Skit is a lot more than an animated gif creator you can take your photos and drawings, turn them into a story, whatever story you want. Then you can share them with the Skit community and all of your friends through your social channels. Once you’ve shared your animation, anyone can “remix” it and make it their own.

You start with a blank canvas and Skit allows you to choose from art they provide for free or you can use your own photos and drawings from your iPad’s library. You can choose weather the photo or drawing is a character or a background, and the app provides you with tons of props as well.

Robin Johnson and Max Woon the cofounders of Skit both have animation backgrounds. Johnson has experience working on the Medal of Honor franchise, among others, while at Electronic Arts. Woon tells Silicon Hills founder Laura Lorek that he also have gaming and animation in his background but became obsessed with this animation idea after watching the making of South Park. In the video interview at SiliconHills website, he talks about how the creators of Southpark would sit in a studio and do the script first and then the animators would get to work.

Both Johnson and Woon wanted something easier and quicker to animate whatever the user wanted and to tell stories.

After the user finishes creating a skit they can save it locally or share it via Facebook and Youtube.

The team behind Skit launched it to the iTunes App store back in February and were chosen for the coveted last pitch position in the recent Techstars Cloud investor day pitches.

Check out our interview with Johnson below and for more information visit skitapp.com

We’ve got more startup stories from TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013 here.

The biggest segment here is of course fitness. Fitbit, Fuelband and other devices allow users to have their workouts monitored and the info tracked on the smartphone.

Well if you’ve decided to tether fitbit to your dog’s collar either to make it look like you’re working out more or you’re curious what kind of workout Rover is getting while you are at work, you can stop now.

Thanks to the husband and wife team of Davide and Sara Rossi, there is now Fitbark. As  you may have gathered, Fitbark is one of those “internet of things” devies that allows you to monitor the energy level and things that your dog does. You may want to make sure that after that steak you fed him last night, he is sweatin to the oldies while you’re dropping the kids off at school.

But seriously,

Fitbark has some great real life uses that most dog owners would actually consider, before buying the device.

For instance, you want to know that your dog actually went for a walk while he was at the boarding facility or while you were paying the neighbor to “dog sit”. You could tell by the level of activity whether your dog sat around all weekend or if he had his walk. You can also tell by the data sent from the Fitbark to the smartphone app, whether or not your dog was walked at the proper times. If the pet sitter says she walked him at 4:30pm but you see he was sleeping, blasphemy, caught in a lie!

Fitbark is also a great way to monitor your dogs health. After all dogs can’t really talk. You may notice in the monitoring of your dog that he or she goes a few days with a lot less activity, that’s probably an indicator that something is just not right.

For those folks out there that are parents, and only to the canine species, a device like Fitbark may be just what the doctor, I mean veteranarian ordered.

You can support Fitbark on Kickstarter and hopefully be one of the first people to get one.

Check out our video interview with Davide Rossi below.

And here are over 50 more startup stories from TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013.

At a time in Spain where they unemployment rate is a whopping 26% Padilla went ahead and quit his job and with $120,000 dollars of his own money, embarked on creating a social shopping site. Others have attempted to bridge a social network with on and offline shopping but Padilla insists that Moodyo has it right.

Others in Spain must have agreed because he was able to raise $600,000 last November. Now he plans to expand his startup based on three simple ideas; I want it, I Have it and I love this, by opening up an office in New York. Padilla tells nibletz.com that they’ve spent the better part of a month, staying in New York after presenting in the Startup Alley at TechCrunch Disrupt. They’ve started forming relationships in the New York startup scene and with New York based investors.

But they weren’t alone, especially at Disrupt. That’s where we saw both Styloola and 3 Other Things, also international startups testing the waters of on and offline shopping.

We got a chance to catch up with Padilla check out our interview below.

What is your startup, what does it do?

Our startup is Moodyo. It’s a social shopping network that really connects the dots between consumers, vendors, brands and trendsetters. We’ve created a system where users can find the right people to follow based on their personal taste, and brands/shops can use Moodyo Insights to track the behavior of potential customers -in a non-intrusive way…- and send them targeted offers and discounts.

Who are the founders and what are their backgrounds?

Javier Padilla, CEO and Co-Founder and Alex Guerra, CTO and Co-Founder.

Javier Padilla has a deep background in the Internet business. He’s a designer and coder that started building websites in 1997. In the last 16 years he has developed more than a hundred sites for companies and individuals. He co-founded in 2006 El Desmarque (http://www.eldesmarque.com), a network of news sites that has around 80.000 unique visitors each day in Spain and is profitable. He also directed the IT department of ABC (http://www.abcdesevilla.es) for 5 years (2006-2011). ABC is the third largest online news site of Spain. Javier loves music and plays drums and the electric guitar in his spare time.

Alex Guerra is a Software Engineer with a great knowledge of Java and other related technologies. He worked for several years developing big websites for corporative clients in Spain.

Alex and Javier worked together for 2 years before they decided to quit from their jobs and start a new career with Moodyo in 2011.

Where are you based?

We are now based in Europe (Spain), but in the summer a part of the team will move to New York. We’ve spent a month now in the City looking for partners, investors and we’ve got an amazing feedback from them.

What is the startup culture like where you are based?

Well, honestly there’s no startup culture in Seville (the city where Moodyo born). There are like two or three startups in the city and a 99% of the people doesn’t know what the word “Startup” means. It’s hard to raise a company there. And it’s more difficult to raise money so we’re very happy about having closed our first round of funding back in November 2012.

In Madrid or Barcelona is different. There’s a new ecosystem of startup companies and some investors with an interesting background. In Spain we have some recent successful companies that have been acquired by the big ones. Amazon acquired BuyVIP two years ago and Telefonica did the same with Tuenti.

What problem does your startup solve?

The platform solves many problems. First, you get recommendations from people you really trust. That’s important because we’re not uploading a bunch of products that we want you to buy but, instead, users with a taste like yours are uploading things that you may like. As we have a follow/unfollow system, all the info received by the user via email, via Moodyo or via other social networks is filtered. Also trendsetters have the chance to build a community of loyal fans and shops don’t expend money on spamming users with the wrong offer. As a result, the user finally gets the product that he needs at the best price/location and shops/brands don’t spend money spamming people with offers that they will never use.

What is one challenge that you’ve overcome in the startup process?

The unemployment rate has reached 26% in Spain. There are more than 6 million people without a job (a 26% of the active population). That’s crazy. And that means that there’s a little chance for entrepreneurs to get money from banks and people around you (family, friends and fools, the famous “3 F’s”) are out of money. So you really need to have an interesting product to convince someone to invest in your project. The first thing I did was to quit my job and put $120.000 from my pocket. Everything I had. Then I tried to find the best people around and fortunately I created an amazing team.

What are some of the milestones your startup has achieved?

We won the Tech Media Europe award in February 2011. That was important because we didn’t have the product in those days and some investors validated our idea. Then we joined the Mola Incubator from Spanish entrepreneur Enrique Dubois who gave us some interesting advices. In November 2012 we closed our first round of funding ($600.000). From January 2013 the network started to grow steadily. Three weeks ago we opened the first shop inside Moodyo and we’re already processing orders everyday. So getting the famous “traction” is our last milestone.

What are your next milestones?

Getting a big amount of active users to be seen as a real opportunity for investors is the first one. We’ll do it because we’re already growing in every way. Moving to New York is also mandatory for us now from my point of view. We’re working on both things at the same time. The mobile app, that will be launched in June will help us because it’s a real tool for shopping.

Who are your mentors and role models?

Well, my first role model is my father. He taught me to work 24 hours a day if you want to succeed. Then Jeff Bezos is a big inspiration and a role model for me. I totally agree with him about how important is the team. It’s the most important thing. If you have a committed and smart team then you have a 50% of the job done. The idea is important, of course, but there are a thousand ideas that died because they didn’t have a team to support them.

What are some of the advantages/disadvantages growing your startup outside of Silicon Valley.

It’s very hard to create a new concept and spread it. When we started to talk to others about “Social Shopping” three years ago in Spain it was like… “Social…what?”. Then the media and blogs outside our country are very hard to reach. If you’re not in New York or The Valley you don’t have the chance to reach to the big ones. Now we’re starting to do it. Nibletz is one of the first sites where we’ll be featured outside Spain (and we’re very happy about that :-)). In Spain we’ve been featured in the most important blogs and newspaper.

What’s next for your startup?

Growing, growing and growing. Then we want to find new partners in United States. In Spain we have 36 pending requests to join us with a shop inside Moodyo.

Where can people find out more, and what is your Twitter username?

We have a blog > http://blog.moodyo.com

We’ve been recently featured in El Pais (sorry, it’s in Spanish. It’s the largest newspaper in Spain) > http://tecnologia.elpais.com/tecnologia/2013/04/22/actualidad/1366654572_098303.html

Moodyo Twitter account > http://twitter.com/moodyo

Check out more than 40 other startup stories from TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013 here at nibletz.com

The product they are bootstrapping will help companies both large and small with employee retention. By having their employee performance platform based in the cloud, it offers easy access for both employees and managers to reference past reviews, keep up with goals, set new goals and conquer milestones. Long gone are the days that an employee should need to wait for an HR person to rifle through file cabinets to find the latest review.

While the company insists that for employees and employers to benefit from reviews they need to discuss them and have an actual in person dialogue their SaaS platform also allows employees and employers to communicate within the platform on a goal. This makes it easy for the employee and employer to remain on the same page. This can be critical for retaining good talent and for employees to set and know benchmarks so they can get raises.

We got a chance to talk with the guys behind Appraisly, check out the interview below.

What is your start-up, what does it do?

In your day-to-day job have you ever had a bad performance review? How did it feel? Unfair? Unjustified? Like your side of things had not been taken into account? Evidence had been ignored? Biased? All of the above?

Appraisly is a cloud-based employee performance management service which will improve the way performance appraisals are conducted at our customers businesses. Our solution allows business owners to manage employee performance in a manner that aligns individual goals to those of the business, in real time and in the cloud. It’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS).

Think of Employee Performance Management as all of the activities that ensure that goals are consistently being met in an effective and efficient manner. It is the method by which job performance of an employee is evaluated. We think every business (small, medium or large) in every country should be doing this; and if they’re already doing it they should be doing it better.

Appraisly will provide the guidance, tools, processes and outputs to enable business to conduct effective and value adding performance appraisals without requiring any integration with existing systems.

Who are the founders and what are their backgrounds?

I’m James and my co-founder is Nik. I’m from Cape Town, South Africa and have a background in corporate and retail finance while consulting to some of the world’s biggest organizations. I have extensive experience with large scale talent management software (solutions provided by SAP, Oracle and IBM) and personal experience with the ups and downs of the performance management process at some of the world’s top consultancies. On the start-up scene I’ve been involved in a couple of businesses including a custom t-shirt website for social media trends, an affiliate advertising master plan which never took off, and a fledgling financial trend analysis business. On the side I am a passionate PHP developer currently learning about the joys of Ruby on Rails and Python. And I love sci-fi (especially Dune).

Nik is an ex-pat who fled the sunshine and blue seas of Greece to land up in the Welsh countryside. He mastered the town of Aberystwyth and climbed the ranks of one of the world’s leading commercial finance businesses, and ended up in the same consulting jobs as me a couple of times. He’s a pitbull and doesn’t understand the word ‘no’; literally. He has a real problem with authority but is the driving force behind some of the great work we’ve done on Appraisly so far. He’s big into Basketball but has wisely decided to focus on start-ups, since he’s a short white Greek guy who can’t jump very high. He codes on the side

Where are you based?

We’re based in the cultural melting pot of London, U.K. We also have full time jobs in the Financial Services sector at the moment (but hopefully not for much longer). We tend to operate out of a swanky hotel but this is mostly because we like the waitresses, the beers are cheap and the wi-fi is free. Also there’s a color printer. We just pretend that we are staying in the hotel, but really we just rock up each evening and use their facilities. I will decline to mention the name for obvious reasons.

What is the startup culture like where you are based?

We are fairly new to the startup culture, but outside of Silicon Valley I would say that London has a great deal to offer especially around the Old Street area. There are meet-ups occurring all the time and plenty of interesting ideas and people to meet. It seems like every person we meet in our day job has an idea for a start-up too – probably because there’s a lot of really motivating success stories in the UK right now, and some really viable channels to obtain funding. Having said that, I think the proportion of folks who actually get up off their seats to make their ideas a reality is really small; and the people who have the determination and motivation to succeed is even less.

What problem does your startup solve?

Small businesses aren’t doing performance appraisals. They should be. Bigger businesses probably are doing performance appraisals, but they aren’t doing them well enough. This affects people’s job happiness and success, and ultimately affects the bottom line of even the smallest business. Overall, employee performance is not measured or managed accurately.

What is one challenge that you’ve overcome in the startup process?

Doing valuable and unbiased market research is hard, and something we’ve failed to do in past ventures. We’ve been incredibly candid with friends, family and people we meet – we are pitching the idea to every man and his dog. But getting honest unbiased market research has been tough. Here’s how we overcame that: we built a market research survey on Google docs and personally emailed everyone we knew. We put ads on Gumtree and Google to garner additional responses; we promoted the hell out of it on Twitter. In addition, we harvested as many publications and research papers as we could from the routes available to us in our day jobs. At this early stage the data looks really promising, and most importantly it’s proving some of the hypotheses we initially conjectured. The findings are proving very useful as we move through the construction of our detailed business plan.

What are some of the milestones your startup has achieved?

Getting off the ground in the right way has been a real win. We’ve tried the lean approach in a few other scenarios but we’ve really not found that method to be a great success. With Appraisly, we wanted to plan things out properly and that’s been a huge help. By planning I mean the following: We’ve drawn up a macro plan which outlines where we want to be in 5 years, where we want to be in 1 year, and then what we need to do to get there. Some of the key outcomes from that process have been things like “We COULD go away and build this thing right away; but it’s more sensible to plan, design and then raise investment before starting”. We feel so passionate about this idea that just going away and doing a slap-bang job would be doing a great disservice to ourselves and to our idea. Having said all that we do understand that our plan almost certainly will not survive the first investor contact, let alone the first customer contact – but it will get us to those contact points in good shape, and that’s a big deal.

We’ve also drawn up a 6 week plan to get us out of the plan phase, and into design. That’s nearly complete and we’re looking forward to wire framing.

We’ve also built a holding page (htttp://www.appraisly.com), bootstrapped it and launched an EC2 instance to host the site. We’ve started a blog (http://www.appraisly.com/blog), built up a good network on Twitter (@appraisly) and most importantly, registered from early stage investor events. This gives us real targets to aim for and those targets align to our macro plan.

What are your next milestones?

At the moment we’re finalizing our detailed business plan for 12^th May, as well as a ten page investor pitch and a couple of one-pager infographics. Following that we’re going into a detailed design phase for the following 6 weeks. That will flesh out our major product offering – we’re really looking forward to this. We’ll be doing an extensive wireframe in Balsamiq and preparing detailed use-cases. Upon completion of the design phase (mid-June) we’ll be heading into the funding/investing phase.

Who are your mentors and role models?

Our role models are Mark Cuban (the man started an IT business, bought a sports team and starred in Entourage!), Elon Musk (the guy has started three separate $1bn businesses – enough said) and Kenny Powers (fictitious), the washed out baseball player from the HBO show Eastbound and Down.

Our mentors include our buddy David Batey (@davidlbatey) a coding genius and lead developer on a couple of awesome projects like Shutl, The Mediagraph and many others. If you want to mentor us give us a shout on Twitter, we’d love to hear any advice you can offer to a new start-up.

What are some of the advantages/disadvantages growing your startup outside of Silicon Valley?

Our major advantages include ready access to the rest of the world (outside of the US). European venture capitalists are on our doorstep, along with a number of potential Arabian and Asian investors. The scene is growing massively and we’ll be part of that wave. We think investors outside of Silicon Valley are looking for founders who are serious, experienced, determined and will not give up. That’s us.

The disadvantages are probably on the flip-side – from what we’ve read, having never visited Silicon Valley, the culture is very immersive; everyone is talking about start-ups or knows someone who knows someone. I guess the disadvantage we have is in terms of the networking possibilities available to us. We also have to ditch our full time jobs and focus exclusively on Appraisly.

What’s next for your startup?

Getting featured in Nibbletz!

We’ll be kicking off our external facing campaign on June 13^th at the Launch 48  Showcase event in London. Look out for us there, and stay in touch on Twitter (@appraisly) and via our Blog in the mean time.  You can find out more at appraisly.com

ThisChattanooga startup is gamifying workplace wellness.

Andy Smith, Founder and CEO of DailyBurn

As a relative newcomer to the tech startup scene, one thing that fascinates me is the daily life of founders. The early stages of a company are so intense, and the pressure only grows with the companies. How do founders do it?

So, I’m on a quest. I want to talk to as many founders as possible and figure out how they make this startup life work.

I hear a lot about how easy it is for founders’ health to deteriorate. Late nights, skipped meals, and the midnight beer to relax. They all add up–with a big dose of stress mixed in–and it’s not hard to see why.

That made my first interview especially interesting. Andy Smith co-founded DailyBurn (then called Gyminee) in 2007. The company was part of TechStars Boulder in 2008, and in 2010 IAC acquired the majority share. Because of the reputation startup life has for bad health, I was interested to see what a health and fitness founder did to stay healthy in the process.

Q. What does your typical day look like?

AS: I’m normally in the office by about 9AM.  Most people here  at DailyBurn work “New York Tech” company hours (10-7), but I like to get home by 6:30 so I can spend time with my 3 kids.  These days I’m in more meetings than I used to be, as I’m trying to build out my core executive team.  We are at the stage in our company growth now where we can’t keep it flat – so I’m spending more time with my direct reports and getting that setup.

One thing that is scheduled in to my day each day is TRAINING.  It’s important to be in good shape if you are the leader of any company, but even more so if you lead a fitness company.  I either join our company workouts at 5pm (eat your own dog food) or train at the nearby gym.  A couple of us are getting ready for another Toughmudder race so I’m pretty strict with food and training right now.

Q. How is it different than in the early days of DailyBurn?

AS: Well, in the EARLY early days of DailyBurn there were two of us, and we both were coding full-time.  That stopped on our second round of funding, when I became full-time business side of things.  I do miss the coding sometimes, but running a business has other interesting problems to solve.

Their social platform allows fashionistas and those who just love good fashion, to sync up over the things they love.

It’s like Pinterest for fashion, on crack with a purpose. You can upload your favorite fashions, pin fashions from others and even curate your own collection. Styloola can then share your collections with designers and boutiques to make owning your favorite fashions a reality.

Styloola also has a checkin twist that allows users to check in to their favorite fashions and stores.

There one of a handful of startups that we saw at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013 that actually understand how to effectively bridge online and offline commerce. 3 Other Things also has a great social approach to drive traffic to brick and mortar stores.

The company received an angel round of funding last fall and officially launched the next phase of Styloola at TechCrunch Disrupt two weeks ago. Check out our video interview below and for more info visit Styloola.com

Over 50 more startup stories from TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013 can be found here at nibletz.com

3dindustri.es is hoping to become the go to search engine for 3d printing. They are very unique in that they don’t use search terns, keywords or typical algorithms. 3dindustri.es is all about geometry and shapes.  3dindustri.es, or 3DI as they’re affectionately known, is based in London.

“What Google did for words and text on the web, we aim to do for shapes and 3D models,” said Dr. Seena Rejal, the founder and CEO of 3DI in an interview with Forbes. “We are ordering the 3D world.”

That’s a tall order to fill with the rapid growth of 3d printing. That’s why the company has already inked partnerships with companies that will prove to be influencers in the 3d printing industry, like 4DLT.

We also got a chance to talk with Rejal. Check out our interview video below:

There’s more where that came from check out over 40 startup stories from TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013.

The bottle looks just about the same as a regular pill bottle, with a little extra girth for both the sensor and a 3g radio chip.  When the 3g radio chip is coupled with the sensors in the pill bottle it can provide information on dosage timing, how many pills are in the bottle and if the bottle is being opened and closed at the correct times.

The ability to communicate this data to a care provider and also to a health management app can be game-changing to people dependent on taking lots of medication.

We talked with the team at AdhereTech about taking multiple prescriptions,and multiple bottles in the same home will not cause any kind of conflict.

We got to interview them at TechCrunch Disrupt NYC 2013. They are also going to participate in the AARP/Live Pitch 2013 Health Innovation Conference in Las Vegas.  Out of 100s of applications, AdhereTech was chosen as one of 10 to pitch their product on the main stage.

They aren’t the first health startup to add sensors to products patients use everyday. At CES 2013 earlier this year we met the team from Geckocap that has installed sensors on asthma inhalers which help track children’s albuterol treatments and gamifies the use of the inhaler for young patients to insure they take their inhaler medication.

Check out the video below and for more information visit adheretech.com.

Have you seen these startup stories from TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013?

UPDATE: 10:23am 5/14/2013

At TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013 two weeks ago we got to spend some time with Minoj Shinde one of the three co-founders of 3 Other Things. Their Mumbai based startup is tackling the bridge between off-line and online shopping experiences, a nut many startups here and overseas are hoping to crack.

The divide between online and offline retail is much larger than we, as consumers in the United States, are led to believe. For instance, in India, where 3 Other Things is based, the divide is 97% off-line retail. In the U.S. it’s actually a whopping 80% offline retail. For retailers to be extremely effective, to drive more traffic to their brick and mortar sites, and their websites, they need to consider both customer subsets. Something that Shinde has been observing over the last 14 years.

By combining the powers of a social network, with a “wish list” feature and customer profile, retailers in the lifestyle, clothing and home decor categories will have one resource to work from that provides a robust snapshot of their customer base. Not only that but 3 Other Things will provide retailers with true customer data with the things that the customer wants and not just algorithmic fluff.

Shinde says that 3 Other Things really comes in handy in non urban centralized areas. For example, some of the stores his family likes to shop at are nearly an hour away from their home. Naturally, investing the time and money into traveling to the store just to find they are out of what they are looking for is a big turn off.

3 Other Things allows users to create a wish list of the products that they actually like. The user can than let the individual retailers know an approximate time of when they will be in their store and the store can come back and say whether or not they have that inventory. Unlike other systems in a similar space, a store clerk using 3 Other Things will physically find or locate an item to insure it’s correct, providing for another level of customer service, that’s often recognized by repeat business.

The social network portion of 3 other things allows likeminded users to share ideas and tips. For instance I like t-shirts with cool designs on them, while Shinde prefers more business casual dressier shirts. I can tell Shinde, using 3 other things, that I saw the perfect shirt for him at a specific retailer and then he can add that shirt to his wish list. The retailer can then market to both of us more effectively.

In the video below with Shinde, we talk a bit about Mumbai’s up and coming startup scene. Watch the video and check out the next disruption in off-line/online retail.

Now check out these other 35 startup stories from TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013.

The more time you spend using the apps in the GetAppRewards network, or playing their games, you’ll earn points. Points can be redeemed for things like other games, electronics, clothing, gift cards and more. The hope is that by rewarding users, they will be more loyal to the apps that are in GetAppRewards network.

In it’s simplest for, GetAppRewards is a mobile advertising platform for app developers to get both more users and downloads as well as improve the time that a user engages with their app.

“GetAppRewards offers instant rewards to users for spending more time in your app, and viewing in-app advertisements. When we reward users like this, they will reward you with their time, attention and purchases. This is a simple and effective formula that helps you monetize your app to the fullest extent.” the company says on their Facebook page.

They also hope to improve in app purchases:  ”With us showering rewards on the users for launching your app, watching video ads and tapping any ads, it’s hard not to make in-app purchases.” they said.

There are other products out there like Junowallet for instance, that reward users for downloading apps. GetAppRewards secret sauce isn’t in just the downloads but also in the engagement and time spent.

Check out our interview below and for more info you can find them on Facebook here.

Have you seen these startup stories from TechCrunch Disrupt?