#startuphouse

Last Thursday, April 13, we had the chance to host an event in collaboration with ItaliaGeeks at StartupHouse. The theme of the day was “What California High-Speed Rail Can Learn from Europe” by Luca Giaramidaro.

Here is an overview of our speaker’s background & his insight on Californian High-Speed Rail.

Luca Giaramidaro left Italia after he obtained his Doctorate degree in Sustainable Design from “la Spienza” University of Rome. His American career started by a job at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) where he’s been working on large scale mixed use urban projects in Asia.

After this experience, Luca joined Perkins+Will, a global architecture and design company, where he executes aviation, transit, corporate, commercial, civic, healthcare, higher education, science and technology, and sports and recreation projects within the US and internationally.

This talented and visionary architect, urban designer and planner, is currently leading the design of the station site layout, accessibility, and connectivity for the California High-Speed Rail.

With the new administration promising huge investments in the infrastructure and California investing in the $64 billion plan for the High-Speed Rail,

Luca visited European’s best rail stations to study what he can take from them as an inspiration to create the perfect Californian Rail Station. His conclusion and vision are that the success of European’s best station is due, not only from the quality and services of the High-Speed Rails, but also from the over-all experience in those stations which make them a destination to visit, a spot to see, gather and enjoy for locals and visitors. This is the vision Californian High-Speed Rail needs to absorb from Europe. The life around their subway lines, surrounded by shops, cafés, restaurants, live music & art shows where the users are kept entertained.

This is where Luca’s expertise comes into play. He’s currently designing the Californian High-Speed Rail Stations that will provide the European subway lifestyle and experience.

Litterati: The Trashy Movement

In 2008, Pixar introduced the world to Wall-E, the adorable trash collecting robot. The film was just one of the media outlets that drew the public's’ attention to the consequences of not taking care of the planet and allowing trash to accumulate. The film depicted a horrifying prediction of what the future would look like, with mountains of trash looming far into to the distance.

However, that depiction is not our future. That is what the world already looks like today.

Everywhere we walk, trash litters the corners of our peripheral vision. It’s on sidewalks, crinkled in gutters, tangled in wired fences. It has become such a pervasive element of our daily lives, that we have stopped noticing it, as if we were wearing futuristic glasses that automatically erase anything that is unpleasant to look at.

“The size of the problem; it's massive. From the top of Mt. Everest to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, you'll find litter just about everywhere you look,” states Jeff Kirschner, founder and creator of Litterati. 

Our eyes glance over rusting cans of red bull on the beach, and within the following 20 to 30 seconds, our brain decides this information isn’t relevant and discards it without leaving any trace of it in our memory. How is anything supposed to change if we don’t even remember there is a problem?

Litterati is an organization that is reopening the publics’ eyes to litter in a useful, informative, and interactive way. Built on top of Instagram, users take photos of pieces of litter they see in their daily lives, hashtag Litterati, and then appropriately discard the item. The photographs are not only an artistic reminder to the public about litter, but are a measurable and tangible evidence of the impact each individual can have by just picking up one piece of trash a day.

“I don’t know of any other way to tackle a big problem, other than just breaking it down into bits and taking it one piece at a time,” explains Kirschner.

With each piece of trash picked up and photographed, a plethora of useful information is gathered. Each image provides data about trash location, the time period in which it was picked up, the type of trash it is, and if it is from a particular brand. With this, waste is transformed into data that can enable people to manage the amounts of litter. Cities can even build their own litter profiles to see which particular parts of the city have a greater issue with litter. The applications of this kind of information are countless! For example, a city can find solutions for areas that generate a large amount of litter by simply acquiring a few well-placed trash and recycling bins on a particular street corner. San Francisco and San Jose have already started to get involved with Litterati to look into ways to improve their cities elimination of litter. Below is just a fraction of how much litter has already been documented in downtown San Francisco.

The information provided by Litterati will be the tools used to find the solutions to clean the earth not just by individual efforts, but with organized and collaborated work. And it’s not a problem that will be solved overnight. Cleaning the earth and eliminating litter will take generations and requires a commitment to be active.

“If Litterati is to truly create transformative change and have a global impact, we hope it's with our children, teaching them how to be effective stewards of our planet”, remarks Kirschner.

As Kirschner hoped, today’s younger generation is already actively involved. Multiple schools around the country, including Modesto’s very own Fremont Open Plan Elementary School, have opened their doors to Litterati. The students at Modesto used the application, and over just a few months, found that the most common piece of litter in their school came from individual straw packaging. They brought this information to the attention to the school board, and successfully convinced them to install a straw dispensary to prevent littering. 

It seems fitting that this movement that Kirschner hopes will most motivate today's’ youth, was originally inspired by his very own daughter. While hiking in the Oakland hills, the four-year-old girl pointed to a plastic tub of cat litter that someone had tossed into the creek. “Daddy, that doesn’t go there,” she said. That, according to Kirschner, was “the eye-opening moment which became the inspiration for Litterati”.

Litterati has already made great strides in the community. In addition to collaborating with numerous environmental organizations such as NOAA, Monterey Bay Aquarium, and Keep America Beautiful, Litterati has had particularly beautiful photographs displayed in multiple art exhibits around the bay area. Recently, Litterati was the winner of July’s Startup House Battlefield, where Kirschner’s story and ideas amazed all five of the experienced judges.

Litterati isn’t just a cool photo app, it’s a movement. After taking a few pictures of litter, suddenly a lot more pieces of trash come into focus. What your brain used to discard within 30 seconds, is now registered as an opportunity; not to just take a photo, but to make a difference. With each photo, Litterati is transforming the waste around us into data to induce new methods of trash and litter management and enacting responsible policies. Through these channels, individual and organized efforts alike, Litterati is going to clean the world; one piece at a time.

In an age where technology has redefined the way we consider almost every aspect of our lives, the restaurant industry has remained stagnant in some aspects. The way we order food in restaurants and food trucks still involves a lot of waiting, whether that be for the waiter or in line. In many cases, waiting to order the food can be even more time consuming than waiting for the actual food. And although in the Bay Area it has become the hallmark of each notable restaurant, with wheels or without, to have a line or waiting list, time is still very precious to many residents.  

To fill this void, founders Jutta Weigh, McCall Vollum, and Nathaniel Ryckman created Appthetable; an app that lets you browse the menu, order and pay without the wait.

“The US restaurant industry is a 700 billion dollar market- but it’s shocking how inefficient it still is”, states Vollum, COO of Appthetable. “We saw the potential to bring in new ideas and technology to help solve these inefficiencies”.

When within the vicinity of a particular food-truck or cafe, instead of waiting in line to place in your order, individuals can visit the app, browse the various food options and pay for them instantly. The order is then sent immediately to the kitchen, and all that is left to do is wait for the kitchen to call your name. It is the perfect application to use if there is a line longer than six people, and ideal in events such as concerts on Treasure Island, where the food-truck lines can be up to an hour long.

The food-trucks participating in pilot trials were very excited. “It helps us get more orders out and push products”, explains William Lee from the Wanna-E food-truck.

These restaurants on wheels benefit from the app by gaining more consumers, who might otherwise be deterred from ordering based on the long line. Based on early testing by Appthetable, food-trucks can expect an estimated 20% increase in overall sales. They can also update their menus in real-time to reflect what foods they might have run out of during the course of the day, as well as promote certain items.

Currently, there are 10 food-trucks piloting with Appthetable, including Wanna-E, PeruChi, and Bacon Bacon. Three food-trucks even came to them upon hearing the idea, so the app already has traction in the market. By their launch date set for August 15th, the founders expect to have around 30 to 40 participating restaurants.

AppTheTable came to ­StartupHouse in March as part of the three month incubation program. In a man dominating startup culture, the female founders felt supported in the workspace and mentorship program. It was here that the bootstrapping Appthetable team made a lot of strides and began to pondering about the future possible applications of their project. While the Appthetable team is currently focusing on launching within the food-truck community, this app could be used within various verticals – mainly, full service and fast-casual restaurants.

“If a customer is sitting at a table, and decides she’d like another Mojito or something, she can just order and pay for it instantly, without having to wait to flag down a waiter”, elaborated Volllum. “On the other hand, if a person has to go through a lot of work just to get the waiters attention, they might just decide against it”.

Some popular chains, such as Starbucks have recently implemented an app which lets customers order and pay ahead for their coffees. However, this is a narrow platform, working only for Starbucks. Appthetable, with the whole $700B restaurant industry at its finger tips- is optimistically looking forward to launching next month and to sharing their innovative idea with the world and revolutionize the way you order and pay for food.