Brandery 2012 Alumn Flightcar Nabs $5.5 Million From Investors Including Ryan Seacrest

So back in July when we heard the original idea behind FlightCar I thought this group of teenage ivy league dropouts was absolutely crazy. Their Cincinnati startup Flightcar is a crazy idea. Their simplest pitch, “let someone else rent your car while you’re traveling” seemed a little far fetched. Combine that with the fact that there’s maybe 10 years driving experience between the three of them and even less business traveling experience, and I was totally disconnected.

Sometime during the Brandery’s demo day back in October my opinion changed. By the end of their pitch, and then a brief meeting with all three founders and I was completely sold.

With the “sharing economy” becoming more and more popular, why wouldn’t someone let another person borrow their car while they are away on a trip. People are doing it with their homes all the time now, by way of Vayala and Airbnb.

The concept is fairly simple. You’re flying out of town for a trip and you have to pay for parking for your car. Rather than paying for parking, Flightcar allows you to park your car in their lot and then while your gone it gets rented out to someone else who is coming into town for the same length or a shorter amount of time. Now, instead of spending money to park, you’re making money with your car that would otherwise be sitting in a parking lot.

To make the value proposition work Flightcar founders Rujul Zaparde, Kevin Petrovic and Shri Ganeshram had to insure a few things for their customers to be comfortable with the transaction.

Insurance: Of course the entire transaction, car, renters, drivers and passengers would need to be fully insured. Flightcar has done this by securing a $1 million dollar insurance policy.

Ease of transaction: The Flightcar team has managed to build in several factors to make the transaction as easy and painless as possible. The Flightcar website helps pre-determine the “borrowing”. Once at the airport (participating airports), you park your car at the Flightcar lot where a ride is provided to the gate. Flightcar will also wash and clean your car prior to renting it out and prior to you picking it up.

After the Brandery, Flightcar was accepted into the YCombinator accelerator program in Silicon Valley. Now they’ve raises $5.5 million dollars from investors. This first round of funding comes from General Catalyst, Softbank Capital, Ryan Seacrest’s Seacrest Global Group, founder of Airbnb Brian Chesky, with participation from a host of other investors including First Round Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, according to TechCrunch.

Check out their pitch video from Brandery’s 2012 demo day below:

Find out more about Flightcar here at flightcar.com

The Brandery is one of the country’s top 15 accelerators, check out all of our Brandery coverage here.

St. Louis Arch Grants Sees 707 Applicants For 2013

Startups who applied, and have made the finals for the St. Louis Arch Grants startup program, are waiting on pins and needles leading up to the final pitch offs and winner announcements.

Arch Grants is a program that kicked off last year in St. Louis. They provide startups with a $50,000 grant (disbursed quarterly over a year). Of course, being that it’s grant money, there is no equity exchanged. Startups selected for the program will relocate to St. Louis where they will enjoy deeply discounted residential and commercial rent, free legal, accounting, marketing, cloud computing and mentoring support, and access to the St. Louis angel investment network.

Arch Grants will award 20 such grants this year and plan on making the announcement early next month. All 20 startups will serve as spokespeople for the St. Louis entrepreneurial community and also be eligible for $100,000 follow on grant money (again no equity).

Our good friend Edward Domain, at media company Techli was one such winner last year. Domain had frequented the St. Louis startup scene from his base of operations, which was Chicago at the time. Once receiving the grant Techli moved to St. Louis and the T-Rex co-working, incubation space.

Domain just recently profiled three of the finalists for this years grants at techli.com

While many startups from across the country apply, and are more than willing to move to St. Louis for it’s rich, budding startup community, some local entrepreneurs have applied too.

Ron Story, a local St. Louis resident and founder of LeadWarmer, told Domain:

“As a resident of the St. Louis metro area, St. Louis is a no-brainer for me. I’ve worked for a St. Louis based startup myself and now that I’ve launched my own venture and have some traction, I am more convinced than ever that St. Louis is exactly where I need to be to grow my business. Being an Arch Grants finalist is humbling and exciting all at once. It makes me proud an East St. Louis entrepreneur can grow a great business here.”

Check out the rest of the story at techli.com

St.Louis has a great startup community, check out more St. Louis startup stories here.

Pittsburgh Startup PayTango Moves Mobile Wallet To Your Fingertips

As the mobile wallet begins to catch on, the next wave of mobile wallet startups are starting to come alive as well. Back in January we interviewed New Jersey startup PulseWallet at CES 2013 in Eureka Park. There we learned that PulseWallet is working on biometrics to serve as someone’s mobile wallet.

Simply put, with this kind of technology you’ll be able to ditch your credit cards, debit cards, and loyalty cards. Instead, your finger will become your secure wallet. With a finger scan and a pin you’ll be able to pay for anything with any number of payment forms in a much safer, fraud resistant way.

PulseWallet isn’t alone. Biometrics is a hot space as is mobile wallet. Four Carnegie Mellon University students have also recently launched a biometrics based mobile wallet called PayTango.

According to the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, using PayTango a customer would swipe there finger and in less than 15 seconds they would be linked to their payment sources.

“We wanted to eliminate the need to carry anything around to identify yourselves. Like you have these plastic credit cards and if you lose them or get the numbers stolen off them, essentially someone could wipe your bank account,” said co-founder Kelly Lau-Kee.

Lau Kee says that credit cards are antiquated and haven’t really evolved in the last 40 years since their introduction. Yes security has gotten better and reconciliation is much more reliable with phone lines and the internet,but storing the information on the magnetic strip is still the same technology today as it was back in the 70’s.

PayTango was brewed in Pennsylvania. All four founders; Brian Groudan, Umang Patel, Christian Reyes and Lau-Kee, are all either seniors or recent graduates of Carnegie Mellon. They conceived the idea in the fall of 2012 for a TechLab startup course at CMU and then continued working on it during the University of Pennsylvania’s PennApps Hackathon.

The technology is currently up and running at three eateries on the Carnegie Mellon campus. For the live beta at CMU, over 700 students have registered their fingerprint which was linked to their student ID which has their meal plan attached. To eat at those eateries, students in the beta just swipe their finger at checkout.

Now they’ve relocated to Mountain View California after being accepted into the prestigious Y Combinator accelerator program. They’ve already expanded PayTango into gyms, restaurants and convenience stores in Silicon Valley.

What they’re doing is bringing a very simple idea into reality,” said Garry Tan, a partner at Y Combinator. “Payments should be easier, and we’re now capable of doing it without fancy cards or readers or anything besides what we carry around with us all the time right now — our fingerprints.”

Find out more about PayTango here

Now check out New Jersey startup PulseWallet

Student Organization nvigor Hosting Philadelphia Student Startup Summit April 20th

An organization hoping to raise awareness and collaboration between Philadelphia’s college student community and business and industrial leaders in the region is hosting a startup event at the University of Pennsylvania. The event called the “Philadelphia Student Startup Summit” takes place this coming Saturday as part of the Philly Tech Week festivities.

The students in the organization come from a variety of schools in Philadelphia including the University of Pennsylvania, Temple and Drexel University where nvigor co-founder Abhiroop Das is a junior.

The Philadelphia Student Startup Summit is hoping to serve as an “Introduction To Philadelphia Startup Community” for many of the students, and business people who attend the day long event.

Event organizers have done a great job of keying up some of Philadelphia’s top startup community leaders as speakers. Josh Kopelman managing partner of First Round Capital and Karen Griffith Gryga, managing partner at Dreamit Ventures are both on tap to speak at the inaugural event.

The event will also feature a “startup alley” showcasing some of the regions best startups. Some of the startups are also looking to hire students right out of college.

Tickets can be picked up here, they are free but they’re running out quickly.

You can find out more about Philly Tech Week here.

Jax Startup Floppy Entertainment Founder: OneSpark Sparking Startup Community

OneSpark starts this Wednesday and runs through Sunday. It’s the first of it’s kind crowdfunding festival for “creators”. OneSpark is taking the crowdfunding concept made popular by Kickstarter, Indiegogo and of course every single startup that’s popped up since we’ve been waiting for the JOBSact,and brought it off line.
The festival will be like SXSW interactive meets SXSW music and everything in between as creators from around the world spread out at venues across downtown Jacksonville. For a good summary of OneSpark check out this story.

We’ll be talking with lot’s of creators on-site and some as we lead up to this epic event.

First up we have Michael Le Manna, the founder of Floppy Entertainment. In our interview with Le Manna he credits the OneSpark festival for really sparking startups and the startup community in Jacksonville. Even Shahid Khan, the owner of the Jacksonville Jaguars, is on board.

Check out the interview below and for more on OneSpark visit beonespark.com

What is your startup, what does it do?

Floppy Entertainment is the first game company in Jacksonville Florida, founded in 2012. It consists of a small group of highly talented programmers and artists. The vision of the company is to create a new and innovative gaming experience for people on a mobile platform to play for brief periods of time throughout the course of a normal day. Our interactive games are fun, easily understood and challenging. Players will be compelled to play again and again.

Who are the founders and what are their backgrounds?

Michael La Manna creative lead, audio designer. Has been writing music for games and media for over 14 years.

Brian Marshburn programmer. Started programming games at the age of 8.

Thomas Schaffer lead technical artist. Master user of Maya software.

What is the startup culture like in Jacksonville?

Other than One Spark there has never been any support for a start up tech company such as game development.

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

The big challenge working in game development is the expensive software licensing fees.

What are some of the milestones your startup has achieved?

We have won multiple indie development contest and secured sponsorship from Microsoft.

What are your next milestones?

Our first mobile game will be released in the next 4 months.

Who are your mentors and role models?

Other independent game company’s such as Trendy Entertainment in Gainesville Florida, they have been very supportive.

What are some of the advantages/disadvantages growing your startup outside of Silicon Valley.

One advantage is lack of competition but the big disadvantage is lack or interest of local support.

What’s next for your startup?

Develop and release at a minimum of 3 games a year.

Where can people find out more?

www.floppyent.com Or on twitter as floppyent

Check out more about OneSpark here at nibletz.com the voice of startups everywhere else

Startup Front, There’s Something Brewing Outside Of Chicago

We’re pretty confident that over the course of the last year Chicago’s thriving tech startup scene has proven the folks at PandoDaily wrong, very wrong. Chicago has one of the fastest growing startup tech scenes in the world. Their 1871 incubator and startup epicenter is amazing, producing hit after hit and now home to TechStars Chicago.
It’s this eruption of startup activity that got serial entrepreneur Kelly Schwedland and entrepreneur Nat Finn talking about what they could do on the other side of Chicago, in Valparaiso Indiana.

We’ve reported on Indiana’s other thriving startup communities, like Indianapolis, home to the Speak Easy, Developer Town and Verge Indy events. We even featured Speak Easy Executive Director Denver Hutt as one of our Bad Ass Startup Chicks.

Now, those in Northwest Indiana don’t need to head into the big city to have access to startup resources thanks to Schwedland, Finn and a host of other collaborators.

Startup Front started out as a lunch meet up for tech leaders, entrepreneurs and startup founders. Like every great startup though, they pivoted and have now become an accelerator, which will launch next year, with a ten year plan of cranking out at least 2 startups per session ripe for an IPO.

Nibletz co-founder and new CEO, Nick Tippmann, was a guest speaker at the kick off event for the new Startup Front last week in Valparaiso. Over the next two weeks we will feature a series of videos from Startup Front that discuss building startup communities in the heartland.

Check out the video below where Tippmann interviews both Finn and Schwedland. They discuss bringing some of the attributes of the third largest city in the United States, just miles down the road to North West Indiana.

Check out Startup Front at startupfront.org

We’ve got more startup stories from Indiana here at nibletz.com

Startup Grinding Into San Antonio

Startup Grind is one of the fastest growing startup movements in the country. The Mountain View based organization is “fostering entrepreneurship through story telling” at localized “fireside chat” style events.

Startup Grind was founded by Derek Anderson and his quickly grown to 40 chapters across the country. One of the latest chapters to join was Startup Grind Philly which we reported on last week.

Each city’s chapter of Startup Grind tries to attract top tier speakers, giving their local entrepreneurs and startup communities access to higher profile speakers’ than you would find at other events.

San Antonio is the newest chapter to join Startup Grind, and their first event is just under two weeks away. The April 23rd inaugural Startup Grind San Antonio event will happen at Geekdom in downtown San Antonio.

Jason Seats the cofounder of SliceHost and Managing Director of TechStars Cloud (which graduates this Thursday), is the fireside chat for the first event. The May speaer will be David Spencer, founder of OnBoard Systems. Pat Condon cofounder of Rackspace is on deck for June.

This month’s event will begin at 6pm with pizza and beer and the fireside chat with Jason Seats will kick off at 7pm. There will also be an interactive Q&A session. Early bird tickets are still available for just $10 at this link.

You can find out more about Startup Grind in your area here.

Startup founders including Jermaine Dupri talk about “Why Atlanta”

Montreal Startup Outpost Is Kayak For P2Pers

Kayak is one of the most awesome sites in the world for travelers. On one big screen you can compare flights, cars and lodging by price and provider. It’s great if you’re on a budget but if you’re bootstrapping and hitting the peer 2 peer sites there hasn’t been a place to offer similar comparative information.

That’s until now.

Montreal based developer Hamed Al-Khabaz, recently launched a new startup called Outpost or outpostp2p.com. It’s the Kayak for people looking to take advantage of p2p travel.

Right now the site give you access to Vayable, RideJoy and Airbnb, but according to Al-Khabaz via reddit and social media, they are looking to add just about every peer 2 peer travel service available.

Outpost is made up of three easy steps.

Lookup P2P services
Plan Your Spots
Packup and Travel

Using outpost you know where you can use each of the services individually or in tandem. If you’re using airbnb why not do some ride sharing too, it just makes sense.

Once you pick your destination using Outpostp2p.com you’re taken to a map that shows you all of the various p2p travel services available to you.

While Ridejoy obviously moves about a city, in cities like New York you can use Outpost to compare Vayable and Airbnb side by side. It also gives you a quick rundown in a list on the left side of the page with current accommodations by price for both services.

While this was admittedly a side project for Al-Khabaz, with the way it looks, operates and the need for a service like this, it could quickly become a huge new startup.

Check out Outpost here at outpostp2p.com

Startup Act 3.0 aims to open borders for entrepreneurs

Dallas Entrepreneur Launches HealthSparx Web Series On Startups & Innovation

HealtSparx,Michael Walsh,Dallas Startup,Health startup,startup podcast

(photo: meetup.com)

Dallas based entrepreneur Michael Walsh has been extremely busy lately. First off, his Austin Texas based startup, Cariloop, just launched. We interviewed Walsh about his startup that uses the “Expedia” model for geriatric care back in January.

Walsh also just recently launched a new web series called “HealthSparx”. This online web based radio show deals with the intersection of three important industries: health, technology and business.

Each webisode runs about 30 minutes and features commentary, information and an interview with an influential person in health or technology.

Healthsparx is already on it’s fourth webisode.

Episode #1 English majors rock as much as mechanical engineers

Episode #2 How IT plumbing will help healthcare

Episode #3 Every little bit helps in healthcare

Episode #4 Creating the perfect social and private experience

Walsh explains the three big reasons he decided to launch HealthSparx:

1. There is seriously so much cool stuff going on in healthcare right now that no one knows about, and that’s thanks to the innovative entrepreneurs and technology that are finally giving this industry the makeover it so desperately needs. Make no mistake, this makeover is going to take a LONG time for us to really see how great it looks, but we will get there…I am sure of it! I want to share these great stories from across the country and make people more aware of the cool products and services being born. If you have one of these stories for me, go submit your info to me on the “Be A Guest” page, I want to hear from you!

2. No easy way to say this, so I’ll just level with you…Healthcare has gotten ridiculously confusing. This confusion is affecting everyone – you, your business, your employees, on and on. I want to pull the curtain back a bit on what’s going on so you might finally make heads or tails of it. Maybe here, in the HealthSparx community, we can even come up with some things that the “powers that be” aren’t thinking about.

3. I love entrepreneurship – I love talking about entrepreneurs, I love helping entrepreneurs, and I love trying to light a spark within an entrepreneur who doesn’t yet know they are an entrepreneur. So, I’m going to do just that, bring people on the show that might be able to help someone else build that amazing idea they’ve been thinking about. This might include developers, designers, lawyers, financial advisors, investors, accelerators or any other people who think they know what it takes to bring a product or service to life. Take this information, digest it, and if possible, make something happen with it!

The shows are well produced and thought out and if you fit into one of HealthSparx categories feel free to apply to be a guest here.

There’s much more to Dallas than oil and JR, check out these Dallas startup stories here.

Oregon Startup To Begin Testing Potato Drones

Drones are a hot button discussion these days. Most of the talk has been about non-manned aircraft used for military and surveillance. An Oregon startup called Paradigm in conjunction with Boeing and Oregon State University are preparing to start test flights of Potato Drones.

The Federal Aviation Administration has authorized the use of two remote-controlled aircrafts which will monitor potato fields in Eastern Oregon.

Komonews reports that the drones are about the size of a suitcase and equipped with cameras that can zoom in on a single leaf plant. The drones are expected to be able to determine if the plants are getting enough water and fertilizer. If they aren’t, they will alert the farmers who can take immediate corrective action.

The use of drones is a lot quicker and the technology makes it much easier to see, verses the old fashioned way of walking through the crops to spot plants that need fixing.

The Potato Drones will fly over fields at the Hermiston Agricultural Research Extension Center and also at a private farm west of Boardman Oregon. The group picked potatoes because they are expensive and difficult to grow. Phil Hamm the director of the research extension center said that potatoes cost about $500,000 for the average crop circle.

Trial flights are expected to start Monday weather permitting.

Here are more Oregon startup stories at nibletz the voice of startups everywhere else.

NTEN Honors Memphis Startup Founder Tal Frankfurt

NTEN, the Nonprofit Technology Network, closed out their 2013 Nonprofit Technology Conference in Minneapolis Minnesota Saturday evening. The event brings together NTEN members from across the country who’s companies use technology for the benefit of non profit organizations across the United States and globally.

Memphis based Cloud For Good, is one of those technology companies. The startup, led by Israeli native tech entrepreneur and SalesForce pro Tal Frankfurt, designs enterprise class data systems operating on the SalesForce platform specifically for non profit clients.

Some of the largest non profit organizations, churches and synagogues across the country rely on Cloud For Good to give them the same class of service that a Fortune 100 company would come to expect.

Each year NTEN recognizes entrepreneurs who go above and beyond over the course of the year to be “true NTENnies”.

This year’s honors were bestowed upon members in the format of “senior superlatives” or “most likely to’s”

Frankfurt was said to be Most likely to: “Live In The Cloud And Help You Get There”.

Tal Frankfurt, Founder and CEO of Cloud for Good, was chosen in 2010 to be one of the first Salesforce MVP Program members, an exclusive club representing the top 1% of the Salesforce community, and have maintained that status to date.

Prior to his involvement with Salesforce.com, Tal was the Director of Resource Development for an Israeli nonprofit organization that worked with at-risk immigrant youth. He was looking for tools to better manage his donors, participants, and volunteers. It was through this experience that Tal learned about Salesforce. The adoption of Salesforce into his everyday work was what sparked the inception of Cloud for Good, a Salesforce implementation partner working primarily with nonprofit and educational institutions to create and implement strategic solutions based on cloud technology.

Tal has been involved with Salesforce.com and The Salesforce.com Foundation for almost 8 years. He was the founder and leader of the Salesforce Nonprofit User Group in Israel and recently founded the first Salesforce Nonprofit User Group in Tennessee. Frankfurt is a Certified Salesforce.com Administrator and a Certified Salesforce.com Consultant.

NTEN wrote in the web version of their conference program.

We’ve got more south east startup coverage here.

The Never Ending Marker Finalist: In St.Louis’ go!-celerator

goBRANDgo! Partners Brandon Dempsey and Derek Weber

(photo: St. Louis Business Journal)

St. Louis may be known for it’s world famous beer, but lately their startup community has been growing and thriving. They have an awesome angel network in place, St. Louis Arch Angels. They also have an accelerator that’s producing real results (and not pre-lining up follow on deals from accelerator partners), Cap Innovators. They have an awesome community focal point in the co-working space T-Rex, and when one of their startups or entrepreneurs faces tough times they rally around them, rather than distancing themselves.

So far the St. Louis startup community is operating by the handbook, Brad Feld’s “Startup Communities”.

Now one of St. Louis’ startup community supporters has launched a new incubator. goBRANDgo! a local marketing firm has decided to open up a new incubator.

Their new incubator, dubbed; go!-celerator is designed for early stage startups. Three finalists are competing for a year’s free office space, networking opportunities, and mentoring to the tune of $50,000 in agency resources.

Saint Louis University student Gregory Keogh and his startup, Remarkable, are finalists for the first spot in the go!-celerator. Keogh is developing a refillable white board marker station that will keep the dry erase marker full at all times.

While this seems like a great idea for any business, startups, who are known for endless “whiteboarding” would certainly take advantage of the value proposition posed by an endlessly refillable,never ending dry erase marker.

According to the St. Louis Business Journal, goBRANDgo! founders Brandon Dempsey and Derek Weber have a thing for going through lots of dry erase markers.

Remarkable is a finalist pitted against Bazaar Boy a tech startup creating a market place for local small businesses and HCP United “an integrated E-Dispensary platform designed for member-based purchasing groups that allows health care providers to deliver more affordable care. “

You can find out more about goBRANDgo! here.

This startup in Louisville teaches 5 year olds how to code!

Fueled By Cardboard: Kidpreneurs Kid President & Caine’s Arcade Spark Happiness & Entrepreneurship

Truth be told I’ve been waiting for the exact right moment where I could sneak in a story about an awe inspiring 9 year old from Memphis Tennessee. If you’re not familiar with Kid President, Robbie Novak, you have to be living under the proverbial rock.

Novak’s this awesome little 9 year old boy who has a brittle bone disease. He’s had over 70 breaks in his short nine years. He’s also adopted (like me) and loves to dance. Aside from the casts he’s often stuck in, you would never know that he had the disease. You wouldn’t know anything sad about him, he makes people laugh and have fun.

Just for fun Novak and his adult brother in law Bradley Montague stared making videos. They cam up with a character, Kid President, and built a set out of cardboard, and used furniture you could find at any good yard sale to create an Oval Office. Novak sits behind a desk (and sometimes on it), and offers his words of wisdom, great interviews, hilarity and sometimes just dancing.

When Novak has a guest in his videos he talks to them through a can and a string and typically gets them to dance as well. Josh Groban, MC Hammer and most recently President Barack Obama have appeared alongside Novak.

But way before the celebrities started catching wind of the 9 year old President, Rainn Wilson from NBC’s “The Office” and the creator of the YouTube channel Soul Pancake found Novak and recruited the boy wonder to release his videos on the Soul Pancake channel.

While no one knows the terms of any revenue split or profit sharing, Novak had one requirement before joining the Soul Pancake channel, and that was of course to eat pancakes. Which he did.

Kid President’s videos have been seen tens of millions of times and he’s been featured on just about every decent sized media outlet known to man. In fact the Obama administration had Kid President be their April Fool’s Day prank this year. With that every major tv network picked up Novak from behind the podium in the White House briefing room.

Montague and Novak never set out for fame or money, they just wanted people to be happy, to get along better and to dance (so far the only celebrity that Novak hasn’t asked to dance has been Obama).

Being in the content business we are sure there is some money being made, and it’s most likely all being saved up for Novak and his sister’s college funds. They offer some Kid President merchandise and since Kid President’s White House appearance for April Fool’s Day and as a grand marshall of sorts for this year’s easter egg roll, his popularity has again increased ten fold.

And it all started with a cardboard set that he and his brother in law made for fun.

Coincidentally today is the year anniversary of Caine’s arcade video going viral on the web.

Caine Monroy was also nine years old (last year) when some cardboard made him famous. For him he wasn’t looking for fame either, he was just having fun putting his entrepreneurial mind to work in his father’s used auto part store.

Over the previous summer Monroy had created an “arcade” out of used cardboard boxes from his dad’s shop. At one point a filmmaker named Nirvan Mullick walked into the shop looking for a door handle for his 96 Toyota Corolla. Curious about the boxes shaped like games, Mullick asked Monroy what he was doing and he said he made an arcade.

Some of the boxes turned into games required more imagination than skill, but some games actually had mechanical function.

It’s amazing what a lot of heart, a big imagination and a smart smiling 9 year old can do.

Monroy told the filmmaker he could pay $1 for two turns or $2 for an all day fun pass and 500 turns. Intrigued by what the 9 year old had built Mullick paid for the all day fun pass.

Caine’s Arcade from Nirvan Mullick on Vimeo.

A short while later Nirvan had returned to the auto parts store because he wanted to make a short film about the innovative cardboard arcade. He found out that day that Nirvan was Monroy’s first and only paying customer. To Monroy’s surprise Nirvan recruited a flash mob of paying customers which made Caine’s day.

The short film went viral and with that a campaign to create a college fund for Caine was born. That college fund raised $228,000 and then it was matched dollar for dollar to support the Imagination Foundation.

Find out more about Kid President here

Find out more about Caine’s Arcade here

Are VC’s Bypassing Early Stage Health Deals?

Healthcare startups,Venture Capital,startups,funding,seed round,series a

(image: policymed.com)

Success stories, like the one of Memphis’ medical device accelerator Zeroto510, where 80% of their first class received follow on funding, seem to be growing scarce on a national scale. In their first class of six startups at the ZeroTo510 program 5 of the startups received follow on funding, with one, Restore Medical Solutions, going straight to a $2.5 million dollar series A round.

Well national medical startup publication MedCity News, released two graphs this morning that may be alarming to early stage medical startups, who often need a lot more seed money than your social, mobile, webtech startups.

The data, published by CB Insights, shows a significant number of VCs are skipping over earlier stage “seed round” deals for healthcare startups. Conversely, the same data set shows that the “series A crunch” may not be as prevalent in healthcare startups.

As you can see clearly from the data set Series A and Series B seem to be the preferred stage for a VC firm to get into a startup business, at least over the last five quarters.

According to MedCity News VC Funding in healtcare was up over the last year, in fact reaching a “multi year high”. Also worthy to note is that the medical device category is eating up the most VC funds. That should be good for the next round of ZeroTo510, Rock Health and Health Box.

Restore Medical talks to us about their $2.5 million dollar Series A round.