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St.Louis Preparing For Super Entrepreneur & Startup Event Venture Draft 8/10-8/11

Brandon Williams, through his Brandon Williams Economic Development Corporation, is planning an amazing event for St. Louis called Venture Draft. We love St. Louis, their thriving tech and startup community is starting to catch on like wildfire and in fact they’ve moved from the 49th city in the US to start a new business to 6th in just one year. That’s amazing.

What else is amazing? How about the line up of speakers, investors, and entrepreneurs that Williams has assembled for the event going on at St. Louis’ Anheuser-Busch Auditorium next week on the 10th and 11th.

Williams, who is an accomplished professional athlete, having played on a variety of NFL football teams including the St. Louis Rams, has tackled (you see what I did there), the task of helping to spread and enrich the world of startups and entrepreneurship in St. Louis. Williams has assembled Venture Draft to be the crossroads between professional athletes and celebrities and the tech and venture community. All the while, making sure an event of this size and nature happened right in his hometown.

“The venture community is always trying to keep up with new technologies while professional athletes are looking for ways to leverage their playing days for more efficient and effective post-sports careers,” says Brandon Williams, co founder of BWEDC and former wide-receiver for the St. Louis Rams. “We understand the needs of both sectors and developed a platform to address them.”

Our good friend Gable Lozano is taking a quick break during a coast to coast fundraising trip to speak at Venture Draft. Also, FUBU founder and ABC Shark Tank investor Daymond John will be there. Successful startup founders like Henry Wong a partner at Garage.com; Maurice Lopes, CEO & CoFounder at EarlyShares, and Seth Burgett CEO at Yurbuds are just some of the great speakers slated for next weekends event.

Judy Sindecuse, CEO of locally based Capital Innovators, and even William Crowder from Philly based DreamIt Ventures will represent some of the best accelerators/incubators in the country (and everywhere else) during the event.

For more information or to sign up go here to this link

We really need some community support to fund our coverage, here’s a link

StampedeCon 2012 – Kraft Food’s Frank Cotignola on Understanding Consumer Behavior

St. Louis, MO – StampedeCon 2012 – Kraft Food’s Frank Cotignola presented Using Social Media Conversations and Search to Understand Consumer Behavior. His bio reads

As part of Kraft Food’s CIS (Consumer Insight and Strategy Group), Frank focuses on three key areas: (1) Global Analytics; (2) Social Media Listening and Measurement, and; (2) Community Management and Knowledge Sharing. He also authors the Kraft “Randomness” blog, which focuses on digital and analytic topics. His efforts to develop both free and paid listening platforms and insights have led to the integration and usage of such research into traditional “asking” research and shopper insights at the company.

Throughout the presentation there were zero mentions (or very few) of searching for the “brand” instead he discussed searching for relevant terms. Using twitter and or Facebook to identify sentiment about dessert, cookies, and hot peppers and Pinterest to see the pinned recipes. He highlighted two factors that make this such a powerful tool.

First is immediacy. There is practically no wait to see what people are talking about. Twitter and Facebook bring never-ending streams of information directly to him. Instead of waiting for survey results or “going out to talk to people” many queries can be done within an hour. Second is cost. It is ostensibly free.

An additional benefit is being able to gauge response – desserts typically elicits a positive response whereas snacking is something considered a need. Hot peppers presented an interesting variable – in North America the popularity of hot peppers peaks in mid-summer. Being Kraft Foods something like this is invaluable, allowing them to see when they should release a new flavor or when they might release an ad campaign or special.

One of the takeaways, for me, was that many businesses are missing the benefits that come from social media are focusing solely on their brand sentiment. Kraft seems to have figured out one of the largest benefits of social media and search as well. It is not necessarily about the brand at all. Many times, in the food industry certainly, the discussion is not necessarily about the brand itself. Using what customers are talking about nationally and globally Kraft is able to glean insights from the chatter and can use that to plan for products in the near-future.

What Is Big Data? We Find Out From David Strom At StampedeCon In St. Louis

StampedeCon kicked off in St.Louis this morning with David Strom speaking on how big data can help your business. Strom is a seasoned technology journalist who’s currently writing for Read Write Web. He was able to engage the audience at StampedeCon with a brief overview of what Big Data is and how it’s applied in real life.

Big Data may be a new term to some, especially on the consumer side of things, but Big Data is very real and we see more and more Big Data startups popping up everywhere else.

The setting at StampedeCon is of course people in the Big Data field but also CEO’s, and CTO’s who are just now getting into Big Data. As “the cloud” makes it’s way into every day language, Big Data is sitting on deck. Strom brought up real life use cases for Big Data like managing airlines and reservations, but also analyzing airline reviews. He also brought up a great example of FedEx using Big Data not just to manage their packages but also their fleet of trucks.

(Proctor & Gamble's Big Data Control Room at their Cincinnati HQ photo: DavidStrom)

Another company that uses massive amounts of Big Data is Cincinnati’s Proctor & Gamble (P&G). According to Strom P&G has over 4 billion transactions per day. Their massive data is managed in a “data sphere” in their Cincinnati headquarters. Key data points are extracted on gigantic screens for their data analysts and their executives to have access too.

P&G is using Big Data to track just about everything including, sales, trends, margin, customer flow, what ads are working, which countries are seeing upticks and downturns. The company is also working on automating notifications so their top level managers can be alerted when things are outside of the norm.

Strom also spoke about one of his favorite “Big Data Rockstars”, Jeff Jonas, who works for IBM. He has developed a system called Infosphere Identity Insight. This is the piece of software that analyzes facial expressions of casino goers and can track and prevent fraud including card counting.

Strom offered three key points for CEO’s about Big Data

Strategic data planning- data is the new raw materials for any business
Analytical Skills- CEOs should be incredibly smart about asking the right questions
Technology skills- Embrace the technology and make it a key part of your CEO skill set

Is Big Data boring?

Certainly not. Strom pointed out a study using Big Data on cupid.com that studied the population of North America (including Canada) and their tendency to be gay curious. The map above shows the most gay curious population in red and the least gay curious population in blue. The data revealed that Canadians are very gay curious. They also found that areas that served soy milk had more gay curious folks. (no this was a real study).

They also asked straight and gay people “Which is bigger the earth or the sun” not surprising, more women got the answer correct regardless of sexual orientation.

Big Data is definitely everywhere and conferences like StampedeCon will highlight that.

Interview With St. Louis Startup Systematic Revenue, Eons More Efficient Than Constant Contact

Earlier this month we reported that Cultivation Capital had invested $100,00 in Sytematic Revenue.

Systematic Revenue is a great automated system that allows you to keep consistently following up with your contacts, customers and prospects. According to many sources it takes up to 6 follow ups with a contact to make a sale. With Systematic Revenue those followups are automated, but learned and made to feel genuine. This is achieved because Systematic Revenue’s system learns about your contacts.

You start by importing all of your contacts from your major social networks, Outlook, Google contacts or any other relevant data file. From there you can create campaigns with any number of steps you like and any frequency that you like. You can also incorporate Systematic Revenue with your contact form on your company’s website so that when you get a new contact it’s automatically entered into Systematic Revenue’s database and entered right into the campaign.

Systematic Revenue takes the premise of ConstantContact and makes it relevant to the business world by providing some features originally only found in robust CRM systems and applying them to your contact database, making the followups relevant and easier to create sales and revenue.

We got a chance to interview Systematic Revenue below:

StampedeCon Big Data Conference In St.Louis Next Week, Interview Here

We’re very glad to be involved with next week’s StampedeCon Big Data conference in fact Nibletz.com is the official national media sponsor of the event that happens August 1st in St.Louis.

The StampedeCon Big Data Conference will feature a whole day of great speakers about one of the fastest growing segments of technology, big data.

StampedeCon founder Gary Stiehr, has put together a great program featuring ReadWriteWeb’s David Storm, Rob Peglar of EMC/Isilon, Bill Eldredge of Nokia, Frank Cotignola of Kraft Foods, Eric Hochmuth of Monsanto, Scott Fines of NISC, Alex Miller of Revelytix, and Jim Duey of Lonocloud.

In addition to the content packed feature speakers there will be a vendor exhibit area and a ton of great people to network with. People are coming from across the country to participate in the first ever StampedeCon and Stiehr tells us he hopes to do more of them. We got to talk to Stiehr in the interview below:

St. Louis Startup Event Attracts Sports Stars And Sharks

Former NFL football player for the San Francisco 49ers, St.Louis Rams and the apittsburgh Steelers, Brandon Williams is a native of St. Louis and passionate about the entrepreneurship and startup movement brewing in the city.

Williams alongside his business partner, Lance McCarthy, have organized a two day startup and entrepreneurship showcase, exhibition and pitch event called the Venture Draft Conference. The conference will be held at St. Louis University August 10th and 11th.

The tickets are $300, however in the world of startup and tech events thats a slim price t pay for the exposure to the resources that both Williams and McCarthy have assembled.

Williams has invited some of his professional sports colleague who are also interested in entrepreneurship as well as some local angels and venture capitalists.

One of the main attractions though will be the keynote provided by Daymond John the founder of FUBU and a shark investor on ABC’s Shark Tank. John is passionate about entrepreneurship. He recently spoke at Black Enterprise Magazine’s Entrepreneur’s Conference In Chicago. John also recently held a hangout on Google+ for high school age business students across the country.

The Business Journal reports that 10 lucky startups will pitch in front of a panel of judges including John in a similar manner to the way that contestant entrepreneurs pitch on Shark Tank. 15 notable sports figures and venture capitalists will be at the event which is sponsored by St. Louis University, the Information Technology Entrepreneur Network (iTen) and the Missouri Venture Forum.

Tickets are still available here.

Linkage:

Source: Business Journal

Here are more nibletz stories about Shark Tank

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Video Interview With St.Louis Startup: LockerDome

Back in April we asked if St.Louis startup LockerDome was the Groupon for St.Louis,you know the standout startup that stays in their hometown and grows. By all accounts LockerDome is shaping up to be that startup.

LockerDome is a social networking site focused on team sports from just about every level. Whether your son or daughter is on a neighborhood soccer team, you’re a high school athlete playing on the football team or you’re a professional athlete LockerDome allows you to make a profile to correspond with the type of team your on.

With your profile you can keep friends, family, teammates, scouts and anyone interested up to date with how you’re doing as an athlete. For kids, think back to when you had trading cards made with the team photos, now grandma and grandpa across the country don’t need to wait for the mail, they can just go online and check out your profile.

One of the great things about LockerDome is that athletes of all levels can be found on the network. Pro Athletes are often the inspiration for many young athletes and you can find pro athletes from all kinds of sports on LockerDome. Imagine playing pee-wee hockey or pee-wee football and having a LockerDome profile just like your favorite professional athlete.

LockerDome has already attached some major attention. St.Louis native and Square co-founder Jim McKelvey sits on the LockerDome board and has invested into the company through Cultivation Capital. LockerDome has raised $2.1 million to date with their latest round totaling $1.04 million, which closed in June.

Check out our video interview below:

How about some Linkage:

Click here to check out LockerDome, start a profile why don’t ya?

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

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St. Louis Startup Norsecorp Has Raised $2.5 Million So Far

Fresh on the heels of news that St. Louis startup Norsecorp entered into a very lucrative partnership with Global eTelecom, the company has reported that they are well on their way to finishing up a $3.5 million dollar round of funding.

Norsecorp provides technology that detects early warning signs of fraud for online transactions. Global eTelecom has a network of over 55,000 merchants nationwide that use their services for ACH and e-check processing. Norsecorp’s technology, when coupled with Global eTelecom, will provide protection from fraudulent transactions that could cost retails a lot of money.

Their software product is called IP Viking.

The Business Journal has reported that Norsecorp has already raised $2.5 million dollars in a round of funding that started on June 29th and expects to close on July 31. According to the SEC the minimum investment in the round is $50,000.

Norsecorp was part of Capital Innovator’s class last year. They received $50,000 in seed funding and also presented at Capital Innovators demo day at the end of the session.

Linkage:

Find out more about Norsecorp here

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

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Cultivation Capital Invests In Two More St. Louis Startups: Yurbuds & Systematic Revenue

Two weeks ago we got a chance to meet Rick Holton of Holton Capital, Arch Angels, and Cultivation Capital among other things. We talked about the thriving tech scene in St. Louis and the synergy created when a meeting at Holton’s office formed VentureSTL.

Cultivation Capital is back in the news again as they’ve announced their two most recent investments. Cultivation Capital’s principals include Holton, along with Square co-founder Jim Mckelvey, Brian Matthews and Peter Esparrage. Back in April we reported on Cultivation Capital’s first three investments, including a $250,000 investment in St.Louis favorite, LockerDome.

In the latest round of investments Cultivation Capital invested $219,000 in Yurbuds a company that makes sports headphones. The company makes earbuds that can withstand the heaviest of workouts. In fact at the International Consumer Electronics back in January, Yurbuds had acrobats walking on their hands while the earbuds stayed firmly in their ears. To prove that there was no PR hocus pocus on-lookers were encouraged to open brand new packs of the earbuds for the acrobats to use. Yes they were awesome.

The other startup to receive funding from Cultivation Capital was Systematic Revenue. While not as sexy as earbuds that won’t fall out of your ears, Systematic Revenue is an online automated marketing solution to help track potential clients. Back in May the startup reported that they had 25 businesses signed up in their beta test.

Systematic Revenue received $100,000 from Cultivation Capital.

“We look forward to assisting the vibrant Yurbuds team and the calculated Systematic Revenue teams as they continue to define St. Louis as an entrepreneurial hub,” saidCliff Holekamp, a general partner of Cultivation Capital, in a statement.

Cultivation Capital plans to invest $500,000 in the most promising startups in the Fall 2012 and Spring 2013 classes of Capital Innovators.

Linkage:

Here’s Cultivation Capital’s website

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

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St. Louis Startup: NorseCorp Lands Huge Deal With Global eTelecom

NorseCorp is a technology startup located in St.Louis that specializes in fraud detection. The company was one of the first startups to receive funding and mentorship as part of the first Capital Innovator’s program in St. Louis last fall. As part of the program NorseCorp received $50,000 in seed funding along with free office space. They also presented during Capital Innovator’s first demo day last December.

Two weeks ago the startup, led by CEO Sam Glines, a 1995 graduate of Saint Louis University, reported a major deal with one of the largest electronic check and ACH payment processors in the U.S. Global eTelecom has over 55,000 merchants nationwide that will rely on NorseCorp’s IPViking software to provide another layer of protection for their customers.

NorseCorp has developed a technology that assists in online transactions by spotting for high risk, fradulent transactions. “Our eCommerce Fraud Prevention service works seamlessly at the payment gateway level to identify and block high-risk transactions before they occur,” said Skip Foss, NorseCorp chief operating officer said in a statement. “The service addresses two essential aspects of effective fraud prevention. It offers accuracy in evaluating the legitimacy of the IP address behind any transaction, and it delivers that information in real time for automated decision-making, not manual review.”

Linkage:

Check out NorseCorp here

Source: St. Louis Business Journal

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St. Louis’ Rick Holton Jr Charged Up By VentureSTL

Rick Holton Jr. And his brother Rob Holton are no strangers to the St. Louis startup scene, tech scene or business scene. The Holton brothers come from a long and historical pedigree in the St. Louis area. Their mother Lotsie Hermann Holton is actually the granddaughter of August “Gussie” Busch from the Anheuser-Busch family.

We met the Holton Brothers on Friday when the Nibletz sneaker strapped startup road trip pulled into St. Louis for a quick overnight stop. We were there to meet with our friends at LockerDome. We had asked Gabe Lozano to introduce us to someone very influential in the St. Louis startup scene, preferably someone part of the Arch Angels, angel investor network.

Rick Holton and Rob Holton, through their investment company, Holton Capital, are members of the Arch Angels. Rick Holton is also one of the principals in the fund that came out of the Arch Angel group, Cultivation Capital. Notable St. Louis alum Jim McKelvey, co-founder of Square is also a principal in Cultivation Capital, as are Brian Matthews, Peter Esparrago, and Cliff Holekamp. Together the fund is backed by $20 million for funding startups.

But the story here doesn’t lay in the background of St.Louis’ growing tech startup community. The story is about what Rick Holton Jr has been very excited about lately, and that is synergy.

When we arrived at Holton’s office Cameron and I were under the impression that Holton had expected to hear a pitch from us. Yes we absolutely need money but we’re not sure VC money is the way to go. We were at Holton Capital’s offices to get the story. The story about how and why, all of the sudden St. Louis keeps popping back up in the tech and startup news.

We are hearing about Arch Angels, Cultivation Capital, BonFyre, LockerDome, and countless other companies, funds and investors on a regular basis. Heck St. Louis is so hot that Edward Domain moved tech.li to St. Louis from Chicago after a $50,000 grant from Arch Grants.

It’s not like the Holton’s or any of the other partners in Cultivation Capital or angel investors in Arch Angels, are strangers to investing. Holton Capital has been investing in companies for over a decade.

Rick Holton explained that with their company they had invested heavily into a variety of companies. They have a classic car company, a framing company, investments in several life sciences companies and of course technology. Rick quickly confirmed with his brother and then told us that Arch Angels has $30 million invested so far.

St. Louis is an extremely loyal town. Earlier in the morning Jim Enright and Mark Sanders at L ockerDome told us that if you went down the street in downtown St.Louis 9 out of 10 locals could tell you everything that happened in the most recent Cardinals game. After a quick test they were right.

But even as loyal as St. Louis can be Holton was concerned that some people may have the perception that St.Louis is a dying industrial town, rather than the thriving tech town that it is.

Holton’s other major concern was that all the startup and tech resources weren’t talking to each other. Through Holton Capital and his work with FinServe Angels and Arch Angels Holton is extremely plugged into the tech and startup ecosystem in St. Louis but he kept finding that not many others were.

Holton explained that he would hear about one deal from someone and suggest another possible investor that would be perfect for the opportunity but they didn’t know each other. “People weren’t talking to each other and because of that they were competing with each other when they didn’t have to be”.

At this point in our discussion Holton has moved from reserved to completely animated. If you don’t know Holton personally, he stands at a towering 10 feet, ok not really but he is very tall. He’s talking extremely fast and moving his hands around explaining to us, with the excitement that you’d expect when Mark McGwire was still belting them out of the park.

You can tell that this non-communication between tech influencers in St. Louis was something Holton was becoming passionate about. So he called a meeting.

Holton invited 15 of the top tech and startup influencers in St.Louis to the meeting in his boardroom on January 26th. Among the invitees were other venture capitalists, influential local tech blogs, partner resources and entrepreneurs.

Of those 15 people invited only 47 of them showed up. Holton Capital has your average modest sized conference room. Holton was fitting all of these interested tech folks wherever they could. At one point, as Holton actually showed us, they moved every chair in the office into the conference room.

“What I expected to be a 45 minute to an hour meeting of introductions and handing out business cards turned into a strategy session that lasted over two hours” Holton said.

Out of that meeting new partnerships were formed, new friends were made, and VentureSTL was born.

VentureSTL is a new web portal connecting everyone in the St.Louis startup and tech community to each other with news, discussions, links and profiles. Holton believed so much in VentureSTL that his own holtoncapital.com forwards to the site.

Holton is very optimistic about the companies that are growing right in St. Louis. Two of the more notable startups are LockerDome and BonFyre. Holton and the others involved in VentureSTL, the meeting that VentureSTL was born out of and everyone affiliated with Arch Angels are doing what they can to keep St. Louis startups in St. Louis and attracting new companies, like tech.li to St. Louis.

St. Louis has some big stars in this web 2.0 wave. Most notably would be Jack Dorsey from Twitter and Square and Jim McKelvey, also co-founder of Square. McKelvey loves St. Louis and is committed to helping Holton and company with the St. Louis mission, Dorsey, not so much.

Linkage:

Connect to VentureSTL here

Nibletz is the voice of startups “everywhere else” here are more new stories from “Everywhere Else”

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St.Louis Startup: LockerDome Announces $1.04M Round

Our good friends at LockerDome have announced some great news this morning. They’ve just completed a $1.04 million dollar round of financing led by St. Louis Arch Angels. Cultivation Capital, Capital Innovators, the Missouri Technology Corporation and several individual angel investors participated in the round.

This new round brings LockerDome’s total investment to date to $2.1M.

In addition to this great funding news LockerDome has also announced today that they’ve seen a 25% increase in users week over week for 24 weeks straight. In just about five months the sports based social networking site has seen growth to 850k monthly uniques. They also have 80 pro athletes signed up including Pittsburgh Steelers Safety Troy Polamalu. They’ve also secured iconic brands like Rawlings.

LockerDome allows users to create their own sporting profiles for their local sports teams. Within LockerDome, teams can create their own social networks whether it be for a 5 year old T-Ball league, a 15-17 year old basketball team or a semi pro team. Even pro-athletes can create their own profiles.

Square Co-Founder Jim McKelvey has been a strong believer in LockerDome and the St.Louis startup scene. McKelvey has invested in LockerDome and holds a seat on their board.

“We’d like to give a huge thanks to the St. Louis investor community, whose support has been fantastic. Oversubscribing on a million-dollar financing round in only a matter of weeks not only speaks to the strong growth and demand that LockerDome is experiencing, but to the quickly emerging St. Louis tech startup ecosystem,” commented LockerDome CEO, Gabe Lozano.

The St.Louis Arch Angels invested $3 million dollars in the thriving St. Louis startup scene in 2011

Linkage:

Check out LockerDome for yourself here

Find out more about St. Louis Arch Angels Here

See Nibletz’ coverage of St. Louis’ startup community here

St. Louis Startup: Passer.by Opens Donation Platform For Business

Last month we brought you an interview with Passer.by co-founder Todd Metheny about this new crowdfunding platform exclusive to the film industry. When we spoke with Metheny that hadn’t quite launched their donation platform.

They’ve now announced their launch and have three films that the public can donate to and help fund. If you’ve ever wanted to partake in the movie business, now’s your chance. This unique service allows ordinary people to invest in movies and independent films. Passer.by is a welcomed source of funding for independent film producers who typically bootstrap their projects, in a very competitive business.

The three films open for funding via passer.by are: The Lovely Passing Life by filmmaker Daniel Leeb, Mrs. Henderson’s Cat by filmmaker Will Pelligrini and Fit To Print by filmmaker Adam Chadwick. Leeb is seeking funds for production while Pelligrini and Chadwick are raising funds for post production.

To introduce the service Metheny told us last month that they are allowing filmmakers to pay them, “what they want”. Once the films reach their funding, they will hopefully pay Passer.by something for helping them raise funds. This promotion is available for the first 20 films that are funded by Passer.by’s crowdsourced funding platform.

More after the break
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St.Louis Startups: Arch Grants Announces 15 Recipients of $50k Grants

If you’re been watching Nibletz.com then you probably know that St.Louis has a thriving startup scene. Square co-founder Jim McKelvey has been investing in some of the leading area startups. Tech.li CEO Edward Domain (no relation to Kim DotCom), moved tech.li’s operations to St. Louis as well.

St. Louis has a tight knit community of startups, entrepreneurs and investors, but at the same time we’ve found that they are really open and welcoming of any startup, extremely easy to talk to and just a great bunch of people. Heck if tech.li wasn’t already in St. Louis, we’d consider moving there :)

Yesterday Arch Grants announced 15 recipients of $50k in startup grants, the winners of their business plan competition. Arch Grants co-founder Jerry Schlichter said that the 15 recipients came out of a pool of 400 submissions.

In addition to the seed money, Arch Grants will provide business consulting, mentorship and big discounts on needed services like office space.

More after the break
Read More…