Tennessee Showcasing Startups, Culture And More At Southland June 11th and 12th

Launch Tennessee and the Music City Music Council have teamed up to hold a new startup and innovation conference in Nashville in June. The conference, called Southland, butts up to two of the regions biggest music events, Bonaroo and the Country Music Association Music Festival.

This unique scheduling allows fans of both music and innovation to plan a nice 10 day trip to Nashville and enjoy a mixture of both.

Southland will feature venture capitalists and angel investors from across the country along with an extensive lineup of speakers and panelists with a firsthand knowledge of the power of innovation and its ability to transform a region’s ecosystem. Speakers include Sarah Lacy (Founder, PandoDaily), Michael Sippy (Vice President of Consumer Products, Twitter), Michael Marquez (Co-Founder, Code Advisors), KC Estenson (SVP & GM, CNN Digital), Ali Partovi (Co-Founder, Code.org), and many more from CNN, Scripps Networks Interactive, IBM and others.

“The Southeast is a hotbed for technology startups,” notes Charlie Brock, CEO of LaunchTN. “This conference is going to be the premier event for bringing together the best our region has to offer in entrepreneurs and cultural tastemakers, along with investors, technology and health care executives from around the country.”

In addition to the usual startup conference programming, like a startup village, and engaging keynotes speakers and panels, Southland will also offer a “Makers Marketplace” of southern culture featuring local musicians, BBQ pit masters, small batch distillers and southern artisans.

Unlike the national everywhereelse conference hosted in Memphis Tennesse, which highlights startups and innovation across, Southland is poised to be the largest regional conference for innovation and startups. Sandwiched in between the two major musical events, the Southland conference will offer an unheard of and very attractive cultural and innovation injection to all attendees.

Tickets are only $300, interested in attending visit southlandse.com

Nibletz provide the best startup coverage in the southeast, here’s more!

500 Startups Alum: Spinnakr On The Importance Of Laying A Foundation At Home

This week nibletz, the voice of startups everywhere else, is participating in the first annual LaunchYourCity, mission trip to Silicon Valley. The trip, sponsored by American Airlines and Uber, is a chance for startups, and ecosystem influencers from Memphis to experience the high paced startup life in the Valley.

Through Memphis native and 500 statups alum Frank Langston, and our good friend Sarah Ware at Markerly, we got to spend a good portion of the day at 500 startups.

Internally at nibletz we actually debated taking this trip up until the last minute. So while we’re the voice of startups everywhere else, there is a lot to be learned from founders out here in Silicon Valley. First things first about 90% of them aren’t actually natives, most have moved from somewhere else.

To that end, we got a chance to talk with two startups, Spinnakr and WayGo, about the role laying foundations in their hometowns played in building their startups prior to heading out west.

500 Startups has no requirement on where a startup has to reside after the completion of their 4 month program. We gathered that about half of the founders in each cohort choose to stay in Silicon Valley while the others either move back home or to cities that strategically work better for their companies.

Spinnakr is one of the startups that stayed in the valley. They actually graduated out of the 500 startups accelerator in 2012 (the 2013 class just graduated last month). Michael Mayernick, co-founder at Spinnakr, talks to us in the video below about the importance laying roots and a foundation at home played in Spinnakr’s growth and success.

Maryernick is still intune with what’s going on in Washington DC, itself a city where innovation is progressing at a very fast pace. Mayernick was named a Tech Titan by Washingtonian Magazine in 2011. He curates the DC Startup Digetst and co-organizes the DC Tech Meetup.

Check out the video below and for more info visit: Spinnakr.com

Check out more of our 500 Startups coverage at nibletz.com

Chicago Startup Bus Team: MyBestRX Pitches In Startup Bus Finals At [sxsw]

A team of ambitious entrepreneurs, that hope to tip the scale when it comes to enabling affordable local healthcare, completed the first in their suite of mobile apps, designed for just that, while on board The Startup Bus.

The idea behind MyBestRX is simple. When people purchase prescription drugs from the pharmacy, there is no standard “MAP” pricing. You could very well find your prescription at your pharmacy for hundreds of dollars, and find it a mile down the road for half of that.

MyBestRX hopes to solve the problem of looking for the best price on prescription drugs. The app will allow you to key in or speak your prescription and it will return results based on both proximity and cost.

Other features include the voice response, as described above, and the ability for the user to take a photo of their current prescriptions and have it filled by way of email or fax directly from mobile.

MyBestRx positions themselves as “A Personalized Rx Concierge”, perhaps the easiest way to find and purchase prescriptions.

Check out the video below and for more info visit nibletz.com keyword: SXSW

5 Rules For Naming Your Startup: Memphis Firm Offers Advice In SXSW Panel [sxsw]

60 year old Memphis advertising and PR firm archer>malmo presented their panel “When Bad Names Happen To Good Startups” last Monday at SXSW Interactive. Over 100 people attended the panel discussion and stayed throughout the entire hour long session.

archer>malmo Chief Creative Officer Gary Backaus and Senior Copy Writer Justin Dobbs presented the entertaining hour long session for startups curious about naming. The duo of advertising executives mixed humor with the session which made it quite entertaining.

Despite having a client roster that includes names like Pfizer, Verizon and RJ Reynolds, Dobbs broke the ice and established credibility by making light of the fact that the firm is located in Memphis. He showed a few slides of new technologies that archer>malmo currently employs including; email, and intranet. He also showed a slide of a rack card rack that you would find at a hotel, saying they were creating something new called the “Take One”.

When it came down to content though, Dobbs and Backaus gave out some great tips in their “5 Rules for Naming Your Startup”.

1) you’re not naming a startup you’re naming a brand.

2) Create a first impression that’s positive, intriguing and clear

3) Don’t create conceptual or technical hurdles

4) When necessary be descriptive, whoa whoa not that descriptive

5) If it ain’t broke.

It was during the fifth rule where Backaus discussed the work that the firm is doing with nibletz.com The Voice Of Startups Everywhere Else. (disclaimer: nibletz is a portfolio company for archer>malmo a>m ventures arm).

One of the biggest takeaways we got from the panel wasn’t an actual rule “You don’t need a big idea for your name you just need a name for your big idea” Backaus told the audience.

Find out more about archer>malmo here and a>m ventures here.

Here’s more of our great startup coverage from SXSW 2013

Meet The 10 Startups In The Nike Techstars Accelerator

Techstars, the world renowned accelerator network has been beefing up there offerings with new locations, like Techstars Chicago and new vertical accelerators in conjunction with Microsoft and Nike. When announced late last year, the startup space was on fire over the possibilities that would come from an accelerator driven by Nike and TechStars.

The Nike accelerator is buit around their NikeFuel digital platform and the Nike Fuel band.

“We are excited by the response to the Nike+ Accelerator and the high caliber of applicants to the program,” Stefan Olander, Nike’s vice president of digital sport, said in a news release. “We recently celebrated the first year of NikeFuel, and the Accelerator program is a natural next step to broaden and enhance the Nike+ ecosystem – allowing Nike to offer richer experiences to athletes of all levels.”

As with most TechStars branded accelerators, hundreds of teams applied. Here are the 10 that were chosen, as reported by the Portland Business Journal.

FitDeck (San Diego, Calif.) — Digital decks of exercise playing cards that deliver ever-changing workouts for fitness and sports. (Fitdeck.com)
GoRecess (New York) — Helps users find, book and review fitness activities. (Gorecess.com)
Chroma.io — Indie game studio that creates virtual worlds tied to real-world activity. (jumpbots.chroma.io)
CoachBase — Provides a digital sports coaching platform. (Coachba.se)
GoFitCause — Leverages fitness data as a means of raising money for charities. (Gofitcause.com)
HighFive — Ad network for health and fitness apps that helps people achieve goals by rewarding them along their journey. (Highfive.io)
Sprout At Work (Toronto) — Provider of corporate wellness solutions using social and gamification tools to inspire employees and employers. (Sproutatwork.com)
GeoPalz (Boulder, Colo.) — An interactive gaming and rewards platform for kids and families. (Geopalz.com)
Incomparable Things — Creates activity-driven fantasy sports leagues. (Incomparablethings.com)
RecBob (Cedar Rapids, Iowa) — Offers a platform that makes recreational sports easy by organizing play. (Recbob.com)

Find out more about TechStars here.

Check out more accelerator stories at nibletz.com

Xoogler Spotlight: Splenvid Zero Button Movie Creation [SXSW]

Two former Googlers (xooglers) who once worked on the UX team at the internet giant have put together something new and exciting called Splenvid. They spent over a decade at Google building maxable scalable systems so they are taking what they learned there and putting it into their new startup.

Splenvid is the self proclaimed “Zero Button Movie Creation” platform that allows users to tell stories through photos and videos uploaded to the cloud. That’s where the magic happens.

Splenvid is also fully collaborative and content can be combined to make even fuller movies.

All of the media that is uploaded from the user is then intertwined together automagically by Splenvid and spit back out as a complete story.

We got to see the pitch for Splenvid at the TechCocktail Pitch Jam event as SXSW (where I was a judge). While the app hasn’t been released yet, it may be just what the world needs in terms of easy ways to do media. Ease of operation are what make Instagram, Pinterest and Vine so popular.

Sure it’s not hard to string together movies using iMovie or a slew of other movie creation apps, but Splenvid’s value proposition is not having to do anything but upload and wait.

The app should be released later this spring. To get on their waiting list click here. Watch the video below:

Check out more of our startup coverage from SXSW here

Say It With A Song Using Utah Startup Gigg [sxsw]

Are you one of those people that likes to quote song lyrics when talking to people? Perhaps you were a child of the 90’s and made “mix tapes” for everyone and everything? Well there’s a startup in Utah called Gigg that puts that nostalgia back into your life.

The best part?

You don’t even need to know the whole lyric.

With Gigg you can use their app and find the song lyrics you want by artist, title or even a couple of words you think are in the song. From there the app finds the song that you’re looking for, lets you send a message with the lyric and links the recipient to where they can purchase the song.

It was great running into the Gigg team at the SXSW trade show, right smack in the middle of SXSWi and SXSW music.

For our demonstration of the app the lyric was “I Like Big Butts” and it quickly found Sir Mix A lot and a bunch of other great lyrics that would make great messages.

The app is fun and for those who like to send sappy love songs, it could be just what you’re looking for.

Check out the interview below and for more info visit gigg.com

Check out more SXSW 2013 Startup Coverage here.

Romotive, One Of Tony Hsieh’s Earliest Startups, Leaves Vegas For Valley

There’s been a lot of talk, and a lot of action lately surrounding Tony Hsieh, the founder of Zappos and his joint venture, the Downtown Project. Through Hsieh and the Vegas Tech Fund, startups are being lured to a community revitalization project in downtown Las Vegas.

As Hsieh has explained several times, Zappos got the opportunity to take over the old Las Vegas City Hall. Rather than creating an insular tech campus like Apple, Microsoft or Google, Hsieh wanted to create an atmosphere where creative collisions naturally occur between Zappos employees, techies and creatives.

To that end, Hsieh has invested $350 million dollars into revitalizing downtown Vegas through the Downtown Project. Part of that money comes in the form of $50 million dollars that Hsieh and his partners have set aside to attract tech startups to Las Vegas.

He’s looking for startups that will excel at what they are doing and also excel at being community leaders. So far they’ve invested in twenty or so tech startups that have relocated to Las Vegas.

We imagined that Hsieh and the Vegas Tech Fund’s efforts were to be long term. No one really questioned what would happen when a startup was ready to leave. Well now, Romotive, a robotics startup that makes mobile phone controlled robots, is leaving Las Vegas for greener pastures in Silicon Valley.

In a letter thanking the Downtown Project, Romotive CEO Keller Rinaudo said “I can’t think of a place I would have rather built Romotive over the last two years than downtown Vegas. It’s also been meaningful to be part of something bigger than ourselves, and we believe deeply that Tony will succeed in building the downtown area into a vibrant tech ecosystem,” Inc reported

Las Vegas Tech Fund Partner, and startup community leader Zach Ware, isn’t put off by Romotive’s decision to relocate. Ware told Pando Daily “While here they’ve grown from a team of three to 20, closed a huge round with Sequoia, and written their largest order via a connection made in downtown Las Vegas,”

Ware went on to say “So we think it demonstrates that Downtown Las Vegas is an awesome place to launch and build a company. Romotive has special needs and we support Keller’s decision to relocate the company to be closer to strategic partners, that’s the right decision for them and we always support the decisions of the founders we invest in.”

Sarah Lacy, who’s husband is working on a Vegas Tech Fund funded photography project, went on to point out that Ecomom, the other promising Vegas Tech Fund startup has also suffered since the untimely death of it’s founder Jody Sherman. Lacy is quick to point out that other things are happening downtown though, a coworking space has opened, a fashion space has opened and more restaurants are going in.

Several other startups that have relocated to the Downtown Project are also doing very well. We really liked RollTech and of course love what TechCocktail is doing.

Check out the kick ass VegasTech party at SXSW

Silicon Slopes Startup Speakerfy Is Turning Devices Into Speakers Everywhere [sxsw]

Have you caught onto the latest phenom in night clubs and parties? Yes I’m talking about the silent disco or the headphone party. These are parties where everyone is listening to the same music, typically being spun by a dj, but using headphones. We’ve been to headphone parties in Memphis, New York, Baltimore and of course on 6th street at SXSW.

The great thing about headphone parties is there is no outer noise and no need for someone to call the cops and complain. The bad part is the upkeep of the wireless headphone equipment.

Well… Utah startup Speakerfy has the solution. Now keep in mind that Speakerfy isn’t just about the headphone party we’ll go over a bunch of uses later. For the example of the headphone party though, Speakerfy allows any wifi connected smartphone to turn into a speaker. It supports up to 250 devices.

So now, if you’re holding a “silent disco” you can use Speakerfy and send the audio through everyone’s personal phone and they can use their own headphones or earbuds to join in the party. (if someone wrote a text communication app on top that would solve the anti-social part of the silent disco).

So all of the devices on the same Speakerfy hear the exact same audio at the exact same time.

Here are some other great uses for Speakerfy:

– Presentations at conferences
– Walking tours
– Museum tours
– your own personal radio station
– sharing music on the bus

the uses are really endless.

For more of how Speakerfy works check out the video interview from SXSW below:

Quick Concise Pitch From Realty Mogul, Eye Catching, And Prize Winning At SXSW [sxsw]

Realty Mogul, a crowdfunded real estate platform and graduate of the TechStars Microsoft Azure accelerator wowed multiple audiences at last weeks SXSW Interactive festival.

We got the chance to see Realty Mogul pitch on the Startup America Live stage before the Hatch Competition. It was the intense coaching they received both in the accelerator and from their Hatch coach, that got their pitch down to almost perfect.

It also resulted in them winning the Hatch Pitch competition, and judges calling the startup “Histrionic”.

The Hatch competition was in it’s second year and narrowed down the field from over 100 applicants. It’s an intense pitch contest with startups selected getting one on one coaching from industry leaders and previous Hatch winners.

“A big piece of what pitches needs to happen is to make the audience relate. What made us successful last year was we told a story about the problem. A lot of the companies don’t engage the audience that well. When you tell a story in four minutes, it’s really hard to be concise with the message. You have to treat it like you have 30 seconds instead of four minutes. That forces you to get the message down.” Distil Inc CEO (and judge for this years Hatch competition) Rami Essaid said to SiliconHills.

When you watch the quick pitch video below you’ll understand how all this work has paid off and how it led to the Realty Mogul team winning the Hatch competition. You can find out more about Realty Mogul, here or here on their Angel List profile.

Canadian Startup Quibl Is Hot Or Not For The Latest Issues

A Canadian startup has taking a format as simple as Hot Or Not and put it online for people to debate the hottest current event issues.

After a year in the making, the site officially launched on Monday and so far there seems to be some interest bubbling.

The founders took to reddit to describe their two main objectives behind Quibl

It aggregates arguments on a specific topic (like gun control for example)
It’s a tool to find debates (we have a location for each debate), allowing you to find what’s going on in your area with google map api. (http://www.quibl.com/where)

Right now the hottest debates seem to be on gun control, Have We Reached Peak Oil and Google Glass.

“For comparison sake, a debate is a bit like a subreddit but you have two columns, one for each side. Debates are always polarized like that. People post their opinion, links to articles, blogs, tweets and just pictures as argument on one or the other side. Behind each argument, you have a comment section where people still pick a side when commenting. Therefore, if you see a “red” argument that seems quite good, you can go check in the comment for “red” or “green” opinions below it. Everything is sorted by number of votes so you can “filter” the content and show what’s best in a certain amount of time. We use exponential decay formulas to depreciate argument after a while, depending on filter selection. This keeps the debate interesting by showing more new content. We have no downvotes, because it makes no sense for people arguing.” one of the founders explained.

They are hoping to scale the site so that it becomes the platform of choice for discussing hot button issues.

What we like?

The ease of voting
Their mission is clearly defined in the presentation and the UI

Check out Quibl for yourself here at quibl.com

Nashville: Jumpstart Foundry Startup, Jamplify, Raises $600K

One of the highlights at the 2012 Jumpstart Foundry Demo Day in Nashville Tennessee last August, was how many startup teams actually had a product ready to go. Jamplify was one of those teams.

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

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

What’s even cooler is you wouldn’t know it if you saw them pitch, but Jamplify was founded by two friends that met while they were coworkers in New York at Goldman Sachs. Andy Pickens and Moses Soyoola, left one of the most prestigious addresses on Wall Street and spent last summer iterating, developing, pivoting and reworking Jamplify to the product that it is today.

They’ve already started seeing great results. Business Insider reports that Jamplify was able to drive 190,000 views to a 15 year old pop stars YouTube video. What’s even more impressive is those 190,000 views were referred by 670 fans, meaning each fan drove about 280 views.

Their $600,000 round came from a number of unnamed Nashville and New York based investors and will allow the team to continue working on a product that’s been tried,proven and is developing traction.

Here’s their pitch video from the Jumpstart Foundry demo day:

We cover high growth technology in the South and Everywhere Else.

89 Year Old Grandma Reaches Her Kickstarter Goal

Pearl Malkin,Happy Canes, Kickstarter,startups

89 Year Old Pearl Malkin creating one of her “Happy Canes” (photo: CNN)

Kickstarter, the most popular crowdfunding platform in the world, saw $319 million dollars pledged for a wide variety of projects last year. With Kickstarter anyone can get their project funded.

Even 89 year old Pearl Malkin, has successfully had a kickstarter project funded. Her project called “Happy Canes” raised $3,606 from 154 backers, BusinessInsider reported.

While Malkin is a vibrant woman at 89, at one point she was stricken with vertigo which required her to use a cane. She felt that traditional canes were drab and boring and livened her cane up with flowers that she glued to the cane herself.

She decided she would make a go of these canes for others and with the help of her grandson, put on a Kickstarter campaign. “I want to be an example to young and old people that age shouldn’t be a barrier for what you want to do in life,” she said.

Here’s the original video from CNN:

OffBeatr is Kickstarter for Porn, more here

LegalCrunch Is The Legal Zoom For Everything Else [interview]

Legal Zoom is by far the 800 pound gorilla when it comes to online legal services. Of course RocketLawyer is skyrocketing to fame as well. But, both of those online legal services target businesses. What about all the other legal work out there?

Well that’s where New Jersey startup LegalCrunch comes in. The company founded by Nikhil Jhunjhnuwala and Keval Amin, provides “…super affordable do-it-yourself kits for common legal issues, such as divorce and expungements. There are some simple legal situations where you just don’t need a lawyer, but you don’t want to make a mistake. We are a reliable alternative. We provide completed paperwork, intuitive instructions that use diagrams and graphics, and helpful phone support. All products are backed by a 100% money-back guarantee because we are that sure they will work.” Junjhunuwala told nibletz.com in an interview.

Jhunjhnuwala is the legal eagle behind the operation. He attended the University of Southern California’s Law School before turning his focus to his previous law related startup called MyRight. During his studies he found that not many people were well versed in their legal rights and wanted to change that.

Amin on the other hand is an artist by trade and the designer by choice.

Jhunjhnuwala and Amin realized that in addition to people not knowing their rights they didn’t have access to legal services. There are a lot of legal services out there that can be researched and started without employing the services of a lawyer and that’s what LegalCrunch hopes to do with their kits.

Check out the rest of our interview with Jhunjhnuwala below:

Where are you based?

Currently based in Princeton, NJ.

What is the startup culture like where you are based?

It’s small but growing. There are great co-working spaces in the area such as Tigerlabs, JuiceTank, and Innovation Garden, all of them focused on nurturing startups. I have noticed there is a preference towards energy and health startups, and more traditional business models., which too me is refreshing compared to the culture of bigger cities.

Our first startup, myRight, had a grand vision, but ultimately failed due to a poor business model and worse execution. On the other hand, LegalCrunch is in it’s 6th week and already making a profit.

What problem does your startup solve?

While in law school, I noticed that many people could not afford a lawyer. At the same time, they felt intimidated taking on the law on their own. These people usually end up taking no action, which hurts all of us. (In addition to promoting moral welfare, laws are meant to increase economic efficiently). When people don’t take advantage of the law, productivity, money, and efficiency is hurt.

From this, we were motivated to create an affordable solution. Legal self-help has existed for some time now, pioneered by Nolo, and more recently LegalZoom. However, these companies have consistently focused on business issues (as they are more profitable). There is a slow shift to personal issues as companies begin to recognize the enormous potential.

We plan on making our kits more accessible by appealing to visual learners. No one yet has tried to create visual representations of complex legal processes. Yet, this common in the sciences and other field. Khan Academy is doing a great job in showing that otherwise mundane topics, can be made interesting and understandable. Another example would be the ease of building IKEA furniture. Our kits are designed to be just as intuitive and easy for law.

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

We don’t have a programmer. To overcome this challenge, we have utilized the amazing number of startup tools available out there for non-developer founders. We currently run on squarespace, wufoo, and determination. These tool let us launch our website in 2 weeks. Since then, it’s been constant iteration and improvement. Rapid prototyping and testing are very important for us.

During the process, we have been learning basic css and html. Though it’s only been 6 weeks, we feel that we’ve outgrown squarespace. We might start fresh, and begin building using twitter bootstrap. Though it’d be better if we could raise money and hire a programmer instead ;D

What are some of the milestones your startup has achieved?

Since we’ve only been up for 6 weeks, we find it important to appreciate small victories. Our greatest milestone thus far has been achieving profitability via ppc. Although the sample size is small and our ppc campaign has only been running for 3 weeks, we currently have strong margins. If anything, we feel that our product has been validated.

What are your next milestones?

Our model works and is profitable, even just using ppc. As our SEO improves (we are a content machine as well), and brand awareness increases, we expect even stronger numbers. As a result, we plan on raising money so that we can expand into order states more rapidly, thereby increasing our volume and impact.

Who are your mentors and role models?

We have many mentors that come from all walks of life and we love watching Charlie Rose. For example, one of our mentors is Oprah, who has taught us to always trust our intuition. Another mentor is Will Smith, who has distilled the secret of success down to two actions “reading and running.”

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

There are less opportunities in New Jersey, broadly speaking. Our last startup was located in LA, which isn’t nearly as popular as Silicon Valley or New York. However, even there we were constantly meeting new people and attending events. There were many business and partnership opportunities and overall “startup glamour.” New Jersey is a lot slower-paced.

On the flip side, the greatest advantage of being in a small scene is that it allows you to focus on your product. In a big startup city, you have a million people, with a million opinions. Since startup people always think they’re right, it’s easy to get swayed or distracted by these varying opinions or lose yourself in the scene. But in New Jersey, there is no noise. You can focus 100% on your product and customers.

What’s next for your startup?

Our next milestone is to raise money. We have validated our product in New Jersey and want to expand.

Where can people find out more?

legalcrunch.com Facebook: facebook.com/legalcrunch twitter: @legalcrunchinfo