Memphis startup Archives - Page 5 of 5

Interview With Memphis Startup Stiqrd’s Founder Aaron Pranther On Expansion

One thing we all know for sure is that loyalty and rewwards startups are a flourishing space. A lot of the better ideas for loyalty and rewards are starting in small markets. Stiqrd is one of those startups.

The great thing about Stiqrd though is that when we first talked with Aaron Pranther, CEO and co-founder of the company they were already talking about taking their concept and scaling it as quickly, as possible but also honing in on what makes them special as well.

So what makes Stiqrd special? For starters? Pranther has a background in both tech and the restaurant business. He knows the real pain from a restauranteurs perspective as well as from the perspective of someone who likes to eat out. Pranther knows all too well what it’s like to try and keep tabs on multiple reward “punch cards”.

Most people have had the experience of thinking you were at the last punch tab of one card to find out you either forgot the card at home or you were in the wrong establishment.

Stiqrd has made loyalty and rewards easy by having a qr code based system and an app to track your purchases and rewards. A very real problem that many in the “loyalty reward app” business are experiencing is that soon instead of having too many key-tags or punch cards you’re going to have too many apps. Pranther is one of the first founders of a loyalty/rewards startup to acknowledge that.

What’s going to make a loyalty and rewards startup successful is going to be their ability to scale in both users and customers and for that Pranther has introduced the 15 minute loyalty program. Through rigorous testing he has found that the Stiqrd program can be implemented in most businesses in under 15 minutes complete with working dashboard.

But Stiqrd is more than a do it yourself loyalty program. He has real people available to speak anytime of the day to business’ that want to set up the loyalty program.

Pranther plans on implementing the system across the country at a few select retail partners however any business owner can sign up, and it truly is that easy.

We got a chance to interview Pranther about Stiqrd and the 15 minute loyalty program. Check out the interview below:

Video Interview With Memphis Startup Paytopia Making Payments Safer & Easier

There are a lot of payment startups out there today. There are consolidated payment solutions and mobile payment solutions coming out of the woodwork. None of them though are focused on convenience and safety, the way that Memphis startup Paytopia is.

We originally met Mike Hoffmeyer CEO and founder of Paytopia a few weeks back at 48 Hour Launch in Memphis. Hoffmeyer, like many others in Memphis isn’t just a local founder and CEO but he regularly gives back to the local startup community by mentoring, helping with pitches and pitching in at events like 48 Hour Launch. In fact when we met with him at our office hours in Memphis we were talking about the the startups he is helping at ZeroTo510 a medical device and biotech incubator in Memphis.

Hoffmeyer, a graduate of the most recent class at Seed Hatchery, loves helping other startups and of course working on Paytopia.

Hoffmeyer spent most of his career in the payment business. He worked with credit card processing and ACH processing (direct debit and checking account payments). Over the years he figured there had to be a better way then filling out these long, sometimes un-secure forms with all of your important information. Hoffmeyer set out to develop a system that was both easier and faster. That system is Paytopia.

In a nutshell Paytopia works like this.

If you buy something at an online merchant that uses the Paytopia system you will only need your email address and Paytopia pin. From there the merchant will ping your bank via the Paytopia system. Paytopia will send you a message with an authentication code for that transaction either in-app or SMS. You’ll then enter the authentication code into the transaction and voila, paid via your bank account.

Paytopia effectively takes a big bite out of payment fraud in the online environment by having a two step authentication system. The only way that a Paytopia customer could be defrauded was if the person committing the fraud had both the customers Paytopia pin and the authentication code delivered by app or SMS message. If someone tries to make a fraudulent Paytopia purchase the worst that can happen is the customer will get a bunch of text messages with authentication codes. Without that code, the fraudster can’t finish the transaction.

Check out more about this great new way to pay in the video below:

Linkage:

Find out more about Paytopia here at Paytopia.com

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Memphis Startup: Yaddoog Final Pitch At 48 Hour Launch

Yaddoog, Good Day spelled backwards, was one of the best startups at 48 Hour Launch this weekend in Memphis. It was a great event overall with a lot of Memphis’ startup community supporting the entrepreneurs and their ideas all weekend long.

For first time startup founder Harold Strong, it was a weekend to get the idea living in his head out into the open and developed. According to the support team at Emerge Memphis Strong had been working on his pitch for days prior to Friday’s first pitches and the hard work then and over the weekend has paid off.

Problem: The answer to the question “How Was Your Day” is usually bull sh*t. 99% of people answer “fine”

Solution: Yaddoog wants to turn the question on it’s head. They do this with a new photosharing app. I said repeatedly all weekend long to people who asked for my feedback on the event, that it has been a longtime since I heard a good pitch for a photo sharing app, until Friday.

Yaddoog lets the user take a series of up to 24 photos (representative of hours in the day) and then publishes them all onto the Yaddoog website at the set time at the end of the day. The user can also assign two emotions to each picture like, happy, sad, pissed, etc. As Strong said in his presentation and in talks with us throughout the weekend, 24 photos tells a story.

After the event I was talking with David Traxler co-founder of Memphis startup Friendsignia and Eric Matthews CEO and Co-President of Launch YourCity and we all agreed that in addition to telling great stories of someones day Yaddoog would be great for special days like, a baby’s first day, or leading up to a kids first day at school. Weddings was another time that Yaddoog would be awesome.

Showing the roulette wheel of emotions a bride has leading up to the big moment would make a great story for Yaddoog.

Of course it’s not all about happy bappy days either. We’ve all had a college buddy who has had their picture taken and posted to Facebook after a night of drinking, pictures get progressively worse as the night ensues, with the final picture typically being a face full of Sharpie marker. Traxler said, wouldn’t it be great to see that guys day starting with his bowl of cornflakes the previous morning.

Indeed it would.

Traxler’s startup Friendsignia just graduated from the most recent SeedHatchery class last month and was paying his experience forward by mentoring Strong and the other startups all weekend long.

Strong admitted that they have a lot of work to do to get the app to market but he’s going to do it or die trying. Check out his final pitch from Sunday here:

Linkage

Checkout Yaddoog here on Facebook

Here’s more coverage from 48 Hour Launch

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Memphis Startup: HappyPotty Final Pitch At 48 Hour Launch

Lot’s of people came out Sunday night to the final pitch event for LaunchMemphis, SeedHathery and LaunchYourCity’s 48 hour launch event. Graduates of SeedHatchery’s two previous classes were in attendance all weekend long to mentor and support their fellow startups. Also, previous participants in the last 5 48 Hour Launch events were in attendance as well.

Hometown startup hero Sarah Lacy of PandoDaily was absent from the event, despite the fact that she vowed to cover startups everywhere in her inaugural post at the relatively new startup focused Silicon Valley website. Oh Well we’ve got a lot of coverage here from the great event.

HappyPotty was another one of the unique “finalists” selected to develop over the weekend long event.

Problem: Finding a clean bathroom on a road trip

Solution: HappyPotty hopes to be the mobile app of choice to find clean “Happy” bathrooms while traveling by car.

There are a couple of similar sites out there. The biggest one was developed in conjunction with toilet paper giant Charmin, however it has it’s flaws.

HappyPotty ran through some statistics including the fact that there are over half a million potty breaks during road travel per year. That number actually seems a little low.

The app is simple, go to a bathroom and rate it “Happy” or “Crappy” the interface shows two toilet flushers, one colored green, and the other red.

They hope to add more functionality like details on the bathroom from cleanliness, to changing tables, seat covers and more.

For monetization they are looking at traditional mobile app in app ads and geo-located advertising with couponing.

The biggest challenge with an app like this is they have to build enormous, nationwide scale fast. The other challenge is sourcing bathrooms. Surely there are a lot of location based api’s however none that will tell you whether they have a multi-person bathroom or a one person bathroom or if you’ll have to purchase something to even use the bathroom.

They Happy Potty team was able to track down some gas station and rest stop data to start the build out of the app, alongside FourSquare API’s. Check out the pitch video below:

Linkage

Check out Happy Potty here at happypottyapp.com

Here’s more of our 48 Hour Launch coverage

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Memphis Startup: ScrewPulp Final Pitch 48 Hour Launch

ScrewPulp is an idea that hasn’t been tackled in quite this way before. It’s a self publishing website that allows authors to publish their books to the site. So what’s so unique about that?

Problem: More and more authors are turning to self publishing. Just look at 50 Shades of Gray for instance. According to the startups data there were over 200,000 self published books out of over 1.5 million books published with ISBN numbers.

Self published authors have a hard time garnering social network interest, ratings and reviews which can be the lifeline for a self published book.

Solution: ScrewPulp offers an innovative new platform for self publishers that builds the social network interest piece and the ratings and reviews piece as well. After a book is downloaded 100 times they will switch to $.99 for the next 1,000 copies. After that they’ll increase to $1.99 and so on.

The monetization plan is to take 25% of the sales from books that are selling on the site.

Screw Pulp will giveaway the authors first 100 copies in exchange for a social media share and a rating/review. Readers who love reading new books will be able to download one free book at a time. Once they share it across social media and provide a star rating and or review, they’ll be allowed to download their next free book.

As far as rights are concerned, Billings would like to require authors to hold their work on ScrewPulp for a year regardless of whether or not that author gets their book picked up from another publisher.

Founder Richard Billings said in the Q&A that ScrewPulp will start with novel sized books first and then expand to series and even short stories. Billings also said he would like to use the format for indie artists as well and said we could expect a ScrewTapes out at some point as well.

Check out their Sunday pitch video below:

Linkage:

Check out ScrewPulp here at their website

Here’s more of Nibletz’ coverage of 48 Hour Launch in Memphis

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Memphis Startup: LostPetCast Final Pitch at 48 Hour Launch

Sunday night in Memphis brought the final pitches for the four startups that were selected to develop at the weekend long event. LostPetCast was the first startup to the plate.

Idea: A centralized place to report lost pets and found pets

Problem: Losing or finding a pet can take hours of work to get the message out and spread the word. You need to contact local vets, animal shelters, humane societies, put up flyers, and search Craigslist ads.

Solution: LostPetCast allows users to quickly enter information for a lost or found pet. Through LostPetCast the information is automatically shared across multiple channels. It also becomes the one spot to see if your pet has been found by others.

LostPetCast is also offering premium features like an email/fax blast to local vet clinics, adoption services, shelters etc.

The idea is great. There are a couple of competitors in the space however if LostPetCast builds scale quickly they could have an advantage. They want to have several localized sites under the LostPetCast umbrella.

When I wrote about them on Friday I was concerned about the name. In the original pitch the founder said that they were the “amber alert for pets” however they researched that and there is already an amber alert for pets. Now they’re faced with a domain name challenge.

You can find them online at lostpetca.st while it’s a clever name it’s the same challenge that know.es faces it doesn’t roll off the tongue and when spread by word of mouth it will be hard to explain and then remember.

One way to get over that challenge is to have damn good SEO and get to the top of the Google results page for lost pets. That may be a new challenge in itself.

The concept is great. We can’t wait to see the execution. Check out their final pitch video below:

Linkage:

Check out LostPetCast here at their website

See more of our 48 Hour Launch Coverage Here

Nibletz is the voice of startups “everywhere else” check out these stories from “everywhere else”

Interview With Memphis Startup Work For Pie, Seed Hatchery’s First Funded Startup

Memphis has got a great startup culture, ecosystem and community. Most of that happens at Emerge Memphis in downtown Memphis Tennessee. Emerge Memphis is a co-working space, home to SeedHatchery, LaunchMemphis and LaunchYourCity. It’s also home to Work For Pie.

Work For Pie is an online community for developers, with a focus on open-source developers. It’s a lot more than a LinkedIn for developers and the only thing like it in existence right now.

The company was founded in 2011 when Cliff McKinney met Brad Montgomery at a Launch 48 event at Emerge Memphis. The two tweaked a different idea into what Work For Pie has turned into today.

Work For Pie’s unique community allows developers to start a free profile that includes a portfolio of their development work. There is also a rating system involved to show the achievements of the developers in the community. The plan as they continue, is to create a site for businesses as well and then link the two so that businesses have a talent pool of top rated developers to choose from for their project.

They’ll be able to do that now that they’ve secured a a $300,000 round in funding. Work For Pie went through the first incubator class at SeedHatchery last year and they are the first startup to get any kind of substantial outside funding round. The two co-founders are excited about working on Work For Pie full-time.

As part of that great startup culture and eco-system in Memphis, they were onhand at 48 Hour Launch this year to help mentor the four startups that are building out in the weekend event. Friendsignia, Paytopia and a host of other EmergeMemphis companies and SeedHatchery graduates also spent the weekend at 48 Hour Launch paying their experience forward.

Check out our interview with both Cliff and Brad about Work For Pie and the startup culture in Memphis:

Memphis Startup Interview With Friendsignia Not Just Another Social Dashboard

So this is how Friendsignia went down. I got a tweet from Cole Hawkins, co-founder of Friendsignia, the other night. He pointed me to a blog entry written as a parody of Lord of the Rings. Truth be told at 36, I read the Hobbit as a kid but never saw Lord of The Rings, or read the book. If you want to test my geekyness, I’ve never seen or read a Harry Potter book, Twilight or the Hunger Games, and don’t get me started about Doctor Who.

So I knew the blog entry was good, I just didn’t get it. Were they taking on Facebook. Who in their right mind would pitch me taking on Facebook. No. So I forwarded the link to the blog post to one of my other editors and asked her to explain it to me. She said “it’s a social dashboard”. I mean that’s a little better than challenging Facebook but I’ve tried a good 40 to 50 social dashboards to date.

Once I was told that Friendsignia was a social dashboard. I took another look at it, and basically what it does is it narrows down your social feeds to the 150 most relevant people to you. This is based on Dunbar’s number which says that scientifically you can’t keep up with more than 150 relationships. Truth be told I have a hard time remember 25 but ok.

The next piece is that it narrows down your most relevant social contacts, which for a Power User (like myself with 100,000+ Twitter followers, is truly relevant).

Friendsignia is a recent graduate of Memphis’ Seed Hatchery incubator program and they are currently building out of Beta. They are also starting to raise funds. After spending time with the founders they’ve got a great idea for a product.

I tried it late last night and I’m working with the team so that they can handle power users with six figure followings. I will tell you on my personal Facebook account with nearly 1000 friends, it did awesome!

Check out the founder video interview below.

Check out more of our 48 Hour Launch coverage here

The 4 Memphis Startups Selected To Develop At 48 Hour Launch

LaunchMemphis, SeedHatchery and LaunchYourCity had over 20 startups pitch on Friday evening to try and secure a spot for development over the weekend at 48 hour launch. The field was great. There were all kinds of different pitches as you can see here at nibletz.com. Here are the four that were chosen by popular vote amongst their peers to develop.

ScrewPulp

ScrewPulp (as in Pulp Fiction, literature etc). Founder Richard Billings has an innovative new spin on the publishing and selling of e-books. Traditional models are flawed because the pricing is so spread out.

Screw Pulp’s distribution works like this. The first 100 copies of an e-book are distributed free in exchange for two things. Those two things are a social media mention across Twitter or Facebook and a star rating review. In other words, threw ScrewPulp an avid reader could read as many books as they want for free, as long as they were one of the first 100 people to download it, share it on social mean and then they give it a rating and review.

Now you can’t get another free book until both the share and the rating/review are completed. Why is this important? Because it drives feedback for the book and sharing of the book. You’re not obligated to give it a good review, just a review.

Now the next batch of books are $.99 then $1.99 and so on. Hear Billings describe it in the video below.

Yaddoog (Good Day Backwards)

I had to think to myself for a while, when was the last time a good photo sharing app was pitched. It’s been quite a while. However Friday night in Memphis a brand new idea for a photo sharing app was pitched and it’s great.

Founder Harold Strong started his pitch out by asking “How was your day” and pointing out that just about everyone in the world says “Fine”, which of course is a BS answer.

Strongs app idea has you take 24 pictures on your smartphone throughout your day. Then at the end of the day at a set time, the app uploads all 24 pictures to the Yaddoog site. Why not one by one, why 24? Because 24 pictures tells a story.

Watch the pitch below… It’s good…

Happy Potty

I know one entrepreneur who had a very similar idea called soflush.it two years ago but never developed it. No problem because Douglas Starnes and Daniel Pritchett have Happy Potty down pat.

Imagine you’re on a car trip and you have to go to the bathroom. When you pull over at the local BP station the restroom is a disaster and hasn’t been cleaned in days. Now imagine if you had an app with bathroom ratings on cleanliness, ease of use, hospitality etc.

Now, imagine that the app followed your GPS location and mapped out for you bathrooms that were open on your route, and clean. You would use that, you know you would.

I can’t wait to see the product they have at the end of the weekend. See the pitch below.

LostAPet

The idea here is great. The pitch was heartfelt, I think the name sucks but that’s because the pitch was so good.

James told a great story about finding a lost dog, spending hours researching what to do with a found dog and then distributing over 100 flyers. This process took hours.

During the presentation, James said “There’s no amber alert for pets”. That’s why I think the LostAPet name sucks so bad.. the name was right there in the pitch, something like “PetAlert””Doggie Alert”BowWowAlert” but nevertheless if 48 Hour Launch was a nationwide popular vote contest, this idea would be hard to beat. Everyone has a soft spot for pets and a nationwide bulletin board site to find and post lost dogs is something long needed.

It’s one of those ideas where you think “Why didn’t I think of that?”, because James did! Watch the video below, and maybe someone from the team will agree that the name could be better:

See more of our 48 Hour Launch coverage here

Memphis Startup Pitch: Agile Assist, Virtual Support System VIDEO

A new startup that promises to be a virtual support system for those with cognitive disabilities was pitched at the 48 hour launch event in Memphis Friday evening. Husband and wife founders, Rhonda and Robert, built this startup based on the experiences with their son who has a cognitive disability.

Cognitive disabilities include autism,brain injuries and even alzheimers. The common factor behind most people with cognitive disabilities is the need for constant support and supervision. While loved ones are always tasked with this duty, and they do it out of love, it certainly takes a toll on the whole family.

In the two minute pitch it was hard to get a grasp on the entire concept. Rhonda and Robert spent a lot of time on some really interesting background information. We did hear that the idea was a virtual internet based support system, utilizing the cloud and video to help with the 24 hour care.

Rhonda says that they’ve already used their system with their son and it’s worked, and their son is happier. Although it wasn’t chosen as one of the ideas to develop over the 48 hour weekend event, we’re hopeful that they will move forward

Check out more of our 48 Hour Launch coverage here

Memphis Startup: Bryant Williams Pitches Crowdfunding Based On Social Clout

Over 20 ideas for startups were pitched Friday evening at 48 Hour Launch in Memphis Tennessee. One of the great ideas was pitched by Memphis entrepreneur Bryant Williams.

Williams wants to take advantage of the JOBS Act and crowdfunding legislation slated to take effect next month. Williams has a rather unique approach though.

What he is hoping to do is have a startup, entrepreneur or whoever is looking for crowdfunding for their project to get it based on the merits of their social graph. Basically, someone looking to get crowdfunded via Williams’ new startup would have to have their Twitter and Facebook influence factored in.

While Indiegogo and Kickstarter both allow for comments on their pages, it’s just another social network to comment on. Why bother utilizing a new comment space when you’re already posting on Twitter and Facebook anyway.

First things first though, is we have to hear the rules on the JOBS act. The SEC has until July 4th to establish those guidelines. Check out Williams pitch below:

Linkage:

See More of our 48 hour launch coverage here

Nibletz is the voice of startups “everywhere else” here are more stories from “everywhere else”

Memphis Startup: Unique Love First To Pitch At 48 Hour Launch

Tonight kicks off 48 hour launch in Memphis Tennessee. Nibletz is on location covering this 48 hour event where 4 startup companies are going to launch. The event is a collaborative effort of Launch Memphis, Startup Hatchery and LaunchYour City and takes place at the Emerge Memphis campus in beautiful downtown Memphis.

Over 20 ideas were pitched during the two minute pitch sessions tonight. Of those pitches four have been selected to be built out over a weekend of fun and camaraderie for Memphis’ thriving startup scene.

The first two minute pitch was for a unique dating site called “Unique Love”. The site focuses on people who are looking to connect that have common unique loves, obsessions or phobias. Get your mind out of the gutter this is not about fetishes, and more about cat lovers, dog lovers, people who love the stars, or antiques, places to find die hard unique interests.

It’s also a please where two people can connect with common phobias. It may be great to hook up with someone who has the same fear of the dark, spiders, or crowds. You may end up finding someone who understands your unique situation. That’s what Unique Love is all about.

Check out founder Stark Miller, pitching in the video below:

Memphis Startup KnoCo Reviving Edutainment

A new EdTech startup in Memphis Tennessee is hoping to revive the stigma, fun, and “accidental learning” that came from software titles back in the day like “Where In The World Is Carmen San Diego”.

The company, called KnoCo is based in Memphis Tennessee. CEO and lead developer Ken Gibbs met co-founder Elliott Boyette while the two were working for a company that develops iOS games. They decided go out on their own and fill a void in The edutainment space. They added James Youngblood as composer, game designer and product manager.

Gibbs admits that thre are a lot of educational games out there but most of them are flash card type games. In those games kids see one card, identify something and then are rewarded with the next card.

More after the break