Even Startup Chicks Love Bacon, Grit Design Introduces SizzlePig

It seems that there’s only one thing that goes wild for bacon more than the dogs in the bacon bits commercials, and that’s geeky startup founders. Bacon and pigs for that matter, isn’t just about dudes, the women have it too. A love, an attraction, to pigs and bacon.

Andrea Livingston, the co-founder of Grit Design, showed off their new SizzlePig product at the recent everywhereelse.co 2013 event. SizzlePig gets a double bonus because not only does it mention pigs, but it’s also a startup born out of an existing business’ tool like Xtrant and ShortStack.

So what is SizzlePig?

SizzlePig is the by product of Grit Design, a small Detroit based shop that specializes in web and mobile design. Over the past four years, Livingston along with her co-founders; Mark Stewart, Eric Livingston, Carrie Thorpe, Michelle Shoan and Brendan Colley, created SizzlePig to handle photos on web and mobile projects.

“We had to resize large numbers of images, over and over again. We’ve made tools for ourselves over the years and developed our own platform which we named Bacon (BCN – Basic Content Network). We decided to use Bacon to help us with the batch image resize issue. Our little tool worked better than we had expected. We thought, hmmmm, I bet others would want to use this…so we put a UI on it and began to test it out.

sizzelpig™ was born. sizzlepig™ is cloud based software (can also live client-side) that pulls an entire folder of images, and allows you to visually resize, crop, change compression to an unlimited amount of sizes for each image, all on the same page. We call it ‘fine-tuning’ the images – which is very helpful for sites that are built to be responsive. . One of the problems we have had in the past is that we couldn’t see our final edits until the scripts had finished running. This could take time – as in hours if the files were large.

We have seen a 70%+ decrease in time spent on initial resizing of batch images and over a 90%+ decrease on time spent for batch images to be re-worked. This literally equals hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars and that’s for each time folder with large amounts of images are processed.

We love how we can manipulate how each image will appear and it is very fast. There are no file size restrictions, so even original files coming from the photographer don’t need additional prep work before being processed.

This isn’t simply an alternative to scripts or other tools, this is a whole new wave of digital creation.” Livingston told nibletz.com in an interview.

She continued; “We didn’t make sizzlepig™ for the sake of launching a product, we made a tool to help us resize an entire folder of images to an unlimited number of sizes and fast. These images needed to be able to live in many places and on multiple screens, and, we wanted complete visual control over each crop and every last pixel. We needed a higher quality and faster solution and were tired of settling.”

Sure there are batch scripts available but what you get with SizzlePig is a way to move the images through faster. We’ve been using SizzlePig inhouse here at nibletz and the greatest thing about it is you can set up a blueprint for the way that you need photos. We need a small 150×150 thumbnail and a 280×280 photo for our stories. We can upload as many photos as we want and that blueprint resizes all the photos at the same time and spits them back out.

SizzlePig is perfect for photographers, brand managers, designers and enterprise. With it’s simple to use interface and wide variety of customers it’s no wonder that Killerstartups.com called SizzlePig a “game changer”

You can try SizzlePig for yourself here

Nibletz is back on our Sneaker Strapped Startup Road Trip Part Deux, you can support us here.

Startup Weekend Heads To Columbus In A Pre-SXSW Extravaganza

Startup Weekend is headed back to Columbus Ohio this weekend, as a pre festivity to the huge startup mega festival we all know and love, SXSWi. In fact, the Ohio area Startup Bus is leaving Sunday from Ohio.

This weekend will pit together entrepreneurs, startup founders, developers, designers and mentors to see what Columbus can hack together in just one weekend.

The Startup Weekend crew in Columbus is one of the most seasoned. We got to meet a few of them at Cincinnati’s startup weekend event last summer. This one is being organized by Startup Weekend veteran; Suzy Bureau, by day she does marketing & communications for Columbus startup Bringshare; Serial Entrepreneur Steve Gacka; and Brian Billingsley the Director of Strategic Business Development at Allaince Data Systems.

Startup Weekend Columbus holds events every six months and they always have great attendance. This weekend’s event will be held at TechColumbus (1275 Kinnear Road). It will kick off with registration at 6:30pm on Friday night and will end with final pitches on Sunday at 5:00pm. All is expected to be wrapped up by 9:00pm, and then the weekend is done (unless you’re heading down to sxsw).

Dan Rockwell, the cofounder of Big Kitty Labs and Program Manager of the software prototyping center at Ohio State is the featured speaker.

At around 7:30pm the “Friday Night” pitches will begin. We’ve covered a lot of startup weekends and you can see plenty of Friday night pitches here at nibletz.com.

The Friday night pitches are 60 seconds and hard timed by a Startup Weekend official. In that 60 seconds you need to sell the audience your idea and why it should be built over the next 53 hours. After everyone who wants to pitch has been given the opportunity, community voting will commence. It’s a rather diplomatic process. Usually the pitchers will hold up a sign with their startup name on it and attendees will put a sticker on the idea they like the best. At the end of the process, those with the most stickers will have their ideas developed.

Friday evening typically tops off with team selection and then some icebreaker time with the teams. From there the teams break off and start working on the startup idea.

Saturday, the community mentors come into play. These seasoned entrepreneurs and local business folks are there to help answer questions for each team and provide ideas and suggestions. The mentors for Startup Weekend Columbus are: Tanisha Robinson, co-founder of TicketFire; Nick Seguin, Partner at Dynamit; Patrick Pohler, Founder at Anecka; Brooke Paul, Founder at Founder’s Factory & Taivara; Alan Gilbert, Vice President of Engineering at CoverMyMeds; and Matt Scatland, co-founder at CoverMyMeds and President at Innova Partners.

We also have it on good authority that Kyle Sandler, Co-Founder and Content Director of Nibletz.com The Voice Of Startups Everywhere Else, and the founder of everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference, the largest startup conference in the world dedicated to entrepreneurship outside the valley, and Nick Tippmann the co-founder and CEO of nibletz.com will also be in attendance..hmmm.

Saturday is also the day that most teams take to the streets, the phones, the emails and the interwebs to get customer validation on their startup project. All the while designers, developers and coders are working on pitch decks, wire frames, prototypes and products.

Sunday is the day the teams put the finishing touches on both their products and their presentations. At 5:00pm and not a second later, the selected teams will have five minutes to pitch their idea and have a brief Q&A with the judges.

For more info on Startup Weekend Columbus or to register click here

Chicago Startup Hummingbird Is The Rotten Tomatos For Anime

Chicago startup Hummingbird has created a platform that anime fans have been looking for for years. The startup, founded by Josh Fabian and Vikhyat Korrapati is the first database and recommendation engine just for anime. “Think Rotten Tomatoes had a baby with Netflix’s recommendation engine, and that baby is a huge anime fan.” Fabian told nibletz.com in an interview.

“Users rate the titles they’ve seen in the past and, based on their tastes, Hummingbird gradually ‘learns’ what you like and don’t like, enabling it to make extremely accurate suggestions on what to watch next. Users are able to properly determine if the anime suggested is something they’d like to watch by making use of our comprehensive database featuring trailers, screenshots, plot summaries and much, much more for every anime you could imagine. Because some users lead very busy lives, we’ve also integrated a simple to use episode tracker to help keep you organized, no matter how many titles you may be watching at a time.” Fabian explained.

Fabian is based in Chicago while Korrapati is based in Hyderabad, India. Fabian says he loves the Chicago startup scene and has found that it’s extremely easy to get the help he needs in Chicago.

“It’s seems no matter where you turn in this city, there’s a community of designers, developers and entrepreneurs learning from each other, encouraging each other and giving a helping hand when you need it most. I can’t think of a better place to launch a business.” He said.

Hummingbird came to life after Fabian, a huge anime fan, found himself without something to watch next. “I hit a roadblock.. I had no idea what to watch next. All of the ‘popular’ choices that come to mind I had already seen, in some cases, multiple times. I did a lot of googling but after a lot of searching, I couldn’t find anything to completely solve my problem. ” So he created it.

Korrapati, a developer, saw Fabian’s first landing page for Hummingbird and reached out to help. “I can honestly say that without Vikhyat joining the team, Hummingbird wouldn’t be nearly as great of an idea as it is now”, Fabian said of his cofounder.

Fabian is bootstrapping it for now but has ambitious plans to try and get into YC or 500 startups. With Hummingbirds unique platform that may not be as difficult as it sounds.

They’ve been launched for about a month and have already picked up nearly 10,000 users. Their next goal is getting to a critical mass of at least 50,000 users but with no other recommendation engine for anime that shouldn’t be so tough. They were also named by TNW as a startup to watch.

You can find out more about Hummingbird here at humminbird.ly

American Airlines Takes Notice Of Tennessee’s 9 Accelerator Regions

American Airlines is truly committed to startups and innovation. They are a corporate sponsor of Startup America and offer a huge benefit to Startup America members who sign up for their free Business ExtrAA rewards plan.

American has relationships with several startup organizations and entrepreneurs across the country have noticed there efforts. In 2012 American entered into a partnership with startup and technology blog and events company TechCocktail. They’ve provided sponsored transportation for several startup related events across the country including flights to DEMO in Santa Clara and last year’s SXSW. They know what it’s like for boot strapped entrepreneurs and startups.

Over the summer American Airlines partnered with Startup America for a huge contest. The video contest asked that startups and entrepreneurs tell a story about how travel connection has helped their business. They gave over half a million Business ExtrAA points away with the grand prize winner getting 100,000 points which was good for 50 round trip tickets. That’s a lot of conferences and investor meetings.

American Airlines has now taken notice of Tennessee’s nine startup accelerator regions and Startup Tennessee, the second Startup America Region. Launch Tennessee the public/private partnership that oversees the 9 accelerator region has entered into a relationship with American Airlines.

The company has also entered into a relationship with LaunchYourCity (LaunchMemphis), nibletz.com and everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference. American is helping an initiative for LaunchMemphis that will see local Memphis entrepreneurs venture out to Silicon Valley for a four day outreach trip.

Through nibletz.com and everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference American will be sponsoring the 2014 conference including offering a considerable discount to those traveling on American to the conference (February 17-19th 2014 in Memphis). To take full advantage of the discount attendees should sign up for the free Business ExtrAA program. The discount will be announced in the coming days (and it’s a good one).

While every traveller doesn’t always have the experience they want no matter what airline they travel on, we are always hearing stories about how American Airlines has come through for our fellow entrepreneurs. On stage at everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference, Lean Entrepreneur co-author Brant Cooper talked about a string of delays in getting to the conference. Rather than waiting for Cooper to complain, he reported on stage that American Airlines went proactive and gave him a number of extra Business ExtrAA points for the trouble.

For more information on the benefits American Airlines offers Startup America members sign up for Startup America at s.co and look under the member benefit section.

Working On Your Pitch Deck? You Gotta See This Pop!

Populr.me is a platform that allows anyone to create all in one pages on the internet. They can be used for a wide variety of things and it’s a lot better than trying to turn to tumblr or creating a word press blog for just one page.

For instance you could use it for a media kit, to brag about your favorite team, to keep people abreast of your schedule or to make a page for a yardsale. Businesses can use pop’s to show off business tips, circulate company wide information, or create all in one self contained pages.

Nick Holland, CEO and founder of populr.me is a Nashville startup leader and also the founder of CentreSource. To demonstrate the uses of the populr.me platform he created pops that Baker Donelson used to explain the legal necessities when launching a startup for the last cohort at Jumpstart Foundry.

Holland is currently working on his Series A round for populr.me and in doing that he started researching the best pitch decks. While he was doing his research he created this amazing pop highlighting some of the best pitch decks and other resources for startups that are looking to pitch.

As you can see from the screenshot above this pop is full of great information for any startup. (Just to note, Holland has a long career in web development and design and this particular pop wasn’t designed for design it was designed in less than an hour and to provide as much content as possible.).

When you hit the link below you can see Facebook’s first pitch deck, Color’s pitch deck, seedcamp’s deck and much more. We highly suggest you go over and check it out.

Click here to see the Pop: The Best Startup Pitch Decks

SouthernAlpha’s Spark Nashville A Success RECAP

Southernalpha.com co-founder and Editor In Chief Walker Duncan, speaks to a capacity crowd at Spark Nashville (photo: NMI 2013)

We visited Southernalpha.com’s Spark Nashville as part of our next 50 stop leg on our sneaker-strapped startup road trip. One of the biggest key’s to our success has been getting out in the trenches with startups everywhere else.

Southernalpha.com was founded by Nashville serial entrepreneur Marcus Whitney and Walker Duncan who serves as the sites Editor in Chief. They cater to “High Growth Technology for the South East” specifically Nashville and New Orleans.

Armed with a seed investment of $150,000 from Duncan’s father’s venture capital firm Solidus, they’ve ramped up nicely and attracted a couple hundred local startups, entrepreneurs and power players to 3rd and Lindsley in Nashville last Thursday.

Whitney, Nashville Technology Council’s CTO of the Year, serves as a visionary and advisor. At the event Whitney credited Duncan and Southernalpha’s Marketing Director Kelley Boothe with the great turn out that saw 11 startups from across Tennessee pitch in a competition for $1000 dollars and an iPad.

Southernalpha.com launched during the late summer. Despite the early investment the site is struggling to gain traction outside of it’s inner circle.

Duncan is no stranger to journalism. He left his post as the Health Care, Manufacturing, Technology and Tourism Reporter for the Nashville Post, a publication also owned by the elder Duncan’s investment firm, to start SouthernAlpha.

As for the event itself, it was alive with startups, entrerpeneurs and investors. It kicked off with a fireside chat between Duncan, Whitney and Nick Holland the founder of CentreSource and now Populr.me.

The discussion was great, highlighting why Nashville has such a strong startup community and many lessons Whitney and Holland learned growing their businesses in Nashville immediately following the first dotcom bubble burst.

Holland and Whitney talked about being inspiring and the yes mentality. They also shared the dumbest thing they’ve done as an entrepreneur with the audience.

After the pitches there was more time for networking and people stuck around well into the night.

For more coverage of this great event click here. We’ll be in Lexington KY, Cincinnati, Columbus, DC, Austin, Kansas City and even Silicon Valley, all in the next 5 weeks on our sneaker-strapped startup road trip.

Were you one of the 1287 people at everywhereelse 2013? Don’t miss everywhereelse 2014 with a stronger lineup, more panels, even better parties oh and free breakfast and lunch, click here.

Ready For Weed Startups? Conference Coming To New York

With two states adopting laws around the recreational use of marijuana and more states adopting laws for medical marijuana it’s just a matter of time before weed startups start cropping up (no pun intended). Cannabis industry trade publication has announced a business seminar for investors and entrepreneurs eager to learn about the business of marijuana.

The event will be held on March 14th at The Lofts At Prince (177 Prince Street Penthouse in New York City). The seminar runs from 6:00pm until 10:15pm and features a panel of industry experts and time for networking.

Chris Walsh, Editor of MJJ Business Daily; Tripp Keber, Medical Marijuana Inc; Jessica Billingsley co-founder, MJ Freeway Software Solutions; and Eric Williams, President, CT Medical Cannabis Alliance, will all speak on the latest trends and industry data.

There will also be four sessions:

Session #1. New Financial & Business Benchmark Data for the Cannabis Industry

Session #2. Investing Advisory on the Cannabis Industry

Session #3. Typical Cannabis Business Mistakes & How to Avoid Them

Session #4. Tri-State Area Cannabis Business Opportunities & Regulatory Outlook

MJJ Business Daily was launched in 2011 with offices in Denver Colorado and Providence Rhode Island.

Tickets for the event are $149 in advance and $199 at the door. MJJ Business Daily warns that the event is for serious investors and entrepreneurs and not for patients or consumers.

For more information or tickets visit this site.

SXSW 13 Preview: When Bad Names Happen To Good Startups

South By Southwest Interactive 2013 is less than two weeks away and for those of us who are actually going to attend the great panel sessions, keynotes and workshops held throughout downton Austin there’s a great one, no startup wants to miss.

archer>malmo our creative agency and an equity holder in nibletz media, through their am>ventures arm, is holding a panel discussion at the Four Seasons entitled “When Bad Names Happen To Good Startups”

Last August when the SXSWi committee took suggestions for panels archer>malmo submitted this panel that is a must attend for all startups.

archer>malmo has been around over 60 years, and is one of the largest and most widely respected firms located off Madison Avenue. They’ve worked with Fortune 100 companies and some of the top brands in the world including Verizon, Pfizer and RJ Reynolds.

archer>malmo has taken an interest and startups and created an investment arm called am>ventures, for which nibletz is a portfolio company. This experience, working with new entrepreneurs and companies, prompted the creative minds at archer>malmo to start talking about names.

Sometimes entrepreneurs and startup founders don’t fully consider the ramifications of their new name. Many startup founders go for a name based on a creative URL while others use a name ripe for great SEO. Still others have other reasons for a name, like nibletz.

When we originally created nibletz it was a companion site to thedroidguy.com and the original idea was to deliver capsulated tech and startup news. The tag line came first when I thought of the name. “Small Crunchy Bytes From The Tech & Startup Scene” was the line I had come up with. I took it to our massive “Thedroidguy” Twitter following at the time and more than 100 followers suggested the word niblets.

We found that niblets meant corn so we changed the S to a Z. At that time we didn’t look at the Urban Dictionary of the word. In fact it wasn’t until we cleared the 50,000 mark on social followers (we’re now at 130,000) that I bothered to look at the Urban Dictionary meaning (go check for yourself).

Another great story about names came by way of a demo day graduation at Chattanooga’s Gig Tank over the summer. The startup was called Corpora. I was writing a story during their live pitch and while one of our staffers was editing video I began to write but I needed a graphic. So I did what anyone would do and went to Google Images. (now go do it for yourself), pretty bad huh.

These things happen all the time and we don’t want to spoil any of the panel so you should check it out and then decide if you’re too invested to create a better name.

The panel will be hosted by archer>malmo’s Chief Creative Officer Gary Backaus and Senior Copy Writer Justin Dobbs.

Check out our interview with Dobbs about the panel below to get more insight:

archer>malmo was a sponsor of everywhereelse.co 2013 and a presenting corporate sponsor for everywhereelse.co 2014 get your tickets here.

Listenup.FM Pitches At Spark Nashville

Listenup,Nashville startup,startup pitch video,startups,Spark Nashville

Listneup.fm CEO Mykas Degesys pitches at Spark Nashville (photo: NMI 2013)

Tennessee startup Listenup.fm just got back from pitching at everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference. Their platform is designed to engage fans with their favorite artists and bands while also returning bands and record labels with valuable analytics.

Their streaming music platform is built on top of the highly successful Spotify platform and rewards fans for sharing the music they’re listening to across their social networks.

CEO Mykas Degesys explains that as the music industry moves from an ownership to an access model, bands need more and more ways to engage with fans and of course generate extra revenue.

Even just a few years ago it was important to own your music collection. Whether it be vinyl, cassette, CD or mp3, most people who loved music owned it in some media format or another. Now with services like Rhapsody,Rdio,Slacker and Spotify, and high speed internet, more and more people are turning to all you can eat access packages with libraries millions of songs deep.

Royalties are baked into services that range from $4.99 a month to $19.99 a month, all supplying some sort of unlimited listening.

Bands can now find ways to get to their exact target market. They can reward fans with prizes and Listenup.fm even allows fans to earn points to purchase prizes like limited edition swag and backstage passes.

Check out Degesys’ pitch from the Spark Nashville event in the video below.

Listenup.fm also pitched at everywhereelse.co 2013, don’t miss everywhereelse.co 2014 with tickets now at 2013 prices through March 27. Click here

Nashville Entrepreneurs Share Their Dumbest Decisions Ever

Spark Nashville,Marcus Whitney,Nick Holland,Populr.me,Moontoast,SouthernAlpha

Nick Holland (L) and Marcus Whitney (R) talk about the dumbest thing they’ve ever done (photo: NMI 2013)

Failure and dumb decisions are part of every true entrepreneurs life. If an entrepreneur goes through life without any failures, anyone telling them their babies are ugly and any dumb decisions, they’re doing it wrong.

Thursday night at 3rd and Lindsley in Nasvhille as part of Southern Alpha’s Spark Nashville event, seasoned local entrepreneurs Nick Holland (CentreSource/Populr.me) and Marcus Whitney (CTO at MoonToast), shared their dumbest decisions.

Both guests looked surprised when Southern Alpha Editor In Chief Walker Duncan asked them to share their dumbest decisions, but the surprise on their face made everyone quickly realize that they were going to actually share their dumbest decisions.

Holland’s centers around his days growing CentreSource. He had a bunch of developers sitting around on the payroll and needed something to do. Holland wanted it to be something creative and something that could make them some money so he had the developers re-do any Nashville website they wanted. The hope was that the businesses who owned the sites they chose would throw money at CentreSource for the new design. What really happened made for a great story.

Whitney’s dumb decision is one that has been a source of constant debate the last four years I’ve personally attended SXSW (3 as Thedroidguy 1 with nibletz). I can only hope that startups out there heed Whitney’s advice, unfortunately with SXSW two weeks away, there’s going to be quite a few startups in Whitney’s shoes come March 12th.

Check out the video for some entertaining and enlightening stories.

Tennessee Startup GreenPal Pitches At Spark Nashville

Greenpal,Tennessee startup,Spark Nashville,Southern Alpha,pitch video

CEO of Greenpal pitches at Spark Nashville (photo: NMI 2013)

After pitching at everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference earlier this month, Tennessee startup GreenPal headed out to Nashville to pitch as part of Spark Nashville on Thursday night.

Earlier this morning we brought you the story about DC startup TouchdownSpace launching. That startup makes booking professional space just as easy as hailing a car with Uber. Greenpal makes it just as easy to get your yardwork done.

The market for this kind of app is huge. Greenpal’s CEO and cofounder spent 15 years in his own landscaping business and suddenly realized there was an easier way to find customers, collect money and set appointments. The company also realized making it easier on themselves would make it easier on the customers as well.

Now Greenpal is here and it allows you to order lawn care service on the web or on their mobile app by vetted professionals who are ready to do the job. Once the appointment is set and the job is done, Greenpal also has a payment mechanism that makes paying your service providers as easy as clicking a button.

These guys looked sharp at everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference and were one of the best pitches at Spark Nasvhille. Watch the video below.

Wait you missed everywhereelse.co 2013 well don’t miss 2014 more info available here

DC Startup TouchdownSpace Is The ZipCar Of Workspace

Co-working space, office space, conference rooms, computer lab space, whatever your need a new startup in Washington DC called TouchdownSpace is there to help. Caleb Parker and Svet Voloshin, the founders of this new startup that’s going to disrupt the current commercial office space model dub it as “The Zipcar for professional space”.

Working isn’t like it used to be. With so many small businesses, entrepreneurs, freelancers and startups, office space needs change. One day a startup founder may need simple desk space, and later in the day they may need a meeting room for 20. On a small business and startup budget it’s impossible to try and rent something that encompasses all the flexible space options someone may need.

Freelancers on the other hand may enjoy co-working at the new co-working space or they may rather sit and sip Starbucks for five hours while working on their latest project. Again this is great until you need to meet a client with a whiteboard, or discuss confidential information.

Some startup spaces and incubators have access to a wide variety of spacing needs, but for those that don’t there’s TouchdownSpace.

“We are on a mission to help people work better,” says CEO and co-founder, Caleb Parker. “The nature of work is changing. More people are working outside of the office than ever before. The old real estate model of high rent and lengthy lease terms must change too. It just doesn’t make sense to pay high rent on a space you’re not in all the time.”

TouchdownSpace has partnered with office business center operators at the leading edge of the workspace-as-a-service (WaaS) industry, such as Carr Workplaces, AdvantEdge Business Centers, Intelligent Office, and others, to aggregate their available workspaces and offer them on-demand to TouchdownSpace members

While TouchdownSpace is starting in Washington DC they already have their eyes on five other markets.

Parker has been an active member of the DC startup scene for quite sometime. Personally he has some great role models and mentors.”

Local angel investor and turnaround CEO, Glen Hellman, who is on our Advisory Board, has been a good mentor. Brad Feld and Steve Case are great business role models, and you can’t forget Richard Branson as a role model on building a strong brand. When it comes to morality/integrity, I can always turn to my Dad for his perspective on what the right thing to do is.” he told us in an interview.

TouchdownSpace members have access to a wide variety of features:

Convenience: find the closest available space in real-time; book and manage reservations instantly from within the app.
Choice: compare availability, pricing and amenities.
Flexibility: No contracts or commitments
Productivity: touch down within our network of professional locations.
Private Spaces: No distractions

For more information, and to sign up visit touchdownspace.com

NY Serial Entrepreneurs Danny Nathan & Chuck Masucci Are Bringing Date Night Back

Last April we reported on New York startup Iwannanom, a cookbook startup that was revolutionizing the online cookbook. Founded by Danny Nathan and Chuck Masucci Iwannanom took a different, more efficient spin on online crowdsourcing recipes.

“I Wanna Nom is a reinvention of the cookbook for the digital world. It’s a recipe bookmarking and discovery tool that allows the user to keep track of recipes they discover anywhere on the internet and easily share them, rate them, comment on them, and find new recipes and dishes by following friends and fellow foodies.” Nathan told us in an interview.

Nathan and Masucci met five years ago while working at POKE New York a well known innovation company that worked with clients like 19 Management, the firm that represent American Idol artists.

Masucci eventually left to join the team at Skedj, which we interviewed back in November. Now Nathan, and Masucci are back together again, along with Joni Goldbach to launch DateNight a new New York startup that’s designed to take the monotony out of dating, post honeymoon phase.

Goldbach met Nathan on a date where they bonded over discussing great marketing ideas. They’ve been together ever since, and admit that they will use their own startup to keep date night alive and well.

“Date Night is a million things to a million different couples. But there’s one common thread we’ve discovered across couples everywhere. Once you’re dating – once you’ve reached the point in your relationship where you start talking about us and we – you stop going out on dates. Candle-lit dinners become take-out containers and theatre tickets become DVD mailers. Date Night gives way to the ease and simplicity of routine” Nathan said of his latest venture. “We believe it’s time for an evening out that was actually planned in advance. It’s time to try something new together – something that fuels your sense of adventure and discovery. Hire a babysitter. Take a class. Party on a school night. Dress to kill, for no good reason but that you can. We believe it’s time for couples to start dating one another, again.”

Nathan, a designer by trade, has turned to advice from Ben Pieratt, one of his role models saying Pieratt “…is always one of the first people who comes to mind for me when someone asks this. I’ve been a fan of Svpply from the early days, and started following his personal blog, etc. to learn more about how he did it. His discussions about transforming himself from designer to co-founder and CEO of a successful startup have always been inspiring to me. He’s a totally down-to-earth guy who made it happen. I respect him for that immensely. ”

Right now the trio is bootstrapping out of their apartments where they are admittedly keeping the cupboards stocked with the simple startup things like Ramen. They plan on iterating quickly and adapting to the community that they’ve started to form.

Sure there are sites out there that recommend things to do, there are also plenty of dating communities but most are targeted towards couples still in that “honeymoon phase” no one has really thought of the post honeymoon phase period. All three founders hope that Date Night can take off and that couples that use the service will continue to have date night with each other for years and years.

Date Night is bringing Date Night back to couples everywhere, find out more here at datenight.is.

2 Of Nashville’s Startup Community Leaders Talk About The Yes Mentality

Spark Nashville,Marcus Whitney,Nick Holland,SouthernAlpha,Startup Communities

Southern Alpha’s Editor In Chief Walker Duncan (L), Nick Holland CEO of Populr.me, Marcus Whitney CTO Moontoast (photo: NMI 2013)

Thursday night was a big night for Nashville’s startup community. New online publication Southern Alpha, which covers high growth technology for the south east, held their inaugural Spark Nashville event. The event organized by Southern Alpha Marketing Director, Kelley Boothe and Editor in Chief, Walker Duncan, was a huge success.

Spark Nashville consisted of three main parts, a fire side chat with Duncan, a pitch contest for Tennessee startups and time for networking in a startup exhibition.

For this first event, Duncan had a fireside chat with community leaders Nick Holland and Marcus Whitney. Both men are seasoned entrepreneurs who’ve had measurable success with their own startups to date.

Holland was the founder of what is now one of the biggest agencies in Nashville CentreSource and Whitney began his career with Emma and eventually spun off and cofounded MoonToast, a social agency that has clients as big as Universal Music Group. Whitney was named the CTO of the year this year by the Nashville Technology Council.

Duncan had come up with some great questions for both guests who are now frequent mentors and advisors to budding young startups in the Nashville community. Holland has an open door policy with all entrepreneurs, a recognizable figure that stops and chats with anyone with an idea. Whitney is a managing director at JumpStart Foundry and a regular, accessible face at community events, as well as at the Entrepreneur Center.

While both guests talked about the struggle and how hard it is to start your own business, they also both talked about the importance of peer groups and finding people to say yes. Sure every entrepreneur wants to find the people that say yes, “yes we’ll write you a check”, “yes your idea is great”, “Yes we can sponsor you”. As you’ll see in the video it’s actually an important foundation in a successful startup community.

Both Holland and Whitney acknowledged that once you go out and prove yourself, roll up your sleeves and prove you’re not afraid to work hard, and not afraid to try, the yes’s get easier.

Holland likes to steer clear of negativity and people who resort to no rather than to hear an idea out. When someone pitches Holland on an idea for a project or an event, if he can wrap his head around it he’s looking for ways to say yes and get it moving rather than to say no. “When I get inspired by somebody it’s infectious and I do whatever I can to say yes”.

Early on in the video Whitney talks about his first experience pitching Holland. Nick had already had some success with CenterSource and Whitney was about to embark on the first BarCamp event, he went to Holland for $1,000 to sponsor. Whitney was a scrappy young and hungry entrepreneur with a great idea, and Holland said yes.

The duo have worked together to help bring Startup Weekend to Nashville as well. They also both support just about any cause or event that’s good for the startup community. When startup community leaders are this supportive it is infectious and the community builds.. wait for it.. organically.

Watch the video below: