Crazy Business Ideas: Chapul The Cricket Bar

Startup Of The Day - PickyDomains.com

http://chapul.com/
Are edible insects the food of the future? One Salt Lake City-based company thinks so. Chapul Inc. has cooked up an energy bar with an eye-popping ingredient -- crickets.

Chapul Bars come in three flavors -- peanut butter, chocolate and Thai -- and sell for $2.99 to $3.59 each. They're made from natural ingredients such as dates, agave nectar, coconut, ginger, lime and dark chocolate. And all contain cricket flour.

 "Most people don't know that crickets are a rich source of edible protein," said Patrick Crowley, 33, an environmentalist and Chapul's founder. And compared to cows and pigs, crickets are also a more environmentally-friendly source of protein, he said.

Cattle and pig farms, for instance, require a huge amount of animal feed and water. But crickets need very little water to live and eat mostly agricultural by-products, like corn husks and broccoli stalks. And crickets have a similar protein content as livestock, with less fat, according to Crowley. "So there's both an economic and environmental benefit to farming insects for protein," he said.

Still, there's no denying the obvious cringe factor. Although insect-based foods aren't unusual in many countries, they're still very much a novelty in America. But American consumers seem to be warming up to the idea, at least as far as Chapul in concerned.

The bars launched late last year and are now in 75 stores, mostly independent health food and sporting goods retailers, in 15 states, said Crowley.

He declined to disclose his revenue, but he did say the start-up is profitable and that sales should top $1 million in the next two years.

 Crowley has a degree in hydrology, which is the study of the Earth's water bodies, and had worked in the area of water management and conservation. Then a 2011 podcast about how insects are nutritious and eco-friendly food sources captured his imagination.

He researched insect farming and learned that insects convert grain and grass into edible protein as much as 10 times more efficiently than cows and pigs. This gave Crowley the idea to create an all-natural snack made with cricket protein. He recruited a chef friend and a business-savvy college buddy to help launch his idea.

It took them eight months to line up a cricket supplier from California, rent a commercial kitchen, perfect recipes and get the necessary approval from the Food and Drug Administration for the energy bars.

"Our product was a first-of-a-kind, so we had to provide lab test results that showed our cricket flour, and the food we were feeding the crickets, were safe for human consumption," he said.

Next, Crowley went to crowdfunding site Kickstarter last June with the goal of raising $10,000 in 18 days, but he raised $16,000 instead.

"We were surprised at how much interest it got. We had donors from 13 countries," said Crowley. The startup used the money to set up a website, buy ingredients in bulk and make the first batch of 2,000 cricket bars, which were sold online and in stores.

As demand picked up, Crowley contracted with a company to make the bars in larger quantities. "We've also moved production to a bigger facility," he said.

[Via - CNNMoney.com]

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Move over, Uber, two Bay Area startups have found a new ways to rent cars out.

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There are few investments less sensible than car ownership. A new purchase loses close to 9 percent of its value the minute it leaves the dealer's lot, according to automotive-information site Edmunds. Further, most cars sit idle the majority of the time.

Two San Francisco-based startups, RelayRides and Getaround, are working to change these inefficiencies--and snag a piece of the nation's $20 billion car-rental market. Similar to Airbnb, both companies facilitate peer-to-peer transactions through which car owners can rent out their vehicles to those who need them by the hour, day or week. Owners set the rental price for their vehicles; both companies say the average rental runs $8 to $12 per hour and lasts 40 hours.

The model offers big savings for customers--generally half of what a local car-rental agency would charge. Plus, the range on offer allows renters to get exactly the vehicle they want, whether it's a pickup truck or minivan for a jaunt to IKEA or a Porsche or Tesla for a night out.

The business model would not have been possible without a new class of insurance created for this purpose. Every individual's car is insured for $1 million against collision and accident coverage. "When we say the service is all-inclusive, that means the vehicle is covered should something go wrong," confirms Andre Haddad, CEO of RelayRides. "Owners like the peace of mind. And as a customer, considering you usually have to pay extra for insurance with a car rental, this is a big deal."

Founded in 2008, RelayRides operates in 1,500 U.S. cities. Getaround, which launched in 2009, has cars in San Francisco, San Diego, Chicago, Austin and Portland, Ore. While their business models are similar, the companies are executing them in subtly different ways. RelayRides is a big believer in the face-to-face meeting between car owner and customer to pick up keys and sign paperwork. That said, the company does offer a mobile access kit for qualified car owners and allows anyone to use General Motors' OnStar system to remotely unlock GM vehicles--pointing to an acknowledgement that many users may not want to be directly involved in the exchange.

The meet-and-greet is also an option with Getaround (minus the paperwork), but that company would rather see owners install "Carkits" that allow renters to unlock the vehicles remotely and access a hidden set of keys through its iPhone app. "We focus on the app," says Sam Zaid, Getaround's co-founder and CEO. "The way we see it, we want to provide a service, and the app is the most efficient way to achieve that."

The nascent car-sharing industry is not without challenges. Cars have long been sold as "a product that is closely associated with who you are," says Arun Sundararajan, a professor at the NYU Stern School of Business, explaining that letting strangers in can uncomfortably infringe on that identity. Perhaps, but RelayRides and Getaround are banking that their financial appeal will help car owners get over it.

[Via - Entrepreneur]

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Lately I get a lot of questions about best SharePoint alternative. Or 'What's the best free SharePoint alternative?'. Answering the second question is very easy, because there's only one truly good free SharePoint alternative, especially since it's better than SharePoint itself in many respects - Bitrix24.

So let's take a closer look at Bitrix24 and other options. Bitrix24 has at least three advantages over SharePoint. First, it's 100% free for small companies (defined as up to 12 users), and if your company is larger it's either $99-$199 a month flat (regardless of how many employees you have) or $2k-$3k for the 'box' version that you host on your servers and own for life. So right here your savings are at least $10k-$20k, so if your mission is to find a free or cheaper alternative - done.

Let's look at features at Bitrix24 vs Sharepoint - it's going to look like Yes/No. Choice of free, cloud or box. Free CRM. Free Project Management. Free SkyDrive (5GB). Social Intranet (not available in Sharepoint without purchase of Yammer). Mobile app. Document management that supports Google Apps. Business process designer. Time Tracking. Work reports. Tasks. Workgroups. Free WebRTC based videoconferencing, Etc.

Obviously, I could keep listing Bitrix24 advantages, but it's like kicking a dead dog - SharePoint is a dying platform - no wonder Microsoft paid $1.2 billion dollars for Yammer last year. So let's look at disadvantages as well. Out of 9000 Bitrix24 partners only around 1500 are in Northern America or Europe  (vs at least 100K SharePoint partners). So finding a local Bitrix24 partner in smaller towns might be a problem. Issue number two - Bitrix24 is currently the fastest growing social intranet for small businesses. Combine that with a smallish partner network and you get the picture - if you call a SharePoint partner, they'll court you, keep calling you back, insist on scheduling a meeting, invite you to a steak dinner, because they really want to get 20K from you. Bitrix24 partner are typically busy - if you want intranet, you'll get it, but don't expect special treatment and don't be surprised if you are asked to wait.

So what about paid SharePoint alternatives? That's when the question gets tricky. If you have up to 350 employees, Bitrix24 is proably still your best alternative in terms of available features, ease of use and security, though other players like LifeRay become viable. In my personal opition, companies that have 150-500 employees get the most out of Bitrix24. But once ou get over one thousand employees, your choice gets wider. SalesForce Chatter is a viable alternative, especially if you use SalesForce CRM. Jive is a decent option for a company with at least ten thousand employees. Tibbr, though feature poor has pricing advantages that neither Jive nor Chatter offer.

Startups That Disrupt - Celly

Startup Of The Day - PickyDomains.com

http://cel.ly/

During the December 2011 Occupy protests in Portland, Ore., someone projected the Batman "bat signal" over the crowds onto a building downtown. Then, one night, the signal was replaced by slogans such as "End the Federal Reserve!" and "The revolution will not be privatized!" Like the protests themselves, the messages didn't originate from any one central source. The only clue was that they came from anonymous protesters who were using a revolutionary new social network called Celly.

Founded in April 2011 in Portland by Greg Passmore and Russell Okamoto, Celly builds mobile social networks of all sizes, both public and private, that can be accessed by any cell phone with SMS and via a web browser, e-mail and the company's iPhone and Android apps. "Group communication unlocks so many possibilities across the socioeconomic and political spectrums," Okamoto says. "We wanted to build the simplest tool that we could, that would have the broadest, deepest impact on the most people."

The service connects individual users into groups, called "cells." Each individual gets a user name, an alias that ensures his or her phone number remains private. Users can connect with one cell or multiple cells. Public cells, like the Occupy Portland channel, are listed on the Celly website, while private cells are hidden and can be joined only by users who know the group's name. Multiple cells can be linked together, or can "listen" to other cells through a concept called hash-linking, in which specific hash-tagged terms cause other cells to be included on a particular communiqué.

Passmore and Okamoto prototyped Celly in 2008 while working day jobs at data-management firm GemStone Systems in Beaverton, Ore., but it wasn't until their employer was sold to VMWare in 2010 that the duo decided to build out their idea.

"The software we built while working at GemStone was for large corporations--especially Wall Street banks--and that wasn't very rewarding," Passmore says. "We are really motivated by using technology in an egalitarian way, unlocking democracy."

As revolutionary as Celly's goals may sound, its user base so far is mainly institutional. Most users have come from public school districts; high-school coaches use the service to stay connected with student athletes, and teachers employ it to elicit participation from shy students. Portland's city government is another big customer. Through cells for volunteer foot patrols, the Gang Violence Task Force and the Portland Police Bureau, many citizens and city workers are using Celly as well.

However, the service truly gained traction as a power for good in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy. Emergency responders and volunteers, lacking access to the internet, needed hyper-local coordination, so nearby Occupy Wall Street veterans who were familiar with Celly used the service to coordinate transportation, logistics, food donations, blankets and clothing among 2,500 users. "It captured everyone who wanted to help," Okamoto says--not unlike the bat signal.

[Via - Entrepreneur.Com]

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From Laos To Los Angeles - GoDaddy Pitches .LA Domains To Businesses In Southern California

We've got dot-com, dot-gov, dot-net and dot-tv, so are we ready for dot-LA? The Lao People's Democratic Republic thinks so.

The small Southeast Asia country uses dot-LA as its country code but has been trying to market it as a brand for more than a decade.

Now the country is part of a partnership that includes Go Daddy, the Scottsdale, Ariz., Internet-domain registrar and Web-hosting company that has launched the first big marketing campaign for dot-LA focused on businesses of all types in the Los Angeles area. And for the privilege of this envied regional identifier, you will pay a tidy $39.99 per year.

In a separate marketing push on Monday, Go Daddy began an online auction of more than 300 dot-LA names -- the bulk of which are specific to the entertainment industry. Bidding started at $100 for names such as Inside.LA. MovieStars.LA, Scripts.LA, Sets.LA and Acting.LA. The auction will run through July 18, and, by Tuesday afternoon, the highest bid was $115 for the name MovieStars.LA.

"Go Daddy is a very strong brand in the domain-name industry, and we just saw an opportunity to take a top-level name and position it properly. There is a lot of context behind the letters LA, and we saw this as the best opportunity to put it before the people and let them make use of it," said Richard Merdinger, Go Daddy vice president of domain name registrations.

The company made the name available on its website late last month without any fanfare -- a soft launch of sorts to gauge interest.

"We're very pleased," Merdinger said of dot-LA's reception. "Since the start of the auction, we've seen a threefold increase in the number of LA domain-name registrations."

Giving a business a Los Angeles-specific cyberspace identity doesn't take long, either. "You can register the name in a matter of minutes, and if you use a website builder, you can be up and running in a couple of hours," said Go Daddy spokesman Nick Fuller.

In addition to media outreach, the marketing campaign includes billboards sprinkled around the Los Angeles area.

Partnering in the campaign are Dot LA Marketing LLC and the registry company CentralNic Group, both located in Woodland Hills.

Ben Crawford, director of Dot LA Marketing, said the companies have been working on the rollout of both campaigns for the past few months.

"We wanted to give dot-LA the launch it really deserves, and it's particularly timely because last week dot-NYC was approved," he said. "Go Daddy is the best-known name in the business."

He added that the Los Angeles market is rife with potential, and there are likely lots of companies that want a particular domain name but discovered the dot-com version had already been registered and priced out of reach.

"Ninety-eight percent of the names not available on dot-com are still available on dot-LA, and that means businesses can get the name they want at the normal retail price," Crawford said. "We've got high hopes for dot-LA. It's the first domain to be launched as a name for a city, so we're really breaking ground. People who live and work in Los Angeles are very proud of their city, and we think they will jump at the opportunity to get a domain name that tells visitors they are a local business."

Andrew Allemann, editor of the website Domain Name Wire, which tracks the industry, said the timing was probably right for Laos to step up what had been an under-the-radar marketing effort.

A few years ago, Tuvalu, a Polynesian island of 10,000 people between Hawaii and Australia, made the dot-TV domain available.

"Dot-TV is kind of catchy, and basically that's what's happening here," Allemann said. "They are trying to rebrand this as a domain name for Los Angeles, and they [Laos] have been trying to sell it for a while, but they didn't have the marketing muscle. With Go Daddy, they have that. Go Daddy is probably the world's largest domain-name registry. Whenever they promote a name, it can make a big difference."

[Via - DailyNews.Com]  

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Weird Buisness Ideas - The Hiccup Stick

Startup Of The Day - PickyDomains.com

http://hicural.com/

A Sacramento inventor is marketing a product that he says is the first tool ever for effectively stopping a case of the hiccups.

Chuck Ray dubbed his invention "The Hiccup Stick," which he developed two years ago. Sitting in his home office, Ray had a pen in his mouth and a case of the hiccups.

"I don't know what I was thinking, but I grabbed a glass of water and drank it with the pen still in my mouth," he said.

It didn't stop his hiccups, he said, but it did make a noticeable improvement.

Ray began working with a friend with access to a 3-D printer, searching for something that would work better than the pen. Using himself as a test subject, he hit upon the Hiccup Stick. He soon quit his job and now works full time as CEO of Hicural, the company he created to market his invention. It's a two-man operation; Ray works with Chief Operating Officer Marc Cheiken.

The product has been available online through cvs.com, drugstore.com and Hicural's website for roughly four months. Ray said he's sold about 3,000 of the devices, which go for $7.99 or less.

Users place the stick lengthwise across their mouths, bite down, and drink a glass of water. It can be used repeatedly, though the company advises owners not to share it.

Ray said the device works by opening the throat and mixing air and water in the same swallow. "This restarts breathing," he said.

Does it work? Not everyone is convinced.

Dr. Mark Vaughan of Auburn Medical Group in Auburn, Calif., said he sees no scientific reasoning for the claimed success of the device.

"I don't see why this would work any better than getting scared or standing on top of your head," Vaughan said. He said the hiccups are a self-limiting problem; eventually they go away by themselves. "If it stops naturally, almost anything you make up can essentially work."

Ray is not discouraged by the skepticism.

"It isn't a cure for the hiccups, because they can always come back," he said, "but it has always stopped anyone's current hiccups."

Certain of its effectiveness, Ray said he'd like to get the Hiccup Stick in hospitals. That would require approval by the Food and Drug Administration.

But FDA spokeswoman Mary Ellen Taylor said the stick, while it is a medical device, is not subject to agency approval. "We don't have any classification for hiccup devices," she said.

Hicural has treated the product as a Class 1 device -- much like a toothbrush -- claiming it poses no potential threat or harm. The packaging has two warnings -- one restricting use for children under 4 and one saying the device is "not intended to relieve cases of chronic hiccups."

Reviews on Hicural's website and independent blogs point to the same opinion: It works.

"I used to be nervous that my idea was stupid, that it wouldn't work for someone," Ray said. "That doesn't happen anymore, I'm never nervous."

Ray is currently working to get the device into a national chain store. He said he expects to have his product on major store shelves within six months. Hoping to earn some popularity and recognition for the Hiccup Stick, Ray plans to sell it at the upcoming California State Fair.

[Via - WPTV.com]

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Startups That Disrupt - Republic Wireless

Startup Of The Day - PickyDomains.com

http://www.republicwireless.com/
David Morken admits that the promise he made to reward his kids with iPhones if they brought home straight A's was no stroke of genius. But the business concept inspired by the ensuing $1,000-plus phone bills may well turn out to be.

Launched nationally in December 2012, Morken's brainchild, Republic Wireless, is a $19-per-month voice, text and data service that relies on Wi-Fi as its primary network (for more disruptive startups, read about DudaMobile). When Wi-Fi isn't accessible--roughly 40 percent of the time for Republic customers, according to Morken--calls automatically bounce to Sprint's 3G cellular network.

The pillar of the low-cost Republic model is a solid but no-frills Android handset, the Motorola Defy XT, which allows Republic to offer a low-cost, contract-free wireless service package with unlimited voice, data and texting after paying an initial $249 for the phone.

In taking on the $178 billion wireless industry, Morken is counting on customers to flock because they already rely on Wi-Fi at home, at the office and in an increasing number of public and private spaces. "The future of mobile technology and the essence of the smartphone, I believe, is Wi-Fi," he says. "It will continue to eat the world because it's so much cheaper."

Turns out Morken's vision of Wi-Fi dominance may be closer than you think. The Wireless Broadband Alliance predicts that the number of hotspot deployments globally will nearly triple between 2012 and 2015--fortifying a reach that Morken says is broad enough to make the Republic model viable. Already, Republic customers can be linked in automatically to 11 million public hotspots using the company's Wi-Fi+ app.

Republic's model, observes technology industry analyst Jeff Kagan, "is innovative, but there are trade-offs for the customer because all the kinks haven't been worked out yet." Indeed, Republic's unique value proposition also happens to be its weakest link, at least for now: At times users must contend with interrupted calls stemming from a less-than-seamless Wi-Fi-to-cellular handoff.

But that hasn't stopped Republic Wireless from signing up "tens of thousands" of new customers each month, according to Morken, suggesting that mobile phone users are willing to live with those shortcomings. And he vows that they won't have to for much longer; by early fall, the company plans to unveil updated software that he expects will largely resolve the handover issue. Republic will also add two more Android handset options.

Morken says he expects those improvements to attract more first-time smartphone users--the college students, cost-conscious Millennials, bargain hunters and land-line cord-cutters who comprise the bulk of Republic's customer base. But what he really wants is for Republic to be the carrier that breaks the stranglehold on the wireless market held by Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint.

"We can't outspend the major carriers," he acknowledges, "so this is going to have to stand on value." And that's a concept we can all agree is most welcome in today's mobile world.

[Via - Entrepreneur]

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http://www.licetreatmentcenter.net/
Last October, Melanie Greifer’s two daughters came home with head lice. The Manhattan pediatrician spent two weeks buying over-the-counter treatments and diligently combing out the girls’ hair, but she could never completely rid them of the infestation. Greifer finally turned to a business called Lice Treatment Center that sent someone to pick the lice and eggs, or nits, from the girls’ scalps and treat them with special shampoos. Greifer didn’t blink at the $100-an-hour fee. “At that moment, I’d have given my left arm to have someone come and take care of this,” she says.

As lice in some areas have become resistant to conventional remedies, desperate parents are turning to newfangled shampoos and pricey delousing house calls. Aside from a handful of treatments vetted by the Food and Drug Administration, the lice business is unregulated. There’s little to stop anyone from setting up shop to sell homegrown anti-lice formulas or comb critters out of kids’ hair. “The louse servicing businesses seem to be spreading faster than the lice themselves,” says Richard Pollack, an entomologist who teaches at the Harvard School of Public Health.

Pediculosis capitis, or head lice, are sesame seed-size parasites that live on human scalps and feed on blood, causing itching in their hosts. They’re most common in children and spread by head-to-head contact. Unlike their body lice cousins, which live on skin and clothing, head lice and pubic lice (better known as crabs) don’t carry disease.

That doesn’t stop parents from freaking out—and shelling out cash for professional help. Lice Treatment Center typically charges between $200 and $500 for a house call, says Liz Solovay, who co-founded the business eight years ago with a pediatrician in Connecticut. They now have 100 employees in 14 states ready to make house calls, and the company will be checking heads at 50 camps this summer. Between nit-picking and selling oil-based treatments, revenue is in the millions, Solovay says.

[Via - BusinessWeek.Com]

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