Jason Cox Demos MilkCrate V2

What was the problem or pain point that you and your team were hoping to solve?

“We noticed how challenging it can be to live sustainably, especially in an urban setting, and we wanted to help people live more sustainably.”
— Jason Cox, CTO of Milkcrate

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How does MilkCrate actively approach solving this problem?

“We are a digital hub of data that helps people live sustainably. Right now, this is mostly sustainable businesses in the Philadelphia metro area. Very soon, this will include products, services, tips, events, and news. As we grow we will find more and more ways to help people live sustainably.”
— Jason Cox, CTO of MilkCrate

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Whats your vision for the future of MilkCrate?

“I’d love to see us make a marketplace to help small businesses provide services or sell products through MilkCrate. Many of the sustainable companies I do business with track everything through spreadsheets and pdf files. Even the somewhat large companies. We could build something that both makes their lives easier and expands what MilkCrate can offer.”
— Jason Cox, CTO of MilkCrate

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FaceCrunch Demo

FaceCrunch

Jonathon Beschen, Founder of FaceCrunch

What was the Problem that you planned to solve with FaceCrunch?

“There wasn’t a problem per se so much as new research that we found extremely intriguing. A/B advertising has been around for a long time but optimizing an ad based on people’s innate responses to the models seems less common and using that information to come up with formulaic answer to ‘will this image work for me’ was even more exciting. So if I were to frame a problem, I’d say a lack of understanding to how people naturally associate facial structures with industries.”
–Jonathon Beshchen, Founder of FaceCrunch

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How does FaceCrunch hope to solve this problem?

“FC solves this problem by doing a full eigenface analysis on every image that passes through our system and cross compares it to every other face in the system. It then scores its ‘similarity’ and then those are associated with industry successes through A/B tests.”
–Jonathon Beshchen, Founder of FaceCrunch

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What’s next for FaceCrunch?

“Next up is a massive open beta where we let in the masses to try our app, and increase the number of industries we support.”
–Jonathon Beshchen, Founder of FaceCrunch

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ClusterPuck 99 Demo with The PHL Collective

Post #ClusterPuck99 Demo Interview

@PHLCollective

What was the problem that ClusterPuck 99 hoped to solve?

“We set out to develop a game that brought back local multiplayer experiences where friends gather in a room and play games. We wanted to take the isolation out of current games and throw it back to our youth when internet connected games weren’t a thing.”
–Nick Madonna, Founder of The PHL Collective

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How did you guys go about solving the problem?

“There were a number of design goals we set with the game and hitting them was paramount to creating a successful product. Gamers who enjoy local multiplayer experiences look for a certain number of features that help enable the party atmosphere. We wanted to make sure we could satisfy those needs while also doing something new and exciting. Outside of features we wanted to boil down the gameplay into a simple loop and button combination. The game needed to be easy to pick up but hard to master. This design choice helped bring new players in and easily introduced them to the core mechanics.”
–Nick Madonna, Founder of The PHL Collective

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What’s next for ClusterPuck 99?

“Next up we will be releasing ClusterPuck 99 on Xbox One. It’s a huge task and we’re currently working our butts off to make sure we deliver the best ClusterPuck experience on consoles.”
–Nick Madonna, Founder of The PHL Collective

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Night Owls: We Joined Meetup.com

Despite the fact that Walnut St. Labs has spent the last year growing our community base through organic means, including our own ambitious social media campaigns and by word of mouth, we’ve took a leap of faith and joined the premier meetup site, meetup.com.

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Night Owls is a weekly hangout, geared towards developer collaboration and open forum networking for entrepreneurs of all sorts. Its an opportunity to expand our community based by reaching out to people who’ve always been interest in visiting us, but haven’t yet attended a Startup Meetup.

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Needless to say, Meetup.com brought out a variety of people interested in the space, startups and a fun place to network and collaborate.

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We were also blessed with the attendance of some new developers who live locally, but don’t frequent our social media channels.

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It was a refreshing to introduce this influx of new Night Owls to the passionate people that champion our space and call this place home on Wednesday Nights.

Office Hours Demo

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Henry Ventura is Technical Operations Manager at Walnut St Labs and created Office Hours new scheduling platform. Henry has added a variety of functionalities that competing products have failed to do. In addition to working at Walnut St. Labs, Henry teaches a programming course at UArts in Philadelphia.

What was the problem you faced?

“We had Office Hours set up as a service to help aspiring entrepreneurs and businesses to grow, but the scheduling software we used to facilitate our advisement sessions. The previous scheduling software was not scalable beyond one location, advisors weren’t capable of editing their own profiles and their service team was unresponsive, in California. It essentially didn’t fit our need, so we decided to make our own.”
–Henry Ventura, Technical Operations at WSL

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How does Office Hours’ web app solve the problem?

“We build up our own product that was geared specifically towards our need. Our product is now scalable to accommodate multiple locations, our advisors can now edit their own profiles and alter their availability at anytime. We can now group our advisors via their ares of expertise.”
–Henry Ventura, Technical Operations at WSL

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What’s next for Office Hours?

“We’re in the process of adding more advisors, sharing it with other spaces that are interested integrating our product, drawing up our press release and planning our full launch. We want Office Hours to be huge, so we’re trying to appeal to others communities who are interested in offering Office Hours.”
–Henry Ventura, Technical Operations at WSL

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ABOUT OFFICE HOURS
Office Hours is a joint project between Walnut St. Labs and the Ideas x Innovation Network that offers innovators the opportunity to gain expert advice from industry and domain experts from Chester County and Southeastern PA.

It’s a joint effort between Walnut St. Labs and Ideas x Innovation Network (i2n) to ignite innovation in Chester County and Southeastern Pennsylvania. Office Hours connects innovators with Innovation Advisors for face-to-face networking and advisement. Innovation Advisors are curated “Pros” from the region who have expertise in a domain or domains. Office Hours makes it easy for innovators to access the rich knowledge base in this region.