12-Year-Old Vegas Tech Rockstar Set To Speak At SXSW V2V

We’re hearing about more and more kidpreneurs and teenpreneurs. There was a 14-year-old who won Cincinnati’s most recent Startup Weekend. Another 14-year-old won Tampa’s most recent Startup Weekend as well.

Ethan Duggan may not be the winner of a recent Startup Weekend, but he is an app developer and startup founder. His app “LazyHusband” launched at SXSW this year in Austin, Texas.

Ethan is growing up in the Las Vegas startup community, VegasTech for those in the know. His father Rick Duggan, is the cofounder of vegasstartups.com. The elder Duggan is also “coach,” with the younger Duggan preferring the keyboard and the app store to the baseball diamond or the football field.

The young but witty tween, knows a thing or two about apps, launching, startups, founding, and entrepreneurship. He also knows about monetization. When asked about monetizing his app, he told Vegasstartups.com’s John Lynn “$0.99 per download…Coder’s gotta eat.”

Lynn reports that down in Austin during SXSW, the young Duggan scored over 10 interviews and several high profile posts including one by Brad Feld, and another from GigaOM that ended up on CNN Money. Not too shabby for a member of the VegasTech community that couldn’t even get into the legendary VegasTech party. No worries though. The elder Duggan and the VegasTech community made sure Ethan could join the party via FaceTime. (How 2013 is that?)

Now father and son are going to host a talk at SXSW V2V next month in Las Vegas. They’ll be talking about how Ethan overcame stereotypes of proper childhood activities. They’ll also talk about how Rick Duggan is his “coach,” the app Ethan has created, and how you’re Never Too Young.

You can still purchase passes for SXSW V2V here. and sign up for Duggan’s session here.

Nibletz will be on the ground in Vegas for SXSW V2V, with your help. We’ve got great sponsorship opportunities here where you can get your startup, or startup support organization in front of millions at the most high profile startup event of the summer.

Ethan Duggan image: vegasstartups.com

These 6 Companies Are In The South Dakota Technology Business Center Accelerator

Earlier today we talked about the incubators and accelerators in Tennessee and Ohio. As we often say, there are accelerator programs and startup initiatives everywhere (or everywhere else), even Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

Sioux Falls startup incubator, the South Dakota Technology Business Center, started their 2013 accelerator program with six entrepreneurial teams that were competitively selected to participate.

The SDTBC’s accelerator program is a break from the traditional model. Rather than having teams quit their jobs, move to Sioux Falls, and participate in a 90 day or 120 day program, their program is a series of monthly workshop days focusing on business concepts and model, sales growth, and scaling their business.

The companies selected to participate in this year’s program are:

Braced With Style
Farmcast Group
Sidewalk Technologies
Nanofiber Separations LLC
Fointar
Prom-Tect SD

These companies are learning how to be successful from some of the region’s top experts in entrepreneurship, sales, finance, intellectual property, business law and more,” Pam Boehm, the center’s client services manager said in a statement. “We are excited to be working with these entrepreneurs and the more than 20 subject matter experts sharing their time and talents to further entrepreneurship in South Dakota.”

The companies are also competing throughout the program for portions of a $20,000 pool of funds and in-kind business services designed to take their startups to the next level. The $20,000 prize fund and services will be distributed throughout the course of the program.

The 2013 Accelerator is sponsored by Forward Sioux Falls and South Dakota EPSCoR. EPSCoR is the Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research that is funded by the National Science Foundation.

You can find out more here.

Do you want to build a startup or a small business? Read this post.

Blackstone Launchpad Expands Entrepreneurship Program To Montana

On Friday Montana became the fifth Blackstone Launchpad region, joining Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Florida.

Blackstone LaunchPad is modeled after a successful program developed at the University of Miami in 2008, which has generated 1,413 business proposals, 210 new jobs, and drawn nearly 2,600 participants. Each new regional program will be linked together, drawing ideas and best practices from the existing programs, and giving student entrepreneurs at the University of Montana and Montana State University access to a national community of over 200,000 of their peers expert advisers for their ventures.

“Entrepreneurship is the single most effective way to spur economic growth and job creation,” said Blackstone’s President and COO, Tony James. “We must all play a role in nurturing talent, and through Blackstone LaunchPad, students will have access to an expanded universe of resources and years of institutional knowledge, helping them launch ventures that can take root locally and strengthen Montana’s economy.”

The Blackstone Charitable Foundation’s three-year, $2 million grant will establish a partnership between Montana State University, the University of Montana, and Headwaters RC&D to introduce entrepreneurship as a viable career option and provide university students with a network of venture coaches and entrepreneurial support to transform new ideas into sustainable companies. With a physical presence at Montana State University and the University of Montana, Blackstone LaunchPad has the potential to generate some 150 new ventures in Montana over the next five years.

“The Blackstone LaunchPad Program will allow students at Montana State University and the University of Montana to see real application of their ideas transformed into sustainable companies as they partner with local businesses. I look forward to the innovation and new ventures Montana will see in the coming years through Blackstone LaunchPad,” Montana Governor Steve Bullock said in a statement.

This should come as no surprise to some as Montana was ranked #1 according to the latest Kauffman Foundation Index of Entrepreneurial Activity, which was released last month. Because of Montana’s natural resources, it’s become a hub of sorts to startups and small businesses.

“Montana is a small business state – in fact nearly all of our workers are employed by businesses with fewer than 20 employees. That means Montana jobs rely on entrepreneurs, striking out on their own and building companies from the ground up. This new partnership will go a long way toward helping Montana entrepreneurs get new businesses off the ground so they can grow and create jobs.” Senator Max Bacus said in a statement.

You can find out more about Blackstone here.

Yes even startups from Montana come to this huge startup conference for startups everywhere else.

Image: Billings, MT

Pittsburgh Startup Wants To Help You Monetize Your White Papers

When companies put out white papers they are typically very proud of their work. A lot of research has gone into these papers, but in the end most of them are distributed freely via pdf. Some may view white papers as research tools, and a way to get a company’s name out there. Or perhaps white papers are used to thoroughly explore a new product. Either way, they are one of the most in-depth forms of content marketing, and these days content marketing is huge.

Outside of content marketing though, but still quite related, white papers can serve as an excellent lead referral source. The problem is most companies don’t know how to utilize the white papers for lead generation, thus leaving them undervalued.

“You would be surprised how few companies correctly leverage their whitepapers and research studies for new customer acquisition. These documents are valuable resources and while it’s OK to give them away as free PR, we feel a lot of consumer leads are being left on the table when a company simply links to the PDF for an instant download,” DocumentLeads founder Chris Cagle told us.

Cagle went onto explain, “If the value of the white paper is correctly explained and presented, many people will not even hesitate to give you their name and email in order to download it. This is where DocumentLeads comes in. While there are currently a few services out there that do this as part of a larger offering, DocumentLeads is the only company that focuses solely on allowing you to create a lead form for the sole purpose of capturing and nurturing leads off a digital document in a completely white-labeled environment. We’ve put all of our skill and attention on doing this one thing, and doing it very well. ”

Cagle is a Pittsburgh-based serial entrepreneur who had a string of misses before launching GetSimple CMS. Cagle used a lot of the knowledge he gained from building GetSimple CMS and put it into DocumentLeads.

Check out the rest of our interview with Cagle below.

What is your startup, what does it do?

DocumentLeads is a document management SaaS application. We give online businesses the ability to generate and capture leads directly from the downloads of their whitepapers and other digital documents. We have a built-in CRM management tool that allows customers to view and nurture the leads they capture. Additionally, if a customer of our service uses an outside CRM tool, we have integrations with some of the top online CRMs such as Nutshell, CapsuleCRM and Highrise as well as similar services like MailChimp.

Who are the founders and what are their backgrounds

DocumentLeads is a product and service created by Chris Cagle. Chris is a tech entrepreneur located in Pittsburgh, PA (USA) and has been creating products on the web for over 10 years. Chris got his start building a lot of online properties that no one used, then moved onto founding & developing one of the most successful lite-CMSs on the market currently – GetSimple CMS. While building GetSimple, Chris learned a lot about application security, great user experience and the downfalls of feature-bloat. All of these skills were used when creating DocumentLeads.

Where are you based?

We are based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Pittsburgh is a budding tech town (because of all of our colleges) and is home to a rabid Black & Gold fan base for the Pirates, Penguins and Steelers.

What is one challenge that you’ve overcome in the startup process?

A large challenge we’ve overcome is how to correctly handle any type of document in any online environment. With DocumentLeads, you can now upload a PPT file (or DOC, XLS, PDF, TXT, etc.) and have it be viewed as an HTML file, then downloaded as a PDF. Most solutions out there force you to use JavaScript (only PDF-friendly) or Flash (not mobile-friendly). At Dcoumentleads, we’ve solved this and have a solution that works for any document on any device. Another large challenge we are currently running into is operating in a bootstrapped environment. Because we are 100% bootstrapped, we don’t have the marketing budget that some of the others in our field have (SlideShare & HubSpot). This is a constant weight on our shoulders that forces us be creative to get the publicity and some visibility needed to be successful in our market.

What are some of the milestones your startup has achieved?

The first and most important milestone we’ve achieved is our initial launch. Coming up for the idea for the business was easy (all ideas are born out of a need, right?), but executing on it was a multitude of difficulty more. There were some late nights, countless “how do we do this?” moments and plenty of code rewrites. In the end, we produced a service that we are extremely proud of and feel can make a difference for many businesses out there looking to take advantage of their digital documents.

What are your next milestones

Integrations. While we have a good stable of CRM integrations at this moment, we need more to make it as useful as possible. This means integrating with entrenched and enterprise-level products like Salesforce, ZoHo, Campaign Monitor and other big name CRM and email management products.

Who are your mentors and role models?

I, like many other self-started entrepreneurs, grew up reading blogs like RRW and Techcrunch. Lately, I’ve been fascinated by the blog and email newsletter of Patrick McKenzie. This guy is a genius (and extremely transparent!) on how to build, price and run your SaaS business. I have learned a lot from him, and would recommend anyone reading this to sign up for this “Grow your software business” email newsletter… it’s fantastic.

What’s next for your startup?

We need to grow. Period. We are still in our infancy (we officially launched only a few short months ago) and we need to grow in terms of customers and mature feature sets. We are constantly striving to harden and shape our business to be the best it can be, but we also recognize it can be a long process. Aside from the integrations we mentioned above, supporting our current customers and the ongoing marketing that needs to occur, our schedules are stacked full (just the way we like it!).

Where can people find out more, and what is your Twitter username?

You can learn more about DocumentLeads on our website Documentleads.com. Our Twitter handle is @documentleads and you will find us posting our product updates and news on there.

This Pittsburgh startup wants to make sure you never lose your wallet again.

Nashville Is Great. Ohio Is Too. This Guy Is Oblivious.

On Saturday, the Cleveland Plain Dealer ran a guest post by Dr. Jeffery Canter. Canter is a retired professor of molecular physiology and biophysics at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and a consultant for many healthcare startups in Nashville.

Apparently Canter lived in Ohio before Nashville. In his piece Canter criticizes Ohio as a whole and offers a laundry list of tips to keep it’s talent, which he says Ohio is giving to Tennessee for free. All of this is based on people Canter has met who relocated to Nashville to launch their businesses. Canter makes a point that Ohio has paid for these people twice: “First, you paid for educations that were far better than ones these new Tennesseans would have received in Nashville. Second, these productive young people removed themselves from your tax base and left you behind to pay even higher taxes.”

At Nibletz our mission is clear: to give a voice to startups everywhere else. With offices in both Memphis and Cincinnati, we know a lot about the ecosystems of each state.

Tennessee has an impressive startup ecosystem. They were the second state region in the Startup America Partnership. There are 9 accelerator regions across the state that are administered by a public private partnership called Launch Tennessee. There are several incubator and accelerator programs, with the biggest being GigTank (Chattanooga), Jumpstart Foundry (Nashville), Seed Hatchery (Memphis), and Zeroto510 (also Memphis).

If you think there’s a lot of entrepreneurial and startup activity in Tennessee, you’re absolutely right, but some believe that Ohio has even more going on.

For starters the Brandery in Cincinnati is one of the top 10 startup accelerators in the country. Cincinnati also has the new Cintrifuse initiative, CincyTech for capital, and regularly holds events like Startup Weekend.

Traveling north, Columbus also has it’s share of exciting startup activities and initiatives. Columbus is home to not one but three accelerators; 1492, 10x, and the Founder’s Factory. TechColumbus is one of the driving forces behind the startup scene, and there are also plenty of resources for capital.

Move a little further north to Cleveland and there’s still NO shortage of startup activity. In fact the nationwide non-profit startup acceleration organization, Jumpstart Inc, is headquartered in Cleveland. Then again there’s not just one but two startup accelerators: LaunchHouse and the new FlashStarts founded by Cleveland serial entrepreneur Charles Stack.

So, what makes a good ecosystem?

Gary Hardin at Knoxville startup BounceIt tweeted us the other day, after we ran Entrepreneur Magazine’s 7 best places to startup. Hardin thought that Tennessee should be on that list because there’s no income tax. Makes logical sense, right? Maybe.

As all of our readers know, during the nationwide sneaker strapped road trip, we’ve seen nearly 100 different startup ecosystems in person and are often asked where would we move if we could go anywhere. We chose Memphis, and at that time we had no idea there was no income tax in Tennessee.

When a startup chooses an accelerator or to relocate for one reason or the other, it’s typically resource or industry related. Nashville is hot for medical devices (you’re probably thinking music, but medical devices definitely prevail). If I needed help with branding, I’d move to Cincinnati; automotive, yes we’d still move to Detroit, Government relations or government sales, DC and so on.

Native Memphian Sarah Lacy penned a column just days after her trip to Nashville’s Southland conference entitled “Memo to non-Valley, non-NYC ecosystems: No one you want cares about cost of living.” And guess what, they don’t. Facebook Co-Founder Dustin Moskovitz also says he wouldn’t move somewhere just for optimized taxes. In fact he said this 13 months before Lacy’s article.

Are the Plain Dealer and Dr. Canter just oblivious to what’s going on around them in the startup space?

There are two certain things certain in life: death and taxes. In general, startups are oblivious to both.

Where ever you are, you need to make plans to attend this startup conference for startups everywhere else.

Image credits: Nashville Cleveland

What Do You Do When Your Startup Fails? Create Stuffed Meme’s Of Course

In April 2012 we reported on a great new startup in Minneapolis that was trying to change the way that people watched indie films. That startup, Altsie, was a great idea with a solid founder, Lucas Rayala. The idea worked like this: a movie go-er checks out the film online and purchases a ticket online. Then they attend the movie among new like-minded friends at a venue that also supports the indie movie circuit. Voila! An instant offline social mix.

While it was a great idea and picked up some traction, six months later they shut the startup down. When they shut it down though, Rayala went above and beyond, not for himself or his team but for other entrepreneurs. He first penned a piece about his failure that appeared on TechCrunch. Then he released what he called “The Altsie Report: Summary of a startup that didn’t quite work out”, giving out advice to fellow entrepreneurs that would listen to help them succeed. It’s a similar approach to what path.to just did this week when they shut down.

So now what’s Rayala up to?

He’s working on another startup that’s in strict stealth mode. In the meantime he’s doing something fun and exciting that may catch on more than he hopes. We know he wants to do another tech startup, but this new idea is sharp.

“Working with a talented group of artists, I created Mr. No and his Meme Friends, a gang of cartoon characters inspired by many of the internet’s most popular memes. Mr. No is my favorite character, so I’ve launched this Kickstarter to produce a Santa-themed Mr. No plush toy in time for the holidays. Mr. No is 8” tall and made of quality materials that meet or exceed all health and safety guidelines. If you skip down to the production details you’ll understand why I’m starting Christmas so early this year. ” Rayla said on his Kickstarter page.

Meme’s are a crazy popular phenomena this year and by Christmas time they’ll be even more popular. This may take off, but Rayala insists that his heart is in tech startups, and he and co-founder Joe Dolson are working hard on the next project. In the meantime go sign up for a stuffed meme.

Worried about startup failure? Go read the Altsie report.

Wisconsin Governor Signs Investment Capital Bill For Startups

Wisconsin startups just had another victory on Thursday as Governor Scott Walker signed an investment capital bill.

The bill, which drew bipartisan support in the state legislature, provides $25 million dollars to startup companies in Wisconsin. Unlike other states, though, this bill was specifically for tech startups vs biotechnology and life sciences. In most states it’s harder for general tech companies to draw this kind of support from the government.

In the case of the Wisconsin bill, startups in agricultural technology, information technology, engineered products, advanced manufacturing, medical devices, and imaging are all eligible for the new funding.

While biotechnology and life sciences companies can create jobs over a much longer period of time, Wisconsin is looking for companies that can create jobs quicker.

“The $25 million allocated for this program in the state budget will help grow private sector jobs by investing in start-up companies,” Walker said in a statement. “One hundred percent of the funds from this program will go to Wisconsin-based businesses, and there are a number of measures in place to ensure accountability and transparency for the hard-working taxpayers.”

Fox11online.com reports that the $25 million dollars in tax payer money will be matched with $50 million in private donations.

“I hope that once success is shown, it will lead to additional measures to increase the amount of capital for new businesses and more Wisconsin jobs,” Walker said in a statement.

Canadian Startup Thalmic Labs Has Quite Possibly The Coolest Wearable Tech Out There

Myo,Thalmic Labs, Canadian startup, startup interview

Wearable technology and “the internet of things” may be the hottest startup segments out there in 2013. There are sensors, gadgets, bracelets, bands, watches, and other technology that captures just about everything. There’s even wearable, sensor-based technology for dogs.

Most people have seen fitness monitors, sleep monitors, and smart watches, but from what I’ve seen (and I’ve seen a lot), Myo, the flagship product from Canadian startup Thalmic Labs, takes the cake.

Myo is a bracelet that has sensors built into it that allows you to gesture control just about anything using the motion in your hand. With Myo you can easily scroll through a presentation deck, navigate a website, or pinpoint a place on a map.

Then there’s the even cooler stuff. Myo can also help you control video games and even fly smartphone- or computer-based helicopters and airplanes.

When I first watched their demo video below I thought it looked kind of silly, but really it’s one of the awesomest things I’ve ever seen. Myo eliminates the need for so many different remote controls and controllers. It’s also intuitive and the gestures (from watching the video) are natural, the gestures you would be doing on a smartphone or tablet anyway.

Sure the Wii Remote, XBox Kinect, and even Roku’s latest remote control are all about motion, but they are also tied directly to their device. Myo makes your hand the motion controller, I know awesome right.

We got a chance to talk with the team behind Myo. Check out the interview right below their video.

What is your startup called?

Thalmic Labs

What does your company do?

Thalmic Labs is a rapidly growing company that is dedicated to the development of gesture control, wearable technology and human-computer interaction. Our flagship product, MYO, has already received 30,000 pre-orders, and continues to generate a massive amount of excitement about the future of wearable computing.

Who are the founders, and what are their backgrounds

Stephen Lake – Founder, CEO

Matthew Bailey – Founder

Aaron Grant – Founder

At the University of Waterloo, Stephen, Matthew and Aaron graduated with degrees in Mechatronics Engineering.

Stephen was named one of Canada’s Top 20 under 20 in 2007 and one of the Next 36 entrepreneurial leaders of Canada in 2011. Stephen graduated with an additional certificate in Entrepreneurship from the University of Toronto, and studied as a visiting scholar at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich. He became an entrepreneur from a young age, attaching LED lights to radio-controlled trucks and selling them at age 13.

Matthew studied pattern recognition, which drove the development of the underlying machine learning magic behind Thalmic’s products. He studied as a visiting scholar at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich.

Aaron has an extensive software engineering background, having spent time in Silicon Valley working for Zynga. His passion for software engineering has even led him to create his own embedded microprocessor operating system.

Where are you based?

Waterloo, Ontario

What problem do you solve?

How do we connect the real and the digital worlds as we move towards wearable and ubiquitous computing?

Why does it matter?

MYO provides a way for us to interact with and control computers and other digital devices directly using our hands. Fundamentally, Thalmic is attempting to close the gap between humans and technology. The applications are endless, including gaming and entertainment, industrial, healthcare, education, business, and general user applications.

What are some of the milestones your startup has already reached?

The video that we launched MYO with has millions of views on YouTube and gave us immediate reach when getting our product out there initially. More recently, our company announced the closing of a Series A funding round at $14.5 million – the largest round of funding that any post-Y Combinator company has received to date. This funding will be used to fuel continued growth, further product development of MYO, and develop future products and technologies from Thalmic Labs.

What are your next milestones?

The most important milestone for us is to get our final product into the hands of thousands of waiting customers. This includes taking our time going to production to ensure the quality of our product and finding the best partners to do this with. Another big milestone is to get early units and documentation to developers late this summer and see how they can help rethink human-computer interaction. Beyond that, we’re excited for the future of technology. For us, MYO is a first step down a long path in this direction.

Where can people find out more? Any social media links you want to share?

The best way to understand Thalmic Labs and MYO is by watching the video on our homepage (https://www.thalmic.com/myo/). As you explore, feel free to “get updates” and pre-order MYO at https://www.thalmic.com/myo/preorder/. You can follow Thalmic Labs on twitter at @Thalmic.

Back in October Kara Swisher said sensors were the big thing for this year, she was right.

BlueBridge Digital Founder Talks About One Year Journey From College To 15 Employees

Last year Santiago Jaramillo was a senior in college. From his dorm room, he created a business building apps for other businesses. What happened over the next year is a story much more common to Silicon Valley and New York than Indiana. Jaramillo took that app-building business and turned it into his startup: BlueBridge Digital, a company that does “apps as a service”.

BlueBridge Digital is an app development company that specializes in three verticals: travel and tourism, higher education, and religious institutions. Their clients include Gatlinburg, Tennessee, University of Arkansas, and several well known large churches.

One of the biggest things that sets BlueBridge Digital apart from other app development houses is their subscription model. They charge their clients a monthly fee rather than making them come out of pocket with one big payment, something that often times prevents companies in their verticals from going forward with their app projects.

By focusing on just three main verticals, making their service accessible to businesses, and offering superior customer service, Jaramillo’s startup is cash flow positive and employs 15 people, just a year out of college.

Jaramillo told Nibletz co-founder Nick Tippmann in an interview that one of the biggest keys to his success was focusing on sales and getting people to actually pay for his services. This made it easier to attract a great team of established co-founders, great employees, and more clients. With all that in mind, Jaramillo was able to bootstrap BlueBridge Digital to revenue.

Check out the video interview below and for more visit bluebridgeapps.com

37 signals founder Jason Fried talks about product design.

Jacksonville Startup Path.To Finds The Path.To Startup Failure, Shares Ways to Avoid It

“Failing gracefully.” That’s a topic that comes up a lot in the startup world. We are all too familiar with the failure rate of startups: depending on who you ask, 70-80% of startups fail. On Tuesday we found out that Jacksonville startup path.to will be shutting down on July 19th.

Almost a year ago we interviewed path.to’s CEO Darren Bounds after reporting the previous month that they had expanded their “e-harmony for jobs” startup to include Chicago, Boston, and NYC. For a while everything looked great for path.to. They were rewriting the boring old job search platform and making it more intuitive with algorithms and indepth profiles.

Not only that, but the team is incredible. We met most of them just a few months ago during Jacksonville’s OneSpark festival. A few of the Path.to team members were helping music discovery startup Aurora while others were helping social event tracking startup #eventhash. During the event, organizer Elton Rivas told us that the path.to team were very active in Jacksonville.

“Failing sucks – especially when it comes to your startup. It’s like being kicked hard in the shins right after being dumped, all while standing in the pouring rain with no cabs in sight, only to have a huge truck drive by and splash mud all over you,” path.to community manager Jill Felska wrote on the company’s blog.

What happens next for the team? Well naturally they’ll continue being innovators, entrepreneurs, and members of Jacksonville’s thriving statup scene. Specifically though, Fileska reports that many of the team will continue innovating in the hiring space and making it a happier space by working at Ignite, a job industry idea incubator also based in Jacksonville.

While the ride is officially over tomorrow, the path.to team shared these six valuable lessons they learned during the two years they were building path.to.

1) Don’t wait to solidify your monetization strategy.

“A ‘build it and they will come’ mentality has taken over the startup space. And yes, we were included in that camp. The problem is, it rarely works that way.

We started out with the strong belief that if we could build up a large, impressive user base, that the customers would follow. Unfortunately, we were wrong. We underestimated the amount of education that would be needed to sell our product – and then were very slow to give it the sales attention it really needed.

Monetization can’t be an afterthought when it comes to startups. Shiny products are great only if they’re solving a real problem that customers will pay for.” – Pete Cochrane, President

2) Technology alone isn’t the solution.

“When the product isn’t succeeding like you expect it to, working to make sure you are providing the core service to the customer is more important than continually adding features, optimizing site-speed, and conversion funnels. Perfecting the tech stuff is fun for some of us, but it is only worthwhile if it adds value to a service that people are finding useful.” – Charlie Cauthen, Technical Architect

3) Two-sided markets are a bitch.

“Building a two-sided market is hard. Really, really hard. If I had a do-over, I would start in just one or two key cities, then wouldn’t expand past them until we had built a strong community of both job seekers and businesses who saw value in our product. Becoming a go-to product or service in your launch city not only validates your idea, but also helps drive engagement in future cities.” – Jill Felska, Chief Community Officer

4) Build for the customers you already have.

“We spent a lot of our time trying to make Path.To better by adding new features, adjusting our pricing strategy and trying to make it available to as many people as possible. While important, it’s the existing customers that really matter. If you remember to focus and appreciate the users that you have, they’ll do the work of sending more people your way.” – Kristin Gattis, Path.To People Person

5) Team communication and trust is key.

“Communication is possibly your most important organizational asset. You can have the best team of engineers and designers in the world, but it means nothing if you can’t work together and solve problems. Poor communication drives down morale and can seed resentment that persists until the issue is resolved.

Learning to surface and resolve issues quickly was one of the most important lessons we learned throughout this process. While we could not identify and resolve every problem, creating an environment of open communication and feedback was crucial.

Just as you have processes to monitor the health of your product and servers, someone in your organization should also to pay attention to the the human aspect of the product.” – Joey Marchy, Project Manager

6) Test, test, test…and then learn to let go.

“The biggest thing I learned throughout the process is to test your product’s efficacy as often as possible. Constantly ask yourself whether you’re really solving someone’s problem at the core or if you’re just making current processes slightly better. Accepting that something isn’t working and changing course is more important than getting it right the first time.” – Dennis Eusebio, UX/UI Designer

Hindsight certainly is 20/20 isn’t it? The funny thing is, these lessons aren’t breaking news. They’ve all been written about before.

The problem is that it’s hard to absorb them and look critically at your business when you’re in the trenches. When things are getting done and moving along everyday.

If our team was to challenge you to just one thing, it would be this: take a step back and really look at what you’re building. What advice from mentors, articles, and your customers could impact your business for the better today? It may just save you the trouble of closing your doors someday down the road. We truly hope it does.

OneSpark was one of the biggest startup events we’ve ever seen, check out our coverage here.

When Sh!t Hits The Fan, There’s Indiana Startup Evacua

Bloomington, Indiana startup Evacua is a platform/marketplace for people when sh!t hits the fan. What kind of sh!t? How about evacuations.

Often times when an evacuation is necessary, nobody is prepared. That lack of preparation makes an evacuation take 10x as long as it would if more people were ready. Hurricanes, wildfires, and floods are just a few of the disasters that can displace you and your family. If you had a safety network in your back pocket ,you would breathe easier and know that anything dictating an evacuation would be more manageable.

Evacua is a network of verified travelers, companies, and transportation providers that can quickly pool resources together during an evacuation.

Evacua isn’t just about natural disasters and what you would think of as traditional “evacuations.” It’s an emergency travel safety net. If you were on a business trip and your wife went into labor or you had a death in the family, Evacua members would have access to last minute travel without the huge cost of paying commercially for it.

The startup accelerated at RunUp Labs, the travel industry accelerator based out of Bloomington, Indiana’s SproutBox. The idea is to quickly connect its members to be mobilized and ready travel companies and providers at a moment’s notice. At the same time, they are also working on the rideshare model for aircraft.

“Simultaneously, we are fixing the ride sharing model for aircrafts. By using a low cost to entry, we can appeal to a broader base of travelers. During emergencies, this base of travelers is more flexible with price, destination, and departure times, allowing for more likely matches of flights and passengers,” the company says on it’s AngelList profile.

Nibletz’ Nick Tippmann was in Indiana for the Innovation Showcase last week where he got to spend some time with Mike Beckwith the General Manager and co-founder of Evacua. Check out our video interview below and for more info visit evacua.com

Los Angeles Startup AroundWire Is The First Social Exchange

Let’s face it. We all know how sketchy Craigslist can be. Whether you’re getting scammed on the front end by someone who wants to charge your PayPal $500 more than your product is selling for, or you’ve got a seller who wants to meet you in a dark alley. While some may score some great deals using Craigslist, others aren’t so lucky. Which is why this Seattle startup created these risky ads.

Los Angeles-based entrepreneur Amira Fickewirth had a bad feeling about a camera purchase she had set up using Craigslist and thought that there had to be a better and safer way. That’s why she and her team created AroundWire, a startup they are calling a “social exchange.”

Alex Brown described it like this: “…a social network, a marketplace, and a payment system all rolled into one. On AroundWire you can ‘partner’ with people you trust and gain access to their “partners” to create a reliable community of people to buy and sell goods and services with. You can also choose to do business with the greater public AroundWire community and feel secure knowing that we have verified accounts, reputation metrics that mimic the way people consider reputations in real life, and excellent customer service and protection for all parties should anything go awry.”

AroundWire wants to bring things like trust, accountability, and conversation back into the online sales equation. They also want to establish a community in which people can go to the other community members over and over again as a source for new sales, referrals, and repeat business.

Sometimes, on Craigslist, you find that one seller that may have the same hobbies and interests as you and you strike up a relationship. That’s happened a few times with me over electronics, camera equipment, and bird supplies. I’ve dealt with the same few people time and time again on Craigslist so they finally started calling or emailing me directly, knowing I would probably buy what they are selling. I have a list of people I can go to when I burn through technology.

For most though, these are rare occurrences. AroundWire wants to create these collisions over and over again between trusted people who develop relationships using their site.

We had a chance to talk with the AroundWire team.

What does your company do?

AroundWire is the world’s first social exchange – a social network, a marketplace and a payment system all rolled into one. On AroundWire you can “partner” with people you trust and gain access to their “partners” to create a reliable community of people to buy and sell goods and services with. You can also choose to do business with the greater public AroundWire community and feel secure knowing that we have verified accounts, reputation metrics that mimic the way people consider reputations in real life, and excellent customer service and protection for all parties should anything go awry. Whether you’re buying vinyl records, looking for a reliable car mechanic, want a great referral for a graphic designer or are trying to launch your business from home, AroundWire can help.

How did the idea for the site come about?

The idea for the site came when our CEO/founder Amira Fickewirth went to go buy a camera off of someone on Craigslist and felt unsafe. She knew little to nothing about the person she was meeting up with and there was no real accountability if the gear was faulty or the person decided to try something unexpected. It dawned on her that there had to be a better way to buy and sell goods and services online – a place where people interacted on a real name basis and were held accountable for being honest in their transactions.

What problem do you solve?

Somewhere along the line, a gap has developed between the way people do business in the real world and the way they do business online – AroundWire’s mission is to change that, to bring the traditional values of business – trust, accountability, personal connections and earned merit – back to business online.

Why now?

E-commerce sites and social networks are facing a crisis of confidence, with fake profiles, phony reviews and ads sowing an environment of distrust. While other social commerce sites struggle with security and fraud, AroundWire aims to tackle those issues right from the get go. With no fake profiles, no annoying banner ads, and an ultra secure built-in payment system, AroundWire will set a new standard for online consumption that demands a real-world level of trust.

Upcoming milestone:

We will be launching in Beta in October!

Where can people find out more? Any social media links you want to share?

Sign up for a Beta invitation at our landing page: www.AroundWire.com

No really you need to see these hilarious videos that may hit close to home for some Craigslist users.

Employee #1 Monica Selby Gets It Done

Monica Selby, Nibletz, Managing Editor, startups, employee 1

Monica Selby (r) our Managing Editor and employee #1

You may have noticed that my grammar, spelling, and story flow have improved over the last two months.

First, thank you.

Second, that’s not by accident.

As an entrepreneur with two successful exits under my belt, I’ve always been a bit headstrong. I’ve also, for the most part, been a one man show. On my previous blog, we had writers, but no one above that or between me and the writers.

However, as Nibletz continued to grow I realized two things: I couldn’t do it all by myself, and people actually wanted to help me.

Most of you know Nick Tippmann joined me on the founding team late last year.

Well two months ago, we got our “employee #1.” This is a huge milestone and a celebration of any startup’s growth. For us though, we didn’t just got an employee #1. We got a bad ass startup chick, like a boss.

Monica Selby has been writing since the 2nd grade. She was the girl that was always writing stories and organizing writing clubs in middle school with her friends. Even while she was in the “real” work force, writing was always a passion for her, and 3-4 years ago she started looking at writing as a serious career path again.

I met Monica at the Upstart 48 Hour Launch in Memphis, where she had pitched her own startup. Unfortunately her startup wasn’t picked, but rather than go home, she spent the entire weekend helping Danielle Inez and Pink Robin Avenue. Inez won the 48 hour launch competition. Monica continued to stick with it, and with Inez, helping her with her Everywhere Else: The Startup Conference booth.

Monica stayed involved with LaunchMemphis (now Start Co), the organization and startup community in Memphis. She had first become aware of LaunchMemphis through her family friend (and our investor*) Patrick Woods. Monica originally thought Patrick was crazy when he asked her if she ever had business ideas of her own. As I prepared this story, Monica told me how she got involved:

Years ago Patrick encouraged me to let him know if I ever had a business idea. At the time, I had 3 kids under 5, so the last thing I was thinking about was starting a business. But, I got involved with some education stuff here in Memphis and had an idea for a education accelerator for teachers. So, Patrick put me in touch with Eric [Mathews, co-president of LaunchMemphis]. I very quickly learned that idea wouldn’t work in this particular educational climate, but I was hooked into the startup scene here in Memphis.

Monica’s title at Nibletz Media Inc is “Managing Editor.” But, like at any startup, that means she wears a ton of hats. She keeps our team organized; she makes sure Nick and I don’t kill each other; she works to grow her personal networks to help create new content and new content categories. Monica is also an integral part of planning next year’s Everywhere Else: The Startup Conference in Memphis and something else really big being announced next week.

On Monica’s personal blog she writes about issues important to her and her audience, including entrepreneurship, women in entrepreneurship, working women, and of course the coveted work-life balance. With 3 boys–a 7-year-old and 2 5-year-olds–that issue definitely hits home. Monica’s husband Austin is a high school teacher and cross country/track coach, which makes “normal” afternoons nonexistent in the Selby house.

Even with all this going on in her life, Monica is dedicated to Nibletz and the Nibletz mission, spending late nights and weekend hours working on ideas, compiling stories, and making new friends in the startup world. Monica has some exciting ideas she’ll be debuting soon, including a contributor network and several regular series. Make sure to check out her first investor spotlight with Carla Valdes.

So, we at Nibletz are excited to have Monica on board. Reach out and say hi through email (monica@nibletz.com) or on Twitter.

Meet Monica and the Nibletz team in person at this huge startup event.

DC Startup yourClass A Market Place Offering Free Live Classes

Online education is broken. Or so says Jacob Ruytenbeek, CEO and co-founder of DC startup yourClass.

Online education has plenty of faults. For starters, although technology is vital to education, in most cases education is the last segment to benefit from changes in technology. Consider this: while there are a lot of startups tackling online education and online learning, most of them are doing it with video courses which are “so 2000s,” Ruytenbeek told us in an interview.

yourClass is connecting real teachers with real learners in a virtual classroom setting. This isn’t new, but what sets them apart is the fact that it’s free for the first 50 live students. The classes are given live and then archived for those that can’t participate during the live date. Students can purchase the archived classes, which is where the revenue comes into play.

The other thing that sets yourClass apart from similar startups is the social component. Student profiles highlight the students social networks where students can get to know each other and collaborate well beyond the live class.

Check out our discussion with Ruytenbeek below.

What is your startup called?

yourClass

What does your company do?

We are a marketplace for live online classes.

Who are the founders, and what are their backgrounds

Paul Flynn (Chief Technology Officer) brings his knowledge as an eBay engineer with experience in U/I and marketplace design.

Matt Stock (Chief Learning Officer) is a renowned photographer, educator, and TEDx Coconut Grove speaker. He’s a former University of Miami MD student who decided to follow his passion into photography and teaching rather than continuing medical school to become a doctor.

Jacob Ruytenbeek (Chief Executive Officer) is an attorney who started two previous micro-startups including PaperChace and YachtBlogs Network. He’s a 2009 graduate of the Pepperdine University’s Graziadio School of Business and Management.

Where are you based?

Reston, Virginia, just outside of Washington, D.C.

What’s the startup scene like where you are based?

The #DCTech scene is incredible and supportive. We’re surrounded by tech like the huge AOL campus which is about 10 minutes away and comScore, which is located about 2 minutes away. At the same time, we have access to the downtown DC tech scene with places like 1776, the DC Economic Partnership, and a host of other accelerators for startups. People are approachable, mellow, and looking to help each other out.

What problem do you solve?

Let’s face it: Education is broken. Institutions capture much of the value that teachers create in the classroom; the cost of education restricts access to those who need it most; present e-learning solutions are mediocre at best; and MOOC’s are just the internet’s version of overcrowded classrooms. On top of it all, the virtual classroom is stale and boring. Everyone hates them.

Why now?

Education is ripe for disruption. The problem is humongous and growing by the day. Competitors like MOOCs are not sustainable since they don’t fix many of the underlying systemic issues with online education like we do. We need to change it and we can’t wait – so the real question is why not now?

How it works (more detail)

We fix education by creating a marketplace for learning where anyone can take or teach a class on almost any topic. We do it by removing the institution and connecting the prime source of value, teachers, directly with students. Our live classes are 100% free, so that anyone, regardless of ability to pay, can learn on our yourClass. Live classes are capped at 50 people per session and are recorded. Students can purchase forever-access for a fee set by, and shared with, the teacher.

Our virtual classrooms also help form relationships between students with deep social media integration embedded right into the classroom. Learning from fellow students and developing lasting relationships with them has always been a critical element to a successful classroom and we make that possible. Seriously, the yourClass virtual classroom is as good, if not better than the traditional classroom.

Teachers earn at least a majority of the revenue from class sales and are therefore incentivized to develop high quality classes and they’re share depends on the rating of the class (teachers receive a higher percentage share of revenue for five-star rated classes than they do three-star rated classes) .

Features

At it’s core, yourClass is a virtual classroom that offers synchronous one-to-many and many-to-many live video. It has the standard virtual whiteboard, screensharing, notes, and raise-your-hand features that you’d expect to find in a virtual classroom, but it goes further. For instance, to help students build relationships with their classmates, student profiles incorporate information from social media profiles. When you click on a student’s profile, you’ll see information about who they are and how you know them, who your shared connections are, and what your shared interests are. It’s a wonderful way to create relationships in a virtual classroom.

What are some of the milestones your startup has already reached?

1. Passed first successful internal technology test (translation: our software works)

2. Announced our upcoming beta on 7/10/2013

3. Landed our first big partner (can’t say who yet)

4. Reached our first 100 signups within 24 hours of announcing the beta.

What are your next milestones?

1. 1,000 signups before beta opens.

2. 100 live classes at launch

3. Deliver 10,000 hours of live online learning

Where can people find out more? Any social media links you want to share?

Come by yourclass.net and add your name to our beta invite list. Users can also follow us on Twitter and Facebook (links below) to get free swag like t-shirts, stickers, sneak-peeks, and early access invites.

Twitter: @yourclassedu

Facebook.com/yourclassedu

This Florida educational startup won 25,000 at the startup conference below.