Chicago Startup Project Travel Launches Peerfunding For Students For Educational Travel

It seems that more and more things we did as younger students are making their way to online platforms. Memphis startup Boosterville is disrupting the school fundraiser and bringing it online and to the mobile phone. Gradfly is helping students manage their online portfolio. Boston startup Abroad101 is the trip advisor for students studying abroad, and that’s just a few.

Now, a Chicago startup called ProjectTravel has launched their crowdfunding platform to the public.

ProjectTravel allows students that are going on educational trips to crowdfund that trip well beyond their tiny network of local family members who have been left holding the boot.

“We help students take an active role in affording their program when financial aid and scholarships aren’t enough,” said Jennifer Thomas, Project Travel Founder & CEO. “Financial barriers should not block a motivated person from having an educational travel experience.”

Project Travel partners with academic institutions, non-profit and third-party program providers to help more students and program participants go abroad, while directly advising them on how to successfully peer-fund and offering online international education resources. The fundraising platform launched its private beta in January 2013 and has been honing the online experience for travelers in preparation for its public launch. Taking advantage of current web design trends and online crowd-funding best practices, the platform offers a user-friendly way for Project Starters to connect with potential donors and supporters.

Thomas has just completed an extensive beta test of the platform and sure enough there is wide interest. Now the “peer funding” site is launched and anyone who is raising money and support for educational travel experience through a school or organization can use the platform. To Project Travel, educational travel includes: studying abroad, volunteering, interning, teaching, service language, language and cultural exchanges and much more.

Project Travel vets all of the applicants before their projects show up on the site but they’ve left the criteria incredibly open ended so almost anyone can take advantage of it that has a legitimate educational travel mission planned.

You can find out more about Project Travel here.

Check out this other recently launches Chicago travel startup BTSocial, the social network for business travelers.

Is The Gender Gap In Women Funded Startups Closing?

We talk about women entrepreneurs and startup founders a lot here at nibletz.com The Voice Of Startups Everywhere Else. Last month at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013, Sequoia’s Aaref Hilaly said that the number one reason for such a big gender gap is that their aren’t enough women engineers.

Dave Tisch on the other hand said that women aren’t treated seriously in VC meetings, saying that this was the biggest bullshit.

Pemo Theodore the founder of Ezebis prepared the infographic below highlighting where women stand in the startup space.. Some of it is still very disturbing.

For instance, their infographic below says that 41.1% of women founders relied on outsider debt to start a business. The data also says that 21% of women entrepreneurs sought angel capital in 2009 and of those only 9.4% were successful. Also in 2009 only 11% of companies that received venture backing, had a female CEO or founder. Perhaps one of the most disturbing thing AlleyWatch found was that only 3% of all people accepted (total) in all of the Y Combinator classes, have been women.

The good news is that since he 1997 census women owned businesses have gone up 50%. In 2011 8.1 million businesses led by women have generated nearly $13 trillion dollars in revenue.

Check out the infographic below:

This accelerator in Memphis Tennessee, specifically for women founders, extends application deadline through June.

10 Rules For A Great Startup Idea [infographic]

As entrepreneurs we’ve been hammered over the head with the idea, that ideas are worthless without execution and follow through. But how do we know if our ideas are even good enough to pursue.

If you’ve vetted your idea and you think it may be a great startup idea, but you don’t have a team, one of the best places that you can go to vet the idea and get started is a Startup Weekend event. So how do you get to that point?

Founder Institute Founder and CEO Adeo Ressi has a structured approach to analyzing ideas. He shares it at most of the Founder Institute events across the country. Well now the Founder Institute has made that wisdom available to everyone via this infographic checklist below.

Passion, simplicity, revenue, customer knowledge, market knowledge, market size, secret sauce, vetting and killing and sharing your idea are all part of this important approach. You can dive more into these ideas below.

10 Rules to a Great Startup Idea infographic

You can find out more about Founder Institute and their programs across the country at fi.co

Now check out 8 bits of awesomness outlining startup life.

New Zealand Startup Accelerator, Lightning Lab, Attracts $3 Million In Follow On Funding

Lightning Lab, the only New Zealand based startup accelerator that is part of the Global Accelerator Network, held their demo day early this month in Wellington. Now in it’s third year, Lightning Lab is a partnership between a group of private professional investors, the science and innovation arm of New Zealand’s Ministry of Business and Creative HQ a coworking and incubation hub in New Zealand.

The nine startups that participated in the 12 week program were:

Publons: a platform for crowd-sourced peer-review of academic articles, where academics build reputation for their contributions. It provides an alternative to the extremely slow, expensive, and closed status quo that hasn’t changed in 300 years.

WIP: a beautifully simple video workflow platform that lets you watch, share and comment on your work-in-progress videos, so you get better feedback faster.

KidsGoMobile: a startup developing a software service to help parents teach their children to become responsible users of their first smartphone. This tool will notify parents if their child engages in potentially risky activity on their phone and gives them tips on how to resolve it.

Teamisto: a startup changing the way sports clubs raise money by generating new streams of sponsorship revenue.

Expander: A cloud-based tracking and analytics platform that gives manufacturers a weapon to fight back against counterfeits, while connecting them to consumers and procuring valuable data in emerging markets.

Adeez: a startup that provides a specialist mobile marketing solution which enables brands and marketing agencies to improve their ROI with mobile campaigns.

LearnKO delivers online learning programs to English language organisations in Asia. We do this by harnessing the talent of Australasian tutors and delivering this via an online classroom to English language organisations.

Promoki a social media gaming platform for photo and video contests

Questo: a startup using game mechanics in real world activities to increase family engagement for organizations.

Their demo day drew 140 investors from across the country and while they haven’t said which of the nine startups received follow on funding stuff.co.nz reports that $3 million dollars in follow on funding has been committed and details will be released shortly.

“Watching Lightning Lab in action was incredible. These results are what makes it worthwhile for the companies which grow out of weeks of hard work, for the investors and mentors who support them, and for the other entrepreneurs who see it and are inspired into action, turning their own ideas into great startup companies going global from downunder.” Tui Te Hau the CEO of Creative HQ said.

You can find out more about Lightning Lab at lightninglab.co.nz

Now check out Startup America joins forces with Startup Weekend for UpGlobal

Start Co Is Bringing NewMe Accelerator Tour To Memphis June 28-30

The NewMe accelerator program is a critically acclaimed accelerator in San Francisco that specifically targets women and minority startups and founders. They launched their Silicon Valley program in June of 2011, and recently announced an abbreviated “pop up” accelerator tour, coming to cities across the country.

The NewMe pop accelerator will make it’s way to Memphis June 28-30 and be housed at the FedEx Institue of Technology, on the campus of the University of Memphis.

The three-night event June 28-30 features one-on-one coaching from NewME experts, a two-part workshop titled “The Art of the Pitch” that will provide the secrets to a perfect pitch and standing out among other founders. The weekend culminates with “Demo Day,” a night where startups will network with key players in Memphis’ tech scene, special guests from Silicon Valley, and ultimately pitch their idea to a panel of judges that consists of local and Silicon Valley investors.

They’ve already held the pop up program in Miami and Washington DC. In fact, Zoobean, the Washington DC pop up winner, has closed a $500,000 seed round led by Mitch Kapor.

In addition to Memphis Tennessee, the NewMe Popup accelerator will also be held in Detroit, Chicago, Atlanta, Durham, Austin, New York, Kansas City, Los Angeles and Oakland.

Participants in the NewMe popup accelerator in Memphis, or on any other city stop will get one-on-one coaching from Silicon Valley business leaders, hands on workshops, and the opportunity to pitch their idea to local and Valley-based investors with the chance to win $45,000 worth of prizes from our sponsors and the opportunity to participate in the NewME Accelerator in San Francisco.

“We’re excited about NewME’s mission and the important work they are doing to accelerate entrepreneurs across the country. Our mission with Google for Entrepreneurs is to grow entrepreneurial communities and equip them with the resources and technology they need to tackle big ideas and build amazing companies,” said Mary Grove, Director of Global Entrepreneurship Outreach at Google one of the key sponsors for the NewMe Accelerator. “We’re truly excited to be teaming up with NewME to bring this series to Memphis and can’t wait to see the big ideas that come from the teams here.”

Start Co. is eager to welcome NewME to Memphis. “We’re excited that Memphis was selected for this exclusive opportunity,” said co-president and CEO Eric Mathews. “It’s a privilege to participate as their local community partner.”

You can apply and find out more about NewMe here and Start Co here.

Are you working on your pitch deck? Check out this Pop!

Memphis’ Startup WorkForPie Selected For Southland For Kufikia

Cliff McKinney and Brad Montgomery, the Memphis based startup team behind WorkForPie have been working on a new product called Kufikia for the past few months. McKinney explained to nibletz that Kufikia loosely means “to achieve” with that they have come up with a learning platform for advanced software developers.

With a new innovative approach, combining cohort based learning, typically found in an accelerator program, with mentoring, and early stage job placement, they were able to get selected as one of the first 20 startups in the Startup Village at the Southland conference in Nashville Tennessee next month. We revealed the entire list of 20 startups earlier today.

Kufikia participants will get the “3 S’s” out of the program according to McKinney. Those three S’s are; structure (a 9 week long curriculum), study buddies (cohorts of 10 students going through the program together), and support coming from the platforms sponsors. Each cohort will have three company sponsors that will alternate in three week intervals throughout the course of the program.

McKinney and Montgomery plan on starting the first cohort in late June. For the first program they are targeting participants in Silicon Valley, the Pacific Northwest, New York and Nashville. Actually four cohorts will run simultaneously. Although this is an online program they want the students and company resources to be in close proximity to each other.

Kufikia has already attracted some heavyweight sponsors for their platform, which they aren’t identifying just yet.

The sponsors will benefit by working closely with the students in the program and hopefully converting them to new employees. McKinney says that most companies spend upwards of $15,000 providing internships to potential employees that may not work out. By working with the students over the nine week period the company sponsors will develop relationships with them and hopefully hire them on.

The sponsors participating will have jobs to fill, and hopefully with those students. McKinney and Montgomery are making a bold bet on the success of the program. Sponsors are under an agreement to provide mentoring and coaching to the cohort but don’t make a financial commitment to Kufikia until they actually hire someone.

Both Montgomery and McKinney are looking forward to showing off this new product to the attendees at Southland including over 41 venture capital and angel firms that have committed to attend.

Find out more about Kufikia here.

Check out this awesome guest post by McKinney here: Are accelerators everywhere else better at producing groundbreaking innovation?

We Talk With Frank Denbow The GoTo Guy For StartupThread And New York Tech

Once your startup moves from idea stage to something, that often times involves a logo. The next natural move is getting that logo put on whatever you can, especially t-shirts. It seems that no matter how big or small the startup, there’s always a t-shirt for it. NY entrepreneur and startup community leader Frank Denbow has embraced that as the founder of StartupThreads.

StartupThreads is a startup itself that allows startups to go on their site, design, upload, create and have their merchandise shipped. Dealing primarily in startups, Denbow offers very competitive pricing and has seen closets and closets full of startup t-shirts.

Startup culture is becoming more mainstream. Walking the streets of any big startup community, whether it be San Francisco, New York, Boulder or even Nashville you’ll see your fair share of startup wear. Going somewhere like TechCrunch Disrupt or SXSW and you’ll see t-shirt overload. In fact, one of the travel tips I’ve given for SXSW is only pack a t-shirt to wear to the event, startups and bands have your week long wardrobe covered.

As you can imagine with the amount of startups in the world Denbow is a pretty busy guy. But in addition to StartupThreads he’s working on another startup simultaneously and in the infamous words of Billy Mays (RIP), but that’s not all.

Denbow also finds time to attend the NY Startup Meetups, plan and help with NY Startup Weekend and curate the Startup Digest. He also sits on the board for the Academy of Software Engineering.

Denbow is well respected and well liked amongst the startup community across the country. In fact he’s even good friends with our friend Denver Hutt who we reported on earlier this week.

Check out our interview with Denbow below he talks about Startup Threads and how the NY tech startup community has grown so fast.

We’ve got over 50 startup stories from TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013.

Here Are The First 20 Startups In Southland’s Startup Village Highlighting The South East

We’re less than a month away from the inaugural Southland conference combining the best of southern culture and technology. The two day conference takes place June 12-13th at the Cannery Ballroom and the Mercy Lounge in downtown Nashville. It’s been strategically placed between the CMA Music Festival and Bonaroo.

Launch Tennessee, a public/private partnership with the state of Tennessee, and responsible for the state’s nine accelerator regions, is spearheading and organizing the Southland Conference along with the Music City Music Council.

The conference is highlighting startups and entrepreneurship across the 12 states in the southeast. To that end, the first twenty startups (out of 50) have been selected for the startup village. These startups will get a chance to show off in front of all of the event attendees including 41 venture capital and angel firms that have committed to attending the event. They’ll also be competing for $10,000.

The 20 startups released so far are a great representation of the entire south east region, many of which we’ve covered here at nibletz.com the voice of startups everywhere else.

Distil Networks, Washington DC area (Northern Virginia) is a technology startup that protects proprietary online content from bots and scrapers. We covered Distil back in August, here.

The Royalty Exchange: is a Raleigh based startup that provides an online marketplace platform for those who want to buy, sell, license, all types of alternative assets and royalty streams.

Variable Inc, is a Chattanooga startup that makes the NODE device for iPhones and Android phones. This bluetooth connected device has sensors built in a small body that measure a variety of things,

World Housing Solution: an Orlando based startup, wants to make a difference in the lives of others through the design, manufacture and construction of sustainable buildings. They do this through structural, insulated, composite panels.

Banyan, based in Chattanooga they were the big winner at last year’s GigTank investor day securing an additional $100,000 at the end of the investor day pitches. The startup began in Florida and relocated to Chattanooga. They provide a cloud based collaboration tool for researchers and did a great job during this pitch to show how the gigabit ethernet in Chattanooga benefit their startup.

QuickCue: is another Chattanooga startup that we actually saw pitch at an event in Nashville. They provide a table reservation and communication platform for restaurants.

Verdeeco: is a smart grid analytics startup based in Atlanta.

Do 5 Things, based in Knoxville Tennessee this startup is a marketing optimization platform for utilities looking to increase rebate redemptions and encourage behavior change.

Patient Focus, is a Nashville startup that is exclusively for patient pay collections “after insurance and before bad debt”

Kufikia, is a new off-shoot of Memphis based WorkForPie. We’ve covered WorkForPie extensively at nibletz.com. Kufikia is a hybrid between online accelerator, internship, and hiring tool connecting highly skilled developers and software engineers to companies through cohort based learning.

Splitsecnd is a Nashville based hardware technology startup focused on connecting motorists in accidents to help. Similar to Onstar but focused on splitsecnd quick response, the devices sensors can determine accidents and connects the motorist to a 24 hour emergency response center.

viaCycle is an Atlanta bike sharing startup focused on the “next generation of bike sharing” we reported on them back in April of 2012.

VIPAAR This startup based in Birmingham Alabama at the Innovation Depot is “telepresence software”. They were the first startup to receive funding from the Central Alabama Angel Network. We covered that story last September.

American Songspace: is a Nashville startup that according to our friend Milt Capps at Venture Nashville and is “relaunching this summer” and they describe the platform as “a song catalog management system,”

Beam Technologies, is a Kentucky based startup that has literally appified the toothbrush. We interviewed their CEO Alex Frommeyer back in August.

Evermind, is a Nashville startup and Jumpstart Foundry alumni. The founding team came out of Griffin Technologies. We saw them pitch their hardware startup that monitors a loved one by their electric current habits. Check out this innovative startups pitch here.

Ridepost was a graduate of the Iron Yard accelerator in Greenville South Carolina and is now incubating at the Fort based in the 1776 DC space. We interviewed this ride sharing startup back in August.

Gatske, it’s not a sexy startup but definitely useful. This startup based in Greenville SC helps plan and manage audits.

NextGxDx is a Nashville startup and 2010 graduate of Jumpstart Foundry. They’re an online marketplace for genetic testing.

Populr.me is a Nashville startup. We’ve covered them extensively and their co-founder Nick Holland has been an extremely useful resource, and almost mentor to the Nibletz team. We’ve covered Holland and Populr extensively here at nibletz.com

Here’s more on Southland at nibletz.com The Voice of startups everywhere else.

Big Data Conference, StampedeCon, Heads Back To St. Louis Featuring Walmart, Ford & More

If you’re in a big data startup, the StampedeCon big data conference in St.Louis is a can’t miss event. Last year we partnered with StampedeCon as their official media sponsor. Speaker after speaker explained this fast growing technology sector, that’s spawning new, great startups every day.

Last year’s inaugural event featured speakers from Facebook, Read Write Web, Kraft foods and more.

This year’s event will be held July 30-31st at the Washington University School of Medicine and will feature speakers from; Walmart, Ford Motor Company, Deloitte, Riot Games and more.

“Big Data is growing exponentially. Understanding how to control the amount of data available and create a strategy to leverage it is vital to today’s workplace,” said Gary Stiehr, StampedeCon organizer. “Companies without an understanding of Big Data are at a severe disadvantage in today’s marketplace. StampedeCon’s goal is to provide that knowledge to everyone.”

StampedeCon runs July 30-31. The first day will provide insight into developing data and analytics strategies. The second day presents a view into the technologies available to implement data and analytics strategies.

StampedeCon 2013 training partners include Cloudera and Inferology. On July 29^th, Inferology is offering a pre-conference course on NoSQL databases. On August 1^st, Cloudera is offering post-conference training workshops on Hadoop, Hive and Pig.

StampedeCon features presentations benefiting both seasoned IT professionals and those getting started with Big Data. The agenda includes twelve speakers and a panel discussion, with the following agenda highlights:Big Data Analytics: Inside and Out
Michael Cavaretta, Ford Motor Company
Cavaretta will present three areas of opportunity for Big Data Analytics: improving internal processing, understanding customers though external data (including social) and vehicle sensor networks. The presentation will include tips for starting your own Big Data projects.

Big Data at Riot Games

Jerome Boulon, Riot Games

Riot Games sought to understand and improve the player experience for its 32 million users. Boulon will review the challenges they faced creating a Big Data infrastructure that delivers the ability to provide continued insight.

Five Trends in Analytics… How to Take Advantage Today

John Lucker, Deloitte Consulting

Lucker will discuss the latest advancements in the world of analytics and offer strategies for tapping into their potential. The topic areas include visualization and design, mobile analytics and strategy analytics.

Big Data, Big Law

Anthony Martin, Walmart

This presentation will tell the story of one global, multi-channel company’s walk through the increasingly complicated legal, compliance security maze while trying to recognize the implicit value of Big Data programs.

For more information visit Stampedecon.com

St. Louis is one of the fastest growing tech cities in the U.S., here’s why.

Buffalo NY Startup Gradfly, Portfolio’s For High School Students

Everyone’s familiar with how artists and designers have portfolio’s for their work. An artist or designer’s best work is kept in one place, now online of course, so that it’s easy for fans, clients and even buyers to see.

Well Buffalo NY startup Gradfly is doing the same exact thing for high school students with a concentration in science and technology students who are “building the most awesome things”, Oscar Pedroso, Gradfly’s CEO and co-founder said in an interview.

Students who enjoy STEM-oriented activities such as building robots, writing code, or solving complex math equations, can build an online portfolio and share their technical creations and achievements in picture, video, or Pinterest-like format with friends, colleges and companies. GradFly’s vision is to bridge the gap between a STEM education, technical training and employability.

GradFly is committed to help open doors in STEM and STEM only. It’s not just going after any high school or college student, GradFly is going after students who want to succeed in this new information-based and highly technological society; the company even welcomes curious students. GradFly understands students need to develop their capabilities in STEM to levels much beyond what was considered in the past. At GradFly, talented students are taking their first step by creating an online portfolio and then connecting to technical colleges and companies that are looking for tomorrow’s scientists, technologists, engineers and mathematicians. GradFly is empowering these students (and their parents) to make the best and most affordable decisions about their education and career in STEM. For college and companies, GradFly will standout by offering modern tools focused on sourcing, talent analytics, assessment, interview management and search.

The startup’s team, which also includes Anna Hadnagy (CIO), Elliott Regan (Front End Programmer) and Herb Susmann (Chief Architect) were selected last fall for the Z80 Labs Technology Incubator.

The work they’ve done over the last 9 months really paid off as they were one of the startups selected to pitch on the TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013 Battlefield stage.

During that appearance, the judges questioned why high school STEM students couldn’t just use GitHub. To that Pedroso says that Gradfly is more visual, helping students tell a story with their work. They also have a focused community of high school aged students, where of course there is no age requirement for GitHub.

Check out our video interview with Pedroso below and for more information visit gradfly.com

Check out all these other startup stories from TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013

Kentucky Startup Givr Launches Frictionless Giving To Charitable Causes

As the mobile wallet space and frictionless payments for consumers continues to explode, socially charged entrepreneurs are starting to explore using that technology for good. Specifically, socially conscious startups are starting to embrace technology, and mobile technology to facilitate charitable transactions.

Last week in Memphis Tennessee, Pam & Tom Cooper launched their startup Boosterville, out of the Seed Hatchery accelerator program. Boosterville embraces mobile technology, incorporates loyalty, rewards, mobile payments and fundraising, all in one easy to use app.

Now we drive up the road to Danville Kentucky where Brock Klein along with Brushfire Interactive started Givr.

“Givr is a native iPhone payments application dedicated to helping charitable organizations achieve their giving goals. The Givr app provides users with an elegant, frictionless giving experience that dramatically reduces the time and stress associated with mobile giving.” Phoenix based Brushfire’s Brandon Clarke told us in an interview.

The logic here being that as it gets easier to actually donate money to a cause or charity, more money will be donated. This has been shown time and time again when natural disaster’s have struck and the Red Cross has mobilized donations via text message. With the simplicity of using a mobile phone to quickly donate money, more money comes in.

Check out the rest of our interview with Givr below.

Who are the founders and what are their backgrounds?

Givr was founded out of a passion for technology and philanthropy by Brock Klein. After studying economics and statistical analysis at Centre College in Kentucky, Brock worked in the financial services industry. His evolving interest in digital development led him to Phoenix, Arizona based BrushfireInteractive, where he worked as project manager. With the support of Brushfire’s founder, Gabe Cooper, Brock began to refine the scope of Givr and development began in the Fall of 2012.

Where are you based?

Danville, KY (Central Kentucky)

What is the startup culture like where you are based?

Nascent. Startups have been coming out of Kentucky for a while but the community is just beginning to get connected and evolve.

What problem does your startup solve?

Remove the friction with routine giving. Don’t have cash on you? Don’t have a checkbook? Not in front of your computer? You can still give to a cause or organization important to you.

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

One of our greatest early challenges was defining the scope of the project, balancing big dreams with a lean launch.

What are some of the milestones your startup has achieved?

Our first milestone was closing our seed round of financing, catalyzing our development process.

Our biggest milestone was launching our iOS app in the App Store.

What are your next milestones

Our next milestone is 100 nonprofit organizations adopting our platform with at least 1,000 users (Givr’s) using the app for their routine giving with these organizations by the end of the year.

Who are your mentors and role models?

We wouldn’t be where we are today without the mentorship and counsel we’ve had. One of our early investors, First Southern National Bank, has consistently given invaluable counsel – particularly the chairman and founder, Jess Correll and the Director of Culture and Outreach, Dan Lewis. Gabe Cooper and LorenKutsko of Brushfire Interactive have also given consistent and indispensable advice and insight into the mobile giving space. Finally, Brian Crall, an executive coach and successful business leader, consistently points us in the right strategic direction.

What are some of the advantages/disadvantages growing your startup outside of Silicon Valley.

Quiet. We’ve been able to put our heads down and focus on our product and our mission. We’ve had all the benefits of top line expertise without any of the noise.

What’s next for your startup?

We’re moving into the broader launch of our platform. “How can we help people express their generosity through mobile?” Wherever that answer leads is where we will go.

Where can people find out more?

People can see our product at www.givrmobile.com.

Startup America and Startup Weekend have merged, story here.

Memphis Animation Startup ProdigiArts To Partner With Nibletz Community

Prodigi Arts is an animation startup that works out of the same incubator that we work out of. While an animation studio may not be your typical high growth potential startup, as a technology company based in Memphis founder Chris O’Conner and all around jack of all trades and Public Relations Coordinator for the company Joshua Colfer, are running the company with the vigor of any startup.

They rely on the resources that other startups in Memphis rely on and they face many of the same issues tech startups face in a medium sized revitalizing market. As Colfer tells us below, O’Conner started Prodigi Arts as a side business or side startup and then made the decision to take the plunge and take the company full time.

Now both O’Conner and Colfer will contribute to the Nibletz community providing content based on their experiences as entrepreneurs, experience in technology and experience in technology. Prodigi Arts will contribute on a wide range of themes, from best practices for startups resorting to animation videos for telling their startup stories, to taking the plunge and pushing an idea forward.

Both O’Conner and Colfer are committed to the world of startups and animation. After just moving into the incubator they made it appoint to attend the first everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference and then sought out the nibletz team to share their thoughts. Colfer and O’Conner are joining an evergrowing stable of great people contributing to the nibletz community like Sarah Ware (co-founder and CEO of Markerly), Mike Muhney the godfather of CRM, and several members of the Young Entrepreneurs Council.

Below Colfer tells us a lot more about Prodigi Arts and just why they’re part of the nibletz, “everywhere else” community. If you want to take your animation project to the next level you can find out more about Prodigi Arts here at prodigiarts.com and you can email Josh directly at jcolfer@prodigiarts.com

Prodigi Arts is an animation studio that produces memorable and poignant multimedia productions used in advertising, commercials, product development, training videos.

Prodigi was founded in 2005 by Memphis native Chris O’ Conner. Steeped heavily in the arts world, Chris grew up sketching, singing, composing music and performing for audiences everywhere. After graduating from Middle Tennessee State University in 2006, Chris had the opportunity to continue his education in animation in Southern California, or return to Memphis to grow and cultivate Prodigi Arts. He chose to return to his hometown to work as a Marketing Representative for the Germantown Performing Arts Center from 2007 to 2010, and served as a Creative Consultant for the performing arts Group, Watoto De Africa as well. During this time, he also began fine tuning the business plan for Prodigi Arts and making connections in the area.

We are based in Memphis, TN.

The startup culture in Memphis can be likened to the AV kids in high school who find support and belonging in the dark confines of the technology room, who one day hope to join the society of filmmakers or special effects artists. Fortunately, startups in the Bluff City have the support of organizations like Launch Memphis, Emerge Memphis and the University of Memphis Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. Since Memphis is a city that is not as quick to embrace innovation and technological advances, startups face some difficulty securing capital from investors willing to take risks on fresh ideas.

Prodigi Arts creates memorable, engaging and entertaining productions through the art of animation. Capturing the attention of audiences is a difficult endeavor for any company, small and big alike. We solve this problem by incorporating 2D & 3D animation, motion graphics, live action and video production into every project. We solve the problem of communicating complex ideas in a simple and concise manner for companies and organizations to tell their stories in the most understandable way possible.

A difficulty that we have faced is entering into the entrepreneurial process without investors or startup capital. Thus far, we have been able to subside entirely on revenue generated from client projects, with the intentions of holding private ownership over the company.

A recent stride that we have made as a company has been our Corporate Sponsorship of Leadership Memphis, which is shared by large entities like United Way and FedEx. In addition, we have signed a three year contract to create the animated and video productions for the CFO of the Year and Small Business Awards with Memphis Business Journal. In addition, Prodigi’s founder, Chris O’ Conner has spoken at numerous events about being a minority business owner, and was honored with the Innovator of the Year Award in Decemeber of 2012 at the “Agents of Change” Gala.

Within the next year, we hope to take on projects that will stretch our creative abilities as an animation studio and grow a more diverse portfolio that highlight different animation techniques. We also aim to become a staple animation company in the Memphis and Mid-South region within the next year that companies will go to when they seek animated commercials, instead of larger firms in the New York or Los Angeles area.

One of Chris’ mentors is a marketing professor at Middle Tennessee State University, who has helped him organize his business plan and strategize about how to market animation services to businesses in the area. Another is Dale Carnegie, author of the book “How to Win Friends and Influence People”. While no longer alive, Carnegie’s ideas about forming business relationships and working within the framework of others’ objectives is an imperative lesson for Prodigi as we seek to make connections with companies and grow our clientele base.

One of our advantages to being located in Memphis is that we are the only animation studio to occupy a niche that has previously gone unoccupied in the past. Being the only animation company, we can provide a creative service at a lower cost than the larger studios in New York or Los Angeles. However, the associations with animation have at times dissuaded businesses from using our services. More often than not, companies assume that we provide animation for children’s shows and cartoons, rather than for companies looking to tell their stories in creative ways. In Metropolitan areas, animation is used regularly in advertisements and commercials, and provides a memorable alternative to video production. Many businesses in Memphis have yet to think of these kinds of applications for animation, and still hold on to their assumptions of animation for children’s shows and cartoons. In essence, we are creating a market for animation.

At the moment we have just finished a live action animation project with Hnedak Bobo Group, and will be starting on the Small Business of the Year Awards with the Memphis Business Journal within a week. After that we have potential clients in mind that we will focus on reaching out to in hopes of partnering with them to bring their brands to life.

We can be found out at www.prodigiarts.com

Facbook

Twitter Name: prodigiarts1

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Chicago’s Startup Community Announces New Founder’s Circle

Chicago is a special place for startups. Despite a crazy warped opinion from Pando Daily a while back, people have started to see Chicago’s thriving entrepreneurial and startup ecosystem for what it really is.

While the verdict is out on the actual success of Groupon, we can’t discount the story of it’s rise to fame and popularity from it’s downtown Chicago headquarters. Despite the fact that ousted CEO Andrew Mason is retreating to Silicon Valley, Groupon, like Belly and GrubHub are products of the Chicago startup ecosystem.

While Groupon, Belly, GrubHub, Lightbank, SimpleRelevance and others are names a lot of tech entrepreneurs from across the country know, what’s really amazing is the success that the 1871 incubator has had since it opened it’s doors. 1871 has housed 225 startup companies, creating 800 jobs. 1871 companies have generated $12.7 million dollars in revenue and drew $27.6 million in venture capital. Of course we can’t forget to mention that Chicago is home to one of the newest Techstars programs.

With this wild growth at just one address (albeit a gigantic one) in downtown Chicago, the entrepreneurial leaders in the city announced Wednesday the formation of Chicago Founder’s Circle (CFC). CFC is a new Peer-to-Peer Networking Group offered exclusively to Founders and CEOs of emerging growth companies in Chicago, with a focus on supporting and nurturing the expanding and vibrant emerging growth company community in the region.

CFC was founded by thought leaders actively involved in the emerging growth sector from a variety of different Chicago-focused organizations, including: DLA Piper, Lightbank, Northwestern University, Deloitte, Dignitas, NEA, and Silicon Valley Bank. CFC is structured as an annual group of 25-30 entrepreneurs who will be invited to participate in a series of four events that will offer them the opportunity to connect with one another and listen to prominent speakers. A fifth networking event will serve as a “graduation” type event that will bring together the current class and, in future renditions, alumni from previous CFC classes.

“We created the Chicago Founders Circle because of the amazing entrepreneurial talent that exists in Chicago,” said Greg Grossman, Partner at DLA Piper. “By connecting world-class mentors, advisors and investors with Chicago’s most successful entrepreneurs, we’ll have the opportunity to contribute to the local economy in a very profound way. The CFC leadership team is excited to use its collective knowledge and skills to foster the growth of these companies and help these entrepreneurs succeed.”

“There is a growing and burgeoning startup ecosystem that has been building in Chicago for a while now,” added Bill Pescatello, Principal at Lightbank. “Last year alone saw a record-breaking $391 million in funding awarded to 197 local startups, which confirms the need and opportunity for a peer-to-peer networking group in Chicago. Our hope is that CFC will become one of the anchors of Chicago’s start-up community for today’s industry leaders and the future generation of motivated, young power players.”

Here’s more Chicago startup coverage at nibletz.com The Voice of Startups Everywhere Else.

Startup Weekend & Startup America Join Forces, Launch UpGlobal & Up.co

With an official announcement forthcoming on Thursday morning at 7am, Startup America and Startup Weekend are joining forces for a new initiative called UpGlobal.

The Startup America partnership, started two years ago by AOL co-founder Steve Case and the Case Foundation, isn’t winding down, but rather “Winding Up” according to Scott Case (no relation), the current CEO of Startup America. The new global partnership will connect entrepreneurs with their communities and the resources they need most.

While Startup America is based in Washington DC and received the blessing of President Barrack Obama at their launch, the new organization will be based at Startup Weekend’s headquarters in Seattle. The collective new organization promises that “startup communities everywhere can expect stronger support and resources to better empower local leadership. The root of Startup America, Startup Weekend and now Up Global is to enable and support entrepreneurs and startups to grow in their hometowns as companies and entrepreneurial communities.

UpGlobal is funded by the Case Foundation, Google Inc, Microsoft, Coca Cola, The Kauffman Foundation and more, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Startup America Regional Champions, myself included, were informed that this partnership was on the horizon at both the last Startup America Summit in Phoenix Arizona last month and in a regions conference call last week. Others not familiar with the plans have been wondering why with Startup America, still a startup itself, are they already merging. Startup America founder and Chairman Steve Case told the Wall Street Journal:

“We designed Startup America from the get-go as a three-year sprint,” says Mr. Case. “The idea was to see what could be accomplished in three years and go from there.”

“After evaluating the situation, Plan A was to stick to our knitting and wrap things up (as initially communicated and planned) and option B was to find a ‘go forward’ strategy.” Scott Case said.

That go forward strategy is Up Global. Over the past several months Startup America and Startup Weekend began growing closer and closer in their relationship to serve entrepreneurial communities. Late last year Startup Weekend Next, with Steve Blank was launched in partnership with Startup America. This curriculum is provided to entrepreneurs looking to grow and dive deeper into starting up and entrepreneurship. Startup Weekend and Startup America held an abbreviated form of the curriculum during SXSW this year in Austin.

Startup America laid the foundation for their work in their first year. In their second year they focused on growing regions, over 30 of them to date, through launch events, networking opportunities, educational opportunities and other resources.

At nibletz we attended, participated in and reported on several Startup America events including the launch of Startup Georgia, Startup Arkansas, CES’ Eureka Park, SXSW and several others. Most events helped forge new relationships between like minded entrepreneurs that could be across the street or across the country.

Each Startup America region participated in the nationwide organization in the way that fit them best. Some regions were extremely successful as Tech Cocktail founder Frank Gruber pointed out in this article, Startup Tennessee launched a major network of accelerators and brought together entrepreneurs from Tennessees larger cities like Memphis, Chattanooga and Nashville. Washington DC’s Startup America Champion Evan Burfield, and former Startup America Director Donna Harris formed 1776 the new hub of entrepreneurship in the nation’s capital. Other regions like Startup Maryland, Startup Arizona, Startup Florida and Startup Indiana have been very active throughout their time in the organization.

This looks like a natural, and great move for the Startup America Partnership.

As someone who’s been deeply involved with Startup America and a big participant in Startup Weekend I hope that going forward the organization grows as the directors of the new organization have laid out. My biggest concern comes from the “event nature of Startup Weekend.

In several cities that have had multiple Startup Weekend events the entrepreneurs who participate have continued to meet up, network and support each other. This is usually dependent on the frequency of events and the resources already on the ground, or forming in those cities. In other cities, like Memphis by experience, after the Startup Weekend event in July resources were somewhat limited.

With the intellectual, and social capital from the collective new organization it looks like UpGlobal will be able to provide ongoing support to the regions that Startup America has built to date.

You can find out more at their new site up.co

Check out more of our Startup America coverage here.