Athens GA Startup Wagglez It All Began With A Honey Bee Dance

Sure there are plenty of daily deals startups out there. In fact, one of the most popular Atlanta startups is daily deal startup ScoutMob, but, none have as good a name as Wagglez.

Athens Georgia based Wagglez takes it’s name from a dance that honey bees do when they get back to the hive to tell the other bees where the honey is. It’s that same principal Wagglez is hoping to achieve with deal seekers.

By delivering relevant local deals straight to the smartphone ,Wagglez eliminates the need to clip coupons or use a daily deals site like Groupon.

When a user fills out a profile on Wagglez, their data (minus their personal info like their name) is saved and delivered to participating merchants. Merchants can then analyze the data to see which offers and promotions are working with which demographic. They can then use that data to offer more strategic offers that will benefit both the consumer and the merchant.

Wagglez wants to make the daily deals experience as easy as possible for the end user. There’s no need to print coupons, all of the participating merchants create the deals themselves, along with the stipulations to take advantage of the deal. This makes the experience as easy as walking into a participating merchant and redeeming your Wagglez deal.

Wagglez is incubating at the FourAthens incubator in Athens Georgia along with several other up and coming tech startups.

Wagglez wants to be as relevant to visitors as it is to locals. The idea came about when founder Chris Bell and some of his fellow University of Nebraska alums went to a football game in Seattle. They didn’t know where to go or what to do. They were eventually pointed to a bar which some other fellow cornhuskers had taken over. For travelers, Bell is hoping to make Wagglez a platform where out of towners can easily find the best things to do with the best deals as well.

Bell was unable to be at the Startup Rally event in Atlanta Monday as he and his wife are expecting a baby, who will also become a Wagglez user. In his place we got to talk with Matt Downing, who even does the Wagglez dance for us in the video. Check it out below.

For more on Wagglez click here

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Pink Robin Avenue Brings the Party to EverywhereElse.co And Beyond

By: Brittany Tuggle, University Of Memphis Entrepreneurial Journalism Student

Memphis-based startup Pink Robin Avenue offers personalized party events for any occasion. Clients can discuss everything from color schemes to tablecloths with CEO Danielle Inez, and her team takes care of the rest.

“I want my clients to have a great party experience without sacrificing so much of their time,” says Inez.

What makes Pink Robin Avenue different from other event planning companies is the convenience of it all. Inez gets all the details from her clients in one session; when her website launches, clients will be able to easily create customized events quickly that way as well. The company pre-assembles your selected party items and ships them to you.

“If you envision it, you don’t have to create it. We’ll do it for you. Everything is exactly how you want it and it’s as unique as my client,” said Inez.

Pink Robin Avenue designs events nationwide and is currently working on launching their website and expanding their business. Inez is planning on entering the Black Enterprise Magazine pitch contest later this year in hopes of garnering additional funding.

To start planning your own event, visit: pinkrobinavenue.com<http://pinkrobinavenue.com> or twitter.com/pinkrobinavenue<http://twitter.com/pinkrobinavenue>.

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Atlanta Startup TripLingo Is Disrupting The Yellow Box

In 2011, after my third trip to IFA in Berlin I made a conscious decision to try and learn German. I wanted to be able to know how to order more than just a “cola light” (that’s German for Diet Coke). So I did what everyone in my position would do, I went to Union Station in DC and plucked down nearly $500 for a big yellow box from Rosetta Stone.

Don’t get me wrong, Rosetta Stone seemed great, but it wasn’t teaching me what I really needed to know. How can I hail a taxi, how can I read a mass transit sign, how can I ask someone where the bathroom is, and how can I order a German chocolate cake. I learned a lot of words I would never need to know, and not enough of the phrases I did need to know.

Well with a trip to LeWeb planned next year, I need to learn French. Since I didn’t pay an ounce of attention in high school, I need to get learning. Luckily at Atlanta’s Startup Rally I bumped into Bijal Nagrashna the VP of Strategy at Atlanta startup TripLingo. After a couple of real time lessons on how to correctly pronounce her name, she took me on a tour of what language learning software should look like.

TripLingo is a platform for learning languages specifically geared toward travelers. The extremely robust application is intuitive and pleasant to use. You start off by identifying where you are going, what you want to do there, why you are going there and your special needs.

For example, I’ll be going to France on business, to cover LeWeb. I won’t be shopping, but I will be eating. I’m type II diabetic (there’s an option for that), other than that I like just about any kind of food.

TripLingo pulls a bunch of popular, and necessary phrases together and gives the user a bunch of options. You can pick the text book translation, or you can go with something a little more casual or slang. If you’re adventuresome there’s a “crazy” option as well. Once you master that option you’ll sound like any hipster local.

TripLingo leaves no stone unturned (no pun intended). Their app offers the transliteration in text and if you plug in a headset you can hear how it’s supposed to sound.

The app also has the ability to help you out in a pinch, whether you’re having an emergency or you’ve spent all day at a conference and forgot to take a break to eat.

While I haven’t dove into the platform just yet, I’m going to use it and I’m confident that it’s going to be a much better experience than Rosetta Stone (and a lot less expensive).

TripLingo also offers a customized professional version for companies. Say you’re the CEO of a big company with offices in another country. Your company can customize TripLingo for phrases that will be important to people traveling on behalf of your company for business.

TripLingo was one of nearly 100 startups that exhibited at Startup Rally in Atlanta.

Find out more here at triplingo.com

Atlanta Startup Founders Tell Their Stories On “Why Atlanta”

Startup Georiga, Startup America, Startup Rally, Bad.gy,ScoutMob,Jermaine Dupri,Atlanta Startups

Bad.gy founder Rob Kischuk speaks on “Why Atlanta” at Startup Rally/Startup Georgia Launch (photo: NMI 2013)

Can startups be built anywhere in the United States? That’s a question the Wall Street Journal Accelerator’s blog and the Huffington Post have recently asked. Between those two widely read publications and last weeks everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference, the answer is a resounding “Yes”. Just to reiterate that though, Atlanta’s startup community came out in full force Monday night to tell their stories in a “Startup Georgia Parade”.

There was no confetti, or marching bands, but the grand marshall, Scott Case (CEO of Startup America and founding CTO of priceline.com) was in his trademark red, white and blue Chuck Taylors.

Rather than 50 foot floats, the standing room only crowd at the historic Biltmore Hotel in Atlanta celebrated multi million dollar companies, entrepreneurs, founders and investors who’ve chosen to keep themselves, and their businesses in Atlanta.

Event organizer Scott Henderson, pointed out several times that, Monday’s event, dubbed “Startup Rally” was the largest assembly of startups and entrepreneurs since the International Cotton exposition, a 100 day exposition held in Atlanta 118 years ago (1895 for those that don’t want to do the math).

Bad.gy

One of the first startup founders to speak was Rob Kischuk founder of Bad.gy. He was quick to point out that just the previous week he was at everywhereelse.co with 1000 other entrepreneurs and startups, using that as testimony to the fact that startups can launch just about anywhere. Kischuk almost got emotional when talking about his decision to stay in Atlanta and that he would have it no other way.

He was lucky that major investor Mark Cuban, is all about raising startups where they are born. Kischuk also commented on how relationships built through Startup America, and specifically with Scott Case, helped engineer a relationship with Cuban that eventually led to a financing round. The introduction to Cuban was made at our co-founder Nick Tippmann’s Shark Tank party as part of Super Bowl festivities in 2012. (You see how fast that happened?)

Finally Kischuk recognized that many of the people in the room at Startup Rally, the influencers of the Atlanta startup community were instrumental in the success bad.gy has had to date.

Find out more about bad.gy here

Sig Mosley, Atlanta’s GodFather of early stage venture capital speaks at Startup Georgia Launch at Startup Rally (photo: NMI 2013)

Every state seems to have a godfather of early stage startup funding. In Tennessee Vic Gatto of Solidus is the godfather. In Atlanta it’s Sig Mosley. Mosley was an early stage venture capitalist, took a short hiatus but couldn’t stay away. He stood on stage and talked about the technology sectors that would build the next stage of companies in Atlanta.

Jim Flannery the founder of Four Athens spoke about coming to Athens Georgia with nothing, in fact he moved from Silicon Valley to Athens Georgia, a town made famous by REM and the B52’s. Now they have their own budding startup community. Four Athens serves as the hub for entrepreneurs in the Athens area. Sam Zebarjadi, a wireless entrepreneur, and mentor for both Four Athens and Greenville’s “Iron Yard” also spoke about startup communities, and the power in Georgia.

Paul Judge, an Atlanta based serial entrepreneur has already had two exits to Silicon Valley firms. While the time was ripe to head out west Judge remained in Atlanta where he currently serves as the Chief Research Officer at Barracuda Networks (which bought one of his companies). He’s currently working on his latest company Pindrop Security, which was exhibiting in Startup Rally’s expo earlier in the day.

Many of the speakers made reference to some of Atlanta’s more well known startups like Sarah Blakely’s Spanx and of course Mail Chimp. Neither company raised venture capital and instead made their money the old fashioned way. Now millions of people are buying Spanx’ products and using Mail Chimp to send out emails in droves.

ScoutMob CEO Michael Tavani on stage at Startup Rally/Startup Georgia Launch (photo: NMI 2013)

Michael Tavani, the CEO of ScoutMob praised Mail Chimp when it was his turn to speak, noting that he wants to start his next company in Atlanta and do it without venture funding. Tavani’s local deals startup has raised $5 million dollars to date, but it wasn’t easy.

Tavani said growing your company in Atlanta “…forces you to be scrappy, we were forced to find a business model that made revenues early on. Instagram would have never worked here.”

Being scrappy and grinding paid off for Tavani and his team. When ScoutMob launched, they had created enough buzz, through hard work, that investors called right away, as did merchant partners. “It’s easy to make an impact here in Georgia. There’s a lot of noise in the valley, the impact we were able to make took a much shorter time” Tavani said.

Check out ScoutMob here

Several other startup founders spoke, as did some of the venture capitalists in Georgia’s startup eco system.

All of this was in celebration of the launch of Startup Georgia the official partner region for Startup America. Case stuck around until the end of the event when he and I had time to talk about how Startup Georgia was still in it’s infant stages of forming back in October during the Startup America Regional Champions Summit. The team behind both events really pulled it off.

This all led up to one of Atlanta’s most infamous entrepreneurs Jermaine Dupri who spoked for about a half an hour on building his business, So So Def Recordings, into a multi million dollar empire, all the while growing it in Atlanta, rather than moving to New York or LA.

A celebration of startups everywhereelse, tickets on sale now at 2013 prices for EE2014, follow this link.

EdTech Startup 19 Pencils Is Saving Lots Of Time For K-6 Teachers

Most teachers don’t have nearly enough time to spend finding resources and lesson planning. Cuts in education typically mean that average teachers have a larger class load, and some are often faced with pulling down multiple jobs in school and even after school. This can be especially difficult for K-6 teachers who often want to give their students all they possibly can.

This is where Jason Fabbri and his Sacremento based educational startup 19Pencils comes in. 19Pencils provides an online community for like minded elementary school teachers. Using their platform teachers can search and discover great educational content and upload and share things that have worked for them in the classroom.

Fabbri has been a software engineer for the last 17 years. He’s had a long career with Adobe contributing to projects like Photoshop Elements, Photoshop Services and more. It was volunteering at his children’s schools that prompted him to create 19Pencils. He saw firsthand the frustration that teachers had in curating good web content for first grade students, and then sharing it.

We got a chance to talk to Fabbri in depth about 19Pencils and the growing startup community in Sacremento, just 90 minutes outside of Silicon Valley. Check out the interview below.

Monster Offers Is Daily Deals On Steroids With Nearly 60,000 Deals

Orange County California daily deals startup Monster Offers is a daily deals startup on steroids. Where most daily deals startups, outside of sites like Living Social and Groupon, focus on one particular area, Monster Offers is aggregating daily deals across several platforms. This gives the user a one stop destination to search for deals on just about anything.

Monster Offers gathers deal offerings from such discount providers as Groupon, Living Social, DealFind, Goldstar, and nearly 100 others. Assisted by a new partnership with Sqoot, Monster Offers can now save you tons of time and money, putting at your fingertips thousands of daily deals from 100 or so deal providers, with many offering discounts of up to 99%, all searchable in one easy location – from your web browser, your Smartphone or other handheld Smart device. The service, now available from both websites, identifies where you are geographically and begins populating the freshest and best deals near you. And based on your location, you can then filter your search based on keywords or by category, and then sit back and check out the recommended deals (including the National Deal of the Day)!

Indeed, there are hundreds, if not thousands of daily deals providers that provide unique offerings to today’s consumers, recently reported to be $2 Billion in industry sales annually. Monster Offers has had success, and remains well positioned in this growing marketplace, with its unique, one-of-a-kind approach through the Monster Offers Smartphone apps, and now adds a web-based search platform. Displaying thousands of deals each day, Monster Offers aggregates them in one convenient place, eliminating users having to wade through countless irrelevant offers just to find one that they’re interested in. The company remains dedicated to its corporate mission of delivering a robust and user friendly interface that allows buyers to organize their deal information based on geographical setting, business type, category, and keywords.

Monster Offers looks broadly across the other daily deals sites to return something that can be as national or hyper local as the user needs. This comes in handy especially for travelers who may have a local daily deals routine.

Other features include:

Hyperlocal list of daily “Monster Dealies” in up to 14 categories and 60 subcategories in your local market, all easily accessible with the press of a button.
View deals from hundreds of daily deal providers, including Groupon, Living Social, EDeals, iCoupon, Goldstar, DealFind, Zozi, Restaurant.com, Signpost, Double Take Deals, and many more.
Get the best deal in the country with the “National Deal of the Day” — straight from the Monster Offers “Monster” himself.
Utilizing IP addresses, map deals from the pool of over 30,000 potential offers, available right to your physical location in real time through your web browser, or the Smartphone App available for download.
In the Monster Offers App, adjust your preferential settings to a specific radius that reflects your daily travels.
Share deals with friends and family through social networking sites (including Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and more).

You can check out Monster Offers for yourself here.

Chicago On Today: A New Startup Launches Every 44 Hours

It’s hard to believe that less than a year ago Silicon Valley based PandoDaily sent a reporter to Chicago and he came back suggesting that their startup scene was sleepy. Fast forward to February 2013 and we’ve been tracking the startup communities rapid growth here.

Earlier this month NBC’s Today Show reported some amazing facts about Chicago’s startup community:

More startups launched in 2012 than any previous year.

A new startup launched every 44 hours.

197 of those were digital startups.

59 companies raised more than a million dollars.

We’ve also made three different trips to Chicago this year as part of our “sneaker strapped startup road trip”. We attended a kick off event at Chicago’s huge 1871 incubator, Chicago TechWeek and the Startup America Regional Champions Summit. On each trip we got to spend more time with Chicago’s seasoned startups like Groupon and Belly and some of their community’s newest players like KlutchClub and SpotHero.

Chicago’s startup ecosystem even caught the eye of TechStars founder David Cohen and Foundry Group’s Brad Feld, who recently announced a merger with Excelerate Labs to form Techstars Chicago.

We are looking forward to what Chicago has in store for 2013. Chicago is my kind of startup town.

Funding Round Up Everywhere Else: batterii, Bluefields, Nomi, Club W 2/18/13

batterii, Cincinnati OH $2.5 Million

batteri is a “co-creation” social network software platform. They recently raised $2.5 million dollars led by Cincinnati local private/public seed stage investor CincyTech. CincyTech contributed $500,000 to the round which included Los Angeles based investor Ken Salkin, batterii CEO Kevin Cummins and other unlisted individuals. The company reports that they have nearly a dozen clients. TechCrunch noticed that quotes from Nike, Crush Republic and ConAgra Foods were on their site. source TC

Bluefields, London England $1 Million

Bluefields is a social platform and management tool for recreational sports teams. The startup is originally from London and is an alumnus of both Seedcamp and 500 Startups. In addition to this latest one million dollar round, Bluefields just launched out of private beta.

During the private beta, TNW reports that there were over 60,000 sports teams players using the service.

Tony Hsieh’s VegasTechFund, Ballpark Ventures, Venrex, 500 startups and White Star Capital all participated in the round. Elliot Loh, Edward Wray, Christian Hernandez, Alicia Navarro, Chang Ng, Andy McLoughlin, Tim Fong, Richard Fearn, Andreas Koukorinis, Christian Lawless and Nathan Elstub all contributed as individuals. source TNW

Nomi, New York, $3 Million

Nomi is a retail “Experience Economy” startup helping to drive engagement for loyal retail customers, rather than having to race to the bottom in price wars. The company was founded by Marc Ferrentino who was formerly the Chief Technical Architect at SalesForce. Nomi takes relationship lessons borrowed from CRM and implements them in a real time environment that’s crucial to closing sales at retail cash registers.

Philadelphia’s First Round Capital led the $3 million dollar round with participation from Greycroft Partners, SV Angel, Forerunner Ventures, Ralph Mack, Dave Tisch, Andy Dunn (CEO, Bonobos), and Sam Decker (CEO, Mass Relevance and former CMO, Bazaarvoice).

Club W, Los Angeles $3.1M

Los Angeles based Club W claims that they are the “coolest wine club” . They are also the first company to offer a personalized and curated subscription model for wine. Their$3.1 million dollar round follows a $500,000 angel round closed this time last year. L.A’s Crosscut Ventures led the round.

“We look at wine and see a $34 billion annual market ripe for disruption,” says Adam Goldenberg, Venture Partner at Crosscut said in a statement. “Club W has great traction and a solid model. We realize we’re taking a contrarian position on eCommerce given the prevailing attitudes among venture capitalists but we’ll continue to bet on the early movers leading great teams in markets with huge potential.” source: bizjournals.com

SideCar Acquires Ride Sharing Competitor Heyride

Ridesharing has been a very popular means of transportation in Europe for many years, it’s just now starting to take off in the United States. Startups like RidePost, who recently graduated from the Iron Yard accelerator, and HeyRide have started a trend in peer to peer ride sharing.

San Francisco based SideCar has, by far, been one of the most popular ride sharing platforms to date. With SideCar you use the companies web based and app based platform to find someone “going your way” and then book a ride with that person. Unlike Uber and Halo users aren’t relying on pricey, already existing ride for hire drivers. Rather, with these kinds of apps you’re just looking for someone going the same place you are. These apps essentially take the ride bulletin board off the campus wall and put it in an app.

HeyRide, was a startup founded two years ago when the founders were embarrassed by the lack of adequate transportation in their hometown for SXSW. People were tweeting, updating their Facebook status and finding other ways to use the web to communicate the need for rides. The HeyRide team turned that need into an app that took off and quickly spread.

Now, with less than a month to go before SXSW 2013, SideCar has acquired HeyRide for an undisclosed amount.

“We’ve heard from people across the country and around the world that they want the SideCar community to take root in their cities and towns,” said Sunil Paul, CEO of SideCar. “Heyride’s talented team has developed a unique design and experience that will help take the rideshare movement we started here in San Francisco nationwide. We are thrilled to welcome Heyride to the SideCar family.”

SideCar and Heyride have a shared vision for empowering communities to solve transportation problems. Heyride’s world-class user experience and design team will join SideCar’s product team to focus on creating an outstanding experience for SideCar drivers and riders. Heyride’s assets include its critically acclaimed iPhone application for ridesharing available at Heyride.com.

During its initial launch phase SideCar will be available for drivers and riders Friday and Saturday nights from 5pm – 3am in West LA, Venice, Santa Monica and Culver City in Los Angeles; and downtown Austin and Philadelphia. Expanded hours and days will follow as the community grows. SideCar is actively recruiting drivers in New York, Chicago, Boston and Washington, DC. Drivers can sign up to be part of the community at www.side.cr/drive. SideCar’s free mobile application is available for download for riders via the App Store for iPhone and GooglePlay for Android users.

How SideCar works
SideCar matches everyday drivers with a car with people nearby who need a ride. It’s like getting a ride from a friend or a neighbor when you want it. Riders place a request to share a ride by setting a pick-up and drop off location using the SideCar app. Once the request is accepted, drivers can be viewed approaching in real-time. Riders can make a voluntary donation at the end of the ride.

SideCar has many features in place to keep riders and drivers safe. All SideCar drivers are pre-vetted for safety. All rides are tracked and passengers can share their progress and ride status in text, email and social media. Donations are made through the app, so the entire experience is cashless and hassle-free. The SideCar community sets and enforces high standards for safety and quality. Drivers and riders rate one another and people with low ratings are removed from the SideCar community. SideCar’s safety features can be found at www.side.cr/safety

Portland Opens Up Applications For Startup PDX: Challenge

Portland Oregon’s Portland Development Commission has kicked off a new initiative to lure startups to the Central Eastside part of town. The new program called the Startup PDX Challenge is a non-equity based grant program that will give up to six startups $10,000 grants and free office space for a year in what once served as Mayor Charlie Hale’s campaign office.

The office space is located in what most people in Portland know as “Produce Row”. It’s for the most part, an industrial area that the city is trying to revitalize with new types of restaurants, businesses and now technology startups.

There are several equity based tech incubators in the Portland area. This program is the first of it’s kind where the money comes with no strings attached (other than working in the office space). The PDC has a budget of $150,000 for the project which includes the grant money as well as money to make improvements to the building where the startups will be housed. In consideration for the improvements the landlord is not charging the tenant startups rent this year.

In addition to the cash and office space, startups selected for the program will also have access to services donated by Portland area law firms, accountants and human resources services according to Oregon Live.

The Startup PDX challenge has already lined up several sponsors including; Perkins Coie; Davis Wright Tremaine LLP; Perkins & Co; Trupp HR; Xenium; Lewis & Clark Bank; Business Accelerator at Portland State University; Pie; Portland Seed Fund; Technology Association of Oregon; Portland Development Commission; Oregon Entrepreneur Network and Transfer Online.

Applications are due April 4th and can be filled out here.

DC Startup CrowdCusp Making The Best Of Things Before SEC Regulations

Crowdfunding is a hot topic these days. Hundreds of crowdfunding startups have surfaced over the last few months, patiently waiting as the Securities and Exchange Commission takes their sweet time figuring out regulations.

While crowdfunding is nothing new, the JOBSAct passed last year which will allow people to crowdfund startups for an equity stake without the normal regulations around venture capital and angel investing. Startups will be able to use this form of crowdfunding as a vehicle for up to $1 million dollars in funding, just as soon as the SEC defines the regulations.

This waiting period has put some crowdfunding startups on ice, while others have found ways around regulations without allowing startups to actually give up equity. In some cases prize packs, swag, and other gifts are donated by the company in exchange for someone’s backing. Other times it’s just about feel good donations.

CrowdCusp is a Washington DC based crowdfunding startup that has already started crowdfunding, sans the equity stake.

We got a chance to talk to the team behind CrowdCusp. Check out the interview below.

Add Your Portfolio To Your LinkedIn Profile With French Startup Dokker

LinkedIn is undoubtedly one of the most useful tools to connect with people from your work life. However, many users have complained that their LinkedIn profile doesn’t give them an adequate platform to show off their portfolio. This can prove to be an important missing piece for marketers, artists, designers, and even writers.

French startup Dokker is looking to change that by offering a platform for portfolios to sync up with LinkedIn accounts. Dokker is free and allows users to post any kind of document to their online portfolio. Once a user builds a Dokker portfolio they can share it with LinkedIn and also Viadeo, which is LinkedIn’s number one competitor in Europe.

Services like Dokker allow for a much more robust picture of someone’s work life rather than just text and recommendations.

We got a chance to speak with Fred Ducrot, Dokker’s co-founder, General Manager and Product Designer. Check out our interview below.

Jermaine Dupri And Scott Case To Kick Off Startup Rally And Startup Georgia

Monday afternoon in Atlanta Georgia promises to bring the largest gathering of startups in the city since 1895 when it hosted the Cotton and International Exposition.

Jermaine Dupri, entrepreneur and CEO of SoSoDef Recordings, is set to keynote Startup Rally which will showcase 100 regional startups at the Biltmore Hotel.

The exposition and summer internship fair will kick off at 3:00pm and run until 7:00pm. At 5:00pm Scott Case, the founding CTO of Priceline.com and the CEO of the Startup America Partnership will take the stage to officially launch Startup Georgia.

Dupri is no stranger to startup and entrepreneurship. His homegrown record label has spawned several Grammy award winning artists, and remains in Atlanta to this day. Dupri I also the founder of Global 14, a social network he launched in 2011 because he wanted a real social network vs “social notifying” which he says other social network are riddled with.

Dupri was also one of many top tier keynote speakers at Startup Grind, earlier this month.

”My roots are in Atlanta, and so is my future,” explains Dupri, “I am excited to share the story about So So Def Recordings and Global 14 at Startup Rally and to support the growth of fresh ideas emerging from Atlanta.”

Case continues his cross country evangelism for promoting startups and entrepreneurism. Last week Case kicked off everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference

“Focusing on high-growth startups is a smart strategy for Georgia to grow its economy,” Case said. “Startup Georgia will provide a state-wide network to help the local entrepreneurs building the next great success story to access the opportunities and resources unique to the state.”

Ticketing information can be found here.

Plixser Addressing The Pains Between Music Students & Music Teachers

Plixser, Memphis startup, everywhereelse.co the startup conference, ee2013

Plixser founder Marcus Wiggins pitching in video contest finals at everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference. (photo: Allie Fox for NMI)

By: Calvin Carter, University Of Memphis Entrepreneurial Journalism Student

Plixser, a music teaching startup, is hoping to expand nationwide from its base in Memphis.

Plixser is a software program that attempts to fix many of the headaches faced by music teachers and students. The program features a live-streaming function for teachers to give lessons to students online, an automated billing system, and the ability to track lesson completion.

Marcus Wiggins, a doctoral student at the University Of Memphis who has been involved in music since the 8th grade, is the founder.

“I know the pains of both the teacher and the student, and Plixser can eliminate those pains,” he said.

By the time you read this, Plixser will have already officially launched. It spent two to three weeks in beta, gaining a positive reaction from ten teachers and students so far, Wiggins said. But Wiggins will continue to spread the word about the music program outside of Memphis, starting with an upcoming event with the Texas Music Educator’s Association. He hopes to garner some interest from the crowd of 25,00 expected to attend.

In it for the long haul, it appears that Wiggins is already enduring the trying moments of being an entrepreneur.

“The sexiness of being an entrepreneur wears off real quick, especially when you get no sleep and are working all the time,” he said.

But Wiggins said he shares one goal of many entrepreneurs trying to solve a problem: going beyond just having a job. “I want it to be that this is who I am and not what I do,” Wiggins said. “…. I want to fund the life that I live.”

Did you miss EE 2013? Don’t miss EE 2014 tickets available here