Startups In The Fastlane: NMotion Startup FiscalCircles

Whether you have an MBA or a GED, startup accelerators are often the biggest push that startups need to go from idea, or earliest MVP, to actual startup and company. Startup accelerators come in all sizes and shapes from YCombinator, 500 Startups, and Techstars to The Fort, The Brandery, and Seed Hatchery. In our Accelerating in the Fast Lane stories we’ll feature an interview with a startup currently going through an accelerator.

Nebraska is filled with startups and entrepreneurs. Warren Buffet hails from Nebraska, as does the Silicon Prairie News and their Big Series of award-winning conferences. On a recent trip to Nebraska, we got to hang out with Eric Moyer the co-founder and CMO of a startup that went into Lincoln, Nebraksa’s NMotion accelerator as Fiscal Circles and has since taken on the name, HipPocket.

HipPocket helps connect consumers to loan products in a more efficient and transparent way. Find out how in our interview with Moyer below.

What is the name of your start-up?

The name of our start-up has long been a loaded question. I am however happy to report, Fiscal Circles, Inc. is now doing business as HipPocket.

What problem are you solving?

We provide insight into consumer finance which until now has lacked any form of transparency. Consumers hoping to improve their financial situation have been forced to call around or ‘take a chance’ on a loan offer that may not be in their best interest through websites like lowermybills.com, quickenloans, etc.

Why now?

Consumer adoption of online banking and more specifically, personal financial management (PFM) sites like Mint.com is trending up. Further, interest rates are poised to increase markedly in the near term. We predict that timing is right for a vast number of consumers who have been on the fence about optimizing their finances will be motivated by a changing rate environment.

Who are your competitors?

The biggest competitor in the PFM space is mint.com, but we’ve also been diligently researching other providers in the space. We’ve seen some companies doing limited comparisons of budget or FICO score but none appear to be leveraging market and peer comparison data in a significant manner. We also have a secret sauce that we’re hoping you ask us about…

What’s your secret sauce?

Our proprietary process for taking users through the comparison process is our secret sauce. We help them build a complete financial picture and provide the clearest possible explanation of where they stand now and an easy-to-understand path to a better future. This process emphasizes simplicity and fairness. Instead of utilizing persistent reminders, info-graphics and a myriad of other tactics to change consumer behavior, we’ve chosen to concentrate on saving people money on the things they already buy.

By concentrating on making refinancing or finding a new mortgage easy and providing unbiased loan recommendations, we give the consumer a fair shot at getting the best deal.

Where are you/were you based before NMotion?

Prior to NMotion, our team split time among coffee shops, Turbine Flats (a co-working space) and of course, the founder’s homes.

Why NMotion?

We applied to NMotion to gain access to resources and best practices in an effort to improve our chances for success. Plus, NMotion is dedicated to developing the start-up community of Lincoln, Nebraska. We recognize that for our venture to succeed, the area needs to be seen as a viable place for new companies to gain a foothold. Brian Ardinger and his staff at NMotion have given participating teams every opportunity to develop and successfully launch compelling products and services.

What’s one lesson you’ve learned since the NMotion session has started.

One lesson we’ve learned is that the time spent validating assumptions might be worth more than what you’re building.

Where can people find out more?

You can find us on Facebook, Twitter and now, YourHipPocket.com.

Stay tuned for more stories from accelerators everywhere else.

Startups from everywhere else attend the huge everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference.

Hip Hop & Startups: The Phat Startup

“This is not a parody,” The Phat Startup says on their website, and it’s not. A lot of entrepreneurs draw lessons from pop culture and contemporary issues and relate them to the passion and drive for startups.

For me, it’s usually a mashup of hip hop and basketball. My basketball references come from my favorite team the Memphis Grizzlies, known for years as the Grit-n-Grind team, which publicly showed it off to the world through the 2013 conference finals. My hip hop references come as the form of subtle musical hints in our videos based on what city we happen to be in on the sneaker strapped startup road trip.

We’re definitely not the only ones that relate hip hop to startups. One of the more famous people in the startup world, Ben Horowitz of Andreesen Horowitz, uses a hip hop lyric at the opening of all of his blog posts, like this post about the firm’s investment in both Instagram and PicPlz where he used Mase’s “Lookin at me” to open up the post.

Some may draw another connection between hip hop and startups because most rappers have had to turn into entrepreneurs in their own right in order to succeed in today’s shifted music economy. There are also parallels from some of the content that hip hop artists often rap about, especially when it comes to hustle.

Well on Wednesday Forbes reported on a New York startup founded by James Lopez and Anthony Frasier called “The Phat Startup”. Lopez is a technologist from the Bronx who worked at publishing giant Random House. Frasier hails from Newark, New Jersey. He is the founder of mobile startup Playd and the “award winning” gaming site “The Koalition.” He was also profiled in the popular hit documentary Black in America: The New Promise Land- Silicon Valley. CNN Money also profiled Frasier as being one of 8 minorities diversifying the tech scene.

Through their blog, outreach, resources, and popular events, The Phat Startup is looking to continue to grow the tech community and teach essential skills for entrepreneurs and startup founders through hip hop.

“A big part of entrepreneurship is the ability to learn from mistakes,” Frasier, told Forbes. “When you hear rappers rap about their upbringing, you can learn a lot because they always sprinkle lessons of things they don’t do anymore, things that they do now, things you can relate to.”

The Forbes article highlights several rap lyrics like one very infamous line from Jay-Z when he declared “I’m not a businessman, I’m a business, man,” an homage to how one of the hip hop kings grew himself, his brand, and his artists to an empire bringing his self worth to nearly half a million dollars.

A song released by Drake, earlier this year, has become a theme song of sorts for several startups going through spring and summer accelerator sessions. The song “We started from the bottom” has a punchy hook that say,s “we started from the bottom now we’re here”.

Hip Hop is so intertwined with the startup culture that it even spawned a huge startup that, of course, Horowitz and the Andreessen Horowitz team were quick to back. That startup, RapGenius, crowdsources the meanings to the lyrics of rap songs. Now the startup is working on other ways to incorporate the technology, like with the news for example. Back in March when Andrew Mason ~~was fired~~, resigned, from Groupon, RapGenius was used to crowdsource the meaning of his now infamous letter to the Groupon team.

The Phat Startup’s next event is Tuesday, August, 20th from 6-8 pm at 1412 Broadway 22nd Floor. At the event, Nihal Mehta the CEO and Co-Founder of LocalResponse will talk about The Future Of Marketing For Startups. You can join that event by clicking here.

Find out more about The Phat Startup here.

Now check out this awesome startup event.

VentureCamp Gives New Meaning to “Go Big or Go Home”

VentureCamp has everything an entrepreneur needs from an accelerator:

top-notch mentorship
a smart cohort
a curriculum developed by leading investors

Oh…and a mansion.

Looks like something out of The Bachelor, right? That’s actually not too far off. Besides building companies and receiving world class mentorship, VentureCamp participants live together in the mansion. And, it’s all being captured on video.

VentureCamp obviously isn’t your typical accelerator.

First, rather than accept teams that are already building products, VentureCamp only accepted individuals. And, they focused on women and minorities, groups that are typically left out of the venture capital game. After the first week, the participants were split up into teams, they chose a company, and had 7 weeks to build it out. The whole experience can be likened to Startup Weekend, but on a bigger, grander scale.

Second, the whole thing is housed in Indianapolis’s Kessler Mansion, owned by one of the camp’s backers, Chad Folkening. The idea is to give the entrepreneurs an idea of what life could be like, in the event their companies go big.

Finally, from morning to night, the whole thing is filmed. Camera crews hang out in all the meetings, strategy sessions, and dinners, capturing the formation of three new companies. The footage will be turned into a “docu-series,” shown first online, but the team hopes to eventually put it on TV. VentureCamp backer and senior advisor Patrick Mellody told USA Today that the film will promote other VentureCamps held around the world.

Despite some of the glitz, VentureCamp entrepreneurs have been hard at work for the last 8 weeks. With mentors like Priceline’s Jeff Hoffmann,they receive outstanding feedback on their business models and pitch.

And, speaking of pitch, what’s the one thing all accelerators have in common?

Demo Day!

Today is the first VentureCamp Demo Day. They are launching (and hoping to fund) 3 companies:

TourNative is a marketplace that connects travelers with locals.
YumDom helps home cooks find just the recipe they need for their lifestyle and includes 6 iPhone apps tailored to different dietary needs.
PlanSoon connects people with someone new to go do something fun.

It should be interesting to watch what comes from VentureCamp, both the new companies and the docu-series. Whatever it is, this team definitely knows how to “go big.”

Sverve Unleashes Bloggers’ Social Verve

There are 20 million women bloggers in the United States. Every year more women join the crowded “mommy blogger” market. There are books (of the e- variety, of course), conferences, networks, and webinars all geared toward helping these women grow their audience and expand their influence.

Few of these blogs will make it “big.” But that doesn’t mean that lots of them couldn’t be profitable. For each well-done mommy blog, there is a tribe of loyal followers that are happy to try products, read books, or take vacations all based on the blogger’s recommendation.

These women work hard to make blogging worth their time, but for all the tactics and strategies out there, it can still be hard for good bloggers to monetize. Likewise, it can be hard for brands to decide which bloggers will be the best partners for them.

Rohit Vashisht and Vikas Gupta have the solution.

Sverve is a platform that connects brands and bloggers. Bloggers sign up for the service, paying $25 every six months. On the platform, they describe their blogs, add areas of influence, and give statistics for their reach and influence across their blog and social media. They can also connect with other bloggers and endorse each other, which helps establish expertise in a topic.

Brands can also pay to access this information. The blogger with the biggest following isn’t necessarily the right person to partner with a brand. With Sverve, brands can see a blogger’s target audience, demographic, and location. The platform allows brands to launch campaigns and recruit the best bloggers to partner with.

Sverve isn’t the first company to do something like this. Social Reactor also connects influencers with brands. But what makes Sverve such a great idea is that they tap into a very underutilized market–mommy bloggers.

I have probably read thousands of blog posts in my years of motherhood. Sometimes, it’s the easiest way to find like-minded community that can fit into the hectic life of a young mom. But, as my kids have gotten older, I read fewer and fewer mom-centric blogs. The ones that I’ve stuck with–well, I’ll try just about anything they recommend, and so would most of their readers. If Sverve finds a way to help brands tap into those followings, it’ll be a boon for the brands and the bloggers.

Sverve is going strong, too. They present today at the 500 Startups Demo Day, and they’ve already raised funding from Scout Ventures and 500 Startups. Their 5500 bloggers reach 50 million followers and get 1 billion pageviews a month collectively. That’s billion-with-a-b, y’all. Sverve’s traction is so good right now, they rank #5 on Mattermark’s pre-series A list.

Most mommy bloggers do it for the love of writing and sharing their lives. But that doesn’t mean these ambitious women don’t want to support their families. Sverve is providing a way for them to do what they love.

Every entrepreneur can get behind that.

The Hottest Thing In Tech Startups Is Getting Hotter

When you ask about the hottest thing in startups, you may get a lot of answers:

Data
Crowdfunding
New media

All of these things are popular, and lots of people are building and innovating in these areas. But, the actual hottest thing in tech startups isn’t an industry. It’s women.

Every conference you go to, you’ll hear the same question: “Where are the women?” Where are they on the VC panels? Why don’t more women-led startups receive funding? Why aren’t more women on the technical side?

There are no easy answers to these questions, because everything is so nuanced. But, the growing emphasis on women in the tech world is undeniable. There’s evidence that the gender gap is closing. Lots of accelerators actively seek women-founded companies. There are more and more initiatives to teach young girls coding and engineering. At our own Everywhere Else Conference, we host a “Kick-Ass Female Founders” panel, where women sound off about starting companies.

And, now, with a new women-only accelerator, women are just getting hotter.

Last week was the opening week of the inaugural cohort of Upstart, a women’s accelerator in Memphis, TN. Four teams survived the application process, and it all kicked off with a swanky reception.

Some people may disagree with a women’s-only accelerator. I admit, I was one of them at first. The thinking is that we don’t want to accidentally build a “separate but equal” ecosystem, with a women’s accelerator becoming a good place for the also-ran’s.

The team at Upstart isn’t going to let that happen, though.

At the opening reception, Start Co co-president Andre Fowlkes addressed this very issue. “Of course we want there to be equal distribution, but there isn’t. This is a first step.”

Mara Lewis is the entrepreneur-in-residence for the accelerator. Though she’s launching her own company in California, she will fly in for about a week each month to meet with the teams and help guide them. She’s always available through phone and email throughout the program. During her absences, the companies will work with the Start Co team to build their businesses and hone their pitches.

I asked Lewis what the difference is a women’s accelerator and a general one would be. Her answer shed a lot of light on the approach Upstart will take to get women ready to launch.

I think the primary difference is more in terms of our tactics. We’re still covering the same points and doing a lot of the same exercises, but we’re going about our critique in a different way…we’re being more aware of what some of the challenges for women are in terms of delivery of the pitch…One of the slides we’re spending a lot of time on right now is the the traction slide. Even though that’s important for all companies, statistically investors will invest in a man based on their potential, whereas for women you have to show past accomplishments, what has been achieved…We really need to show strides. By the end of 90 days, these girls need to have customers, they need to have revenue.

Upstart is the first women’s accelerator of its kind, that focuses on any company led by a woman. But, there is another accelerator in New York that focuses on women.

Women Innovate Mobile is an accelerator that invests in and mentors mobile-first, female-led companies. They see that fewer women receive investment funding, and they see that as a huge opportunity for them. While their teams are always mixed-gender, it is a requirement that a woman be a major stakeholder in the company. Other than that, their program has the same standards as any other accelerator.

Kelly Hoey is the Co-founder and Managing Director of WIM. As one of 5 women listed in Forbes for changing the world of VC/entrepreneurship, she’s a great mentor for the companies WIM accepts. And she expects big things from those companies. She told me over email, “We look for female founders who want to be household names, like Zukerberg, Jobs, or Gates.”

With programs like Upstart and WIM, it shouldn’t be long before we stop asking, “Where are the women?” And as more women choose to start companies and get the first-class mentorship available through these programs, the hottest thing in startups will just keep getting hotter.

Stay tuned for more coverage of the current Upstart and WIM cohorts.

Accel.io Publishes Guides for Everything

Scott Annan was frustrated with the lack of connection between authors and learners when he set out to create Accel.io, an online platform for creating interactive guides viewable across an array of devices.

Accel.io is different from eBooks in that it is much more interactive. Annan explains that “with an eBook, you get a “story” or narrative of things you should do, with text and images. With a course you get a series of lectures and specific activities to do to “prove” you understand. But with our guides you get a step-by-step process that is actually used by a successful author – with text, videos, file templates – everything you need to do it yourself.”

Annan first tested the market with StartupPlays, a site that offered Accel.io guides to help budding entrepreneurs build their first startup. The user response was astounding. Annan and his team sold over 10,000 guides with very positive feedback from their customers. With Accel.io guides being a new way to consume content, Annan says that it “took many iterations on pricing, format, and subjects, but we learned a lot in the process.”

Annan is no stranger to rallying the appropriate resources to help build Accel.io. In Ottawa, Canada, where Annan and Accel.io are based, Annan’s involvement in his local startup community is that of a leader. He ran a small accelerator last year and has brought together his community to provide mentorship and direction to cultivate a strong community in multiple areas. Annan is also part of the change in shifting Ottawa from being a hardware-focused city in the 90s to that of the consumer focused, software-oriented city it is today.

After rebuilding the Accel.io platform early this year to make the platform easier to use for anyone to create their own Accel.io guide, Annan says he and his team are now focusing on expanding their content into that of “health & fitness, professional development, relationships, and even home improvement.” By expanding the content of Accel.io, Annan hopes it becomes a great way to learn in all areas of life across the world. The ease of interacting with authors, taking notes, and interacting with embedded media make Accel.io a natural fit for a wide variety of subjects.

Annan says the long-term vision for Accel.io is to provide both content producers and content consumers “an alternative model to the eBook.” He views today’s formats as stuck in the past, printing press style of content. This limits the way a consumer can view and interact with content and limits authors in the way they can interact with users. Content, according to Annan, “should be more personalized, like a modern ‘choose your own adventure’ that is multimedia-based, constantly updated, and not constrained to so many pages.”

Annan is optimistic for Accel.io’s success and potential moving forward as it continues to dramatically grow. With a focus on interactivity and usability, Accel.io hopes to break past the wall that eBooks and traditional books have hit.

Michael Luchen is a student at the University of Kansas and project coordinator at Cremalab. You can find him at his website or on Twitter @mluchen.

New VC Fund Is Linking Michigan To Silicon Valley

While the bankruptcy of Detroit has put Michigan in the news in a negative way, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel coming from startups and entrepreneurship. This isn’t anything new for the state of Michigan; after all at one point even cars were new technology.

While Detroit has a blossoming startup scene and is preparing to rebuild, Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan have a startup scene that’s starting to thrive. The latest startup-focused venture, a VC fund called Michigan eLab is the most recent organization to join the cause.

Most startup communities “everywhere else” struggle with two major things: access to capital and access to talent. The new Michigan eLab is positioned to help entrepreneurs in Ann Arbor with both.

Crain’s Detroit reports that the new Michigan eLab is raising a first fund of $40 million dollars. While any startup community would welcome a new VC fund, Michigan eLab is uniquely positioned to bridge Ann Arbor and Michigan with Silicon Valley.

For starters the fund has two offices: one in Ann Arbor, the other in San Mateo California. An even bigger benefit that eLab brings to Ann Arbor is that three of the fund’s four founders have ties to Michigan. Doug Neal, one of the fund’s founders is originally from Mt. Pleasant. Neal spent 15 years in Silicon Valley with companies like Hewlett-Packard and Symantec before co-founding his own startup Mobile Automation. That company sold to iPass Inc in 2005 for $20 million dollars.

Rick Bolander is another one of the Michigan eLab founders with ties to both Silicon Valley and Michigan. Bolander graduated from the University of Michigan with a master’s in electrical engineering. He went on to launch Chicago’s Blue Sky Ventures and then co-founded San Mateo-based Gabriel Venture Partners.

Bob Stefanski is the third founder with ties to both Silicon Valley and Michigan. He is a graduate of UM earning both an engineering and a law degree. Stefanski is a partner in the Silicon Valley-based Reed Smith LLP. He is also the cofounder of Tibco Software, which has more than $1 billion in revenue according to Crain’s.

The final partner, Scott Chou, has no direct ties to Michigan or UM, but he is a managing director at Bolander’s Gabriel Venture Partners. Chou’s first venture deal was a 2001 seed round investment in NextG Networks, a California company, which sold to Texas-based Crown Castle International in December of 2011 for $1 billion dollars. That earned him a spot on the highly coveted top 100 venture capitalists in Silicon Valley list from AlwaysOn.

The founders of Michigan eLab hope to link Ann Arbor’s tech community, startups, and entrepreneurs with other famous founders with ties to the region. Those include: Larry Page, Dick Costolo, Skype’s Josh Silverman, Sun Microsystems co-founders Scott McNealy and Bill Joy, Groupon co-founder Brad Keywell, former Palm Inc. CEO Donna Dubinsky, and more.

Source: Crain’s Detroit.

Indy Startup Adproval Simplifies Direct Advertising For Any Blogger [VIDEO]

Most of our readers know I’m into my 7th year as a full time blogger. Both of the new media startups I’ve founded produced fresh content six days a week. After creating Nibletz in the summer of 2011, I sold Thedroidguy the following spring to concentrate on Nibletz full time.

Like many of the serial entrepreneurs we’ve profiled here at Nibletz, I learned a lot of lessons from my previous startup, and at the same time brought with me habits from my previous startup as well.

With a new media startup (in a lot of cases a fancy schmancy word for blog), or as a full time blogger, and now one with a staff, people often wonder how we do it. There are so many people out there that think they can buy a $1.99 domain name, activate Word Press, and be in business. Well as Indianapolis startup Adproval’s, founder Mathew Anderson talks about in the video below, it’s not that easy. A lot of bloggers either stop blogging altogether or move to part time blogging because they can’t figure out how to monetize.

In 2013 there are so many different things involved in monetization, the least lucrative of those is ad networks. Through both sites we’ve tried just about every available ad network. Now with tech focused sites we’re at an even bigger loss because most of our readers are trained not to click network ads. With advertising though, the trick is to be engaging and to capture the attention of the reader. That’s why our state and local partnerships are the best way to reach an engaged audience of millions across the site and social media.

But attracting those partnerships takes a lot of time.

Even with a permanent Managing Editor on board and a co-founder picking up a lot of the backend work, I spend a lot of time working on direct sales. Anderson is hoping to solve that problem, not just for us but for everyone. Anderson explains his “aha moment” in his conversation with Nick Tippmann in the video below, and he shared a lot about it in our interview with him back in November.

Adproval provides a platform that makes it easy to reach targeted direct advertisers for whatever your niche in blogging is.

Are you blogging recipes, kite flying, paintball, or even tech? Adproval helps you set up their system to reach those advertisers or sponsors that will engage the audience.

At Thedroidguy we used one of the biggest and best ad networks in the world, outside of Google AdSense. Still, an Android-focused blog, we would get huge skyscraper or interstitial ads for macaroni and cheese, cleaning product,s and Brita water filters. As internet sensation Sweet Brown would say, “Ain’t nobody got time for that.”

Here at Nibletz for instance, the best ads would be for startup lawyers, PR firms catering to startups, accelerators, startup conferences, the latest mobile technology, incubators, and coworking spaces. Our readers don’t care about Velveeta Shells & Cheese; they’re still eating Ramen noodles.

Adproval’s knack for connecting bloggers with the sponsors and advertisers that will fill these needs and actually get eyeballs is making the Indianapolis-based company successful.

Check out our video interview with Anderson below and for more info visit adproval.com

Launch Tennessee And The Blackstone Foundation Are Looking For The TENN Best Startups

Just yesterday we were talking about the 9 accelerator regions in Tennessee. Launch Tennessee is the public/private partnership that oversees those nine accelerator regions and helps promote Tennessee startups statewide. Earlier this month they announced a new initiative, cleverly called TENN, that’s looking to identify the ten top startups coming out of the Tennessee accelerators. The program will kick off August 27th with a statewide demo day.

The TENN is sponsored by the Blackstone Foundation, who we just reported yesterday announced their LaunchPad program was moving into their 5th state, Montana.

“Focusing on innovation and attracting and encouraging entrepreneurs are key economic development strategies in Tennessee,” Gov. Bill Haslam said in a statement. “Launch Tennessee’s initiative to coordinate a statewide network of startup accelerators is an important part of our ongoing efforts and isn’t being done anywhere else in the country. The TENN program, which is one of the most exciting projects to come out of this effort, recognizes the best and brightest of Tennessee’s entrepreneurs. I look forward to the new ideas, partnerships and investments that will result from the program.”

Companies that have graduated from one of Tennessee’s nine regional business accelerators in the last year can apply to be one of The TENN by Aug. 2. A panel of regional and national venture capitalists and angel fund leaders will select The TENN to participate in the inaugural program. The application, a full listing of the panelists, and other program information may be accessed online.

Shortly after demo day, The TENN will leave for a statewide bus tour, where they will meet with leaders of Tennessee’s top corporations. Additionally, during the master accelerator program, The TENN companies will fly to California and the East Coast to network with venture capitalists and angel investors.

Other benefits of the TENN program include office space in the nearest regional accelerator or a subsidy for the company’s existing office space, events that connect the companies to industry-specific mentors, and high-level access to major corporations based in Tennessee.

Governor Haslam will announce The TENN at the statewide demo day, which will also include a keynote speech from John Greathouse, partner at Santa Barbara, Calif.-based Rincon Venture Partners and co-founder of RevUpNet.

“I am looking forward to participating in the upcoming TENN program, Tennessee’s statewide demo day in which the top companies from Tennessee’s accelerators join forces to network and compete,” Greathouse said in a statement. “The TENN program is an outstanding opportunity for startups that are past the initial incubator stage, but are seeking mentors, funding and other critical resources to help them achieve the next stage of success. My hope is that this unique platform spawns similar regional and statewide events targeted at assisting companies that have graduated from accelerators but have yet to reach critical mass.”

Just as it was last year, August will be a huge month for Tennessee startups. Chattanooga’s GigTank, Memphis’ ZeroTo510, and Nashville’s Jumpstart Foundry accelerators will all graduate.

You can find out more about Launch Tennessee here.

This huge startup event for startups everywhere else is also in Tennessee.

Boston’s HackFit Puts A Healthy Spin On The Startup Building Hackathon

We’ve been to several Startup Weekends, Angel Hacks, 48 Hour Launch events, and other hackathons. On the surface they attract a similar “type” of person: the guy or gal who sits around and codes around the clock eating pizza, drinking beer, and keeping their eyes open with 5 Hour Energy and RedBull. Justin Mendelson, the founder of a new hackathon in Boston called HackFit, is preparing to change that.

In addition to coding and building, HackFit attendees will also have ample time to sleep, a variety of workout classes, healthy foods, and of course sessions for coding developing and company building.

Mendelson has been an entrepreneur, product builder, mentor, and business developer throughout his career. He’s also a runner and an athlete, which is why he founded HackFit, a natural mesh of his two passions.

“I’ve participated in a lot of other startup weekends because of previous ideas that I had for fitness-related startups, and I learned that the best teammates were often the ones who were runners themselves. However, I felt like any time I attended one of those startup events, I’d aged a year when the event was over. I wanted to create an active, healthy startup event system since none currently exist,” Mendelson told bostonmagazine.com.

The inaugural HackFit event will be held in Cambridge, Massachusetts, September 20-22nd. “Like a typical startup event schedule, people will first pitch ideas that pertain to the fitness tech space,” Mendelson says, explaining the weekend schedule. “But instead of people just coming up to you after your pitch and asking to join you, we’ll have a physical exercise ice breaker that will help people meet each other. Then people will form teams and go home for the night to sleep.”

In addition to a schedule that includes ample time for fitness and team building, all of the startups created will be fitness and health related. Like most startup-building hackathons there will be a judging panel on Sunday. Participants will receive prizes from area sponsors including gym memberships.

To find out more about HackFit click here.

This startup event may not be so healthy but it’s gonna be a ton of fun and huge.

12-Year-Old Vegas Tech Rockstar Set To Speak At SXSW V2V

We’re hearing about more and more kidpreneurs and teenpreneurs. There was a 14-year-old who won Cincinnati’s most recent Startup Weekend. Another 14-year-old won Tampa’s most recent Startup Weekend as well.

Ethan Duggan may not be the winner of a recent Startup Weekend, but he is an app developer and startup founder. His app “LazyHusband” launched at SXSW this year in Austin, Texas.

Ethan is growing up in the Las Vegas startup community, VegasTech for those in the know. His father Rick Duggan, is the cofounder of vegasstartups.com. The elder Duggan is also “coach,” with the younger Duggan preferring the keyboard and the app store to the baseball diamond or the football field.

The young but witty tween, knows a thing or two about apps, launching, startups, founding, and entrepreneurship. He also knows about monetization. When asked about monetizing his app, he told Vegasstartups.com’s John Lynn “$0.99 per download…Coder’s gotta eat.”

Lynn reports that down in Austin during SXSW, the young Duggan scored over 10 interviews and several high profile posts including one by Brad Feld, and another from GigaOM that ended up on CNN Money. Not too shabby for a member of the VegasTech community that couldn’t even get into the legendary VegasTech party. No worries though. The elder Duggan and the VegasTech community made sure Ethan could join the party via FaceTime. (How 2013 is that?)

Now father and son are going to host a talk at SXSW V2V next month in Las Vegas. They’ll be talking about how Ethan overcame stereotypes of proper childhood activities. They’ll also talk about how Rick Duggan is his “coach,” the app Ethan has created, and how you’re Never Too Young.

You can still purchase passes for SXSW V2V here. and sign up for Duggan’s session here.

Nibletz will be on the ground in Vegas for SXSW V2V, with your help. We’ve got great sponsorship opportunities here where you can get your startup, or startup support organization in front of millions at the most high profile startup event of the summer.

Ethan Duggan image: vegasstartups.com

These 6 Companies Are In The South Dakota Technology Business Center Accelerator

Earlier today we talked about the incubators and accelerators in Tennessee and Ohio. As we often say, there are accelerator programs and startup initiatives everywhere (or everywhere else), even Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

Sioux Falls startup incubator, the South Dakota Technology Business Center, started their 2013 accelerator program with six entrepreneurial teams that were competitively selected to participate.

The SDTBC’s accelerator program is a break from the traditional model. Rather than having teams quit their jobs, move to Sioux Falls, and participate in a 90 day or 120 day program, their program is a series of monthly workshop days focusing on business concepts and model, sales growth, and scaling their business.

The companies selected to participate in this year’s program are:

Braced With Style
Farmcast Group
Sidewalk Technologies
Nanofiber Separations LLC
Fointar
Prom-Tect SD

These companies are learning how to be successful from some of the region’s top experts in entrepreneurship, sales, finance, intellectual property, business law and more,” Pam Boehm, the center’s client services manager said in a statement. “We are excited to be working with these entrepreneurs and the more than 20 subject matter experts sharing their time and talents to further entrepreneurship in South Dakota.”

The companies are also competing throughout the program for portions of a $20,000 pool of funds and in-kind business services designed to take their startups to the next level. The $20,000 prize fund and services will be distributed throughout the course of the program.

The 2013 Accelerator is sponsored by Forward Sioux Falls and South Dakota EPSCoR. EPSCoR is the Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research that is funded by the National Science Foundation.

You can find out more here.

Do you want to build a startup or a small business? Read this post.

Blackstone Launchpad Expands Entrepreneurship Program To Montana

On Friday Montana became the fifth Blackstone Launchpad region, joining Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Florida.

Blackstone LaunchPad is modeled after a successful program developed at the University of Miami in 2008, which has generated 1,413 business proposals, 210 new jobs, and drawn nearly 2,600 participants. Each new regional program will be linked together, drawing ideas and best practices from the existing programs, and giving student entrepreneurs at the University of Montana and Montana State University access to a national community of over 200,000 of their peers expert advisers for their ventures.

“Entrepreneurship is the single most effective way to spur economic growth and job creation,” said Blackstone’s President and COO, Tony James. “We must all play a role in nurturing talent, and through Blackstone LaunchPad, students will have access to an expanded universe of resources and years of institutional knowledge, helping them launch ventures that can take root locally and strengthen Montana’s economy.”

The Blackstone Charitable Foundation’s three-year, $2 million grant will establish a partnership between Montana State University, the University of Montana, and Headwaters RC&D to introduce entrepreneurship as a viable career option and provide university students with a network of venture coaches and entrepreneurial support to transform new ideas into sustainable companies. With a physical presence at Montana State University and the University of Montana, Blackstone LaunchPad has the potential to generate some 150 new ventures in Montana over the next five years.

“The Blackstone LaunchPad Program will allow students at Montana State University and the University of Montana to see real application of their ideas transformed into sustainable companies as they partner with local businesses. I look forward to the innovation and new ventures Montana will see in the coming years through Blackstone LaunchPad,” Montana Governor Steve Bullock said in a statement.

This should come as no surprise to some as Montana was ranked #1 according to the latest Kauffman Foundation Index of Entrepreneurial Activity, which was released last month. Because of Montana’s natural resources, it’s become a hub of sorts to startups and small businesses.

“Montana is a small business state – in fact nearly all of our workers are employed by businesses with fewer than 20 employees. That means Montana jobs rely on entrepreneurs, striking out on their own and building companies from the ground up. This new partnership will go a long way toward helping Montana entrepreneurs get new businesses off the ground so they can grow and create jobs.” Senator Max Bacus said in a statement.

You can find out more about Blackstone here.

Yes even startups from Montana come to this huge startup conference for startups everywhere else.

Image: Billings, MT

Pittsburgh Startup Wants To Help You Monetize Your White Papers

When companies put out white papers they are typically very proud of their work. A lot of research has gone into these papers, but in the end most of them are distributed freely via pdf. Some may view white papers as research tools, and a way to get a company’s name out there. Or perhaps white papers are used to thoroughly explore a new product. Either way, they are one of the most in-depth forms of content marketing, and these days content marketing is huge.

Outside of content marketing though, but still quite related, white papers can serve as an excellent lead referral source. The problem is most companies don’t know how to utilize the white papers for lead generation, thus leaving them undervalued.

“You would be surprised how few companies correctly leverage their whitepapers and research studies for new customer acquisition. These documents are valuable resources and while it’s OK to give them away as free PR, we feel a lot of consumer leads are being left on the table when a company simply links to the PDF for an instant download,” DocumentLeads founder Chris Cagle told us.

Cagle went onto explain, “If the value of the white paper is correctly explained and presented, many people will not even hesitate to give you their name and email in order to download it. This is where DocumentLeads comes in. While there are currently a few services out there that do this as part of a larger offering, DocumentLeads is the only company that focuses solely on allowing you to create a lead form for the sole purpose of capturing and nurturing leads off a digital document in a completely white-labeled environment. We’ve put all of our skill and attention on doing this one thing, and doing it very well. ”

Cagle is a Pittsburgh-based serial entrepreneur who had a string of misses before launching GetSimple CMS. Cagle used a lot of the knowledge he gained from building GetSimple CMS and put it into DocumentLeads.

Check out the rest of our interview with Cagle below.

What is your startup, what does it do?

DocumentLeads is a document management SaaS application. We give online businesses the ability to generate and capture leads directly from the downloads of their whitepapers and other digital documents. We have a built-in CRM management tool that allows customers to view and nurture the leads they capture. Additionally, if a customer of our service uses an outside CRM tool, we have integrations with some of the top online CRMs such as Nutshell, CapsuleCRM and Highrise as well as similar services like MailChimp.

Who are the founders and what are their backgrounds

DocumentLeads is a product and service created by Chris Cagle. Chris is a tech entrepreneur located in Pittsburgh, PA (USA) and has been creating products on the web for over 10 years. Chris got his start building a lot of online properties that no one used, then moved onto founding & developing one of the most successful lite-CMSs on the market currently – GetSimple CMS. While building GetSimple, Chris learned a lot about application security, great user experience and the downfalls of feature-bloat. All of these skills were used when creating DocumentLeads.

Where are you based?

We are based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Pittsburgh is a budding tech town (because of all of our colleges) and is home to a rabid Black & Gold fan base for the Pirates, Penguins and Steelers.

What is one challenge that you’ve overcome in the startup process?

A large challenge we’ve overcome is how to correctly handle any type of document in any online environment. With DocumentLeads, you can now upload a PPT file (or DOC, XLS, PDF, TXT, etc.) and have it be viewed as an HTML file, then downloaded as a PDF. Most solutions out there force you to use JavaScript (only PDF-friendly) or Flash (not mobile-friendly). At Dcoumentleads, we’ve solved this and have a solution that works for any document on any device. Another large challenge we are currently running into is operating in a bootstrapped environment. Because we are 100% bootstrapped, we don’t have the marketing budget that some of the others in our field have (SlideShare & HubSpot). This is a constant weight on our shoulders that forces us be creative to get the publicity and some visibility needed to be successful in our market.

What are some of the milestones your startup has achieved?

The first and most important milestone we’ve achieved is our initial launch. Coming up for the idea for the business was easy (all ideas are born out of a need, right?), but executing on it was a multitude of difficulty more. There were some late nights, countless “how do we do this?” moments and plenty of code rewrites. In the end, we produced a service that we are extremely proud of and feel can make a difference for many businesses out there looking to take advantage of their digital documents.

What are your next milestones

Integrations. While we have a good stable of CRM integrations at this moment, we need more to make it as useful as possible. This means integrating with entrenched and enterprise-level products like Salesforce, ZoHo, Campaign Monitor and other big name CRM and email management products.

Who are your mentors and role models?

I, like many other self-started entrepreneurs, grew up reading blogs like RRW and Techcrunch. Lately, I’ve been fascinated by the blog and email newsletter of Patrick McKenzie. This guy is a genius (and extremely transparent!) on how to build, price and run your SaaS business. I have learned a lot from him, and would recommend anyone reading this to sign up for this “Grow your software business” email newsletter… it’s fantastic.

What’s next for your startup?

We need to grow. Period. We are still in our infancy (we officially launched only a few short months ago) and we need to grow in terms of customers and mature feature sets. We are constantly striving to harden and shape our business to be the best it can be, but we also recognize it can be a long process. Aside from the integrations we mentioned above, supporting our current customers and the ongoing marketing that needs to occur, our schedules are stacked full (just the way we like it!).

Where can people find out more, and what is your Twitter username?

You can learn more about DocumentLeads on our website Documentleads.com. Our Twitter handle is @documentleads and you will find us posting our product updates and news on there.

This Pittsburgh startup wants to make sure you never lose your wallet again.