The 20 Best Accelerated Startups In Tennessee Make The TENN Finals

Launch Tennessee, the private/public partnership that oversees 9 accelerators across the state, is running a “super accelerator” of sorts, appropriately called the TENN. The TENN starts off with a statewide demo day on August 27th in Nashville. At that event, 20 startups, announced on Thursday, will pitch their business.

A group of national investors and entrepreneurs will narrow that field from 20 to 10 at the statewide event. The demo day investor panel includes Sabeer Bhatia, chairman and CEO of Sabse/Jaxtr and founder and former CEO of Hotmail; John McIlwraith, managing partner at Cincinnati, Ohio-based Allos Ventures; John Greathouse, general partner at Santa Barbara, Calif.-based Rincon Venture Partners; Sig Mosley, managing partner at Atlanta, Ga.-based Mosley Ventures; Bob Crutchfield, partner at Birmingham, Ala.-based Harbert Ventures; and Mike Tatum, serial entrepreneur and CEO of Workbus. Governor Bill Haslam will announce the 10 companies that will comprise The TENN.

After the TENN is announced they will embark on a statewide bus tour, parading the startups in front of the state’s biggest companies and innovators. The TENN group will also have access to a master mentor network pulling from all nine accelerators. The TENN startups will also receive free office space, either at one of the regional accelerator headquarters or receive a subsidy for office space.

Launch Tennessee partnered with the Blackstone Foundation to hold the TENN program.

Here are the 20 finalists for the TENN program:

East Tennessee (6):

Hutgrip
FwdHealth
HATponics
Vendor Registry
Survature
Renewable Algal Energy

Middle Tennessee (9) :

eClinicHealthCare
InCrowd Capital
Gun.io
Got You In
Newsbreak
Ecoviate
Green Dot Charging
March Fuels
Graphenics

West Tennessee (5):

ADVANCE Inventions
Mobilizer
ScrewPulp
Health & Bliss
View Medical

“These 20 startups are an exceptional representation of the innovative and promising ideas emerging from Tennessee’s accelerator programs,” said Launch Tennessee CEO Charlie Brock. “From the quality and diversity of applications submitted across the state, it is apparent that Tennessee’s network of accelerators, which is unique in the nation and Launch Tennessee helps fund, is working well.”

You can find out more about Launch Tennessee at LaunchTn.org

Follow Friday: Follow These Startup Rockstars

Our Follow Friday tradition continues with another list of great startup people to follow on Twitter. Today follow the list of startup rockstars below. Then, get your attendee or Startup Village ticket for Everywhere Else Cincinnati, where you can see them all in person, speaking and networking with startups from “everywhere else”.

Jonathon Perrelli, Founder, Fortify Ventures
Mark Hasebroock, Dundee Venture Capital
Jason Healey, Founder, Blu eCigs
John Bracken, Founder of e-vite and Speek
Dave Knox, co-founder Brandery, CMO Rockfish
Patrick Woods, Managing Partner a>m Ventures
Andrew Warner, Founder, Mixergy
Raghu Betina, Managing Partner, The Starter League
Wil Schroter, Founder Fundable
Ryan O’Connell, VP Influence & Co
Blake Miller, Managing Director, Think Big Accelerator
Sarah Ware, Founder Markerly
Naithan Jones, Founder AgLocal
Michael Bergman, Founder, Repp
Andy Sparks, Co-Founder MatterMark
John T. Meyer, Founder, Lemon.ly
Jake Stutzman, Founder, Creative Director, Elevate.co
Blair Garrou, Managing Director, Mercury Fund
Joe Medved, Parter, SoftBank Capita
Derek Flanzraich, Founder & CEO, Greatist

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Startup Weekend Heads To Biloxi

Startup Weekend, the globally famous 54 hour startup hackathon, continues to grow. Next weekend Startup Weekend heads to the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, where Biloxi will play host to entrepreneurs, developers, coders, and their supporters while they hack the weekend away on what could become the next big business.

Startup Weekend Biloxi is being put on by Innovate Mississippi, a public-private partnership thats fueling the economy by supporting startups and innovation across the state.

Although it’s the first Startup Weekend event in Biloxi, it’s not the first in Mississippi. Jackson, Mississippi held Startup Weekend last year. The organizers of that event were also on hand for Memphis’ official Startup Weekend last July. Startup Weekend is a staple in Florida cities like Orlando and Tampa.

“It’s our turn,” Stephen Witt, the Executive Director of the Innovation Center told the Sun Herald, “and a great opportunity for the Coast. Pulling together all of the entrepreneurs, designers, marketers, and innovators from all backgrounds and all ages and putting them together for a weekend of creating, designing, and launching new ventures is pure chemistry.”

Startup Weekend Biloxi will follow Startup Weekend’s normal 54 hour format. Entrepreneurs who sign up here, will meet each other over dinner on Friday evening. After that they’ll pitch their ideas in 60 second pitches where the audience will decide which ideas will be worked on all weekend long.

Once the ideas are chosen, the audience will divide up into teams and conquer the startups at hand. They’ll work through the weekend with access to mentors and coaches. Saturday they’ll go through customer discovery and work on their wireframes and pitch decks.

Sunday the teams will put together the finishing touches on their presentations and pitch to the panel of judges. Judges for the Biloxi event are:

Bud Jones, AGJ Systems
Dr. Lou Finkle Entrepreneur/Angel Investor
Stephen O’Mara, Renaissance Corporation

Coaches for the Biloxi event are:

Ryan Giles, Founding Partner CFO AGJ Systems & Networks Inc
Mark Henderson, Lazy Magnolia Brewing Company
Matthew McLaughlin, Balch & Bingham
Kathleen Chapman, Patent Attorney
John Shinn, President, PPS Software
Cathye Ross, Independent Marketing Consultant
Charlie Beasley, MSET

You can find out more about Biloxi’s Startup Weekend and register here at startupweekend.org

$600,000 Investment In GigTank Startup WeCounsel Proves Accelerators Still Work

WeCounsel, Chattanooga startup, GigTank, UltraGroup, Funding

WeCounsel CEO Harrison Tyner pitches at GigTank demo day (photo: NMI 2013)

Just last week we were in Chattanooga for the GigTank accelerator’s second demo day. GigTank debuted last year, right on the heels of Chattanooga becoming the first (sorry KC) city with 1gb ethernet to all residential and business addresses. This year’s cohort came literally from across the globe with startups from Bulgaria, India and the Cayman Islands choosing to spend the summer in Tennessee.

During the two day celebration of startups in Chattanooga, there was a lot of hush hush talk about accelerators in general. It’s actually a common discussion, whether or not accelerators are worth the time and money. Many think the 3-4 month model isn’t enough time to build real companies, and with accelerators all over the country, there may be an accelerator bubble.

Another struggle is attracting investors. Outreach is tremendously important for an accelerator. Sure you can invite the same 50-100 investors on the VC academy list of VC Pro database, and they may come. But often the startups presenting aren’t in their investment wheelhouse. For accelerators not in their first season, the investors have seen the same PowerPoint template presented over and over again .

Accelerators and their demo days get interesting when you include anyone who’s interested into the startup community. Entrepreneurs come in all shapes, sizes, and colors and so do startup supporters. CoLab and GigTank director Sheldon Grizzle is very good at bringing the whole community together around entrepreneurial events. On the eve of the GigTank demo day, there was an event called Fireside Talks which included entrepreneurs 20 and under working on a variety of projects.

UltraGroup is not one of your typical startup investors. UltraGroup is a healthcare company that specializes in behavioral health programs. They provide outpatient care at 40 rural hospitals across eight states, according to the TimesFreePress. They are based in Chattanooga.

WeCounsel is a GigTank startup that went through the most recent cohort, graduating last week. They offer an online platform that allows therapists to take notes, coordinate scheduling, share documents, store client records and interact with colleagues. They are also based in Chattanooga, and one of three local startups in this year’s GigTank Cohort.

WeCounsel co-founder and CEO Harrison Tyner told Nibletz by phone that UltraGroup was on their radar to talk with earlier this summer.

“Relationships we built at the GigTank made our talks with UltraGroup progress even further,” he said. He went on to say that without the GigTank helping them iterate their idea to perfection and mentorship from others in the GigTank’s network, they would not have been ready for UltraGroup’s $600,000 investment reported Wednesday.

“None of this would have been possible for us without the GigTank. It’s been the best thing to happen to our startup,” Tyner said.

Tyner and his co-founders Riley Draper and Joshua Goldberg are all originally from Chattanooga and will stay there to grow WeCounsel. Currently they are still operating out of CoLab but plan on moving to their own office in about a month.

“Chattanooga continues to prove that it’s a great city for entrepreneurship,” Tyner said. By staying in Chattanooga, they will be able to work closely with UltraGroup and continue to work with the mentors and leaders they formed relationship with at GigTank.

When the GigTank presentations kicked off, Toni Gamayel co-founder and CEO of Banyan took the stage. His company, which has designed a collaboration platform for researchers, won $100,000 from Alcatel Lucent at last year’s demo day. Shortly after demo day the company went home to Tampa, Florida, where Gamayel has been a fixture in the startup community. He told a story about coming up to visit during the winter last year and realizing that Chattanooga was on its way up. With that realization entire team loaded up a Uhaul and moved back to town.

For more info on WeCounsel visit them online here.

Check out more GigTank coverage here.

Meet Everywhere Else Cincinnati Speaker Blake Miller, Managing Director Think Big Accelerator

With Everywhere Else Cincinnati rapidly approaching, we’re going to spend some time introducing you to our great speakers. There are still a limited number of early bird discount attendee, investor, and Startup Village tickets still available at eecincinnati.com

As a partner at Think Big Partners, Blake Miller is the Managing Director of the Think Big Accelerator program, consults for both local and national startup companies, and manages the Think Big in-house dev team (also known as Think Big Labs). Blake’s strengths are in ideation, innovation, UI/UX, growth hacking, and connecting the dots. Blake has co-founded a number of tech startups, including BodeeFit, WeeJay, Inboun, and Pitchcaster. He sits on the board of Keyzio and is an adviser to SquareOffs and Kahootz.

What was your first experience with startups?

I’ve always kind of had my own “startup” in that I’ve been building websites for small businesses since I was 13. However my first true startup was not in tech. About 4 years ago, I got into a new Consumer Packaged Good called The Secret Sauce. The BBQ Sauce was outstanding, it won the American Royal BBQ Competition (out of 500+ sauces) 2 years in a row. We did well at first when we started bottling, but starting a CPG company is REALLY HARD and EXPENSIVE. We ended up failing after getting a large purchase order from Costco, but couldn’t get a bank to loan us the money to produce the order because of Costco’s terms.

What made you want to become an entrepreneur?

Doing the same thing the rest of my life terrifies me. I just can’t imagine having the same routine for the rest of my life. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But I get to work with some of the smartest people anywhere day in and day out solving real problems. It also probably stems from my parents, they’ve been entrepreneurs ever since I can remember.

What has been the most important thing you’ve learned running an accelerator?

Two things actually: no matter how experienced the entrepreneur… EVERYONE NEEDS help because building a company is hard. Two, there’s no such thing as “the traditional accelerator model.” We realized this early on. Although many problems that arise for entrepreneurs start to look the same, every company is a bit different and needs a slightly different approach. To add to that, not everyone is always in the same space and not every company can naturally progress at the same speed.

What has been your biggest failure and biggest success at Think Big Partners and what did you learn from them?

We’ve made A LOT of mistakes and I think depending on who you ask in our organization, you’ll probably get a million different answers. I’d say the biggest is our initial approach to the accelerator model. It was definitely a “me too” approach, which I think you are seeing a lot of across the country. We quickly realized that we needed to do a lot more then just hand an entrepreneur a check, tell them here’s our list of mentors, let us know if you want to be connected, and “oh yea we will have office hours once a week.” This model obviously works for some, but what we experienced was that entrepreneurs need more resources.

In my opinion one of our biggest success is a result of that failure. We quickly realized that many entrepreneurs need help actually building their product. Luckily we didn’t realize this too late. We built a team of devs and designers so that we could help the entrepreneurs build MVP’s and get to market faster. Our success in this instance is that out of 6 companies in our first cohort, 5 are in the market, gaining customers, and generating revenue.

What do you like most about working with startups?

Solving Problems. I could expand on that a million different ways, but it always comes back to the challenge of solving real problems. It sounds far reaching but there is something extremely sexy to me about waking up every morning and solving problems for potentially millions of people. It also doesn’t hurt that I get to wear Jeans and T-shirt every day.

How can people keep up to date with you online?

Follow me on Twitter @ImBmills

Connect on Linkedin

Find ThinkBig at thinkbigpartners.com

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SoftBank’s Joe Medved And Mercury Fund’s Blair Garrou To Speak At Everywhere Else Cincinnati

Today’s been a big day for Everywhere Else Cincinnati. Earlier this morning we announced that Greatist founder Derek Flanzraich had joined the already amazing line up for the conference taking place in Cincinnati September 29-October 1st.

The Everywhere Else conference series is aimed at startups “everywhere else,” cities across America where startups are fueling the new economy. Startups in areas that aren’t traditional tech hubs, like Silicon Valley, often have a common set of challenges including access to capital, access to talent, and not knowing which resources are available to tap into.

At Everywhere Else Cincinnati, startups, angel investors, and VC’s from everywhere else will be able to learn and collaborate with like minded people in similar situations. We’ve compiled an amazing list of national speakers who will offer a range of discussions from starting up everywhere else, to raising money everywhere else, to accelerating everywhere else, and even what VC’s and angel investors are looking for when they turn to startups everywhere else.

After our huge conference in Memphis last February, a theme kept recurring: the need to “Start Where U Are.” This conference will help startups realize that in most cases starting where they are is the best scenario for them and the community.

We already have VC’s from some of the nation’s most respected firms attending or speaking at the conference. Two more of those VC’s, Soft Bank Capital’s Joe Medved and Mercury Fund’s Manging Partner Blair Garrou, will share their insight into what VC’s are looking for and how startups, who often have the odds stacked against them in the first place, can make sure they look good and ready in front of investor.

Both VC’s are distinguished in their fields, have an active role in their startup communities and advisory roles with their startups. Both investors have also been on the Business Journal‘s 40 under 40 in addition to other great accomplishments.

Joe Medved joined SoftBank Capital in 2005. He’s been investing in digital media companies for over nine years, from seed through growth stage. He focuses on supporting primarily Seed and Series A stage companies with special interests including consumer and enterprise mobile, gaming, and social marketing.

Prior to joining SoftBank Capital, Joe was an Associate with Constellation Ventures, a media and communications venture capital fund under Bear Stearns Asset Management. Prior to Constellation Ventures, he was an Associate and Analyst for the Technology, Media and Telecommunications Group with JPMorgan Investment Banking.

In 2011, Joe was selected by the Boston Business Journal for its 40 Under 40 class. He is Co-Founder of the Digital Media VC/Corp Dev Connection, a group that brings together active investors and corporate development professionals from large corporations focused on digital media. Joe is also Chairman Emeritus of the New England Venture Network (NEVN), one of the largest venture capital organizations on the East Coast.

Blair Garrou is a co-founder and Managing Director of the Mercury Fund (formerly DFJ Mercury). The Houston-based VC firm makes investments in technology and energy where they even support their own accelerator called Surge. Garrou’s reach to accelerators doesn’t end there, though. He is a big believer in the accelerator model and is a mentor at The Brandery and often speaks to other accelerator cohorts across the country.

Prior to co-founding the Mercury Fund, Blair was the CEO of Intermat, Inc., a leader in product information management software (acq. by IHS). Before Intermat, Blair was a Principal of Genesis Park LP, a Houston-based venture capital and private equity firm, where he focused on the firm’s software investments, including Intermat, FuelQuest (acq. by Saracen Energy), and SAT Corporation (acq. by Invensys). Prior to Genesis Park, Blair helped launch and was the Director of Operations for the Houston Technology Center (HTC), the largest technology incubator in the state of Texas, and he led the formation of the Houston Angel Network, one of the largest and most active angel investment organizations in the U.S. Previously, Blair was an investment banker with BMO Nesbitt Burns, and an auditor with Deloitte & Touche. Blair is a licensed CPA in the state of Texas. He received a B.S. in Management with special attainments in Commerce from Washington & Lee University.

Medved and Garrou join this already amazing list of speakers

Naithan Jones, Founder AgLocal
Derek Flanzraich, Founder Greatist
Andrew Warner, Founder Mixergy
Andy Sparks, Co-Founder Mattermark
Wil Schroter, Founder Fundable
Jake Stutzman, Founder Elevate.co

Jonathon Perrelli, Managing Director, Fortify Ventures
Justin Gutwein, Filmmaker and Entrepreneur startupland.tv
Mark Hasebroock, Founder Dundee Venture Capital
Jason Healy, Founder Blu
John Bracken, Founder Evite and Speek
Dave Knox, CMO Rockfish, co-founder Brandery
Patrick Woods, Managing Director a>m ventures
Sarah Ware, Founder Markerly
John T. Meyer, Founder lemon.ly
Raghu Betina, Managing Patner The Starter League
Ryan O’Connell, VP Influence & Company
Blake Miller, Managing Director Think Big Accelerator
Michael Bergman, Founder Repp.

Startups hurry only 4 Startup Village Booths left at the early bird discount rate!

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Greatist Founder Derek Flanzraich Added To Everywhere Else Cincinnati Line Up

No, we did’t misspell “greatest” in that headline.

Greatist is an web startup about health and wellness. It’s an expert community driven resource that helps you reach fitness, health, and happiness goals. Whether you’re looking for great healthy recipes, workout tips, or even how to get over a hangover, Greatist offers a variety of wellness and health related content.

While the content on Greatist.com is overflowing, the team at Greatist encourages their users to take it slow, one week at a time. The startup’s mission is to inspire and inform the world to make at least one healthier decision per week. Whether you want to lose weight, eat better, get stronger, get motivated, relieve stress, or just start working out, Greatist offers the content you need, in an easy-to-read format for all of their users.

Derek Flanzraich has been an entrepreneur since his first “lemonade stand” startup dog walking business. All the while friends, family members, and new acquaintances would ask him what drove him, and one of those main ingredients was health and wellness. That’s why he created Greatist.

Flanzraich has been featured by Forbes as an up and comer. That’s also why Andrew Warner, the founder of Mixergy, (and another Everywhere Else Cincinnati speaker) interviewed Flanzraich on his popular site Mixergy, home of the ambitious startup.

Flanzraich told Warner in the interview that he thought of product first, in his case the content on Greatist, before he thought about revenue and traffic, a healthy recipe that seems to be working out.

Flanzraich can talk about his experience building a school newspaper in middle school, a political forum in high school, or a web TV show and network at Harvard. He can also talk about how he joined Clicker, a startup that sold to CBS for hundreds of millions, right before exit. He even picked the startup route over joining Google. Then he can talk about building Greatist into the greatest. Why people come, why they stay, and what he has learned in his career in new media.

Check out Flanzraich’s site, Greatist, here

Flanzraich joins the growing list of confirmed national speakers for Everywhere Else Cincinnati:

Naithan Jones, Founder agLocal
Andrew Warner, Founder Mixergy
Andy Sparks, Co-Founder Mattermark (backed by NEA and a16z)
Wil Schroter, Mr. Ohio, founder of Fundable
Jake Stutzman, founder evlevate.co
Jonathon Perrelli, Managing Director, Fortify Ventures
Justin Gutwein, Filmmaker and Entrepreneur startupland.tv
Mark Hasebroock, Founder Dundee Venture Capital
Jason Healy, Founder, Blu
John Bracken, Founder e-vite and Speek
Dave Knox, CMO Rockfish, co-founder, Brandery
Patrick Woods, Managing Director a>m ventures
Sarah Ware, Founder Markerly
John T. Meyer, Founder lemon.ly
Raghu Betina, Managing Patner, The Starter League
Ryan O’Connell, VP Influence & Company
Blake Miller, Managing Director, Think Big Accelerator
Michael Bergman, Founder Repp.

Get your ticket or Startup Village Booth for Everywhere Else Cincinnati below.

4 Early Bird Startup Village Booths Left For Everywhere Else Cincinnati

UPDATE: 8/12/2013 Only 4 startup village booths left at the early bird discount rate.

Everywhere Else Cincinnati is less than two months away. When we announced the conference last week, we offered the first 30 startup village booths at an early bird discount rate of just $495. That rate includes three attendee tickets, booth space, a pitch contest, and more.

The Startup Village at Everywhere Else Cincinnati is a great place to get your startup huge exposure. VC and angel firms from across the country will be in attendance at the conference including Fortify Ventures, DVP, CincyTech, Elevate Ventures, DFJ and many more. Also, the Brandery demo day is on October 2nd, and a lot of investors will already be in town for that.

The Everywhere Else conference series gives startups from across the country and around the world access to top tier conference content, networking, and education, even on the most bootstrapped of budgets.

We’re still not finished announcing speakers for this big national conference. Speakers already committed include:

Naithan Jones, Founder agLocal
Andrew Warner, Founder Mixergy
Andy Sparks, Co-Founder Mattermark (backed by NEA and a16z)
Wil Schroter, Mr. Ohio, founder of Fundable

Jake Stutzman, founder evlevate.co
Jonathon Perrelli, Managing Director, Fortify Ventures
Justin Gutwein, Filmmaker and Entrepreneur startupland.tv
Mark Hasebroock, Founder Dundee Venture Capital
Jason Healy, Founder, Blu
John Bracken, Founder e-vite and Speek
Dave Knox, CMO Rockfish, co-founder, Brandery
Patrick Woods, Managing Director a>m ventures
Sarah Ware, Founder Markerly
John T. Meyer, Founder lemon.ly
Raghu Betina, Managing Patner, The Starter League
Ryan O’Connell, VP Influence & Company
Blake Miller, Managing Director, Think Big Accelerator
Michael Bergman, Founder Repp.

We are going to close out the discount this week. The first 30 startups in the village will get the best booth placement and a featured spot in the startup village guide.

If your startup is currently in an accelerator or accelerator alumni, there’s a good chance that your accelerator has a discount code. If not, the remaining 8 4 early bird Startup Village booths are discounted an additional 10% by clicking here.

We’ll see you in Cincinnati at the end of September.

SellingThe Parents, Richard Branson & Acquisition: Bad Ass Startup Chick Stacey Ferreira Tells Her Story

Stacey Ferreira is a bad ass startup chick, and quite frankly has one of the most bad ass stories we’ve ever heard. That story starts when she was a student at an all girls Catholic high school in Phoenix, Arizona. When you hear about entrepreneurs starting out as developers in high school, a lot of times those stories are about boys.

Well Ferreira was lonely and missing all of her public school friends who were about 40 miles away. Looking for something to do to pass the time she turned to her brother Scott. He had just begun teaching himself how to program, so the two of them decided they would learn how to become game developers.

Through the rest of her time in high school, Ferreira spent her free time creating and developing different projects with her brother. Then the time came to graduate high school and their parents insisted that they had just one more summer left before they had to go get real internships like everyone else. The Ferreira siblings decided to go all in and move to Los Angeles to build out one of the projects that they had worked on in high school. That project became MySocialCloud.

During that summer Richard Branson held a fundraiser contest of sorts that said if you could donate $2,000 to his charity you could have cocktails with Branson in Miami. Stacey wasn’t even old enough to drink, but quickly realized the value in spending time with Branson. Oh, the other problem was they didn’t have the money. To make matters worse, when they called and talked with someone in Branson’s office they discovered the two of them would need $4,000 not $2000.

Scott and Stacey now had the daunting task of selling their dad on getting a loan. Dad wanted a business plan, Stacey told the standing room-only crowd at a startup event Tuesday in Chattanooga. So she and Scott developed a business plan. Almost reluctantly their dad said yes, but they had to return the money in 3 months.

That ended up not being too tough because that meeting in Miami ended up with a million dollar investment.

Stacey, who is also involved with the Young Entrepreneur’s Council, told her story during FireSide Talks, which featured Thiel Fellows and other entrepreneurs 20 and under. Stacey talked about her entrepreneurial journey from that private school in Arizona, to living in almost the slums of Los Angeles, meeting Branson, getting $1 million dollar investment, and eventually getting acquired. Oh, and that was in less than two years.

Watch Stacey tell her own story:

Startup Accelerators: The Hard Advice

GigTank, Mira Designs, Sisasa, TidBit, startups, accelerators

(Lawrence Yu CoFounder of Mira Designs. Photo NMI 2013)

Startup accelerators are great,] because they give young growing startups capital, access to resources, mentors, and hopefully investors. But they aren’t always rosy. In fact, if all your days in an accelerator program are rosy, then you need to run like hell from that accelerator program.

On our sneaker-strapped startup road trip, we’ve had the privilege of meeting several startups in mid session. We’ve seen startup founders cry, scream, cuss, even break things, typically right before they have that “aha moment”. What we normally find is that the hardest piece of advice, and usually the “ugly baby” moment, is very early on in the accelerator. In fact most accelerators engineer an activity on day one or two where mentors, advisors, or even media members are invited in to tear an idea to shreds.

We got a chance to talk with Lawrence Yu, cofounder of Mira Designs, Alejandro Dinsmore, cofounder of Sisasa, and Sam Bowden, founder and CEO of TidBit. All three startups graduated from the GigTank accelerator in Chattanooga, Tennessee, on Tuesday afternoon.

For Yu, the hardest advice came as an eye opening experience that they weren’t the only startup trying to fix offline retail with online components. The team at Mira Designs needed to make sure that they were clearly differentiating themselves from the competition and they needed to do it in a big way.

For both Bowen and Dinsmore, their harshest advice was an ugly baby moment that for both startups meant a pivot. Sisasa totally changed course from the idea they came into the accelerator with. For Bowen it meant going after a different industry, actually an industry he knew more about first hand. The end result of both of their “ugly baby” moments was what most would call traction.

The video below features all three founders talking about their harshest or most eye opening advice in the GigTank.

Check out the accelerator panel with accelerator heads from across the country at this national startup conference.

Tidbit, A Cayman Islands Startup, Is Fixing Training [video]

When Sam Bowen took the stage at the GigTank demo day on Tuesday afternoon, he talked about everything wrong with corporate training. And he should know. He’s been a trainer throughout most of his career. He has trained professionals in state government, the hospitality industry, and non profit organizations. At one point he even had to train judges, which can be an extremely hard task.

Kicking off his pitch, Bowen said, “I can tell you two things have remained constant, a majority of folks hate training,” which drew a chuckle from the crowd of investors and startup supporters in Chattanooga.The second thing, according to Bowen, is that everyone in the hospitality industry focuses on one number: the annual staff turnover rate. The national average annual staff turnover rate is a whopping 65%.

That’s obviously why everybody hates training. With employee churn that high, business owners, corporate trainers, and HR departments are constantly training new employees to do their regular jobs, making it almost impossible to find the time to teach existing employees new things.

Online training in one form or another has been around for nearly two decades. Text and “module” based training or even “knowledge base” training has fueled big corporations, staffing firms, retailers, and chain restaurants since the 90’s.

The problem with those solutions is, as technology improved, training didn’t. The other key factor is that for more and more busy people, the computer is becoming screen number 2. Screen number one is the phone or tablet.

So Cayman Islands native Bowen, his brother, and their team created Tidbit, a startup that incorporates the smartphone and all its available technology to make training materials easy for the trainer to create and just as easy for the employee to consume. Bowen gave the example of a bakery owner who would be able to use her smartphone’s video camera and microphone to walk employees through how to make her latest cupcake designs. The employees can then in turn, watch the content created by the owner and make the cupcake at the same time.

Hotels could use Tidbit to quickly show an entire fleet of housekeepers some new way of making the beds or where a new piece of flair goes in a room. The employees become more productive by having those training modules in their hand, in the room while they’re doing the job.

For employers that want to allow their employees to access the content from their own device, training becomes something that an employee can do on the bus or at home in some down time without the worry of finding a computer.

There’s an unwritten rule across most accelerators: to wow the investors in the room, they save the best startup for last. Tidbit went last, here’s the video:

Sisasa Is Bridging The Gap Between Young Adults And Community Banks

Sisasa co-founders Alejandro DInsmore and Deborah Tien (photo: NMI 2013)

Community banks are great. Often times community banks have more 1:1 resources to give to their customers. They can offer education, guidance and products that benefit local businesses, local residents and bolster the local economy.

But what happens when a college student or young adult leaves home for another city?

Well often times they turn to one of the mega banks like Bank of America, Wells Fargo or Chase. There the college student is just another number and they often times have questions that they just can’t get answered by an automated phone system. This is a real problem for college students.

“Students often find themselves incurring fees they don’t understand and can never get a real person to talk with them about it so they pay it and move on” Sisasa co-founder Alejandro Dinsmore told us before GigTank’s demo day on Tuesday. “We hear horror stories from students and their parents on a regular basis”.

What they found though, is that many of these students resort to the mega banks because they have better mobile apps. Bank of America and Wells Fargo have real time banking on their mobile apps. If you deposit $10 into a Bank of America or Wells Fargo branch, you can leave the teller station, check the app and see that $10. Community Banks are often not as up to date, relying on systems implemented years ago trying to sway young people in this digital age.

That’s how Sisasa is solving this problem. By offering a better mobile banking app for community banks they can help the bank attract or retain this important customer. If a young person has a good experience with a community bank they are more likely to stay with that bank as they continue to grow. That community bank could finance their first car or that first house, but in an internet 2.0 (almost 3.0) age, and in the age of mobile, without that technology the community bank is dead in the water.

Sisasa, who’s team hails from Michigan, Boston and everywhere else, developed their current product at the GigTank in Chattanooga. Dinsmore tells us that they blew up their original idea after their first meeting with their lead mentor. After pivoting that mentor’s company is now one of their beta customers.

Sisasa private labels their mobile banking app for community bank, giving those local community banks features comparable and at times even better than their mega bank counterparts.

We got a chance to talk with Dinsmore just minutes before their GigTank pitch. Check out our interview below.

Checkout more GigTank Demo Day startup coverage here

Monitor Your Older Loved Ones With Sensevery, No Smartphone Required [video]

The GigTank, Chattanooga’s startup accelerator named after their gigabit ethernet, graduated its second class on Tuesday afternoon. Seven startups from across the country and around the world worked through the dog days of summer at improving their companies, iterating, and bringing products to market. When the accelerator announced this year’s application process, co-founder Sheldon Grizzle was looking for startups working on the “the internet of things.”

One of those startups hails from India and is using “the internet of things” to unobtrusively monitor elderly loved ones. As co-founder Bentley Cook said in his presentation, he would call his grandmother on a regular basis, ask how she was, and she always said she was good. But really, what does good actually mean?

Many older folks don’t want to tell their younger family members that something’s wrong. Either they don’t want to be a burden or they don’t want to give up their independence.

Back in the 80’s Life Alert had a system that allowed an elderly person to hit a button and yell out to a speaker box that they’ve had some kind of problem. The token line was “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.” We all remember the commercials and how big and gaudy the pendant was for Life Alert.

Sensevery is building an unobtrusive device that allows family members to monitor a loved one without disrupting their lifestyle. Cook went through a bunch of devices, including a 1980’s digital watch-looking device, and acknowledged the fact that nobody wanted to wear something like that.

Cook even went as far as to dis Solidus portfolio company, EverMind, which makes a device that monitors an older person’s power habits to see for disruptions in their daily routines. Cook said in his pitch “If your doctor wants to know how often your coffee maker was on, then you’ve got a problem.” Solidus is one of the investment backers of the GigTank program. Aside from that awkward reference, Sensevery may be onto something big.

Their system uses a small bracelet style monitoring device no more obtrusive than a FitBit or other lifestyle monitor. Now typically these devices are synced to an app and a smartphone, but really how many folks in that older generation have a smartphone or the patience to program one.

For those people Sensevery has developed a syncing device that plugs into the wall, and voila. The wall device sends the data from the bracelet to the cloud where loved ones and family members can access the data in the cloud from any internet connected device.

The data coming from the bracelet can quickly tell the person monitoring if something’s not right. Alerts can also be set up to tell the monitoring person the minute something breaks from the norm. If all of a sudden there was no heart rate picked up, the device would also summon emergency personnel.

Cook, along with co-founder Parth Suthar, are hoping that others quickly see the value in the Sensevery platform.

Check out Cook’s GigTank pitch below.

No really click on this link right now, you won’t regret it.

GigTank Demo Day Kicks Off With Princeton Startup Mira

Chattanooga’s GigTank accelerator kicked off their second annual demo day on Tuesday afternoon. In perusing the startups in the second cohort before they took the stage, we quickly realized that startups from around the world were accepted into the program in the first GigCity in the U.S. (sorry Kansas City).

GigTank attracted startups from Bulgaria (HutGrip), The Cayman Islands (Tidbit.co) and of course across this country. One of those startups hailed from Princeton and chose to come to Chattanooga for access to the extremely fast internet and the wide range of mentors, lead mentors, and seed capital that Sheldon Grizzle, Mike Bradshaw, and the team at GigTank have provided.

Mira is the latest startup to tackle the offline retail experience with data points and information typically only found online. Now we’ve talked with a few startups in the space, but what they lacked was an actual hardware/software platform in the store that would allow the customer to get an online experience within the walls of the retail store.

During the presentation they talked about a woman, Michelle, who is looking for running shoes specifically for a 10k. She forgot to do research so rather than postponing the purchase or going “window shopping,” she was able to use the Mira Pod, an in-store interactive sign to choose the shoes that she needed. After she went through her personal experience, she was able to try the shoes on, pay, and get on with her day.

There is definitely value in bringing that kind of web experience into a retail outlet. Check out the pitch below to better understand Mira.

You can find out more about Mira here at shopwithmira.com

Here’s our interview with Mira Designs:

And here’s their pitch video: