Kauffman Foundation Teams Up With AARP Proving You’re Never Too Old To Launch A Company

The Kauffman Foundation has teamed up with AARP to launch a new initiative that will hone the entrepreneurial skills of people over 50 years old. We’ve seen our share of these golden entrepreneurs, who have either retired or left the corporate world to start a new business venture.

Two such entrepreneurs are 54 year old Elizabeth Van Sant and 68 year old Susan Jones, launched at Washington DC startup called Quad2Quad that serves as a platform providing much needed information to parents, families and students visiting colleges.

Kauffman Foundation, AARP, Quad 2 Quad, Accelerator,startup

The two baby boomer founders of quad2quad at everywhereelse.co 2013 (photo: Allie Fox for NMI 2013)

When we interviewed Jones last September, she proudly said that she was old enough to be Mark Zuckerberg’s mom. Although some may consider them too old to roll with today’s startup hipster, they’ve been touring the conference scene across the country with appearances in San Francisco at Appnation and at everywhereelse.co in Memphis.

Now, the Kauffman Foundation has announced a new program targeted to baby boomer entrepreneurs 50 and over.

Three pilot courses of FastTrac NewVenture™ for the Boomer Entrepreneur will be offered in 2013 by Kauffman FastTrac affiliates. Up to 20 qualified applicants will be accepted per course, and AARP scholarship funds will cover $500 of each participant’s course fees.

The three Kauffman FastTrac affiliates selected to participate in the baby boomer pilot are ProperoHCA, New York City; Tech Coast Venture Network, Irvine, Calif.; and the Miami Innovation Center for Entrepreneurship, Inc., Miami.

ProperoHCA has scheduled its weekly course for April 3-June 5. Tech Coast Venture Network plans to offer its Boomer course this summer. The Miami course, which will be taught in Spanish in an outreach to the region’s large Hispanic population, is also slated for a summer start.

“We look forward to partnering with Kauffman FastTrac to better serve our members interested in expanding their entrepreneurship business skills,” said Jody Holtzman, AARP’s senior vice president of thought leadership. “Through this coursework, they will acquire new insights and tools, explore available resources, and expand their networking opportunities to start and grow successful businesses.”

Content specific to baby boomers was recently added to the Kauffman FastTrac curriculum in recognition of changing U.S. demographics and research that finds a higher rate of entrepreneurial activity among Americans aged 55 to 64 than much younger age groups in recent years.

The initial 10-week baby boomer class was held in fall 2012 in Kansas City.

“We believe there is pent-up demand for entrepreneurship education among more mature audiences,” said Kauffman FastTrac president Alana Muller. “Whether they’re pursuing a lifelong passion, shoring up their retirement accounts, or utilizing skills and experience in a new way, boomer entrepreneurs make big contributions to our economy by creating new businesses and, in turn, new jobs.”

You can find out more about this program here

Ready For Weed Startups? Conference Coming To New York

With two states adopting laws around the recreational use of marijuana and more states adopting laws for medical marijuana it’s just a matter of time before weed startups start cropping up (no pun intended). Cannabis industry trade publication has announced a business seminar for investors and entrepreneurs eager to learn about the business of marijuana.

The event will be held on March 14th at The Lofts At Prince (177 Prince Street Penthouse in New York City). The seminar runs from 6:00pm until 10:15pm and features a panel of industry experts and time for networking.

Chris Walsh, Editor of MJJ Business Daily; Tripp Keber, Medical Marijuana Inc; Jessica Billingsley co-founder, MJ Freeway Software Solutions; and Eric Williams, President, CT Medical Cannabis Alliance, will all speak on the latest trends and industry data.

There will also be four sessions:

Session #1. New Financial & Business Benchmark Data for the Cannabis Industry

Session #2. Investing Advisory on the Cannabis Industry

Session #3. Typical Cannabis Business Mistakes & How to Avoid Them

Session #4. Tri-State Area Cannabis Business Opportunities & Regulatory Outlook

MJJ Business Daily was launched in 2011 with offices in Denver Colorado and Providence Rhode Island.

Tickets for the event are $149 in advance and $199 at the door. MJJ Business Daily warns that the event is for serious investors and entrepreneurs and not for patients or consumers.

For more information or tickets visit this site.

Lean Entrepreneur Authors Brant Cooper & Patrick Vlaskovits Join Everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference

But wait there’s more…

Earlier this morning we announced some very exciting news that Dell and their Entrepreneur In Residence, Ingrid Vandervelt, have joined everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference. Dell will be offering office hour consultations, startup and entrepreneurship advice and more both onstage and in the Dell Lounge at the conference.

Now we’re pleased to announce that Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits the authors of The Lean Entrepreneur will not only be speaking at the conference but they’ll be offering their Lean Entrepreneur’s workshop.

Learn from Cooper and Vlaskovits’ best practices that they report on in their book, live in person. The two hour workshop will be held on site mid day Tuesday afternoon and is free to attendees on a first come first serve basis. Cooper and Vlaskovits will be giving away copies of their bible, we mean book, during the workshop.

Attendees who come to the workshop will come away with valuable lessons in tackling market uncertainty, and discovering where you sit in the innovation spectrum. They’ll also walk away with understanding value stream and what waste looks like in a lean startup, as well as the anti-segment the people you don’t need to be listening to.

Also on Tuesday Cooprt and Vlaskovits will speak to the entire group giving an abbreviated lesson in all things Lean Entrepreneur. In addition to The Lean Entrepreneur Cooper and Vlaskovits also co-authored The Entrepreneurs Guide to Customer Development.

A limited number of tickets and 2 startup booths are still available for everywhereelse.co for more info on the conference visit this link, for tickets use the tool below.

Event Registration Online for Everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference powered by Eventbrite

Entrepreneurs, Are You Sticking to Your New Year’s Resolution? [Infographic]

A new year, a new you. It’s such a commonplace mentality once January rolls around, but how many of us have already lost momentum and broken our resolutions? The first month of 2013 is almost over, and it’s around the time co-workers, friends, and family stop asking about your resolutions, causing us to push them to the back burner ourselves. But all is not lost. It’s still important to set goals, even if you know you won’t always stick to them perfectly or achieve them within a year’s time. This infographic by OnlineEducation provides some interesting facts and figures about goal setting, including tips that could be helpful when it comes to keeping your resolutions this year.

For example, they suggest writing your goals down. Having clear and documented objectives made individuals 10 times more likely to achieve them. And yet, statistics indicate that only about one in five individuals actually write down their New Year’s goals. But also remember to pace yourself, trying to making too many changes too quickly could backfire or create only short-lived results. Additionally, make sure to re-evaluate your goals and ensure they are for you alone, and not dependent on other people. This makes them much more attainable, and more rewarding as well. Above all, know that if you have lapsed a bit, you are not the only one. It’s not too late to get back on track for the rest of 2013!

Memphis Prepares For Transformation To Risk City For Global Entrepreneurship Week

Next week thousands and thousands of entrepreneurs, startup founders, developers, eco-system partners and stake holders will participate in events across the globe as part of Global Entrepreneurship Week. In fact, GEW officially kicks off later tonight as over 100 different cities get fired up over Startup Weekend.

Tennessee has a variety of activities going on across the state. One of Tennessee’s major metropolitan areas is transforming their city.

Memphis will turn itself into Risk City beginning Monday. Memphis has always been a city that turns adversity into opportunity and embraces risk as a path to progress. Just take a look at companies like FedEx, Holiday Inn and AutoZone. All three pioneers in their industry and when you look at them in the time and place they were founded, potential investors thought the entrepreneurs behind these Memphis based companies were nuts.

The same thing can be said about the blues and it’s off shoot, rock and roll music, which is often credited with starting in Memphis Tennessee.

In talking with a crazy conservative intern of sorts in Memphis it was mutually agreed upon that risk and aversion to risk were what separated the “startup founder entrepreneurs” and the “lets open a dry cleaner, entrepreneurs”. It’s that risk that is this years global entrepreneurship week theme in Memphis.

Don’t get me wrong, Memphis has had it’s share of of big risks, not pan out in the end. That’s why there’s a gigantic pyramid in the middle of the city, and an entire island that’s all but a ghost town these days. However new risk takers, entrepreneurs and startup founders are going to be the ones to reclaim the city.

To that end, the folks at LaunchMemphis has put together some great programming for all of Memphis to see what the startup and entrepreneurial culture is like downtown. Below are some of the activities going on in Memphis. The highlight of the week is “field day”, the Amazing Risk and a huge party all happening Friday night at Minglewood Hall in Memphis.

Also, with Risk City and Global Entrepreneurship Week kicking off, the applications for the 2013 class of Seed Hatchery are now open as well.

Pitch Perfect
Monday, November 12 from 2:00-5:00pm in the Launchpad
For those actively moving forward with their startups – like those involved with Office Hours, BOOSTcamp, 48 Hour Launch or the Launchpad – we will provide a panel of diverse experts to provide feedback on your latest pitch. Accompanying visuals like PowerPoint are encouraged.

Memphis Startup Meetup
Monday, November 12 at 6:00pm in the Launchpad
The Memphis Startup Meetup group offers a special GEW edition of their monthly meetup for anyone interested in and involved with a startup company- entrepreneurs, developers, geeks, tech enthusiasts, professionals.

Mentor Mixer
Tuesday, November 13 from 5:30-7:00pm at Alchemy
It takes a village to grow a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem. We invite you to a casual cocktail event to learn more about the benefits of sharing your time, insights, experience and leadership with our founders and their startups.

High Octane Office Hours
Thursday, November 15 from 9:00am-3:00pm in the Launchpad
Memphis area business leaders join us in the Launchpad for an exclusive, high-powered set of one-to-one Office Hours for high growth potential startup companies. Like Pitch Perfect, these sessions are for those actively moving forward through our platform and process.

SpeedPitch
Friday, November 16 from 11:00am-1:00pm at Minglewood Hall
Similar to speed dating, LaunchMemphis introduces an event for those with fresh, bold ideas ready for some creative customer discovery. You get two minutes to pitch, then three minutes for feedback from business and community leaders. When the bell rings, you’re off to the next table!

Field Day
Friday, November 16 from 9:00am-4:00pm at Minglewood Hall
RSVP http://riskcityfieldday.eventbrite.com
Co-working facilitates conversation, collaboration and impromptu synergies- we hope your startup or organization will bring a team to our inaugural GEW Field Day. Wifi will be available, and food trucks will be around for lunch!

Field Day Mixer and Amazing Risk Finals
Friday, November 16 from 4:00pm-6:00pm

Risk City Soiree
Friday, November 16 at 8:00pm at Minglewood Hall
$5 cover, cash at door or http://riskcity.eventbrite.com
Join us at Minglewood Hall to conclude Memphis’ biggest Global Entrepreneurship Week to date, with our biggest party to date! As if a full week of activities fueling entrepreneurship and growing our innovation ecosystem wasn’t reason enough to celebrate, entertainment includes:

Finally as part of Risk City and Global Entrepreneurship week in Memphis. Anyone who attends any of the events above and brings a friend can get a FREE ticket to “everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference” just find an official Launch Memphis employee or volunteer and tell them you want your free ticket to “everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference” and introduce them to your friend and you’ve got it.

Linkage:

Launch Memphis

No one covers high growth technology in the South East, like we do

Everywhere Else conference

SXSW Eco 2012 – NJ Startup: Staxxon Dynamic Container Systems

New Jersey/Ohio startup Staxxon is working to address one of the largest inefficiencies in the logistics industry – the empty shipping container. Every year hundreds of millions of shipping containers are shipped empty taking up space, using valuable natural resources, and wearing out equipment.

According to Tom Stitt, Staxxon’s corporate development director, the company’s founder was inspired to begin working on a new container design while driving one of his daughters to college. “George [Kochanowski] kept seeing piles of containers [along the roadway] and thought there had to be a better way to deal with them than stacking them high,” says Stitt. ¹

Staxxon has created an “accordian-like” shipping container that can be folded to 1/5 it’s size. This allows 5 empty containers to take up the space of just one container. It doesn’t take much imagination to see how this could significantly alter the practices of logistics companies. Each container takes up space on trucks, trains, and container ships, as well as shipping yards. In April of this year they received a CSC Certificate for its 20′ container design and was issued the BIC registration code STXU for its test and trial containers. Below we have an in-person demonstration of the benefits via legos:

More details regarding Staxxon’s Dynamic Container Systems from their FAQ:

What technology and products is Staxxon developing?

Staxxon has developed, patented, prototype and obtained certification for a shipping container design that allows up to 5 empty containers to be folded, nested and moved in the same space as 1 container. In addition, Staxxon is developing an integrated system to support high speed folding/nesting and unfolding/un-nesting at terminals and depots that includes support for space/slot optimized freight bookings and related terminal/depot/ship/rail/truck workflow information technology.

Who will be Staxxon’s customers?

Staxxon will license its container, folding nesting system and related information technology to its customers. This means that a container fleet owner/operators – carriers, leasing companies, governments – can continue to work with existing container vendors/manufacturers. Terminal/depot operators will be able to source the folding/nesting system from current suppliers. leading freight booking and terminal operating system providers will be able to integrate Staxxon’s information technology.

How much does Staxxon’s technology cost? How much will a container with Staxxon technology cost?

Staxxon’s business model is based on licensing its intellectual property, designs and know-how, not manufacturing. Container fleet owner/operators will continue to source containers from their current vendors at prices negotiated by the fleet owners/operators. Staxxon will support existing container manufacturers with assembly line configuration, sourcing, training, inspections and certification services. Staxxon’s target cost for a container that includes Staxxon technology is in a range that provides the container fleet owner/operator a 100% return on the total investment, including operating costs unique to Staxxon’s technology, over a 24-30 month period. *Emphasis mine

LINKAGE

Staxxon homepage

The official Lego Video

Startups from Everywhere Else finally have a conference for them

St.Louis Preparing For Super Entrepreneur & Startup Event Venture Draft 8/10-8/11

Brandon Williams, through his Brandon Williams Economic Development Corporation, is planning an amazing event for St. Louis called Venture Draft. We love St. Louis, their thriving tech and startup community is starting to catch on like wildfire and in fact they’ve moved from the 49th city in the US to start a new business to 6th in just one year. That’s amazing.

What else is amazing? How about the line up of speakers, investors, and entrepreneurs that Williams has assembled for the event going on at St. Louis’ Anheuser-Busch Auditorium next week on the 10th and 11th.

Williams, who is an accomplished professional athlete, having played on a variety of NFL football teams including the St. Louis Rams, has tackled (you see what I did there), the task of helping to spread and enrich the world of startups and entrepreneurship in St. Louis. Williams has assembled Venture Draft to be the crossroads between professional athletes and celebrities and the tech and venture community. All the while, making sure an event of this size and nature happened right in his hometown.

“The venture community is always trying to keep up with new technologies while professional athletes are looking for ways to leverage their playing days for more efficient and effective post-sports careers,” says Brandon Williams, co founder of BWEDC and former wide-receiver for the St. Louis Rams. “We understand the needs of both sectors and developed a platform to address them.”

Our good friend Gable Lozano is taking a quick break during a coast to coast fundraising trip to speak at Venture Draft. Also, FUBU founder and ABC Shark Tank investor Daymond John will be there. Successful startup founders like Henry Wong a partner at Garage.com; Maurice Lopes, CEO & CoFounder at EarlyShares, and Seth Burgett CEO at Yurbuds are just some of the great speakers slated for next weekends event.

Judy Sindecuse, CEO of locally based Capital Innovators, and even William Crowder from Philly based DreamIt Ventures will represent some of the best accelerators/incubators in the country (and everywhere else) during the event.

For more information or to sign up go here to this link

We really need some community support to fund our coverage, here’s a link

Chicago Startup: Matador Transforms How People Invest INTERVIEW

What are the two ingredients for making a successful investment? Answer: Knowing what to buy and when to buy. Say its late 2004, knowing that Google’s stock was going to skyrocket beforehand and timely buying some GOOG shares would seamlessly make you rich (and also mommy proud). But how would you know what to buy (i.e. Google) and when to buy a stock or commodity? That’s where Matador comes in.

Matador is a advisory messaging platform that empowers investors to be informed from financial advisories and act on this information by messaging a broker.

Example, Yahoo! Finance recommends to buy gold or treasuries because the economy is tanking. Using Matador’s web and mobile platform, an investor can receive an instant recommendation from Yahoo! and then accordingly email or call their broker within the app. Hence, Matador streamlines the slow and boring process of manually receiving information from an advisory and communicating that time sensitive information to your broker.

Matador has real potential to innovate in the investing space that hasn’t particularly seen many successful apps. We like the value they offer to users, advisories and brokers. Plus, it doesn’t hurt to have a rockstar team including serial entrepreneur Jared Steffes, founder of Tap.Me

Co-Founder Andy Guinn gave us a sneak peak of how the app would work. Check out the video interview below:

Links we’ve got em:

Signup for Matador’s private beta

Nibletz is the voice of startups “everywhere else” here are more stories from “everywhere else”

Nibletz could use YOUR help click here

VIDEO Capital Connection TechBUZZ ’12 Ending Keynote – Steve “Makes Our” Case

(photo: nibletz syndicate)

Capital Connection TechBUZZ ’12 Had Steve Case as the Keynote speaker at the end of the two days. In 1985 Steve Case founded AOL. It was the first internet company to go public, it was the largest media acquisition of its time.

When crowdfunding was brought up he spoke about the ability to raise funds for projects via indiegogo or kickstarter Recently he has been spending a lot of time in Washington DC convincing the US Government to deal with entrepreneurial issues and American jobs. When asked how he feels about crowdfunding (JOBS Act) he mentioned the fact that it has been passed and is waiting for the SEC to finish their part. The law had previously stated that it was illegal to sell private equity to investors online. “You can sell the whole business – 100% but you will go to jail if you sell 1%” Case stated “for the first 6 years it was illegal for us to connect to the internet.” The JOBS act focuses on modernizing an extremely old system.

In this short clip he discusses the benefits he sees in crowdfunding for startups and where it will may have the biggest benefit. As we are well aware, if you are in North Dakota, Philly, St Louis, Chicago, or Everywhere Else – it is very difficult to get covered by media outlets or to raise seed or angel capital. This is where we come in. We are planning on driving across the country for just over a year meeting with startups, incubators, accelerators, and their towns. While we cannot directly assist in helping you raise capital, we are sneaker strapped ourselves, we can help get your names out. We will come to your city and spend time with you. We don’t discriminate against a lack of funds being raised or lack of angels in your region. We only care about meeting startups who are making a go at something new.

We do need some help though, which explains the title of the article, our case has been made by Steve Case himself. Take a look below:

More stories from Capital Connection 2012/TechBUZZ here

What’s this sneaker strapped, startup road trip? Find out here

Chicago: Daymond John To Speak At Black Enterprise Entrepreneurs Conference May 23-25

FUBU founder and ABC’s Shark Tank, shark and investor, Daymond John will be speaking at the Black Enterprise Entrepreneur’s conference in Chicago later this month. The conference is put on in conjunction with Nationwide insurance and over 1200 entrepreneurs, business owners, startup founders as well local and national business leaders.

John joins the likes of Gina Neely from Downhome with the Neely’s, Kim Coles, and national radio personality Michael Baisden. There is a complete list available here.

The Black Enterprise Entrepreneurs Conference covers just about every aspect of business life. They are also holding the “Black Enterprise Elevator Pitch Competition”, Small Business Successs Bootcamp, and “Equity Date With An Angel” which John will help kick off.

In addition to running his clothing empire and appearing on Shark Tank, Daymond John is a nationally known and respected speaker on all topics having to do with business, entrepreneurship and startups. He was recently the featured guest in a town hall meeting for high school students studying business across the country. This event was held in a Google Hangout setting, one of the largest Google Hangouts to date. Google hosted John at their New York office so that he could participate in the event.

More after the break
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Utah High School Teacher Organizes Entrepreneurship/Startup Google+ Hangout With Shark Tank’s Daymond John

Daymond John the entrepreneur and brains behind the worldwide brand FuBu has been speaking to folks about the trials and tribulations of startups and entrepreneurship for years. Since he took his business from the trunk of the car and made it a recognized brand on every street corner in America and around the world John has been passionate about business. It also helps that he has been one of the panelists on ABC’s Shark Tank for all three seasons.

That’s why Utah High School Business teacher Jeff McCauley was resilient in trying to contact John for some kind of entrepreneurship event with his students. Originally McCauley had wanted to Skype with John and his class however that idea took a pivot in the year it took to nail a date down. What ended up happening was nothing short of phenomenal for the over 100 high school kids around the country that attended the hangout on Google’s Google+ Hangout platform.

McCauley is no stranger to Shark Tank either. He admits to showing the program to his students to show real life examples of the lessons that he teaches everyday.

More after the break
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