DiscoveringStartups -Tech Startup Reviews

We help retailers and food service companies easily create and communicate their employee work schedules. We give employee the ability to post availabilities and vacations on our site as well as view and swap shifts. Managers can easily take all of this information, and create schedules quicker then ever. Our users have found up to an 80% reduction in scheduling time and an overall improvement in employee moral.

Unlike other ‘business softwares’ we really focus on simplicity and using the best in modern web-design to help make SkedX really simple to use.

We focus on a specific market that is not a focus of the large scheduling companies and is to big for the all the small scheduling companies. We basically want to give our users most of the features and integrations expected in a large ERP system, but for a lot cheaper..

It is a SaaS company. Our prices start at about $3/user per month.

No thoughts at the moment. Very interesting!

Please visit their website to learn more: http://www.skedx.com

Nix Hydra Games develops witty and disruptive online and mobile games that fill gaps in particular market segments. Our first product is called The Wishing World, and it is an online social game for teen girls that offers them a very different experience from other online games currently available.

The Wishing World has an unique voice and distinctive art style that will appeal to our target demographic in a way that other social games currently don’t, as well as unique personality based group play mechanics.

There’s a huge gap in the market for appropriate online gaming content for teen girls and we believe The Wishing World will fill that gap. There are 35 million teens in the US controlling an estimated $208 billion in largely disposable income. Nearly one out of three view the internet as their primary source of entertainment.

Free to play with virtual goods, mobile apps, premium subscription, advertising and sponsorships, merchandising.

No thoughts at the moment. Very interesting!

Please visit their website to learn more: http://www.nixhydragames.com

Climber.com is recruiter networking site for jobseekers. We target 50k + salary, Bachelor degree or experience equivalent candidates that are domestic in the United States. Jobseekers who become part of Climber’s network are marketed to recruiters and hiring managers, who are actively looking to source qualified candidates.

Unlike most career sites on the web, Climber is not just a job board with postings. Our goal is to connect our jobseekers with actual human beings who are looking to hire. We do this not only through our internal recruiter network, but also create an SEO version of our jobseekers profiles that we index on major search engines such as Google and Yahoo. This then allows our jobseekers to be found by recruiters and hiring managers outside of Climber. In addition to actively marketing our jobseekers, we also provide them with multiple career tools such as a Recruiter Directory, Custom Resume Center and provide partnerships with job boards so they can search multiple sites all in one place.

Climber has seen significant growth this year and tripled it’s membership in the first quarter of 2010 alone. The Recruiter Directory, which allows jobseekers to search for the hiring executive at their favorite companies or industries and send them their resume directly thus avoiding the Applicant Tracking System, was launched this year and we have already received success stories of users being hired from it. We are also currently in development of creating and launching a career management section for users to keep track of their job search efforts for the long and short term.

We are currently profitable and charge a month-to-month fee to our jobseekers as well as have different price packages for the recruiters who use our service to source qualified candidates.

No thoughts at the moment. Very interesting!

Please visit their website to learn more: http://www.climber.com

SpankinCheap is a massive online marketplace that Let’s users Buy Event Tickets & Book travel online. SpankinCheap provides a huge selection of quality tickets for events, and also give the fans the option of booking Flights, Hotels, and Car Rentals direct from our site. We have dedicated professionals on our staff working hard to make sure that customers have the most up-to-date information about Event Tickets & Travel Bookings. Customers will have access to one of the largest Event Tickets inventory & Travel Booking engines on the web. In addition to providing real time access to inventory, We guarantee customers can shop safely

Spankin Cheap is your one-stop, secure online shop for all your ticketing needs, from concerts to different sporting leagues. Spankin Cheap also offers flight, hotel and car rental bookings.

SpankinCheap is a one of a kind company that allows user’s to shop for all of their ticketing needs and also offers flight, hotel and car rental bookings to fans with out having them leave the site

With SpankinCheap already saving consumer’s money promo code’s for discounts will be available for customers to use when they shop online for tickets or book travel there will be decided to

No thoughts at the moment. Very interesting!

Please visit their website to learn more: http://www.spankincheap.com

FindtheBoutiques.com provides a directory of boutiques nationwide for boutique shoppers to discover, explore and shop while also providing a low cost method of advertising for boutique owners to increase boutique awareness and their customer base.

There is no other website that covers boutiques on a national level.

Everyone loves to have unique clothes/decor/etc which is why boutique shopping is so popular, but knowing where to find and shop at boutiques is difficult. FindtheBoutiques.com allows easy access for boutique shoppers and boutique owners to find each other to create lasting shopping relationships and support local small businesses.

Boutique’s basic information will be listed for FREE so boutique shoppers can start their boutique hunting right away. Boutique Owners have several levels of listing options to increase their boutique’s marketing on FindtheBoutiques.com. Some of the options include: store front photo, featured merchandise, store tour video, boutique biography, sales/coupon section and so much more.

No thoughts at the moment. Very interesting!

Please visit their website to learn more: http://www.FindtheBoutiques.com

Merge.fm is an app that exposes fans to the creative experience of their favorite music artists, establishing a new revenue channel for a music industry in need of new business models with the growth of the internet. Check out our website for a demo!

Merge.fm lets music artists dominate their songwriting process. Unlike a blog, twitter account, or facebook page which makes them do extra work on top of making music, merge.fm improves songwriting first. Then as a bonus they can engage fans with almost no extra time commitment. So the kicker is that artists can let fans be there when they are writing great songs simply by giving them access as they work on their music. Our song versioning tech makes this simple and scalable.

With this approach, the growth of the internet is an advantage because we are allowing artists to sell an experience that only gets better with more sharing and at larger scale, giving merge.fm the potential to be a highly scalable point of value for digital music. With half a million serious music artists each with a loyal fan base in the target market, this is at least a $5 billion/year market opportunity.

Unlike most internet music startups, merge.fm does not charge music artists for its services. Fans are the customers and they currently pay to subscribe to their favorite artists on merge.fm. Part of the revenue goes to us for providing the platform, and part goes to the artist for providing the content.

No thoughts at the moment. Very interesting!

Please visit their website to learn more: http://merge.fm

Agent Anything is the eBay of services:

People can post any service (“Mission”) they need accomplished (errands, tasks, research, anything) onto the website. They can then decide the price they are willing to pay, or they can elect to accept offers from Agents.

Students (“Agents”), using their university ID, can run these Missions in their free time and get paid the full amount offered.

- The Customer has full control over how much they pay.
- Only verified college Students can run Missions, so Customers are helping out Students by helping themselves
- Students can get verified in seconds, so they can start running Missions immediately
- Customers only pay AFTER their Mission has been completed to their satisfaction
- The cost of having someone run a Mission is extremely low

How many people do you know that have plenty of time to do all the little things they have to do in a day?

Pretty much everybody has more on their plate than they can handle on a daily basis. This is a huge problem in our society, not just in terms of productivity and efficiency, but also in terms of stress and well-being. Until now, this problem has never really had an adequate, affordable solution.

With Agent Anything though, people can get help with all of their little tasks: walking the dog, picking-up groceries, moving, finding a vacation condo…Anything!

This isn’t some concierge service that charges $40-50 per hour with a minimum of 18 units of 2 hours each and a 24-hour advanced reservation policy. Agent Anything connects you directly with college students, and with college employment levels lower than they’ve been in years, there are sure to be plenty of students who are available right now and would be happy to take $10-15 to run an errand.

Agent Anything charges a fee for successfully connecting Clients with Agents. It’s not much (e.g. $2.50 for a $10 Mission, $3.50 for a $20 Mission), and again, the Client is only charged AFTER the Mission has been confirmed as successfully accomplished.

This would be like ordering-in dinner. Eating all of it. And then only paying for the food if you liked the meal.

No thoughts at the moment. Very interesting!

Please visit their website to learn more: http://www.agentanything.com

We send a curated weekly newsletter of the best startup events in 47 cities and 5 Universities (Stanford, Berkeley, NYU, Princeton, Columbia) around the world

Our newsletter is hand curated by a member of the startup community themselves, we focus on events and short form content, and we tell you what is going on in your localized startup community.

We are reaching a highly influential demographic of mostly geeky dudes who are 25-30, early adopters, and the most socially connected segment of the population. (our audience creates the social technology).

Other publications that reach this audience (INC, Fast Company, Entrepreneur) monetize this audience consistently and well. We can do the same + offer engagement which magazine advertising could never do.

We’re already cash flow positive through sponsorship and partnering with larger tech events.

No thoughts at the moment. Very interesting!

Please visit their website to learn more: http://www.thestartupdigest.com

We provide a platform that brings together investors and start-ups and allows a start-up to get funding for their business by their peers. We facilitate the entire deal and ensure that all securities regulations are complied with.

We are the first company to offer a service like this online.
From the investor point of view we are going to give investors access to private securities that they normally don’t have access to because unless you are an active angel investor you are not getting the opportunity.
From the Busines point of view we are giving a business a new way to raise money. The options used to be fund yourself, get a bank loan, friends/family or venture capital. Now you have an additional way to get funding.

We are also an approved broker/dealer with FINRA/SEC so we can ensure that the start-up is submitting the proper forms to ensure compliance

With banks still being conservative in lending money to start-ups this is a perfect time for this business to launch.

We charge $99 when a business submits a plan, if we think we can help raise capital we charge $250 for additional due diligence. Once finished, approved and on the platform we charge a commission of between 5-10% of the total raised depending on how much we raise. We only charge that fee if we are successful in raise you money.

No thoughts at the moment. Very interesting!

Please visit their website to learn more: http://www.microventures.com

We retail thousands of diamonds and quality jewelry at outstanding prices. Our new website has not launched so please do not get turned off by what’s currently on our site.

Whats the difference between walmart, costco, and target? how do they all succeed? We differ from our competitors by appealing to consumers from different angles, with different designs, and better user experiences.

It could be big because the industry is on a rise and we can gain market share with the rise, and there’s a lack of influential players in the game.

That’s a great question. We plan to keep our company expenses as low as possible. Cheap operating costs, marketing expenses, maintaining a low overhead. We want to build as much as possible in house with no low external costs.

No thoughts at the moment. Very interesting!

Please visit their website to learn more: http://www.RomancingDiamonds.com