Have you tried out Brad Feld’s version of Hacker News?
Most everyone in the startup community is familiar with Y-Combinator’s Hacker News. If you’re not, it’s pretty simple, it’s like Reddit but rather than all news it’s just hacker news. Most of the community contributed stories involve hacking, coding, design, development and startups.
One of the problems with Hacker News, for me at least, is that I am only looking for startup news. Hacker News gets a tremendous amount of contributions every day, so it gets to be cumbersome weeding through the stories to find the startup news relevant to me.
After I track down the startup news on Hacker News I just want to get to the story and barely have time to comment, even if I want to.
Brad Feld has introduced a new site similar to Hacker News but all about startups. The site is called The Startup Revolution Hub, actually has a nicer looking UI and is easier to navigate. Best of all I don’t have to weed out general coding and dev posts to get to the startup posts.
The Startup Revolution Hub was launched earlier this month and has already amassed 250 users. It functions like Hacker News and Reddit. A user can post a story, comment a story and move a story up or down by hitting one of the arrow buttons.
Right now the contributions range from startup news stories, startup founders announcing their startups, startup events, and even how to’s that startup founders and entrepreneurs would find useful. For instance we found “How to design infographics”
Community members are also sharing their thoughts, best practices and advice in posts like “Technical Co-Founder Confessions” and “The Hardest Part of Startups: Getting Past Zero”.
If you haven’t signed up for Startup Revolution yet, you may want to. Joining a community early has it’s advantages and I’m sure it’s going to get quite popular, quickly.
We’ve covered Boulder startup Orbotix since the beginning. We began covering them at our previous Android website when we saw the Sphero ball at a Show Stoppers event during CES 2011. We also covered their Techstars pivot, which came about when working with their mentor Brad Feld, and we covered their biggest fan, President Barack Obama.
Orbotix is the startup behind the Sphero ball. Sphero is a smartphone controlled ball. The concept in itself can bring tons of fun, maneuvering the ball throughout the house, teasing the dog and cat can be hours of fun. However, Sphero isn’t just about the ball. They’ve built some great interactive apps (games) like golf. The control the user has with their Android phone or iPhone, over the ball, is world’s apart from other smartphone controlled toys.
While the company launched in 2011 after going through the TechStars program in Boulder, Chief Executive Paul Berberian feels like this distribution deal with Target is their big consumer launch.
“The name of the game in consumer electronics and gaming is getting in front of customers,” Berberian said to the Boulder County Business Report. “We feel like we’ve been out there for a long time telling our story, but most people have never seen a Sphero. This is essentially our launch.”
The Sphero ball has limited distribution in some Apple stores as well as some Brookstone stores but of course Target means they’ll reach the masses. It’s also a great time to get into a retail stores shelves as Americans prepare for the busy holiday shopping season.
Target already has a good selection of interactive smartphone accessories. Their toy section is filled with iPhone and iPad games that have a physical component like fishing, and even an Angry Birds game where you move the bird across the screen. Target’s smartphone accessories section, located within their electronics department, stocks the iCade mini arcade machine accessory as well as some of the “cooler” music accessories.
Sphero will be stocked among the smartphone app accessories section and available online at Target.com as well.
Comments Off on Brad Feld On “The Boulder Thesis” VIDEO0LikeLike 2,677
Author,founder, entrepreneur, investor and all around startup evangelist Brad Feld was on hand in Chicago on Tuesday for the Startup America regions summit. Feld is one of the founders, and Managing Director of Foundry Group and has been enamored in startup culture for over 15 years.
Feld’s latest book “Startup Communities” was published earlier this month, and in addition to speaking Startup America and 1871 hosted an official launch party for Feld’s book which included signing copies and free books for the first 40 in line.
Feld’s book serves as almost a handbook to other entrepreneurs and startup ecosystem leaders looking to build startup ecosystems in their town. Feld feels that most communities can support a startup ecosystem if they follow some basic guidelines. Boulder Colorado is one of the most well known and respected startup communities outside of Silicon Valley. Boulder didn’t grow into the startup community it is today, overnight. Feld points out that its been growing over the past 15 years and continues to grow.
Feld has been working with Startup America since it’s inception, in fact Startup America CEO Scott Case counts Feld as one of his most trusted advisors out in the field, working in the trenches with startups every day.
During his Startup America talk Feld highlighted the foundation, or framework found in his book “Startup Communities” about building startup communities.
The startup communities have to be led by entrepreneurs
These entrepreneurs have to take a very long term view (20 years)
They have to be inclusive of anyone who wants to be inclusive of the startup community in any way
You have to have activities and events that engage the entire entrepreneurial community
Feld prides himself on his genuine accessibility and is anxious to talk with entrepreneurs and startups from everywhere. He’s a top rate connector and if you’re headed to Boulder he will gladly share members of his network with you that he feels you will benefit from. He’s willing to help just about anyone, however before he helps you he often gives out tasks to do, nothing too hard, but rather questions to answer or information to find out, usually helping yourself in the process. These tasks usually separate the serious from the not so serious.
In the same spirit as his email accessibility Feld stuck around most of the day talking with the Startup America champions about just about anything. In fact we talked about startups, tennis and Australia and how they all interconnect for Feld and his family in February.
Check out the video from his talk at the Startup America summit below:
Comments Off on Interview With Techstars Boulder Startup: Birdbox One Place For All Your Photos & Video0LikeLike 2,593
A few years back I had stored all of my digital photos on the sonystyle photo sharing website. At some point in the last part of the 2000s Sony decided to shut the site down. Unfortunately, I had used an older email address when signing up for the Sony photo sharing site and missed their 20 or so warnings that the site was shutting down. My photos from that time, were gone forever.
Because of this experience I was reluctant to try any of the newer services like Flickr or even Photobucket. I stored most of my photos (and still to this day) using iPhoto. The problem with iPhoto is if you take a ton of photos the space is eaten up quickly. I love what Apple has done with Photostream but that’s only good for your 1000 most recent photos. As you import more and more photos to Photostream the older ones get pushed out.
These are some major pain points for me personally that TechStars graduate, and Boulder startup, Birdbox will solve. BirdBox is a service that aggregates all of your photos and videos from over a dozen services both local and in the cloud. Once BirdBox imports all of your photos it keeps them in “nests” for you. Birdbox claims to do all the “heavy lifting” for you and they do. What’s even better is they make it a cinch to recall a photo later based on event, hashtag or whatever other cataloging you put into it.
All these features came about after founder Ben Nunez tried to find one single photo to send to his mom on his phone. Unfortunately the photo was tucked away on an external hard drive and he had to wait. Between SD cards, USB flash drives, external hard drives, iPhoto, Picassa (Google+) and now even Flickr, it’s sometimes a pain in the ass to try and find that one photo. Birdbox will make it easy for you.
We got a chance to interview the guys from Birdbox. Check out the interview with this exciting TechStars Boulder grad below:
Comments Off on Boulder: Foundry Group Closes Third Annual $225M Fund0LikeLike 1,504
The Foundry Group, the venture capital group founded by Startup Colorado Co-Chair and Techstars Co-Founder, Brad Feld has announced that they’ve just completed raising their third annual $225M Fund.
As our friends at PE Hub are quick to point out the fanfare around the announcement was exactly the same as the previous two years. That’s perfectly fine with us though as Feld and his team are extremely busy and just about everything that he does is focused around funding, promoting and pushing entrepreneurs and Startups, and a lot of them are “everywhere else”.
For instance, Feld still serves as a mentor at TechStars and several other accelerators that are part of the Global Accelerator Network.
As far as the fund itself goes it will continue to invest in US based Startups and technology focuse companies. They prefer to invest in themes that have long term growth strategies in place rather than looking for the next Instagram. They often provide follow on funding for Techstars graduates. For example, The Foundry Group invested $5 Million in Orbotix Series B Round. Orbotix was mentored by Feld at TechStars. They created the Sphero robotic ball that even President Obama is a fan of.
Other notable investments include Cheezburger, Urban Airship, FullContact and Zynga.
In Brad Feld’s column in Business Insider this morning he talked about the Orbotix team, Adam Wilson and Ian Bernstein. They’re the two guys behind that crazy little ball we all grew to know and love at Thedroidguy offices as The Sphero. Feld was holding office hours during the 2010 Boulder TechStars program at a pivotal point for the ball. In fact, without Feld’s interaction with Wilson and Bernstein there may have never been a ball.
We first saw the Sphero Ball at Show Stoppers at CES in 2011, a year before almost everyone else saw the ball. You could control the ball with your smartphone and make it dance across the floor. It was right then and there that Russell Holly, a colleague of mine, and I, saw the true potential for the ball. Without any prompting we entered into a conversation with the founders about crazy cat toys, virtual golf, obstacle courses, virtual bowling and a slew of other things that would come to fruition in the following 18 months.
So how did it almost, not happen?
Well Bernstein and Wilson went through what feld called “Mentor Whiplash”. We’ve seen it happen at many accelerators across the country, the accelerator pivot.
From Feld’s account at SAI, Wilson and Bernstein sat down to meet with Feld and looked like whipped puppies. Their fire was gone from Feld’s previous visits with the duo.They had three slides on the table and Feld wanted to hear the ideas. Both Bernstein and WIlson were self-proclaimed robot geeks, and hackers and loved working with robotics all hours of the night.
As Feld tells it in his SAI column, the first idea was a door lock that unlocked with a smartphone. The second idea it seems no one could remember, and the third idea was the robotic ball. Problem is, there was no market for a robotic ball,no way to scale a robotic ball and it just seemed like a fun toy. Feld encouraged Wilson and Bernstein to go for it.
Bernstein, Wilson and heck Feld aren’t alone when it comes to pivoting in the accelerator. In fact, pivoting in the acce
lerator is justpart of the process. Top ranked Cincinnati accelerator, The Brandery, co-founder Dave Knox told us:
“In the early days of a startup, a company is searching to find a business model that resonates with consumers and can scale. This search can lead to subtle changes in their direction or at times a complete course correction that we often call a pivot. It is a process we have seen several times at the accelerator stage at The Brandery. At an accelerator, startups are put into the spotlight with their peer companies, mentors and potential investors. This leads to a quick determination if their startup is going to have what it takes to make it.”
“A great example of a pivot during the accelerator was Michael Wohlschlaeger in 2011. He came into The Brandery with a company called Meruni that was a data aggregation and analytics play. At The Brandery he found that the original business model was flawed but there was a segment of consumers in fashion that were incredibly interested in parts of the plan. He pivoted the company to StyleZen, focusing entirely on that fashion market opportunity. And while the pivot happened only 4 weeks before Demo Day, it ultimately led Michael and his team to raise a seed round from the venture firm CincyTech.”
Wohlschlaeger added:
“StyleZen started as Shoptimize, an automated, smart grocery list solution. The link between Shoptimize and StyleZen was harnessing the power of consumer data to build compelling solutions for the consumer (as opposed to just the brands and retailers). StyleZen is a personalize fashion discovery platform (truly “me-commerce) that learns a consumers preferences and distills the fashion universe down to a personalized, consumable level. ”
In Memphis Tennessee at the Seed Hatchery accelerator, Work For Pie pivoted from a website that was looking to link founders to technical co-founders, to an all out social network for open source developers. In fact, the name Work For Pie came from that idea where they would link founders together who would of course work for equity instead of pay (well at least by design). When the concept changed the name remained the same and they quickly took off getting a $300,000 add on funding round led by Solidus.
As for the little robotic ball. After making it’s debut at CES 2011 it was prominently featured at SXSW 2011 and Google I/O 2011 where the Sphero ball was a main attraction at the Google playground. The balls officially went on sale right before the holidays last year and are still selling like hotcakes, or like must have robotic balls controlled by your smartphone.
Check out the Sphero Ball rocking it at Google IO 2011 (1:30 in or so)
The Sphero ball also caught the attention of one Barrack Obama back in April. The President even got a little snippy with passerbys while he was trying to play with the Sphero Ball telling them “Excuse me- give me some space to drive my ball”.
Way before Viddy, SocialCam, and just about any other video app that you can think of, Pixorial was making waves in Englewood Colorado. Pixorial was somewhat ahead of the curve when it comes to video, online video editing, collaborative video editing, and sharing. Pixorial integrates all of that in a very simple and easy to use consumer facing interface.
They launched their first consumer facing product in 2009, again a couple of years before the video phenomenon.
Pixorial caught the eyes of the powers that be at Google as Pixorial was chosen as one of the inaugural 18 companies to partner with Google’s new Google Drive product. This partnership gives consumers access to the entire Pixorial tool to edit, collaborate, and share videos on Google Drive’s cloud based service.
Pixorial’s video product has the simplicity and ease of use of Apple’s iMovie HD in the cloud, providing a much more robust feature set then YouTube’s new video editor. In fact this year they’ve even added filters to their iPhone App.
We got a chance to talk with Pixorial in the interview below.
Comments Off on Denver Startup Plink Raises $3M Series A From Grotech Ventures0LikeLike 1,991
Denver loyalty and rewards startup Plink has been on a roll lately. Back in June we brought you this story about how they partnered with TangoCard to bring their rewards beyond Facebook credits and that strategy has seemed to pay off.
Today they’ve announced that they’ve closed a $3 million dollar series A round entirely from mid-atlantic (VA & MD) based Grotech Ventures.
Plink began as a company that would take offline businesses and incentivize their customer base with something simple, and easy that millions would benefit from, Facebook credits. While only offering Facebook credits they rapidly ramped up their brick and mortar customer base, until the recent transition to rewards from TangoCard partners. The company has reported that they will use the new funding to continue accelerating development of their offline program. Of course they will also ramp up member acquisition and their marketing efforts.
“Connecting online-to-offline is a challenge for marketers,” said Plink Co-founder and CEO Peter Vogel. “Plink bridges that gap and Grotech Ventures’ investment brings nearly 20 years of successful experience, an enormous amount of industry know-how, insight, and strategic guidance to propel Plink to the next level.”
“For consumers, Plink is a no-brainer,” said Joe Zell, general partner of Grotech Ventures. “Why wouldn’t someone join and get rewards for going out to their favorite places? There’s no extra card to carry or steps a consumer has to take. In addition, Plink has already proven that huge national restaurant brands love the model and they’re already seeing significant increases in consumer purchases.”
Some of the largest fast food establishments are already on board with Plink including Arby’s, Dunkin Donuts and Burger King.
Large chains have embraced Plink because it doesn’t require any changes to their existing point-of-sale infrastructure, does not require staff training, Plink does all the marketing and the restaurants only pay a percentage of the sales that Plink drives. Initial results have shown that Plink members are spending 65 percent more per month at partner restaurants than they were prior to joining Plink. It’s a risk-free, 100 percent turn-key model for national chains and Plink will soon be adding large retail and travel partners.
Comments Off on Kick Ass Boulder Startup: “Startup The Game” Yes An Actual Mobile Game For Startups0LikeLike 1,500
There’s not a lot of downtime in the startup life, in fact there’s virtually none at all. But we all know that at some point there needs to be some release. You need to free your mind from coding, pitching and business developing so your brain doesn’t just totally fry. Some turn to Angry Birds, others turn to SongPop but now, thanks to a Boulder Startup there’s “Startup The Game”.
Startup The Game is a classic video game. You have to capture as many good characters as you can before something bad happens. Good characters in Startup The Game include research,good press,users and venture capital. Bad characters include bugs,bad press, and competition.
The soundtrack for the game is fittingly, “dub step” music which is perfect for startups.
The scrolling game has you jump and crouch to get the things you need and avoid the things that you don’t.
Now the game is about as fun and mind relaxing as that helicopter game or even Temple Run, but that’s just the beginning. Robert Reichs, the founder of “Startup The Game”, has actually added a way for startups to create traction in a fun and competitive way through “Startup The Game”.
When you finish the game you can donate your points to one of the popular startups that’s trending within the game. If your favorite startup isn’t available you can add it, and hopefully your startup will shoot up the ladder and other players will start donating their points to you. Reichs tells us there are already 500 startups signed up within the game.
We wanted to find out just how does someone come up with a game like this. Reichs told us:
“I teach a couse at the university of colorado (CU) Called Startup (http://vimeo.com/32882215) as part of the class i wanted to make sure the basic curriculum being taught allowed the students to create awesome products quickly. So i took the class I was teaching. Startup the game was the outcome.”
Reichs is no stranger to the startup scene. In addition to teaching a class on startups his other credits include; being an entrepreneurial executive with over 15 years experience directing product life cycles from concept, development and launch, to feedback and refinement. Unique blend of creativity, design, strategy and senior executive management skills.He is also the Founder / CEO Openspace Store – social discovery of apps, Founder / moderator boulder denver new tech, Founder / VP Product OneRiot – real time search (sold to Walmart labs),Founder / CEO of Ecosystems – content management software (sold to Me.dium). Reichs is also the Adjunct Professor on Media and Business Design at University of Colorado (CU), named inventor and contributor on 6 patents, advisory board member of Silicon Flatirons, board member Boulder Digital Works at CU, Openspace Store and OneRiot.
While for the most part this is a fun project for Reichs he does plan on adding a store for users to actually buy things with those points.
We’ve been playing “Startup The Game” for a little while and it is a nice break from the big startup game we’re all playing everyday. Check it out at the links below.
Comments Off on Denver Startup: Full Contact Gives Employees $7500 For Paid Vacation,Vacation0LikeLike 3,066
Could you go completely off the grid and really enjoy vacation time with your friends and family? When we say off the grid we mean off the grid, no checking work emails, taking work phone calls, checking in on work gossip, no VPNing into your work network?
If you said yes, you might want to consider applying for a job at Denver startup FullContact. They have a whole list of openings including Android developer,business development, iOS and Mac developer,Outlook and Exchange .NET developer,platform engineer and web app/front end engineer.
FullContact specializes in an API that keeps your contacts up to date and so much more.
Now for the part about the $7500.
Bart Lorang, co-founder and CEO of FullContact offers his employees $7500 of paid, paid vacation time. This means that when you take vacation time, you get $7500 but you have to totally unplug. Lorang wants his employees to have mind resting, enjoyable vacation time.
That’s not the only reason for the paid, paid vacation though. Lorang feels that knowing that you’re going to go totally off the grid (at least the work grid) employees will be more comfortable creating total redundancy in their positions.
Knowing that employees will go completely off the grid, Lorang wrote in a blog post that they may:
They might empower direct reports to make more decisions.
They might be less likely to create a special script that isn’t checked into GitHub and only lives on their machine.
They might document their code a bit better.
They might contribute to the Company Wiki and share knowledge.
Lorang talks on the FullContact blog about how this idea of his for paid,paid vacation kept invading his brain. For a final blessing on the idea he reached out to TechStars and Founry’s Brad Feld who said:
“I love the Paid Paid Vacation concept and totally agree with it. A lot of people won’t spend the money because they don’t have it or think they’ll be happier if they save it. But they miss the value of disconnecting.
This exchange about paid, paid vacation assured Lorang that Feld would make a great board member and as a result the Foundry Group led the startups Series B round.
At this day and age, from a worker’s perspective this is supposed to sound like a no-brainer but to some it really isn’t. Their brains aren’t programmed for a total disconnect. There’s that inherent feeling of missing something, and then at work there’s the feeling that if someone else can do their job than they aren’t indispensable. The reality is, is that in an employment situation everyone is dispensable and yes the world will be there when you get back from Vacation.
Working at FullContact means you’ll get the time off, and the money to take a good, quality vacation.
Comments Off on Boulder Startups TeamUp To Thank FireFighters & Wildlife Relief0LikeLike 1,285
(image breakingnews.com)
We already know that Boulder has a thriving startup scene as far as the technology and ideas that are coming out of the Colorado town that’s home to Techstars and the Foundry. Now we’re witnessing what makes the Boulder startup scene an actual community.
When stories come out like this, it’s a great feeling. Startups that compete day in and day out for the same funding y, and the same spotlight can put all that aside and come together for the communities that they are in. Earlier this year a large number of North Carolina startups, including well established startups like ReverbNation came together to speak out against amendment one, which was unfortunately passed when NC went to vote. In that particular case the startups and their founders were worried that passing amendment one would make it harder to attract gay talent.
The story out of Boulder is in regards to the massive forest fires that destroyed thousands of acres in Colorado. While some members of Boulder’s startup community felt the effects of the fires first hand with displaced homes and businesses, others have pitched in with their own efforts just for the good of the community.
Some of the projects that the Boulder startups startups have worked on include fundraising drives, cash donations, wildfire t-shirts and even thank you cards. Card Gnome is behind the colorful thank you cards that have been sent to the firefighters. Startup Shirts has created t-shirts with 100% of the proceeds going to Colorado Firefighting and Rebuilding called “The Heal Colorado” t-shirt.
Comments Off on Interview With The Co-Founder Of Boulder Startup: MobileDay, Just About Effortless Conference Calling0LikeLike 1,898
Anyone who knows me well, knows that I’m not typically about the sexiest apps. I rarely play games, although Songpop has me hooked right now, and I’m not looking for the coolest way to share anything most of the time, because I’m too busy on conference calls.
I could scream at the top of my lungs that email and texting work better for me. I could put an outgoing voicemail message that says email and texting works better for me (and I have) but each and everyday there are three to five people that insist on having conference calls. What irritates me even more is when the conference call, using a bridge, is with just one person… yo dude just call me directly.
So when I came across MobileDay a sigh of relief was let out. You see when nibletz took on the responsibility of being the voice of startups “everywhere else” and then we got some help from a research analyst at Kauffman, we found out that there are hundreds of thousands of startups “everywhere else”. There are a lot of people in the world who want to talk and tell their story, and above everything I really want to listen.
My conference calls aren’t so bad, I’ve actually learned a lot and planned some great things via conference call. But anyone who takes conference calls on a regular basis (Read just about any strartup founder’s daily routine), knows how cumbersome setting the call up can be.
First off there are hundreds of different conference call services, and without a doubt every single person who wants a conference call with me uses a different one.
Next, they typically have some 7-11 digit number that you need to call into to connect to “your party”. Well it doesn’t matter if I’m calling from my iPhone or my Android phone du jour, no smartphone has been able to allow you to dial into a number, press one number than automatically dial in another number, like the conference calls ID.
So whether I’m sitting in the office (yes we have an office), or sitting at home (got one of those too) or on the road (which is 90% of the time) I have to fumble through my calendar, emails or heck even text messages to get all the necessary information to “hop on the call” listen people since the most conventional conference call applications have been out there’s been know such thing as just “hopping on” a conference call… until now (wow 400+ words to get to that part)
Boulder startup MobileDay is that conference call participants dream app. Once the conference call is loaded into the app it reminds you of your call and than voila one touch of the screen and you’re not just on the conference calls service, you’ve dialed the “bridge” number too. They’ve got even more features on the way that will make attending, postponing or notifying conference participants easier too.
This comes in particularly handy on the nibletz sneaker-strapped nationwide startup roadtrip because taking a conference call driving through Indiana (sorry Nick), Arkansas, or even up and down 95 can be a pain in the ass with call drops (and I’m on Verizon). So if you get disconnected it’s the same simple easy process to get back on the call. All you have to do is touch the button, and then wait to “say your name to enter the conference”.
So what’s even better than MobileDay is that we got a few minutes to interview MobileDay co-founder Brad Dupee and I must say Brad with Steve Jobs gone you may be the next person to make my life easier.
Comments Off on Boulder Startup: LinkSmart Comes Out Of Stealth Mode, Reports $4.7M In Funding0LikeLike 1,317
A Boulder startup that promises online publishers a better, smarter way to handle link management, has emerged from the secrecy of “stealth mode”.
LinkSmart announced their concept and product to the yesterday along with the fact that the startup has raised $4.7 million since starting the company in 2009.
LinkSmart’s venture backing comes from Boulder’s The Foundry Group as well as two Silicon Valley area venture groups, Sutter Hill and Costanoa.
Founder and CEO Pete Sheinbaum comes from an online publishing background. He was previously the founder and publisher of DailyCandy.
Text link advertising can be a lucrative source of income, especially for independent online publishers.
Companies like Kontera offer publishers link based advertising that serves up a mini popup hover ad over keywords. One of the pain points with services like these are that readers click out of a website to the ad supported content.
This is just one of the examples of the many things Sheinbaum and the LinkSmart team have been working on since 2009.
“I wanted to build a system for publishers, by a publisher, that satisfies the real business problems” they have with traffic management, user engagement and advertising, Sheinbaum said to the DailyCamera
LinkSmart’s Total Link Management is a SaaS (software as a service) that analyzes readers behavior on websites to serve and suggest more relevant links and keyword suggestions.
This is just the beginning for LinkSmart though they’ve moved into larger office space and plan on working on more publisher centric products and features.
Comments Off on Colorado: Springs Startup Re-Brands And Joins Startup America Partnership0LikeLike 1,555
Springs Startup which was formed in November 2011 to help support Startups in the flourishing startup hub of Colorado Springs, has announced a name change. Springs Startup has rebranded themselves as Startup Colorado Springs and officially joined the Startup America Partnership.
Startup America, which is chaired by AOL co-founder Steve Case, supports startups across America through over 25 regional partnerships. Startup America continues to grow, each moth adding more and more cities to the network. Scott Case, founding CTO of Priceline.com, (and no relation to Steve Case) serves as Startup America CEO and is often the frontman across the country at launch events for new partners.
Jan Horsfall, who serves as co-founder Startup Colorado Springs looks forward to joining forces with Startup Colorado and the nationwide partnership Startup America. They held an event tonight in Colorado Springs to announce the name change and the partnership.
“Since our inception, our goal of supporting entrepreneurs as a group of entrepreneurs ourselves has never changed,” noted Jan Horsfall, co-chairman of Startup Colorado Springs and a co-founder of Startup Colorado® – the statewide initiative tied back in with Startup America. “We saw what was being accomplished at the hub – Startup America – and we saw what was happening at the state level with Startup Colorado, and it just made infinite sense to pull this hub-and-spoke thinking all the way down through our growing entrepreneurial scene in Colorado Springs. We have more air cover for our startup community than ever before and Startup Colorado Springs simply supports it wherever we see it.”
Nick Lee, another co-founder of Startup Colorado Springs added:
“Each stage of Startup America provides different assets to entrepreneurs depending on the new company’s needs. Startup America is all about providing the platform for us to understand how we can organically create more entrepreneurial assistance through shared learning and programs. Startup Colorado is all about identifying the resources up and down the Front Range that entrepreneurs can utilize within a state setting. To us, Startup Colorado Springs is about providing the local, personal connectivity and assistance – through entrepreneurs and not through government programs – to our startup community.”
Linkage:
For more on Startup Colorado Springs visit their website here
For more information on Startup America visit their website here
Nibletz is a proud member of Startup America, and the voice of Startups “everywhere else”
Kyle
Have you tried out Brad Feld’s version of Hacker News?
Brad Feld has introduced a new site similar to Hacker News but all about startups. The site is called The Startup Revolution Hub, actually has a nicer looking UI and is easier to navigate. Best of all I don’t have to weed out general coding and dev posts to get to the startup posts.
