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Bull City Stampede Launches Seven New North Carolina Startups

Last week, people from all over the Raliegh/Durham/Chapel Hill area, known as the Triangle, showed up for the final presentations of the Bull City Stampede startup program. The end result was seven new North Carolina startups were launched.

Bull City Stampede is a sixty day accelerator program which provides startups with office space, furniture, wifi and other resources that they need to grow their companies. The 60 day program culminated with a demo day event to a packed house, at Beyu Caffe in downtown Durham, North Carolina.

This sessions Bull City Stampede Class included some tangible product startups in the fashion industry, jewelry industry, financial services, social media and even a jazz non profit. This variety showed off the new types of businesses and startups that are calling the Raliegh Durham area home. This is great news for the region as they plan for the launch of their Startup North Carolina regional partnership of Startup America which launches on August 20th.

“This was a special group of entrepreneurs that supported each other and built better companies because of their time with startups outside of their industry,” said Adam Klein, Startup Strategist for the Greater Durham Chamber of Commerce. “We had non-software companies receiving help from the techies and vice versa. It shows the power of putting creative people together in a creative environment.”

While the event launches seven startups out of North Carolina, one of the startups Alekto, relocated from Washington DC for the Bull City Stampede program and has decided to stay in North Carolina. Five of the startups will continue growing their business in NC.

The Bull City Startup Stampede also partnered with Pruvop, a digital products lab in downtown Durham, to award one startup a prize package including $5,000 in custom software development & consulting. Pruvop co-founder Adam Schultz announced The Art of Cool as the recipient of the software package. The Art of Cool is a jazz presenting non-profit working to launch an international jazz festival in Durham.

“In addition to sharing the vision of a prospering, culturally vibrant Durham, we were personally impressed by Cicely’s (AOC founder) drive, hunger for feedback and the ability to pivot and grow rapidly based on the feedback she was given,” said Schultz. “It’s organizations like hers that we love to work with.”

“The Stampede is the launching ground for startups in Durham,” said Matthew Coppedge, Director of Marketing at Downtown Durham, Inc. “We are part of the pipeline developing in Durham that helps early-stage entrepreneurs go from concept to market quickly.”

To date Stampede has done a good job of accelerating startups and then keeping them in North Carolina. So far 28 companies have gone through the program and 15 have remained in downtown Durham, a statistic that you don’t typically find with accelerators who open up their applications nationwide or globally.

Bull City Stampede has provided this list of all of this sessions class and their Twitter handles:

• Alekto empowers consumers through innovative credit reporting management services. @AlektoCo

• Directed Deposits helps individuals find and fund high interest, FDIC-insured savings accounts that are good for your wallets and the issues & communities you care about. @DirectedDeposits

• Freshly Given embraces minimalist style, creativity & sustainability through accessories, handmade from genuine re-purposed leather. @FreshlyGiven

• Offline Media is envisioning a world where “social” means more than just sitting behind a computer. @offlinemedia

• Seam Happy designs and makes custom promotional products, decor, and apparel. For business, home, and general happiness. @SeamHappy

• Social Media Phobia Solutions is a fearless digital media consulting and business management firm. @BreeLDavis

• Sweeps helps you get just about anything done by motivated college students for $25 per hour. @SweepsJobs

• The Art of Cool Project is dedicated to preserving, presenting, and promoting the local vibrant, varied, and surprisingly under-appreciated jazz and art scene in Raleigh-Durham. @theaocproject

Linkage:

Check out Bull City Stampede Here

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North Carolina Is So Bad Ass They’re Having Two Startup North Carolina Launch Parties August 20th

North Carolina is a great state with three thriving areas for startups, business and commerce as a whole. They are “The Triangle” in Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill, “The Triad” Greensboro/Winston Salem/High Point and Charlotte “The Queen City”. The Triangle has a thriving startup community anchored by their biotech corridor and Research Park. The Triad is an area built on old money and Tobacco and has seen a recent up-tick in startups and entrepreneurship. Charlotte is booming thanks to mainstays like Bank Of America and Wells Fargo (previously Wachovia). Charlotte has great startups, like our friends at RawPorter.

So if you’ve been wondering, like I have, what’s taking them so long to sync up with Startup America, well that wait is over.

Startup North Carolina, the Startup America Partnership region for NC, will officially fire up on August 20th with not one but two launch parties. The Triangle region will be spearheaded by Triangle Startup Weekend’s founder Mital Patel. Patel was actually referred to Startup America by ExitEvent’s Joe Procipio. Procipio had been interested in developing the Startup North Carolina region but timing constraints made it impossible to give as much as he wanted to. Procipio explains how he helped lay the groundwork for Startup North Carolin and for Patel in this blog post.

The Charlotte are will kick off on August 20th with their own launch party. That area will be led by Adam Hill of Packard Place.

According to Procipio, both Hill and Patel will run the Startup North Carolina region similar to the way Startup DC is run.

Startup America lets each regional partnership run itself and each partnership gets out of it what they put into it. Startup North Carolina will take an approach much like Ignite and Startup Weekend. We’re sure that it will be a very active regional partnership. In fact Procipio reports that Patel is already setting up a Uservoice automated system so that participants from across the state can help vote for things that Startup North Carolina will focus on.

While we’re sure that their will be some competition between both sides of the chapter (by design most likely) together they will solidify North Carolina’s position in the startup eco-system in the US. As they say when the tide rises, all the ships sale.

Startup America offers great benefits to their member base across the country. They focus on growth potential startups that will eventually lead to more job creation, commerce and a positive contribution to the American economy. Did we mention it’s free to join?

Linkage:

Check out Procipio’s post here

Here’s a link to Startup America

Did you know Startup America and American Airlines are holding a contest for 80 free flights?

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Raleigh Startup: Sprout Scores $20M Round For Female Viagra

If you’re in a relationship with a woman, whether it’s a long term relationship, marriage, or even same sex marriage, and your female partner tells you she’s not in the mood, a lot, it may not be you after all. A Raleigh NC based startup called Sprout may actually be able to help you and your partner, down the road if they get FDA approval.

In 1998 Pfizer rocked the market when they introduced Viagra the first commercially available medication for men with erectile dysfunction. Viagra spawned a new category of prescription medications that have now turned into a $5 billion dollar industry. No one thought about women though.

Female sexual dysfunction, or low sexual desire is an actual problem. An Illinois based company called BioSante Pharmaceuticals suggests that as many as 43% of women between the ages of 18 and 59 experience some kind of female sexual dysfunction. The company made that statement based on figures published by the Journal of the American Medical Association. They project that female sexual dysfunction could turn into a $2 billion dollar a year industry.

Sprout, is working toward FDA approval for fibanserin a compound developed to treat hypoactive sexual disorder which is a form of female sexual dysfunction. Sprout purchased the compound from German pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim. The FDA denied Boehringer approval of fibanserin in 2010.

Sprout’s Chief Commercial Officer Cynthia Whitehead thinks that Sprout will be more successful with FDA approval. Whiethead told WRAL that there were “flawed metrics” in the first FDA submission by Boehringer. She went on to say “It will be a review issue,” she said. “We feel we have all of the data we need.”

Whitehead also said that Boehringer’s submission for fibarnserin was as a depression treatment.

Sprout has received a $20 million dollar angel investment from 59 angel investors, the same group of investors that backed Slate Pharmaceuticals which was the company that spun out Sprout. The company will use the money to support their operations and growth. They will also use the money to hire regulatory personnel and scientists to work on the resubmission of the drug in 2013.

Source: WRAL

Charlotte Startup: Rawporter Strikes Exclusive Deal For Libyan Coverage

Citizen Journalism startup Rawporter has reported some very exciting news themselves. The Charlotte based startup has announced that they’ve teamed up with freedom fighter and journalist Matthew VanDyke, who will provide 1st person perspective of the newly liberated Libya, for Rawporter users around the world to use for footage.

“Weʼre excited to participate in this incredibly unique opportunity, Matt is genuinely trying to make a
difference and weʼre extremely proud to assist in his efforts to bring more visibility to Libya while it
undergoes a massive transition,” said Kevin Davis, co-founder. “Weʼve been building a powerful
platform to help people share their stories and this is a great example of our vision being put into
practice.”

Rawporter will have a page (http://rawporter.com/pm/matthewvandyke) dedicated to Mr. VanDykeʼs videos and photos that anyone can view or purchase. Any proceeds from video and photo sales will be donated to a fund for the family of a journalist killed while reporting in a conflict zone. Additionally, Rawporter will be subsidizing a portion of Mr. VanDykeʼs expenses so that he can focus on his mission and worry less about logistics. Mr. VanDyke will attempt to make himself available to respond to assignments if possible but wants to reinforce that there will be significant limitations on his time.

“Citizen journalism played a key role in the Libyan civil war. The videos captured by Libyans in the early days of the revolution were broadcast through the internet and helped mobilize international support for the war. I believe that Rawporter is an innovative company that will facilitate the dissemination of Arab Spring footage from Libya, Syria, Egypt, Bahrain and elsewhere. Their technology will also assist in the broadcast of revolutionary footage from beyond the Arab world that is essential to attracting the attention of the international community to support struggles for freedom worldwide. My partnership with Rawporter is another opportunity for me to contribute to the cause of freedom, as well as another cause I care deeply about – journalism and freedom of the press. I hope that my participation can help expand Rawporterʼs market and give another way for the voices of the oppressed to be heard,” said Matt VanDyke.

Rawporter offers a unique app for both iOS and Android phones that allows users to participate in the action and supply “citizen journalistic” videos and photos for news outlets, media sites, blogs and more to use across the Rawporter network.

Adding this partnership with VanDyke solidifies Rawporter’s commitment to full fledged journalism in addition to their innovative platform.

Linkage:

For more information visit rawporter.com

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Startup America Partners With Startup RockOn For DNC RNC Events

Startup America and Startup RockOn have announced that they are partnering for some very exciting events this year.

Startup RockOn is a collaborative effort of fast growing Startups, Event Farm, HyperVocal, and Fighter Interactive. Together they are putting together mini festival style events at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) on September 3, 2012 in Charlotte North Carolina and the Republican National Convention (RNC) August 27th in Tampa Bay.

The events will highlight America’s thriving startup culture, have interactive displays and sessions and feature musical performances, including the group The Roots who have agreed to headline the events.

Startup America CEO, Scott Case, stated, “As the RNC and DNC capture the attention of the country, it’s imperative to highlight the importance of startups to our national economy, and we’re incredibly excited to partner with EventFarm, HyperVocal and FIGHTER Interactive — three hard-working startups themselves — to do just that.”

The StartUp RockOn leadership team stated, “From a garage band to culture-shifting software, from next-generation media companies to 21st century energy solutions, the greatest American success stories start (and will start) through ingenuity, creativity, hard work and perseverance. StartUp RockOn honors the entrepreneurs of America’s bright future.”

Startup America is now 23 regional partnerships strong and has already hosted or partnered for a bunch of great events including a Startup America event at the Hilton in Austin during South by Southwest Interactive.

This new partnership will spur even more interest in Startups, entrepreneurism and technology in the United States, regardless of political affiliation.

Linkage:

Greenville Startup: EyeBar Relocating To Wilmington After Winning Contest

A cool video streaming startup from Greenville South Carolina recently won the “Bootstrap ILM” contest in Wilmington North Carolina. The BootStrap ILM contest was sponsored by Wilmington Downtown Inc, Double Eagle and Tayloe Gray.

Double Eagle is a co-working space located in Wilmington North Carolina. They’re the backbone to the prize package that EyeBar has won.

The winning companies in Bootstrap ILM were the proud recipients of:

Office Space: The Double Eagle at 404 North Third Street comes complete with parking, free secured bandwidth internet, a conference room and kitchenette/break room. BootStrap winners get 90 days of free rent and The Double Eagle will offer flexible terms to those who desire to stay long term, or even month-to-month. Visit the website for the Double Eagle.
Support from the Community: A weekly brown bag lunch series will feature roundtable discussions of various entrepreneurial and industry supporters (lawyers, accountants, other high growth entrepreneurs, real estate professionals, etc).
Design Services: TayloeGray will provide business cards, a basic web site and design assistance when and where needed.
Publicity: Wilmington Downtown Inc. (WDI) will provide the marketing push to get your company initial notoriety upon launch. Additionally, WDI will network your company with others in the downtown community so that when you need something, it’s only a call away.

Spencer Barrick the founder and CEO of EyeBar is very excited about venturing over to Wilmington. His technology allows users to see what’s going on at bars, clubs, festivals and events. Barrick is already looking for places where he can implement the EyeBar technology. He said in a press release:

“BootStrap helps WDI complete several of our goals and we look forward to running this program again next year. We generated some great interest and I’m impressed with the high quality applicants that [were] submitted this year,” said WDI president and CEO John Hinnant, in a press release.

Greenville just started their “Next Big Thing” incubator program today in Greenville.

Linkage:

Find out more about Eyebar here

Find out more about the Bootstrap ILM contest here

Check out Double Eagle Here

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Washington DC: Carlyle Group Founder David Rubenstein Gives $15M To Duke For Innovation

One of Washington DC’s top investors and philanthropists, David Rubenstein has given $15 million dollars to his alma mater Duke University for innovation.

Rubenstein recently donated $7.5 million dollars to repair cracks sustained in the Washington Monument during last years freak east earth quakes. Rubenstein’s $15 million dollar donation to Duke University makes it his largest single donation to one institution.

Duke University just recently completed a $50,000 startup challenge. A health and life sciences startup called Nanoly was the recipient of the $50,000 award. Their startup has found a way to chemically preserve vaccines outside of refrigerators, and make them easier to administer in developing and third world countries.

Another great startup emerged from the Duke University Challenge called Mobile Foods which is entering the food truck tracking space. Their technology will allow customers of their favorite food trucks to track their location and find them easier using existing mobile phone technologies.

Rubenstein is the founder of the Washington DC private equity from, The Carlyle Group, which recently went public.

Rubenstein said today that the money will fund courses, mentoring and an incubator for students and faculty to develop new startup ventures through Duke’s innovation and entrepreneurship initiative which is also the backbone to the annual startup challenge contest.

Linkage:

source: WGME

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North Carolina Startup: Mobile Foods To Tackle Tracking The Food Truck

The mobile food vending space is growing ten fold every year. According to the National Restaurant Association there are some 15.6 million Americans that eat at mobile food vendors already. Mobile food vending has exploded in the last five years, no longer are we talking about just hot dog carts, food trucks have become the in-thing these days.

According to research prepared in Mobile Foods’ presentation for the Duke Startup Challenge session that just ended there are somewhere between 40,000 and 60,000 mobile food vendors in the US. There are 20,000 in Austin, Dallas, Houston and Los Angeles County alone.

One of the tricky parts with your favorite food truck is finding out where it is on any given day. Now if you have a regular truck that you eat at you probably know where they are going to be, maybe they post their schedule on the truck, online or have some kind of email list that you can subscribe to. Mobile Foods hopes to solve the Food Truck location problem for you.

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North Carolina Startup: Nanoly Wins Duke Startup $50,000 Spring Challenge

(photo: Sophia Palenberg/The Chronicle)

A women owned startup called Nanoly has just won the Duke startup $50,000 spring challenge. Duke University’s $50,000 spring startup competition ran from February until this week. The startups in the challenge had to fit into one of three tracks; the functional track, special interest track or pilot track. Within the functional track were 5 categories; Clean Energy, Healthcare and Life Sciences, IT, Internet and Media, Social Enterprises and other. The grand prize winner came from the Healthcare and Life Sciences category.

Ting Ting Zhou (Duke University), Nanxi Liu (Berkeley) and Crystal Lee (Stanford) founded Nanoly with one common goal, to use a nano-sized solution to solve a macro sized problem. While you may not think about it the problem that these three women are hoping to solve is actually a big problem and one as Americans we may take for granted.

Zhou explains in her pitch video that while developed countries have access to vaccines and diseases like small pox are pretty much eradicated, emerging countries don’t have access to vaccines. One of the main reasons emerging countries don’t have access to vaccines can be boiled down to refrigeration and electricity.

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Charlotte Startup: Rawporter Talks About What DEMO Was Like

Our good friends Kevin and Rob at Rawporter were among the startups that presented at DEMO last week in Santa Clara. We reached out to many of the startups that were coming from “Everywhere Else” to DEMO to talk to them about their experience and what it is they were doing.

Rawporter is an app and service (Service as an app) that allows everyday people with smartphones to take pictures and videos, upload them to the rawporter site and then get paid for providing “man on the street” coverage to news outlets across the country, and the world. It’s also a great service for bloggers to source video that they might not otherwise be able to cover.

“Now anyone who needs custom video and photo content can request it from our users who might already be in the right place at the right time. In exchange for responding to assignments, our Rawporters get the compensation and credit they deserve simply for putting their smartphone to work.” Kevin Davis, co-founder of Rawporter told Nibletz.com

So we wanted to find out why, with all the startup competitions across the country, did Rawporter choose DEMO?

“We knew DEMO was a tremendous platform to launch a new business, but since we’re still bootstrapping, we weren’t sure if we could afford the exhibition fee. Luckily, they offered us a scholarship and that made it a very easy decision. The DEMO team was incredibly helpful and we can’t thank them enough for the experience and exposure that Rawporter received at the event.”

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Durham NC Startup: School House Apparel; Collegiate Home Grown Apparel With Purpose

Duke University Alum Rachel Weeks set out on a mission to create a line of fashion apparel that’s socially conscious. School House started when Weeks went to Sri Lanka in 2007 on a mission to build a socially responsible clothing company. She was able to do that with her first college t-shirt from her alma mater Duke University.

The first School House line was manufactured in Sri Lanka and it helped support a living wage factory there. While she was maintaining an ethically social responsible clothing line while using a living wage factory in Sri Lanka she found the opportunity to come full circle in 2011 and brought her clothing line back home to North Carolina, but that wasn’t before Weeks was able to triple the wages in that Sri Lankan factory.

While Weeks felt great about what she was doing for the Sri Lankan factory she found out later on that the factory had taken on more and more orders from other companies and the School House orders were getting pushed to the back. With an angel investment Weeks was able to hire textile and apparel expert Susan Williams who had over 25 years of experience with brands like Jockey, Levi Strauss and the Gap. The two of them together did a cost analysis and decided that home was where School House needed to be.

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North Carolina Startup, Evatran, Attracting Funds By Finding Ways To Cut The Cord For Electric Cars

Outside of Detroit, North Carolina is a mecca for innovation in the automobile sector. North Carolina also has a thriving tech community in the research triangle area which encompasses Raliegh, Durham, Chapel Hill, Cary and surrounding areas. One of those companies is Evatran.

Evatran is a spinoff of a company called MTC transformers, which is an electronics manufacturer based in Whytheville Virginia. Evatran moved to Morrisville NC to be closer to the global technology hub that exists there.

So what is this start up doing that is Evatran doing that is so phenomenal that Google, Hertz Rent A Car, Duke Energy and Clemson University have come to the plate with funding for them? They are looking to cut the cord to recharge electric cars. Evatran is working on a plugless recharging station for electric cars.

“Fundamentally, what we’re selling here is convenience,” said Evatran co-founder Rebecca Hough told the Winston Salem Journal. “The cord gets really dirty. People run over the cord.”

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Charlotte Based Startup Rawporter Putting A New More Viable Spin On Citizen Journalism

Rawporter made a pretty nice impact at South By Southwest in Austin Texas earlier this month. This two person start up out of Charlotte NC is bringing a new concept to citizen reporting. With Rawporter, not only can a citizen report the news via video, they can also get paid for it.

Rawporter came about when friends and co-founders Kevin Davis and Rob Gaige were hanging out and then saw a horrible accident. Of course everyone on the scene of the accident had their camera phone out and were shooting the entire scene, but when they got home and turned on the 11:00 news, Gaige tells me that the only shot they had was the reporters stand up at a cleared scene.

Gaige and Davis knew that there had to be someway for those people who too that video, and the hundreds of thousands of people who take videos of incidents like this everyday, could both get sourced and make money.

Gaige has a background in marketing. Davis has a background in news radio, and then changed careers to marketing. They both met in the marketing department at Bank of America. As they see first hand that the biggest companies in the world are cutting back staff, and Davis knows that news media jobs are eliminated every day, citizen reporting can easily become a huge source for news stations.

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