11 Awesome Coworking Spaces for Entrepreneurs

Working from home sucks sometimes. You can only stare at the same wall so many times before it completely drains you of all creativity. And, in my case, it’s a guarantee that as soon as I get in a groove, the children will want to tell me about their latest Lego creation.

That’s why coworking spaces can be so awesome for entrepreneurs. You can be surrounded by like-minded people, but also plugged totally into work. Many of the spaces below also offer on-site mentors and other perks.

In case you didn’t know, most coworking spaces are member-only because they often also work as incubators. But, if you’re ever traveling, a nominal fee will usually get you some space at one of these awesome hubs, and you’ll get the added benefit of networking with a whole new set of people.

If you live around one of these awesome coworking spaces everywhere else, do whatever you can to get in!

1. 1776 DC–Opened in January of this year, 1776 is a great space for entrepreneurs. Many of the businesses that work here are focused on solving our nation’s toughest problems in healthcare, education, energy, and government.

2. The Speak Easy in Indianapolis bills itself as “a combination of a 17th century salon, coffee shop, and science lab.” Companies pay yearly dues and have access to common areas and a conference room, as well as a gaming center and semi-regular events.

3. Chicago’s 1871 (named after the 1871 Chicago fire) is located in the historic Merchandise Mart. There are three different kinds of memberships that offer different levels of access to the space. They also host classes, workshops, and networking events.

4. Miami Shared is full not the average folding table coworking space. Full of windows, white walls, and stunning artwork, Miami Shared creates a unique place for entrepreneurs to work. Members get the benefit of the beautiful space, as well as networking and collaboration opportunities.

5. Green Spaces can be found in Denver, CO, New York City, and (soon) Minneapolis, MN. The space particularly hosts companies that focus on “doing good.” Collaboration, networking, and access to influencers across the world are just a few perks of being a member at Green Spaces.

6. MAKERS opened up shop in Seattle in 2011. The building is full of refurbished wood and natural light, reminiscent of Seattle’s nature-loving atmosphere. There are several tiers of membership, and non-members can rent out certain spaces at certain times.

7. 654 Work Cottage is one of the more creative uses for an old house. Don’t the let the quaint outside fool you, though. Inside the Work Cottage is a first class coworking space. They offer a range of memberships, including pay as you go.

8. The Nashville Entrepreneur Center opened last month to a little bit of controversy. Still, members of the center have access to investors, mentors, and other resources to build their companies. They also get preferred consideration for the incubator housed in the same building.

9. The Iceberg is a cool place to work in tiny Fayetteville, AR. The basement space is divided into areas, such as a coffeeshop/lounge, conference room, workspace, and resource library. Rent is affordable at The Iceberg, and they offer day passes to those passing through.

10. In Jacksonville, NC, CoWorx offers an office space for any entrepreneur. They have all the trappings of an office, but offer tiers of membership to make it affordable. Members can even rent private, furnished offices.

11. Philadelphia’s Independents Hall is tapping into the excitement that working with a group can generate. Indy Hall offers all the other essentials of a coworking space, but they really focus on the serendipity of the relationships built there. They also offer day passes for people who are passing through or want to test the waters.

Most startups and entrepreneurs could never afford the upkeep on these sleek, state-of-the-art offices. But, with the growing coworking trend, it’s so much easier to work in style.

Know of a great coworking space? Let us know which ones we left out.

Building the Colorado Ecosystem Just Got a Little Easier

I went to a great event here in Memphis this week. Rather than the typical happy hour, the event started at 8–after work, gym, and dinner. (And, in my case, kids’ bedtimes.) It wasn’t focused on any one industry in the city, but rather on 20-30somethings across all areas. There was a great turn out, and lots of new connections made. The very thing a healthy ecosystem needs.

Now, the guy who organized it is very well-respected in Memphis, and it wasn’t hard for him to raise the money for the event and the next few coming up. But, what if Memphis were farther along in the ecosystem-building continuum? What if there were events every single day, hosted by multiple entrepreneurs and for multiple reasons?

According to Brad Feld, that’s exactly what’s happening in Colorado right now. In Boulder and Denver alone, there are often as many as 5 different events in a day. None of these are particularly expensive on their own, but as they scale, the entrepreneurs hosting them have to find money to pay for that. And with that many events in a concentrated area–well, there’s only so much money to go around.

That’s why Feld and several others are creating a $200,000 fund to help. In partnership with Startup Colorado, the fund with support “activities, events, and organizations in the Colorado startup community.”

Each quarter the fund will hand out grants to entrepreneurs organizing events for the community. Those grants will range from $1000-$25,000. This isn’t an investment or a loan. Rather, it plays into Feld’s Boulder Thesis and helps drive the things he believes are necessary for a strong ecosystem. The entrepreneurs who organize these events usually do it on the side; they are also busy building their companies. The grants from the Startup Colorado Community Fund will make it easier on them to also contribute to the state’s ecosystem as a whole.

The fund will offer grants across the state, but focus on Boulder, Denver, Colorado Springs, and Fort Collins. For more information, check out the video below and visit the Startup Colorado Community Fund website.

The Startup Colorado Community Fund from Startup Colorado on Vimeo.

6 Companies From Everywhere Else That Raised Money This Week

The two biggest complaints about building a company outside of Silicon Valley are 1) lack of talent and 2) lack of capital.

But that doesn’t mean NO ONE gets funded outside of Silicon Valley. Every day companies close rounds and gain that extra capital they need to scale. And, yes, they even do it outside of the Valley.

Here are 6 companies from everywhere else that raised capital just this week.

Mediaspectrum–Based in Boston, Mediaspectrum provides a platform for big media companies (think Gannett, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, etc) to manage content and advertising in one place. They raised $35.8 million, led by Insight Ventures Partners.
MobileSpaces–This Maryland company helps businesses secure mobile apps on their employees’ phones, keeping sensitive business data from leaking. They raised $8.6 million in second round funding from Accel Partners and Marker LLC.
Vivino–This wine app from Denmark followed on their December series A with another $10.3 million. The app scans wine labels and tells the drinker what brand, varietals, vintage, and year of the wine inside the bottle.
Objective Logistics–On July 19, the Cambridge, MA-based company announced a $5.3 million Series A. The app gamifies waiting tables, trying to incentive waitstaff that may need extra encouragement.
Codeanywhere–The Croatia-based company bills itself as “the Google Docs for developers” and offers a Web-based code editor. On Monday they announced a $600,000 series A from World Wide Web Hosting, LLC.
Panjo–Based in LA, Panjo is an ecommerce platform that taps into the “enthusiast market.” Within each vertical (cars, sports, pets, etc), hobbyists can sell items related to the hobby. They raised $1.6 million in seed funding, led by Spark Capital.

As I researched this story, I realized something. Few of these companies are “sexy.” They aren’t the next consumer-facing social phenomenon. They aren’t going to interest every person on earth, or even most people, really. But, most of them are solving problems encountered by people and businesses all over the world.

That’s kind of what “everywhere else” is about, right? The Valley has done what the Valley’s going to do, and now it’s time for everywhere else to step up and solve problems.

Here from several startups everywhere else that raised money this year at everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference, a Must Attend by Forbes.

VentureCamp Gives New Meaning to “Go Big or Go Home”

VentureCamp has everything an entrepreneur needs from an accelerator:

top-notch mentorship
a smart cohort
a curriculum developed by leading investors

Oh…and a mansion.

Looks like something out of The Bachelor, right? That’s actually not too far off. Besides building companies and receiving world class mentorship, VentureCamp participants live together in the mansion. And, it’s all being captured on video.

VentureCamp obviously isn’t your typical accelerator.

First, rather than accept teams that are already building products, VentureCamp only accepted individuals. And, they focused on women and minorities, groups that are typically left out of the venture capital game. After the first week, the participants were split up into teams, they chose a company, and had 7 weeks to build it out. The whole experience can be likened to Startup Weekend, but on a bigger, grander scale.

Second, the whole thing is housed in Indianapolis’s Kessler Mansion, owned by one of the camp’s backers, Chad Folkening. The idea is to give the entrepreneurs an idea of what life could be like, in the event their companies go big.

Finally, from morning to night, the whole thing is filmed. Camera crews hang out in all the meetings, strategy sessions, and dinners, capturing the formation of three new companies. The footage will be turned into a “docu-series,” shown first online, but the team hopes to eventually put it on TV. VentureCamp backer and senior advisor Patrick Mellody told USA Today that the film will promote other VentureCamps held around the world.

Despite some of the glitz, VentureCamp entrepreneurs have been hard at work for the last 8 weeks. With mentors like Priceline’s Jeff Hoffmann,they receive outstanding feedback on their business models and pitch.

And, speaking of pitch, what’s the one thing all accelerators have in common?

Demo Day!

Today is the first VentureCamp Demo Day. They are launching (and hoping to fund) 3 companies:

TourNative is a marketplace that connects travelers with locals.
YumDom helps home cooks find just the recipe they need for their lifestyle and includes 6 iPhone apps tailored to different dietary needs.
PlanSoon connects people with someone new to go do something fun.

It should be interesting to watch what comes from VentureCamp, both the new companies and the docu-series. Whatever it is, this team definitely knows how to “go big.”

Sverve Unleashes Bloggers’ Social Verve

There are 20 million women bloggers in the United States. Every year more women join the crowded “mommy blogger” market. There are books (of the e- variety, of course), conferences, networks, and webinars all geared toward helping these women grow their audience and expand their influence.

Few of these blogs will make it “big.” But that doesn’t mean that lots of them couldn’t be profitable. For each well-done mommy blog, there is a tribe of loyal followers that are happy to try products, read books, or take vacations all based on the blogger’s recommendation.

These women work hard to make blogging worth their time, but for all the tactics and strategies out there, it can still be hard for good bloggers to monetize. Likewise, it can be hard for brands to decide which bloggers will be the best partners for them.

Rohit Vashisht and Vikas Gupta have the solution.

Sverve is a platform that connects brands and bloggers. Bloggers sign up for the service, paying $25 every six months. On the platform, they describe their blogs, add areas of influence, and give statistics for their reach and influence across their blog and social media. They can also connect with other bloggers and endorse each other, which helps establish expertise in a topic.

Brands can also pay to access this information. The blogger with the biggest following isn’t necessarily the right person to partner with a brand. With Sverve, brands can see a blogger’s target audience, demographic, and location. The platform allows brands to launch campaigns and recruit the best bloggers to partner with.

Sverve isn’t the first company to do something like this. Social Reactor also connects influencers with brands. But what makes Sverve such a great idea is that they tap into a very underutilized market–mommy bloggers.

I have probably read thousands of blog posts in my years of motherhood. Sometimes, it’s the easiest way to find like-minded community that can fit into the hectic life of a young mom. But, as my kids have gotten older, I read fewer and fewer mom-centric blogs. The ones that I’ve stuck with–well, I’ll try just about anything they recommend, and so would most of their readers. If Sverve finds a way to help brands tap into those followings, it’ll be a boon for the brands and the bloggers.

Sverve is going strong, too. They present today at the 500 Startups Demo Day, and they’ve already raised funding from Scout Ventures and 500 Startups. Their 5500 bloggers reach 50 million followers and get 1 billion pageviews a month collectively. That’s billion-with-a-b, y’all. Sverve’s traction is so good right now, they rank #5 on Mattermark’s pre-series A list.

Most mommy bloggers do it for the love of writing and sharing their lives. But that doesn’t mean these ambitious women don’t want to support their families. Sverve is providing a way for them to do what they love.

Every entrepreneur can get behind that.

The Hottest Thing In Tech Startups Is Getting Hotter

When you ask about the hottest thing in startups, you may get a lot of answers:

Data
Crowdfunding
New media

All of these things are popular, and lots of people are building and innovating in these areas. But, the actual hottest thing in tech startups isn’t an industry. It’s women.

Every conference you go to, you’ll hear the same question: “Where are the women?” Where are they on the VC panels? Why don’t more women-led startups receive funding? Why aren’t more women on the technical side?

There are no easy answers to these questions, because everything is so nuanced. But, the growing emphasis on women in the tech world is undeniable. There’s evidence that the gender gap is closing. Lots of accelerators actively seek women-founded companies. There are more and more initiatives to teach young girls coding and engineering. At our own Everywhere Else Conference, we host a “Kick-Ass Female Founders” panel, where women sound off about starting companies.

And, now, with a new women-only accelerator, women are just getting hotter.

Last week was the opening week of the inaugural cohort of Upstart, a women’s accelerator in Memphis, TN. Four teams survived the application process, and it all kicked off with a swanky reception.

Some people may disagree with a women’s-only accelerator. I admit, I was one of them at first. The thinking is that we don’t want to accidentally build a “separate but equal” ecosystem, with a women’s accelerator becoming a good place for the also-ran’s.

The team at Upstart isn’t going to let that happen, though.

At the opening reception, Start Co co-president Andre Fowlkes addressed this very issue. “Of course we want there to be equal distribution, but there isn’t. This is a first step.”

Mara Lewis is the entrepreneur-in-residence for the accelerator. Though she’s launching her own company in California, she will fly in for about a week each month to meet with the teams and help guide them. She’s always available through phone and email throughout the program. During her absences, the companies will work with the Start Co team to build their businesses and hone their pitches.

I asked Lewis what the difference is a women’s accelerator and a general one would be. Her answer shed a lot of light on the approach Upstart will take to get women ready to launch.

I think the primary difference is more in terms of our tactics. We’re still covering the same points and doing a lot of the same exercises, but we’re going about our critique in a different way…we’re being more aware of what some of the challenges for women are in terms of delivery of the pitch…One of the slides we’re spending a lot of time on right now is the the traction slide. Even though that’s important for all companies, statistically investors will invest in a man based on their potential, whereas for women you have to show past accomplishments, what has been achieved…We really need to show strides. By the end of 90 days, these girls need to have customers, they need to have revenue.

Upstart is the first women’s accelerator of its kind, that focuses on any company led by a woman. But, there is another accelerator in New York that focuses on women.

Women Innovate Mobile is an accelerator that invests in and mentors mobile-first, female-led companies. They see that fewer women receive investment funding, and they see that as a huge opportunity for them. While their teams are always mixed-gender, it is a requirement that a woman be a major stakeholder in the company. Other than that, their program has the same standards as any other accelerator.

Kelly Hoey is the Co-founder and Managing Director of WIM. As one of 5 women listed in Forbes for changing the world of VC/entrepreneurship, she’s a great mentor for the companies WIM accepts. And she expects big things from those companies. She told me over email, “We look for female founders who want to be household names, like Zukerberg, Jobs, or Gates.”

With programs like Upstart and WIM, it shouldn’t be long before we stop asking, “Where are the women?” And as more women choose to start companies and get the first-class mentorship available through these programs, the hottest thing in startups will just keep getting hotter.

Stay tuned for more coverage of the current Upstart and WIM cohorts.

IndustryHuddle Gets Funding, Reaches 500 Users, & Throws A Party

One of my favorite things about covering startups “everywhere else” is that they’re really good at solving un-sexy problems. At the Southland Summit last month, Sarah Lacy said, “The Valley has done what the Valley is good at.” Which leaves a large field for innovation from everywhere else.

IndustryHuddle is doing just that. In June they announced a small funding round that would allow them to iterate their social trade network, adding features and improving the platform. Then, last week, they made another announcement via press release.

Cincinnati-based social trade network IndustryHuddle.com has reached a new milestone over a month before its first major overhaul. Century Fasteners & Machines Co., of Niles, IL, registered on July 12th, 2013 as the 500th company on the social trade network. As a result, they will receive a $500 advertising credit for use on the site or towards sponsorship of an industry huddle of their choosing.

The free network allows businesses to connect with suppliers and consumers within their industry. They currently offer 40 different industries, including bearings and power transmission, HVAC, carpet/tile/flooring, and janitorial supplies. Obviously, these aren’t typical Valley focal points.

Once a company signs up for the network, they can list themselves under any industry huddle they participate in. Then, they have access to sales leads, an online sales platform, and exclusive promotions offered within the huddles. IndustryHuddle also works with partners like Chevron/Texaco, Sprint, Staples, and Office Depot to offer member-only discounts.

The addition of the 500th member is a huge milestone for the company, especially since they still haven’t unveiled the latest improvements.

One thing IndustryHuddle has done right is those partnerships with big companies that offer discounts to members. Because small businesses have to watch every penny, this alone provided value, even before the network began to grow. Now, with each industry filling out, members have easy access to big and small players in their business, making it easy to both buy and sell products and services.

In the press release, Zachary Haines, President and CEO of IndustryHuddle said: With large companies like 3M on board as well as smaller operations like Century Fasteners, we’re proving that our services are accessible to all.

The company took a quick break to celebrate their 500th member with a pizza party. Then, they got back to work on the next iteration of their growing platform. IndustryHuddle 2.0 will be launched in late August and will feature individual profiles, new communication choices, and an overall better user experience.

Go congratulate IndustryHuddle on Twitter and check out IndustryHuddle.com.

The Anew School Gives American Boys Hope In Africa

Here at Nibletz, we cover mostly high-growth technology startups. Even with a lot of noise in the space, we ultimately believe these are the ventures that are shaping our world.

But, every so often we come across a different kind of venture that we just can’t help but write about. Last month I attended the Demo Day of the Memphis edition of the NewME PopUp Accelerator. I was blown away by the great ideas and the caliber of entrepreneurs in the room. One in particular is not starting a tech company. In fact, she’s going into education, a rocky field at best. But, I was so impressed by her and her venture, I couldn’t help but share it with Nibletz readers.

Alexandria Lee knows firsthand what it’s like to grow up struggling. The daughter of a single mom and a drug addict dad, her story could have been one of the thousands of tragedies happening in American schools every day. Except for that one teacher who challenged her to do more. Thanks to him–a transplant from Senegal–she switched to honors classes and surprised everyone by graduating not just from high school, but also from Spelman College and Harvard Law School.

Now, Nashville-based Lee has a new vision for education for African-American boys.

“9% of black males in the 8th grade can read at a proficient level,” she said in her NewME pitch. Well, obviously, that’s not acceptable.

Lee’s solution is to open a school in Ghana and transplant at-risk boys for a few years of out-of-their-element education. Besides honors-level classes, the boys will be paired with a local student to learn leadership and entrepreneurship. They will work together to devise community action plans that solve real problems in the local community. The school wants to teach African-American boys where their roots really are, not in the tragedy of slavery, but in the deserts of Africa.

“Our goal is to transform discarded youth into community leaders. Our students will come into the program underperforming. We will first catch them up, and then excel them past their classmates back home. But, more than just academic gap closure, our students will be trained in emotional competence, given the desire to serve others, and learn manhood lessons. At an early age they will become global citizens and return to their communities with broadened horizons, prepared to begin finding solutions to ills within their own communities,” Lee told me in an email.

The Anew School will receive charter school funding from the state of Tennessee, but they will also supplement with donations from private foundations. They already have some land in Ghana and will begin building soon.

Check out The Anew School on Facebook and Twitter.

Other great things happen in Memphis, like the biggest startup conference in the world for startups everywhere else.

Stopped.At Launches In Super-Super-Beta

As the Entrepreneur-In-Residence of the new Upstart Accelerator in Memphis, Mara Lewis has spent the last week telling women to just do it. Women have to fight perfectionism, and if they try to make a product perfect before it launches, it’ll never launch.

“You iterate. You put it out there. It can’t be pretty. If you wait until it’s perfect, you’ve waited too long.”

Lewis’s co-founders back in California were shocked when she took her own advice and made the announcement about their own product: Launch it. Put it live.

And that will forever be the story of stopped.at’s launch into the world. But, of course, it really isn’t the beginning. The beginning happened two years ago when Lewis and her team pivoted their old “Foursquare for the Web” site and began formulating stopped.at.

In the last two years, they have perfected an algorithm similar to Pandora. A user signs up for stopped.at, drags the bookmarklet to their browser, and goes about their business. As they use the web, they “check in” on each site via the bookmarklet. Over time, stopped.at’s algorithm will begin to read the traits of the websites a user visits. Then, it suggests new sites, apps, or services the user might be interested in.

Stopped.at has all the features we love about social sites. You can connect it with your Facebook or Twitter account and you can follow friends. There’s also a rewards system. For each task you do, you earn rewards, which you can then redeem for prizes.

They also have “folders,” similar to boards on Pinterest. Using the folders it’s easy to create collections of the websites, apps, and services you use every day. Then your friends can browse your folders and discover their next must-have app or website. This feature is the one stopped.at’s team is most interested in testing during beta. They want to know if and how people will use them and if they are a good value for the site.

Right now stopped.at is only available on the web. “One regret is,” Lewis admitted with a sigh, “at the time, I wish we had done mobile-first. But, we know it, and we recognize it, and it’s top of our priority list.” Since more than half of American adults use their smartphones to browse the Internet, stopped.at will probably see a lot of growth when they launch on mobile.

The team hopes to launch out of its “super-super-beta” at the end of August, and the goal is to have 50,000 monthly users by October.

Lewis has been at the entrepreneurial game for a long time. This is her third company, and this version of stopped.at has been in production for 2 years. Kyle ran into Lewis during SXSW this year, where she pitched in the Dolphin Tank.

Those of us in the tech world could find stopped.at to be the perfect engine to discovering the best apps and websites out there. Join the public beta and let the team know what you think.

The 7 Best Places to Startup (Infographic)

Here at Nibletz, we’ve long known the benefits of starting up “everywhere else.” Silicon Valley gets so much press–and they have certainly been at the top for a long time–but we know that the hottest new companies of this century will come from outside the Valley.

And now we have an infographic to back us up!

GoodApril is (ironically) a San Franciso-based tax-planning company and a startup themselves. In conjunction with Entrepreneur, they ranked the 7 hottest startup scenes in America on 5 measures:

median tech-employee earnings
max personal income tax
property tax
cost of housing
cost of office space

There are some people who argue that these factors don’t affect the decisions of people you actually want. But, we’ve met plenty of great entrepreneurs over the years who definitely understand the benefits of low cost of living. And they know that employees can work from anywhere.

So, you’re looking to move you’re startup. Where should you go?

According to the GoodApril rankings, Austin, TX is the best place to build a new company. San Francisco? Well, by these metrics, the Valley is actually the worst place to start your new company, despite the concentration of talent and VC money. In a blog post on GoodApril’s website, co-founder Mitch Fox tells this story:

I recently met an entrepreneur who’s had enough of the Bay Area’s living costs and taxes, and is moving to Austin. He launched his startup in San Francisco several years ago. Now he says, “The business case to move is just too compelling. Austin has everything we need at a much lower cost.” He’s had an office in Texas for three years. Now he’s going all-in. “This tax increase was a tipping point for me, but it’s not just about taxes. My employees can buy a large, three bedroom house in Austin for less than a one bedroom condo in Noe Valley.”

Several states don’t have income tax, including Florida, Texas, Washington, and Nevada. A lack of income tax makes life easier for employees as well as companies. And for many families with children, the pace of life outside the Valley is a better fit.

It may take awhile for any one of these scenes to overtake the Valley, but the more entrepreneurs see the benefits of “everywhere else” the quicker it will happen.

Check out the infographic from GoodApril and Entrepreneur for all the details.

7 best places to startup, startups, entrepreneurs, inforgraphic

Source: Entrepreneur.com

Google’s Maker Camp Brings The Maker Movement to Teens Everywhere

Summer camp is an iconic American tradition. Even if you’ve never actually been to summer camp, you know the images: lakes, ropes courses, capture the flag, and campfires.

Oh, and arts and crafts, of course.

For the second year in a row, Google is bringing the summer camp arts and crafts experience online with Maker Camp.

Don’t be fooled, though. This is the 21st century, and we’re talking about Google. You won’t see any macaroni birdhouses. Instead, Google has partnered with MAKE Magazine to bring a lineup of intense hands-on projects over a period of 30 days. Each morning, a new project is posted on the camp’s Google+ page, complete with materials needed and instructions. Each afternoon features a Google+ Hangout with a “maker” as well as tips and tricks on cool projects. The week caps off with Field Trip Friday, a video series going behind the scenes of some pretty cool spots. For example, the first week took visitors to Oracle Team USA’s basecamp, where they build the boats that race in the America’s Cup.

This year, each week has a theme. This week’s theme is “Create the Future” and features projects like a light up hoodie and learning to solder. The field trip on Friday will be to NASA, which promises to be pretty cool.

If you’re thinking some of this stuff would be hard to pull of at home, you’re right. In many areas there are “campsites” with counselors facilitating the program. Most of the projects are fairly simple, though, so if you’re in an area without a campsite, it’s still possible for teens to do them on their own. But, teens like to socialize, so they can also hop on the Google+ page to chat with other kids doing the same projects.

“Maker Camp hopes to foster the DIY (do-it-yourself) spirit in young people. We want each camper to see how much there is that you can do and how much there is to explore all around you. Once you begin doing things, you’ll meet others who share your interests, and you can collaborate to work on projects together. We call that DIT (do-it-together),” publisher of MAKE Magazine Dale Dougherty said in a blog post.

Last week I jumped on the Maker Camp website with my 3 boys. Now, at 7 & 5 they are definitely under the age range Google is targeting, and I am certainly not one of those handy moms skilled in any kind of crafts. But, we attempted the “balloon blimp” project anyway. (And by “we,” of course, I mean “I.” Unless you count chattering and jumping on the bed as the boys helping.)

The project was simple enough and the instructions pretty clear. We did need to plan ahead to get a certain kind of balloon and a certain kind of straw, though, which would be hard for a younger teen at home while parents worked. Ultimately, we didn’t really succeed in our project, but that was because my own kids were too impatient to let me try different solutions to make it work.

For the industrious teen, though, the projects at Maker Camp are easy enough to do alone, but challenging enough to require some problem-solving skills. The experience would be enhanced, of course, if they can do it with a group of some kind. Because everything’s more fun in a group.

This whole endeavor is a stroke of genius on Google’s part. They are contributing to the DIY nature of the next generation, which gives them great press. But, this year the program is also intimately wrapped up in the Google+ platform. Last year, more than 1 million campers tuned in, and this year they are hoping for even more. That’s a lot of interaction on the world’s 2nd most popular social network site.

Maker Camp is only 6 days in, so there’s still time for teens to jump in. Check it out on the website or at Google+.

Fortify VC’s Carla Valdes Knows What It Means to “Have It All”

On the outside, it looks like Carla Valdes has a life any woman would want. Husband, kids, interesting job. She’s beautiful and pulled-together, and it definitely seems like she “has it all.”

And she’s okay with that illusion.

“I’m great with the world thinking I’m pulled together,” she laughingly told me over Skype. “But, really I’m just like any other mom trying to make it all work.”

“It all” for Valdes is a day that typically starts before dark. She’s up at 4:30 so she can head into her office with Fortify Ventures by 5:30. The commute is anywhere from 1-2 ½ hours depending on traffic, but her husband’s teaching and coaching gig keeps them in their current location, close to family. There aren’t many phone calls to make that early in the morning, so in her head, Valdes makes lists of all the things to do that day. Around 6:30 she talks to her 2 kids—ages 5 & 3–before they head off to school.

When she finally gets into the office, the day could go a thousand different ways. As a General Partner at Fortify, Valdes oversees the accelerator, The Fort. She also plans events, participates in investor relations, and works on deal sourcing. Despite meetings throughout the day, she also joins us all on the quest for inbox zero. She tries to leave the office by 3:30 so she can be home by 5-5:30.

Jonathon Perelli, Managing Director of Fortify, knows he has a stellar partner on his team. He confided over email:

Carla Valdes is the hardest working unsung hero I’ve ever had the opportunity and pleasure to work with. Her enthusiasm for entrepreneurship is contagious and she has a passion for startups that is second only to her passion for her children. Carla’s impact goes well beyond the Fortify portfolio and Washington, DC region. She is a firecracker whose strong heart and sharp mind are fantastic assets and having her as a partner has been a blessing.

After a full day, Valdes does the evening dance we all know and love to hate. Dinner (healthy, if she’s lucky), baths, story, bed. She often falls asleep with or before her kids, alarm set to do it all again the next day.

Yup, it seems like she has it all. But, like any of us, Valdes can point out the things she’s missing.

When I spoke with her via Skype this week, she had the luxury of working from home and was at a local Starbucks for the afternoon. This rare break from the killer commute was only possible, though, because her kids were at the beach for the week. With the kids gone, she and a few interns were working out of her house, and she was excited to feel so productive. But…

“You always have parental guilt,” she pointed out. “The kids are at the beach, and I’m missing the fun. But if they were here, I would feel guilty they weren’t at the beach.”

Parental guilt aside, Valdes doesn’t plan to quit any time soon. Like many moms, she knows if she didn’t work, she would go crazy.

For women that feel the same way, Valdes has a few tips:

At work, don’t be too nice. It took her awhile, but she finally realized that the polite behaviors—offering drinks, stepping out for a call—made her seem like a secretary. While these behaviors come natural to many women, it can make others second guess your role in the deal and not take you seriously.
Let the men think you’re pulled together. Valdes thinks the whole conversation about women and work is good for women to have in small circles. It’s good to know we’re not alone in our struggles. But, as far as anyone else needs to know, this whole thing is effortless.
Forget what you think a perfectly balanced life looks like. It’s like when you give a speech. You may think you bombed it because you forgot this point or didn’t put in that punch line. But the audience doesn’t know what you meant to say. Give yourself a break on those things you think you should be doing and focus on the things you have done.
Get some “me” time. Valdes admitted she’s actually not the best at this herself. Still, once every month or so, she gets a pedicure all by herself—no kids allowed. “Even if the laptop’s on my lap!” she laughed.

In the middle of a national conversation about work/life balance, Carla Valdes just does it, with a lot of grace. She knows it won’t be perfect, but that’s okay.

Voices Heard Media Helps Brands (Including Startups) Engage Their Customers

These days, customers expect more from brands. Gone are the days when we make a purchase and walk away. Now, we often spend time and effort researching major purchases, and we care about the companies where we choose to spend our money. With the advent of social media, we have come to expect a high level of engagement with the companies we love.

Tony Runyan puts it this way: Two-way communication is no longer a luxury; it’s a necessity.

But, that engagement can be expensive and difficult for companies to maintain on their own, which is where Voices Heard Media comes in.

Voices Heard Media provides a suite of plugins that increase customer engagement. Their products include apps that handle contests/sweepstakes, trivia/quizzes, social media streams, live Q&A sessions, video polls, and conversation around a brand. They work with big names like Disney, Food Network, and Fox Sports.

Will Overstreet founded Voices Heard Media in 2007. In his former gig as an Atlanta Falcon and sports broadcaster, Overstreet noticed that a simple conversation with a fan increased the likelihood that the fan would buy a jersey, listen to a show, or tell friends and family about Overstreet’s brand. He realized that there had to be a scalable way to take that kind of interaction into the digital world.

Tony Runyan joined the company in 2008 and made the initial big sales they needed. Now the VP of Product, Runyan develops new products, among other things.

So, what can the Voices Heard Media products do?

When I ran into them at the Southland Summit last month, I recognized the Food Network site on their display computer. The company wanted to increase engagement on their site, so they had Voices Heard Media create a Q&A session with the most recent The Next Food Network Star winner. The idea was simple enough: visitors sent in questions over one week, then Aarti Sequeria answered them. But the magic happened when, after the event closed, it still continued to drive traffic and interactions on the site.

All products from Voices Heard Media work on a company’s website, mobile site, and Facebook tab. The company sees this flexibility as absolutely necessary in today’s digital world.

They may work with some of the biggest names in the country, but they also handle smaller, local-focused companies like news outlets, political campaigns, and creative agencies.

Their prices are pretty startup-friendly, too, starting at only $50 for a basic package. And they can bring the same expertise they’ve built with big brands to your new company.

Check out Voices Heard Media and see how they can help your startup engage your audience.

Pixuru: Photo Art From The Pictures On Your Phone

Smartphone photography is constant. I’m not the best photographer, but my friends take gorgeous pictures with their iPhones. Even I have hundreds of pictures sitting on my phone, and while they’re fun to scroll through, they never seem to make it to my walls.

There are plenty of ways to print phone pictures, of course. But Pixuru is unique because it takes your pictures and creates a work of art for your home.

All you do is snap the picture, upload it to the app, and pick your product. In just a few days, your new artwork is delivered to your home. Pixuru prints your pictures on canvas, wood, metal, or more traditional photo paper with a frame. You can also turn your pictures into iPhone or iPad cases.

Here at Nibletz, we travel. A. LOT. And in our travels, we come across some pretty cool stuff. With Pixuru, we can snap great pictures, order our custom artwork, and have it waiting on us when we (finally) get home.

The company also runs regular contests, so check out their website for the current one.

As an Android user, the thing I love about Pixuru is that it’s already available in the Google Play Store.

Check out Kyle’s interview with Pixuru below.

Here’s more startup coverage from Chicago TechWeek.