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Launch Memphis Launches UpStart Women’s Startup Initiative And 48 Hour Launch Dec 7-9

Launch Memphis, one of the key ecosystem drivers for startups in Tennessee, has launched a new initiative aimed at women entrepreneurs and startups. Getting more women engaged in startup communities is a goal that most cities are working on. Driving entrepreneurial growth among women is also a key factor in the overall health and success of an entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Launch Your City and their Memphis arm, Launch Memphis, are no strangers to the startup ecosystem. They’ve been the driving force behind Memphis’ startup and entrepreneurial growth since 2006. Launch Memphis runs a free coworking space; The LaunchPad, curriculum based initiatives through Launch Memphis and a startup accelerator in it’s third year, Seed Hatchery.

With the success of their most recent endeavors, including playing host to over a dozen Global Entrepreneurship Week events, now is the perfect time to announce a women’s initiative.

The kick off event for the women’s initiative, dubbed “UpStart” is a 48 Hour Launch event being held December 7-9th at Emerge Memphis. The three day hackathon style, startup launching vehicle has been so successful in Memphis, the folks in Nashville recently replicated the event for their startup community.

The UpStart 48 Hour Launch is open to both women and men to participate however the ideas pitched will be from women. These women entrepreneurs will drive their teams through 48 hours of hacking, collaborating and building a viable product.

Unlike many of the “official” Startup Weekend events, 48 Hour Launch is coupled with the existing resources of Launch Memphis and Emerge Memphis which serves as the epicenter for startup and entrepreneurial activity in the mid south.

“We recognize that the disparity between men’s and women’s high growth potential startup companies is not unique to Memphis; however, Memphis can be unique in our deliberate approach to close this gap and fuel women’s innovation and entrepreneurship”. Elizabeth Lemmonds, Chief Brand Officer at LaunchYourCity told nibletz.com

Danielle Inez, a successful PR, marketing and event planning consultant in Memphis is anxious to pitch her newest idea at the UpStart 48 Hour Launch in December. Inez was among hundreds who participated in Launch Memphis’ Risk City Field Day event last Friday as part of Global Entrepreneurship Week.

Inez took to Twitter on Tuesday to express her enthusiasm for both events.

Eric Mathews, Co-President and CEO of LaunchYourCity said: “We are making a commitment to cultivate and fund a woman led and majority woman owned startup by the end of the first quarter of next year. We encourage women to reach out and get involved in all levels of our platform as mentors, investors, and of course as potential founders.”

UpStart programming also includes a women’s meetup and plans on being a permanent fixture in the LaunchMemphis programming.

Linkage:

Upstart Memphis is here

No one covers high growth technology in the south east like Nibletz

Make sure you’ve got a ticket to this grand event

Stay Tuned In With Memphis Startup StayTunedIn, Pitch Video

Over the weekend we brought you the story of Memphis entrepreneur Aaron Prather and his new idea, which is now called StayTunedIn. StayTunedIn is a new web based platform tool for publishers that allows publishers and editors to keep their finger on the pulse of their readers.

The concept is simple, in fact it’s so simple it’s one of those “Why didn’t I think of that” think of that kind of ideas, well the reason you didn’t think of it is because Prather did.

StayTunedIn is essentially a button that will automatically be placed at the end of a piece of content from a participating publisher. If you want follow up information on that particular piece of content, clicking the button will let the publisher/editor know that you want follow up and when they post a follow up story you’ll be notified.

Say you read a story about a local man that rescued people from a car wreck. Maybe you would like to know what happens next with the “hero” and the people he rescued. By clicking the button you’ll get that content.

Sure their are Google alerts and sites like reddit that offer a similar type of service however it’s not actual follow up and we all know that Google alerts can be messy. This is specific content from the same source. Now you can really keep track of a story.

On the publisher side the tool is great because it lets publishers and editors know exactly what their reading audience wants to read.

Publishing giants across the country have all echoed the same theme. For big sites like the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, the problem isn’t readership the problem that they face is getting people to come back over and over again.

Raju Narsetti the managing editor of the Wall Street Journal’s digital network recently said:

“A promiscuous audience is our new reality. Are our news rooms ready to give them an experience worth coming back to, over and over again?”

Larry Kilman, the Deputy CEO of The World Association Of Newspapers echoed Narsetti’s sentiment saying:

“We are not losing readers, we are losing readership. Our industry challenge is engagement. Because someone is a subscriber does not make him a loyalist.”

One major way to get readers more engaged is to give them the content that they want. With StayTunedIn publishers have a better opportunity to do just that.

While Prather worked hard over 48 Hour Launch with a team of Memphis startup community members, he said the work is just beginning. The opportunity for StayTunedIn is too large to abandon after one weekend. In fact he already has commitments from some of the bigger local publications to try the service out when he has it up and running.

Check out his Sunday pitch video here:

Check out his Friday pitch here:

Linkage:

More 48 Hour Launch Coverage here

What is “everywhere else” well you need to be here

Memphis SMB Green Girl Produce Ignites Startup Vs SMB Debate, But Plan Is Great For Memphis!

While there’s been much debate in the Nibletz office and surrounding areas over the past 72 hours on whether or not this idea counted as a “startup” it’s still a good idea and a good idea for Memphis Tennessee at that.

Emma Self, pitched her “Green Girl Produce” business idea on Friday evening at LaunchMemphis’ 48 Hour Launch. 48 Hour Launch is a weekend startup hackathon. The “startup vs SMB” debate was alive and well this weekend with everyone I talked to about this business.

The debate about “Startup vs SMB” in Self’s case has NOTHING to do with technology. There is another woman in Memphis who has come up with a new way to remove acrylic nails without the harsh abrasiveness and damage to the nails that traditional methods have caused. To me, the young lady with the nail solution is a startup. Green Girl is not.

Here’s why:

While it’s become a growing trend in the last few years, there is NOTHING new about urban, vertical, hyrdoponic green houses. Hydroponic greenhouses have been sprouting up (you see what I did there) across the country and around the world for at least the last decade, possibly two. Heck, stories of people being busted growing illegal substances in green houses trace back to the early 90’s.

As I explained to Launch Memphis intern Andy Cowan, in my argument, if there were no hamburger restaurants in Memphis Tennessee, anywhere, and there were everywhere else across the world, I wouldn’t consider Memphis’ first hamburger restaurant a “startup” just a new business idea for Memphis.

Steve Blank describes the debate between “startup vs SMB” as SMB’s being lifestyle businesses and startup founders working to save the world.

I will tell you that I’m confident that Self is passionate about changing her corner of the world, Memphis TN, but still not sold on it being a startup.

So now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s take a look at the business plan. It was a good business plan.

Self has obtained an abandoned liquor store in downtown Memphis (currently abandon business sites are abundant in downtown Memphis). There is approximately 1200 square feet of growing space in the liquor store. With a $200,000 investment Self will be able to make the necessary changes to the liquor store to accommodate her green house, and start her first cash crop.

The conversion will take about a month and after planting, she’ll be raising cash crops in two weeks, using LED technology. Self doesn’t have the $30,000 bill for the LED equipment though as she’s participating in a beta test with a new product.

In her market research Self found out that restaurants, and even the local vegetable distributors are paying upwards of $100 a pound for micro-greens.

Micro-greens are greens that chef’s are using to “make dishes pop” as garnish and extra flavoring. According to a local Chef we talked to on Sunday night, micro-greens give dishes a lot more flavor and pizaaz than say parsley but even his establishment stopped using them because of the cost.

Self can get that cost down to under $40 per pound and still produce $1 million dollars in revenue with that one location.

The community picked Green Girl Produce on Friday as one of three companies to build out over 48 Hour Launch. Self was able to connect with valuable resources in the community members that helped her with her plans.

archer>malmo, the south east PR/advertising giant was on hand all weekend. In fact a team of 6 stayed throughout to help with logos and concepts. The archer>malmo team was especially helpful to Self. They developed her logo, branding, and helped her visualize the supply chain.

Did Self do a great job this weekend. Yes! Did she utilize the resources to her and take advantage of the weekend concept Yes! Is Green Girl Produce a “startup”… Call me a “startup snob” but I don’t think so.

Check out her Sunday pitch video below. Now keep in mind that Emma is not one of those startup junkies who’s seen a hundred pitches. I think she did a heck of a job in front of the audience but she is definitely a bit nervous.

Linkage:

More 48 Hour Launch coverage here

Got your ticket yet? Come on down to Memphis

Memphis Entrepreneur Aaron Prather Launching New Startup This Weekend During 48 Hour Launch

It’s 48 Hour Launch time in Memphis Tennessee. This weekend entrepreneurs from across the state (and some neighboring states as well) have assembled for a weekend of launching new startups, hackathon style.

Nearly 50 entrepreneurs, developers, marketers and support people are working on three great startup ideas. The three selected ideas will work to develop those ideas over the next two days and turn them into actual viable startups. Sunday they’ll show off their new startups to the toughest judges of them all, a room full of their peers.

48 Hour Launch is a unique concept in the weekend startup hackathon. As a product of Launch Memphis, the 48 Hour Launch teams have access to continuing resources to develop their ideas, way beyond Sunday.

As a testament to that concept, Richard Billings, the founder of Memphis startup ScrewPulp, spoke to the crowd before the Friday evening pitches. Billings alternative independent publishing platform was hatched in June at Launch Memphis’ last 48 Hour Launch event. Today, Billings has staffed up and even moved the company to office space downtown. Their designer is working on the front end, a developer is working on the back end and Billings is working on developing the business and laying roots in the publishing community.

Aaron Prather, the founder of Memphis startup Stiqrd, was on hand for 48 Hour Launch. Prather is no stranger to Launch Memphis or their cohort based accelerator, Seed Hatchery. Pranther’s startup Stiqrd accelerated at Seed Hatchery two years ago.

This weekend though Prather had a great idea. He’s building a tool where online news consumers can use a widget, or browser plugin to let publishers, bloggers and writers know that they want follow up to the stories they read online.

If you’re familiar with how sites like Reddit and the hub at Startup Revolution work, you can get notified every time someone does anything with your message. Pranther wants it to be that easy, but in reverse, to let writers and publishers know, “Hey I’ll read a follow up on that”.

The idea is great for publishers, because as Prather put it, there’s guaranteed eyeballs on stories not even published yet.

Check out Pranther’s Friday pitch below:

Linkage:

Memphis Prepares For 48 Hour Launch October 12th-14th

We’re just a couple of weeks away from Memphis’ next 48 hour launch. We were at the last 48 hour launch hosted by Launch Memphis at Emerge Memphis back in June. That 48 hour launch saw four teams of entrepreneurs present Happy Potty, Screw Pulp, YaDoog and LostPetCast.

Very similar to Startup Weekend, 48 Hour Launch puts a room full of entrepreneurs, designers, developers and coders together for 48 hours of hacking together a business.

Friday evening all of those registered for 48 Hour Launch will eat dinner, get to know each other and then pitch their ideas in 60 seconds or less to the room full of attendees. After all of the ideas are pitched, everyone in the audience will get a chance to vote for their favorite startup ideas. At the end of the voting process, an based on how many people are registered, ideas will be chosen that will be developed over the weekend.

Saturday teams will work on customer validation and building product. They’ll have community mentors around to answer legal questions, marketing questions and anything else they can think of.

Sunday, the teams will make their final pitches to show off the work they did over the previous 47 hours.

That’s typically where the traditional “Startup Weekend” ends. Startup Weekend events end with the judging of the final pitches. That’s not where 48 Hour Launch ends though.

After the weekend the 48 Hour Launch teams are invited to utilize the other resources from Launch 48 and it’s parent company Launch Your City. These resources include office hours from experienced entrepreneurial and startup advisors, free office space in the drop in LaunchPad co-working space and some 48 Hour Launch teams may decide to apply to Seed Hatchery, Memphis’ cohort based accelerator.

While some “Startup Weekend” events are held in incubators and can pull resources, Launch Memphis makes 48 Hour Launch a natural introduction into the Memphis’ Startup Ecosystem.

Memphis’ Startup Ecosystem is spearheaded by the efforts of Eric Matthews, Andre Fowlkes and Elizabeth Lemmonds, the team behind Launch Your City. Matthews has been an integral part of the Memphis entrepreneur and startup scene for nearly a decade. He founded Launch Your City in 2006 and before that was a director at the FedEx Institute of Technology on the campus of the University of Memphis.

Fast forward to 2012, and while many cities are just laying roots in a startup ecosystem, Launch Your City has their Launch Memphis efforts, which often plays quarterback to many of the regions entrepreneurial and startup events. Launch Memphis also organizes meetups, runs a mentor network, a co-working space, and provides countless other resources to young, high growth potential startups.

Launch Your City also runs Seed Hatchery and collaborates with other area resources for C2 and Zeroto510 accelerator programs as well.

These twice yearly 48 Hour Launch events, serve as a great place for new entrepreneurs to get their feet wet and get exposed to all that Memphis has to offer. One of the great things about these particular events is the way that others who have participated in any of the Launch Your City programs come out to support the growing startup community.

48 Hour Launch boasts that for just $40 you can:

Launch brand new tech-supported companies, contributing toward our local innovation economy and creating jobs;
Learn by doing, experiencing firsthand entrepreneurial principles that can be applied to any endeavor or work environment;
Connect with like-minded and talented professionals, developing your network;
Play an active role in Memphis’ entrepreneurial community, volunteering your current skills while learning new ones;
Eat and drink well, including all meals and copious amounts of coffee and Red Bull; and
Be a part of something this collaborative, creative and cool?!

You don’t have to live or work in Memphis to participate in 48 Hour Launch. People from as far away as Alabama and Atlanta have come to Memphis for weekend startup hackathon events.

There’s still space left. Hit the link below

Linkage:

Check out our 48 Hour Launch coverage from June 2012

Check out Launch Your City here

No One covers high growth tech news for the southeast like we do, here’s more

Memphis Startup: Yaddoog Final Pitch At 48 Hour Launch

Yaddoog, Good Day spelled backwards, was one of the best startups at 48 Hour Launch this weekend in Memphis. It was a great event overall with a lot of Memphis’ startup community supporting the entrepreneurs and their ideas all weekend long.

For first time startup founder Harold Strong, it was a weekend to get the idea living in his head out into the open and developed. According to the support team at Emerge Memphis Strong had been working on his pitch for days prior to Friday’s first pitches and the hard work then and over the weekend has paid off.

Problem: The answer to the question “How Was Your Day” is usually bull sh*t. 99% of people answer “fine”

Solution: Yaddoog wants to turn the question on it’s head. They do this with a new photosharing app. I said repeatedly all weekend long to people who asked for my feedback on the event, that it has been a longtime since I heard a good pitch for a photo sharing app, until Friday.

Yaddoog lets the user take a series of up to 24 photos (representative of hours in the day) and then publishes them all onto the Yaddoog website at the set time at the end of the day. The user can also assign two emotions to each picture like, happy, sad, pissed, etc. As Strong said in his presentation and in talks with us throughout the weekend, 24 photos tells a story.

After the event I was talking with David Traxler co-founder of Memphis startup Friendsignia and Eric Matthews CEO and Co-President of Launch YourCity and we all agreed that in addition to telling great stories of someones day Yaddoog would be great for special days like, a baby’s first day, or leading up to a kids first day at school. Weddings was another time that Yaddoog would be awesome.

Showing the roulette wheel of emotions a bride has leading up to the big moment would make a great story for Yaddoog.

Of course it’s not all about happy bappy days either. We’ve all had a college buddy who has had their picture taken and posted to Facebook after a night of drinking, pictures get progressively worse as the night ensues, with the final picture typically being a face full of Sharpie marker. Traxler said, wouldn’t it be great to see that guys day starting with his bowl of cornflakes the previous morning.

Indeed it would.

Traxler’s startup Friendsignia just graduated from the most recent SeedHatchery class last month and was paying his experience forward by mentoring Strong and the other startups all weekend long.

Strong admitted that they have a lot of work to do to get the app to market but he’s going to do it or die trying. Check out his final pitch from Sunday here:

Linkage

Checkout Yaddoog here on Facebook

Here’s more coverage from 48 Hour Launch

Nibletz is the voice of startups “everywhere else” check out these stories from “everywhere else”

Memphis Startup: HappyPotty Final Pitch At 48 Hour Launch

Lot’s of people came out Sunday night to the final pitch event for LaunchMemphis, SeedHathery and LaunchYourCity’s 48 hour launch event. Graduates of SeedHatchery’s two previous classes were in attendance all weekend long to mentor and support their fellow startups. Also, previous participants in the last 5 48 Hour Launch events were in attendance as well.

Hometown startup hero Sarah Lacy of PandoDaily was absent from the event, despite the fact that she vowed to cover startups everywhere in her inaugural post at the relatively new startup focused Silicon Valley website. Oh Well we’ve got a lot of coverage here from the great event.

HappyPotty was another one of the unique “finalists” selected to develop over the weekend long event.

Problem: Finding a clean bathroom on a road trip

Solution: HappyPotty hopes to be the mobile app of choice to find clean “Happy” bathrooms while traveling by car.

There are a couple of similar sites out there. The biggest one was developed in conjunction with toilet paper giant Charmin, however it has it’s flaws.

HappyPotty ran through some statistics including the fact that there are over half a million potty breaks during road travel per year. That number actually seems a little low.

The app is simple, go to a bathroom and rate it “Happy” or “Crappy” the interface shows two toilet flushers, one colored green, and the other red.

They hope to add more functionality like details on the bathroom from cleanliness, to changing tables, seat covers and more.

For monetization they are looking at traditional mobile app in app ads and geo-located advertising with couponing.

The biggest challenge with an app like this is they have to build enormous, nationwide scale fast. The other challenge is sourcing bathrooms. Surely there are a lot of location based api’s however none that will tell you whether they have a multi-person bathroom or a one person bathroom or if you’ll have to purchase something to even use the bathroom.

They Happy Potty team was able to track down some gas station and rest stop data to start the build out of the app, alongside FourSquare API’s. Check out the pitch video below:

Linkage

Check out Happy Potty here at happypottyapp.com

Here’s more of our 48 Hour Launch coverage

Nibletz is the voice of startups everywhere else, check out these stories from everywhere else

Memphis Startup: ScrewPulp Final Pitch 48 Hour Launch

ScrewPulp is an idea that hasn’t been tackled in quite this way before. It’s a self publishing website that allows authors to publish their books to the site. So what’s so unique about that?

Problem: More and more authors are turning to self publishing. Just look at 50 Shades of Gray for instance. According to the startups data there were over 200,000 self published books out of over 1.5 million books published with ISBN numbers.

Self published authors have a hard time garnering social network interest, ratings and reviews which can be the lifeline for a self published book.

Solution: ScrewPulp offers an innovative new platform for self publishers that builds the social network interest piece and the ratings and reviews piece as well. After a book is downloaded 100 times they will switch to $.99 for the next 1,000 copies. After that they’ll increase to $1.99 and so on.

The monetization plan is to take 25% of the sales from books that are selling on the site.

Screw Pulp will giveaway the authors first 100 copies in exchange for a social media share and a rating/review. Readers who love reading new books will be able to download one free book at a time. Once they share it across social media and provide a star rating and or review, they’ll be allowed to download their next free book.

As far as rights are concerned, Billings would like to require authors to hold their work on ScrewPulp for a year regardless of whether or not that author gets their book picked up from another publisher.

Founder Richard Billings said in the Q&A that ScrewPulp will start with novel sized books first and then expand to series and even short stories. Billings also said he would like to use the format for indie artists as well and said we could expect a ScrewTapes out at some point as well.

Check out their Sunday pitch video below:

Linkage:

Check out ScrewPulp here at their website

Here’s more of Nibletz’ coverage of 48 Hour Launch in Memphis

Nibletz is the voice of startups everywhere else, here’s more stories from “everywhere else”

Memphis Startup: LostPetCast Final Pitch at 48 Hour Launch

Sunday night in Memphis brought the final pitches for the four startups that were selected to develop at the weekend long event. LostPetCast was the first startup to the plate.

Idea: A centralized place to report lost pets and found pets

Problem: Losing or finding a pet can take hours of work to get the message out and spread the word. You need to contact local vets, animal shelters, humane societies, put up flyers, and search Craigslist ads.

Solution: LostPetCast allows users to quickly enter information for a lost or found pet. Through LostPetCast the information is automatically shared across multiple channels. It also becomes the one spot to see if your pet has been found by others.

LostPetCast is also offering premium features like an email/fax blast to local vet clinics, adoption services, shelters etc.

The idea is great. There are a couple of competitors in the space however if LostPetCast builds scale quickly they could have an advantage. They want to have several localized sites under the LostPetCast umbrella.

When I wrote about them on Friday I was concerned about the name. In the original pitch the founder said that they were the “amber alert for pets” however they researched that and there is already an amber alert for pets. Now they’re faced with a domain name challenge.

You can find them online at lostpetca.st while it’s a clever name it’s the same challenge that know.es faces it doesn’t roll off the tongue and when spread by word of mouth it will be hard to explain and then remember.

One way to get over that challenge is to have damn good SEO and get to the top of the Google results page for lost pets. That may be a new challenge in itself.

The concept is great. We can’t wait to see the execution. Check out their final pitch video below:

Linkage:

Check out LostPetCast here at their website

See more of our 48 Hour Launch Coverage Here

Nibletz is the voice of startups “everywhere else” check out these stories from “everywhere else”

Interview With Memphis Startup Work For Pie, Seed Hatchery’s First Funded Startup

Memphis has got a great startup culture, ecosystem and community. Most of that happens at Emerge Memphis in downtown Memphis Tennessee. Emerge Memphis is a co-working space, home to SeedHatchery, LaunchMemphis and LaunchYourCity. It’s also home to Work For Pie.

Work For Pie is an online community for developers, with a focus on open-source developers. It’s a lot more than a LinkedIn for developers and the only thing like it in existence right now.

The company was founded in 2011 when Cliff McKinney met Brad Montgomery at a Launch 48 event at Emerge Memphis. The two tweaked a different idea into what Work For Pie has turned into today.

Work For Pie’s unique community allows developers to start a free profile that includes a portfolio of their development work. There is also a rating system involved to show the achievements of the developers in the community. The plan as they continue, is to create a site for businesses as well and then link the two so that businesses have a talent pool of top rated developers to choose from for their project.

They’ll be able to do that now that they’ve secured a a $300,000 round in funding. Work For Pie went through the first incubator class at SeedHatchery last year and they are the first startup to get any kind of substantial outside funding round. The two co-founders are excited about working on Work For Pie full-time.

As part of that great startup culture and eco-system in Memphis, they were onhand at 48 Hour Launch this year to help mentor the four startups that are building out in the weekend event. Friendsignia, Paytopia and a host of other EmergeMemphis companies and SeedHatchery graduates also spent the weekend at 48 Hour Launch paying their experience forward.

Check out our interview with both Cliff and Brad about Work For Pie and the startup culture in Memphis:

Memphis Startup Interview With Friendsignia Not Just Another Social Dashboard

So this is how Friendsignia went down. I got a tweet from Cole Hawkins, co-founder of Friendsignia, the other night. He pointed me to a blog entry written as a parody of Lord of the Rings. Truth be told at 36, I read the Hobbit as a kid but never saw Lord of The Rings, or read the book. If you want to test my geekyness, I’ve never seen or read a Harry Potter book, Twilight or the Hunger Games, and don’t get me started about Doctor Who.

So I knew the blog entry was good, I just didn’t get it. Were they taking on Facebook. Who in their right mind would pitch me taking on Facebook. No. So I forwarded the link to the blog post to one of my other editors and asked her to explain it to me. She said “it’s a social dashboard”. I mean that’s a little better than challenging Facebook but I’ve tried a good 40 to 50 social dashboards to date.

Once I was told that Friendsignia was a social dashboard. I took another look at it, and basically what it does is it narrows down your social feeds to the 150 most relevant people to you. This is based on Dunbar’s number which says that scientifically you can’t keep up with more than 150 relationships. Truth be told I have a hard time remember 25 but ok.

The next piece is that it narrows down your most relevant social contacts, which for a Power User (like myself with 100,000+ Twitter followers, is truly relevant).

Friendsignia is a recent graduate of Memphis’ Seed Hatchery incubator program and they are currently building out of Beta. They are also starting to raise funds. After spending time with the founders they’ve got a great idea for a product.

I tried it late last night and I’m working with the team so that they can handle power users with six figure followings. I will tell you on my personal Facebook account with nearly 1000 friends, it did awesome!

Check out the founder video interview below.

Check out more of our 48 Hour Launch coverage here

The 4 Memphis Startups Selected To Develop At 48 Hour Launch

LaunchMemphis, SeedHatchery and LaunchYourCity had over 20 startups pitch on Friday evening to try and secure a spot for development over the weekend at 48 hour launch. The field was great. There were all kinds of different pitches as you can see here at nibletz.com. Here are the four that were chosen by popular vote amongst their peers to develop.

ScrewPulp

ScrewPulp (as in Pulp Fiction, literature etc). Founder Richard Billings has an innovative new spin on the publishing and selling of e-books. Traditional models are flawed because the pricing is so spread out.

Screw Pulp’s distribution works like this. The first 100 copies of an e-book are distributed free in exchange for two things. Those two things are a social media mention across Twitter or Facebook and a star rating review. In other words, threw ScrewPulp an avid reader could read as many books as they want for free, as long as they were one of the first 100 people to download it, share it on social mean and then they give it a rating and review.

Now you can’t get another free book until both the share and the rating/review are completed. Why is this important? Because it drives feedback for the book and sharing of the book. You’re not obligated to give it a good review, just a review.

Now the next batch of books are $.99 then $1.99 and so on. Hear Billings describe it in the video below.

Yaddoog (Good Day Backwards)

I had to think to myself for a while, when was the last time a good photo sharing app was pitched. It’s been quite a while. However Friday night in Memphis a brand new idea for a photo sharing app was pitched and it’s great.

Founder Harold Strong started his pitch out by asking “How was your day” and pointing out that just about everyone in the world says “Fine”, which of course is a BS answer.

Strongs app idea has you take 24 pictures on your smartphone throughout your day. Then at the end of the day at a set time, the app uploads all 24 pictures to the Yaddoog site. Why not one by one, why 24? Because 24 pictures tells a story.

Watch the pitch below… It’s good…

Happy Potty

I know one entrepreneur who had a very similar idea called soflush.it two years ago but never developed it. No problem because Douglas Starnes and Daniel Pritchett have Happy Potty down pat.

Imagine you’re on a car trip and you have to go to the bathroom. When you pull over at the local BP station the restroom is a disaster and hasn’t been cleaned in days. Now imagine if you had an app with bathroom ratings on cleanliness, ease of use, hospitality etc.

Now, imagine that the app followed your GPS location and mapped out for you bathrooms that were open on your route, and clean. You would use that, you know you would.

I can’t wait to see the product they have at the end of the weekend. See the pitch below.

LostAPet

The idea here is great. The pitch was heartfelt, I think the name sucks but that’s because the pitch was so good.

James told a great story about finding a lost dog, spending hours researching what to do with a found dog and then distributing over 100 flyers. This process took hours.

During the presentation, James said “There’s no amber alert for pets”. That’s why I think the LostAPet name sucks so bad.. the name was right there in the pitch, something like “PetAlert””Doggie Alert”BowWowAlert” but nevertheless if 48 Hour Launch was a nationwide popular vote contest, this idea would be hard to beat. Everyone has a soft spot for pets and a nationwide bulletin board site to find and post lost dogs is something long needed.

It’s one of those ideas where you think “Why didn’t I think of that?”, because James did! Watch the video below, and maybe someone from the team will agree that the name could be better:

See more of our 48 Hour Launch coverage here

Memphis Startup Pitch: Agile Assist, Virtual Support System VIDEO

A new startup that promises to be a virtual support system for those with cognitive disabilities was pitched at the 48 hour launch event in Memphis Friday evening. Husband and wife founders, Rhonda and Robert, built this startup based on the experiences with their son who has a cognitive disability.

Cognitive disabilities include autism,brain injuries and even alzheimers. The common factor behind most people with cognitive disabilities is the need for constant support and supervision. While loved ones are always tasked with this duty, and they do it out of love, it certainly takes a toll on the whole family.

In the two minute pitch it was hard to get a grasp on the entire concept. Rhonda and Robert spent a lot of time on some really interesting background information. We did hear that the idea was a virtual internet based support system, utilizing the cloud and video to help with the 24 hour care.

Rhonda says that they’ve already used their system with their son and it’s worked, and their son is happier. Although it wasn’t chosen as one of the ideas to develop over the 48 hour weekend event, we’re hopeful that they will move forward

Check out more of our 48 Hour Launch coverage here

Memphis Startup: Bryant Williams Pitches Crowdfunding Based On Social Clout

Over 20 ideas for startups were pitched Friday evening at 48 Hour Launch in Memphis Tennessee. One of the great ideas was pitched by Memphis entrepreneur Bryant Williams.

Williams wants to take advantage of the JOBS Act and crowdfunding legislation slated to take effect next month. Williams has a rather unique approach though.

What he is hoping to do is have a startup, entrepreneur or whoever is looking for crowdfunding for their project to get it based on the merits of their social graph. Basically, someone looking to get crowdfunded via Williams’ new startup would have to have their Twitter and Facebook influence factored in.

While Indiegogo and Kickstarter both allow for comments on their pages, it’s just another social network to comment on. Why bother utilizing a new comment space when you’re already posting on Twitter and Facebook anyway.

First things first though, is we have to hear the rules on the JOBS act. The SEC has until July 4th to establish those guidelines. Check out Williams pitch below:

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