Tennessee Archives - Page 9 of 16

Interview With Eric Mathews Founder Of Memphis Startup Accelerator Seed Hatchery

While some startup communities are in their earliest stages of development, Memphis’ ecosystem is going on six years old. One of the biggest drivers of that startup community is Eric Mathews, who’s Launch Your City organization has been at the center of Memphis’ entrepreneurial community for over six years.

Launch Your City is the organization behind Launch Memphis, Upstart Memphis, and Seed Hatchery, Memphis’ intense three month startup accelerator. Seed Hatchery is currently taking applications for it’s third class which will begin in February and graduate in May during Memphis’ legendary Barbecue Festival.

We got a chance to catch up with Mathews to discuss Seed Hatchery, what makes it different, and why Memphis. Check out the interview below:

Memphis Startup: Xtrant Named Official Project Management Tool For Everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference

Project management is an integral part of every startup and every startup conference. Often times founding teams are bogged down with multiple tasks. Without an effective project management solution, things can get chaotic quickly.

There are several project management tools out there like Basecamp and Asana however we found a new project management startup called Xtrant that allows collaboration, cloud based file storage and an extremely easy work flow. Xtrant is based in Memphis TN home to the everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference event.

Xtrant has a freemium model so it’s easy to sign up for an account and you simply pay to get more storage.

The startup was founded by James Sposto of Sposto Creative. It’s been evolving for the last 10 years and started as an internal tool that Sposto and his company used for managing web development, marketing and advertising projects. The different levels of access allowed them to share creative with their teams and important, more confidential information like contracts with the key stakeholders, a feature that’s made it into the public release.

Xtrant is in public beta at the moment but will officially debut at everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference. You’ll be able to find Xtrant on the conference level with our top tier sponsors like Baker Donelson, Archer Malmo, Startup America and others.

We’re also privy to some important, and cool information, you should sign up for Xtrant now. In the coming weeks we will have an official “everywhere else” project in the Xtrant system where attendees, and startups in the Startup Village can win cool prizes.

Xtrant will be hosting a few cool events as part of the conference so stay tuned for those details as well.

Linkage:

Check out Xtrant online here

Everywhereelse.co Getting Close, Less Than 8 Weeks Til The Biggest Startup Conference In The U.S.

The biggest startup conference in the United States, everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference, is happening in less than eight weeks. February 9-12th 2013, over 1700 entrepreneurs, startup founders, investors, designers, and developers will converge on downtown Memphis Tennessee. Make no mistake about it, this is a national conference with less than 15% of the ticket sales zipcoding to Tennessee.

Over 400 of the tickets sold have identified themselves as angels or VC’s and their email addresses check out.

The conference officially starts on Sunday February 10th with a preview of the Startup Village. Over 100 startups from around the world will be exhibiting in the Startup Village. Startup Village exhibitors have three changes to win part of $50,000 in cash (and then prizes) in three different contests. The first contest will be a video contest that will launch on January 15th and is open to all of the startups in the village. The second contest will be a hard 2 minute speed pitch contest in front of an audience of investors Sunday afternoon. The third contest is an audience choice contest which will allow the over 1700 attendees who’ve purchased tickets to the event to vote for the startup they like the best.

We have the strongest speaker line up of any conference this size. Scott Case, founding CTO at Priceline.com, Several TechStars founders, Mike Bott GM at The Brandery, Gabe Lozano from Lockerdome, Sarah Ware, Award Winning Author Tracy Myers, and many more that we can announce when ticket sales close.

everywhereelse.co The Starutp Conference will give startups, entrepreneurs and founders unparalleled access to some of the best investors in the world and networking opportunities not available from any other conference. We’ve been able to do this because of our great sponsors and keeping ticket prices low. (Regular price $99 attendee $550 startup/early bird pricing $59 attendee $425 startup which includes 3 tickets)

We can’t wait to see you in Memphis!

Linkage:

everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference website

Get your Startup Village booth or attendee ticket here

Memphis Bioworks’ ZeroTo510 Class “All In” On Everywhereelse.co Startup Conference

The Memphis Bioworks Foundation’s partnership program with Seed Hatchery, called Zeroto510, is all in for the upcoming everywhbereelsse.co The Startup Conference event in February in Memphis Tennessee.

All 6 teams that participated in the summer acceleration program housed at Memphis Bioworks Foundation in Memphis’ Medical District, have committed to “Startup Village Booth Space” where they will pitch their companies to over 400 investors coming from out of town. They’ll also get the chance to talk about the most successful acceleration program in the United States with over 85% of the initial class receiving follow on funding.

The program was spearheaded by Steven Bares, President and Executive Director of the Memphis Bioworks Foundation, Lauren Bigger, Program Manager of Bioworks Business Association, Allan Daisley Director of Entrepreneurship and Sustainability for the foundation and Eric Mathews and Andre Folkes, Co-President’s at Launch Your City, the Seed Hatchery arm of the program.

Innova, an early stage investor group and MB Ventures, both of Memphis, were also major partners for the ZeroTo510 program.

The success of the Memphis Bioworks, Seed Hatchery joint venture has trickled across the country an around the globe. That prompted Dr. Laura Faulconer who runs an incubator program in Australia, to recently visit the Memphis Bioworks Foundation and spend some time learning from Daisley as well as some of the Seed Hatchery team.

Bionanovations, HandMinder, NanOpthalmics, Randall Surgical, Restore Medical and Urova Medical will all be present during the everywhereelse.co conference where attendees, investors and other startups who may be looking to go the medical device route, will get a chance to speak with the founders. Many of whom, uprooted themselves from other cities like Atlanta, and Durham NC to work with the likes of Daisley and the Memphis Bioworks Foundation.

Shawn Flynn, co-founder of Restore Medical Solutions, a company that just raised a $2.5 million dollar Series A round, will speak on a panel at the conference called “Raising Money Everywhere Else”.

Bioworks has already said they plan on running the Zeroto510 program again in 2013 but may change the focus slightly to another medical related vertical that’s exploding in the region.

Memphis Bioworks, which serves as the epicenter for biosciences entrepreneurs, startups and acceleration functions to address three very important areas in a community that thrives with Biosciences innovation. Those areas are: Building Infrastructure, Growing The Workforce, and Promoting Entrepreneurship.

One thing that you rarely hear with an accelerator is that 100% of the teams that built their businesses during the ZeroTo510 program at Bioworks, have stayed in Memphis to continue to grow their businesses. While HandMinder has roots in the Memphis area, the rest of the teams have had at least one co-founder that’s relocated to the area.

Linkage:

More about Bioworks here

More about everywherelse.co The Startup Conference Here

Want to exhibit alongside the ZeroTo510 teams? Click here

Memphis Startup: AFocusED Path Starts Helping Students With Careers In Middle School

AFocusED Path was one of the four startups built during Memphis’ recent 48 Hour Launch for women as part of their new UpStart program. AFocused Path is essentially a social network surrounding a students academic life, and their support infrastructure. It’s also a great way to keep a child’s support network, no matter how close or far away they live from the child, involved.

Parents of school aged children can sign up for a free profile at AFocusED Path. From there they will add information about the student academically and socially as it related to their child’s development. Report cards, progress reports, key assignments, reports, intramural sports achievements, school play programs, you name it all of this can be added to a child’s AFocusED Path profile. This will serve as the ultimate archive for a child’s early years.

With all this information collected and displayed in a private social network, families are building an online resume of their child dating back to the earliest years. Long gone are the days of throwing shoeboxes filled with photos away during the next move.

This aspect of the the platform is also great for keeping aunts, uncles, grandparents, friends and other supporters, up to date with a child’s progress, achievements and areas of improvement. Now grandma and grandpa in Florida get to participate more actively in their grandchildren’s lives. If the student got good grades they can leave praise, if they are having a rough period they can be there for support.

Eventually the startup would like to add other key players in a child’s scholastic career in the platform as well. Guidance counselors, teachers, and coaches could all be involved in the overall well being of the child through their school career and then even onto college.

The second part of AFocusED Path is equally as interesting.

Usually when a student hits 8th grade they start getting the first real inclination of what they may want to do when they grow up. Whether the child wants to be a doctor, vet, counselor, entrepreneur or an electrical engineer, AFocusED Path is able to help create a clear plan as to what the child should be doing in their school years to prepare for college in that field.

The system will know what classes to get and what grades to maintain and if that student is underperforming or overachieving when it comes to those goals.

Naturally, starting a career path at 8th grade usually means a pivot or three and AFocusED path can accommodate that pivot and several others. The platform can also let a student and their support system know how hard it will be to change career paths at whatever point they make that decision.

They hope to become the goto social platform for everyone scholastically prior to college.

Denise Davis PHd and Rod DeBerry are the two founders behind this new startup and they are anxious to get it moving. They worked relentlessly with their 48 Hour Launch team to perfect their pitch as well as starting their social media channels. Check out their Friday pitch video:

Here’s the pitch video from Sunday evening:

Linkage:

Check out UpstartMemphis here

Here are more startup stories from “everywhere else”

come to the largest startup conference ever in the U.S.

Month One In A Startup Accelerator, Cliff McKinney CEO, Work For Pie

“This is my rifle. There are many like it, but this one is mine.”

So I’ve started a couple of companies before. Okay I say “started companies,” but I don’t really
mean either of those words. I just incorporated some ideas I had. I got business cards with my
name on them. I built a little website for interested people to sign up. One of them even earned
me a little play money. But in truth, I was just playing house.

When I walked in the door a month ago at Seed Hatchery, a startup accelerator in Memphis,
TN, I hadn’t discovered that yet. In my mind, I was kind of a badass. I had read more books
about entrepreneurship than anyone I knew. I had listened to every episode of This Week in
Startups. Hell I even suffered through a few episodes of This Week in Venture Capital. My
team had a GREAT idea that NOBODY ELSE was doing (or doing well, at least), and I had this
awesome, undiscovered savant of a co-founder and we were just going to waltz in there and
kick serious butt.

And day one was awesome! I was part of a special fraternity of entrepreneurs, and we were all
going to change the world. It was all champagne and roses. And I really felt that way. It was
wild man. Like livin’ on Haight in ’67.

Then the rest of the week felt something like this:

“Your idea sucks. No one is doing it because it sucks. You haven’t thought it through, you
haven’t done a bit of customer research, and it’s amazing that you didn’t have the good sense
to realize it before you walked in this door. You are only slightly less likely to fail because you’re
here than you were before you got here, which is to say that the likelihood of your failure just
went from 100% to something closer to 99.5%. Your pitch sucks. It’s too long. Where’s the
real pain? Are you solving a real problem? Your presentation isn’t that great either. Too many
words, not enough substance. You’re half as talented as my mother and you’re in Memphis-
freaking-Tennessee. They don’t give money to stupid people here. They don’t even give it
to smart people. You have 90, 89, 88, 87, 86 days to make a great product, and you haven’t
shown me anything that makes me believe that will happen yet…”

Thank you Drill Sergeant, may I have another?

It was an awakening, to say the least. Turns out everything I thought mattered didn’t, and
everything I thought was true wasn’t (except for the bit about the genius co-founder), and
everything I had learned wasn’t relevant anymore. By the end of that first week, I was huddled
in a corner with my rifle, crying, hoping the whole thing would just blow up and take me along
with it.

“Okay, forget everything we just said.”

But I kept coming back, because it was the most awesome thing I had ever done. Humbling,
yes, but awesome nonetheless. I was doing THIS. I was being brought to my knees HERE,

doing OUR THING. We didn’t answer to anyone but ourselves. We were keeping late nights
because we wanted to, not because some freaking busybody micro-manager in another
department needs her TPS reports by noon tomorrow. We were living the dream!

And we were getting better. Bit by bit. By week two the pitch had improved. We met mentors
who had been there and were willing to guide us through the trials and tribulations. We were
doing customer research and starting to turn our crappy little idea into something that just
might work. We had this amazing, awesome group of cohort companies, each with great
entrepreneurs and talented individuals, helping us along the way. We were making progress,
and we were doing it at a speed that my counterparts in “the real world” wouldn’t even be able
to comprehend.

So three weeks in we said “okay, forget about everything we just said,” and changed just about
everything about our original idea. Three days (and about 12 hours of sleep) later, we pitched
that new idea to investors for the first time. We had come far enough to be able to say “yeah,
this one is going to be better, and it’s okay that we have to scrap a bunch of stuff to make it
work.” It was progress, and the investors noticed. It IS a better idea, and they knew it. And we
had survived. It wasn’t pretty, but we had survived. At least the first battle.

“You think Grendel’s a bear–you should meet the mother!”

Things aren’t any easier these days. Not at all. Sleep still comes in short bursts. The pressure
is building as we get closer and closer to demo day, and the expectations are higher because,
somehow, we’re infinitely better than we were when we walked through the door a month ago.
We’ve got a month to build a product that thousands of people will one day use. 31, 30, 29, 28
days. They pass before we even know what hit us.

But the false hope that got turned into realistic doubt in that first week is creeping into the
territory of realistic hope. And what we’re hearing in week five sounds a bit more like this:

“Your idea sucks, but you’ve got time to make it better. You haven’t thought it through, but
you’ve got the tools to do that now. You haven’t talked to your customers enough, but we’re
going to help you do that. And no matter what you think, we didn’t bet on your idea. The only
thing you brought with you was you, and you are what we bet on, not your stupid idea. You’ve
got a shot at this. Keep going.”

Here’s hoping that kind of talk continues…

Author Biography:

Cliff McKinney is CEO of Work for Pie, a company that is changing the way software developers
get recruited and hired by changing the way they communicate with companies. He and his
team have conducted countless interviews with both developers and the companies that hire
them. You can find him on twitter at @cliffmckinney.

Linkage:

Learn more about Seed Hatchery, the accelerator WorkForPie went through, here

Are you coming to “everywhereelse.co The startup conference”

Check out Work For Pie here

Founder Of Memphis Startup Mentor.Me Crowdfund’s In Person For Everywhereelse Booth

This weekend was a big weekend for Memphis entrepreneurs, specifically women founders and entrepreneurs. Upstart Memphis, the latest initiative by Launch Memphis, officially kicked off with the 48 Hour Launch, women’s edition. During the 48 hour period four women CEO’s from Memphis built 4 exciting new startups; Care2Manage, AfocusED Path, Pink Robin Avenue and Mentor.me.

Throughout the weekend the women were rushing to gain as much business knowledge as they could, test their idea out and validate it with customers, and work on their pitch deck. They were also competing for a free booth space at the upcoming “everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference” event being held in Memphis in February.

The three day event is bringing entrepreneurs, founders, and investors from across the country and around the world to Memphis for three days of startup knowledge. A smorgasboard of panels, discussions, fireside chats, networking opportunities and parties. There’s a huge list of nationally known speakers as well. (here’s more info on the event).

Mentor.me is solving a big problem for non profit groups that are linking mentors with mentees. Until now the systems used by most mentoring non profits has been flawed.

For instance Brittany Fitzpatrick said in her pitch that a few people she knows that connect mentors and mentees have to go through thousands of applications and then they link mentors with their mentees by looking at a simple sheet of paper. This paves the way for bad connections and relationships. We also learned that most mentor relationships dissolve in six months or less and that’s actually worse for the mentee than not having been mentored at all.

Check out Mentor.me’s Friday pitch:

And here’s Fitzpatrick’s Sunday pitch:

Fitzpatrick’s web based platform will allow both mentors and mentees the opportunity to build a much more robust profile with likes, interests, needs and goals. This way both the mentor and the mentee have a better chance at vetting each other out to see if they’re likely to be compatible.

When the judges convened after hearing all four pitches on Sunday evening it was a very close call between Mentor.me and the startup that won, Pink Robin Avenue.

Undeterred, once Fitzpatrick realized she wasn’t the winner she started approaching the folks in the audience with a simple proposal, help me get my startup into the conference.

Very quickly Fitzpatrick got sponsored to the beat of $265 and at that point I kicked in the last $30 to get her startup into the conference.

Hopefully both Fitzpatrick and the winner Danielle Inez, will wow the investors the way they wowed the judges this weekend and raise some venture capital.

Linkage:

Check out Upstart Memphis here

Check out “everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference” here

Memphis Startup: Pink Robin Avenue Wins Free Booth At Everywhereelse.co

This weekend was Upstart Memphis’ 48 Hour Launch weekend. Upstart Memphis is the newest initiative for Launch Memphis the catalyst behind all things entrepreneurial and startup in Memphis Tennessee. Upstart Memphis is about helping women entrepreneurs and startup founders through fellowship, education and events. 48 Hour Launch, Memphis’ take on Startup Weekend, was the first big even for the organization.

Launch Memphis has held several 48 Hour Launch events. They function the same way most weekend startup hackathons function. This time was a little different though because all of the ideas pitched needed to be led by women.

Care2Manage, A focusED Path, Mentore.Me and Pink Robin Avenue were the four ideas picked to build throughout the course of the weekend. As you can see from both the Friday and Sunday videos for each startup, they got a lot of work done.

Danielle Inez and her Pink Robin Avenue was the prevailing winner though, even after an original judges tie.

Pink Robin Avenue is an easy way to plan and decorate for an event. For those who like it broken down in it’s simplest form, Pink Robin Avenue is an “event in a box”.

Inez and her team used the weekend to work on their business plan, website, social channels, customer discovery and preparing a great presentation. Inez brought out her bubbly personality and really shut the crowd down with her enthusiastic responses to every part of the Q&A, having a sensible answer for every question thrown her way.

While Inez will initially grow Pink Robin Avenue in Memphis she plans on expanding nationwide and helping people plan events, and get all the decorations they need from top to bottom in a box delivered to their door step, instructions and all.

After checking out her Sunday pitch video you’ll see why she ended up winning a free Startup Village booth at everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference. Inez will be very busy over the next two months making sure that her idea is ready for prime time and ready to go onstage in front of over 1500 people, 400 of them investors.

As a testament to the weekend startup hackathon building model check out her Friday pitch here:

and here’s her wining Sunday pitch video

Linkage:

Get your ticket or booth space at everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference, the largest startup conference in the United States, by clicking here.

Find out more about Upstart Memphis here

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Meet The 4 Women Led Memphis Startups Pitching At 48 Hour Launch

Memphis’ Launch Memphis, is holding a 48 Hour Launch made up entirely of startups founded by women. This is part of Launch Memphis’ new Upstart Memphis initiative focused on enriching women entrepreneurs and startups across the midsouth.

In addition to events like this, Upstart Memphis holds a regular women’s entrepreneur meetup and provides access to women founders and entrepreneurs to the organizations free workshops and seminars. Upstart Memphis welcomes entrepreneurs of all types from traditional small businesses to high growth potential startups.

This weekend’s 48 Hour Launch saw traditional high growth startups and a hybrid startup with huge upside potential locally and if it can build scale, nationally as well.

Care2Manage

Care2Manage is a web portal and referral service aimed at 30 and 40 somethings who’s parents may be ready for elder care. More and more of the elderly are turning to staying home rather than going into managed care centers, which can be frightening for their children, especially when 100s of miles separate child and parent.

That’s where Care2Manage comes in. This referral site and management platform allows the parent and the children to collaborate together and find the best care providers in the parents’ local area. With the service being based on the web, children from across the country and around the world can be involved in their parents care. Not only that, but Care2Manage will also staff up with 24 hour staff available to the parent or the child, and in some cases both.

Here’s the Friday raw pitch:

focusED Path

This startup plans to be a first in it’s space. Essentially focusED Path is a social network for students and parents to keep up with their scholastic activities. Using focusED path, parents and students can put all of their grades, achievements and assignments online. As the student reaches milestones they can be celebrated as well.

focusED Path takes it’s name from one of it’s key features. At the eighth grade level most students start thinking about careers and the work force. They start solidifying their first “what I want to be when I grow up” plans.

focusED Path takes those ideas and makes recommendations on courses to take and what grade averages are needed to sustain that goal. The system will also help when that student undoubtedly pivots to another career path. The student and the parent can see what changes will need to be made to keep them on the focusED path.

Finally, in their secure network students and parents can share milestones, and victories along with areas the student needs to work on with that student’s support network.

Here’s the Friday Pitch:

Pink Robin Avenue

Pink Robin Avenue is the ultimate event planning tool for the busy person. Professional career minded women, single dads, single parents and anyone who’s day to day makes them too busy to plan a party can easily use Pink Robin Avenue to design an event in a box and have the party they’ve dreamt about in just a few clicks.

The founder of Pink Robin Avenue, Danielle Inez, put together the idea when she found that with her social calendar and PR consulting firm she didn’t have enough time to think of things like cake toppers, decorations, and party favors.

Check out the Friday pitch:

Mentor.me

Brittney Fitzpatrick has noticed that there is a huge flaw in mentoring. One of her close colleagues is in charge of administering a very big mentor program in Memphis Tennessee and told Fitzpartrick that most of the mentor matching she does is strictly baed on what’s on a sheet of paper. For so many reasons this process is flawed.

Mentor.me plans on taking profiles for the mentor and the mentee and using algorithms to better match the two.

With Mentor.me a mentee will be able to better address and get more indepth about their needs in a mentor. The mentor will also be able to better see if they’re a match or not.

Mentor.me will help both mentors and mentees waist a lot less time and get right into mentoring, which is what they’re supposed to do.

Check out Mentor.me’s Friday Pitch.

Linkage:

Here are more startup stories from “everywhere else”

Find out more about Upstart Memphis here

Come to Memphis for the largest startup conference in the country, more on that here

Nashville Startup: TalkApolis Brings Locally Produced High Quality Video To The Smartphone

As media consumption continues to move the direction of the smart, connected, handheld device, companies need to continue to adapt. Or of course just launch new companies. Such is the case with Nashville startup TalkApolis. The Nashville startup is headed by John Bransford

“You can watch locally focused, entertaining, high quality video shows on your smartphone or mobile device that were made to be watched on it. Download our app for your device and watch TalkApolis content with a touch of your screen” Bransford told us in an interview.

The microcasting company was originally selected for the 2012 Jumpstart Foundry cohort but dropped out before the program ended in August.

Even without the accelerator program Bransford’s background in media (real media like HBO) and development, including Drupal, helped bring TalkApolis to fruition.

Bransford has designed the TalkApolis platform to operate smooth and efficiently with the ability to produce relevant content extremely fast. ” Our production suite is so adept, we can test out a show from something we see trending on the internet and see if it sticks almost immediately. If it doesn’t get traction or the host get an audience, we move on to the next one. Licensees will benefit from this agility of the back-end system by being able to do the exact same things in their local markets. Our plan is to allow licensees to apply their unique local knowledge where it matters.” Bransford said.

Check out the rest of our interview with Bransford below.

Voice Of Memphis Grizzlies Confirms, Grizzlies & Memphis Are All In With Entrepreneurship And Startups

Memphis startups,Memphis Grizzlies, everywhereelse.co, startups

photo: nibletz.com

Yesterday we reported that Los Angeles startup myStorey had teamed up with super star Memphis Grizzlies forward, Rudy Gay, for their new platform that “shopifies” the clothing and accessories he and other celebrities wear and use everyday. It seems with the changing of the guard and the sale of the team earlier this fall, that the Grizzlies are all about entrepreneurship, startups and cultivating downtown Memphis.

Back in November, the Memphis Grizzlies were sold by Michael Heisley to a new group led by 34 year old telecommunications entrepreneur Robert J Pera. Pera had made the list of Forbes 10 youngest billionaires in the world after the company he founded in 2005, Ubiquiti networks, went public in October 2011.

In Pera’s biography that appears in the Memphis Grizzlies programs this season, it says that it was a life long goal for Pera to be involved in professional sports which ultimately led to him leading the group that finally closed on the purchase of the Memphis Grizzlies, with NBA approval just two months ago.

Justin Timberlake, Peyton Manning’s wife Ashley and basketball star Penny Hardaway are all minority stake holders in Pera’s group.

The local Memphis part of the ownership group is more than just a group of local businessmen. Each one of the local team is an entrepreneur in their own right but they’ve also either embraced or are starting to embrace the local young entrepeneur and startup space as well.

J.R. “Pitt” Hyde, is the founder of Autozone. He has one of the most robust careers of any single person. Hyde grew up in a family of entrepreneurs and immediately got involved with the family business Malone and Hyde. After taking over Malone and Hyde he ended up being the youngest CEO of any publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange. He was also the sitting CEO when Malone and Hyde was one of the first leveraged buyouts by notorious LBO firm KKR, prior to their infamous deal for RJR Nabisco chronicled in the movie and book Barbarians at the Gate.

Hyde continued to build companies, including national auto parts chain AutoZone which is headquartered in Memphis. He also sits on the board of Memphis Bioworks, the medical device incubator that is the collaboration partner with Seed Hatchery in the Zeroto510 program. Hyde is also part of the Society of Entrepreneurs, an organization that supports local entrepreneurship, and he recently spoke at a New Memphis luncheon, where he moderated a panel with local startups PayTopia, Nanopthalmics and Bionanovations, all three of whom accelerated through Launch Memphis affiliated programs.

Staley Cates is the President of Southeastern Asset Management. He was also instrumental in bringing the Memphis Grizzlies to Memphis from Vancouver. He sits on several boards that deal directly with youth including the board of the New Hope Christian Academy, Memphis Athletic Ministries, Soulsville and the Urban Youth Initiative. Also a member of the Society of Entrepreneurs Cates participates in mentoring young companies through the organizations “Core Conversations” program.

Ed Dobbs helps lead the family business Dobbs Management Service which oversees interests in the automotive industry; restaurants and airline catering, beverage distribution and holding company Three Rivers Holdings. Dobbs is leading the family’s efforts to start and acquire new businesses. Dobbs also sits on the board of Memphis Fast Forward, an organization that fosters development, attraction and retention of talent in Memphis Shelby County.

Duncan Williams, is the President of Duncan Williams a local investment bank. Duncan Williams is very active in the Memphis community. The company was also a signature sponsor for the Southeastern Medical Device Association Conference that was held in March in Atlanta. The organization highlights medical device entrepreneurship which is a growing funnel of new startup activity in the Memphis region and the southeast.

Billy Orgel, is a Memphis communications Mogul. As the head of Tower Ventures a company that owns over 700 communications towers across the country and has sold another 280 more. Through the Society of Entrepreneurs, he too is active in fostering and mentoring young companies in Memphis. Orgel was also the angel investor that backed City Torch a Memphis location discovery startup that operated out of Emerge Memphis.

But the Memphis Grizzlies ties to entrepreneurship don’t start or stop with their list of investors and even their player involvement in social startups. Many of the men listed here along with several others tied to the organization have noticed an emergence of more and more people coming to Memphis to go to school and staying post graduation to work for or start their own companies. They’ve also taken notice of companies and startups that have relocated to the Memphis area to grow their businesses.

The entrepreneurial activity is bubbling to the degree that Memphis Grizzlies PA Announcer Rick Trotter made it a point to take notice of students staying in Memphis and the entrepreneurial activity spurring in the downtown area in a recent interview with local Memphis publication choose901.com.

Trotter tells Choose901.com

“One of my favorite things about being part of Memphis, right now is being a part of, a new culture, a new sense of optimism in this city…” He continues “I see a lot of hopeful folks, a lot of people with fresh ideas, and creativity coming to this city, people going to colleges and high schools in this city and staying here to invest…” Trotter goes on “I’ve got a lot of friends in this area who are entrepreneurs and business owners…” Check out the entire 3 minute interview below.

With the everywhereelse.co conference just over two months away, over 1500 people have already purchased tickets from across the country and around the world, to come to Memphis and see this wind of change with their own eyes. Hundreds of those attendees have identified themselves as accredited angel investors and VC’s and out of the companies we recognize there is over $10 billion dollars in venture capital that will be represented at the conference.

With that it’s only fitting that we’ll kick off the festivities of Sunday evening with a Grizzlies game as they take on the Minnesota Timberwolves on Sunday February 10th when they arrive for the conference. After the game all the attendees will pour onto Beale Street to take in some of the entertainment that Memphis is famous for during the Grasshopper, the Entrepreneurs’ Phone System Bar Hop.

With that, we’re so excited to welcome everyone coming to the everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference, to our house, the Fedex Forum to kick off the largest startup conference in the country, everywhereelse.co

Linkage:

Get tickets to everywhereelse.co here or register your startup for the startup village

Learn more about LaunchMemphis Here

And go ahead check out the Memphis Grizzlies.

Check out Choose901 here

Memphis Grizzlies Star Rudy Gay Featured In Los Angeles Startup MyStorey

Rudy Gay, Memphis Grizzlies, myStorey, LA Startup,California startup,startup

Memphis Grizzlies star forward Rudy Gay will be featured in myStorey (photo: nibletz LLC)

A new startup in Los Angeles called MyStorey is set to debut with some celebrity heavyweights in the mix, including Memphis Grizzlies star forward Rudy Gay.

myStorey is a we-commerce platform where users build online stores through the stories of their lives. They allow people the unique opportunity to tag the things in their personal photos from Facebook, Instagram, Flickr, or their blog and aggregate those tags into a shoppable store so that others can discover and shop them too. Celebrities, bloggers, brands, and even everyday people have found immense value in myStorey’s ability to transform their digital content into shopping opportunities.

myStorey worked with Rudy Gay’s social team to leverage his social media content and use it to highlight the products from his everyday life. myStorey will highlight some of the clothing and accessories that Gay wears in everyday life along with some of the luxury items that help bring his swag like his Audermars Piguet watch.

Anyone can use myStorey, whether you’re the average Joe or a trendsetter, myStorey lets you highlight the things you wear everyday and then helps people discover those items and purchase them.

Other celebrities participating at launch include:

US Open Surf Champion Lakey Peterson
Fitness guru Chalene Johnson
Jacksonville Jaguars Quarterback Jordan Palmer
Miami Marlin’s player Bryan Petersen
Miami Marlin’s player Logan Morrison
Beauty Biz CEO and expert Sumita Batra
HoneynSilk.com fashion blogger Stephanie Liu
Beachmint’s Social Media Coordinator Vaneza Pitynski

myStorey seems like a very innovative platform, and with the star power they’ve recruited in the beginning they should be in good shape for a successful launch. We got a chance to talk with the team behind myStorey, check out the interview below.

Startup Communities: Celebrating Victories

Brad Feld, startup investor, co-founder of Techstars, co-founder of Foundry Group, Marathon Runner, and huge startup community evangelist offers lots of great advice in his recent book on startup communities. One of the things that he speaks about when talking about startup communities is celebrating a startup community victory.

Earlier this morning we reported that Memphis startup accelerator grad Restore Medical Solutions has raised a $2.5 million dollar series A round.

That’s a huge victory for not only Restore Medical Solutions but for the Memphis Startup Community.

Linkage:

Original story

Come to Memphis for the biggest startup conference in the US

Memphis Startup Restore Medical Raises $2.5 Million Seed Round

Restore Medical Solutions, Memphis startup, Zeroto510,funded startup

Shawn Flynn (L) Ryan Ramkhelawan (R) founders of Restore Medical Solutions

Memphis’ startup community has kicked it into high gear as of late. In 2012 Launch Your City, the organization behind the Seed Hatchery starutp accelerator, the Launch Pad free coworking space and Launch Memphis, the curriculum arm behind Memphis’ startup ecosystem, had a big year. They saw two cohorts go through their Seed Hatchery program this year. One group of web/tech entrepreneurs took their startups through Seed Hatchery. The other group went through a collaborative effort between Seed Hatchery and Memphis BioWorks called Zeroto510.

The Zeroto510 program is a medical device startup accelerator that relies on Bioworks for the medical part and Seed Hatchery for the startup, and business development portion of their training. After a rigorous accelerator program, and an intense demo day in May, the six startups in the program saw 85% follow on funding. Four of the graduating startup companies received $100,000 investments from MB Ventures and Innova. The fifth startup, Restore Medical Solutions, raised a $2.5 million dollar Series A round.

It’s no wonder that Restore Medical Solutions was able to close such a large round. Co-Founder Shawn Flynn announced that the company had a $3.75 million dollar purchase order, during his investor day pitch.

Restore Medical Solutions has come up with a concept and system to more efficiently sterilize surgical instruments. When we first met with Flynn and Co-Founder Ryan Ramkhelawan explained that not only was the current system for sterilizing surgical instruments filled with flaws, to a degree it’s also dangerous.

Currently surgical instruments are grouped in sets according to the surgery that the operating room is performing. The instruments are kept in a sterile container/tray until they are brought up to the surgical suite and used. However, if one piece of equipment is either missing, or shows signs of not being completely sterilized, the entire set is deemed unusable and another set is ordered up.

The problem with that is most hospitals don’t have a bunch of reserve sets for the operating rooms. The sterilization team has put together the sets based on that days surgeries. Waiting on instruments to be re-sterilized and recompiled can take hours. At that time the patient is either kept under anesthesia or they are woken up, either option can have risks.

Not only that but some hospitals still use sterilization procedures that are likened to the way silverware is washed in a restaurant, everything dumped on one big tray and run through a dishwasher type sterilization machine. The problem with that is the instruments at the bottom may not be as sterile as the instruments on the top. This is often the cause of hospital born infections.

Restore Medical Solutions system makes the process quicker, more efficient and completely sterile.

Flynn and Ramkhelawan get anxious and excited when talking about their process and the upside potential for hospitals. With the reduction in time, the more efficient sterilization and the cut down on infections, Restore Medical Solutions is in the business of sterilizing instruments, but more importantly to the bottom line, driving costs down. Quicker turn arounds in the sterilization process also mean quicker turn arounds in the operating rooms, and more surgeries.

How much money? We’re not talking a thousands here or a thousand there, we’re talking tens of millions of dollars per hospital.

The duo behind Restore Medical Solutions has already pitched a number of hospitals in Tennessee and along the east coast. To date they are proud to announce that they’ve at least secured a follow up meeting and in other cases, purchase orders.

While a $2.5 million dollar Series A round is great for the company and will allow them to start producing to fulfill their purchase orders, it wasn’t always easy. Both Ramkhelawan and Flynn quit their good paying day jobs in Atlanta to relocate to Memphis for the ZeroTo510 program. The program gave them a $50,000 seed round but waiting for that initial funding they were sneaker-strapping it like the rest of their cohort.

Both men left families back in Atlanta and Ramkhelawan and his wife had just had a new baby daughter. With kids, families, and houses in Atlanta these two middle aged entrepreneurs set out to live the ramen noodle eating, hipster lifestyle. They immediately went on the grind to make things happen.

And happen it did.

After finding out about the ZeroTo510 program from a friend of Flynn’s who has a marketing business in Memphis the two made the trip to Memphis to scope out the city and the program. They immediately fell in love with the town. They are sharing an apartment literally within feet from the new corporate headquarters for Restore Medical which officially opens Friday.

For what they’re doing, both entrepreneurs admit that the Memphis startup ecosystem is further along than things are in Atlanta. New initiatives have begun in Atlanta which will be great for the region but Memphis is already doing it. Also, Jackson Tennessee is doing it as well. Both entrepreneurs spend time in Jackson, helping to further that cities entrepreneurs along as well.

Flynn and Ramkelawan give a lot of credit to Launch Your City’s Eric Mathews and Bio Works’ Allan Daisley who were instrumental in the Zeroto510 programs inaugural class.

Linkage:

Check out Restore Medical here

Check out Zeroto510 here

Apply for Seed Hatchery’s next session here

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