TheStartup.eu

It’s a known fact that seed capital is very scarce in Italy. Entrepreneurs, which by definition are stubborn entities are therefore finding creative and cheap ways to bootstrap their startups.

Tipsandtrip was born from an idea of social media consultant Juliette Bellavita and Blogo.it CEO Marco Magnocavallo. They had the goal of launching a web app and an iphone app in 6 months with less than $10k.

How did they do it? With some great project management and a few crowdsourcing platforms. Let’s break down their costs:

• Logo design: a simple contest on 99designs with a $300 prize. 114 submissions and a professional logo in less than a week.
• Development: using DjangoPeople and Elance a very international team was born. Developers are in Argentina, Ukraine and Russia. Total cost: $5000.
• Iphone development: an italian freelance developer found on the web. Two months of work and $2500.
• Iphone icon: a dutch designer made a professional icon for $350
• Internationalization: translations in german, french and spanish. MyGengo.com and Tolingo.de. 24h turnaround and a great service. Total cost: $100.
• Hosting: pay-as-you-go cloud servers, mostly free in the beginning.
• Debug/usability: UserTesting and $100.
• Sweat Equity: Juliette and Marco put in a bit of work during weekends as project managers, designers, developers, sysadmins, etc.

Total: $8,350.

They say they’re gonna use the remaining $1,650 to fix the numerous bugs that usually come out after the launch.
We still haven’t drilled down into the app. The founders were tired of having to remember all the precious tips their friend were giving them regarding restaurants, B&Bs, shops, etc. in foreign countries prior to their trips. After looking for an online tool to annotate all this information and having found nothing really useful they decided to build it themselves.

Tipsandtrip is your portable notebook where you can write your vacation related notes and find the best tips your friends and other users make public. The app will be a crowdsourced list of the best restaurants, shops, parks, beaches, B&Bs and city spots for tourists. The app obviously geolocalizes every info and integrates with Facebook and other social networks.

They are competing in a very crowded and fragmented market but I’d say that for $10k, they’re off to a good start.

It’s a free app and you can download it here.

There has been immense interest in the App Store. It has 28,000 developers who have made 140,000 apps to date. It’s amazing how much energy has been diverted to the iPhone and now the iPad platform. In its 18 month history, the App Store has a dramatic impact on our lives, not just as consumers, but has changed businesses around the world. It amazes me.

What I have seen:
Developers quitting their jobs and starting their own companies selling apps. Companies allocating resources and departments to making apps. VCs investing $24 million into an iPhone app and creating funds dedicated to app development. Companies piggybacking on the usefulness of apps. Companies extending their service to mobile. Millions of websites reviewing apps. Companies being threaten by apps.

I’m not even mentioning the impact of the iPhone itself.

If apps are the equivalent  of software, then Apple is Microsoft now. If the app store is the web, then Apple is Yahoo. I wonder who will emerge as Google. Just a thought.

Technology is moving faster than ever. We are using and developing ourselves things that we couldn’t even immagine a few years ago. I think augmented reality will be the next big thing.

You may have already heard the “augmented reality” term, but just to be sure you know what I’m talking about here is how Wikipedia defines it:

Augmented reality (AR) is a field of computer research which deals with the combination of real-world and computer-generated data (virtual reality), where computer graphics objects are blended into real footage in real time.

We are starting to see the first augmented reality phone applications for Android and Iphone, and now London-based Accrossair announced a game-changing iPhone application.

Nearest Tube, as you may guess by its name, will let you see in real time the closest London tube station. It is really very easy to use: when you load the app, holding it flat, all 13 lines of the London underground are displayed in coloured arrows. By tilting the phone upwards, you will see the nearest stations: what direction they are in relation to your location, how many kilometres and miles away they are and what tube lines they are on.

Check out a demo video (careful with the volume, this video is extremely loud):

The application is ready and awaiting approval from the App Store. To use the app you will need an iPhone 3GS.

Online social travel guide website Tripwolf just launched its free iPhone application. (iTunes download link).

The Vienna-bases company provides crowd-sourced information thanks to the 18000 members and adds on top of it content from guides such as Marco Polo and Footprint, for more than 400.000 destinations.
That’s a lot of stuff, but how do you access it when you’re away on a trip? That’s what they have been asking themselves lately, and answered with an awesome iPhone application. City guides, restaurants and hotel reviews, everything at your fingertips.
The usage is not limited to tripwolf members, but it is highly recommended to have an account as you can synchronize it with the application.

Alexander Trieb, the tripwolf co-founder responsible for the implementation of the iPhone application, says: “By offering the tripwolf iPhone application we are taking the logical next step in the evolution of travel guides: Beyond the book.”

One of the most important features I spotted is the offline mode. Tripwolf lets you choose what you would like to download and save you from those huge roaming costs. Users have the choice of downloading either text only or the whole package that includes pictures. You will then be able to synchronize everything back at the hotel.

“The possibility of using the tripwolf iPhone application offline was extremely important to us. We wanted travelers not to worry about paying high roaming costs”, Sebastian Heinzel, CEO of tripwolf explains, “while still being able to access their personalized tripwolf guides and benefit from location based interactivity.

This is a great news for every traveller out there. The application is currently available in five languages – English, German, Spanish, French and Italian – in any part of the world.

Scoreloop, a Munich startup, announced today with a press release a free SDK that allows iPhone developers to build social features into their games.

Social gaming is the direction that online and mobile gaming is inevitably taking. Developers now have an easy way of implementing this strategy, while gaining other sources of income.

Scoreloop works in any game that results in a score. With each win, the gamer is awarded coins and points. Coins allow for playing new challenges. Points express skill and ranking. When gamers run out of coins, they repurchase them for more challenge play.

“Nothing is better at motivating gamers to play more than seeing someone out there with a better score.  And the only thing that comes close to that is the ability to brag about it on social media like Facebook,” said Scoreloop’s CEO, Marc Gumpinger.  “We’re bringing that level of play and functionality to the mobile device in your pocket now.”

I think this can be a nice way for small developers to implement social gaming technologies while not having to develop it. We all know that apart from the big hitters, making a living out of the AppStore is pretty hard, with this solution there are no extra costs as Scoreloop handles all server operations/costs and implementing typically takes less than one day and does not require dedicated skills.

In 2008, the German based venture capital company Target Partners invested in the company, but Gumpinger said that he might seek a further round of investing to finance the company development. While partnerships with some of the world’s largest game publishers/portals and independents will be announced in the coming months we will update you on their business model.

We wish Scoreloop the best of luck.

You can watch a 15 minutes introductory video here: