provide their sons with a better education. Mrked is their way of giving back.
Comments Off on Austin Startup Burpy Is The Latest In The Grocery Delivery Phenomena [video][sxsw]0LikeLike 6,261
We got a chance to catch up with Aseem Ali, one of the cofounders of Austin startup Burpy.
The Burpy platform allows you to order groceries, beverages, snacks/candy, beer, health and beauty needs, cigarettes, household essentials and more. Essentially, anything that can be purchased at WalMart can be delivered via Burpy.
“Our vision was inspired in the kitchen of a friend’s house on August 30, 2012. We were all gathered for a surprise birthday party and were busy baking a cake for the special occasion. Once we pulled the freshly baked cake out from the oven, we realized we didn’t have any candles! With decorations left to arrange and more guests arriving every second, there was no time for anyone to run out and get candles. This left us with a bit of a problem.
That is when the idea for Burpy came to life.
We created Burpy with the goal of uniting traditional “brick & mortar” stores with a 1-hour delivery platform to make shopping a breeze. Burpy’s unique service provides instant delivery of thousands of products whenever and wherever you want! Simply choose products from our easy to use website or mobile app, and we’ll deliver them to your location in a “burp.” If you use it in your home and it fits in a grocery bag, chances are we have it. Plus, our inventory is constantly growing so we’re always looking out for you.” their website says.
At the moment they are in a public beta in their home city of Austin Texas but Ali tells us in the interview video below that they plan on expanding to other big metro areas in Texas as quickly as possible.
This may be the way to go in terms of order and deliver startups. A few weeks back Zaarly shuddered their original “reverse Craigslist idea”, paving the way for Burpy and other similar services to succeed.
Now of course we asked Ali why the name “Burpy” and he explains the answer in the video. All of the founders are students at UT Austin.
Comments Off on I Know We Want Venture Capital But What Is It?0LikeLike 3,023
You may be shocked at the amount of startup founders and entrepreneurs that are too afraid to ask the question in the headline, “I know we want venture capital, but what is it”.
Well almost three years ago Silicon Valley Bank did a round table discussion led by Michael Hanewich, the East Coast Head Of Life Sciences/Venture Capital for Silicon Valley Bank.
The panelists were:
Bryan Roberts, Ph.D. — Partner with Venrock, a leading venture capital firm
Judith Elsea — Co-Founder and Managing Director of Weathergage Capital, a fund-of-funds and limited partner in venture capital investing
John Mendlein, Ph.D. — Chairman of Fate Therapeutics, an emerging company backed by venture funding.
In a six part video series they explain exactly what venture capital is, where it comes from, how it gets to entrepreneurs and how an entrepreneur can benefit, not only from the funding but from a long term commitment as well.
Roberts explains the venture capital process early on. Venture capital firms raise funds every 3 or 4 years from limited partners. Limited partners can come in a variety of forms. Wealthy families, foundation partners, insurance companies, funds of funds and other can be partners in VC firms. Now keep in mind we’re talking about Venture Capital here, not an “angel” round which is something totally different.
Partners in a venture capital firm have a “very long horizon” on dollars. They want to make money,but are fine, and perhaps better off, doing it over a long period of time.
Now, granted, this video series was produced three years ago before super exits like Instagram. However, Instagram is the exception, not the rule.
The purpose of the VC dollars is to get a company’s product developed and to market, and eventually to liquidity. Venture capitalists will then make money on their initial investment commonly through the company going public or a merger or acquisition of some sort. In rare instances the venture capitalists can make their money back through the company generating revenue.
Comments Off on California Startup Communly Is Building Communities Of Like Minded People [video]0LikeLike 2,909
Alaxic Smith and Neil Parikh met each other a little over two years ago when they embarked on their first startup remotely. At the time Alaxic (Alex) was only 15 and Neil was 18. They had started a social network of sorts and built up that community to over 15,000. They knew they were onto something.
The problem was that Neil was based in San Francisco and Alaxic was based in Texas. Alaxic had this little thing called school that made it impossible for him to uproot himself and move to the valley to continue building that startup.
Well two years later, and Alaxic made a brave move. He left high school to focus on he and Neil’s latest startup Communly.
So what is Communly? Alaxic tells us: “Communly is all about communities. Communities are essentially groups of people who have a shared interests. Communities act as a blank canvas for people to create relevant content for the community. On the flip side of things, community managers can feature content that they find to represent the community as well. We believe that we’re providing users with tools that allow them to define the social web they want to see and we also provide a more relevant experience for users.”
Neil told us in an interview it’s about putting like minds together. They seem to be picking up a lot of traction around musicians and artists that are still building loyal followings. They also have communities about hiking, outdoors, art, and even startups.
They aren’t in an accelerator class, nor are they incubating anywhere accept Neil’s apartment at the moment but they are attacking communly with the vigor found in most thriving startups.
Check out our quick video interview with Neil as he tells us all about Communly. For more info visit communly.com
Kyle
Knowledge and learning are big markets in the startup space. One Forte, is a Jacksonville based startup, that’s a market place for knowledge. OneForte
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