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

goBRANDgo! Partners Brandon Dempsey and Derek Weber

(photo: St. Louis Business Journal)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You can find out more about goBRANDgo! here.

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

 

SXSW Virgins: Columbia MO Startup Digital Talent Agents

Digital Talent Agents,St.Louis startup,Missouri startup,startup,startup interview,sxsw13This week starts our 12th South By Southwest, the last four have been spent as a tech journalist and before that I attended the music portion during my radio career. SXSW can be intimidating for a first timer, especially a first time startup, that’s why we’re featuring some great SXSW Virgins, seek them out, find out more about them and help them out if you can.

Digital Talent Agents, a startup based in Columbia Missouri has a rockstar team all working on an awesome goal, to help build credibility for experts through thought leadership and content marketing by getting them consistently published in online reputable publications.

In addition to being an agency for credible content the crew at DTA are passionate about startups and often write themselves on things that matter most to startups. In fact it was DTA’s John Hall, who called everywhereelse.co a “Must Attend” startup conference at Forbes.com.

Kelsey Meyer, the company’s Senior Vice President, offered these tips on promoting your startup.

DTA is making their way across the country and networking with startups of all kinds every chance they get. They were in Memphis for everywhereelse.co and several events in between then and SXSW. This is their first time at SXSW.

1) What is you startup? Digital Talent Agents is an agency that builds your credibility through thought leadership and content marketing.

2) Where are you based? We’re headquartered out of Columbia, Missouri but have remote locations in St.Louis, Mo and Dallas, Tx.

3) What do you do? We help clients leverage their expertise by getting consistent content placed in reputable online publications through by-lined articles and interviews to build thought leadership and credibility for the client and the companies their representing.

4) Is this your first time to SXSW? Yes, its our first time.

5) What are your plans at SXSW? It’s always exciting to see what other startups, brands and varied artists are doing. It’ll be a great place for us to network, create relationships and see what cool things companies are doing. I can’t forget to mention the amazing parties and concerts that are being held at SXSW that I’m sure you’ll see several of our team members. :)

6) How can people connect:

Twitter: @DTAgents

Natalie Stezovsky (Vice President): natalie@digitaltalentagents.com


We’ve got even more SXSW13 coverage here at nibletz.com the voice of startups everywhere else.

St. Louis Startup LockerDome Inks Deal With USA Today

LockerDome, St.Louis startup,startup,sports startup, USA TodayMonday our friends at St. Louis based sports social networking startup announced a new partnership with one of the most recognized sports brands in the world. USA Today Sports is now partnering with LockerDome by adding their content within the USA Today network and also partnering to sell advertising on the site that’s growing at a tremendous rate.  LockerDome is one of the hottest startups in St. Louis.

LockerDome has over 1450 networks of professional athletes, sports teams, brands and other sports properties. FL superstars Troy Polamalu, Larry Fitzgerald, Maurice Jones-Drew, Antonio Brown and Marshawn Lynch; MLB All-Star Felix Hernandez; baseball legends Pete Rose and Wade Boggs; and NBA stars Blake Griffin, Rudy Gay, David Lee and Stephen Curry, are just some of the professional sports players that have pages on LockerDome.

Since launch LockerDome, which is backed by Square co-founder Jim McKelvey and other major investors in the St. Louis community, has grown to over 8 million monthly unique visitors. They are currently growing at a rate of more than 100,000 uniques per day.

Under the partnership, effective immediately, USA TODAY Sports Digital Properties will begin selling advertising on LockerDome, and LockerDome’s traffic will now be included within the USA Today Sports Properties network. Additional 2013 strategic initiatives between the two properties are currently being planned.

“By delivering an innovative platform for publishers, LockerDome has quickly become the fastest growing sports website in the world,” said Gabe Lozano, co-founder and CEO, LockerDome. “USA TODAY Sports is a top-tier media brand that we’ve always had a great amount of respect for, and becoming an Official Partner of USA TODAY Sports is a fantastic marriage between two world-class companies that opens up a number of exciting growth opportunities across the board,”

“We’re excited to welcome LockerDome to the USA TODAY Sports family,” said Clay Walker, Vice President of Affiliate Relations for USA TODAY Sports Digital Properties. “LockerDome’s unique social media platform enables us to provide our advertisers with engaged, highly targeted audiences inside LockerDome’s vast—and growing– ecosystem.”

What sets LockerDome apart for publishers is its ability to reach a more engaged, targeted sports audience and increase their overall social media footprint. Since its initial launch, LockerDome has delivered 50% average growth across Facebook and Twitter for its properties in their first 4.5 months. One of its key differentiators is LockerDome’s cross-promotional flexibility, allowing its networks to grow their existing audiences with each other, a service Facebook and Twitter do not currently offer. While contests on other platforms traditionally average the industry standard of 2% – 3%, LockerDome boasts an average landing page conversion of 23%.

Sports enthusiasts join LockerDome to become a part of interest-specific sports communities where they can consume content and interact with like-minded fans around their favorite professional athletes, teams and sports. Milestones for LockerDome since its launch in January 2012 include surpassing one million uniques in June, two million in October, three million in November, four million in December and eight million in January. At its current growth rate, LockerDome is on pace to be a top-10 most visited sports site in the next 12 months.

LockerDome founder Gabe Lozano will appear on “Grinding For Cash” (raising money everywhere else panel) and giving his own talk at everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference

Bonfyre: The Official App For Everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference

Bonfyre, St. Louis startup, everywhereelse.co the startup conference, appWith everywhereelse.co the startup conference a little over a week away we want to make sure that everyone knows what app to use to keep up with all the action at the biggest startup conference in the U.S., whether you’re at home or at the event.

Bonfyre is the official app for everywhereelse.co the startup conference. Download the app today from the iTunes app store then join the Bonfyre for everywhereelse.co. You’ll be able to keep up with the schedule, panels, speakers, startup village and everything happening in Grind City February 10th-12th.

Bonfyre debuted their most recent version of their app at DEMO in Silicon Valley last fall. They also partnered with the Powder Keg conference in Indianapolis.

Just as they did with PowderKeg, Bonfyre will allow entrepreneurs, startup founders, investors, panelists, and startup support to keep up with all the conference go-ers in the event’s own channel.

Nibletz has been reporting on Bonfyre since last year. They’ve raised $750,000 dollars so far led by the St. Louis Arch Angels and Jim McKelvey, co-founder of Square, who sits on Bonfyre’s board. To date, the St. Louis startup has partnered with the NFL’s St. Louis Rams for three games.

Not only that but one lucky person that downloads and registers for Bonfyre for the conference will walk away from Memphis with a brand new iPad Mini (16gb wifi only). It’s that easy.

Check out Bonfyre for everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference here

If you don’t have your tickets for everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference we don’t know what you’re waiting for, luckily it’s not too late.

 

St. Louis Accelerator Capital Innovator’s Introduces Fresh Class Of Startups

Capital Innovators, St. Louis startup,startup acceleratorAt an event held at Moulin in St. Louis last night, Capital Innovators, the region’s cohort based accelerator, announced their newest class of startups. The class will convene for a 12 week program at the T-Rex startup hub and co-working space.

T-Rex houses several other startups as well as winners in the Arch Grants program that gives grants to startups to relocate and build their business in St. Louis.

This is the fourth class to go through the Capital Innovators program. To date, Capital Innovators has invested in and graduated 24 other startups in a variety of industries.  Startups like Systematic Revenue and Norsecorp, that have successfully gone through the Capital Innovators program, have also successfully raised follow on funding.

The Capital Innovators program sees their startups with $50,000 which runs on the higher side of accelerator seed funds. Typically accelerators fund companies with between $10,000 and $25,000 dollars.

These are the five startups in the 2013 spring program, along with their founders:

BidRazor, Mike Pulley
BidRazor gives contractors the power to create custom bids much more easily and quickly than traditional
methods.
Dead Inventory Management Systems, Brandon Twitty
Dead Inventory Management Systems (DIMS) is in the business of aiding manufacturing companies in
listing large amounts of idle electrical inventory online in the matter of seconds using our Quick LIST
system.
Juristat, Drew Winship
Juristat helps lawyers predict the future. We transform raw court records into actionable analytics,
allowing users to predict the behavior of judges, juries, and attorneys. Juristat can calculate the odds of a
favorable verdict, motion, or appeal.
Time to Cater, Ed Spinaio
Time to Cater is a free national catering concierge service that connects busy people with the perfect
caterer for their event to save them time and money. We handle all the details of any catered event from
order through delivery and presentation at no extra cost to our client.
TrakBill, Steven Marciniak
TrakBill is an advocacy platform delivering timely, customizable updates on legislation, with a social twist.
Find specific bills or search areas of interest, receive up-to-the-minute updates on legislative actions and
hearings, and advocate for your cause using social media. With TrakBill, you spend more time advocating
and less time tracking

The spring class will end on April 26, 2013 and Capital Innovators will hold demo day on May 8th.

Two of St. Louis successful startups, LockerDome and Bonfyre will be at  eveywhereelse.co The Startup Conference Will you?

 

Partnership With St. Louis Rams, Paying Off For Startup, Bonfyre

Bonfyre, St. Louis startup, st. louis ramsSt. Louis startup Bonfyre is socially engaging and powering events in ways that other social event sharing apps just haven’t been able to perfect. When you think about an actual bonfire, you know the big huge ones, everyone at the bonfire may take away something different from that event. If you’ve ever been to enormous bonfires like the ones at Bonaroo in years past, hundreds and hundreds of people could be at the same event and share totally different experiences.

The same thing goes for any large event. Football games make a great case use for the Bonfyre application. Here you have tens of thousands of fans that are watching the same game, with different favorite players, different favorite teams, and in different places throughout the stadium. In this day and age all of those people are sharing to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other social networks. Everyone has a different perspective and different shares. Bonfyre is bringing that all back together.

The St. Louis, venture backed startup was founded by Raymond Gobberg and Mark Sawyier. They’ve received $750,000 in venture capital from Arch Angels and Cultivation Capital. It’s another St. Louis startup that Rick Holton is all fyred up about.

Bonfyre was fortunate enough to get into a partnership with the St. Louis Rams early on. Now Bonfyre and the Rams have been through their third sponsored game. The St. Louis Business Journal, is reporting that during the game between the St. Louis Rams and the Minnesota Vikings, fans used Bonfyre over 17,000 times. 20 percent of those participants shared 1800 chats and photos.

The Rams are taking advantage of Bonfyre’s social network and outreach and they’ve baked ticket giveaways and behind the scenes photos and chats with players into the game experience via Bonfyre.

“The app allows us to further connect with our fans to help increase the value of their experience before, during and after a game,” Brian Killingsworth Rams Vice President of Marketing & Branding for the Rams told the Business Journal.

Linkage:

Check out Bonfyre here

Here’s more startup news from “everywhere else”

everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference is the largest startup conference in the U.S.

LockerDome The Hottest Startup In St. Louis

LockerDome, St. Louis startup,startup,startup newsSports social networking startup LockerDome is the hottest consumer facing internet startup in St. Louis and probably the hottest sports startup period. The social network that allows anyone at any age to build a profile at their level, continues to grow at a rate reminiscent of a Silicon Valley startup.

Just two weeks ago we reported that LockerDome, founded by Gabe Lozano, had surpassed 3 million monthly unique visitors. Now they’re reporting that they’ve topped 4 million monthly unique visitors (MUV).

LockerDome continues to grow at a rate of 14% week over week since their launch in January of this year. They passed the 1 million mark in June, two million in early October, three million in late November and now four million.  LockerDome experienced more growth on one single day in December than it did in the first 12 weeks of the year combined (5.6%).  At the pace they’re at they are poised to be a top 10 most visited sports site within the next 12 to 18 months.

Their growth is fueled by the fact that LockerDome allows anyone to jump on the platform wherever they’re at in their sporting life. Founder Gabe Lozano explained to us back when we toured the LockerDome offices earlier this year, that everyone has three basic lives, work life, personal life, and for many, sports life.

Whether you’re the parent of a child playing tee-ball or 5-6 year old basketball, a semi pro baseball player or even a pro athlete you can join LockerDome and become part of your teams network and the network of other teams, including professional teams and players that you’re a fan of.

LockerDome is designed to be the one single sports social networking destination for their user throughout their entire sporting life. If someone starts out as a young tee-ball player and in 15 years becomes a pro baseball player, the network is robust enough to grow throughout that career. If a pee wee football player plays college ball and then becomes a coach, LockerDome can handle that path as well.

Even if after playing in a competitive city league and ending your sporting career, you can continue on with LockerDome as a fan, keeping your entire sporting life history in your profile.

Pro Athletes including Memphis Grizzlies’ Rudy Gay, six time PGA Tour Winner Dustin Johnson and NFL All Pro Larry Fitzgerald are all participants in LockerDome.

“Every professional athlete needs to be on LockerDome. By leveraging LockerDome as the social media hub for my personal brand, I’ve been able to better engage my fans and grow my entire social presence across Facebook, Twitter, and LockerDome,” said Larry Fitzgerald, All-Pro NFL wide receiver with the Arizona Cardinals. “From a content standpoint, I use LockerDome not only to host unique fan giveaways, but also as a daily source to post behind the scenes, interactive content.”

“This is just the tip of the iceberg for LockerDome. As explosive as LockerDome’s growth has been in 2012, we will undoubtedly be even more dominant in 2013,” commented Gabe Lozano, co-founder and CEO of LockerDome. “The overwhelming demand for LockerDome by professional athletes, media partners, brands and the targeted audiences these publishers reach, and the subsequent meteoric growth from that demand, is a clear indication that the LockerDome platform will only continue to strengthen.”

Linkage:

 Sign up for LockerDome here

Here’s more startup news from St. Louis

Gabe Lozano is speaking at everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference, you should attend

St. Louis Startup LockerDome Surpasses 3 Million MUVs

LockerDome,St.Louis startup,startups,startup newsLately St. Louis startup LockerDome has been on fire. We recently reported that the sports social networking startup announced the first game/app built on their platform. Soon after we reported that 19 year venture capital veteran Mark Lewis, had joined the company as CFO.  Thursday, they announced that they’ve surpassed 3 million monthly unique visitors (muv).

In addition to offering a sports social network for any stage athlete, from childrens intramural sports, up through college and pro, LockerDome also features over 1350 professional athletes, brands, media personalities, parody sites and other recognized sports properties that host their brands on LockerDome. By leveraging LockerDome, publishers are able to reach a more engaged, targeted sports audience and increase their overall social media footprint. Since launching in January, the interactive sports social media platform has delivered 47% average growth across Facebook and Twitter for its properties (average 4.3 month span, 109,018 to 144,746 followers).

Sports enthusiasts join LockerDome to become a part of interest-specific sports communities where they can consume content and interact with like-minded fans around their favorite professional athletes, teams and sports. The company has been growing at an average rate of14% per week since its launch 11 months back, surpassing one million uniques in June, two million in October and now three million in November. At its current growth rate, LockerDome is on pace to be a top-10 most visited sports site in the next 12 – 18 months.

Contributing to LockerDome’s tremendous growth are the contests that professional athletes, brands, and media personalities host on its platform, with its high-profile contests attracting more than 100,000 entries. Unique to LockerDome is the ability for its properties to easily cross-promote one another, as well as run their contests seamlessly across Facebook and Twitter, maximizing the audience that each property reaches. Contests on LockerDome boast an average landing page conversion of 19%, more than six times above the industry average of 2% – 3%. Current featured contests include MLB Hall of Famer, Wade Boggs, MLB’s all-time hits leader, Pete Rose, NFL Superstars, Larry Fitzgerald and Troy Polamalu, and the iconic baseball brand, Rawlings.

“This is just the tip of the iceberg for LockerDome. As explosive as LockerDome’s growth has been in 2012, we will undoubtedly be even more dominant in 2013,” commented Gabe Lozano, co-founder and CEO of LockerDome. “The overwhelming demand for LockerDome by professional athletes, media partners, brands and the targeted audiences these publishers reach, and the subsequent meteoric growth from that demand, is a clear indication that the LockerDome platform will only continue to strengthen.”

“Every professional athlete needs to be on LockerDome. By leveraging LockerDome as the social media hub for my personal brand, I’ve been able to better engage my fans and grow my entire social presence across Facebook, Twitter, and LockerDome,” said Larry Fitzgerald, All-Pro NFL wide receiver with the Arizona Cardinals. “From a content standpoint, I use LockerDome not only to host unique fan giveaways, but also as a daily source to post behind the scenes, interactive content.”

“As one of the world’s premier sports agencies, we’re always looking for unique technologies that give our clients an edge. LockerDome has become part of our secret sauce,” said Adam Rosenthal, Director of Athlete Marketing at Octagon Sports. “LockerDome not only enhances our clients’ brands, but also provides them with new monetization opportunities. LockerDome will become a standard across all professional athletes and notable sports figures.”

Linkage:

Go get a LockerDome account today, here

Here’s more St.Louis coverage at nibletz.com

Yup, this is the biggest startup conference in the country, got your ticket yet?

St.Louis Startup LockerDome Adds 19 Year VC Veteran Mark Lewis As CFO

Lockerdome,St. Louis startup,startup newsNews keeps pouring out from our friends at St. Louis startup LockerDome. Earlier this week the largest sports social network startup in the world announced that they had just partnered for the release of the first app/game built on the LockerDome platform. Thursday the team at LockerDome announced a new addition in 19 year venture capital veteran Mark Lewis, joining the team as CFO.

Lewis’ venture capital experience includes working with Gateway Associates and Two River Associates from 1998 to 2006. Most recently Lewis spent the last six years as a principal at Advantage Capital Partners, one of the nations leading venture capital firms with over $1.3 billion in invested capital.

While LockerDome founder and CEO Gabe Lozano is no beginner when it comes to startup and entrepreneurism, adding Lewis to the team brings a plethora of welcomed experience.

“As we continue to invest in the team’s growth, we are thrilled that someone of Mark’s stature, energy and talent will lead LockerDome’s efforts toward securing an even brighter financial future for the company,” Lozano said in a statement. “Under Mark’s financial leadership we will continue to build on the momentum the company has had this year in amassing over 1,300 properties and 2.5 million monthly unique visitors since January.”

“Joining a visionary leader such as Gabe Lozano to help build LockerDome into the premier interest-specific social media platform is an incredible opportunity. I am quite excited by the prospect of sustaining and managing LockerDome’s explosive growth,” said Mark Lewis, LockerDome’s new CFO “I look forward to securing a strong financial future to execute Gabe’s vision and LockerDome’s brand.”

LockerDome is a sports social network that allows anyone at any level in sports to join, create a profile and interact with others. From school age leagues to the pro’s, a wide variety of athletes make up the LockerDome social network. Hundreds of thousands of sports fans have also joined the network to keep up with their favorite sports stars, teams and even media sites.

Linkage:

LockerDome is here

More St. Louis startup coverage is here at nibletz.

LockerDome will be at the largest startup conference in the world, will you? CLICK HERE

St. Louis Startup LockerDome Announces First Game Built On LockerDome Platform

LockerDome,Dime Magazine,St. Louis startup,Gabe Lozano,startup,startups,startup newsWe’ve been continually covering St. Louis startup LockerDome since April of this year. LockerDome is a venture backed sports social network that allows players of any age and any level to engage throughout their entire career. LockerDome was founded by Gabe Lozano who’s the son of online payment software pioneer Bob Lozano. The elder Lozano helped launch cloud solutions and development firm Appistry as well as PayLinx.

LockerDome is backed by Cultivation Capital as well as Square co-founder and local St.Louis entrepreneur Jim McKelvey.

We’ve had the privilege of talking with Lozano quite a bit over the last six months. In fact he served as an impromptu, remote mentor for one of the teams that participated in Memphis’ Startup Weekend over the summer.

On our last trip to St. Louis Lozano was very excited when he was telling us that they had started to open up the LockerDome platform to developers and some of the ideas that may come out of that. Today they’re announcing the first game/app that has been built on top of the LockerDome platform, “Basketball Memory App by Dime Magazine”.

Dime Magazine is the the basketball lifestyle magazine that’s been around since 2001. The Memory App by Dime Magazine will live on the Dime Magazine Network on LockerDome and leverage LockerDome’s over 2.5 million monthly unique visitors. Users will match the popular basketball lifestyle magazine’s covers featuring the biggest names in basketball as quickly as possible and win cool basketball related prizes. The first of these prizes is a pair of the recently launched “Polarizing Pink” Nike Air Foamposite One shoes provided by Foot Locker.

“We are pleased to be partnering with Dime Magazine and IDC Projects to deliver the first game to LockerDome’s rapidly growing and highly engaged sports audience,” said Gabe Lozano, co-founder and CEO of LockerDome. “This exciting new game featuring the stunning artwork from previous Dime covers and the wonderfully addictive Memory Matches technology represents the next step in the evolution of LockerDome as a sports media platform.”

“We’re excited to use our expertise in mobile games to be part of this synergistic approach to encourage interaction between basketball fans and brands.” said Michael Orlando, CEO of IDC Projects.

“Over the past decade, Dime Magazine’s covers have featured the best basketball players in the word. We’re excited to bring Dime to a robust mobile platform like LockerDome, and to give our fans a fun, new experience through this innovative and wonderfully addictive new game,” Dime Magazine’s CEO and co-founder Josh Gotthelf said in a statement.

Since re-launching in January, LockerDome has been one of the fastest growing sports-specific websites in the world. Many top sports agencies are leveraging LockerDome as a means to maximize their client’s social media efforts on Facebook and Twitter and to better engage their fanbases. The official brands and networks the St. Louis-based company represents includes NBA superstars Blake Griffin, Rudy Gay, David Lee and Stephen Curry, NFL superstars Troy Polamalu, Larry Fitzgerald, Maurice Jones-Drew and Marshawn Lynch, and MLB Legends Pete Rose and Wade Boggs, among others.

Linkage:

Download the game for your iOS device today, here

Sign up for LockerDome here

Nibletz is the voice of startups “everywhere else” here are more startup stories from St. Louis

Are you headed to the biggest startup conference in the US?

Take A Look At St.Louis’ Thriving Tech And Startup Scene INFOGRAPHIC

St. Louis startups,Iten,Lockerdome, St. Louis tech,arch angelsSt. Louis’ Information Technology Entrepreneur Network released a great infographic on Tuesday highlighting the goings on in St.Louis. This was just ahead of the Startup Connections conference that happened in St. Louis yesterday.

Although we’re not based there we do consider St. Louis one of our second startup and technology homes and even spotlight their tech scene, sometimes more than their own local sites. St. Louis is ripe for startups and entrepreneurs. In fact when looking at St. Louis from the outside, all of Brad Feld’s “Boulder Thesis” is in place in St. Louis.

Aside from that though, the infographic put together by iTen tells a great story. Take a look at some of these factoids.

  • New York’s cost of living is 145% higher than St. Louis
  • Seattle, Silicon Valley, Boston and Austin also have higher costs of living than St. Louis
  • Washington University (St. Louis) Entrepreneurship Program is ranked 6th in the nation
  • Missouri ranked top 10 (6th) in the Kauffman Foundation’s Entrepreneurship Index
  • St. Louis has 9 strong investor firms
  • St. Louis startups have raised nearly half a billion dollars
We’ve covered some great startups in St. Louis. Lockerdome is a big success story in St. Louis, one that founder Gabe Lozano hopes to keep in St. Louis. In fact Lozano is speaking at “everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference and App Fest” There are a lot of reasons to pay attention to the things going on in St. Louis. See for yourself, check out the infographic below:

19 Year Old Entrepreneur Poised To Take On Big Data With His St.Louis Startup

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St. Louis startup Evtron, and it’s pair of founders still too young to drink alcohol, are looking to take on stage server hardware space.

The story of Evtron co-founders Andrew Mayhall and Kyle Goeken, will be one for the entrepreneurial history books, if their innovative startup takes off. To kick off their story though, they went on a road trip.

Mayhall and Goeken had received the almost golden ticket. Their startup was selected to pitch at the recent DEMO conference at the Santa Clara convention center in Silicon Valley. We say “almost golden ticket” because they weren’t quite lucky enough to get one of the highly coveted “scholarship” spots, but nonetheless the opportunity to pitch that crowd is one you can’t pass up.

Now most bootstrapped startups have a hard enough time coming up with the $8,000 to just get on the stage at DEMO, (that’s why conferences like everywhereelse.co charge much less). Combine that with the fact that Mayhall is only 19 and Goeken is just 20 and that’s a lot of lawns to mow and burgers to flip.

Regardless of the hardwork the duo had to put in to raise the $8,000 the story of their road trip hardly ends there. The St. Louis Post Dispatch reports that to save money they elected to drive from St.Louis to Silicon Valley. Surely that’s no big deal for two young adults but the Post Dispatch continues on to report that the folks at DEMO mistakenly double charged the teams debit card, rendering them completely broke in route.

Goeken was able to save the day because he luckily had a Shell gas card. So with a card for fuel and all the beef jerkey and other great gas station food they could buy, the two would finally make it to the conference.

Mayhall is one of those prodigal entrepreneurs. He began tinkering with computers when he was 8 or 9. He dropped out of high school to attend college early and then dropped out of college to work on his own ideas.

One of those ideas is Evtron. Mayhall synced up with now Evtron’s Chief Technology Officer, Brady O’Brien to revolutionize the server industry. Evtron has found a way to stack server hard drives vertically instead of horizontally. They also found a way to use the base as a “heat sink”. When coupled together the Evtron server uses 45% less electricity, generates 38% less heat and takes up 66% less space. When considering huge data centers the size of say Google’s (that were revealed to the public earlier this week) you’re talking about savings in the tens of millions.

While we are constantly covering the St. Louis startup scene , St. Louis isn’t known for being a hardware town.

Brian Matthews a local St. Louis tech entrepreneur who’s been advising Evtron, agreed that St. Louis isn’t a hardware town.

“If it’s really going to scale up and mass-produce data servers, Evtron will need two things that are hard to find here: money and an experienced management team” Matthews told the Post Dispatch.

As St. Louis’ startup community continues to grow, hopefully Evtron will be able to find a fit, and a way to stay in the city. Mayhall said that is one of his goals.

Linkage:

Check out Evtron the next generation storage platform here.

Here are more startup stories from St. Louis

Source: St. Louis Post Dispatch

We hope to see you here

St. Louis Startup Connection October 25th

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St. Louis is preparing for the next Startup Connection event on October 25, 2012 at the St. Louis Science Center. Arch Grants, Executive Director, Sarah Spear reported in a guest post at the St. Louis Business Journal that the one day event continues to grow.

This year over 50 area entrepreneurs will show off their startups and compete for a variety of cash and prizes totaling more that $20,000.

The sponsor list, supporter list and prize list are like a who’s who of the thriving St. Louis startup ecosystem. It’s this synergy in the ecosystem that’s had Cultivation Capital’s Rick Holten all fires up for months.

The startups features at Startup Connection will be competing for the following prizes:
• People’s Choice Award — $2,500
• BioSTL Awards — $2,000 and $1,000
• Cultivation Capital Award — $2,000
• Mueller Prost PC Award — $1,500
• AEGIS Professional Services Award — $4,000 Legal Credit
• Hostirian — $4,000 Hosting Credit
• Systematic Revenue — $4,000 Subscription Credit

Startup Connection is held twice a year. This fall event will be at the St. Louis Science Center, October 25 from 4:30 to 8:30pm.

Linkage:

Here’s the web page for Startup Connection

Source: St. Louis Business Journal

Nibletz is the voice of startups “everywhere else” we cover St. Louis better than the home team, click here!

Madison Startup Entrepreneurs Wow’d By St. Louis Venture Draft Event

You may not think about it every Sunday, Monday night and Thursday night that you’re watching your favorite NFL football team but an alarming number of pro athletes actually go bankrupt after their professional careers end. In talking with a few celebrities who have almost gone down that route, it’s not even ignorance that some may think. It’s not living beyond your means as a national celebrity, sometimes pro athletes and celebrities really get too busy to manage their money. They also get too busy to think about what happens afterwards.

We’ve all heard the sad stories too, of people like Fantasia Barrino and other stars who have turned their finances over to someone less than qualified to handle such large amounts of money. Celebrities and pro athletes assume that everyone has their best interest at heart.

Well former NFL star and entrepreneur Brandon Williams does. Williams, through his Brandon Williams Economic Development Corporation is trying to connect athletes and celebrities with entrepreneurism. He’s not talking about the kind where a celebrity quickly endorses a product and moves on. Williams is trying to connect entrepreneurs, startups, sports stars and celebrities in a new kind of ecosystem so that entrepreneurs can benefit from investment and athletes and celebrities have a plan for when their careers slow.

One of Williams initiatives is Venture Draft, a startup and entrepreneur event, pitch contest and showcase that happened in St. Louis this past weekend.

ABC Shark Tank Shark, Founder of Fubu and partner in Shark Branding, Daymond John, was one of the top level keynote speakers at the event.  We didn’t raise enough money in our last crowdfunding leg to attend ourselves, but our good friend Scott Resnick in Madison WI led a group of 6 from Madison to St. Louis for the event.

Resnick was “Wowed” by the event and wrote a great entry on his blog where he said:

The first annual Venture Draft Conference was held in St Louis this weekend. The mission of the conference was to bring professional athletes, venture capitalists and technology experts face-to-face to create business opportunities (aka allow entrepreneurs to mingle with and teach current and former NFL players about technology). A tip of the hat to the Brandon Williams Economic Development Corporation: the Venture Draft was a success.

Rarely do I experience a “wow” moment at a tech conference. However, this one was different. Maybe it was the personality of the highlighted speakers (who attended every event) or the charm of St Louis, but there was something special about Venture Draft.

My “wow” moment came right after I had the opportunity to bounce business expansion ideas off keynote speaker Henry Wong of Garage Technology Ventures at a local cigar bar. As I was walking out of the bar to a sponsored after party, Jim Sorgi struck up a conversation about his future with the Colts and time on Gilman Street. Wow, this conference was pretty cool.

Continue here to the Hardin Design & Development Blog for the rest!