Could This Waterloo Startup Change Digital Advertising The Way Blackberry Originally Changed The Smartphone

People in Waterloo come up with some amazing ideas. Although we often joke about RIM/Blackberry these days, back when they first came out they created an entirely new industry, one that still has renewing legacy customers. By putting customers’ messaging abilities, calendars, and digital lives in the palm of their hands and making it all sync wirelessly with the office, things were easy and efficient.

Although RIM has stopped innovating, Waterloo has not.

Enter WestonExpressions, a Waterloo-based startup behind a new wireless digital, interactive advertising platform called Linkett. Now I’m definitely not a fan of big buzz words, but Linkett is really all of those things. It may be what the world has been looking for in the form of new advertising.

Linkett allows you to let your phone interact with many different types of digital advertising platforms. It can be an ad on your computer screen, a bus stop sign or even at the mall. You can use Linkett to walk through an exhibit and download the music playing. Users can use Linkett to download an author’s book while at the bookstore. You can even use Linkett to get a mall directory by just swiping your phone in front of a display. Really, the possibilities for this new advertising platform are limitless.

“The attention span of the average consumer in today’s world is at an all-time low due to “media clutter.” People can’t remember things that were advertised to them on a TV or a billboard like they once could and therefore traditional digital signage ads are less efficient. We solve this problem by making all content interactive and easily accessible for consumers while providing key analytics to promoters. Online ads provide analytics to advertisers so they can boost ad effectiveness, so we want to provide the same type of data and service but in the real world,” the team told us in an interview.

To get an idea of this new level of interaction check out the video.

What is your startup called?

WestonExpressions

What does your company do?

WestonExpressions is a technology corporation providing hardware and software innovations for the out-of-home advertisement industry.

Who are the founders, and what are their backgrounds?

Douglas Lusted is the CEO and co-Founder of WestonExpressions. Douglas founded the company in 2012 after winning the University of Waterloo’s Innovation Showcase and Velocity Venture Fund in his second year of business studies; leading to the development of Linkett Technology.

Ashok Patel is the COO and co-Founder of WestonExpressions. Ashok is a computer scientist that graduated from the University of Waterloo and currently handles hardware engineering and operations. Ashok is a serial entrepreneur who previously co-founded Softart MicroSystems which was acquired by BlackBerry, where he was team lead for the GSM/GPRS radio protocol stack implementation team.

Vlad Pisanov is the CTO and co-founder of WestonExpressions. Vlad finished Hon.B.Sc in Physics from the University of Toronto and obtained his Master’s Degree in Computer Science from the University of Waterloo. Vlad’s previous work experience includes outdoor advertisement agencies and developed the core backend system of Linkett.

What’s the startup scene like where you are based?

Kitchener is very tech intensive, and has a common theme of new mobile technologies especially at the Communitech Hub and Velocity Garage which serves as our incubator. There are a lot of software companies, and great engineers from the University of Waterloo. There is a much more “west-coast” vibe around a lot of the companies compared to New York or Toronto for example. After BufferBox was acquired, Vidyard and Thalmic raised high series A rounds of funding, it really attracted some talent and investors in the area.

Why now?

Digital marketing is the fastest growing channel of marketing and the technology in mobile devices is rapidly innovating. There is a critical shift in how consumers shop, obtain information and are entertained and it is being reflected in how they engage with brands, and with digital screens. We think it is the perfect time to improve digital screen technology so it can keep up with consumers and their mobile devices.

What are some of the milestones your startup has already reached?

In our first week we have reached many milestones. We closed our first round of funding from VC Firms and angel investors and also reached over 50,000 hits on YouTube. We have two international protected Patent applications and sold units internationally in the United States, Canada, Peru, New Zealand and Ireland.

What are your next milestones?

Our next milestones to reach include continuing to drive sales in North America and penetrating the retail market. We will finish product development and ship Linketts to those who have pre-ordered as well as launch our next generation Linkett that offers payment not only through mobile devices, but also through loyalty and credit cards.

Where can people find out more? Any social media links you want to share?

linkett.com

Even Canadian startups are welcome at this huge startup conference “everywhere else”

GiveForward’s Ethan Austin To Try Burritos In Cincinnati At Everywhere Else

Correction: We originally reported that Austin was the COO of GiveForward and that he would be speaking on raising money outside of SV. He is actually the President of GiveForward, and he plans to speak on the importance of culture in your startup. Corrections have been made below.

Ethan Austin is the President and burrito-eating champion at GiveForward, a Chicago startup he co-founded as a way to help people do personal fundraising. As a child Austin lost his father to colon cancer, and over the years he looked for ways to help people with cancer. Then, he ran the Marine Corps Marathon in DC to raise money for Memphis’ St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. During that race, Austin had an idea.

Through his personal web page, Austin, who was trained as a lawyer with a BA from Emory and a JD from American University, raised small amounts of money from people all over the world. This was the precursor to GiveForward.

It was obviously fate when he met co-founder Desiree Vargas Wrigley because she had already written a business plan similar to the Austin’s idea. The two collaborated and cofounded GiveForward.

The company accelerated at Chicago’s Excelerate Labs (now Techstars Chicago), and raised $2.5 million dollars in venture capital to bring the crowdfunding-with-a-purpose site to life. It’s now extremely popular.

During is Everywhere Else Cincinnati speech, Austin will talk about the importance of building culture as we build our companies.

Austin should be a great enough reason to get your discounted attendee or Startup Avenue ticket today, but if not here’s 42 more reasons.

Online Ticketing for Everywhere Else Cincinnati – “Start Where U Are” powered by Eventbrite

Mexican Entrepreneuer Working On Hospitality Retention With His Startup Guest Retain

With all the online platforms out there for hotels, spas, and other hospitality oriented services, the first and most influential exposure is typically based on price. I know when I started using the hotel site we use today, back in 2002, it was strictly price driven. Now, we typically book 100s of nights a year, and we look for amenities and hotels that will still let us use our brand rewards even though we book through a third party.

Once a user gets over the initial cost benefit, retaining customers to any one brand and becoming loyal is a tough sell. Most of the time when we hear about loyalty and rewards, which are the centerpieces around customer retention, we are typically talking about retail and restaurants.

Geordie Wardman, a Mexican entrepreneur, is hoping to change the way companies in the hotel, salon, and spa industries retain quality customers and solve customer issues as fast as they can.

We keep hearing stories about consumer giants like Best Buy, Dell, and American Airlines, who have devoted huge teams of employees to monitor review sites and social media. But what about the small business, or even the startup?

That’s where Guest Retain comes in. Wardman’s company monitors the biggest review sites and social media to find the buzz words and other indicators of a negative review, alerting a business owner within minutes so that they can try their best to turn a negative into a positive.

A customer who has been turned around from a bad experience is far more likely to be loyal than just a regular customer. Guest Retain hones in on that idea, getting the most important information back to the companies so they can act on it.

We got a chance to talk to Warman. Check out the interview below.

What is your startup called?

GuestRetain – We handle online reputation marketing for Hotels, Spas and Salons. Our solution basically automates positives reviews by capturing testimonials and when the customers responses are positive guiding the customers to leave positive reviews on the social review sites like Google Reviews, Yahoo, TripAdvisor, Yelp, City Search and any others that are beneficial to promote the business reputation of our clients. When a customer experience is bad, we warn the owner and give them the opportunity to correct the situation directly with that client before they go on to the social review site.

Who are the founders, and what are their backgrounds

Founder is Geordie Wardman

Where are you based?

I am based in Sayulita, Mexico where I live on the beach with my family and surf 3 to 4 days a week (when there are waves!)

What’s the startup scene like where you are based?

There is none, and I have to form my own mastermind groups and accountability groups because I live in a very rural area of Mexico.

What problem do you solve?

The problem that I solve is only angry customers leave reviews, not good loyal customers because Good Service is expected. When a problem does arise, the owner is given notice of it BEFORE the customer complains on it on the social review sites. Previously, the owners only found out about customers problems AFTER the customers had left a scathing critique of an experience online, where it stays forever to detract future business prospects from checking their business. We are an alert system for business owners to stay in closer contact with their customers, so they can be proactive about their customer retention and relationships, and augment their online reputations.

What are some of the milestones your startup has already reached?

Funded development by pre-sales. Collected from 3 customers 12 months in advance revenues. Already achieved $4,000 per month in recurring revenues after 2 months of being live, with 40 customers and a 20-30% growth rate per month in new clients.

What are your next milestones?

100 clients and $10,000 in monthly recurring revenues by Jan 1, 2014.

Where can people find out more? Any social media links you want to share?

http://www.guestretain.com,

JuiceTank — Innovation Lab, Accelerator and Coworking Space — Takes Shape in Somerset

[repostus jump=4 hash=76aa5c135a8f63e730abfb4225e51b2b title=JuiceTank+%26mdash%3B+Innovation+Lab%2C+Accelerator+and+Coworking+Space+%26mdash%3B+Takes+Shape+in+Somerset host=NJ+Tech+Weekly short=1zCgC snip=Murals+and+art+adorn+the+walls+at+Juice%C2%A0Tank.+%7C+Clark+Lagemann+NJTechWeekly.com+recently+had+a+chance+to+tour+the+new+JuiceTank+idea+lab%2C+startup+accelerator+and+coworking+space+in+Somerset%2C+which+has+both+a+mission+and+a+philosophy.+Entrepreneur+and%26hellip%3B thumb=4277400]

Permission Not Required for Assemble Detroit, Michigan’s Own SXSW Event

Kevin Krease and Garrett Koehler recently lost the ESPN X Games bid for Detroit, but turned this failure into Michigan’s own and very first SXSW-like event. The event called Assemble will be hosted in Detroit during the Summer of 2014, and will combine tech, music, art and extreme sports.

The duo who attracted national media attention for the ESPN bid shared with us at last night’s Fifty Founders event how they got started and what they aim to do with Assemble Detroit. It was a great turnout at Bamboo Detroit where the community gathered to network and hear this young startup speak.

When Kevin Krease and Garret Koehler started the X Games bid in Detroit, it was because they wanted to make a positive impact in the city that had always fascinated them. Krease worked in publishing and Kohler had experience teaching art, traveling through Palestine, and eventually working at Groupon in Chicago. Koehler left to join Krease in Detroit this past year.

During the bid, their team raised national awareness, launched a viral video, and created a social media movement around the event. Along the way they setup strategic partnerships. The loss of the bid helped them garner enough support for Assemble Detroit.

Here’s what the duo says they learned along the way:

No Permission Required. This is the internal motto for the Assemble Detroit team. Why? Because they learned that to make something like a large scale event happen you need to take your own initiative. The duo said the resources are always there, and that there are plenty of startup resources in Detroit. You just need the idea to get started and inspire others to believe. For events, they said it’s about the idea and the brand. Then, you hire local talent to help make it happen.

Build relationships and trust. To get excitement for the ESPN bid going the team had to create a video. They had little budget to work with, and partnered with another startup to create their video that eventually went viral. The startup trusted them and covered the costs until the group received funding. What did they learn? It’s about building relationships and trust with others to get an idea off the ground. The video was a huge success in building momentum for the team. They were able to pay the other business back when funding came in.

Always add value. The team used this piece of advice to help maneuver how they would build up momentum for their extreme sports event. Every time they went to make a decision that may have seemed like a leap, they asked themselves if it added value to their goal. If the answer was yes, they found a way to make it happen.

It’s about perception, not risk. The duo said that they did hear some negative feedback on their journey. Others called hosting a large event with extreme sports in the city risky. They pointed out that risk is all about your perception on the place and the people. Risk to extreme sports is falling down during a dangerous jump. Risk in Detroit isn’t that risky as others might see it. The duo said:

“Detroit isn’t a liability. Its grit and resources are a bonus. Risky is believing that Detroit won’t turn around. It’s thinking you can move and make it in New York City.”

Failure can be fun. When the bid was lost, they realized how fun it could be to build their own large scale event that included sports. The idea for Assemble was to create a similar event to SXSW, but one that included extreme sports too. They’re aiming to bring 100,000 people to Detroit for the event next summer.

Remember the community. Both Krease and Koehler remarked that Detroit has a a strong sense of place. The name “Assemble” reminds us of coming together as an assembly line, to work, and to innovate in the city. It also brings together a larger community into the current narrative of a city that’s often described as rebuilding. They are aware of the sense of community, bringing up the X Games bid through grassroots marketing strategies. They expressed the importance for including the community, but also doing great work that isn’t tied to only Detroit.

Next Fifty Founders Event: The next Fifty Founder’s event which will feature Ryan Blair in September. Fifty Founder’s is a fireside chat series hosted in Detroit, bringing successful entrepreneurs in Michigan and around the country to Detroit. The series goes in-depth to share details about startup lessons learned. Sign up now here: https://ryanblair.eventbrite.com/

This event was sponsored by Start Garden and TechTown Detroit. Learn more about Fifty Founders and stay tuned for the next event.

From our content partner michipreneur.com! Written by: Amanda Lewan. Blogger. Marketer. Cupcake baker. I like helping startups with marketing. I also blog on digital storytelling Amandalewan.com. Follow Amanda at @Amanda_Jenn

2 Memphis Startups, Mobilizer And Boosterville Get Attention From Major Press

While nibletz has a pretty large following and people love us because we’re the voice of startups everywhere else, getting attention from the major tech and startup players is a big deal for all startups. This week two Memphis startups were fortunate enough to catch the eyes of TechCrunch and GigaOm.

Mobilizer, a recent graduate of the Memphis based ZeroTo510 accelerator, and recently named to the Tennessee TENN, was featured in TechCrunch on Saturday evening.The company has found a way to make ambulatory patients in hospitals more mobile.

As company co-founder and CEO James Bell told me a few months ago, after major surgery getting up and walking around is a very important part of recovery. That’s why as soon as you are able, doctors like for patients to walk to other parts of the hospital for testing and therapy. The problem in the past was that all of the equipment tied to a patient recovering from surgery often requires more than one technician to accompany the patients on these walks. Often taking technicians away from other duties.

With the Mobilizer product, one technician can accompany the patient as the walk through the hospital allowing the other technicians to tend to other patients and even saving hospitals money on over-staffing.

Boosterville, a spring 2013 graduate of the Memphis based Seed Hatchery accelerator was featured in GigaOM earlier this week. The company, founded by Pam Cooper and her husband, and founding CTO of Cha-Cha, Tom Cooper, has a better way of school fundraising. Pam Cooper had previously built up a large cleaning business in Indiana. When she met her husband Tom six years ago they knew they would eventually collaborate on a startup.

Boosterville is that startup. The company offers a mobile wallet app that is tied in to local merchants that are automagically kicking back money for fundraising. The user selects the participating merchant that they want to patronize and checkout using Boosterville. The merchant is paid and a portion of the payment is forwarded onto the school or charity.

GigaOm featured Boosterville as part of a story about startups that are changing the way schools can do fundraising, trading in wrapping paper, pizza kits and World’s Finest Chocolate bars, for an easy to use mobile app.

Find out more about Boosterville here Mobilizer is on the web here.

Krossover, Because Everyone Loves A Great High School Sports Comeback

So, I may have shed a little tear when watching Undefeated earlier this year. It’s one of those tug-at-your-heart-strings comeback stories. Team does horribly, needs more direction, gets it in adversity, and wins. In the case of Undefeated, the team almost went all the way. While Undefeated was more about culture and upbringing, and we may have a little bias being based in Memphis and all, it’s still a great high school comeback story.

High school comeback stories are good for morale, good for building strong minds, and in a lot of cases great for the community.

New York-based startup Krossover is giving high school coaches everywhere a better chance at making that comeback. They provide access to tools that used to only be available to college and professional coaches.

Coaches subscribed to the Krossover service upload their raw game video footage to the Krossover servers. Then a network of over 1300 crowdsourced employees in the US, India, and Europe watch the films and document everything. What’s delivered back to the coach in 24 hours looks like a college or professional sports analytics.

According to Business Insider, Krossover indexes the video and data, and a coach can instantly call up shots by a particular player, bad running plays, missed free throws, and just about every piece of the game.

“We are sitting on mounds of data, about 20 terabytes of video, data, and analytics,” James Piette, Krossover founder told Business Insider. “Our service is cataloging exactly what’s happening in every single play like who took a shot where, who rebounded the shot, who inbounded the ball, everything.”

Krossover has thousands of coaches as customers and provides their services for football, basketball, and lacrosse. One of their customers Sean McInnis, the basketball coach at King Philip Regional High Scool in Massachusetts. Before he took over the team and signed up for Krossover, the team had gone winless in three seasons, with over 60 losses. The year he tried Krossover they improved their record to 14-8.

Check out Krossover here.

Boston Startup HelmetHub Has The Helmets To Go With The Bike Share

Bike sharing is becoming the in thing when it comes to green transportation in most major cities. Boston, New York, Chicago, Washington DC, Atlanta, and several West Coast cities all have significant bike share programs in place. Bike sharing allows users to “rent” a bike using an automated kiosk. In most cases you can rent the bike for the day at one location and return it at a different location, kind of like Red Box.

Bike sharing is perfect for when it’s pouring down rain in the morning but brightens up by lunch time or after work. You wouldn’t schlep your bike to work in the rain, but having a bike share kiosk near by means that you can get some exercise in the afternoon if the weather permits.

One of the hurdles that bike share programs have encountered is safety, and more specifically helmets. Whether it’s a matter of law or just people conscious about protecting their noggin, helmets are a significant barrier to people bike sharing. Sure you could go buy a helmet and carry it in a backpack, but at that point you might as well buy your own bike, get a lock, and forget the bike sharing concept all together.

Two Boston entrepreneurs, Breanna Berry and Chris Mills, are hoping to solve the helmet problem by making helmets as easy to rent as bikes.

The two have developed a kiosk called HelmetHub that allows users to swipe a credit card and rent a helmet for $2 per day to go along with the bike they just rented. To test out the service, HelmetHub is being installed in four locations alongside bike sharing kiosks. When a rider rents a bike they can pick up the helmet and be on their way. According to the Boston Herald, users rent their helmets from one side of the machine and return them to another. This keeps the used helmets separate from the sterilized helmets. Each helmet is cleaned and sterilized between uses.

“It’ll be the first real automated bike helmet vending machine in the world,” said Nicole Freedman, Boston’s so-called bike czar who heads the city’s Boston Bikes program. “What we want to do with HelmetHub is make helmets as convenient as renting the bikes.”

Berry told the Herald that she hopes that HelmetHub goes well in Boston so that they can branch out to the other cities offering bike share services.

Find out more about HelmetHub at helmet-hub.com

It’s Day One For These 5 Startups From Gener8tor’s Summer Session

Wisconsin’s dual city accelerator, Gener8tor, is one of the most successful startup accelerators in the midwest. Just last week we reported that two graduates from the Winter 2013 session held in Madison Wisconsin raised $610,000 in seed rounds.

WeMontage, a company that has new ways for users to have their mobile phone pics printed as wallpaper, and Quietyme, a company that monitors the environmental conditions in normally quiet places like hospitals, hotels and nursing homes, raised $310,000 and $300,000 respectively.

A third startup, Abodo, also raised $325,000, they too were a member of that winter class at Gener8tor. Not bad for a general tech accelerator that typically runs cohorts of 5.

Today is Launch Day for the summer cohort at Gener8tor. The Gener8tor founders alternate between Madison and Milwaukee. The summer 2013 cohort was based in Milwaukee.

While many accelerators call the day at the end of the session demo day, or investor day, and we call it graduation, Troy Vosseller, one of the Gener8tor cofounders tells us that they call it launch day. With the teams working all session long and building their companies, demo day doesn’t signify an ending but more importantly a beginning.

Gener8tor’s summer session yielded five great startups:

Maillift

Take your marketing efforts to a whole new level with hand written letters.

MailLift integrates with your Customer Relationship Management, helpdesk and other tools allowing handwritten letters to be automated. MailLift sends handwritten letters to old-school mailboxes on your behalf, freeing you and your staff’s time. With MailLift you have the ability to send thousands of personalized handwritten letters with just a few mouse clicks. Improve your customer acquisition and retention by sending these letters from your browser, email client, mobile device or CRM.

In this world of electronic everything, a hand written letter helps you reach your prospects in a whole new, old fashioned way.

Optyn

Optyn makes marketing simple for small businesses by providing easy, automated tools to acquire and engage their customers. Optyn’s marketing platform helps business owners decide what message to communicate and then enables them to create, schedule and send an email campaign in less than 2 minutes. Optyn also ensures consumers only get emails from merchants they have chosen.

Catalyze.io

catalyze.io provides health cloud solutions for application developers, enabling rapid application development, enhanced data integration and industry-standard security. Our vision is to offer the hosted core infrastructure required to build modern apps for health and wellness. catalyze.io takes care of the plumbing for app owners and empowers developers inside and outside of enterprises to quickly build, test and deploy health and wellness applications−all without worrying about data sources and models, interoperability or HIPAA technology security.

OpenHomes

OpenHomes provides modern, professional tools for the “for sale by owner” market. With OpenHomes, it is easy, affordable, and secure for people to buy or sell their homes themselves. Openhomes’ simple, elegant technology connects buyers and sellers directly online, enabling everything from scheduling a showing, giving feedback, or asking questions, to making an offer from your tablet or smartphone. OpenHomes’ services enable home owners to sell their homes themselves with confidence – for only 1% commission.

Docalytics

Docalytics is an easy to implement, cross-platform technology that enhances how businesses use their marketing and sales documents to interact with and capture actionable data from their prospective customers. Docalytics enables users to efficiently:

– CAPTURE more leads from their content.
– CONVERT more sales from these leads.
– CREATE better, more engaging content.

You can find out more about Gener8tor here at gener8tor.com

It’s Demo Day In Indiana At Velocity

Southern Indiana’s startup accelerator, Velocity, is graduating their summer session today (August 29). The accelerator, a stone’s throw from Louisville, Kentucky, has managed to attract top startups not just from the region but as far away as California.

Each of the five teams in the Velocity accelerator received $20,000 in seed money in exchange for a small amount of equity. They also received free workspace and access to mentors from across Kentucky, Indiana, and the region.

These are the five teams launching from Velocity:

Collabra- Collabra allows musicians and fans to create, collaborate, and share music in a new and innovative way. Combining a novel song arrangement platform with an easy-to-use recording suite, Collabra enables musicians around the world to connect and create music while engaging fans in the creative process for the first time ever. Due to its low-barrier-to-entry approach, for musicians and fans, as well as a robust feature set, Collabra has the potential to change the music creation process forever.

Large Insights- Large is laser-focused on generating insights from data to increase client revenues, and we do that by establishing digital and social business goals, tracking activity and measuring success.

Change My School- Change My School is a platform for students, teachers, and parents to upload and watch videos. It is available to users of all ages and provides a video contest platform. The winning videos each month receive $1,000 for items such as supplies, projects, or technology. It also provides students and teachers opportunities to incorporate creativity, video technology and project based learning into their classrooms.

Steel Fashion- Steel Fashion provides a free styling software service that allows men to style clothes they have, want, or are looking to purchase. They can discover and purchase new brands easily by identifying brands they already like. Confidence and creativity are easily harnessed when visiting Steel Fashion.

Greek Pull- Greek Pull enables a Fraternity or Sorority chapter to reach their target markets in an efficient way. Those target markets are potential new members, their alumni and the Greek Community. Because of this, GreekPull differs from other social media solutions because GreekPull is focused on bringing those target markets to chapter houses. The network is exclusive to Greek Life and helps chapters with efficient marketing. We bring Fraternity and Sorority target markets to Greek Chapters so they can be easily contacted, creating an efficient communication tool.

Nominate Your Favorite Female Speaker for Everywhere Else Cincinnati

Everywhere Else Cincinnati is fast approaching, and the Nibletz team is working like crazy to make it the best event everywhere else. We’ve already announced tons of speakers, and we have even more waiting for unveiling.

But, we want YOU to be involved, too! We need to know who you want to hear speak at Everywhere Else Cincinnati. Fill out our quick survey, and we’ll send personal invitations to the fan favorites.

Here at Nibletz, we love to celebrate women starting up. We have our Bad-Ass Startup Chick series that highlights awesome women starting awesome companies. At our Memphis event, the Kick Ass Female Founders panel was one of the most popular. In fact, women swept the pitch contests at the Everywhere Else Memphis conference.

Female founders face unique challenges, and the best ones do it with so much grace, you’d never know starting up was hard. They have amazing stories that entrepreneurs–male and female–can learn from. And we want to make sure our Everywhere Else Cincinnati attendees are getting the best in-the-trenches stories possible.

That’s why your input is so important to us. The survey is super-quick (2 questions!), and you can make sure the best women get a prime spot in our lineup.

So, let us know: which women should we invite to Everywhere Else Cincinnati?

By the way, after you nominate your favorite women speakers, make sure to get your early bird ticket. We’re selling out fast!

Event management for Everywhere Else Cincinnati – “Start Where U Are” powered by Eventbrite

Luke Beatty Exits Position As Managing Director Of Techstars Boulder

Techstars flagship Boulder program had some news on Monday that may have been troubling to some at first. Luke Beatty, the program’s Managing Director, has stepped down.

Beatty began his career at Techstars as an Entrepreneur-In-Residence before he moved up to his current role as Managing Director. He took on that role as predecessor Nicole Glarros segued to a similar position at Techstars New York program. That was to fill the void from Techstars NY’s Dave Tisch stepping down to start Box Group.

Beatty is being tight lipped about why he is stepping down but did tell the Boulder County Business Report that “I have a once-in-a-lifetime chance (to be announced later), that I just can’t pass up – one that wouldn’t allow me to live up to the TechStars promise if I were to try to juggle.”

“Luke is staying very close to the Boulder program, and Nicole is taking it back over,” TechStars co-founder and chief executive David Cohen said in an email Monday,

Beatty is an entrepreneur’s entrepreneur, one of those guys that preaches the startup and entrepreneur lifestyle. He also takes pride in being annoying and hyperactive. “I will remain annoyingly (hyper) active and will forever be engaged with the 11 companies that were in this summer’s cohort in Boulder.” he said on his blog.

Beatty was the founder of Associated Content which was acquired by Yahoo in the pre-Mayer era. After the acquisition he stayed on at Yahoo as a Vice President before leaving for Techstars.

Glaros will move back to Boulder and take over as Managing Director.

Beatty oversaw the most recent graduating class at Techstars Boulder which included GoodApril, a tax planning startup that was actually acquired before completing the program.

Of course you can find out more at techstars.com

You gotta see the startup accelerator panels at this huge startup conference.

SLIC Games Is Another Great Louisville EduGames Startup

When you think great educational game startups, the first place that comes to mind probably isn’t Kentucky. But here at Nibletz, we make sure you know about the great startups everywhere.

SLIC Games (pronounced slick), the creator of Gadzookery, is the second great Louisville startup focused on creating amazing educational games. The first we told you about was Kodable. We first reported on Kodable back in November. Now, thanks to that Louisville startup my six year old is learning how to code.

While Kodable focuses on teaching children to code through a fun interactive game, the folks at SLIC (also based in Louisville) believe that games are for everyone, even adults. That’s why Gadzookery is fun for all ages. In fact, SLIC games co-founder Simon Brooks prides himself on the fact that Gadzookery is teaching without the learner even knowing.

We got a chance to talk to Brooks about SLIC, Gadzookery and Louisville. Check out the interview below.

What is your startup called?

SLIC games LLC (pronounced Slick) is named after the original founder Simon, and his three pets Lexy, Izzy, and Chelsea. Lexy & Chelsea are two big old mutt dogs, and Izzy was his cat. Unfortunately Izzy died during the development of Gadzookery, but he lives on in our games in both our company logo and virtual currency.

What does your company do?

Primarily we’re a gaming company with the focus on making them both social and educational. There are five original scalable games we plan to develop over the coming 18 months, although we do have other ideas that are little bit outside the box of gaming while remaining scalable.

Who are the founders, and what are their backgrounds

Simon Brooks hails from London, England. He’s lived in Louisville, KY for approaching ten years. His background is mostly sales & marketing, and small business ownership. He’s creative with ideas, be it for new products, or improving systems within an office environment such as marketing tactics, client retention, and other general office procedures. Currently he has nine original app ideas including Gadzookery that he wants developed.

Within the last few months Greg Gorman joined SLIC games LLC as tech lead. In his career, Greg has worked on projects ranging from the Artificial Heart program, to automated analysis of CAT scans for non-destructive evaluation of space shuttle engine blades.

Greg currently has aimed his focus on mobile app and mobile web development.

Greg evolved from the initial web developer at TechRepublic, to Director of Application Development, building the team that built the site. TechRepublic went from whiteboard concept to a website with 16 million page views per month in less than two years.

Greg grew up in Louisville, KY and received Bachelor of Science and Master of Engineering degrees in Engineering Math and Computer Science from the University of Louisville.

What problem do you solve?

Gadzookery is a very educational game aimed at all age groups, even adults. The problem with educational games is they’re either aimed solely at kids, or just plain old boring. Gadzookery educates without the user even realizing as it’s fun. It’s vocabulary building, and boosts creative writing skills.

Why now?

Simon started this project well over one year ago by himself. His dream was to get the game launched in a timely fashion and be the sole owner laying back on a beach somewhere exotic. All the work was outsourced. The problem was with designers and developers. They were either very slow, or in the developers’ case, crooked. We’ve gone through four different developers in getting the game launched. Simon has an absolute nightmare outsourcing story that he plans to share with would be non-techie tech entrepreneurs at some point. He’s learned a lot along the way, and realized in this industry often less is more. This is the reason a founding tech lead was brought in, to drive the business and make the right technical decisions.

What are some of the milestones your startup has already reached?

After around 18 months trying to get launched, just getting the game launched feels like a massive milestone!

However along the way there have been some bright spots:

Last year due to delays and spiraling costs Gadzookery was listed on Appbackr (a crowdfunding for profit portal). It actually did very well there. Most companies struggle to raise $500 but Gadzookery raised a little over $10,000 It was going head to head with an app called ‘Old School’ which was officially licensed by Paramount Pictures. More of the appbackrs liked Gadzookery over Old School. That felt really good.

There was another small feel good moment. Simon’s biggest inspiration in the gaming business are the Bettner brothers who co-founded Words With Friends. Much to Simon’s delight at the time one of the brothers gave him a small endorsement. To most people that’s just a small moment, but to Simon, with all the stress of outsourcing he was going through that was a huge moment. Gadzookery is unofficially already also getting known as Sentences With Friends as that’s the style of game play so the connection is quite apparent.

What are your next milestones?

We do need to submit some upgrades to Gadzookery first, but after that the first milestone is 1 million downloads of Gadzookery Free. That’s just the start as future goals include a daily user base of 10 million plus, and having the game played in classrooms. Another goal is to have the game played on a national T.V show, such as a satire talk show, where the host and guest play against each other using for the target word a topic that is currently trending.

Short time milestones or goals, include building a very strong in house team so that outsourcing is never even an option, and the full vision of SLIC games LLC materializes.

Where can people find out more? Any social media links you want to share?

https://www.facebook.com/Gadzookery

https://twitter.com/Gadzookery

Tennessee’s Governor Bill Haslam Announces The TENN Top Startups In Statewide Program

Tuesday saw the final pitch off for Launch Tennessee’s TENN program. Launch Tennessee is a public/private partnership that helps organize, administer and provide resources to nine accelerator regions across the state of Tennessee.

With so many accelerators in one single state, Launch Tennessee teamed up with the Blackstone Foundation to hold a “super accelerator” of sorts simply called The TENN. Startups that went through one of the accelerator programs in Tennessee within the last 12 months were eligible to compete in a statewide competition to name the best of the best.

Earlier this month Launch Tennessee announced 20 finalists from across east, middle and western Tennessee. The 20 startups chosen as finalists represented a variety of technological and entrepreneurial fields including general tech, social, medical, medical device, life sciences and even publishing.

On Tuesday the startups in the top 20 pitched off in front of a panel of outside investors that included: Sabeer Bhatia, chairman and CEO of Sabse/Jaxtr and founder and former CEO of Hotmail; John McIlwraith, managing partner at Cincinnati, Ohio-based Allos Ventures; John Greathouse, general partner at Santa Barbara, Calif.-based Rincon Venture Partners; Sig Mosley, managing partner at Atlanta, Ga.-based Mosley Ventures; Bob Crutchfield, partner at Birmingham, Ala.-based Harbert Ventures; and Mike Tatum, serial entrepreneur and CEO of Workbus.

At the end of the day Governor Bill Haslam called up the top 10 startups who were named to the TENN;

eClinic (Nashville)
Got You In (Nashville)
Gun.io (Nashville)
Hatponics (Knoxville)
Health & Bliss (Memphis)
Mobilizer (Memphis)
Screwpulp (Memphis)
Survature (Knoxville)
Vendor Registry (East Tennessee”
View Medical (Memphis)

These 10 startups will participate in the TENN program which includes a statewide bus trip to meet some of the biggest companies, entrepreneurs and business leaders across the state, trips to New York and Silicon Valley and office space at their local accelerator or incubator. They will also have access to mentors and other resources to continue taking their post accelerator companies to the next level.

Congratulations to all the startups that made the list.