Exhilarator Founder, Michael Goldstein on: Beating The Startup Odds

Michael Goldstein, Exhilirator, DC Tech,DC startups

(photo: bizjournals.com)

Michael Goldstein is the founder ofExhilarator, a startup accelerator that helps consumer Internet startups get traction and funding. He is a serial entrepreneur with 15 years of experience focused on e-commerce, online content, and subscription businesses. Michael’s passion is for growing startups, and he has been involved with multiple startup businesses as an advisor and mentor

The old formula for startup success is out. Instead of the traditional plan-pitch-present-sell method, successful startups increasingly use a more straightforward sink-or-swim approach. These entrepreneurs jump in right away with their ideas to test them with customers.

Many entrepreneurs take a more conservative approach to building their startups, believing an extensive business plan increases their chance of success. They develop a business plan and look for financing. Once their plan has been vetted by investors, they put together a team, introduce a product, and only then begin selling their product.

A business plan created without any real data or feedback from customers is ineffective. Moreover, this approach can take months or even years to go from idea to product. Meanwhile, technology races ahead.

The best path a startup can take is creating value for its customers as quickly as possible. Once you’ve developed a minimum viable product, you can use feedback to determine your startup’s business plan. A startup needs powerful internal motivation to get moving before external momentum kicks in.

Building a Lean Approach

Here are a few ways to increase your chance of survival in the startup world:

1. Create value. Prioritize value first, then revenue. Increasing the worth of services or products means creating something your customers need and want. People will appreciate you offering something truly valuable to them — and they’ll invest in it.

2. Get to revenue. Revenue follows value. Building revenue buys you time to come up with a good business model. The success of your startup depends on making money from your idea. Use your startup’s first steps to take your product to your customers.

3. Stay slim. Keep your startup’s business as lean as possible. It’s important to stay focused on a few high-value products, rather than many lower-value ones. We use leanlaunchlab.com, an online canvas with tools and advice for startups.

4. Find expert help. Good mentors significantly reduce the learning curve for startups. Mitigate risk by seeking guidance from more experienced entrepreneurs. Now, more than ever, experienced, successful people are willing to share their knowledge. Seek out a referral from someone you trust or leverage online resources to make connections.

5. Pay attention to details. Taxes, insurance, and compliance issues can quickly sink a business if they’re ignored. Be sure your startup has a business license, pays appropriate taxes, and buys adequate insurance coverage. These seemingly small issues can become costly if left unaddressed.

Breathing Life into a Struggling Startup

If you’ve already taken the business plan approach and are experiencing problems, don’t be discouraged. You’re never too far along to be unable to stop and take stock of your options. A great idea may need to be reworked, tweaked, or improved. If you find yourself in a rut, here are some ideas to get your startup back on track:

Regroup. Plan an offsite meeting with your team. Getting out of the office to focus on the bumps will invigorate your business and get new ideas flowing.

Ask your customers. Your product, delivery, or brand may need a readjustment. Survey target or current buyers to find out what they want and how you can improve. Sites like surveymonkey.com make this task easy and inexpensive.

Seek outside advice. Find an advisor. A more experienced entrepreneur or mentor will seek guidance to get things back on track.

Value, Revenue, Growth

The chances of success for any startup are slim. Research by Harvard Business School academics found recently that 75 percent of all new startups fail.

Those entrepreneurs who take the typical business plan approach may not be ready to jump in all the way. Entrepreneurs who work from a lean startup plan to create momentum have a higher likelihood of survival because their flexibility allows them to meet the ever-changing needs of their customers.

Not everyone is meant to be an entrepreneur. If you find yourself among those brave people who are passionate about an idea and can tolerate the rollercoaster of risk, be sure you’re keeping your priorities in order: value, revenue, and growth.

Michael Goldstein is the founder of Exhilarator, a startup accelerator that helps consumer Internet startups get traction and funding. He is a serial entrepreneur with 15 years of experience focused on e-commerce, online content, and subscription businesses. Michael’s passion is for growing startups, and he has been involved with multiple startup businesses as an advisor and mentor. Connect with Michael onTwitter andGoogle+. Because this article was published, one book will be donated to Reading Is Fundamental.

DC startup Speek, the easiest way to conference, comes out of beta.

Is The Gender Gap In Women Funded Startups Closing?

We talk about women entrepreneurs and startup founders a lot here at nibletz.com The Voice Of Startups Everywhere Else. Last month at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013, Sequoia’s Aaref Hilaly said that the number one reason for such a big gender gap is that their aren’t enough women engineers.

Dave Tisch on the other hand said that women aren’t treated seriously in VC meetings, saying that this was the biggest bullshit.

Pemo Theodore the founder of Ezebis prepared the infographic below highlighting where women stand in the startup space.. Some of it is still very disturbing.

For instance, their infographic below says that 41.1% of women founders relied on outsider debt to start a business. The data also says that 21% of women entrepreneurs sought angel capital in 2009 and of those only 9.4% were successful. Also in 2009 only 11% of companies that received venture backing, had a female CEO or founder. Perhaps one of the most disturbing thing AlleyWatch found was that only 3% of all people accepted (total) in all of the Y Combinator classes, have been women.

The good news is that since he 1997 census women owned businesses have gone up 50%. In 2011 8.1 million businesses led by women have generated nearly $13 trillion dollars in revenue.

Check out the infographic below:

This accelerator in Memphis Tennessee, specifically for women founders, extends application deadline through June.

New Zealand Startup Accelerator, Lightning Lab, Attracts $3 Million In Follow On Funding

Lightning Lab, the only New Zealand based startup accelerator that is part of the Global Accelerator Network, held their demo day early this month in Wellington. Now in it’s third year, Lightning Lab is a partnership between a group of private professional investors, the science and innovation arm of New Zealand’s Ministry of Business and Creative HQ a coworking and incubation hub in New Zealand.

The nine startups that participated in the 12 week program were:

Publons: a platform for crowd-sourced peer-review of academic articles, where academics build reputation for their contributions. It provides an alternative to the extremely slow, expensive, and closed status quo that hasn’t changed in 300 years.

WIP: a beautifully simple video workflow platform that lets you watch, share and comment on your work-in-progress videos, so you get better feedback faster.

KidsGoMobile: a startup developing a software service to help parents teach their children to become responsible users of their first smartphone. This tool will notify parents if their child engages in potentially risky activity on their phone and gives them tips on how to resolve it.

Teamisto: a startup changing the way sports clubs raise money by generating new streams of sponsorship revenue.

Expander: A cloud-based tracking and analytics platform that gives manufacturers a weapon to fight back against counterfeits, while connecting them to consumers and procuring valuable data in emerging markets.

Adeez: a startup that provides a specialist mobile marketing solution which enables brands and marketing agencies to improve their ROI with mobile campaigns.

LearnKO delivers online learning programs to English language organisations in Asia. We do this by harnessing the talent of Australasian tutors and delivering this via an online classroom to English language organisations.

Promoki a social media gaming platform for photo and video contests

Questo: a startup using game mechanics in real world activities to increase family engagement for organizations.

Their demo day drew 140 investors from across the country and while they haven’t said which of the nine startups received follow on funding stuff.co.nz reports that $3 million dollars in follow on funding has been committed and details will be released shortly.

“Watching Lightning Lab in action was incredible. These results are what makes it worthwhile for the companies which grow out of weeks of hard work, for the investors and mentors who support them, and for the other entrepreneurs who see it and are inspired into action, turning their own ideas into great startup companies going global from downunder.” Tui Te Hau the CEO of Creative HQ said.

You can find out more about Lightning Lab at lightninglab.co.nz

Now check out Startup America joins forces with Startup Weekend for UpGlobal

Nashville Teen, Mark Daniel, Gets Into Thiel Fellowship Must Quit College

Nashville teenager Mark Daniel, 19, is the latest recipient of the Thiel Fellowship.

The Thiel Fellowship is a program, established by PayPal founder Peter Thiel that encourages young people to quit college and work on their startup. When admitted into the program participants move to San Francisco and receive $100,000 over two years, in addition to top shelf mentoring, and working alongside like minded students. During the two year program, participants must not attend college.

It’s a pretty prestigious honor to be selected into the Thiel Fellowship program. Since the program was introduced in 2011 they’ve launched over 30 companies and raised over $34 million dollars.

“As we welcome a new class of determined young people into the Thiel Fellowship community, we also celebrate the pioneering spirit of our 2011 and 2012 fellows,” said Jonathan Cain, president of the Thiel Foundation. “Over the past two years, they have launched more than thirty companies, and raised more than $34 million in outside funding, including venture investments, company sales, revenue, grants, sponsorships, and awards. They have been hiring employees, launching products, engaging with vendors and manufacturers, and advising some of the world’s most well-known technology companies. And now they’re helping the next generation of tech researchers and entrepreneurs by mentoring future cohorts of Thiel fellows.”

Over two years, each fellow receives $100,000 from the Thiel Foundation as well as mentorship from the Foundation’s network of tech entrepreneurs, investors, scientists, thought leaders, futurists, and innovators. Projects pursued by the 2013 class of fellows span numerous cutting-edge science and technology fields, including robotics, computer science, telecommunications, education, photonics, game development, cyberdefense, biotechnology, health I.T., law, neuroscience, fashion, and personal manufacturing.

Jim O’Neill, partner at Mithril Capital Management and fellowship co-founder, said, “Pessimists are correct that we still live in a world of scarcity and suffering. And optimists are correct that better science and technology can relieve these problems immensely. But contrary to both sides, nothing is inevitable. The young men and women Peter has appointed are committed to improving the quality of life for countless people through skillful execution of new ideas, and I am confident they will succeed.”

Daniel joins 19 other students his age who he will work alongside during the program. Daniel’s starutp, StatusHawk is a web based application that compiles and formats workplace status reports into one easy to read format.

This isn’t Daniel’s first startup. StatusHawk is an offspring of his first startup, GoalHawk, which was a social crowdsourcing platform that he cofounded with Sumukh Sridhara a California developer in 2011.

Daniel is looking forward to focusing on StatusHawk, which he says is more valuable than the actual money. The company has a dozen companies lined up to begin beta testing the product, report the Tennessean.

“As we see more and more people using mobile in their daily work, it’ll be a natural progression,” Daniel said. “I think we’ll be in a very strong position in two years. I believe we can be a $100 million company.”

Now read this: It takes a village or a startup community to build an entrepreneur center.

Memphis Seed Hatchery Investor Day Draws Global Audience

On Thursday in a swank movie theater in Memphis’ revitalized midtown district, six startups presented their companies to a theater that was literally, standing room only by the beginning of the pitches.

BetterFed (farm to consumer), MentorMe (e-harmony for mentors), Soundstache (a fan engagement platform for bands), Boosterville (a huge disruption in fundraising), Musistic (Github for musicians) and ScrewPulp (a better way to self publish), took the stage for 12 minute investor pitches after concluding the three month Seed Hatchery accelerator program.

Investors and spectators from Mississippi, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee and as far away as Singapore and Silicon Valley were in attendance to take in the pitches.

Mara Lewis, a San Francisco based entrepreneur and founder of stopped.at, was in attendance for the Seed Hatchery festivities which included an after party at the world famous Memphis BBQ competition. Lewis, who’s pitched in front of plenty of crowds said that this group at Seed Hatchery was one of the best groups she’s seen. Lewis is currently working with Start Co’s co-President’s Andre Fowlkes and Eric Mathews on their upcoming Upstart women’s startup accelerator.

After playing host to a group of Memphis entrepreneurs (including myself) in Silicon Valley in March, Kuji Chahal of Fisher Investments made the cross country trek to hear the pitches from the Seed Hatchery cohort. Chahal stuck around throughout the festivities to talk with all of the new entrepreneurs.

Andre Mouton, an investor from Singapore has been ecstatic about Memphis’ entrepreneurship. He made a trip to Memphis in February which included visits to Launch Memphis, Bioworks and everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference. Mouton took meetings with entrepreneurs all weekend long at the BBQ Festival and over at the Peabody Hotel. Mouton told us that he was impressed at how hard everyone was working in Memphis, that my friend is the Grit N Grind.

Vic Gatto, a Managing Partner at Solidus, the investment firm that seeds the Seed Hatchery class along with Jump Start Foundry in Nashville, made it a point to call out investors in the room with a call to action to talk with the entrepreneurs, and see that all six businesses have a good chance of survival. Gatto’s partner Townes Duncan, along with his son Walker Duncan, co-founder and Editor in Chief at southernalpha also made it down from Nashville. The younger Duncan was returning from an event in Atlanta. Obviously the Grit N Grind of Memphis is expanding state wide.

Both Fowlkes and Mathews were quick to point out that Investor Day isn’t the conclusion of the Seed Hatchery program but rather the beginning. They recently added Rhodes graduate, Hillary Quirk, to the Start Co team as Community Manager. In her new role Quirk is forming an alumni association for Memphis’ accelerators which include the two cohorts at ZeroTo510.

You can find out more at neverstop.co and at their old site launchyourcity.com

See all the pitch videos from Seed Hatchery’s investor day here at nibletz.com The Voice Of Startups Everywhere Else.

Animate Your Life With Techstars Cloud Alum Skit [video]

Boston Startup Skit is a mobile app that lets you take your photos, and drawings and easily turn them into an animated story. The user doesn’t need to know a thing about animation. The app itself is all gesture based and easy for anyone with a little bit of mobile experience.

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.

Memphis’ Bad Ass Startup Chick Brittany Fitzpatrick Pitches MentorMe

The day of reckoning is upon us and it appears that Bad Ass Startup Chick Brittany Fitzpatrick’s nerves have calmed a bit. After working tirelessly on a startup she originally pitched at the women’s 48 hour launch in Decemeber, Fitzpatrick is ready to show the world her answer to many of mentoring’s problems.

Community service and helping people have been what Brittany Fitzpatrick’s life’s work have been about. But what makes this Memphian even more amazing is that she left a position with one of the most prestigious, well known brands in the non-profit space, Ronald McDonald House Charities, to start something of her own, again in community service.

As the communications coordinator for Ronald McDonald House Charities of Memphis, Brittany took the passion and drive she’s had since high school and through college at Howard University and Memphis University, and combined it with the tools available in recent day to double the groups social media reach. Ronald McDonald House Charities of Memphis works with the most well known children’s research facility in the world, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

Over the last six years, Brittany has been a mentor and helped other mentor’s in a variety of programs. Through her work with Ronald McDonald House Charities and other stops along the way, she found that mentorship was a great thing, but flawed in many ways.

When she first pitched the idea for her startup “Mentor Me” back in December at a women focused 48 Hour Launch, she revealed that most mentor orgranizations spend more money re-placing mentors and mentees than they do setting up original pairs. Brittanny quickly realized if someone could fix the initial matching proces than these programs could focus on their original goals and save a lot of money.

That’s where her startup Mentor Me comes in. Mentor Me is a mentor and mentee online matching service that uses a variety of information given from both parties and an algorithm to make more successful matches. While Brittany is hesitant about using the verbage “e-harmony for mentor”, at the core that’s what it is and that’s why it’s going to be so successful.

But the biggest factor in the success of Mentor Me is going to be a combination of the technology and the founder. Brittany is a dynamic young woman. Back in December, the prize for the 48 Hour Launch competition was a startup village booth at everywherelse.co. When Brittany came in second place she decided to crowdfund the people in the audience so that she too could have a booth for her startup. Within minutes her mission was successful.

After working for three months in the Seed Hatchery startup accelerator, Fitzpatrick unveiled MentorMe to the public at large Thursday in Memphis. Check out her pitch below:

Find out more about Mentor me here at getmentorme.com

2 Memphis Tech & Startup Ninjas Turn Farmer With BetterFed [SeedHatchery]

The story about how Scott Finney and his scientific outsourcing startup, IncreaseIf, pivoted to become BetterFed is a story that wouldn’t even fit here on the pages of nibletz. It’s actually a classic story of believing in the founder though and that’s what the team that vetted Seed Hatchery startups did. (disclosure I was on that team).

We knew that Scott Finney had a very well versed background in engineering. A graduate of Auburn University, and a regular attendee of the local Startup Meetup, Finney has had a slew of great ideas. IncreaseIf may not have been one of those, but his passion and technical expertise would drive him to his ultimate destiny which is BetterFed.

BetterFed is a startup that bridges farmers and local growers with people too busy to get to the farmers market but still want the freshness, benefits and healthy alternatives that come from real home grown food. To get from IncreaseIf to BetterFed, took a lot of pivoting, until Finney just blew everything up and solicited the help of Seed Hatchery alum Kenn Gibbs. Gibbs had taken his own edutainment startup, Knoco, through last year’s Seed Hatchery program.

At first Gibbs wasn’t sure if he would join Finney on the BetterFed journey. He was already knee deep in mentoring and offering technical advice to the other cohort teams. However without much poking and proding, Gibbs came around and now both young men are so into BetterFed that they created Twitter handles FarmerFinn and FarmerKenn. They’ve also been talking about opening up their own farm and becoming growersthemselves.

We got a chance to talk to Finney just before he went onstage here’s what he said:

What’s your startup, what do you do?

BetterFed connects customers to local food sources. We provide weekly food subscriptions that best fit your families eating habits.

Why did you apply to Seed Hatchery?

I was looking to get my MBA sometime soon. Speaking with some of the alum, I heard the benefits of Seed Hatchery outweighing a classroom experience.

What were you expecting?
I was expecting to be a technical co-founder for a team and ended up being a lone founder for the first month of the cohort.

Did you get what you were expecting?

Yes, I knew I was going to be forced out of my comfort zone, but didn’t know how much until now.

What was your big “A Ha Moment”?

The importance of taking action and realizing you can plan and assume all you want, but you won’t learn anything until you take action.

What are two big things you learned during the Accelerator Process?

Get a product out to your customers as soon as you can, and tell everyone about what you’re working on because you never know who can make an introduction to a valuable relationship.

What’s one thing you learned about yourself during the accelerator process?

The program required me to use skill sets I did not believe I had. In the past I would have let others handle sales and marketing, but I’m completely involved in those avenues.

What are you hoping for after Investor day?

We’re looking to continue our customer discovery to validate all that we’ve learned in the past couple weeks.

Tell us one of your mentors and what you learned from him or her?

Sarah Baker is a PR and communication expert and she’s helped us focus our message to our target audience.

And now check out their pitch video.

Find out more at BetterFed.co

We’ve got more Seed Hatchery startup stories for you here.

The Big Day Is Here For Memphis Startup ScrewPulp

Last week we were pleased to bring you the story of ScrewPulp’s launch. The new self publishing platform is helping authors and publishers with much needed traction and engagement through a different model.

Publishers/authors sign up for ScrewPulp which helps them market their books by giving away the first 25 copies in exchange for a social media mention, review or rating. From there, as books gain popularity they increase in price by $1.00 per level. This format gives authors/publishers, much needed exposure and the benefit of having ratings and reviews built in to their profile.

Publishers hold all the rights to their books. ScrewPulp takes a small percentage and leaves the author/publisher with no less than 75%. They only ask that submitted works stay on the site for 90 days.

Screw Pulp founder Richard Billings launched the startup at 48 Hour Launch in June of last year. From there he went on to take the top prize at Launch Memphis’ Global Entrepreneurship Week event, which included pitching in front of Federal Court Judge, John Fowlkes. The Seed Hatchery accelerator was the next natural step for the team.

We’ve chronicled the life of ScrewPulp from that very first pitch in June, consequently the same 48 Hour Launch event that attracted Nibletz to Memphis, through demo day. Check out more Screwpulp coverage here and watch Billings’ pitch video here:

Check out more of our Seed Hatchery coverage here.

Musistic Debuts At Seed Hatchery Demo Day, Finally A GitHub For Musicians

What do you get when you cross two musicians and two recording studio employees in Memphis one of the earliest cities in the world with a globally musical pulse? Musistic.

The Musistic team is made up of Justin Olita, Vince Rogers, Brian Wentzloff and Rachel Hurley (who joined them after leaving the soundstache team). The four of them together are pioneering a new collaborative music platform that allows musicians to collaborate in a meaningful way, similar to how programmers collaborate on GitHub.

Users can find others to collaborate on a song or album together via the Musistic platform. From there each musician can post their parts and tracks for the others to “pull down” and record on top of. The best part is that the Musistic platform is DAW friendly across many types of popular software.

Gone are the days when musicians need to upload enormous email attachments or figure out which drop box, box.net or other cloud account has enough space for their project.

Using Musistic they can easily find the parts they need, re-record, edit and get them back up for the collaborators to continue working on. This isa welcomed tool in the music community and it’s made from a team that is rich in their musical background.

To date they’ve secured a creative capital investment from Loaded For Bear equal to $100,000 per year for five years. They are also working on strategic partnerships with the Memphis Music Foundation and the Folk Alliance International. It also helps that Hurley, who leads marketing and business development, has deep relationships with hundreds of Memphis musicians.

To get a better idea of what Musistic is and where it’s going, check out the pitch video below.

You can find out more at musistic.com

We’ve got more Seed Hatchery coverage here.

Star & Micey’s Nick Redmond Pitches Soundstache At Seed Hatchery Investor Day

Memphians, and for that matter a lot of folks in Tennessee are familiar with the name Nick Redmond. Nick is the frontman for the very popular indie band, Star & Micey. It was through touring, singing, performing and engaging with fans that Redmond had this great idea for a startup and Soundstache was born.

Through fellow Memphian Rachel Hurley who is knee deep in the Memphis music scene through working with the Poplar Lounge and other Memphis music spots, and through being active in the Memphis startup community, Redmond got the opportunity to apply for Seed Hatchery.

Hurley says that it was actually at famous movie director and local Memphian, Craig Brewer’s birthday party where Redmond pitched the idea for an interactive app that worked both online and off line and connected fans to musicians. Soundstache is a geo-caching app/game that allows fans to search for “staches” that bands put out for them to find. They could be in plain sight or maybe tucked under a tree, in a set of stairs or attached to a sign post.

Bands plant staches for fans to find and the app directs them to it.

Never afraid a challenge, just days into the Seed Hatchery program Redmond decided to try SoundStache out at one of the biggest playgrounds in the music world, SXSW and there it was met a ton of positivity. Fans loved the exclusive nature of the prizes they were winning. Speaking of which, bands can give away whatever they want, a used drum stick, concert tickets, cd’s, demos whatever.

Most people know that indie music fans, real indie music fans not fake ass hipsters, go all in on their favorite bands and support them anyway they can. Soundstache gets them off the couch and out from behind the macbook, onto the street looking for “staches”.

In between his hard touring schedule Redmond just went through the Seed Hatchery accelerator program. Here’s their investor day pitch video.

Here are more SeedHatchery stories at nibletz.com The Voice Of Startups Everywhere Else.

Launch Your City Takes A Dose Of Their Own Medicine, Unveils Startco

Eric Mathews, Founder and co-President of Memphis-based Launch Your City, is no stranger to entrepreneurship. His family owns a very successful steel door business based in Little Rock, Arkansas. But rather than falling into the security of the family-run business, Mathews,a chemistry student at the time, wanted to be his own entrepreneur. Better than that, he saw, through entrepreneurship, ways to give back to the community, becoming a “social entrepreneur” of sorts before it was the cool hipster thing to do.

In his early 20’s, Mathews became the assistant director at the Fedex Institute of Technology, an academic and tech initiative at the University of Memphis.That wasn’t enough, though. Mathews wanted to help launch companies and startups in Memphis without a tie in to the University. He wanted anyone with a good idea to be able to benefit from an entrepreneurship program. So in 2006 he took the plunge and started the organization that became Launch Your City.

“Iteration trumps perfection,” an “Eric-ism” oft-repeated in Memphis’ startup circles, is a motto that Mathews practices as well as preaches. Launch Your City has seen a slew of iteration over the past 7 years and continues to evolve today.

While choosing a name that would easily transition to startup communities and ecosystems in any city, Mathews honed it in to Memphis by officially launching LaunchMemphis, a division of LaunchYour City, in 2008.

Over the next few years, Andre Fowlkes grew tired of the investment banking and private equity landscape on both coasts and started looking for opportunities to return home. In late 2010 the native Memphian and son of Federal Court Judge John Fowlkes gave up the private equity and investment career and the salary that went with it. After meeting Mathews he realized that Launch Your City is where he wanted to be.

Those who know them know that Mathews is very analytical, quiet, and a little introverted. Fowlkes on the other hand is very outgoing, a relationship builder and connector. With his outgoing personality and business acumen, Fowlkes was the perfect complement for Mathews. In 2011 they became co-presidents of the organization that now oversees Launch Memphis, Seed Hatchery, Upstart, Memphis Venture Mentors, and Wolf River Angels.

With their plates filling up fast and so many different names to keep track of, Fowlkes and Mathews went to work with local agency and huge startup supporter archer>malmo* on re-branding. What began as a project to subtly adjust their branding and message came together as a whole new brand that’s more reflective of the future for the organization.

Today, as Fowlkes kicked off the Seed Hatchery 2013 Investor Day, they revealed the new branding for the organization as Start Co.

The new name and branding fit the overall goals much better, putting everything together in one easy to remember and understand brand. The three lines of effort for the organization remain in tact.

–Educating talented founders

–Accelerating their businesses

–Building the ecosystem of support resources around the entrepreneurs

With the new Start Co branding, their vertical efforts that support accelerators, mentors, raising capital, and supporting the startup community will be better served.

During the transition you can find out more at neverstop.co

*disclosure, archer>malmo holds an equity interest in Nibletz through their a>m ventures arm.

Indiana Couple Pitches Their Startup, Boosterville, At Seed Hatchery Demo Day

Attracting great talent to an accelerator that doesn’t have the name Techstars or YCombinator in it can be a difficult task. Attracting great talent that’s already had success in the startup space can be even more daunting. That’s what happened in the case of Indiana startup Boosterville.

I actually met Pam Cooper the CEO and co-founder of Boosterville, while it was still called Sodbuster, on Brad Feld’s Hacker News alternative site, the startup hub. Pam and I quickly became friends. It was then I learned that she was a little more “seasoned” than other founders, having started a very successful small business in Indiana. Her quick wit and thought provoking questions made it easy to interact with her on an online platform.

Pam decided that despite a failed attempt at Indianapolis startup conference “Powder Keg” her and her co-founder/CTO husband, Tom Cooper, would make the trek to Memphis for everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference. At the same time we were accepting applications for Seed Hatchery and I quickly introduced her to the organizations leader, Eric Mathews, and they got in.

We learned through the vetting process that Tom was actually the founding CTO of question and answer site Cha-Cha. He also has a long resume of engineering work at several successful startups and companies. The Cooper’s have done well. They’ve got kids in college, a rather large home in Indiana, oh and Tom has his own plane as well. So why come all the way to Memphis for an accelerator?Great question, the answer: For the accelerator.

From day one both Pam and Tom dove head first into the curriculum, learning, sharing and development that is offered through the Seed Hatchery program. They took criticism like the best of them, often times from leaders and mentors that didn’t have even a fraction of the startup experience that Tom had. Both Cooper’s have said over and over again how much they’ve learned here in Memphis.

“I really didn’t know what to expect, so we went for it and Seed Hatchery was the best thing we’ve done for our company” Tom told us in an interview.

During the accelerator the coopers went through a name change, a huge pivot and even worked hand in hand with MBA students for discovery, and to help refine their product.

Boosterville combines digital wallet with loyalty and rewards and all for the benefit of schools and non profits. Using Dwolla, another midwest startup, as their mobile wallet conduit, users sign up for a school they want to donate to. From there they can see a list of merchants in their community that use the Boosterville platform. When they make a purchase at one of the establishments in the program, they check out using their phone, the merchant gets paid, the school gets a donation and Boosterville takes a small cut.

“Putting children who are now grown, through school I’ve seen my share of wrapping paper and World’s Finest Chocolate Bars”, Pam loves to tell anyone who will listen. Of course we all agree.

The company is a great mesh of Pam’s community minded nature and business savvy, with Tom’s over three decades of programming experience.

What’s next for Boosterville, well while Tom has an open invitation to return full time to his engineering job in Indiana, they are going to continue to raise money and bring Boosterville to live.

Check out their investor day pitch video below:

Find out more about Boosterville here at boosterville.com

We’ve got more Seed Hatchery coverage here.

Techstars Opens In Austin, Mashing The Best Of Texas’ Startup World

Some may be surprised to find out that Techstars has no “official” presence in Austin. What??? That’s right, even though they throw one of the best parties at SXSW and you can find most of the Techstars team roaming about during the festival they’ve had no real presence.

Until now.

Techstars announced via their blog that they are going to take up residency in the already epically awesome Capital Factory (home to DreamIt Austin as well), and begin an official Techstars cohort in August.

That’s not all though. They are bringing over TechStars Cloud Director, Jason Seats, from San Antonio to run the program. Seats sold his company Slicehost to Rackspace and has since been involved with Techstars. He’s also part of the StartupGrind program. Having a Techstars class in an environment like Capital Factory gives the young startups a huge advantage. Austinpreneurs are always hanging out at Capital Factory, in addition to the huge mentor network Techstars already has to offer.

David Cohen announced the new Techstars program this morning and also opened up the application process.

“Forbes and Bloomberg have been calling Austin the No. 1Boomtown and the best place for your startup for years now, and Google recently chose it as the second city to receive the fastest Internet on the planet. TechStars exists to put the best mentors and the best entrepreneurs together in the best startup communities so Austin is a natural next stop for us. We will run our first program starting this August and applications are open as of today!” Cohen said in the blog post.

Here’s the application for Techstars Austin

Speaking of Austin here’s over 40 startup stories from SXSW 2013.