Events Archives - Page 28 of 44

AngelHack, World’s Biggest Hackathon Coming To DC And We Have Free Tickets

The old days, picturing a dark room filled with pocket protectors, broken glasses and keyboards are long gone. The hackathon has become a big part of our culture in the startup world. It seems like everyone with a pulse on technology has found the way to create a hackathon to design this, hack this, break into this, vet this, or program that. Microsoft recently held a huge hackathon on their Windows 8 platform. Startup Weekend holds several hackathons every week.

None of these hackathons can parallel the enormous size, booty (prize stash), resources and sponsors of Angelhack.

Angelhack is going down this weekend in 11 cities with 2500 hackers and one gigantic Angelhack crown. Hackers, coders, developers, founders and entrepreneurs will converge on Tel Aviv, Paris, London, Washington DC, Boston, Toronto, Los Angeles, Seattle, Santiago and San Francisco for one crazy weekend of hacking.

The event kicks off at 9:00am on Saturday morning and runs through 5:00pm Sunday night. This hackathon isn’t for the weak at heart though. This isn’t a turn the lights off at midnight and come back at 8am kind of hackathon. Angelhack will run continuously all weekend long.

Angelhack is one of the most critically acclaimed hackathons in the world because of the creativity and startups that it helps create. All 11 locations will narrow the field down to 25 teams from around the world. These 25 teams will win six weeks of mentorship and be flown to Silicon Valley where they’ll show off their finished products to media, investors and other startups. In the past 30% of the finalists have found enough funding to continue building out their companies.

Our good friend Anton Gelman, the CEO and co-founder of Cont3nt is the Washington DC AngelHack coordinator and he’s given nibletz 35 free tickets to the event. Just go to this link to get your ticket and enter the word “nibletz” you’ll instantly save the $60 off the hackathon ticket price and be ready to go.

Gelman told our friends at DC’s inthecapital.com:

“Over the summer, I happened to be in New York and decided to check out AngelHack New York. Crazy enough, I won! They sent us to San Francisco in the following month to compete with other winners from other countries. It was probably one of the coolest events I’ve been to, and then I thought, this was such an amazing experience in New York, why can’t we have one in D.C.? So I arranged a few meetings, made a few phone calls, and was able to convince them to host an event here in D.C. And here we are, the first AngelHack competition is going to happen this weekend!”

Did we mention that Angelhack offers $650,000 in cash and prizes. If you’re anywhere within 300 miles of Washington DC, your plans for this weekend are now set.

Linkage:

Get a free ticket to Angelhack from nibletz click here

Source: InTheCapital

More startup news from Nibletz

And while you’re registering for events

Chattanooga, America’s First Gig City, Welcomes 500 Startups For Will This Float At GEW

One of the biggest misconceptions in the startup and tech space is that Kansas City and Google were the first to offer 1GB Ethernet to businesses and residents. While we love Kansas City startups it’s actually Chattanooga Tennessee that was first with citywide 1gb Ethernet to homes and residences.

Chattanooga has been doing some very big things for entrepreneurs and startups lately. Back in August we brought you exclusive coverage of the GigTank Demo Day. Chattanooga has also been aggressively recruiting entrepreneurs and startups to the region with economic incentives.

Community leaders Sheldon Grizzle and Enoch Elwell haven’t slowed down either. Among other things, including running the Colab space, Grizzle and Elwell have recently been in Chicago, Nashville and Atlanta evangelizing about one of the most truly beautiful places in the world to launch a startup.

In fact it was at the VentureAtlanta event where Grizzle caught the eye of 500 Startups Co-Founder & Sith Apprentice Paul Singh.

500 Startups is the extremely active and diverse vc firm and accelerator in Mountain View. Although the secret 500 startup lair is physically located in Silicon Valley it’s anything but a valley accelerator. Here on nibletz alone we’ve profiled over a dozen 500 startups, none of them have been from the valley.

This week, as the world gears up for global entrepreneurship week so does Chattanooga. Their signature event pits 15 startups against each other this year, in the “will this float” startup competition. The competition, abbreviated WTF, has grown in both the number of participating startups and prize money/investment. The Times Free Press reports that last year’s winner, SupplyHog, is already making money.

This year the contestants include a new startup aiming to help convert streaming music listeners into active music purchasers. Another innovative idea vying for an investment of up to $250,000.

Another startup competing for the gold is looking to turn Farmville into somewhat of a reality. Entrepreneur Troy Cain plans on building an urban farm that is ultimately controlled by mobile devices. Farmers would be able to buy warehouse space where they would be able to plant their own urban farms. Plant watering, and other needs would be monitored and executed via mobile phone commands.

“People want to have a garden and grow their own food, but they don’t have the space or time to maintain it,” Cain said to the Times Free Press. “We’re looking at making it less than the average people spend on food per month,”…”We think it’ll float.”

Entrepreneurs, other startups and the community can come and see the 15 teams pitch live on Thursday at 6pm on the fourth floor of the public library at 1001 Broad Street. They’ll be showing off a new space that’s dedicated to tech work and will even feature things like lights that dance on the walls in response to tweets.

Linkage:

Get your ticket for “Will This Float” here

Source: Times Free Press

No one covers high growth tech in the South East like nibletz.com

We’ll see you in February

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

Startup Super Group Initiative Launched: Startup America, Startup Weekend, TechStars, Udacity, Steve Blank

What do you get when you put together Startup America, Startup Weekend, TechStars, and Udacity, and then let Steve Blank run the whole thing? Startup Weekend Next, that’s what!

Startup Weekend announced the largest Startup initiative to date today. The startup “super group” (as our good friend Michael del Castillo calls it), consists of Startup America, Startup Weekend, TechStars, and Udacity. It’s all being led by Blank who wrote the book on startups “The Startup Owners Manual”.

The four organizations, and Blank are teaming up to help launch 10,000 startups. Startup Weekend Next will be a rolling four week program with hands on training, education and inspiration.

The backbone behind Startup Weekend Next will be The Lean Launchpad Class that Blank came up with, adapting the ideas and lessons from the Startup Owners Manual and applying them to real life companies and scenarios. The class is currently taught at Stanford, Berkeley, Columbia, Caltech,Princeton, the University of Michigan and Georgia Tech.

Blank also recently put the class online at Udacity where over 50,000 people have already started taking the course.

Certainly with the Udacity online course tens of thousands more entrepreneurs are able to take the course without being enrolled in some of the top colleges in the United States. As Blank points out in his blog though, the online version

“… doesn’t require you to form a team, and there’s no immediate instructor feedback. More importantly, it makes no demands of you to stand and deliver your weekly customer development progress in front of your peers. In sum, it lacks the rigorous and collaborative hands-on experience that entrepreneurs get in our university classes”

After pondering and then collaborating to find ways to make the Lean Launch Pad accessible to entrepreneurs in a classroom environment the Startup Weekend Next initiative was born.

Startup America will leverage their 30 startup regions, and their Startup America Regional Champions throughout the country to assist, promote and engage entrepreneurs in the classes. Techstars will leverage it’s world class mentor network to help coach the teams.

There is a small fee between $140 and $299 assessed to basically just cover the costs of hosting the classes.

Blank described on his blog how Startup Weekend Next will work:

You form a startup team (if you don’t have one, taking the 54-hour Startup Weekend class is a great a way to find one) and come into class with an initial idea
Your team arrives with an initial Business Model Canvas. (Your pre-class reading is to watch the Lean LaunchPad initial lectures on Udacity)
You present your hypotheses and what you learned in front of your peers and coaches
Your team gets live coaching and advice from Startup Weekend Next mentors.
You’ll take the suggestions from the meeting, get out of the building and talk to ten plus customers per week.
You’ll refine your business model by iterating or pivoting your product, your target customers, pricing, channels, partners, etc.
Repeat for four weeks– all while working with volunteer mentor partners from Startup Weekend, Startup America and TechStars – serial entrepreneurs and seasoned startup investors – to see whether your business idea was truly a vision or simply a hallucination.

Blank is calling this endeavor a “pre-accelerator”. The possibilities of where a startup can go after Startup Weekend Next are endless.

Linkage:

Steve Blank’s Blog

Startup Weekend Next website

Everywhere else is where you need to be

Speek Holding Speek Easy During Digital Capital Week (DC Tech Week)

While the Washington DC area and the rest of the north east are being pummeled by Hurricane Sandy, “Frankenstorm”, entrepreneurs are still planning on attending DC’s Tech Week which starts this Friday.

Our friends at TechCocktail and many others have put together a weeks worth of great programming for entrepreneurs, founders, startups, developers, designers, coders and anyone else in the tech scene. Hopefully we will be able to travel to DC for the event.

One of the big parties you don’t want to miss is the “Speek Easy” being hosted by Speek at Capitale in NorthWest Washington DC Saturday night November 3rd from 8:00pm-2:00am.

Speek is the easiest to use conference calling platform. Rather than a call in “bridge” number with a bunch of codes to memorize and enter, with Speek you just direct your participants to your Speek page, they click a button and get brought into the conference. You can speek me at speek.com/kyle.

Speek’s pulling out all the stops and taking the “speak easy” theme back to the roaring 20’s. They’ll have 1920’s style photo booths, burlesque dancers and they’re encouraging everyone who attends to register for their Speek link before the party. Attendees with Speek links will be eligible for some cool prizes.

The free “Speek Easy” party is happening at

Capitale
1301 K Street NW
Washington DC 2005

Linkage:

SXSW Bringing Startup Event To Vegas Baby: SXSWV2V

The SXSWi or South By Southwest Interactive show, as part of the annual South By Southwest festival held in March every year, continues to grow. This year all hotel rooms in the immediate vicinity are already sold out. Last year, despite torrential downpours for three days SXSWi had it’s biggest year ever.

SXSWi has been the birth place to many great startups that we use today. Twitter, FourSquare, and Zaarly are just a few of the startups that successfully launched out of SXSW. Glancee (acquired by Facbeook), Highlight and Banjo were the talk of the town last year during the festival.

Thousands and thousands of entrepreneurs flock to Austin Texas to see and take part in the latest startups brewing across the country. In fact, there are even buses that head down to SXSW where startups are building “startup weekend style” along the way. There are many startups that set aside a great chunk of their marketing budget to participate in the SXSW festivities. Other startups use it as both a customer acquisition point and a launch pad.

SXSWi Director Hugh Forrest has seen how SXSWi has grown and taken off and now he wants to expand the property and brand outside the realm of downtown Austin. Forrest has announced V2V August 11-14 2013 at the Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas.

While the strip is still a short distance away from Zappos founder Tony Hsieh’s Downtown Project, the 4 day SXSW conference is a welcome event among all of Las Vegas’ tech community.

Forrest hasn’t decided what “V2V” means just yet but told the Austin Chronicle “Well, the idea there is that it is somewhat of a meaningless term, but if you really want to think of a meaning there, it could be visionary to visionary, or voice to voice, or voice to visionary, or visionaries to Vegas. We like that it’s an open palette and will afford us some room to grow and develop into whatever this event becomes.”

While the Downtown Project continues to grow and the Vegas tech scene is on fire we’re pretty confident that V2V will catch on just as quickly. If it doesn’t though, Forrest isn’t worried. He’s used to building things slowly and organically.

” I think that we can bring a lot of skill and expertise to the Las Vegas venture. On the other hand, one of the reasons SXSW is where it’s at now is it that it was allowed to grow somewhat slowly and organically. We were afforded the luxury of making mistakes on a fairly small stage and then learning from those mistakes and growing after it, growing better. It’d be great if the Las Vegas thing draws a big crowd the first year but at the same time, I don’t want to grow that too fast. I’m very much a believer of the slow, organic growth idea as a way to figure out exactly what you’re doing” Forrest said in the Austin Chronicle interview.

“With the growth and popularity of the startup-related programming across the SXSW family of events, it is clear that there is enough momentum to create a wholly unique and independent event focused on entrepreneurs,” said SXSW V2V Producer Christine Auten said in a statement. “SXSW V2V will follow the same general strategy we have followed with other SXSW experiences. It is about turning creative ideas into reality — bringing visionaries to Vegas.”

SXSW V2V will take place at The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas — a deluxe urban resort in the heart of the Vegas Strip — from Sunday, August 11 through Wednesday, August 14. SXSW V2V registration will include three days of programming, an opening reception, welcome dinner and an eclectic mix of evening and networking events. Register now at the discounted rate of $695 through December 14, 2012

Linkage:

Looking to participate,speak or volunteer at V2V click here

Want to pitch at V2V click here

Maybe you should warm up your pitch at “everywhereelse.co” click here

Bethlehem PA To Hold First Startup Weekend Lehigh Valley Next Week

The 54 hour weekend hackathon to build startups that we know and love “Startup Weekend” is coming to the Lehigh Valley region of Pennsylvania next weekend. After you’ve cleared your house of ghosts and goblins and a week before Startup Weekend’s big global jamboree, entrepreneurs, developers, founders, and startup ecosystem partners will converge at Ben Franklin TechVentures for Startup Weekend.

Startup Weekend Lehigh Valley, is an officially sanctioned event being administered in conjunction with the Startup Weekend organization based in Seattle, which receives major funding from the Kauffman Foundation. All “official” Startup Weekend events follow the same general format.

Registration will begin on Friday evening at 6:30pm at Ben Franklin. 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. 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 Lehigh Valley are: Mark Lang, co-founder of the Northeast Ben Franklin Technology Partners; Yuriy Portyko, General Partner at Smart Start a cross-atlantic incubator and early stage venture capital investor; Scott Gingold, serial entrepreneur with several exits; Amar Reddy, Founder & CEO of Smart IMS; David Easton, Senior Business Development Manager Smart IMS; and Shahri Naghshineh, CEO Surface Chemistry Discovery.

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 Lehigh Valley judges are: Jim Gordon, President & CEO Robert Rothschild Farm; Bob Moul, CEO appRennaisance; and Wayne Barz, Manager of Entrepreneurial Services – Ben Franklin Technology Partners.

Startup Weekend Lehigh Valley is being organized by: Anthony Durante, Wayne Barz, Anthony Josiah Braun, Mark Koberlein, Tim Lytle and Santiago Rivera.

Linkage:

Official Startup Weekend Lehigh Valley here

Check out Ben Franklin here

You gotta check out “everywhere else” here

Purdue Startup: FoundOps Wins Startup Bowl At Indy Powder Keg Conference

photo: TechCocktail

Last week downtown Indianapolis and Lucas Oil Field (home to this years Super Bowl) played host to the first Powder Keg conference.

Powder Keg piggybacked off Connections 12, ExactTarget’s annual conference for their digital marketers.

The signature event for this year’s Powder Keg conference was the first ever Startup Bowl. The Startup Bowl pitted 12 regional startups against each other in a traditional pitch contest. To put a very cool spin on it, conference organizer Matt Hunckler, held the Startup Bowl at Lucas Oil Field.

Derek Pacque and his startup CoatChex was among one of the 12 contestants. Pacque is somewhat of an Indy startup celebrity. He turned down a $200,000 investment from Mark Cuban in the first episode of Shark Tank Season 4.

Pacque’s mini celeb status wasn’t enough to thwart a duo of entrepreneurs from Purdue though. It was their startup, FindOPS, which took home a prize package worth $15,000.

FoundOPS founders, Jon Perl and Oren Shatken admit that their startup isn’t the sexiest. FoundOPS is a useful mobile app that offers route optimization, data collection and GPS tracking.

FoundOPS is in the hot enterprise space, targeting field services. Companies with field workers will take advantage of the many features found in FieldOPS mobile app.

What were the judges looking for?

“What’s their go-to-market strategy? Have they identified their market correctly? Where do they fit, versus their competition?” Judge Christopher Day, Managing Principal at the Nabudar Group told the Indianapolis Business Journal.

FoundOPS had all the components the judges pool were looking for. Startup America CEO and Founding CTO of Priceline.com, announced the winning team at the end of the event.

Linkage:

Source: IndyStar

Here’s more startup news from “everywhere else”

Speaking of conferences

Photo: TechCocktail

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:

Indy’s Powder Keg Startup Conference Announces 12 Startups In The Super Bowl

Startup evangelist, entrepreneur and founder of Verge Startups (Verge Indy), Matt Hunckler has been hard at work producing the upcoming Powder Keg regional startup conference in Indianapolis. Powder Keg is taking place in downtown Indianapolis with one amazing opportunity for 12 great startups, in a startup competition of Super Bowl proportions (can we say Super Bowl?).

“The Big Game” startup competition (see what we did there) will take place at Lucas Oil Stadium next Thursday, which just happens to be the same venue for last years Super Bowl. You know, the one where another Indiana startup evangelist put together this little Shark Tank party with Mark Cuban.

Yes, Indiana has it like that and Powder Keg will continue the tradition of great startup events produced by Hunckler on a much larger scale. Powder Keg has a great list of speakers including illusionist David Blaine, Scott Case (who’s also speaking at everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference), Dave Knox from RockFish and co-founder of The Brandery,and Erik Martin General Manager at Reddit. The event will feature two powerful days of sessions, the Startup Bowl, Startup Showcase and three great parties (what’s a startup event without parties).

Yesterday, the Verge Startups team announced the 12 startups competing for a $15,000 startup growth prize sponsored by Microsoft and Elevate Ventures. Here’s the list:

CoatChex
CoatChex is focused on bringing innovation and value through today’s technology to an industry that hasn’t been touched in decades. The patent-pending process optimizes coat check-in and retrieval functions and reduces the risks that are commonly associated with checking coats, making it the hassle-free solution to running a secure, profitable, and efficient coat check station.

Team Mash
TeamMash is a daily email for sports fanatics. Every day, their editors scour the web for the best sports content. Each morning, they email you a mashup of what happened with your favorite teams in the past 24 hours. It even contains links to hand-picked articles from around the web.

FoundOPS
FoundOPS is developing an operations platform to help small field service operate more efficiently by gamifying carbon savings. In one, easy to use cloud based system, they’ve incorporated GPS technician tracking, drag and drop dispatching, and intuitive customer service management. The platform is provided for free, but customers are incentived to purchase premium features such as route optimization, QuickBooks integration, and BI reports in order to increase their carbon savings.

Adproval
Adproval is a service that streamlines the process of direct ad sales for small and medium bloggers while allowing them to maintain relationships with their advertisers. Working with an approved advertiser lets bloggers use their voice – by means of product reviews, featured posts, etc. – to back them as a sponsor, making ad space on that blog more valuable. Bloggers set up their sponsorship offerings with Adproval and put a page on their blog where advertisers can choose what they want and make an offer. If the blogger finds the advertiser suitable and approves of them, the ad image is automatically uploaded to their blog, the payment is automatically transferred, and the relationship is managed through their dashboard on Adproval.

Lisnr
Lisnr aims to change the way that consumers experience audio by turning what has historically been a passive experience into an interactive engagement platform. Lisnr is an app that allows music or any other audio medium to passively trigger consumer interactions, direct to their mobile device, during a consumer’s listening experience. Lisnr is completely source agnostic as notifications can be sent from audio being played anywhere.

PetBookings
PetBookings.com is the first and only website to offer instant and confirmed online reservations to the $3.5 billion professional pet care industry. They are launching v2.0 of their website platform Friday October 5, 2012 and are armed with some remarkable test data going to market. Pet owners (B2C) are not only experiencing the convenience and benefits of booking online with instant confirmation, but pet care facilities (B2B) are also seeing a significant impact on their bottom line.

Lesson.ly
Lesson.ly is a teaching and learning marketplace. It’s like iTunes, but with lessons and courses instead of songs and albums. It is “the simplest way to learn” and is currently in beta-testing.

Bonfyre
Bonfyres are private groups created around events where you can share chats and photos. All of these shared photos become part of group photostreams, called Memories, and are accessible only to others at that bonfyre. Simple event planning, private real-time sharing and collective group photos in one app, just like it should be.

Squarejive
Squarejive is a free mobile application that recommends things to do nearby. The app is built upon a mosaic design that allows users to seamlessly find and share events across Facebook, Twitter, SMS Text, and Email. With Yelp integration, the app also includes business profiles for over 400 venues in Indianapolis. They intend to launch Squarejive version 1.0 on October 13th at the Broad Ripple Music Festival.

Modulus
Modulus helps developers spend less time configuring servers and more time building products. Modulus does this by providing a complete platform that companies can use to host and scale their internet-based applications. We add to that an integrated database and file storage solution, and wrap everything under a powerful statistics engine.

Visit Apps
Visit Apps empowers Convention & Visitors Bureaus (CVBs = tourism agencies) to harness the mobile channel to deeply engage their visitors. Visit Apps has built a proprietary platform that allows any CVB – from the quaintest of towns to a bustling metropolis – to have their own mobile app. Visit Apps is a SaaS startup in the explosively growing mobile sector (available in iPad, iPhone and Android devices). The Visit Apps team is led by Santiago Jaramillo (serial entrepreneur of University Storage & MyMusicCamp.com).

Diagnotes
In an effort to eliminate the problems associated with effective communication and care during on-call medical encounters, Diagnotes has developed an integrated software solution that provides critical information, secure communication and convenient documentation for healthcare providers via their smartphones, focusing initially on on-call physicians and the 50-100 million such patient encounters conducted annually in the US.

Tickets for PowderKeg are still available for $299 check the link below.

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Get your tickets now for just $299 here for Powder Keg

Source: Verge Startups

Then, we’ll see you in February for this

SXSW Eco 2012 – Interview with DJ Spooky [Video]

Paul Miller better known as DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid was at SXSW Eco 2012 with his session The Intersection of Art + Sustainability

Media is the new medium for conservation. Using art to impact the planet, causing a global shift: Academy Award Winner, Grammy Winners and Artists speak on altering awareness on a global scale through media, film, music and design.

He was also on-hand to sign his latest book “The Book of Ice”

“What I have done with this book is to unpack some of the issues that drive my artwork and its relationship to the constantly changing facets of contemporary life in our information-economy dominated, post-everything twenty-first century. Looking back over the last several centuries, an intense amount of energy has been expended all over the world exploring and unraveling the meaning of humanity’s condition on the planet. Much of this energy has been spent in perverse and self-defeating ways. Our vision of modern life is tinged by events like the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, which makes former disasters like the 1989 Exxon Valdez incident or the 1986 release of radioactive steam in Chernobyl seem quaint and self-contained. More than ever, we are interconnected, and interdependent. In the future, regardless of any human action, the planet will be here – we as a species, might not.”

We had a chance to tape a quick interview with Paul Miller/DJ Spooky where we covered the book, his work with Saul Williams and the role that startups play in regards to the environment. (I apologize for the poor lighting conditions and Paul being so dark. This was 100% operator error and a lack of working knowledge to fix this).

DJ Spooky traveled down to Antarctica with his recording studio to record the ice. Out of this trip grew Terra Nova Sinfonia Antarctica a multimedia art project. As described on his site:

Sinfonia Antarctica transforms Miller’s first person encounter with the harsh, dynamic landscape into multimedia portraits with music composed from the different geographies that make up the land mass. Miller’s field recordings from a portable studio, set up to capture the acoustic qualities of Antarctic ice forms, reflect a changing and even vanishing environment under duress. Coupled with historic, scientific, and geographical visual material, Terra Nova: Sinfonia Antarctica is a seventy minute performance, creating a unique and powerful moment around man’s relationship with nature.

This is his third book, following Sound Unbound: DJ Spooky Explores Remix Culture and Rhythm Science both published by MIT Press. Like The Book Of Ice and Terra Nova, Rhythm Science also included a piece that accompanied it entitled DJ Spooky’s Rebirth of a Nation.

Teen Startup Flight Car Takes On Airport Car Rental Industry PITCH VIDEO

So back in July when we heard the original idea behind FlightCar I thought this group of teenage ivy league dropouts was absolutely crazy. Their Cincinnati startup FlightCar is a crazy idea. Their simplest pitch, “let someone else rent your car while you’re traveling” seemed a little far fetched. Combine that with the fact that there’s maybe 10 years driving experience between the three of them and even less business traveling experience, and I was totally disconnected.

Sometime during Wednesday’s demo day for the Brandery though my opinion totally changed.

There are hundreds of thousands of rental cars available at just the top 30 airports in the United States. There’s also hundreds of thousands of cars that sit in long term parking lots at those same airports. FlightCar solves this problem.

Using the FlightCar platform somebody about to go on a trip can sign up to rent their car for the rate they want and the mileage they’ll allow. They indicate what time the car will be available and what time it will need to be back by. When they arrive at one of Flight Car’s satellite parking lots they are greeted by a friendly FlightCar team member who takes their keys and their car. FlightCar then cleans the car and waits for the renter.

The renter checks the FlightCar website and can see what’s available by kind of car, time available, mileage allotment and price. Because this is a peer to peer sharing product there is much more variety in the cars available than your standard 5 model rental car lot. Did we mention this is also a lot cheaper.

FlightCar rentees keep 65% of the cost of the rental after taxes and fees, so rather than spending money on long term parking they’ll make money off the rental itself.

FlightCar is beta testing in Cincinnati and plans to bring San Jose and Oakland online in the next month.

As a very frequent business traveler my biggest concern was what if I rent my car out using FlightCar and when I get back from my trip the car is not back yet, or worse in an accident.

On the accident side, FlightCar has a million dollar insurance policy on each vehicle. They’ve secured this policy through the only insurance company currently insuring peer-to-peer car rental companies. Not only that but they have secured a deal with their insurance company that prohibits that company from insuring a competitor. That’s something investors will love.

On the pure timing side, the FlightCar guys said customer service is of the utmost importance to them. Their lot attendants will have the authority to give you another rental until your car comes back or get you a ride to wherever you need to go, and then bring your car to you.

See what this amazing trio of young entrepreneurs has cooked up in their pitch video below. They are currently raising $850,000 and have $200,000 committed. They should have no problem raising the entire round, and quickly.