SYRACUSE — A business launched over the summer in the Syracuse Student Sandbox is running a crowd-funding campaign to raise startup funds. Two Syracuse University students, Dee Cater and Heather Rinder, founded Scrapsule and worked on the idea during this year’s sandbox program. Both have graduated, but are staying in Syracuse to keep working on […]
SYRACUSE — A business launched over the summer in the Syracuse Student Sandbox is running a crowd-funding campaign to raise startup funds.
Two Syracuse University students, Dee Cater and Heather Rinder, founded Scrapsule and worked on the idea during this year’s sandbox program. Both have graduated, but are staying in Syracuse to keep working on the company.
Scrapsule is a Web-based tool that pulls photos, videos, and status updates from a user’s social-media feeds and organizes them into a virtual, online scrapbook. The idea is to fund the business with micro-transactions, Rinder says.
The site itself will be free, but users would pay small fees to add personal touches to their online scrapbooks, Rinder says. Personalization could include different font choices, backgrounds, templates, and photo- cropping options.
Cater and Rinder are running their funding campaign at http://www.indiegogo.com/scrapsulecampaign. Indiegogo will allow the pair to access their funds regardless of whether they reach their $5,000 goal, Rinder says.
She and Cater plan to use the money for entrance fees to business competitions and to improve the site. At the moment, they’re funding the company with their own money.
They’ve contracted with developers at Bear Fountain Design of Geneseo to build a prototype of the Scrapsule site. It’s a basic first take, Rinder says.
“There really is a lot left to do,” she adds.
Cater is handling design work for the site, but says she and Rinder don’t have the technical expertise to build it. They’re hoping to add technical staff in the near future so they can add more features to the prototype.
Some of the money from the Indiegogo campaign may go toward hiring as well.
Cater, Scrapsule CEO, came up with the idea. She says she collects plenty of material to make scrapbooks, but never has time to organize it and put it all together.
She started looking for an online service that could help.
“There was nothing,” she says.
Cater brought the idea to Rinder, Scrapsule’s chief operating officer, who says she has been scrapbooking for years. She liked the concept of an online scrapbooking tool immediately.
Rinder says she spent a week last summer pulling photos together for a printable photo book after an internship. A product like Scrapsule would have been a big help, she adds.
The site pulls content from users’ social networks based on keyword searches and organizes the results by topic.
People have been asking when the service will be available, Cater says.
“I need it,” she says. “I know other people need it.”
Cater and Rinder are planning to launch the site by the end of the year.
Scrapsule was one of 34 teams to participate in the Sandbox program this year. The initiative began in 2009 with five teams.
Housed in the Tech Garden in downtown Syracuse, its goal is to help students from area colleges develop and accelerate their business ideas.
Scrapsule was also one of 15 Sandbox teams that presented their ideas at the program’s annual Demo Day on Aug. 15. Craftistas, a subscription service that delivers do-it-yourself fashion kits based on current trends, won the Demo Day pitch contest.
Contact Tampone at ktampone@cnybj.com
