Cincinnati & Pittsburgh, A Startup City Swap?

Sports rivalries are intense between Pittsburgh, PA and Cincinnati OH (home to the Everywhere Else Cincinnati Conference). Of course there’s the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Cincinnati Bengals but also the Pirates and the Reds. Enough to make a grown person very passionate. Another thing people in both cities are passionate about is entrepreneurship and startups.

Pittsburgh has several startup initiatives including Built In Pittsburgh and Rustbuilt. Cincinnati has Cintrifuse, The Brandery, and CincyTech. This year Cincinnati also has the national Everywhere Else startup conference. Leaders in both startup communities thought the natural sports rivalries created a unique synergy of sorts that could help entrepreneurs in each city learn from each other.

So to further those ideas, Cincinnati’s Cintrifuse and Pittsburgh’s RustBuilt accelerator are holding a city swap on the last two Fridays of the month.

On Friday September 20th Rustbuilt will host a group of Cincinnati entrepreneurs from Cintrifuse at their facility in Pittsburgh, just in time for RustBuilt Night at PNC Park, home of the Pittsburgh Pirates. Entrepreneurs from both cities will enjoy each other’s company, share best practices, and then take in a night of baseball as the Pittsburgh Pirates host the Cincinnati Reds.

Then, the following week, Cincinnati’s Cintrifuse will host a group from RustBuilt for either startup speed dating or a startup crawl of sorts, still to be determined. Then the startups will enjoy an evening of baseball at the Great American Ballpark as the Reds host the Pirates.

But wait there’s more. Pittsburgh entrepreneur Kit Mueller tells us that several of the Pittsburgh startups will stay all weekend long and attend the Everywhere Else conference beginning that Sunday night.

Tickets for Rustbuilt night at PNC Park in Pittsburgh September 20th can be found here.

Info on the Cintrifuse event at the Cincinnati Reds game can be found here.

Go register for Everywhere Else Cincinnati here.

Former Record Label Worker Having Success With Unsigned Artist Startup

New York is the hub for all things music in the US. That’s where New York entrepreneur Randy Morano got his feet wet working with record labels, PR firms, and management firms. Morano drew on this experience to help unsigned artists get discovered through his startup ExposedVocals.

We realize there are hundreds of entrepreneurs who are trying to tackle the connection between unsigned artists and record labels. However, Morano has seen real quality metrics to date. Exposed Vocals has over 25,000 regular members and 5,000 participating in their upgraded paid membership.

We got a chance to spend some time with Morano back in May during TechCrunch Disrupt NYC and have stayed in contact with him over the summer. During that time he’s been on the grind putting together extensive promotional packages designed to help artists really get discovered.

Part of the success he’s seen so far comes from his real life experience with record labels. There are a lot of unsigned artist startups that were started by music fans. Morano has some advantages in knowing parts of the business, like what A&R people in 2013 are really looking for.

We got a chance to talk with Morano indepth. Check out the interview below.

What is your startup called?

Exposed Vocals (ExposedVocals.com)

What does your company do?

Exposed Vocals is an unsigned artist music video platform that uses an algorithm to analyze information contained within user profiles and suggests potential connections between musicians, bands and industry professionals. After members create their profiles, the software automatically alerts relevant users notifying them of someone matching their interests. (Music Industry Matchmaking) We also offer marketing tools, digital distribution and networking opportunities as well.

Who are the founders, and what are their backgrounds

Founder: Randy Morano, young entrepreneur that has worked with Record Labels, Management firms and PR Reps for the past 5 years in an effort to help shine the spotlight on unsigned artists.

Where are you based?

We are based out of New York City

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

New York City is mostly known as a hub for media, advertising, or finance companies. There are a multitude of the name brand investment firms out here – Union Square, RRE, First Round, FlyBridge, Lerer Ventures, First Mark, and Bessemer among others. This is an amazing ecosystem for startups and a close 2nd to SV and really helps bridge the funding gap. It’s a thriving scene!

What problem do you solve?

So, the problem is this ever widening gap between Unsigned Musicians and Record Labels. Exposed Vocals solves this problem by creating a sort of bridge, if you will. This is done by providing real world solutions to help expose underground and unsigned artists and bands to Music Industry Professionals in a real offline way. This includes Targeted Promotional Packages, FM and online Radio Play, Music Industry Matchmaking (Premium upgrade) and Individual Member Interview Opportunities with Exposed Vocals to help beef up their press packs.

Why now?

The music Industry has changed and there is a huge new push for digital music streaming and with social networking becoming the #1 way for self promotion due to it being extremely light on the wallet – it was only a matter of time before a company like Exposed Vocals emerged.

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

Exposed Vocals has just reached 25,000 members with close to 5,000 participating in our premium match making service ($2.99 a month). We’re getting on average 7,000 visits a day due to our intensive promotional package plan that pull in targeted views for enrolled members and other members promoting their videos and sending traffic to their interview pages.

What are your next milestones?

Our next step is focused on venture capital. We need more tools developed ensure our members are supplied with the best tools in our industry. We’ve been plugging away at stabilizing our revenue streams by bringing in new clients and continuing to grow our user-base and content. We will be focusing more on our Global Marketing Initiative that has been slowly picking up speed. Currently, we are ranking (Alexa) about 20K in the U.S and 120K in the world – we’d like to see that global figure come down a lot so that we can focus on delivering targeted ads to our members.

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

Exposedvocals.com and our Facebook page is here.

Everywhere Else Cincinnati Is Less Than A Month Away

The national conference for startups everywhere else continues to grow.

Thank you so much for being part of the Nibletz community. We all know that startups across the country and around the globe are fueling innovation and creating jobs. Whether it’s in Boise, Idaho, Memphis, Tennessee, Pittsburgh, Alaska, or anywhere in between we all face similar challenges.

That’s why Everywhere Else Cincinnati is all about starting where you are. Learn tips from pros. Hear from people who have raised money outside of Silicon Valley and New York. Meet investors who could be looking for deals in your neighborhood.

We’ve assembled over 30 top tier national speakers for the two and a half day event which starts September 29th and runs through October 1st at the Duke Energy Convention Center in downtown Cincinnati.

With the conference less than a month away our early bird pricing will end at the end of this week. Right now you can save big on an attendee ticket or Startup Avenue booth which includes three attendee tickets, booth space, exhibition area, and a great pitch event.

Need more reasons to attend Everywhere Else Cincinnati? Here’s 42 of them.

Here are the speakers we’ve announced so far (we still have even more to announce):

Blair Garrou, Managing Director Mercury Fund
Scott Gerber, Founder of YEC
Ethan Austin, Founder GiveForward
Joe Medved, Partner SoftBank Capital
Naithan Jones, Founder AgLocal
Derek Flanzraich, Founder Greatist
Andrew Warner, Founder Mixergy
Andy Sparks, Co-Founder MatterMark
Wil Schroter, Founder Fundable
Jake Stutzman, Founder Elevate.co
Jonathon Perrelli, Managing Director, Fortify Ventures
Justin Gutwein, Filmmaker and Entrepreneur StartupLand.tv
Mark Hasebroock, Founder Dundee Venture Capital
Jason Healy, Founder Blu
John Bracken, Founder Evite and Speek
Dave Knox, CMO Rockfish, co-founder Brandery
Patrick Woods, Managing Director a>m ventures
Sarah Ware, Founder Markerly
John T. Meyer, Founder Lemon.ly
Raghu Betina, Managing Partner The Starter League
Ryan O’Connell, VP Influence & Co
Blake Miller, Managing Director Think Big Accelerator
Michael Bergman, Founder Repp

Investors committed so far:
Mercury Fund, SoftBank, Detroit Venture Partners (DVP), CincyTech, am>ventures, Fortify.vc, Ben Franklin and many more.

You can register below at a great early bird discount rate or at eecincinnati.com

Online event registration for Everywhere Else Cincinnati – “Start Where U Are” powered by Eventbrite

Tech Cocktail’s Kira Newman Wants Entrepreneurs To “Audit Your Soul” At SXSW

Kira Newman is a senior writer over at Tech Cocktail. She’s been covering startups and entrepreneurs for a while now and even took a trip across the world learning about how they do things in different cities. After covering hundreds and hundreds of entrepreneurs she has some great insight.

Newman has noticed that in the “just do it” and do it now, lives of entrepreneurs, they don’t take the time to “know thyself.” Many entrepreneurs know how important it is to know their customers, but they often overlook their team and themselves.

We are combing the pages and pages of the SXSW panel picker for 2014 to find some of the more interesting startup discussions vying for a spot in the SXSW lineup. Newman’s talk is definitely worth a vote.

Why is looking into your soul and knowing thyself important? This is Newman’s take from the panel picker page:

“Entrepreneurs who pinpointed their fear of failure would perform better than those plagued by unknown terror. Entrepreneurs who understood their personality quirks could build a more cohesive team. Entrepreneurs who consciously valued independence would make completely different decisions from those who valued money.”

During the two and a half hour workshop, Newman will go over ten important questions that every entrepreneur should ask themselves.

You can vote for Newman’s talk here!

Startups In The Fastlane: Velocity Startup Pass It

Velocity Indiana, a startup accelerator just outside of Louisville, Kentucky, just graduated their first class last week. They brought startups from across the country to learn, grow, and accelerate in a beautiful area in the middle of the country. Velocity is the epitome of “everywhere else”.

Pass It, came from Seattle, Washington to work on a next generation photo sharing app. Nowadays, regular photo sharing apps are getting boring and there’s a filter for everything. Startups are looking to find ways to make photo sharing apps more engaging.

Pass It wants users to send their photos “around the world”. They’ve also added an element of competition to the mix.

Pass It is in our Fastlane, our interview feature that profile’s startups that are going through, or just completed an accelerator program.

What is the name of your startup?

Pass it

What accelerator are you in?

Velocity Accelerator. http://velocityindiana.org

Where is your startup originally from?

Seattle

Tell us about your current team?

Bryce Anderson – Moving the business forward.

Robert Eickmann – Mobile developer with superpowers.

Cameron Chinn – Marketing and user acquisition specialist.

Jon Matar – Primary Advisor

What does your startup do?

Pass it is a photo sharing app that allows users to connect, compete, and send their photos around the world.

What are your goals for the accelerator program?

To substantially improve our business model and create as many new relationships as possible.

What’s one thing you’ve learned in the accelerator?

Failure is a part of the process. Every week we tested several hypotheses and we had to constantly adapt our thinking based on our customer feedback.

What’s the hardest piece of advice you’ve had to stomach so far?

To pivot. We came in to Velocity with an EdTech company and we completely changed our business due to the Lean Startup methodology.

What is your goal for the day after demo day?

To create meetings with potential investors and business leaders in the Indiana and Kentucky entrepreneurial community.

Why did you choose this accelerator?

We chose Velocity because of its central location and outstanding business mentors. I would like to give a shout out to Tony Schy, Dave Durand, Terry Goertz, Michael Browning and Greg Langdon.

What’s one thing you learned about an accelerator that you didn’t know when you applied?

How much I would learn from the other startups participating in the program. Even though we all had substantially different businesses, we all faced the same day-to-day startup challenges and I learned valuable information from their experiences with the lean startup program.

Where can people find out more?

www.passitapp.co

What’s your twitter handle?

@PassPics

Dave Knox And Blair Garrou Jumping In The Shark Tank At Straight Shot Demo Day

The first week of October is going to be huge. Of course that’s when Everywhere Else Cincinnati is happening. It will be an even bigger week for some of our speakers: Brandery co-founder Dave Knox, Dundee Venture Capital Co-Founder Mark Hasebroock, and Mercury Fund’s Blair Garrou.

In addition to speaking at Everywhere Else Cincinnati, The Brandery is graduating its summer class the following day, October 2, making it a big enough week already for Dave Knox. But in the words of Billy Mays, “But wait there’s more”.

Dundee backed accelerator, Straight Shot, is graduating its summer class on October 3rd, making it a huge week for Hasebroock as well. All three Everywhere Else speakers are attending the Brandery demo day on October 2nd and then Straight Shot’s demo day.

Straight Shot announced on Tuesday that Garrou and Knox have both agreed to be “sharks’ in their Shark Tank style demo day. Rather than just a straight pitch event to a room full of 400 investors, and startup supporters, the Straight Shot inaugural class will also receive feedback from Garrou and Knox. While we consider both to be very nice guys, they are straight shooters when it comes to startups and their viability.

The seven startups graduating from Straight Shot are:

BusinessExchange – a referral SaaS model that allows small businesses to make evaluations of, connections with, and recommendations for other small businesses as vendors and/or suppliers. BusinessExchange recently launched a pilot program with the Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce that aims to spur economic growth and increased collaboration among Chamber member companies.

BuyNow – an e-commerce application that allows customers to instantly purchase advertised goods and services from any TV, print, online and/or out-of-home ad by simply sending an SMS text message. BuyNow has a patent pending for their ad-tech application. The founders are on the cusp of pivotal partnerships with one Fortune 500 media company and a handful of major retailers.

CardioSys – a software currently under development that uses fluid algorithms that will help health insurers, third-party administrators, and brokers to forecast preventable life events and mitigate risk among their client/customer population. CardioSys partnered with UNeMed, the technology transfer branch of the University of Nebraska Medical Center responsible for bringing intellectual property from the laboratory to the marketplace.

Cosmic Cart – an e-commerce platform that consolidates fragmented shopping carts across the web while enhancing the shopping experience for customers. Cosmic Cart allows publishers to monetize their media and retailers to sell their products across the web. Currently, more than 85 brands, six fashion bloggers and five major retailers have signed on with Cosmic Cart.

Crateful – a software that leverages advanced audio and data analytics to help music enthusiasts find the best music for their mood or the moment. Crateful’s technology analyzes each song in a customer’s database by tempo, key and rhythm structure and then allows the user to sort based on their needs. Currently, more than 60 well-known electronic music deejays are piloting Crateful.

Cympel – an e-commerce and ad-tech platform that streamlines online shopping for consumers and expedites the transaction process for brands. An attractive platform for advertisers, publishers, and customers alike, Cympel eliminates the multiple redirecting windows currently involved in the online advertising and shopping process. Cympel’s team has two campaigns underway currently and is showing a positive return-on-investment for each.

HuntForce – a software that enables hunters to become more strategic and successful in their sport by reducing the hours they currently spend sifting through and organizing the thousands of photos taken by their trail cameras. The father-son founding team has established relationships with more than a dozen professional hunters interested in using the HuntForce technology to improve their upcoming season.

For more information on Straight Shot and their demo day visit straightshot.co

See all three speakers and 27 more national startup speakers at Everywhere Else Cincinnati.

Philly’s Novotorium Announces New Seed Funding Program

Philadelphia’s Novotorium continues to support health, wellness, and nutrition startups across the Philadelphia region. We’ve covered Novotorium quite a bit over the last 18 months and their progress has been fun to watch.

The team backing the startup support organization wants to get in with companies in their wheelhouse as early as possible, sometimes backing companies as early as a business plan stage or during the development of a companies minimum viable product (MVP). More often than not, companies at that early a stage are turned away and can’t develop without funding, especially in health and wellness sectors.

Novotorium has announced a week’s worth of programming geared towards the earliest stage companies. The program runs the week of September 16-20 and at the end of the week those that participated will be part of a business plan competition on September 23rd. The competition will have a $2500 prize, but Novotorium will consider all participants for possible future investments ranging from $5,000 to $250,000.

“Our goal with this program is to work with companies in the early stages of developing a business plan and creating the first iteration of their business. We are looking forward to helping them build out their plans and create their minimum viable products. We anticipate that we will be able to offer seed funding to several companies,” Novotorium Managing Director Stuart Segal said in a statement.

Novotorium’s Marketing and Business Director, Chuck Hall, summarized the program on their blog:

During each day of the week-long program — September 16 through 20 — Novotorium partners will be on hand at Novotorium in Langhorne to offer classes and hold office hours on key parts of creating and launching a business — finance, law, marketing, sales, operations, lean startup, agile development, technology, health care products and markets and more. This is a completely free week of sessions, with the goal of helping entrepreneurs accepted into this program move forward with their business plans and business implementation efforts.

On Friday, September 20, business plans and business development efforts will be vetted, with approved startups slotted into presentation times for Monday, September 23. Entrepreneurs will be asked to present to a Novotorium panel that will then determine the winner of the competition. The winner will receive the top prize of $2,500 in cash and $3,000 in services at Novotorium over a 30-day period.

Companies wishing to participate in the program must apply on the Novotorium website using the ordinary application form. Applicants should note “TBD” in any part of the application that is yet to be determined. Applicants should also note “Applying for September Program” in the “What Else?” section of the application.

Interested? Hit the application link above

STACHE Investments Exceeds $1 Million Dollar Commitment To 2013 OneSpark Companies

Last Spring we were one of the national media partners for one of the most incredible startup related events we’ve ever seen. That event, the OneSpark crowdfunding festival in North Florida, saw over 130,000 attendees throughout the course of the week. The event was like taking Kickstarter or Indiegogo, pulling them offline, and putting the creators into a five day festival.

We saw startups, art projects, art installations, music projects, visual arts, and a variety of amazing, but unclassifiable ideas. All of the participants were looking for crowdfunding in person at the event and to earn the OneSpark prize money or get an investment from Jacksonville based STACHE investments. STACHE investments is the investment arm of Shahid Kahn’s company. Kahn is the automotive entrepreneur who purchased the Jacksonville Jaguars in November of 2011 and took up residency in Jacksonville.

Since that time he has been very active behind the scenes in Jacksonville’s startup and entrepreneurial community. Khan quickly got involved with the OneSpark festival, committing $1,000,000 in follow on funding for the most promising ideas during the festival.

Late last month it was announced that not only had STACHE Investments (named after Khan’s legendary mustache) reached and exceeded their $1,000,000 commitment, but they committed to 2014 and also helped back a new accelerator in Jacksonville called KYN.

KYN will launch with four companies in its inaugural class and will leverage its resources to support numerous One Spark creators that have been in talks with the STACHE Investments Corporation. KYN has also partnered with the University of North Florida to help train students in design and development. The accelerator’s inaugural class are all businesses who participated in the wildly successful One Spark festival.

“We are impressed by the outpouring of talent we witnessed at One Spark earlier this year,” Jim Zsebok, Chief Investments Officer at the STACHE Investments Corporation said in a statement. “STACHE has provided the seed capital for KYN because we view it as an essential component of the entrepreneurial ecosystem that Elton and his team is creating in Jacksonville which began with CoWork Jax, then One Spark and now KYN. So today, via KYN we announce the 4 companies who will participate in the inaugural class at KYN and we will continue to work with several other Creators we met at One Spark who require different resources, including Heritage Farms, Workout Navigator and Chair to Share.”

The companies who participated in One Spark and are receiving funding at this time are:

Heritage Farms
Pure Treats
Floppy Entertainment
Original Fuzz
Hatchware

Pure Treats, Floppy Entertainment, Original Fuzz, and Hatchware are the four companies who will be in the inaugural class and receive funding directly from KYN.

Nearing the completion of the 16-week program at KYN, the companies will have an opportunity to participate in a demo day where other venture capitalists and angel investors interested in their companies will review opportunities to invest in the companies.

“This is a natural outgrowth of what we hoped to achieve with the inaugural One Spark festival, and the next step in supporting great startups in Jacksonville,” said KYN Co-Founder, Elton Rivas. “Our selection of downtown to house this accelerator is further commitment to the continued support and growth of Jacksonville’s thriving startup community in the heart of our city. We couldn’t be happier to be working with the STACHE Investments Corporation in support of the growth of this ecosystem for Jacksonville.”

In addition to the accelerator program, KYN has also announced their partnership with the University of North Florida. KYN will hire select students to participate in a semester long apprenticeship program where they will earn course credit, learn web development, and user interface and design, all while working directly with KYN startup companies.

The accelerator will soon begin selecting applications for its second 16-week class, slated to begin January 2014. All information for the application timing and process can be found on the KYN website at www.kyn.is.

“We’re focused on linking early stage companies in technology, health and fitness and hard goods with seed money, tools and great mentors to support the rapid growth of their business,” co-founder, Rivas said. “This intensive 16-week program provides access to mentors, developers and designers, workshops, work space and a collaborative community while also training nearly a dozen UNF students that could be potential future hires for these companies. It’s a great model.”

Find out more about KYN here and check out our 2013 OneSpark coverage here.

Check out this enormous conference 100% devoted to startups “everywhere else”

image: Shahid Khan

Could This Waterloo Startup Change Digital Advertising The Way Blackberry Originally Changed The Smartphone

People in Waterloo come up with some amazing ideas. Although we often joke about RIM/Blackberry these days, back when they first came out they created an entirely new industry, one that still has renewing legacy customers. By putting customers’ messaging abilities, calendars, and digital lives in the palm of their hands and making it all sync wirelessly with the office, things were easy and efficient.

Although RIM has stopped innovating, Waterloo has not.

Enter WestonExpressions, a Waterloo-based startup behind a new wireless digital, interactive advertising platform called Linkett. Now I’m definitely not a fan of big buzz words, but Linkett is really all of those things. It may be what the world has been looking for in the form of new advertising.

Linkett allows you to let your phone interact with many different types of digital advertising platforms. It can be an ad on your computer screen, a bus stop sign or even at the mall. You can use Linkett to walk through an exhibit and download the music playing. Users can use Linkett to download an author’s book while at the bookstore. You can even use Linkett to get a mall directory by just swiping your phone in front of a display. Really, the possibilities for this new advertising platform are limitless.

“The attention span of the average consumer in today’s world is at an all-time low due to “media clutter.” People can’t remember things that were advertised to them on a TV or a billboard like they once could and therefore traditional digital signage ads are less efficient. We solve this problem by making all content interactive and easily accessible for consumers while providing key analytics to promoters. Online ads provide analytics to advertisers so they can boost ad effectiveness, so we want to provide the same type of data and service but in the real world,” the team told us in an interview.

To get an idea of this new level of interaction check out the video.

What is your startup called?

WestonExpressions

What does your company do?

WestonExpressions is a technology corporation providing hardware and software innovations for the out-of-home advertisement industry.

Who are the founders, and what are their backgrounds?

Douglas Lusted is the CEO and co-Founder of WestonExpressions. Douglas founded the company in 2012 after winning the University of Waterloo’s Innovation Showcase and Velocity Venture Fund in his second year of business studies; leading to the development of Linkett Technology.

Ashok Patel is the COO and co-Founder of WestonExpressions. Ashok is a computer scientist that graduated from the University of Waterloo and currently handles hardware engineering and operations. Ashok is a serial entrepreneur who previously co-founded Softart MicroSystems which was acquired by BlackBerry, where he was team lead for the GSM/GPRS radio protocol stack implementation team.

Vlad Pisanov is the CTO and co-founder of WestonExpressions. Vlad finished Hon.B.Sc in Physics from the University of Toronto and obtained his Master’s Degree in Computer Science from the University of Waterloo. Vlad’s previous work experience includes outdoor advertisement agencies and developed the core backend system of Linkett.

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

Kitchener is very tech intensive, and has a common theme of new mobile technologies especially at the Communitech Hub and Velocity Garage which serves as our incubator. There are a lot of software companies, and great engineers from the University of Waterloo. There is a much more “west-coast” vibe around a lot of the companies compared to New York or Toronto for example. After BufferBox was acquired, Vidyard and Thalmic raised high series A rounds of funding, it really attracted some talent and investors in the area.

Why now?

Digital marketing is the fastest growing channel of marketing and the technology in mobile devices is rapidly innovating. There is a critical shift in how consumers shop, obtain information and are entertained and it is being reflected in how they engage with brands, and with digital screens. We think it is the perfect time to improve digital screen technology so it can keep up with consumers and their mobile devices.

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

In our first week we have reached many milestones. We closed our first round of funding from VC Firms and angel investors and also reached over 50,000 hits on YouTube. We have two international protected Patent applications and sold units internationally in the United States, Canada, Peru, New Zealand and Ireland.

What are your next milestones?

Our next milestones to reach include continuing to drive sales in North America and penetrating the retail market. We will finish product development and ship Linketts to those who have pre-ordered as well as launch our next generation Linkett that offers payment not only through mobile devices, but also through loyalty and credit cards.

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

linkett.com

Even Canadian startups are welcome at this huge startup conference “everywhere else”

GiveForward’s Ethan Austin To Try Burritos In Cincinnati At Everywhere Else

Correction: We originally reported that Austin was the COO of GiveForward and that he would be speaking on raising money outside of SV. He is actually the President of GiveForward, and he plans to speak on the importance of culture in your startup. Corrections have been made below.

Ethan Austin is the President and burrito-eating champion at GiveForward, a Chicago startup he co-founded as a way to help people do personal fundraising. As a child Austin lost his father to colon cancer, and over the years he looked for ways to help people with cancer. Then, he ran the Marine Corps Marathon in DC to raise money for Memphis’ St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. During that race, Austin had an idea.

Through his personal web page, Austin, who was trained as a lawyer with a BA from Emory and a JD from American University, raised small amounts of money from people all over the world. This was the precursor to GiveForward.

It was obviously fate when he met co-founder Desiree Vargas Wrigley because she had already written a business plan similar to the Austin’s idea. The two collaborated and cofounded GiveForward.

The company accelerated at Chicago’s Excelerate Labs (now Techstars Chicago), and raised $2.5 million dollars in venture capital to bring the crowdfunding-with-a-purpose site to life. It’s now extremely popular.

During is Everywhere Else Cincinnati speech, Austin will talk about the importance of building culture as we build our companies.

Austin should be a great enough reason to get your discounted attendee or Startup Avenue ticket today, but if not here’s 42 more reasons.

Online Ticketing for Everywhere Else Cincinnati – “Start Where U Are” powered by Eventbrite

Mexican Entrepreneuer Working On Hospitality Retention With His Startup Guest Retain

With all the online platforms out there for hotels, spas, and other hospitality oriented services, the first and most influential exposure is typically based on price. I know when I started using the hotel site we use today, back in 2002, it was strictly price driven. Now, we typically book 100s of nights a year, and we look for amenities and hotels that will still let us use our brand rewards even though we book through a third party.

Once a user gets over the initial cost benefit, retaining customers to any one brand and becoming loyal is a tough sell. Most of the time when we hear about loyalty and rewards, which are the centerpieces around customer retention, we are typically talking about retail and restaurants.

Geordie Wardman, a Mexican entrepreneur, is hoping to change the way companies in the hotel, salon, and spa industries retain quality customers and solve customer issues as fast as they can.

We keep hearing stories about consumer giants like Best Buy, Dell, and American Airlines, who have devoted huge teams of employees to monitor review sites and social media. But what about the small business, or even the startup?

That’s where Guest Retain comes in. Wardman’s company monitors the biggest review sites and social media to find the buzz words and other indicators of a negative review, alerting a business owner within minutes so that they can try their best to turn a negative into a positive.

A customer who has been turned around from a bad experience is far more likely to be loyal than just a regular customer. Guest Retain hones in on that idea, getting the most important information back to the companies so they can act on it.

We got a chance to talk to Warman. Check out the interview below.

What is your startup called?

GuestRetain – We handle online reputation marketing for Hotels, Spas and Salons. Our solution basically automates positives reviews by capturing testimonials and when the customers responses are positive guiding the customers to leave positive reviews on the social review sites like Google Reviews, Yahoo, TripAdvisor, Yelp, City Search and any others that are beneficial to promote the business reputation of our clients. When a customer experience is bad, we warn the owner and give them the opportunity to correct the situation directly with that client before they go on to the social review site.

Who are the founders, and what are their backgrounds

Founder is Geordie Wardman

Where are you based?

I am based in Sayulita, Mexico where I live on the beach with my family and surf 3 to 4 days a week (when there are waves!)

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

There is none, and I have to form my own mastermind groups and accountability groups because I live in a very rural area of Mexico.

What problem do you solve?

The problem that I solve is only angry customers leave reviews, not good loyal customers because Good Service is expected. When a problem does arise, the owner is given notice of it BEFORE the customer complains on it on the social review sites. Previously, the owners only found out about customers problems AFTER the customers had left a scathing critique of an experience online, where it stays forever to detract future business prospects from checking their business. We are an alert system for business owners to stay in closer contact with their customers, so they can be proactive about their customer retention and relationships, and augment their online reputations.

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

Funded development by pre-sales. Collected from 3 customers 12 months in advance revenues. Already achieved $4,000 per month in recurring revenues after 2 months of being live, with 40 customers and a 20-30% growth rate per month in new clients.

What are your next milestones?

100 clients and $10,000 in monthly recurring revenues by Jan 1, 2014.

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

http://www.guestretain.com,

2 Memphis Startups, Mobilizer And Boosterville Get Attention From Major Press

While nibletz has a pretty large following and people love us because we’re the voice of startups everywhere else, getting attention from the major tech and startup players is a big deal for all startups. This week two Memphis startups were fortunate enough to catch the eyes of TechCrunch and GigaOm.

Mobilizer, a recent graduate of the Memphis based ZeroTo510 accelerator, and recently named to the Tennessee TENN, was featured in TechCrunch on Saturday evening.The company has found a way to make ambulatory patients in hospitals more mobile.

As company co-founder and CEO James Bell told me a few months ago, after major surgery getting up and walking around is a very important part of recovery. That’s why as soon as you are able, doctors like for patients to walk to other parts of the hospital for testing and therapy. The problem in the past was that all of the equipment tied to a patient recovering from surgery often requires more than one technician to accompany the patients on these walks. Often taking technicians away from other duties.

With the Mobilizer product, one technician can accompany the patient as the walk through the hospital allowing the other technicians to tend to other patients and even saving hospitals money on over-staffing.

Boosterville, a spring 2013 graduate of the Memphis based Seed Hatchery accelerator was featured in GigaOM earlier this week. The company, founded by Pam Cooper and her husband, and founding CTO of Cha-Cha, Tom Cooper, has a better way of school fundraising. Pam Cooper had previously built up a large cleaning business in Indiana. When she met her husband Tom six years ago they knew they would eventually collaborate on a startup.

Boosterville is that startup. The company offers a mobile wallet app that is tied in to local merchants that are automagically kicking back money for fundraising. The user selects the participating merchant that they want to patronize and checkout using Boosterville. The merchant is paid and a portion of the payment is forwarded onto the school or charity.

GigaOm featured Boosterville as part of a story about startups that are changing the way schools can do fundraising, trading in wrapping paper, pizza kits and World’s Finest Chocolate bars, for an easy to use mobile app.

Find out more about Boosterville here Mobilizer is on the web here.

Krossover, Because Everyone Loves A Great High School Sports Comeback

So, I may have shed a little tear when watching Undefeated earlier this year. It’s one of those tug-at-your-heart-strings comeback stories. Team does horribly, needs more direction, gets it in adversity, and wins. In the case of Undefeated, the team almost went all the way. While Undefeated was more about culture and upbringing, and we may have a little bias being based in Memphis and all, it’s still a great high school comeback story.

High school comeback stories are good for morale, good for building strong minds, and in a lot of cases great for the community.

New York-based startup Krossover is giving high school coaches everywhere a better chance at making that comeback. They provide access to tools that used to only be available to college and professional coaches.

Coaches subscribed to the Krossover service upload their raw game video footage to the Krossover servers. Then a network of over 1300 crowdsourced employees in the US, India, and Europe watch the films and document everything. What’s delivered back to the coach in 24 hours looks like a college or professional sports analytics.

According to Business Insider, Krossover indexes the video and data, and a coach can instantly call up shots by a particular player, bad running plays, missed free throws, and just about every piece of the game.

“We are sitting on mounds of data, about 20 terabytes of video, data, and analytics,” James Piette, Krossover founder told Business Insider. “Our service is cataloging exactly what’s happening in every single play like who took a shot where, who rebounded the shot, who inbounded the ball, everything.”

Krossover has thousands of coaches as customers and provides their services for football, basketball, and lacrosse. One of their customers Sean McInnis, the basketball coach at King Philip Regional High Scool in Massachusetts. Before he took over the team and signed up for Krossover, the team had gone winless in three seasons, with over 60 losses. The year he tried Krossover they improved their record to 14-8.

Check out Krossover here.

Boston Startup HelmetHub Has The Helmets To Go With The Bike Share

Bike sharing is becoming the in thing when it comes to green transportation in most major cities. Boston, New York, Chicago, Washington DC, Atlanta, and several West Coast cities all have significant bike share programs in place. Bike sharing allows users to “rent” a bike using an automated kiosk. In most cases you can rent the bike for the day at one location and return it at a different location, kind of like Red Box.

Bike sharing is perfect for when it’s pouring down rain in the morning but brightens up by lunch time or after work. You wouldn’t schlep your bike to work in the rain, but having a bike share kiosk near by means that you can get some exercise in the afternoon if the weather permits.

One of the hurdles that bike share programs have encountered is safety, and more specifically helmets. Whether it’s a matter of law or just people conscious about protecting their noggin, helmets are a significant barrier to people bike sharing. Sure you could go buy a helmet and carry it in a backpack, but at that point you might as well buy your own bike, get a lock, and forget the bike sharing concept all together.

Two Boston entrepreneurs, Breanna Berry and Chris Mills, are hoping to solve the helmet problem by making helmets as easy to rent as bikes.

The two have developed a kiosk called HelmetHub that allows users to swipe a credit card and rent a helmet for $2 per day to go along with the bike they just rented. To test out the service, HelmetHub is being installed in four locations alongside bike sharing kiosks. When a rider rents a bike they can pick up the helmet and be on their way. According to the Boston Herald, users rent their helmets from one side of the machine and return them to another. This keeps the used helmets separate from the sterilized helmets. Each helmet is cleaned and sterilized between uses.

“It’ll be the first real automated bike helmet vending machine in the world,” said Nicole Freedman, Boston’s so-called bike czar who heads the city’s Boston Bikes program. “What we want to do with HelmetHub is make helmets as convenient as renting the bikes.”

Berry told the Herald that she hopes that HelmetHub goes well in Boston so that they can branch out to the other cities offering bike share services.

Find out more about HelmetHub at helmet-hub.com