Tennessee Archives - Page 11 of 16

Knoxville Startup: FairMechanics Launches To Help You Find Fair Mechanics

Knoxville, a town in the great state of Tennessee with just under 200,000 people has an entrepreneurial revolution occurring right now. A community group called “Entrepreneurs of Knoxville” or EOK for short, has seen over 40 small businesses and startups launch.

EOK was founded in April 2008 by Leonard “Leo” R. Knight Jr and today it’s amassed over 950 members. They offer a variety of programming from entrepreneurial “support groups” to mentorship efforts and everything in between. They also hold work shops, lectures and a variety of other great events.

Knoxville is just one of nine entrepreneurial pockets across the state of Tennessee. In fact, with nine different high growth areas that means Tennessee residents are never more than an hour and a half away from an entrepreneurial hub. Also, all nine regions within Tennessee are participating in the upcoming Global Entrepreneurship week.

EOK Founder Leo Knight and EOK member Augustine Gattuso launched EOK’s latest startup “FairMechanics” on Thursday.

As you might imagine the goal behind FairMechanics is to help consumers find the most fair mechanic for their next repair needs. FairMechanics offers their platform for bidding out auto problems on the web, and mobile devices with an iOS and Android app.

Rather than just offering a directory of local mechanics, FairMechanics’, platform allows users to bid out the work they need done on their cars. FairMechanics is looking for mechanics to join their service. They’re offering a “first 10 bids” free program for early adopters on the mechanic side.

Their website doesn’t say the vetting process for the mechanics but we’d imagine that there is some kind of process set in order to be able to call the service “FairMechanics” in the first place.

Users will create a profile for their vehicle and post a job out for bid. Mechanics will get the bids delivered to them via email and then the user/shopper will decide on the best mechanic for the job, from the bids they received. A ratings system will be in place when the work is done so that feedback can be given to the mechanics so they can bid on future jobs.

The shopper in this scenario is just as integral to the business model as the mechanic. FairMechanics is helping the user/shopper get their repair work done at the best cost, with the best customer service and the quickest possible. On the mechanic side FairMechanics is giving out job leads for mechanics, and what mechanic would turn down a good quality lead.

Linkage.

Check out this great Knoxville startup here

No one covers high growth tech news in the South East like nibletz.com

Make sure you’re “everywhere else” February 9-12, more info here.

Knoxville Startup: Credit Virgin To Educate And Protect Young Adults From Credit Whoas

Nate Buchanan a graduate of the University of Tennessee and the founder of a new startup called “Credit Virgin” is looking to help as many young people, and college students make their credit lives easier. The Knoxville news reports that when Buchanan and a friend went to rent an apartment, the friend couldn’t get approved for the apartment because he had no credit history. It didn’t matter that the friend worked fll time and both perspective tenants made more than enough to afford the apartment. Because Buchanan’s friend hadn’t established any credit they were turned away.

Of course Buchanan knows that as young adults between 18-24 credit can be a double edged sword. Although it’s not as prevalent as it was in the late 90’s and early part of the 2000’s, there are still plenty of credit card companies and other finance companies that prey on college students who are already racking up enormous amounts of debt with student loans.

According to the UT Federal Credit Union, the average college student graduates with $8,000 in credit debt,outside student loans.

Through Credit Virgin, Buchanan hopes to first educate college students and young adults on the pro’s and cons of credit and how to establish credit via videos delivered on the startups website. He hopes to also integrate the site with a credit card evaluation tool which will compare terms and conditions as well as interest rates and other need to know information about credit cards typically offered to college students.

Buchanan hopes to also offer a credit monitoring service for students and their parents so they can monitor their credit together.

Credit, when used responsibly, can be a tool for young adults starting to establish themselves.

“Younger people don’t realize the implications of that until they go to buy a car and they have to get a loan, or they try and buy a house and don’t have a down payment,” Melinda Wood, Vice President of Marketing at the UT Federal Credit Union said to the Knoxville News.

Linkage:

Source: Knoxville News

Find out more about CreditVirgin here

No one covers High Growth Tech News in the SouthEast like we do

Come on down to “everywhere else”

Nashville Startup WannaDo Finds You What You Wanna Do

It seems like, on the surface, the event discovery space is a big space. When you peel it back though there aren’t many event discovery apps that are doing it right. The two we like the most are Louisville startup Impulcity and Nashville startup WannaDo.

Wannado, under the leadership of founder Steven Buhram, is starting out local in Nashville for now with plans on scaling out soon. Impulcity on the other hand is going all in, connecting their user base to music, and entertainment events nationwide and hyper local.

Wannado has a different approach though, than the average event discovery nut. The first thing that we noticed when testing Wannado in their home town was that everything was laid out in very easy to understand categories.

Play- obviously encompasses fun things to do, artsy stuff, plays and music (which Nashville has a lot of).

Work & Network is your guide t company events and career minded conference.

Eat & Drink, is pretty self explanatory

Learn, is all about learning and can be anything from health and wellness events to CPR courses.

You can even peel back layers and get to geek categories, nerd categories, artsy categories and more.

Once you find the event that’s for you, you can easily save it to your wannado list or share it using this unique share tool that allows you to share it by email, Facebook, text message of Twitter. Why not invite all your friends in the world to the great events you find on wannado.

That’s not the only way wannado differs from other traditional event discovery platforms though. Like any other app you can invite all of your Facebook friends to use wannado and you can see if any of your Facebook friends are currently using wannado. Naturally you’re going to trust a friends opinion about an event.

With wannado though, they also have guides, more seasoned people from an area that may know the lay of the land a little better. You can see what the guides are recommending or you can ask the guide something which makes the experience socially engaging.

So does it work?

Well in one night in Nashville we were able to use Wannado to take in Luke Bryan and Rodney Atkins at two different events free. We found some awesome hamburgers and realized we missed out on what would have been a fun startup breakfast event.

Comparatively speaking Wannado actually showed us more of what was going on in Nashville in one night than any other app we’ve tried. While it seems Buhram is comfortable with building scale with baby steps, if they could replicate this user experience to scale quickly across the country it could become our event app of choice for all events from seminars to cooking lessons to concerts.

Linkage:

Check out wannado here

No one covers High Growth Tech News in the southeast like we do

Are you coming to “everywhere else”

Memphis Entrepreneur Launches Phone & Personal Protection Startup Coyote Case

Memphis entrepreneur, Jonathan Page has just launched an Indiegogo campaign for his new startup Coyote Case. Coyote Case uniquely blends personal protection with phone protection.

Sure we’ve seen phone cases that hold pepper spray and even one that has a taser gun built in, but Page’s case is different. The Coyote Case features a 100db personal alarm which makes one heck of a noise if someone pushes the button and is being attacked. But in the infamous words of people like Billy Mays… But Wait There’s More…

With the Coyote Case there’s actually much more.

In addition to the personal protection alarm, Coyote Case has a bluetooth chip built into the case housing. It’s also integrated with a battery that will last well over a year. The BlueTooth is used to communicate with an app that’s on the smartphone. Using the app, a user can set up an emergency list for an outgoing text message.

Combining the Bluetooth technology, GPS and SMS technology the app within the phone will send an emergency text message to those on the list. If your alarm company, or University security is set up to receive text messages you can add those folks to your emergency list as well. When the app sends out the text message it will also send out your GPS coordinates so that your ICE (In Case Of Emergency) contacts know that you need assistance and exactly where you are.

The idea came to Page after his college aged niece visited him from Nashville last year. Page’s niece had told him that she was nearly attacked while walking back to her apartment at night. When Page found this out, not only was he scared for his niece he went out searching for more information .He found some startling statistics from the Department of Justice website that he talks to us about in the interview video below.

Not only were the statistics shocking for females in general but it was revealed that girls between 18-24 were at an even higher risk. When Page found this out he immediately set out on the idea for the Coyote Case.

Page is trying to launch Coyote Case without giving up any equity to traditional venture capital investors so he’s taken to Indiegogo where you can contribute to CoyoteCase and get early access to the life saving, and phone protecting case.

Check out our video interview with Page below and the links to the Coyote Case are in the Linkage section. Coyote Case will proudly be exhibiting at everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference, and you can too.

Here’s that video:

Linkage:

Check out Coyote Case here

Support their Indiegogo here

See them live and in person here

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

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:

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?

FedEx Announces $50,000 Startup/Small Business Competition

Nothing screams crazy startup entrepreneur like FedEx and Fred Smith. In fact business folklore says that when Smith wrote about his idea, that eventually became the largest logistics company in the world, for a paper at Yale he got a C. Think about how crazy the idea would be in the early 70’s to connect trucks and jets to deliver packages overnight.

In recent years FedEx has begun to pay homage to Smith’s entrepreneurial roots by opening up their own FedEx labs, and sponsoring the FedEx institute of Technology at the University of Memphis, among other things.

Now the company has followed in the foot steps of other companies like Pitney Bowes, and developed a small business (read: startups) contest.

Our good friend James Dowd at Startup Memphis reports that FedEx will award a total of 6 small businesses cash prizes totaling $50,000. There’s one $25,000 grand prize and the five other businesses will receive a $5,000 prize.

The business must have less than 100 employees and crowd voting will be done through Facebook. The voting started October 1st and runs through November 24th, and it’s not too late to enter. The winners will be announced in January.

“FedEx has long recognized that small businesses are incredibly vital to the health of both the global economy and local communities,” said T. Michael Glenn, executive vice president of Market Development at FedEx. “Providing these grants is yet another way for FedEx to show our support for small businesses as we continue to create programs to help give them a head start and access to new opportunities.”

Linkage:

Enter the contest here

More startup news from everywhere else

Boom! And it’s on

Nashville Startup Jamplify Exhibiting At DEMO Courtesy Of Startup America

As we reported earlier this morning, Startup America revealed the 8 startups that won their contest for a free trip to DEMO in Santa Clara California this week. Four startups are exhibiting in the DEMO Showcase Pavilion. The other four startups are presenting on the main stage.

Nashville Jumpstart Foundry graduate Jamplify was one of the four startup selected for the exhibit space in the DEMO Showcase Pavillion.

Jamplify is a hybrid, promotional, crowdsourcing platform. With Jamplify’s finished product, you get the most logical promotional vehicle for bands, musicians, and bloggers that’s available to date.

Jamplify crowdsources people for promoting the bands that they love. Rather than crowdsourcing for actual capital Jamplify is crowdsourcing for social capital and human capital, and then there’s the payoff.

Jamplify is like the kickstarter for fan based, crowd based musical promotion. As a fan of a band or a promotional ambassador you can agree to promote a band or musician. Based on your social graph and the amount of people that you actually touch with the campaigns short, trackable url you will become eligible for prizes from the band or artist you’re promoting.

Jamplify arrived at Nashville’s Jumpstart Foundry from New York City where the founders worked on Wall Street.

Check out their video pitch from Jumpstart Foundry’s demo day in August below:

Linkage:

Check out Jamplify here

DEMO here

Startup America here

Everywhere Else here

everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference Announced February 10-12th 2013 In Memphis Tennessee

MEMPHIS TN, & EVERYWHERE ELSE- “everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference” has been announced for Sunday February 10, 2013 through Tuesday February 12, 2013 and has already attracted an all star line up of speakers, panelists, investors,startups and entrepreneurs. The conference will take place in the heart of beautiful Memphis Tennessee at the Memphis Convention Center.

The three day conference will feature over 30 panels, keynote addresses, roundtable and fireside chats geared towards the challenges that entrepreneurs, startups and even investors face outside Silicon Valley. The conference will also include three signature networking events as well as a three day startup exhibition featuring 100 startups from “everywhere else”. Startups from every stretch of the country, and as far away as Israel and Romania have already committed to exhibit in the Startup Village.

Startup America CEO and founding CTO of Priceline Scott Case will keynote at the event. Best selling author and motivational speaker Tracy Myers,Rohit Bhargava,Bill Harris former CEO of Paypal and Intuit and many more, will also speak at the event. everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference will continue to announce speakers over the next two months.

Startups, startup founders, accelerator heads and investors will round out three fun filled and educational days in Memphis Tennessee on topics ranging from “raising money everywhere else”, “what I learned in an accelerator”, “what investors outside the valley expect”, “startups: life after hip hop, music and sports”, “kick ass female founders from everywhere else” and more.

There will also be three startup pitch contests with finals taking place at the conference; “The Best of Everywhere Else”, “The Startup Village People Awards” and the “Top of Tennessee” startup pitch contests will have their finals take place at the conference in front of a panel of well known angels, VC’s and celebrities. With the three startup contests over $100,000 in cash and prizes will be given away.

The Best Of Everywhere Else contest will begin with video pitches on November 1, 2012.

The Top Of Tennessee pitch contest will be open to startups throughout the state of Tennessee and will begin during Global Entrepreneurship Week.

In the Startup Village People Awards, Startup Village companies will compete for $25,000 in cash and prizes by audience participation vote via the official conference app.

“everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference” has made both exhibiting and attending affordable for even the boot-strapping startup from “everywhere else”. Attendee tickets are $60 with an early bird rate of $39 for all three days. Startup Village booths are $480 with a few $295 pre-sale booth spaces still available. An earlybird rate for Startup Village booths of $350 will continue through October 31st.

Linkage:

Check out everywhereelse.co

Attendees get your attendee tickets here at the special early bird rate

Startups, here’s a link for $295 startup village booth space that ends Tuesday at 11:59pm

Memphis Prepares For 48 Hour Launch October 12th-14th

We’re just a couple of weeks away from Memphis’ next 48 hour launch. We were at the last 48 hour launch hosted by Launch Memphis at Emerge Memphis back in June. That 48 hour launch saw four teams of entrepreneurs present Happy Potty, Screw Pulp, YaDoog and LostPetCast.

Very similar to Startup Weekend, 48 Hour Launch puts a room full of entrepreneurs, designers, developers and coders together for 48 hours of hacking together a business.

Friday evening all of those registered for 48 Hour Launch will eat dinner, get to know each other and then pitch their ideas in 60 seconds or less to the room full of attendees. After all of the ideas are pitched, everyone in the audience will get a chance to vote for their favorite startup ideas. At the end of the voting process, an based on how many people are registered, ideas will be chosen that will be developed over the weekend.

Saturday teams will work on customer validation and building product. They’ll have community mentors around to answer legal questions, marketing questions and anything else they can think of.

Sunday, the teams will make their final pitches to show off the work they did over the previous 47 hours.

That’s typically where the traditional “Startup Weekend” ends. Startup Weekend events end with the judging of the final pitches. That’s not where 48 Hour Launch ends though.

After the weekend the 48 Hour Launch teams are invited to utilize the other resources from Launch 48 and it’s parent company Launch Your City. These resources include office hours from experienced entrepreneurial and startup advisors, free office space in the drop in LaunchPad co-working space and some 48 Hour Launch teams may decide to apply to Seed Hatchery, Memphis’ cohort based accelerator.

While some “Startup Weekend” events are held in incubators and can pull resources, Launch Memphis makes 48 Hour Launch a natural introduction into the Memphis’ Startup Ecosystem.

Memphis’ Startup Ecosystem is spearheaded by the efforts of Eric Matthews, Andre Fowlkes and Elizabeth Lemmonds, the team behind Launch Your City. Matthews has been an integral part of the Memphis entrepreneur and startup scene for nearly a decade. He founded Launch Your City in 2006 and before that was a director at the FedEx Institute of Technology on the campus of the University of Memphis.

Fast forward to 2012, and while many cities are just laying roots in a startup ecosystem, Launch Your City has their Launch Memphis efforts, which often plays quarterback to many of the regions entrepreneurial and startup events. Launch Memphis also organizes meetups, runs a mentor network, a co-working space, and provides countless other resources to young, high growth potential startups.

Launch Your City also runs Seed Hatchery and collaborates with other area resources for C2 and Zeroto510 accelerator programs as well.

These twice yearly 48 Hour Launch events, serve as a great place for new entrepreneurs to get their feet wet and get exposed to all that Memphis has to offer. One of the great things about these particular events is the way that others who have participated in any of the Launch Your City programs come out to support the growing startup community.

48 Hour Launch boasts that for just $40 you can:

Launch brand new tech-supported companies, contributing toward our local innovation economy and creating jobs;
Learn by doing, experiencing firsthand entrepreneurial principles that can be applied to any endeavor or work environment;
Connect with like-minded and talented professionals, developing your network;
Play an active role in Memphis’ entrepreneurial community, volunteering your current skills while learning new ones;
Eat and drink well, including all meals and copious amounts of coffee and Red Bull; and
Be a part of something this collaborative, creative and cool?!

You don’t have to live or work in Memphis to participate in 48 Hour Launch. People from as far away as Alabama and Atlanta have come to Memphis for weekend startup hackathon events.

There’s still space left. Hit the link below

Linkage:

Check out our 48 Hour Launch coverage from June 2012

Check out Launch Your City here

No One covers high growth tech news for the southeast like we do, here’s more

Nashville Startup: Edo Interactive Closes Another $15 Million In Venture Funding

Edo Interactive, a startup headquartered in Nashville TN has just announced another $15 million in venture funding. Silicon Valley based VantagePoint Capital Partners led the latest $15 million dollar round. Baird Ventures also participated. Bair led Edo Interactive’s $20 million dollar round last year and cumulatively Edo Interactive has raised $54 million in venture funding.

So what does this Nashville startup do that’s garnered such huge venture capital investments? They provide a deals service, similar to Groupon, but through banks and retailers vs mom and pop restaurants, coffee shops and other businesses. Retailers pay banks a fee to market deals to their databases of credit and debit cards. This gives Edo Interactives client base a much more lucrative market.

Using Edo Interactive’s proprietary technology bank cards are directly tied to participating retailers cash register systems, delivering an instant rebate right back to the customer utilizing the deal. The retailer can then notify the customer by email, text or voicemail. Chicagobusiness.com reports that Edo has relationships with 140 banks with 150 million card holders. They also work with 5 of the 10 largest credit card providers.

Ed Braswell is the CEO of Edo Interactive which is headquartered in Nashville Tennessee and has an additional 20 employees working in the Chicago area. They employ 75 total right now.

“Payments and advertising are colliding; to stay competitive, banks must deliver value to cardholders that goes beyond the traditional realm of services, while advertisers are searching for solutions to drive customer acquisition, loyalty and return on marketing investment,” CEO Ed Braswell said in the statement. “This latest investment will help Edo expand our market leadership position and scale our advertising content, merchant partnerships and growth within the highly competitive local business market.”

Braswell has said that he hopes to offer 140 million new offers per week by 2013. Crate & Barrel, Nordstrom, Target and Subway are just some of the companies that work with Edo Interactive’s platform.

Linkage:

Check out EdoInteractive here

We’re the voice of startups “everywhere else” here’s more startup news from “everywhere else”

No one covers high growth tech news for the south east, like nibletz.com see for yourself here

This is the must attend event for startups!

Memphis Startup: HandMinder Aims To Restore Hand Movement In Stroke Victims

There are some incredible startups coming out of Memphis Tennessee and HandMinder is one of them. Handminder was part of the first class at the ZeroTo510 accelerator. Zeroto510 is the first cohort based medical device accelerator and was a joint venture between Memphis BioWorks and Seed Hatchery, the local tech startup accelerator.

HandMinder was founded by Dr. Yu Liu, MD,Phd, Randall J Nelson PhD,John M Denton, Technical Advisor & CoFounder, James Bell who currently serves as the company’s CEO.

A shocking 15 million people suffer from strokes across the globe. 12.5 million of those people survive and of those 12.5 million, 60% of them have some form of hand dysfunction after the stroke.

The devices that are currently on the market today that help rehab stroke victims’ hands deal with the problem from a total physiological perspective. The devices today allow functionality but not learned functionality. They provide localized muscular exercise but not brain function.

The HandMinder device, which fits like a glove, restores the neurological connection between the hand and the brain. The loss of hand movement in a stroke victim is a neurological problem, not just a physiological problem. By reprogramming the stroke victims brain to hand function, HandMinder closes the natural physiological loop.

Unlike other devices that address this issue, HandMinder is a take home product that allows stroke victims to rehabilitate their hands as often as they would like without having to take up extra time in their rehab clinics. It also allows them to continue their therapy while traveling, being outside and living somewhat normal lives.

When designing the HandMinder product, the team at HandMinder talked with stroke victims and their families. Because strokes are more prevalent in older patients, Handminder even talked with grandparents and grandchildren who were concerned with the way some of the medical devices looked. A lot of other devices used for this purpose, seemed somewhat scary to grandchildren which was a real concern for older patients. Handminder, while still a medical device, “looks cool”.

HandMinder presented at the ZeroTo510 demo day last month to a crowd of investors. They are currently working on their third prototype and plan to start field testing the device shortly.

Linkage:

For more info visit handminder.com

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

No one covers high growth startups in the SouthEast like nibletz, more here.

Following In Chattanooga’s Footsteps, Kansas City Wants To Be A Destination For Startups

Last year, Chattanooga Tennessee became the first city in the country to have a 1gb fiber network that was available to all businesses and residents within a 600 square mile area. The gb fiber is the backbone to the city’s new grid so the connections automatically go to every residence and business within the footprint. It’s up to the business owner or resident whether they want to also tap that line for data, tv and phone.

Earlier this summer, Kansas City, was the first city to receive commercial 1gb fiber available to it’s residents through Google. Google offers a great introductory offer including low cost high speed internet access, 1 tb of cloud based services and even a tablet.

When Chattanooga lit up their “gig” they started calling the city “The Gig City” and immediately ramped up their efforts to promote entrepreneurism and startups across the city. They did this by increasing promotion of co.lab a coworking space, incubator and accelerator in downtown Chattanooga and by launching the first three month accelerator based on high bandwidth, rightfully called the GigTank.

Now, with their one gigabit internet in tow Kansas City is hoping to spur innovation as well.

Last week Kansas City Mayor Sly James announced the new Launch KC initiative aimed at growing small businesses and startups in Kansas City rather than just focusing on luring big business. James said “We can build Kansas City into the place, theplace, for startups to call home.”

Kansas City is calling on partnerships with existing private sector businesses to provide startups and entrepreneurs with resources like free office space and mentoring. According to Kansas City Public Media, the city plans to kick in funds to offset equipment costs and build out wifi downtown.

This seems like a good start for Kansas City but from a municipal level we’re hopeful that this is just a start.

Linkage:

More Kansas City stories from nibletz.com

Source: KCUR.org

Startups “everywhere else” have you seen this yet?