Barcamp Jonesboro = IDEA Tech Festival November 8th & 9th

Brian Rogers and the folks behind Barcamp Jonesboro have made a pivot, changing the name of Barcamp Jonesboro to IDEA Tech Festival. With that they’ve turned the event in to two days (this time around), featuring a startup pitch contest and a full day of presentations.

The IDEA Tech Festival founders plan on growing the festival event after event and hope that in the coming years it will turn into a week long festival including a festival, technology trade show, hackathons and more. They also plan on holding these events twice a year beginning in 2014.

As for this year, the first IDEA Tech Festival is about 3 weeks away, on November 8th and 9th.

November 8th kicks off IDEA Tech Festival with a startup pitch contest at 6:00pm at the Brick House Grill in Jonesboro. Investors, entrepreneurs, startup leaders and media will all be in attendance to see the best of the best of what Jonesboro’s tech scene has to offer. Up for grabs is a $1000 cash prize, and other prizes.

November 9th is dubbed “Tech Talks” and will be held at the ASU Delta Center. The schedule for Saturday’s talks can be found here. The event promises to bring great content for developers, entrepreneurs, freelancers and artists. Tech Talks will be in three different tracks; Creative & Marketing, Development & Technology, and Business & Finance.

This is a great step for Jonesboro’s tech and startup scene. Find out more here.

Arkansas Catches Teenpreneur Bug With Sparkible Startup Summer Camps

Last week we sat in on a pretty intense startup community meeting in Tennessee. During the meeting some of the community stakeholders reminded us that successful startup communities are drilling down even further with education.

Entrepreneurs are getting younger and younger. Stories about 22 year old entrepreneurs are regular occurrences. The new wave of entrepreneurs are teenagers, and we’re not talking the 18-19 year old variety. Earlier this month we reported that a team led by a 14-year-old won Tampa Bay’s most recent Startup Weekend.

Startup communities across the country are starting to recognize this trend of innovation and entrepreneurism hitting a younger demographic. Also in the beginning of the month, the Kauffman Foundation and Kansas City entrepreneur William Robinson announced Teen Idea Labs, a conference style event for teenagers.

Now Arkansas has announced an initiative aimed at teenagers and innovation. Sparkible is a 4 day mini-accelerator summer camp for teenagers, complete with a demo day for potential investors, educators, stakeholders, and of course parents.

Sparkible is the brain child of Arkansas serial entrepreneur Mike Steely with help from Northwest Arkansas serial entrepreneur and Ark Challenge mentor David Moody, Innovate Arkansas reports.

Steely posted on his LinkedIn:

I am pleased to announce the creation of Sparkible, a non-profit education company focused on sparking innovation and startup learning. Sparkible is kicking off a series of summer camps in Arkansas structured to immerse teenagers in idea creation, innovation and building a business. This series is also our initial fundraising effort, proceeds from the camps will be used to build out our technologies and curriculum for this fall.
If you would like to learn more, know of a potential camper who would be interested in attending, would be interested in sponsoring a camp or camp participant, please contact me and also go check out our startup website at www.sparkible.org.
– See more at: http://innovation.arkansasbusiness.com/blog/2013/06/18/sparkible-launches-offers-startup-education-for-teenagers/#sthash.IO8Sxbmp.dpuf

Sparkible will allow participants between the ages of 14-18 to:

Learn ways to spot innovative ideas
Experience the lean startup process for turning an idea to a plan in less than a day
Understand what it takes to build a startup company and define your role.
Learn how to build a team, plan, and develop your idea.
Understand how Social Media interacts with your company.
Understand how mobile technologies, including Apps, will impact businesses of the future.
How to craft your message via an elevator pitch for funding and growth.
Where to find startup capital to grow your idea into a business.

Find out more here at Innovate Arkansas.

Check out with these two kidpreneurs did with cardboard.

Image source.

Holy Apples Batman, Steve Wozniak To Speak In Arkansas April 7th For Free

This announcement comes to us by way of Lee Watson and Startup Arkansas .

Apple co-founder, and generally awesome tech geek extraordinaire, Steve Wozniak is speaking at the University of Arkansas next Sunday April 7th. Doors open at 6:00p,. The lecture and Q&A, with are part of the University of Arkansas’ “Distinguished Lecture Series.

The talk will take place at the Barnhill Arena and is free and open to the public. Seating will be first come firs served, so arrive early.

More info here.

Little Rock Entrepreneurs Prepare For Startup Weekend April 5-7th

We were recently in Arkansas for the kickoff of Startup Arkansas, it was there we got to meet some of the Arkansas community leaders. Arkansas has four major startup regions and Little Rock is one of them.

Over the course of SXSW we got to spend a lot of time with the Startup Weekend team and provided some non traditional coverage of the organization that’s not only supporting entrepreneurs but entire communities as well.

Startup Weekend is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a three day hackathon style event to create businesses. It’s also the best place to go when you have an “idea” according to Startup Weekend CEO Marc Nager.

The three day event heads to Little Rock next weekend April 5th-7th at the Clinton School of Public Services, 1200 President Clinton Ave, Little Rock, AR.

Registration will begin on Friday evening at 6:30pm. That will be followed by great networking dinner where attendees will be able to size up the competition and the possible teammates for the weekend. The presentation will begin at 7:20pm. At around 7:30pm the “Friday Night” pitches will begin. We’ve covered a lot of startup weekends and you can see plenty of Friday night pitches here at nibletz.com.

The Friday night pitches are 60 seconds and hard timed by a Startup Weekend official. In that 60 seconds you need to sell the audience your idea and why it should be built over the next 53 hours. After everyone who wants to pitch has been given the opportunity, community voting will commence. It’s a rather diplomatic process. Usually the pitchers will hold up a sign with their startup name on it and attendees will put a sticker on the idea they like the best. At the end of the process, those with the most stickers will have their ideas developed.

Friday evening typically tops off with team selection and then some icebreaker time with the teams. From there the teams break off and start working on the startup idea.

Saturday, the community coaches come into play. These seasoned entrepreneurs and local business folks are there to help answer questions for each team and provide ideas and suggestions. The coaches for Startup Weekend Little Rock are Kristian Anderson, KA+A Founder and President; Dustin Williams, UX Architect and Designer; Josh Clemence, CEO, Founder BLKBOXLabs; Mike Smith Jr, Advisor at Innovate Arkansas, Whitney Horton, Arkansas Small Business and technology development center marketing specialist; John Twyford, Arkansas Small Business and Technology Development Center Startup Finance & Management Consultant; Mike Steely, eCommerce and Entrepreneurship Coordinator, Arkansas Capital Corporation; Lee Watson, Owner of Clarovista; Ted Dickey, Advisor at Innovate Arkansas; Stuart McLendon, Senior Financial Analyst at CFO Network, Adjunct Professor of Finance at UALR; and Luke Coleman, Software Developer III at ABC Financial Services.

Saturday is also the day that most teams take to the streets, the phones, the emails and the interwebs to get customer validation on their startup project. All the while designers, developers and coders are working on pitch decks, wire frames, prototypes and products.

Sunday is the day the teams put the finishing touches on both their products and their presentations. At 5:00pm and not a second later, the selected teams will have five minutes to pitch their idea and have a brief Q&A with the judges. Startup Weekend Little Rock judges are: Millie Ward, Co-Founder/President Stone Ward; Jeff Amerine, Venture Capitalist/leader Innovate Arkansas; Arlton Lowry, Designer / Founder, Made by Few / Adjunct Professor of Art, UALR; Jeff Stinson, Director, Center for Innovation & Commercialization at UALR; and Jeanette Balleza, Bad Ass Startup Chick and Director ARK Challenge.

You can register for Startup Weekend Little Rock here

Here’s more Startup Weekend Stories at nibletz.com

Bad Ass Startup Chicks: Jeannette Balleza Director, Ark Challenge

As you probably heard, women in startups played a big roll in the inaugural everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference. The conference which had over 1200 attendees on site featured panels like “Kick Ass Female Founders From Everywhere Else” and other panels which featured startup founders from everywhere else.

One of those bad ass startup chicks that was in the audience and networking all conference long was Jeannette Balleza the director of Ark Challenge, Arkansas’ premiere startup accelerator, and member of the Global Accelerator Network.

Balleza is no stranger to startups. After college she went straight to startup life launching her own company, Scribe Marketing. She is also the co-founding archivist of the award winning family history website DeadFred.

Balleza is a busy busy woman but always finds time to strengthen the Arkansas startup community every chance she gets.

She serves as a Board Member of the Northwest Arkansas Entrepreneurship Alliance, advises a number of small businesses and non-profit organizations and is part of the team spearheading the region’s first co-working space, The Iceberg. She is a member of The CEO Forums of Northwest Arkansas, and she coordinates the Professional Women’s Network Washington County. She was honored as one of Northwest Arkansas Business Journal‘s “40 Under 40” in 2008, and in 2009 she was selected as one of 135 U.S. entrepreneurs by British Airways to attend The Face of Opportunity Global Business Summit Conference in London.

We caught up with her, not in NorthWest Arkansas but rather in Central Arkansas for the ThinkBig Arkansas event and the kick off of Startup Arkansas. She provided a quick speech to attendees with an update about Ark Challenge and the exciting new Iceberg coworking space. Check out our interview below, the first of many to come in our series Bad Ass Startup Chicks.

Ark Challenge is still accepting applications for their second cohort, click here for more info.

Scott Case: “If You Build It They Will Come, BULL SH!T”

Scott Case, Startup America, Startup Arkansas, Startup Tip,startup communities

Scott Case, CEO of Startup America addresses the audience at Think Big Arkansas, Startup Arkansas Kick Off (photo: NMI 2013)

If you’ve ever heard Scott Case, the CEO of Startup America and founding CTO of priceline.com speak than you are very familiar with the subject of the headline. Case often talks about the movie Field of Dreams and it’s most popular line, “If you build it they will come.”

A lot of startup founders have the same philosophy, they think that no matter what they do as long as they build it people will come. It goes along the same lines as growing organically, or magically.

Sure there are huge grand slams every now and then but most of them either come from founders with long pedigrees in startups or because they caught the backing of name brand venture capitalists and angel investors early on. For others, gaining traction requires marketing. For bootstrapped (or sneaker strapped) startups that often times means grass roots marketing, crowdfunding, and good ole donations.

When speaking, Case follows the Field of Dreams example with, “if you market it they will come” a valuable lesson.

In the video below he talks about his first big venture into entrepreneurship. He built a product in 1994 that was packaged software and still available to this day. He talks about buying a full page advertisement in the biggest industry publication for his product. The problem though, the phone never rang. That’s when he set out to learn marketing.

This is a valuable lesson for all startup founders and the video is worth watching. Case was delivering the keynote at the recent Think Big Arkansas event in Conway Arkansas, a similar message to the one he delivered the week before that in Atlanta and the week before that in Memphis at everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference.

In talking with Case we discussed “canned speeches” and how I’ve personally seen Case speak over 30 times in the last year. The thing about him though, is that he doesn’t do the same canned speech at every event, but he often resorts to the Field of Dreams story, because it’s not a valuable lesson, but the most valuable lesson.

Now go watch this hilarious video from the Startup Arkansas kick off.

We’re on the sneaker strapped nationwide startup roadtrip part deux, find out how you can help here

Arkansas Thinks Big Everywhere Else

Arkansas, Startup Arkansas, Think Big Arkansas, Lee Watson, Startup Communities

Lee Watson organizer of Think Big Arkansas and Startup Arkansas (photo: NMI 2013)

Hendrix College in Conway Arkansas was bursting at the seams with young entrepreneurs and seasoned corporate executives. They’ve come together this morning to celebrate the kick off of Startup Arkansas and to Think Big Arkansas.

Event organizer, Lee Watson, did a great job of bringing startup community leaders from the entire state in to Conway for this event.

Scott Case the CEO of Startup America and founding CTO of Priceline will be keynoting today. Brad Feld, the author of Startup Communities should be at the event in the evening as well.

The morning session kicked off with entrepreneurs and event organizers from

Mike Smith, Innovate Arkansas (photo: NMI 2013)

organizations like BarCampConway, Startup Weekend, Innovate Arkansas, Ark Challenge, Made By Few and many others, to talk about what’s going on with their organization and how to bridge it all together in one cohesive unit.

In a pre-event dinner Thursday night Startup Arkansas Regional Champion Luke Coleman reached out to myself and Scott Case to address the problem that there are “cliques” in each part of Arkansas. Noooooo I had never heard of that before????

Case was able to give him some great advice which was summed up as “do you want the good news or the bad news first”, of course Coleman elected to take the bad news first which was “every region in Startup America has been in that same spot”, the good news? “Every region in Startup America has been in that same spot”.

Tennessee is no stranger to where Coleman sees a huge opportunity for growth, however in Tennessee we’ve done a great job of overcoming our hyper local focus and celebrating the victories in each of the 9 accelerator regions. It’s not uncommon to see a van or bus ful of Memphians at a Nashville or Chattanooga startup event, and vice versa.

Friday morning the parallels continued, confirming the main theme of the recent everywhereelse conference, startups and startup communities everywhere else have commonalities in problems and growth areas.

At the beginning of the event Arkansas Regional Champions Dave Moody, along with Coleman, brought 5 attendees up to the mic to share their ideas for a better community.

Abbey Keever with RedClay echoed one of Scott Case’s favorite themes,which was don’t try to be the next Silicon Valley. Keever, an experienced business woman and the fearless leader at RedClay, said she would love to see Arkansas expand in startups in their biggest areas, of course retail (Walmart) and logistics (Walmart and JB Hunt).

Most every startup community we’ve seen is starting to get their patriarch companies or at least their industries intertwined in the growth of the community.

Other ideas included keeping the dialoge open and holding vertical specific summits to give entrepreneurs access to closer related resources.

If you haven’t seen this amazing video from Thursday night, Go here now!

The Eve Of The Startup Arkansas Kickoff With Startup America & Company

Startup America, Nibletz, Work For Pie, and the Startup Arkansas crew really hammed it up on the eve of Startup Arkansas’s kick off and Think Big Arkansas. This video really needs no introduction.

The event kicks off bright and early at 9:00am with check-in starting at 8:30am. It’s being held at the Hendrix College Student Life & Technology Center.

Think Big Arkansas has a whole day of programming lined up including a startup alley exhibition area, a parade of startup ecosystem startups and partners, several sessions and of course Scott Case and Brad Feld. Case will be speaking at noon during lunch (bring $$ for Food Trucks and guided by Truckily) and Feld will be speaking at 6:30. He’ll also be signing copies of his book “Startup Communities”.

15 startups will be featured during the event in a startup alley, and demoing throughout. Kenny Tomlin from Rockfish and John James from Acumen will be speaking on starting up and the importance of serial entrepreneurship.

It’s not too late to register for this great event, click here.

We’re on the nibletz sneaker strapped nationwide startup road trip

Startup Arkansas Launching Friday March 1st With Scott Case & Brad Feld

Tis the season to launch Startup America Partnership regions. Monday we were in Atlanta for the kickoff of Startup Georgia with Scott Case and So So Def CEO & Founder Jermaine Dupri. Now Case along with Startup Community activist, investor and author Brad Feld are preparing for Startup Arkansas’ big launch on March 1st.

While Startup Bus regions across the country are double checking their busses, and checking their manifests, entrepreneurs throughout Arkansas will come together in Conway for an event called “Think Big Arkansas”.

The event kicks off bright and early at 9:00am with check-in starting at 8:30am. It’s being held at the Hendrix College Student Life & Technology Center.

It’s not too late to register for this great event, click here.

Work On An Iceberg: Ark Challenge Applications Open Through April 7th

We were really pleased that our neighbors from Arkansas’ Ark Challenge accelerator program were just one of many Global Accelerator Network (GAN) accelerators in attendance at everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference. The Ark crew was at the conference talking to attendees and startups about retail, logistics and food processing the three core focus areas for the North West Arkansas based accelerator.

Startups selected to accelerate in the Ark Challenge program will receive a seed investment of $20,000 for 6% equity to offset the cost of relocation to North West Arkansas.

The program will be held at the beautiful new IceBerg coworking space, where founders will have 24×7 access. They’ll also get access to a huge mentor network, product development and design support, promotion, and access to advisors and funders. On the retail side of things Ark Challenge isn’t far from the largest retailer in the world, Walmart.

The Ark Challenge is one of 20 projects nationwide that receives funding for the advancement of regional competitiveness from the Economic Development Administration (EDA), Small Business Administration (SBA) and the Employment And Training Administration (ETA).

In addition to all of that, two teams are selected to receive follow on funding of $150,000 to help the startup get through “speed up”.

The early bird application deadline is next week on February 24th with the final deadline on April 7, 2013. The session will run from June to mid September with an investor/demo day at the end of the session.

You can apply to the Ark Challenge here

Did you miss everywhereelse.co 2013? Well don’t miss everywhereelse.co 2014, ticket sales open and discounted now for the next six weeks here.

Silicon Valley Startup: Sooligan Moves To Arkansas To Help Strangers INTERVIEW

Startups flock in droves from their home city to Silicon Valley. It’s like the pilgrimage that actors and actresses make to Hollywood and models make to New York (some startups too). It’s not often that you hear of a startup moving from Silicon Valley to “everywhere else” to grow.

Back in June we brought you the story of the vitamin and supplement subscription box startup, Bulu Box. The husband and wife team behind Bulu Box moved from Silicon Valley to Lincoln Nebraska to grow their startup. Paul and Stephanie Jarrett were able to get an investment from the Nebraska Angels. They decided to pack things up and move to Nebraska, not only because of the investment but because costs would be more manageable there.

Today we’ve found Sooligan. Sooligan is a social discovery startup for the things around you. The idea behind the startup is that whether you’re traveling to a new city or your’re moving their, you can use Sooligan to crowdsource expert advice from the best experts, the locals.

Sooligan has rolled a few concepts into one big idea. They submitted the idea to the Ark Challenge accelerator in Fayetteville Arkansas and we’re accepted.

The two female founders from Sooligan, Nikka Umil and Natasha Malaihollo have relocated their headquarters to Fayetteville and plan on staying there after the accelerator program is over. Umil told nibletz.com why they decided to relocate to Arkansas and then stay there:

“I think everyone already knows about Berkeley! It is minutes away from Silicon Valley, and is a hub for the country’s best and brightest. This makes moving to Fayetteville, Arkansas (where we are currently based) quite shocking and a bit unexpected. We had NO clue whatsoever that this place had a booming startup scene/culture. We were very surprised by what we found once we started researching the area. Not ony is it home to the biggest Forbes 500 and 1000 companies, but it is also home to great up-and-coming startups like TTAGG, MobileFWD, Acumen Brands and more. Initiatives like the Ark Challenge and The Iceberg are also testaments to the growing startup culture in the area.”

Umil found a laundry list of accolades for their new home:

· Forbes named Fayetteville, Arkansas, a Best Place for Businesses and Careers.

· Fast Company recently named Fayetteville, AR as one of the “9 cities you wouldn’t think are hubs for tech startups” http://www.entrepreneur.com/slideshow/224504

· Travel + Leisure named Bentonville, Arkansas, one of the hottest travel destinations for 2012.

· The region, relatively insulated from the macroeconomy, offers a high quality of life and low cost of living.

· Northwest Arkansas is home to Fortune 500 and 1000 companies, as well as thousands of their big-brand suppliers.

· In 2011, Arkansas was cited by CNBC as having the lowest overall cost of doing business in the nation.

· The Kauffman Foundation ranks Arkansas as the 15th most entrepreneurial state in 2011 in the current issue of its annual report, the Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity. The calculated index for Arkansas is at 0.34%, which means there are 340 entrepreneurs per 100,000 adults per month in the Natural State.

· The nation is seeing progress, innovation clusters and cultural revival in the Midwest and American South.

· Northwest Arkansas is the sixth fastest growing region in the country, surrounded by the beautiful Ozark Mountains.

· The Northwest Arkansas MSA has grown 35% since 2000 and now numbers more than 463,000 residents—the fastest growing population in Middle America.

· Northwest Arkansas is a hub at the center of a regional market including Dallas, Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Kansas City, St. Louis, Little Rock, and Memphis metropolitan areas.

· Northwest Arkansas has a welcoming entrepreneurial culture with quick-start networking opportunities.

· Northwest Arkansas sees a high degree of philanthropic engagement from its citizenry, as well as creative and business communities.

· Northwest Arkansas has the most billionaires per capita than anywhere in the United States.

· As part of a regional strategic economic development plan, Northwest Arkansas has an intentional focus onnurturing mobile and Internet startups.

Below is the rest of our interview with Umil.

Cincy Serial Entrepreneur Comes In 2nd Place At Startup Weekend With 3DLT

Pablo Arellano Jr is a busy man. He is currently working on a startup in stealth mode that was just accepted into the Ark Challenge accelerator in Fayetteville Arkansas. We can’t tell you much about it but Arellano is excited about Ark Challenge, especially with it’s proximity to Bentonville.

This past weekend though he wanted to develop another idea, that’s equally as good. His startup 3DLT will be launching soon as a platform to buy and sell 3D printer templates online. Think of it as an iStock Photo or 99 Designs, except for 3D printer templates.

With companies like Makerbot thrusting onto the scene this last year, 3D Printing is starting to rise in popularity. Within the next few years it may become a household concept. In our video interview with Arellano he points out that most major college institutions already have a 3D Printer, the same way that they used to be the only place to find a good laser printer or a big computer.

While 3D printers will probably never fall as cheap as a Lexmark ink jet printer that you can buy at Walmart for under $30, they could start popping up in pro-sumer homes in the next few years.

The biggest pain point for 3D printers is the actual programming and design work. In his Sunday pitch Arellano showed a video of TV late night host and car enthusiast Jay Leno who uses a 3D printer in his garage to make prototypes for parts that are no longer available for purchase. After he and his 3D printer guy, make the plastic prototype they can take the mold to a machine shop and have the same part made of metal.

Architecture is another industry that has embraced the 3D printer concept. Now instead of paying someone to skillfully make models for buildings and neighborhoods out of little pieces of wood and plastic, these buildings, houses and even trees can be cut from a 3D printer. Heck there’s even a 3D printer out there now that prints chocolate bars.

Arellano is hopeful that by providing a template resource for 3D Printer users, he can help drive sales and the price of 3D printers down, while still making between 30-60% commission off the sales of the templates.

Check out our video interview with Arellano below:

Linkage:

Here’s more of our coverage of Startup Weekend

Check out Ark Challenge here

Nibletz is the voice of startups “everywhere else” and we’re on a sneaker strapped road trip “everywhere else”

South Carolina Startup: 52 Apps Will Produce 52 Apps This Year

Here’s a story that’s just screaming “everywhere else”. Two students who actually hail from Arkansas, Brandon Lee and Chris Thibault are two ambitious young entrepreneurs who have built a startup app studio with a twist. Their startup is working out of an incubator at USC where Thibault was a student.

Their development company, called 52apps, is set out to produce 52 high quality apps over the next year. They hope to produce each app in just five days, presumably cheating the startup culture and taking weekends off, which is ok considering they are also students.

While the 52apps concept isn’t entirely new, the way they’ve set out to find app ideas has an interesting twist. The startup held almost a “pitch” event Friday evening. At the event they took app suggestions from all walks of life at an event with a stage, pitches and brainstorming.

Lee and Tthibault heard a ton of great app ideas at their “Idea Day” that was held immediately following a launch and kick off event for their University of South Carolina, Columbia, based company,

These two aren’t guys who just decided to become app developers in College. Both Lee and Thibault are BFFs from high school, who developed their first app while they were till in high school, with the ambitious idea to make math homework easier and more automated. They were able to achieve that as part of a goal to stop taking backpacks to school.

52apps is just one of 32 resident startup companies at a fairly new incubator at UNC.
“These are two- to three-month projects,” said Steve Leicht, who serves as 52apps’ chief executive and part of the management team put together by the incubator and Columbia venture capitalist Don Tomlin, said Tomthe statee.com. “These folks pull it off in a week.”

The duo has already put out their first iOS app under the 52apps umbrella. The app, called Tap Notes, sells for $2.99 in the iTunes app store and helps students, and business professionals take notes, and record conversations for the notes that can be accessed at specific points rather than having to listen to an entire conversation and then pulling what you need.

Lee and Thibault report that they’ve received over 30 great ideas so far and will start developing straight away.

Linkage:

Check out 52apps at 52apps.com

Source: thestate.com

Nibletz is the voice of Startups everywhere else and could use your help click here

Arkansas Startup: Rebounces Puts The Green Back In The Tennis Ball

In our endless quest to look past the trending (read valley based) startups on the Angel List (angel.co), we came across one that is sports related, fun, green (environment) and green (money). The startup is called reBounces and they are based in Harrison Arkansas.

Arkansas has a bubbling startup scene and we’ve covered a handful of startups from Arkansas here at nibletz.

So what is reBounces?

Well Rebounces was founded by Bill Dirst and Cannon Fletcher. The company uses a gas based mixture technology invented by Dirst to put the bounce back into flattened tennis balls.

Typically when a tennis ball has been used over and over again they start to deflate. Even if you are only a casual tennis player you’ve probably noticed this deflating. Normally when a tennis ball deflates the natural reaction is to go buy another can of balls. While that’s all well and good, the tennis balls are not biodegradable and even in their flattened state they go into the landfill.

With the reBounces technology tennis balls are dumped into the Green Tennis Machine. After the machine is sealed and the balls sit for three days they enviro-magically have their bounce back. The balls have the same bounce as balls that just came out of a fresh can and they are back to regulation.

More after the break
Read More…