By Pabla Ayala
The second day down TechCrunch Disrupt's Startup Alley in San Francisco was packed and we ran into a couple more Miami startups and one that should seriously reconsider relocating to South Florida.
UsefulTools, Adam Boalt’s latest venture based out of Pipeline, was
smack in the middle of the enterprise aisle of the Alley where he made his
official launch. “I’m going to show you how to launch a call center in under 30
seconds,” began Boalt. After successfully selling his previous company this
past December, RushMyPassport, he could only manage to sit still for a short
time before the startup bug got him again. He began analyzing his previous
business’ strengths and weaknesses when he realized his biggest shortcoming was
when the phones would ring he didn’t have enough people to answer quickly, if
at all. “As an entrepreneur it is really difficult to work really hard for
something and watch the phone go unanswered because you know those are missed
opportunities.” Small businesses are often lean operations and don’t have
access to call centers, but UsefulTools is making it affordable for anyone to
hire call center services quickly and effectively so you never miss a call
opportunity again. “I want to provide enterprise level call centers for small
businesses,” Boalt says. You can create a custom script for the call center to
carry out and choose the agent characteristics like the language, gender,
location, experience level and industry specific to your business. UsefulTools
has different packages available starting at $150 and premium per minute
pricing for more specialized agents based on specific criteria like a Spanish
speaking agent or special certifications like HIPAA certified.
We came
across Brian Thomas and CashOff a little further down Startup
alley, well, because it was a bit hard to miss him and his female boxing booth
babe with big red gloves. “It’s a do it yourself coupon management system that
allows any business to create coupons, print and share those same coupons on
social media and profit from them,” Thomas explained. “We’re a Groupon
disruptor.” Thomas created this business as an alternative for small businesses
to be able to market themselves without discounting 50% and sharing the revenue
with services like Groupon or LivingSocial. Thomas came up with the business
idea when a celebrity eye doctor friend of his approached him and asked him to
help him create a coupon for his business. “It took me about a week of going
back and forth with him and the coupon wasn’t even digital. We looked at each
other and thought, there’s gotta be a better way.” Using cloud based software
CashOff enables merchants to digitally generate, modify and display the coupon
in real time. To celebrate the launch of their startup CashOff is offering 12
months of free service using promo code techcrunch on their site.
So Diveboard
may be a Parisian startup, but should seriously reconsider relocating to Miami. This online
platform, with an Apple and Android app available, is a free digital log book
for diving enthusiasts to document, share and learn from other divers from all
over the globe. “I am a frustrated diver,” says Alexander Casassovici, Chief
Diveboarder, “because I live in Paris,
France, the
worst place in the world for scuba. I was logging my dives manually on my paper
log book and decided it was time to go digital.” Users can browse interactive
maps, discover new spots and connect with the divers who dived them. On the
platform you are able to upload pictures, videos, dive site coordinates,
document species, diver information and the gear that was used for each dive as
well as diving conditions, length of dive, depth and even water temperatures,
all on a personal diver’s profile page. “A few months after our launch we have
over 70,000 divers on the platform from every corner of the world. But with 60
million registered divers worldwide there is definitely room for improvement,”
said Casassovici. Diveboard also hopes to become a useful tool and source of
information for marine biology institutions as well as conservation groups to
be able to document and share information worldwide. Diveboard is currently
available for free in the Apple App Store and Google Play.
Stay tuned for the Day 3 wrap up including pictures and presentation from Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg. All of these interviews and more from TechCrunch will be airing on the debut of The Lab Report on KlangBox.FM from The LAB Miami.
Follow our TechCrunch Disrupt adventures by following us on Twitter at @pfunkmedia, @pfunkFSU and @cfunk305 and be sure to watch the live stream presentations and Startup Battle pitches here http://ustre.am/jMF6.
Photos by Pabla Ayala
Posted Sept. 11, 2013