Thinx is a startup reinventing women’s underwear. Undergarments are not a topic commonly discussed on VentureBeat or in the technology community at large, but as female readers out there know, there is plenty of room for improvement. The women behind Thinx are applying unique technology, entrepreneurial chops, and an innovative business model to build a better brief.

“Over the last 2,000 years, talking about periods has been a taboo subject, but accidents happen all the time,” said cofounder Miki Agrawal. “No matter who or where you are, this is a real problem. If you are a woman in the middle of doing a surgery, like my sister; or on the stock trading floor, like I used to be; or a girl in a developing country who can’t go to school while she has her period, this needs to be figured out. We are making a product that thinks about women around the world.”

Everyone wears underwear

The inspiration to start Thinx came during a trip Agrawal took to Africa and India with her twin sister Radha and their close friend Antonia Saint Dunbar. They learned that pads and tampons are often difficult to find and dispose of in developing countries and that tens of millions of women have to miss work or school during their ‘week of shame.’ It was a persistent problem around the world, and yet remarkably little innovation has happened in the space. 

The trio spent the next three years creating the ultimate pair of women’s underwear. Thinx garments are leak and stain-resistant, anti-microbial, moisture-wicking, made with durable, high-quality materials, and attractive to boot. The patent-pending “Quad-Dry BreatheTech” is a support matrix that consists of three layers dedicated to moisture-wicking, absorption, and leak-proofing.

For every pair of Thinx it sells, the company will fund seven pairs of washable, reusable pads for women in Africa.

Waste not, want not

In addition to helping girls stay in school and work at jobs, Thinx also seeks to reduce environmental waste. Agrawal said that women use an average of 17,000 tampons and pads in their lifetime, which is wasteful both in terms of production and disposal.

But Thinx says it’s not just doing good for the world. The company says it has significant value for women in the U.S.

“We want to be the best-in-class and make sure our product is beautiful, comfortable, and won’t have to be thrown away,” she said. “Our product protects you so you never have to worry about it again. We set the bar really high, and it took a lot of determination to get to this point.”

It also took some luck and serendipity. While on a plane ride to a yoga retreat, Saint Dunbar fortuitously met a textile manufacture who was excited about the project. Then during a Summit Series cruise, Agrawal met Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh, who expressed interest in her other business, a healthy pizza restaurant in New York City, which he wanted to bring to Las Vegas. Miki took the opportunity to tell him about Thinx, and Hsieh said he would get his merchandising team on board.

The success of shapewear company Spanx proved that women’s underwear is a viable business opportunity. Spanx founder Sara Blakely was constantly turned down when she first pitched her idea and is now a billionaire. The idea might seem crazy, but in many ways, it is the most natural thing in the world. Women want underwear that works with their bodies and they are willing to pay for it. However, Agrawal wonders whether people are ready to talk about periods so openly. Will stores want to carry this product on their shelves? Are women willing to give up the traditional underwear-pad-tampon trifecta? How do you market a product addressing an “icky” problem? Building a business off such a sensitive subject is risky on all fronts.

Thinx is in the midst of a Kickstarter campaign, with a goal of $50,000 to get the manufacturing and distribution up and running. The first line comes in four styles: “hip hugger,” “cheeky,” “shape wear,” and a limited-edition pair designed by NAVEN. They come in black and nude and will retail for $26, $34, $68, and $89, respectively. 

Nomanini is a social enterprise company that sells a “business in a box.” Called Lula, this portable orange device is like a little digital vending machine for prepaid vouchers for mobile airtime, electricity, water, and insurance. (Many in Africa use prepaid mobile to pay for such services.) People can buy one of Nomanini’s boxes and quickly set up a “mini-business” to supplement their incomes.

Chief executive and founder Vahid Monadjem is an Iranian-American who was born in Germany and raised in the U.S. and Swaziland. In 2008, he took a job with the prestigious consulting firm McKinsey, where he worked as a global fellow for emerging market product development. From his post in Johannesburg, South Africa, Monadjem found that reaching consumers was his biggest challenge. Most people do not have computers, Internet access, or even smartphones, and many do not even have a documented home address. Mobile prepaid services are so popular because they don’t require Internet access or a bank account, and you can purchase them in small or large amounts.

In this problem, Monadjem saw an opportunity for himself and the locals. He left McKinsey to found Nomanini, which means “anytime” in Zulu, in 2010.

“There are about 200,000 minibus taxis driving around South Africa serving 20 million commuters everyday,” Monadjem said. “It occurred to me that the sale of prepaid vouchers could more efficient if we developed a solution that could be distributed to people on minibus taxis. Not only would you be providing a really important service for people living at the base of the [economic] pyramid who need these central services, but you would also be giving a massive sector the benefit of additional income.”

The Lula can print these prepaid vouchers on the go. Owners can sell the vouchers anywhere, in minibuses, their homes, or even just walking around on the street. They deposit their earnings into a Nomanini account to reload the terminal and earn a commission on all of their sales. The terminal costs about $200 and is “built like a truck” to endure whatever Africa can throw at it. The backend system and all of the transactions are run on the Google App Engine.

In December, 40,000 people bought airtime through Lula devices. Monadjem told me stories of Vuyile, a man who worked as a night shift security guard and barely earned enough to support his family. Through Nomanini, he has increased his monthly income by 20 percent.

The success of the business is largely due to the Nomanini’s intimate understanding of the African market. Monadjem and his cofounders strived to develop a uniquely “South African born-and-bred solution” that specifically targets the needs of the local population.

“What is missing with a lot of tech efforts in Africa is learning from the market,” he said. “Rather than importing the latest solution from the U.S. or Europe, we need homegrown solutions, particularly in transactions. There is massive expansion in the mobile space, but we need to build solutions that work with unreliable networks, poor internet connections, and a user that may be screen illiterate. If Nomanini is successful, hopefully we will get another set of entrepreneurs to be thinking about Africa as a target market rather than trying to build a video-sharing service.”

Right now, Nomanini is only active in South Africa, but the company has received requests for the boxes from all over the continent. Projects for Kenya and Nigeria are in the pipeline as well as plans to sell additional types of vouchers.

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BlastRoots was founded by Washington D.C. mover-and-shaker Chris Hull. Hull spent his career working in politics. He has worked for state and national legislatures, as well as for a national party committee, public policy think tanks, lobbying groups, and public affairs firms. His primary role was to advise organizations of all sizes, from grassroots campaigns to global corporations, on how to best achieve their political aims. He is also an adjunct assistant professor at Georgetown University.

A few years ago, Hull’s attention began to wander away from from serving special interest groups and towards creating a system where a majority of the population is not unhappy with the way government works. A Gallup poll conducted last year found that satisfaction with the government was at a record low of nearly 30%. Hull believes that these numbers would go up if voters felt they had a greater impact on policy.

“I felt for a long time that someone should automate me out of existence,” Hull said in an interview with VentureBeat. “Suddenly, a lightbulb went off in my head and I realized this was made possible by the social networking revolution. It is undeniable that the internet has changed politics by making it easier for people to organize online.”

He left his public affairs job and set out to create a platform that combined the knowledge, resources, and tools of political insiders with the capabilities of internet technology. Hull’s cofounder John Merz previously served as the Director of Technology for the AOL Greenhouse. The men combined their political and technical expertise to create what they believe is the ultimate grassroots lobbying platform.

“In my judgement, there was not a company that took the know-how of Washington and how things actually work, and applied these new lessons of technology to it, opening it up to the public. What we really need is a transparent and open marketplace where people can access these services and use them to participate in the political process.”

Hull said BlastRoots bridges the gap between platforms like Change.org and Causes which are entirely focused on grassroots momentum, and the “enormous but completely subterranean” industry in Washington that influences public affairs for a very high price.

BlastRoots is now in beta. Visitors to the site can create their own campaign using a step-by-step guide, browse existing campaigns to join, or blast out an idea to their social network to incite action. The dashboard offers tools to create a grassroots lobbying campaign, including a customized petition template, a database of email addresses and Twitter handles for directly contacting the members of Congress, customized print-and-send letter templates, and recruitment features. There are also analytical features to track progress, measure impact, and follow up as needed.

The idea is to help people without a lot of expertise, connections or money, change the world. According to an analysis BlastRoots conducted on the political advocacy market, $17.2 billion was spent on federal lobbying, non-profit advocacy, political contributions, and campaigns in 2012. However, while these numbers are high and climbing, the increase is partly driven by relatively small online donations.

“Our view is that spending not only on politics, but on policy – advocacy and lobbying – will eventually flow more and more from ordinary citizens, much of it gathered online,” Hull said in a discussion on Politico. “That’s a promising trend.”

BlastRoots is based in Washington DC. It’s core team consists of 6 people, all dedicated to the goal of a more democratic lobbying system, and the ideal of a more democratic America.

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Oroeco links data about your spending and investment decisions, via Mint.com, with climate change data to track the environmental impact of each dollar you spend. In addition to raising awareness about sustainability, the platform involves social games, tips, points, prizes, and real-world deals to encourage a sustainable lifestyle.

Americans are (and should be) concerned about climate change, and the growth of movements to support local food, eco-friendly clothing materials, and greener cities attest to the population’s interest in making good choices. However, it is not as simple as “good” or “bad” for the environment anymore. Now there are buzzwords like “organic,” “natural,” “local,” “sustainable,” “seasonal,” “grass-fed,” free-range,” “green,” “clean,”, not to mention an alphabet of hormones and chemicals to watch out for. 

CEO Ian Monroe is a lecturer on Energy & Climate at Stanford University and has worked on sustainability related projects around the world for corporations like Walmart, Nike, UPS, and the World Bank. In an email to VentureBeat, he said that small decisions have a large impact and that most social and environmental problems can ultimately be traced back to collectively how we spend our money.

“The basic idea is that every dollar we spend on products or services impacts the environment and society for better or for worse,” he said. “The problem is that these impacts aren’t apparent when we’re deciding what to buy, particularly now that global supply chains have shifted problems half a world away. Our overall goal is to dramatically reincentivize the global economy for sustainability. Politicians have thus far failed to address major global issues, like climate change, but we see tremendous potential in bottom-up change that comes from informed and incentivized consumer.”

The technology harnesses advancements in supply chain analytics, online banking, mobile networks, gaming and cognitive psychology so consumers can actively make choices for the world they want to live in. They can track how the impact of their small decisions, and compare how they are doing as compared to local and national averages, and with participating friends on Facebook.

There are other companies in the field such as GoodGuide, which helps users find green products, Recyclebank, which rewards people for taking green actions with discounts, and Opower, which incentivizes consumers to make smart energy decisions. However, Oroeco claims to be the first to take this financial approach, and will be introducing more advanced social gaming mechanics than the other players.

Cofounder Kirstin Cummings studied Symbolic Systems and Artificial Intelligence at Stanford and has worked as a web developer and designer for over a decade. She said that changing consumer behavior requires intent, knowledge and external rewards, and the time is ripe to unite them all on one platform.

“It’s all about aligning incentives and information for better choices,” she said. “We finally have the information technology infrastructure that can tell us how our daily decisions impacts the world around us, now we just need to make this information fun and engaging so that it motivates real change.” 

The other team members include an MIT-trained engineer, a PhD candidate in Psychology with a focus on climate change and consumer decision-making, a clean energy finance expert, and a Stanford physicist/environmental journalist who moonlights as a programmer. Together, they make up Oroeco’s core team. They operate in San Francisco and Chile, and recently raised $43K from Startup-Chile, as well a $7K and climbing on Indiegogo.

This crew of self-described “scientists, engineers, sustainability junkies,and startup vets” are taking on nothing less than one of the biggest problems facing our globe today. While it is a major, systemic issue, change begins at home. Eco-friendly lifestyle tweaks can be as small as cutting down on red meat or taking public transportation a few extra times a week. Often, decisions that are good for the environment are also good for the wallet, as well as for physical and mental well-being.

Startup Spotlight is a new weekly series that features a company with a unique idea or story to tell. If your company would like to be considered, please submit an application at http://venturebeat.com/news-tips/.

Movember first began in Australia and is now a global movement to support prostate cancer and testicular cancer initiatives. “Via the moustache, Movember aims to fulfill its vision of having an everlasting impact on the face of men’s health by continuing to spark conversation and spread awareness of men’s health issues each year,” says the organization’s mission statement. Over the past decade, almost 2 million “Mo Bros and Mo Sistas” have participated and raised $126.3 million for the cause in 2011 alone. 

Last year, a few of the guys at SurveyMonkey decided to form an informal team. Their efforts were so popular that this year, the company formed an official partnership with Movember. SurveyMonkey employees not only sprouted ‘staches and fundraised, but they also offered the organization the resources at their disposal.

SurveyMonkey is a provider of web-based survey solutions. Customers easily create custom surveys online and distribute them to respondents. These surveys help them collect data of any kind that can be used for anything from business insights, to in this case, “who has the most iconic mo?” Apparently, men associate mustaches with manliness and distinction, while women generally find them creepy.

“It was interesting to watch the monkeys grow mustaches, and as we watched them do it, we wanted to do research,” said VP of Marketing Bennett Porter. “This is very important stuff, we wanted to get feedback on how America feels about mustaches so we could give our monkeys pointers.”

The surveys found that the top style is the ‘classic English,’ followed by the ‘Handlebar’, ‘Fu Manchu’, ‘Painter’s Brush’, ‘Pencil’, ‘Chevron’, and the ‘Walrus’. Apparently, the number one reason men don’t grow mustaches is because they think they look funny, while 36% of significant others are fine if their loved ones ‘bro a Mo.’

That said, one of the team captains was forced to shave his mustache for a wedding at the bequest of his girlfriend. Not one to be derailed, he grew a second ‘stache and had something to present at the Great Shave after all.

As part of the Great Shave, SurveyMoney brought a professional barber into the headquarters to bring all participants back to clean-shaven. However, a few men abstained from the proceedings to keep their mustaches for one more wild weekend and a few even contemplated maintaining the mustachioed look. 

“Over the past 30 days, some people looked exactly the same as they did on day 1, and others looked like they were headed straight for a biker bar,” Porter said.  “We took an internal survey to crown the King of Movember and the winner was one of our guys in Portland, but it was kind of unfair because mustaches seem to grow better in Portland. Regardless, we are going to miss those furry little guys.”

Hipster points aside, SurveyMonkey raised around $2000 for men’s health. Porter said this endeavor was about more than fundraising; it  was also about promoting company culture and staying competitive in the battle to recruit talent. SurveyMonkey is hardly a scrappy startup anymore. It was purchased in 2009 by Spectrum Equity and Bain Capital, and today has 150 employees and a billion dollar valuation.

That said, SurveyMonkey, like the mustaches on of its employees faces, is continuing to grow, spreading the doctrine of accessible data, as well as mustaches, around the world. Check out the Flickr gallery the “Month of Mustaches” and this Movember infographic:

Startup Spotlight is a new weekly series that features a company with a unique idea or story to tell. If your company would like to be considered, please submit an application at http://venturebeat.com/news-tips/.

Every 20 seconds, a child dies from a water-related illness. Startling statistics like these can make it hard to stomach the millions of dollars funneled into the latest social networking or e-commerce app, but a new wave of social entrepreneurship is taking on the idea that doing good and making money are mutually exclusive concepts.

Hydros manufactures reusable water bottles with built-in filters. Reusable water bottles are hardly innovative but Hydros’ unique approach to social entrepreneurship and use of internet platforms to spread its mandate is.

The water crisis is a massive global problem. 1 in 7 people lack access to clean water and 3.575 million people die each year from water-related diseases. Furthermore, 38 billion (billion!) water bottles are discarded into landfills every year. After learning about these issues, founders Jay Parekh, Aakash Mathur, and Winston Ibrahim forsook traditional career paths to tackle the crisis head on.

The water bottle is the consumer product that funds Operation Hydros, “the movement to fight the global water crisis.” For every bottle purchased, $1 dollar is contributed to a rural water project. The company is still in the early stages of distribution, but has already helped implement a water piping system in Cameroon and a sanitation project in Kenya. Hydros recently partnered with Engineers Without Borders to ensure each water system is implemented effectively and well maintained.

“People think there is either the nonprofit world where you won’t make any money, or the business world where you won’t do anything good,” he said. “I want to dedicate my life to proving this wrong.  I want to prove you can create a successful business that returns money to founders and shareholders, while still addressing a social issue.”

Ibrahim was raised in Silicon Valley and leveraged his knowledge of the entrepreneurial ecosystem to get Operation Hydros off the ground. He reached out to investors, recruited renowned entrepreneurs to the advisory board, and spearheaded digital sales and marketing efforts. Hydros has received investment from angel investors, venture firms, and from crowdfunding site Fundable to bring the product to market.

Now, the company is starting its major distribution push. It is sold in Whole Foods in certain markets around the country and has worked with tech startups and other organizations on “cobranding” initiatives. The bottles are also available online on e-commerce sites like Amazon and Groupon. There are even potential celebrity sponsorships in the pipeline.

The bottle itself filters out toxins and chemicals in 20 seconds. Hydros also seeks to combat the water crisis by promoting more eco-friendly habits, like cutting down on bottled water waste. Ibrahim said there is strong interest amongst consumers for this type of product and business model.

“A feature of our generation is to care about the broader world,” he said. “Millenials were raised in this internet age, we have so much access to information and see the issues that are going on. There is opportunity inherent in problems of the word. Our generation is primed to see lack of food, lack of water, lack of jobs as a chance to create benefits for society and cause change.”

Ibrahim recently visited the White House as part of Global Entrepreneurship Week, “the world’s largest celebration of the innovators and job creators who launch startups that bring ideas to life, drive economic growth and expand human welfare.” The massive growth of this event (115 countries; nearly 24,000 partner organizations; more than 37,000 activities;  directly engaging more than 7 million people” is a testament to the growing belief around the world, amongst entrepreneurs, business people, politicians, and development agencies, that startups can cause widespread, meaningful change.

In honor of Veteran’s Day, I wanted to dedicate Startup Spotlight to entrepreneurs with military experience, or who were working on projects to benefit the veteran community. I found a company that embodies both.

Women Veterans Connect is an online community for women who have served in the military. At its core, it is a network where women veterans can connect, exchange stories, engage with peer mentors, and find relevant information. Jo Ann Martinez founded the organization after serving in the Air Force and receiving strong support from an informal group of women veterans. She realized not everyone had the same access to this network and set out to create WVC.

“I have been immersed in the women’s veterans community since day 1,” Martinez said. “These are all women whose stories I know personally, and I realized that we typically don’t ask for help until we are in crisis. I took on project after project trying to figure out what to do, and it finally came down to stopping, looking back at all the reasons why things failed, and doing the opposite. My expertise was with women’s veterans. I wanted to serve that community for all the mentoring they provided me and I wanted to contribute by helping them successfully reintegrate into the community.”  

After multiple unsuccessful attempts to get something off the ground, Martinez met the Katherine Webster, the woman behind TechCentral SF and VetsInTech. That encounter led her to attend the first ever VetsInTech hackathon in March. Up until this point, Martinez taught herself basic elements of front end development and design, but knew that to launch a fully-featured web-based platform, she would need more education and help. Much to her surprise, her team placed third and she found the bridge she needed from the military world into the technology world.

“I think veterans make great entrepreneurs,” she said. “Military personal go through so many leadership programs, it makes sense. Plus, we have all the work ethic and commitment that is involved. The Air Force core values are integrity, service before self, and excellence in all we do. I still apply this win my everyday life.”

Many members of the military also receive extensive training in math, science, engineering, and logistics, which can provide a solid foundation to learn programming. Furthermore, startup life can be a desirable route for veterans who struggle to find more traditional forms of unemployment.

“People getting out of the military can have a stigma,” she said. “We’ve got employers out there that are not going to say this directly, but they might look at you as a liability. Veterans come back after multiple deployments, some with PTSD, to a weakened economy and it can be really really difficult to get a job. This is why entrepreneurship becomes attractive for us.”

Women Veterans Connect is not only about supporting returned military personnel, but also about supporting women. Technology and the military are both male-dominated industries and part of Martinez’s mission is to encourage women to throw themselves headfirst into these worlds, even when it can be intimidating.

“I had my daughter in the same year that this idea was born,” she said. “It is my mission to not just tell her, but actually show her all of the possibilities that we are capable of as women. In my experience, women are always willing to make more out of less, whereas men are asking for more and getting more. What I hope happens down the road is women veterans show up more and there are more women overall in tech community.”

The WVC officially incorporated as a non-profit in April 2012. It currently focuses its efforts on the 167,000 women veterans in California, but the vision is to expand the platform nationwide and hopefully gain some influence at the government level.

While women veterans comprise a relatively small segment of the population, Martinez strives to make the services and her vision relatable to the rest of the country. She wants to honor the accomplishments of women veterans, beyond their military service, and tell stories that not only provide recognition, but inspiration.

For more information about this weekend’s VetsInTech hackathon, click here. 

Startup Spotlight is a new weekly series that features a company with a unique idea or story to tell. If your company would like to be considered, please submit an application at http://venturebeat.com/news-tips/.

Peace Corps Volunteers and entrepreneurs have a lot in common. To be successful, both must be idealistic, motivated, adventurous, resourceful, and adaptable. Both groups pinpoint needs and endeavor to address them, and both are no strangers to bad food.

Vijay Rajendran served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Cameroon from 2002 to 2004. Now a decade later, he has formed a startup called Hungry Globetrotter that gives people the opportunity to create authentic, delicious, ethnic meals in their own homes.

Hungry Globetrotter is a subscription service for food items that highlights an international destination every month. Users receive boxes designed around specific cuisines, with boutique ingredients that can be used to prepare home-cooked dinners. The packages come with recipes for a well-rounded meal, as well as a regional guide the tells the story behind the area and the products.

The first subscription box was called the South Indian Sampler. It contained a bottle of curry sauce and organic spices, among other things, that could be turned into a feast of madras curry, garam masala rice with vegetables and yogurt raita. Users must buy their own perishable items. October’s theme was Argentina, and included Gaucho Ranch Chimichurri sauce, balsamic pecan vinegar, paprika finishing salt, and gourmet quinoa. 

“I am someone who has lived my life pursuing good food everywhere,” Rajendran said. “I want to  introduce people to new brands, cuisines, flavors and cultures that they can experience through food. Culinary tourism is something people may only do a few times in their life and I want to empower them to have these experiences at home.”

After a youth spent living abroad, a stint as a venture capital consultant in New York, and a Peace Corps Volunteer specializing in micro finance in West Africa, Rajendran is trying to combat the standardization he sees in the American food industry. Most mainstream grocery stores are saturated with mediocre international options, while world food stores are few and far between outside of metropolitan areas,an can be overwhelming and expensive.

Another issue is a lack of knowledge. A home cook may want to create a Moroccan repast, but have no idea what ingredients to buy. The process of researching, purchasing, and preparing is time-consuming for a casual dinner in, and amateurs may be deterred from experimenting with cuisines they know nothing about. Rajendran said Hungry Globetrotter’s vision is about more than just foreign flavors. By encouraging people to roll up their sleeves and cook, it creates a global context and communal experience surrounding the food.

“When I was in Cameroon, I was thrown into a culture and a cuisine that I knew nothing about,” he said. “I became a part of the community through the people I connected with over meals. We would eat together and I would learn about traditions, rituals, festivals, agriculture, family life and so forth. Food became a medium for me to gather, socialize, and share. It gave me a way to genuinely explore their history and grasp a broader sense of culture.”

To this end, Hungry Globetrotter emphasizes content in addition to product. There is a smörgåsbord of food subsciprition services in the e-commerce space, such as Foodzie, Love With Food, Culture Kitchen, Global Grub, and GrubKit. Many of these sell international snacks and artisanal samples, or cater to niche markets. They are not geared towards full meal preparation which can potentially have an impact beyond exposure to new tastes.

“In American food culture, there is the over-communization of certain foods, people often don’t prepare foods at home, and obesity as an epidemic is troubling” he said. “There are studies that show that children who eat dinner at home eat more fruits and vegetables. We are not trying to be a health food company, but we know that something positive starts when people cook at home, and when that process is not a chore, but rather something exciting. The experience of preparing and enjoying home-cooked meals can address many elements of the food system that are broken today.

Hungry Globetrotter sent out its first box in September and is based in San Francisco. The November box will focus on Morocco and December will have a Japanese izakaya theme.

Startup Spotlight is a new weekly series that features a company with a unique idea or story to tell. If your company would like to be considered, please submit an application at http://venturebeat.com/news-tips/.

Its not often an entrepreneur cites Mr. Rogers as his role model, but Jase Wilson and Mr. Rogers have a shared mission. Both strive to make neighborhoods stronger.

Wilson is the founder of Neighbor.ly, a crowd funding platform for civic projects. Organizations can post projects on the site and raise money from the community. Neighbor.ly grew out of Wilson’s frustration at community meetings. A self-identified “city geek,” he has two degrees in urban planning and design. Time and time again, Wilson heard great ideas and proposals, but the common denominator was a lack of resources to make them happen. He decided to create an alternative channel for municipal fundraising.

“Cities are broke,” Wilson said. “People need civic projects- the economy, jobs, and quality of life all benefit when good civic projects happen. It’s a problem that needs innovation now. We built Neighbor.ly to help greenlight civic projects, even when the community budget is not so awesome.”

However, stalemates in urban improvement are not only a function of budgets. There are also bureaucratic and political obstacles that slow the whole process, which Neighbor.ly can circumvent. For example, a civic committee may not choose to fund a skate park or Women’s biking co-op, but if these groups can achieve their fundraising goals, their proposals could become a reality.

“This is very much a way to cut through bureaucracy,” he said. “We want to rewire public finance and help cities help themselves to get civic stuff done, without relying exclusively on debt. People can short circuit the process of voting by voting with their dollars directly on the site. This is more efficient.”

Neighbor.ly is still in the early stages and there are a small number of projects on the site. Most of them are located in Kansas City, Missouri where Wilson is based. So far, the platform has helped fund a bike sharing system, Google Fiber initiative, pedestrian walkway renovation, and a Streetcar line. Interested groups (never individuals) can submit their ideas for review and if approved, Neighbor.ly will work with them to figure out the campaign, set goals and timeframes, and hopefully find sponsors. Once the funds have been raised, it is up to the organization to implement them effectively.

So far, many of the proposals on the site are civic projects that could not get funded, but the platform also works for more alternative ideas and people that would rather pursue their visions outside of municipal bodies.

“This will help to usher in a new era of urbanism,” Wilson said. “This is not just about cities that need a million dollars to do basic things. This is about DIY cities, its taking an entrepreneurial, hacker approach to civic thing. It appeals to younger generation that wants to be more involved and have more participation than what it was afforded in past, but is not keen on idea of a traditional, electoral or ballot based vote in the government. There is distrust it in some cases, and rightly so. With all the talk about the deficit, social security, bankruptcy and unemployment, people realize the government may not provide what they need.”

Grassroots movements are picking up around the country and Wilson and his small team are picking up where Kickstarter leaves off by focusing on civic initiatives. In addition to a financial platform, they also provide their expertise and knowledge surrounding urban planning. Wilson said depending on how things progress with the economy, this type of model would be a useful alternative for keeping certain government services alive. Only time will tell.

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If my family founded a startup, it would be a disaster. We find it challenging to coordinate holidays much less get a company off the ground, and could only rally around a product that related to beagles or wine.

The Harris family does not share our limitations. This mother-father-son trio is putting a new spin on the idea of the “family business” by launching an e-commerce company called The Itsy Bitsy Ritzy Shop.

The IBR shop is an online home-goods and furniture store specializing in small spaces. The 200-item inventory includes dressers, tables, and desks with added storage capabilities, as well as slender lamps and chairs suitable for a dorm room or apartment.

It was all designed by Marcia Harris, a professional interior designer who saw a lack of quality products available  for small spaces. Marcia also assembled four themed collections that put together furniture, fabrics, accessories, and paint into a coordinated whole. Buyers can buy directly on the site and have orders delivered to their door.

The direct-to-consumer model is increasingly popular with online retailers that don’t want to operate through chain stores or set up a brick-and-mortar outpost. Marcia’s husband, Dean, is a veteran of the e-commerce world and saw an opportunity to combine his wife’s design expertise with his business experience. 

“I was the Chief Marketing Officer for multiple Internet startups, and I saw the percentage of sales migrating to the web,” he said. “Big box retailers are closing down and people are getting more used to buying online. We thought the furniture industry could stand this disruption. By building to order and eliminating additional layers of middlemen, we can deliver a high quality product at a lower cost.”

All the furniture is manufactured in a facility near the Harris’ Connecticut home. The family took space in the former Singer Sewing Machine factory, which Dean said underscores their emphasis on using locally made materials to revitalize a struggling local economy.

This is not the first time Dean and Marcia have gone into business together. The couple ran an advertising agency together for over 20 years and passed on this legacy to their son Zach, who has spent most of his career in online video advertising. Zach joined his parents to work on the Itsy Bitsy Ritzy Shop at the beginning of this year. He manages the web development and digital production and advises on digital strategy, social media, and operations.

“Officially, in some capacity, I have been working for my parents for my whole life,” Zach said. “It felt like a natural progression of this relationship. The most rewarding aspect of working with my folks is watching them learn and seeing how much energy they have and continue to invest in the project. Fifteen years ago my mother was the biggest Luddite. Now she is proficient in web apps across the board.”

The Itsy Bitsy Ritzy Shop launched earlier this month and is open for business.

Startup Spotlight is a new weekly series that features a company with a unique idea or story to tell. If your company would like to be considered, please submit an application at http://venturebeat.com/news-tips/.

The last time I shopped in a place where nothing had a price, I was at Burning Man. On the playa, a gift economy flourishes where people give, trade, and receive based on their desires and resources.

Flubit, a startup based in the UK, also removes pre-ordained pricing from its marketplace. Unlike Black Rock City, smiles are not viewed as legitimate currency on the site. Rather, it capitalizes on the sense of FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) that plaguing online shoppers who worry that there is always a better deal out there. With so many merchants offering the same inventory at varying degrees of discount, this is a legitimate concern.

Shoppers enter the product they desire and the URL of the best price they could find. Flubit’s engine than cross-references this price with its database of integrated merchants to find the ultimate best price. That particular deal is sent to the shopper who can buy it through the site.

The team says the technology finds consumers better offers than the customers’ initial offer almost 90% of the time. It does this by working directly with merchants and providing them a direct route to the consumer.

“We have had strong success integrating merchants who see us as a way to break the stranglehold of low margins forced on them by the incumbent players, like Amazon,” said CEO Bertie Stephens. “We’ve found that internet shoppers are willing to wait a short period to secure a better price. The offers they get are created by us, in house, unique for them each and every time they demand one.”

The company’s primary goal, aside from making money, is to create the simplest possible online shopping experience for customers who already knows the item they want. It eschews gimmicks and group-buying strategies, and focuses instead on seeking out the bottom line.

“We are proving that you can make e-commerce work without product or price listings, without savagely discounted loss leaders, without social. We’re changing the idea of the marketplace – we can deliver sales to merchants without them needing to offer discounts to customers already won, and we can get better prices for our users without them needing to wade through offer after offer for things they don’t want. ”

Stephens found his inspiration to start Flubit while working as Neville Longbottom’s fill-in on the Harry Potter movie. [Full disclosure: this is one of the main reasons I chose to feature this company].

“Oddly enough, Flubit started as a bit of an accident over a shared orange juice on a video shoot,” Stephens said. I wanted to built a ‘no-brainer pipe dream’: a service that would give you whatever it was you wanted to buy for less than you were about to pay for it – like a shopping trump card. I got to talking to someone on the shoot, and at the end of it he decided to invest £50,000 to make it happen, and it became the first version of Flubit.”

Since then, the company has raised $2.75 million and has 26 employees. Their main investor is Pierre Andurand, founder of BlueGold Capital Management. It has pivoted from its early days when it operated on a group-buying model that gained little traction with buyers and sellers. Now in its second iteration, consumers and retailers alike are responding to the “whatever you want for cheaper” promise.

“It’s working,” Stephens said. “For the guy who ordered a garden shed and a five pack of Crunchy Nut Flakes, where else can you buy both of those things at a price just for you? The most passionate merchant we had would list deal after deal – but he only had one product: The Incredible Hulk campervan curtains. And the biggest group we ever put together was for people who wanted to buy new boyfriends… “

Cereal, the selling of humans, and Harry Potter aside, this scrappy team of European entrepreneurs hopes that one day, Flubit is to go-to site for e-commerce. Until then, they at least have a delightful video to watch: http://youtu.be/lzRwt3wGXpA

Our Startup Spotlight feature puts promising new companies center stage, with an in-depth look at who they are and what they do. Every other week, we’ll showcase what makes our featured company stand out from the competition.

There’s no cost to you. You simply need to explain to our editors why we should select your business.

To be eligible, there are a few ground rules:

• Your business must be less than 3 years old.
• You cannot have been featured on VentureBeat previously.
• You must generate less than $1 million (U.S.) in annual revenue
• And you must have an active site or product – not just a good idea.

You can apply to be considered for the Startup Spotlight here.

Curious to see how other companies have been highlighted? Here are a few recent Spotlight stories:
Power2Switch lets small businesses choose their electricity suppliers
Huddle takes collaboration tools to the next level
People Capital brings peer-to-peer lending to student loans