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Cuban Backed Boston Startup Apptopia Heating Up, Sells First $25,000 App

Back in march we reported on Boston area startup Apptopia. They’re making a name for themselves as a second hand market for app developers. They essentially do what Flippa does for websites, except for mobile apps.

Mobile app developers may find that they’ve built an app that’s picked up a bit of traction, but they’re ready to move onto something else. Rather than abandon the original app idea or it’s user base, an app developer can turn to Apptopia and sell the app and the accompanying intellectual property to someone else.

Many mobile app developers are incredibly good at coding and design but they may fall short in the marketing or sales department. For some developers the thrill in itself is the development process. Apptopia is the perfect place for those developers who may not necessarily have the skill set or drive to push their app to an actual business model. In some cases Apptopia may actually save some really great apps and get them out to market, in the hands of a more business savvy owner.

Apptopia is also a great place for multi title app publishers to increase their portfolio size.

Apps can sell on Apptopia, with the business plan, intellectual property and user base in tact, from anywhere to a few hundred dollars, upwards to tens of thousands of dollars.

Such is the case with an app that modeled itself after humor site 9GAG. The Android based app, which in some opinions was better than the official iOS 9GAG app, (and had more downloads than the official app) recently sold on Apptopia for $25,000.00.

On the sale of the 9GAG app, Apptopia founder and CEO Jonathan Kay told nibletz.com

“The 9GAG app that sold for $25k on Apptopia boasts stats that include over 855,000 downloads & 37,000 ratings. This is great to see as this app (built by an independant developer) is far out performing 9GAG’s offical iPhone app (which has less than 10% of the stats). 9GAG plans to enter the Android Market “later this year,” but i would be quite shocked if they built something from scratch versus acquiring the best available option (and customizing it to fit their brand/API). In my opinion this is what makes the acquisiton so interesting – there is a massive opportunity to then flip this back to 9GAG when they are ready. Just remember it’s about the users, not the technology.”

That’s definitely not chump change, especially for developers that may not have as much skin in the game.

To date Apptopia has facilitated the same of 83 different apps from the original developer to a new buyer. Sure with the hundreds of thousands of apps available today 83 doesn’t sound like very many, however Apptopia has been growing exponentially since their launch earlier this year.

Why does this work?

“Probably 80% of people who want to get involved in mobile either don’t know how to code an app or don’t know an app developer,” Kay said. “So there’s this massive demand, but kind of a little bit of a barrier to entry.”

The model alone has attracted an investment from Dallas Maverick’s owner, entrepreneur and investor Mark Cuban. The secondary app market will naturally continue to grow. As the word spreads about Apptopia people will start utilizing the service as a go to spot for app developers to sell their apps outright.

Kay also pointed out that there are some developers out there who are developing directly for Apptopia.

Linkage:

Check out Apptopia here

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Memphis SMB Green Girl Produce Ignites Startup Vs SMB Debate, But Plan Is Great For Memphis!

While there’s been much debate in the Nibletz office and surrounding areas over the past 72 hours on whether or not this idea counted as a “startup” it’s still a good idea and a good idea for Memphis Tennessee at that.

Emma Self, pitched her “Green Girl Produce” business idea on Friday evening at LaunchMemphis’ 48 Hour Launch. 48 Hour Launch is a weekend startup hackathon. The “startup vs SMB” debate was alive and well this weekend with everyone I talked to about this business.

The debate about “Startup vs SMB” in Self’s case has NOTHING to do with technology. There is another woman in Memphis who has come up with a new way to remove acrylic nails without the harsh abrasiveness and damage to the nails that traditional methods have caused. To me, the young lady with the nail solution is a startup. Green Girl is not.

Here’s why:

While it’s become a growing trend in the last few years, there is NOTHING new about urban, vertical, hyrdoponic green houses. Hydroponic greenhouses have been sprouting up (you see what I did there) across the country and around the world for at least the last decade, possibly two. Heck, stories of people being busted growing illegal substances in green houses trace back to the early 90’s.

As I explained to Launch Memphis intern Andy Cowan, in my argument, if there were no hamburger restaurants in Memphis Tennessee, anywhere, and there were everywhere else across the world, I wouldn’t consider Memphis’ first hamburger restaurant a “startup” just a new business idea for Memphis.

Steve Blank describes the debate between “startup vs SMB” as SMB’s being lifestyle businesses and startup founders working to save the world.

I will tell you that I’m confident that Self is passionate about changing her corner of the world, Memphis TN, but still not sold on it being a startup.

So now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s take a look at the business plan. It was a good business plan.

Self has obtained an abandoned liquor store in downtown Memphis (currently abandon business sites are abundant in downtown Memphis). There is approximately 1200 square feet of growing space in the liquor store. With a $200,000 investment Self will be able to make the necessary changes to the liquor store to accommodate her green house, and start her first cash crop.

The conversion will take about a month and after planting, she’ll be raising cash crops in two weeks, using LED technology. Self doesn’t have the $30,000 bill for the LED equipment though as she’s participating in a beta test with a new product.

In her market research Self found out that restaurants, and even the local vegetable distributors are paying upwards of $100 a pound for micro-greens.

Micro-greens are greens that chef’s are using to “make dishes pop” as garnish and extra flavoring. According to a local Chef we talked to on Sunday night, micro-greens give dishes a lot more flavor and pizaaz than say parsley but even his establishment stopped using them because of the cost.

Self can get that cost down to under $40 per pound and still produce $1 million dollars in revenue with that one location.

The community picked Green Girl Produce on Friday as one of three companies to build out over 48 Hour Launch. Self was able to connect with valuable resources in the community members that helped her with her plans.

archer>malmo, the south east PR/advertising giant was on hand all weekend. In fact a team of 6 stayed throughout to help with logos and concepts. The archer>malmo team was especially helpful to Self. They developed her logo, branding, and helped her visualize the supply chain.

Did Self do a great job this weekend. Yes! Did she utilize the resources to her and take advantage of the weekend concept Yes! Is Green Girl Produce a “startup”… Call me a “startup snob” but I don’t think so.

Check out her Sunday pitch video below. Now keep in mind that Emma is not one of those startup junkies who’s seen a hundred pitches. I think she did a heck of a job in front of the audience but she is definitely a bit nervous.

Linkage:

More 48 Hour Launch coverage here

Got your ticket yet? Come on down to Memphis

Washington DC Tops Inc’s 500 List Of All Time

The Inc 500/5000 conference just wrapped up in Phoenix Arizona. The three day conference highlights the private sector companies, both big and small, that are the fabric of our American corporate culture.

The Inc 500 is a list published every year by the premiere business magazine, that lists the 500 fastest growing companies in the country. The list, first published in 1982, has become the benchmark that many companies set for growth in their formative years. Companies like Pandora, Zipcar, Zappos and even companies with rich history now, like Toys R Us and 7 Eleven have topped the list.

The Inc 500 is a subset of the Inc 5000 which shows off an even broader range of US companies, those who are the fastest growing 5000 companies in America. Each of the Inc 5000 companies are featured on Inc’s website. The 500 companies are featured in Inc’s traditional magazine in the September issue.

The Kauffman Foundation, the non profit foundation in Kansas City that procures important data relating to startups, innovation, corporations and growth, recently analyzed the last 30 years worth of Inc 500 companies.

They found that over the past 30 years worth of Inc 500 lists, Washington DC has produced more companies that have appeared on the list than any other metropolitan area, in the country. In the last 12 years alone Washington DC has been home to 385 companies that have appeared on the Inc 500 list.

On a state by state basis California and then Texas topped Kauffman’s list. Virginia (which borders DC) was in the number 3 spot and Massachusetts was number 4.

When the list was adjusted for population Indianapolis ranked 6th, Baltimore ranked 15th, Philly ranked 19th and Louisville Kentucky ranked (20th).

When examined by county, Virginia had three of the top five counties with Fairfax City, Falls Church City and Arlington County. Motley County Texas and Broomfield County Colorado topped that list.

Check out the interactive map of the data in the links below

Linkage:

Source: Inc Magazine

Kauffman’s data set

Something worth checking out

Walk Thru’s Made Easy With Israeli Startup WalkMe

By a show of hands how many people out there have “walk thru” still on their to-do list. Everyone wants to do a great walk thru for their company, business or startup but many people have the hardest time getting this project off the ground. Either they don’t think they have access to the resources to create great “walk thru’s” or they don’t think they can afford it.

Well a startup in Tel Aviv called WalkMe is about to solve both of those problems for everyone.

No matter how easy or complex your task is, WalkMe wants to provide you with the tool to create an easy step-by-step “Walk thru” guide to everything.

Walkme is a simple to use plugin. Once you have it installed you just move about your screen in the natural steps it takes to do whatever process you want to teach. As you begin to complete each step you write what the step is, how to do it and add your text balloon and move on to the next step.

You can easily create “walk thru” instructions while you’re creating your WalkMe walk thru.

Anything from how to complete an order, to how to change your password, can easily be explained using Walkme. If you want to show someone an easy to use trick on your own website, you can create a WalkMe “walk thru”. Basically if you can do the task you want to teach, and if you can use a mouse, than you’re in business.

We got a chance to talk to the team from WalkMe about their easy to use tool. Check out the interview below:

Oklahoma City Startup: Buzzam Has The Blueprint For Next Generation Radio

Oklahoma City startup Buzzam is currently accelerating at the new Blueprint for Business accelerator in OKC. In fact Buzzam is the only homegrown team in the BluePrint For Business accelerator, other teams hail from as far away as London and Alabama.

Buzzam promises a whole new way of listening and enjoying some of your favorite online radio sources. The iOS app, which is available as of today, integrates seamlessly with your iTunes, Rdio and Spotify accounts insuring that you’re never without your favorite music regardless of the source.

It doesn’t stop there though. Buzzam is offering a new kind of radio, similar to original terrestrial radio, in that Buzzam will deliver information that is relevant to you, the listener. But we aren’t talking about relevant information to an international radio listening audience, a national listening audience or even a local audience. Buzzam will deliver information that’s relevant to just you.

Buzzam will create a radio listening experience for you based on your favorite Rdio and Spotify channels and your iTunes music. What happens in between songs is what makes Buzzam truly unique. Buzzam’s dj service will deliver your Facebook and Twitter updates right to you while you’re enjoying your favorite music.

Using Buzzam’s proprietary and patent pending technology, all your important social data is broadcast in between songs no matter what the feed.

On a recent visit to Blueprint for Business even Brad Feld thought Buzzam was a cool idea.

We got a chance to talk with Greg Starling, co-founder and COO of Buzzam about this innovative new radio idea ( and you know how we love radio ideas). Check out the interview below.

Meet Romania’s Mobile App Developer Referral Startup: BigBangJobs

Job boards are a dime a dozen these days. The job board was a space once owned by just two online companies, Hot Jobs (Yahoo) and Monster.com. Now there are job boards for just about everything and everywhere. It’s innovative new career minded sites, and category specific platforms like, WorkForPie and Path.to that are prevailing in the United States.

But what about outside the U.S.?

Well Romanian startup Big Bang Jobs is trying to solve the problem of connecting mobile app developers to people hiring mobile app developers in a way that cuts out a lot of the clutter found on more traditional websites.

BigBangJobs is a two way street. They function as a place where great mobile developers can find exciting new projects to work on, and where startups and established companies can find the perfect developer for their project. BigBangJobs is a mobile web developer community.

Unlike many other startups, BigBangJobs has a revenue model in place. After a quick vetting process, those developers that wan’t to participate in the program are admitted free. Those companies listing projects pay a one time fee of $99. While that may seem a little steep, BigBangJobs is looking to produce real results and get mobile app developers to work as quick as possible, in situations they want to be in.

We got a chance to talk to the founder of BigBangJobs, check out the interview below.

Meet The Founders Of Miami Startup: CloudShopper

This story originally appeared on our content partner site StarTropica.com

“We didn’t set out to do a Startup we’re doing a Business”, Ulises Orozco, co-founder ofCloudShopper, a free shopping comparison add-on already popular in the market place told me when our conversation turned a little too much into startup blabber as if wanting to draw the line between the social and fashionable side of “having a startup” and the simple execution of a business plan.

Simple it is, and also lean. So lean it only appears in your browser at the exact time that you need it, nothing more nothing less. Unlike most existing browser add-ons CloudShopper is invisible and it only pops up when you search for a specific product in a shopping portal offering you price comparisons of the exact same item in other websites, so that you can choose the lower one. One click and you are off to see it, and very probably buy it.

It’s sleek, non-intrusive, efficient, and accurate, no longer it has amassed 17,000 downloads in almost a year with very limited advertising; as big as that number is it’s not even near to what their goal is, they actually need much more than that to really start seeing the kind of return they are expecting, that’s why they are conquering every browser platform in the market. It is already available in Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Explorer, and Opera, and they are soon releasing the iPhone app.

What’s so amazing about CloudShopper is how simple it is for the user but how complicated it is to implement on the back-end. The add-on is available in 2,500 e-commerce websites from Amazon and Wal-Mart, to Sears and Target, you name it, and they are there. This implied setting up connections with many of those portals through their APIs, but at the same time making a different piece of software for each of the existing Browsers to then bring it all together under a clean user interface. And they did it all in just under a year of work.

Continue reading at our partner site StarTropica

Have you heard about this yet?

Memphis Entrepreneur Aaron Prather Launching New Startup This Weekend During 48 Hour Launch

It’s 48 Hour Launch time in Memphis Tennessee. This weekend entrepreneurs from across the state (and some neighboring states as well) have assembled for a weekend of launching new startups, hackathon style.

Nearly 50 entrepreneurs, developers, marketers and support people are working on three great startup ideas. The three selected ideas will work to develop those ideas over the next two days and turn them into actual viable startups. Sunday they’ll show off their new startups to the toughest judges of them all, a room full of their peers.

48 Hour Launch is a unique concept in the weekend startup hackathon. As a product of Launch Memphis, the 48 Hour Launch teams have access to continuing resources to develop their ideas, way beyond Sunday.

As a testament to that concept, Richard Billings, the founder of Memphis startup ScrewPulp, spoke to the crowd before the Friday evening pitches. Billings alternative independent publishing platform was hatched in June at Launch Memphis’ last 48 Hour Launch event. Today, Billings has staffed up and even moved the company to office space downtown. Their designer is working on the front end, a developer is working on the back end and Billings is working on developing the business and laying roots in the publishing community.

Aaron Prather, the founder of Memphis startup Stiqrd, was on hand for 48 Hour Launch. Prather is no stranger to Launch Memphis or their cohort based accelerator, Seed Hatchery. Pranther’s startup Stiqrd accelerated at Seed Hatchery two years ago.

This weekend though Prather had a great idea. He’s building a tool where online news consumers can use a widget, or browser plugin to let publishers, bloggers and writers know that they want follow up to the stories they read online.

If you’re familiar with how sites like Reddit and the hub at Startup Revolution work, you can get notified every time someone does anything with your message. Pranther wants it to be that easy, but in reverse, to let writers and publishers know, “Hey I’ll read a follow up on that”.

The idea is great for publishers, because as Prather put it, there’s guaranteed eyeballs on stories not even published yet.

Check out Pranther’s Friday pitch below:

Linkage:

Kansas City Man Buys House To Give To Startups!

Kansas City’s entrepreneurial and startup ecosystem continues to grow. Kansas City is home to some great startups like Neighbor.ly, AgLocal, Front Flip,Cognovant, Zippido and even Ray Ray’s. Even Helzberg Diamond’s, Barnett Helzberg Jr, has launched a new startup in his hometown.

Kansas City Mayor Sly James recently announced an initiative to make Kansas City a destination for startups. Part of that initiative called for those in the private sector to contribute to the growing ecosystem. James is calling on private sector businesses to step up to the plate and donate unused office space, equipment and mentoring time for new startups.

Although he doesn’t own his own company and fancy’s himself an “entrepreneur wannabe”, British Kansas City implant Ben Barreth has responded to James’ is call in a major way.

Barreth has started a new project called “Homes For Hackers”. His program calls for residents in Kansas City to make homes available for hackers and startup founders, rent free, and utility free for three months to let them get their startups off the ground. Barreth didn’t just announce a program and put up a fancy website. He put his money where his mouth is so to speak, cashed out a retirement account and bought the first home for hackers himself.

The house Barreth purchased is also located in the Google Fiber district of Kansas City, which means that the hackers working on their startups will be able to do it with 1gb fiber.

Barreth ran into an initial stumbling block when he found out, that since he wouldn’t actually be living in the house, it was an investment property. What that meant was that mortgage lenders needed 20% down rather than the 10% down he had prepared for.

Barreth hasn’t launched his own startup yet (we would consider Homes For Hackers a social startup), and he’s had no successful exits yet. In fact he said he had to Google what “successful exits” meant. He’s just a guy who felt compelled to do this.

Three months rent and utility free should be enough time for relocating startups to lay roots in Kansas City so that when the times up they can continue to take advantage of the resources their, like Think Big.

Barreth says that the only thing that startups will need to supply for themselves is food.

Linkage:

Check out Homes for Hackers and apply here

We found out about Homes For Hackers at the Hub at Startup Revolution

Startups you need to be here

Nibletz Teams Up With StarTropica For Strategic Content Partnership

Here at the nibletz world headquarters we are pleased to announce that we have entered into a strategic content partnership with Moises Szarf and StarTropica.

StarTropica, “cracking the startup coconut”, is the premiere startup and high growth technology website super serving southern Florida, specifically Miami.

Although just launched three months ago Szarf has been gathering and reporting on Miami area startup news continuously since then as both an outreach and traction tool for Miami’s fledging startup community.

We are particularly pleased to announce this partnership on the heels of the Startup America Regions Summit which served as a hyper advocate to promote startup communities working together and partnering for the good of the overall startup ecosystem across the country. Also, a strategic partnership with StarTropica at this time cements the foundation for our evolving plan for the nibletz.com brand and long term goals.

Our partnership with StarTropica will include story pick ups, custom content provided by Szarf and his staff as well as co-hosting events and meetups in Miami Beach (and who doesn’t want to partner when it means trips to Miami).

Nibletz.com content originating out of Miami Florida will either be diverted to the StarTropica staff, or cross posted from the Nibletz hub. Miami startups are encouraged to keep corresponding with StarTropica directly or feel free to email miami@nibletz.com

We look forward to increasing our coverage of the great startups in the sunshine state.

Linkage:

Check out StarTropica here

Nibletz Florida coverage is here

And this is for everywhereelse click it

Listen To Places Through People With Chicago Startup: EvzDrop INTERVIEW

Chicago startup Evzdrop has put a new spin on social discovery. Rather than going somewhere and seeing who’s around you, you can “listen” to places using Evzdrop’s website and mobile app. Essentially what Evzdrop is doing is combining event discovery with people discovery, in reverse.

To understand this better here’s how it works. When a user goes somewhere they do a drop, basically putting a pin down where they are at. “Dropping” is Evzdrop speak for checking in. Once you check in or “drop” you can leave a tip or comment about the place. Through your setting you can decide if you want to share your “drops” with people in your network or the public at large. Or, if you rather just lurk in the shadows you can go into “stealth mode” kind of like those startups that think they have original ideas.

You can update your drops as well. For instance if you go to your favorite burger joint and they’re out of milkshakes, that may be important information people need to know. Or perhaps you’ve gone out to one of your favorite clubs but tonight it’s a pure sausage fest.

These drops make event and people discovery for other users a breeze. Now people can look at all the places they want to check out. Users can search for a place or see what’s trending. When they do that, they’ll see all the drops from the people there already. They’ll know if it’s hot or not, by just looking at the drops on the mobile app.

If you’re the “dropper” your drops can be voted up and get you points by the more people that check out your drop. Evzdrop calls this whole thing listening in. So now you’re listening into places rather than just checking them out.

To put it another way. FourSquare is great for checking in you want to check in and get points, and show all your friends that you’ve checked in to such and such place. You may even want to be the mayor (do they even do that anymore). With Evzdrop they’re giving the drops a real purpose. When’s the last time you went to FourSquare to see if a place was hot? You looked for the people right? Evzdrop puts that idea in reverse.

We got a chance to talk with the Evzdrop team. Check out the interview below:

Waterloo Canada: What Do You Do When Your Tech Giant Fails?

Waterloo Canada is the home to Research In Motion (RIM) the creators of the Blackberry. For nearly twenty years the Canadian company was the leader in the smartphone space, basically because there were no decent challengers. Palm/Handspring tried to compete with their Treo line and then the Pre line. Several companies tried to implement the original Windows Phone into some kind of Blackberry contender but time and time again Blackberry prevailed.

Until 2007.

Depending on what sites you read, or who you ask, many people believe that RIM felt unstoppable. There was no way that this “smart phone” with a touch screen was going to be able to displace the top seeded Blackberry. Once Google released Android on several different OEM’s the writing on the wall was clear, RIM needed a new game plan. RIM stuck to their guns though because they thought they had the enterprise market cornered. They didn’t.

But this isn’t the story of a falling tech giant. It’s the story of a great city in Waterloo Canada. It’s the story of an incredibly solid startup eco-system that until a few short years ago, lived in the shadows of RIM.

Sortable published an amazing infographic (below) that highlights some of the amazing things going on in Waterloo Canada. You’ll probably read this article and look at the infographic and be just as surprised as we were.

Waterloo serves as the Canadian headquarters for technology giants; Google, IBM,McAfee, Oracle and Electronic Arts (EA). From that, and Waterloo’s thriving tech startup community, over 30,000 people in Waterloo are employed at tech firms. All of that combined is good for $25 billion in revenue from Waterloo’s tech sector. Wow!

550 tech startups call Waterloo home
850+ tech firms call Waterloo home
531 new companies started in the last three years
1,000 open tech jobs
VC and private equity investments have gone from $7 million in 1997 to $300 million today

Shocked?

Canada has great entrepreneurial pockets throughout the country. Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and of course Waterloo have all graced the pages of nibletz.com with startup news stories and interviews. That’s why Waterloo is known as Canada’s innovation hub.

While it wasn’t cited in this particular infographic, RIM has served as a breeding ground for great startup founders, similar to the way Google does for Valley startups. It’s apparent though that solid people in the tech industry should have no problem finding work as RIM continues to crumble. It was reported back in August that RIM is laying off 3,000 employees.

Sortable Waterloo Region Tech Infographic

Linkage:

Check out our Canadian coverage here

Canada counts as “everywhere else” so click here.

Have You Tried Brad Feld’s Version Of Hacker News? The hub at Startup Revolution

Have you tried out Brad Feld’s version of Hacker News?

Most everyone in the startup community is familiar with Y-Combinator’s Hacker News. If you’re not, it’s pretty simple, it’s like Reddit but rather than all news it’s just hacker news. Most of the community contributed stories involve hacking, coding, design, development and startups.

One of the problems with Hacker News, for me at least, is that I am only looking for startup news. Hacker News gets a tremendous amount of contributions every day, so it gets to be cumbersome weeding through the stories to find the startup news relevant to me.

After I track down the startup news on Hacker News I just want to get to the story and barely have time to comment, even if I want to.

Brad Feld has introduced a new site similar to Hacker News but all about startups. The site is called The Startup Revolution Hub, actually has a nicer looking UI and is easier to navigate. Best of all I don’t have to weed out general coding and dev posts to get to the startup posts.

The Startup Revolution Hub was launched earlier this month and has already amassed 250 users. It functions like Hacker News and Reddit. A user can post a story, comment a story and move a story up or down by hitting one of the arrow buttons.

Right now the contributions range from startup news stories, startup founders announcing their startups, startup events, and even how to’s that startup founders and entrepreneurs would find useful. For instance we found “How to design infographics”

Community members are also sharing their thoughts, best practices and advice in posts like “Technical Co-Founder Confessions” and “The Hardest Part of Startups: Getting Past Zero”.

If you haven’t signed up for Startup Revolution yet, you may want to. Joining a community early has it’s advantages and I’m sure it’s going to get quite popular, quickly.

Linkage:

Startup Revolution Hub here

Hacker News here

Everywhere Else here

Entrepreneur Development Center Opens In Jackson Tennessee

When people think about innovation, startups and entrepreneurship, Tennessee is often overlooked. What people don’t know about Tennessee is there are 9 entrepreneurial hubs across the state, anchored by Nashville, Memphis, Knoxville and Chattanooga. The other five areas are a little more rural, but still breed innovation. As wide as Tennessee is, with nine unique ecosystems, no one in the state is ever more than an hour and a half from an accelerator or entrepreneurial hub.

Tennessee has been an innovator for over a century. Tennessee was a major hub for cotton in the 1800s. In fact, prior to their bankruptcy in 2008, the fourth largest investment bank in the world, Lehman Brothers, had actually started out in Tennessee in the cotton exchange business.

Major corporations like FedEx, Holiday Inn, Auto Zone, Service Master, Sax Fifth Avenue, Gibson and Kirkland’s call Tennessee home. Heck the internet was born in Tennessee, just ask Al Gore.

In that spirit, Jackson Tennessee has announced the grand opening of the Entrepreneur Development Center. The Entrepreneur Development Center will help budding entrepreneurs in Jackson and the Southwest Tennessee area develop their businesses from idea generation to business launch. The EDC will pair entrepreneurs with successful business leaders who will serve as their mentors during their time in the center.

The EDC will launch Tuesday October 23rd at the Aenas Building in downton Jackson kicking off at 11:30am. Kirkland’s Co-Founder and Chairman Emeritus, Carl Kirkland will keynote the event alongside Matt Kisber President and CEO of Silicon Ranch Corporation.

“Through entrepreneurship, I’ve lived the American Dream” Carl Kirkland told Action News 5. The beauty of this country is that you can start with little more than a dream and build a successful business that provides jobs and economic growth.”

“Our new center strives to be the “front door” for entrepreneurs in Southwest Tennessee. We will help our entrepreneurs build their businesses by connecting them to the critical resources they need to be successful. These critical resources include experienced mentors, knowledge, training, seed capital and a supportive community.” Linda Garrard, Executive Director of the EDC told Action News 5.

Marci Harris, founder of award winning startup PopVox and other entrepreneurs will also be featured during the launch event.

The EDC will open just in time for Global Entrepreneurship week from November 12th -16th. In conjunction with Launch Tennessee, all nine startup ecosystems in the state will participate by holding entrepreneurial and startup focused events all week long.

Entrepreneurial leaders across the state like Sheldon Grizzle (Chattanooga), Michael Burcham (Nashville) and Eric Matthews (Memphis) have planned out a weeks worth of talks, discussions, conferences, parties and interactive engaging events across the state for GEW.

Linkage:

Check out the EDC in Jackson Tennessee here

No one covers High Growth tech news for the south east like Nibletz

Are you going to be here?