After Everywhereelse.co Win, AspirEDU Keeps Proving They’re Not A One Hit Wonder

Last year when Kim Munzo went to the Startup Weekend EDU event in Florida, she didn’t know what to expect. The career long educator had a problem and the solution, and with fingers crossed she hoped for the best. She had no idea what a ride it would be.

Munzo has worked in online education for the past 15 years. For those keeping score, that’s just about when online education became accepted as a legitimate source of education. In her position she found that there were a lot of people who dropped out. They get too busy, they get bored, and sometimes they just didn’t feel like continuing.

Munzo was at Everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference, we weren’t able to see much of her business. Fortunately, at Southland we found out the big picture behind this Florida startup.

Munzo developed an analytical system that can predict which online students are at risk of dropping out. An online student can elect to take one class, or a whole degree program online. Some students choose to get multiple degrees. At that rate, the tuition adds up and the revenue for online institutions is in play. A drop out, depending on the cost of their tuition and programs offered, can cost an institution up to tens of thousands of dollars.

AspirEDU lets online institutions know which students are at risk. Then the institution can follow up in a variety of ways. AspirEDU co-founder Kevin Kopas also told us that they are developing features that will automatically send online students at risk emails or text messages to get them re-engaged with their online education. The end result is less attrition for online institutions and students who finish their degrees and certifications.

Following a win at that Startup Weekend EDU event, AspirEDU started taking their show on the road, exhibiting at conferences, pitching in pitch contests, and submitting business plans for business plan competitions. All of those avenues proved to be great for the company.

AspirEDU won $25,000 in cash in the Best of Village pitch contest at Everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference I. After that they won the Florida Atlantic University business plan competition which included $55,000 in cash and services prizes. All of which came in handy for the bootstrapped startup. They also came in 7th place in a global business plan competition.

Although the entire team is still employed elsewhere full time, they are working 40-70 hours more per week on AspirEDU.

“I’m taking off from my day job to be here at Southland,” Kopas told us. Kopas works for a major domain name provider during the day, and dedicates all of his free time to AspirEDU, time he used to use to enjoy the waters of Florida.

AspirEDU is a certified partner with Canvas by Instructure and the team will be traveling to Utah next week to present in a conference with 9 other certified partners.

While the education space is filling up rapidly, there’s no other startup that is using analytics to help keep students enrolled. While it’s a great idea and great technology, the team is leery of taking an investment right now. They already have clients and some major deals with big institutions across the globe in the works. Munzo and Kopas are hoping that they can start creating substantial revenue and not have to give up any equity, at least in the short term.

An investor told us that anyone can make a $4 million dollar business; we want to hold off on an investment in case we need it to get to the $100 million dollar mark. That’s a good possibility with the online education industry counting for billions of dollars on a global scale.

Munzo and Kopas credit Startup Weekend and the people they’ve met while traveling all over the country to promote AspirEDU with where they’ve gotten thus far.

You can find out more about AspirEDU here at aspiredu.com and by watching the interview video below.

Check out more of our Southland coverage here!

Distil Networks Is Following Us Around The Country Because They Block Bots

We were in Washington, DC and Baltimore last week as part of the Sneaker-Strapped Startup Road Trip. That’s where we ran into Distil Networks CEO and co-founder Rami Essaid. A few days and 665 miles later, we’ve run into Essaid again, this time at Southland in Nashville, Tennessee.

Distil Networks was one of 50 regional startups chosen to exhibit at Southland’s Startup Village. They were also one of 20 startups selected to pitch onstage at the conference as well.

We first reported on Distill Networks back in August when they were going by the name Distil.it. Since then, they’ve added more features, more employees, more users and changed their name to Distil Networks.

The company offers a very useful service. Through a simple line added in a websites DNS entry, Distil is able to quickly check a website and identify and disable “bots” that can often pirate content, hype statistics, and do other aggravating things. Their technology allows content sites big and small to function faster and stop worrying about their content being auto-posted to thousands of blogs world wide.

One of their customers is the site ripoffreport.com. Ripoffreport came to Distill because they suspected that bots were stealing their articles. One quick analysis and Distil found out that they were correct, but that was just the beginning. After turning Distil’s service on they found that they were stopping 50,000 malicious bots a day that were reducing their server load by a whopping 70%. Distil increased the site’s load time by 50% and by stopping the theft of their content, for the first time in years, ripoffreport saw an increase in visitors to their site.

But malicious bots aren’t just about stealing content and hogging band width. As Essaid says in his Southland pitch below, malicious bots steal e-commerce site data, post fake posts to forums, auto-click on ads and other things that are harmful to businesses who rely on their server infrastructure.

Distil is constantly updating their base of malicious bots. When they find a new malicious bot on one of their client sites, they test all of their client sites for the same bot. They also have other safety features in place, like randomizing their code every few minutes so bad bots can’t penetrate it.

Check out Essaid’s full pitch at Southland below and for more information visit them at distil.it

Here’s more coverage from Southland 2013 at Nibletz.com The Voice Of Startups Everywhere Else.

Banyan, The Git Hub For Science, Shows Off New Features & A New Deck At Southland

On Wednesday, Chattanooga transplant startup Banyan was selected to pitch on stage as part of the Southland Summit in Nashville. You may remember Banyan; they won the entrepreneur track at the GigTank demo day last summer and took home $100,000 dollars. Although it wasn’t a condition of receiving their prize, the Banyan team–Toni Gamayel, Travis Staton, and TJ Weigel–decided to relocate their startup from Florida to Chattanooga late last year.

Banyan billed itself as a collaborative research tool that could handle enormous amounts of data. They were the only GigTank participant that really talked about the effects of 1gb ethernet and big data during last year’s Demo Day. To make his point, the company’s pitch man, Gamayel, point it this way: To take two terrabytes of data from Stanford to London, it would be faster to get on a plane with two hard drives than it would be with conventional Internet speeds. In contrast, Chattanooga’s 1gb ethernet pipe would allow that data to transmit in just four hours.

During the Southland pitch Gamayel revealed that scientific research hasn’t fundamentally changed since the 1700’s. Even in present day scientists have a really hard time collaborating because they need to keep control of their authorship. Gamayel also said that universities are very protective of their researchers as well. Gamayel pointed to a case where Stanford University lost $50 million dollars when they couldn’t clearly state whether or not a professor worked on a certain piece of research under his university role or independently.

The newest iteration of Banyan solves all of these problems. For starters they’ve added profiles for scientists and researchers on the system. Scientists can clearly list their accolades and achievements, skills, and research they’ve authored. There is also the base tool for collaboration as well as a way to leave comments and feedback. Finally Banyan has incorporated a system that can time and date stamp each iteration of the research and correctly credit the author. So in that case at Stanford, it would be clear whose “time” the professor was on.

Although we thought Gamayel did a fine job pitching their exciting product, he was a little hard on himself, stating after the pitch that it was the first time that he’s talked about the new features to a large audience, with some of their investors in the crowd.

Banyan is a fascinating product and is sure to continue changing the way researchers and scientists work. Check out Gamayel’s Southland pitch below.

Here’s more of our Southland Coverage at nibletz.com

Tennessee Is Great For Startups, Bill Hagerty Tells Us Why

Tennessee Economic Development Commissioner Bill Hagerty took the stage at the Southland Conference in Nashville on Wednesday morning to introduce the conference and highlight why Tennessee is great for startups.

Since the current administration took over two and a half years ago, Tennessee has become number one in the southeast and number four in the nation for manufacturing job growth. Tennessee is also number one in the southeast for personal income growth.

But one thing that we found interesting is that Tennessee has the best balance sheet in the country.

“I think everybody knows that the nation has experienced a serious fiscal crisis and if you start looking across the states you’ll see a very wide divergence in terms of the fiscal situation that each state faces. What that does is present a different risk profile for the companies that choose to locate in those states. Tennessee has the lowest debt per capita in America.”

This is important because Tennessee hasn’t put itself in a position where they haven’t raised the debt ceiling to a point where it can’t be manageable.

All of this means that Tennessee is a great place to grow jobs, personal wealth and families. Hagerty went on to discuss the regions history of entrepreneurship including companies like FedEx that call Tennessee home.

Finally, Hagerty pointed out one of the biggest claims to fame for Tennessee in regards to startups. Since the Haslam administration took over Tennessee has become home to nine startup accelerator regions all administered by Launch Tennessee. Each startup accelerator region has an incubator or accelerator program.

While many don’t think of Tennessee in terms of entrepreneurship these highlights along with the infrastructure in place already for business owners, job creators, startups and entrepreneurs, it’ s no wonder that Tennessee is first for startups in the South East.

Check out this video of Hagerty’s speech at Southland.

Check out more of our Southland coverage here.

Memphian Sarah Lacy Gives Away Big Omaha’s Secret At Tennessee’s Southland Conference

A refreshing side of Sarah Lacy returned to her native Tennessee on Wednesday morning to kick off the first Southland Conference. If you’ve seen Lacy on her best you know she can be a hard edged interviewer that commands respect in the room, after all with her storied career and climbing through Business Week, TechCrunch, authoring books and two children, she’s earned it. But Wednesday morning her southern Tennessee charm returned when she welcomed her interviewee Gary Swart, CEO of Odesk for a fireside chat.

Before the interview though, Lacy wanted to hand a secret over to the organizers and attendees of the first ever Southland conference. Lacy talked abut Big Omaha, the centerpiece of Silicon Prairie News’ “Big Series” and a must attend conference for entrepreneurs everywhere. “Do you know how they get big names at Big Omaha” Lacy asked the audience. Then she proceeded to show everyone.

First off she made it clear as southerners and entrepreneurs we were going to “steal” what Big Omaha does. After that she showed off Jeff Slobotski’s (the organizer of Big Omaha and founder of SPN) secret.

It was a huge warm welcome that made each of the speakers, big and small, feel like the biggest person on earth. “Pretend Gary is Oprah and she just gave everyone a car” Lacy told the audience as she asked everyone to practice the big welcome.

Although Southland is in Nashville it’s designed to celebrate entrepreneurship throughout the south east and with that in mind Lacy made plenty of references to her Memphis upbringing during her talk with Swart. Lacy made the trek from Silicon Valley with her 8 week old baby in tow.

Here’s some video

Check out more of our Southland coverage here.

Southland Kicks Off With Emmy Lou Harris, Rodney Crowell And A Party With SouthernAlpha

Southland, Southern Alpha, startups, Tennessee, Launch Tennessee

The Southland conference officially kicks off Thursday morning at 9am but the pre-festivities started Wednesday night in historic downtown Nashville.

Investors and VIP’s from as far away as Vancouver were treated to a swank VIP party at the legendary Ryman Auditorium to kick off the two day conference celebrating startups, culture and technology. Baker Donelson’s Emerging Technologies Practice Lead, Chris Sloan said it was “the most amazing investor party I’ve ever been to” Why? Because Launch Tennessee, the producers of the conference, were able to get local national country stars Emmy Lou Harris and Rodney Crowell to dazzle the crowd with an intimate performance.

Launch Tennessee CEO Charlie Brock getting into an exciting discussion with one of the hundreds of entrepreneurs at Southland

While that party was going on, event attendees who arrived Wednesday evening were treated to a roof top party at the Rock Bottom Brewery hosted by our cousins at SouthernAlpha. Southern Alpha’s Walker Duncan, Kelly Boothe and Dave Ledgerwood were meeting and greeting startup founders, entrepreneurs, startup support organizations and investors from up and down the east coast. Even 500 Startups partner and founder of dashboard.io Paul Singh, was on hand, with his lovely wife Suki mingling with the crowd, talking up startups and what dashboard.io can do for founders and investors.

We bumped into Kim Munzo, founder of Florida based Aspiredu and the winner of $25,000 best in village award at Everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference. Munzo made the trek from Tampa Florida to see what the Southland buzz was about and to update us about the progress their educational analytic startup has made since winning the crown at our conference.

Steve Buhrman the CEO and founder of am>venture backed (we are also backed by am>ventures) WannaDo gave us a sneak back of a bad ass upgrade to their event discovery app and assured us that they will be adding new metropolitan areas rapidly.

Our Memphis startup community was in full force. On the hot and muggy night people kept saying Memphis brought the heat, and that we did. Pam Cooper (Boosterville), Brittany Fitzpatrick (MentorMe), Richard and Richard (ScrewPulp), Charleson Bell (Bionanovations) and Allan Daisley (Memphis Bioworks), shut the party down (as usual).

If Tuesday evening was any indication of what to expect from Southland this is going to be one epic conference. Stay tuned for more Southland coverage here at nibletz.com the voice of startups everywhere else.

Team Led By 14-Year-Old Wins Startup Weekend Tampa

Last weekend Startup Weekend came back to Tampa. Startup Weekend attracts developers, designers, and entrepreneurs of all ages to a 54 hour hackathon to build out company and startup ideas. Teams go beyond a business plan and 54 hours later strive to have a working product.

That’s just what happened for 14-year-old Nathan Eyal and his team that worked on Live Warfare. The team that built out this mobile game also included Eyal’s dad Omer, who brought him out for the 54 hour hackathon.

According to 83degreesmedia, the product is a person-to-person video game that allows players to take a picture of someone and then digitally “shoot” them. Once they’re shot a notification is sent to their phone. Think of it as virtual paintball.

Ed Glarza, Akira Mitchell, Ken Morris, and Matt Saulding rounded out the younger Eyal’s team. “We focus on the team, and I think their team was really strong,” Ryan Sullivan, co-organizer for Startup Weekend told 83degrees. “Because Nathan was so passionate about the idea, he kept the team moving forward and making decisions.”

Nathan pitched his Live Warfare idea to a packed house at the University of South Florida, St. Petersburg on Friday evening. That’s when participants have 60 seconds to pitch their idea. After the initial pitches they go around the room with poster board signs and the people in the audience vote (typically with a colored sticker) on what projects they think should be developed. At the end of the vote, the projects with the most votes are hacked out over the remaining time.

During that time, Nathan and his team were able to build out the app. They also tested it out with friends and got real feedback on the idea. By the time final pitches occurred on Sunday afternoon Live Warfare was a finished product.

The second and third place finishers were both based on crowdsourced data. BuySignal came in second place. Their startup monitors Twitter feeds to find “indicators” that someone is about to make a purchasing decision. The third placed finisher, StreezWize, is an app that allows people to provide real time feedback about potential crimes.

See how these 10 year olds are sparking happiness and entrepreneurship.

Image: startupweekend.org

AngelHack DC Attracts Over 100 Hackers To 1776

It wasn’t a big weekend in DC Tech this past weekend. Launch and startup parties at DC’s technology hub, 1776, are regular occurrences, as are startup events, designer events, and even hackathons. With the amount of tech and startup activity in DC, they are well on their way to becoming the “Silicon Valley of the East” as DC Mayor Vince Gray said in his remarks Friday.

Hackathons are awesome and are becoming more and more common. They come in any number of sizes and formats; there are informal hackathons called at a moment’s notice, hacking for a specific project, social hacking, and building companies. Two of the biggest hackathon formats for building companies are Startup Weekend and AngelHack.

Both events are ongoing and have meetups at multiple locations throughout the world. Startup Weekend’s happen every weekend and in multiple cities per week. AngelHack happens twice yearly and multiple cities compete over one weekend. Hackers, developers, designers and coders are encouraged to come on day 1 and pitch their project idea. Hackers in the crowd will vote on the best projects and build them out over the remaining hours in the weekend (24). From there judges select one winning team that they will send to the AngelHack “finals” in Silicon Valley with over $100,000 in cash and prizes on the line.

The Washington DC AngelHack is chaired by DC startup mega enthusiast Anton Gelman, CEO and cofounder of Cont3nt. Gelman is no stranger to hackathons and pitch contests. He won the New York Angel Hack last year.

“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” Gelman told Nibletz last year before the first AngelHack competition in DC.

This year, AngelHack DC attracted over 100 hackers to 1776 dc, the epicenter of technology startups. They pitched a wide range of ideas from big data to health tech, to social entrepreneurship, and even Kickstarter tracking. Check out some of the Saturday morning pitches in the short video below.

Mobile Polling Done Right, Check out 1776DC startup YoPine here.

DC Mayor Vincent Gray Celebrates, Speek, DC Tech and 1776

“I think I’ve been here every week since it opened,” DC Mayor Vincent Gray told a standing room only crowd at the Speek launch and thank you party held at 1776DC on Friday evening. Gray and Newark Mayor Cory Booker are two politicians very friendly to startups.

Gray and his constituents working on DC’s economic development were instrumental in helping 1776DC secure their prime real estate at 1133 15th Street in Northwest Washington. The center, directed by Donna Harris and Evan Burfield, is the epicenter of startups in DC and the go-to place for some great startup events and parties. “1776 sure knows how to throw a party,” Gray told the audience.

“We’ve got it down to a science,” Burfield told us in regards to flipping the space from mega co-working to a great place to party. Walls, desks, and even mock windows are all on wheels which makes the space customizable for anything from hackathons (Angel Hack is being held there this weekend) to small strategy meetings, to parties with upwards of 500.

And that’s exactly what happened Friday evening.

As for Gray, the very active mayor arrived early and stayed late, making sure to speak with anyone who wanted his attention. Gray, who proudly sported a 1776 DC Tshirt at SXSW earlier this year, was enthusiastic about everything having to do with DC startups.

“There were 75 startups knocking at the door when 1776 opened,” Gray told the crowd during his official remarks. Burfield quickly piped up to announce that the final number of startups at launch, a little over a month ago, was actually 103.

Gray said that for DC to continue in the right direction they need to reinvent the economy and startups play a big part of that. Gray said that over 600,000 people live in the district and he wants more to live, play, and work in our nation’s capital.

Gray was very enthusiastic about Speek, the gamechanging technology that is making conference calls easier. Gray told Nibletz that his job dictates that he’s always on conference calls. In our informal conversation Gray was able to cite details about 1776 and startups (by name) without a crib sheet. Gray also mentioned the dedication of DC entrepreneurs to their companies and their city, laughing about the dedication of Speek’s co-founders and this tattoo stunt from SXSW.

As you’ll see in the video, the Mayor of DC is also the Mayor of DCTech and as such, a very enthusiastic cheerleader for all DC startups.

DC’s Free & Easy Conference Call Startup Speek Throwing Free And Easy Mega Launch Party

A Friday night party at 1776 will be a who’s who of the startup world. Evite co-founder John Bracken and the legendary Danny Boice, the founders of Speek.com, are throwing their official launch party.

Speek eliminates long dial in numbers, bridge codes, and awful elevator music for conference calls. To use the Speek platform to conference call somebody, you just go to their Speek page and click one button. For example, if you wanted to conference call me you would just go to speek.com/kyle.

Speek went into beta last summer and has been iterating over the course of the last year. They’ve added robust mobile apps and packed the website with easy-to-use and easy-to-understand features.

Boice is a party animal, diehard tech guy, and a startup aficionado. In fact, he spoke at Everywhereelse.co with a great talk called “You Only Launch Once”. We next saw him at SXSW in Austin, Texas. As part of his speed pitch he said that if Speek got the most votes in a pitch contest, the slightly more reserved Bracken would get a tattoo of their monkey logo on his ass. Needless to say they won and Bracken got the tattoo.

So to celebrate their official launch, Speek is hosting the launch party of all launch parties at 1776 in DC. Because Speek and the DC tech scene are so intertwined with the fine folks at Startup America, this party will include dueling pianos (will Scott Case be back from Seattle?). In addition there will be an open bar, raffles and giveaways. The picture above is the temporary tattoos of the Speek Monkey that you can put on your ass, to match Bracken’s which it doesn’t come off.

The party starts at 8pm on the campus of 1776: 1133, 15th Street NW, 12th Floor, Washington DC 20005. It’s free, all you have to do is register here.

Kansas City & Kauffman Foundation To Host Teen Conference

One of the big benefits to growing your startup in Kansas City is the proximity to the Kauffman Foundation. The group is constantly backing, helping, and innovating in the startup community space. Kansas City often gets the earliest access to the Foundation’s newest programs like 1 Million Cups.

Now, our friends at Silicon Prairie News are reporting that KC is about to see a new one day seminar/conference program geared towards teenagers.

William Robison, a Kansas City-based self proclaimed “Solopreneur,” came up with the idea for Teen Idea Labs when his own kids started asking questions about owning and starting their own businesses.

“As a business owner, for as long as they can remember, they have only witnessed this side of the world,” he told SPN. “As they mature, I challenge them to explore opportunities of their own.”

Robison took the idea to Kauffman Foundation’s Nate Olson, and now the all-day program becomes a reality.

The first Teen Idea Labs will be held at the Kauffman Labs next Wednesday, June 12th and will kick off with the teenage attendees taking part in that morning’s 1 Million Cups meet-up.

“These younger minds are willing to challenge these belief systems and develop with better forward thinking minds. These are the next generation of incubator and Kansas City Startup Village residents.” Robison told SPN’s Megan Bannister

Interested teenpreneurs and innovators can find out more at Silicon Prairie. They can register free here at eventbrite.

Southland Conference Announces Investor Panels Including Mark Kvamme, Founding Investor For LinkedIn

Launch Tennessee’s Southland conference, happening June 11-12th in Nashville, Tennessee, will highlight the best in startups, technology, and down-home Southern culture. The event is intentionally sandwiched between the CMA Music Festival and the legendary Bonnaroo, and adds an element of entrepreneurship, almost SXSW-style to these two historic events. With the way Southland’s schedule is shaping up, it too will become a staple in the Music City.

Over the weekend we reported on the 50 startups from across the Southeast that were chosen to participate in Southland’s Startup Village. Eleven states were represented, with 17 startups hailing from Nashville.

On Monday, Launch Tennessee CEO and conference organizer Charlie Brock announced some heavyweight investor panels, which will provide firsthand, top-notch knowledge of early stage investing to startup founders, entrepreneurs, and local angels from across the Southeast.

The first panel “VC Trends: From Silicon Valley To The Southeast” will feature Mark Kvamme, Paul Santinelli, and Jason Sibley. Kvamme is a co-founder and partner of Columbus, Ohio-based Drive Capital. Previously, he was special limited partner and general partner at Menlo Park, Calif.-based Sequoia Capital, where he was the founding investor of LinkedIn, Cast Iron Systems (acquired by IBM), MarkLogic Corporation and Funnyordie.com.

Santinelli is a partner at North Bridge Venture Partners in Palo Alto, Calif., where he specializes in communications and infrastructure and focuses on investments in open source, software, security, Internet applications, and infrastructure and communications. He founded and ran NOCpulse, a Silicon Valley software startup that was acquired by Red Hat Network.

Sibley is a director at GE Ventures, Healthymagination Fund. He was previously a Vice President at GE Equity and a member of its healthcare investment team. He is currently building out GE Ventures’ Boston investment office, which is focused on life sciences, medical technology, and energy investments.

“Mark, Paul, and Jason are experienced investors who can provide the kind of insight that early-stage companies need,” Brock said in a statement. “This panel will be an outstanding opportunity for entrepreneurs to get an insider’s perspective on what investors are looking for today.”

The regional investor panel, “VC Trends: Focus on the Southeast,” includes Rik Vandevenne with River Cities Capital Funds of Cincinnati, Ohio, and Raleigh, N.C.; David Jones with Southern Capital Ventures/Bull City Venture Partners of Raleigh, N.C.; Spence McClelland with Noro-Moseley Partners of Atlanta; and Sid Chambless of the Nashville Capital Network.

In addition to investor panelists, representatives from more than 35 venture capital companies are attending Southland, including Durham, N.C.-based Hatteras Venture Partners; Menlo Park, Calif.-based Shasta Ventures; and Battery Ventures, which has offices in Waltham, Mass., Menlo Park, Calif., and Israel.

Other Southland speakers and panelists include Slava Rubin, co-founder and CEO of Indiegogo; Dan Pelino, general manager of IBM Healthcare and Life Sciences Industry; Ali Partovi, co-founder of Code.org; George Kliavkoff, executive vice president and deputy group head of Hearst Entertainment & Syndication; Gary Swart, CEO of oDesk; and Paul Singh, partner at 500 Startups.

Stay tuned to Nibletz for even more Southland coverage. Here’s what we’ve covered so far.

LaunchTn Reveals All 50 Startups In The Southland Startup Village, 17 From Nashville

Launch Tennessee the private/public partnership designed to support 9 accelerator regions for startups in entrepreneurship across Tennessee is highlighting the entire south east region, it’s culture, technology and startups at the upcoming Southland Conference in Nashville in two weeks.

Of course the day and a half long conference, being held at The Cannery Ballroom and Mercy Lounge in Nashville’s historic Cannery Row District, is going to feature some great keynotes, like a fireside chat with Sarah Lacy, author, technology writer and founder of Pando Daily interviewing Gary Swart the founder of oDesk. The next 30 hours after that are packed full of great talks, performances, pitches and an exhibition Startup Village.

For their Startup Village, Launch Tennessee used an application and vetting process. Originally, startups that submitted had to have raised or made at least $250,000 that was quickly rescinded based on the work of startups statewide going through or just recently completing accelerator programs.

With that requirement out of the way, Launch Tennessee took a hard look at just about every state in the Southeast from Virginia to Florida and of course as far west as Tennessee to fill the booths of the Startup Village.

Over 11 states are represented from a mix of technology spaces including social, mobile, media, health tech, ed tech, social entrepreneurship and even consumer packaged goods. Nashville had a whopping 17 startups make the startup village.

Here’s the entire list, congratulations to all:

Company Name	City	State	About
American Songspace	Nashville	TN	American Songspace is an online platform for songwriters.
Angel Eye	Little Rock	AR	Angel Eye is a camera that allows parents to see their kids in the neonatal ICU unit from their mobile device or computer.
ArchiveSocial	Durham	NC	ArchiveSocial archives businesses’ social media data.
AspirEDU	Tampa	FL	AspirEDU is educational analytics software with performance metrics used by education administrators and teachers.
AudiencePoint	Chattanooga	TN	AudiencePoint provides smart email marketing/connection to social media.
Banyan	Chattanooga	TN	Banyan is software for scientists to collaborate.
Beam Technologies	Louisville	KY	Beam Technologies makes the first connected toothbrush with sensor embedded in the brush.
BioNanovations	Nashville	TN	BioNanovations provides a device that allows you to monitor the progression of bacteria in cultures.
Cardagin Networks, Inc.	Nashville	TN	Cardagin Networks provides a customized mobile-enabled customer loyalty program for large and small businesses.
Checkd.in	Nashville	TN	Checkd.in helps companies effectively use multiple social media marketing platforms via their application and consulting work.
Consensus Point, Inc.	Nashville	TN	Consensus Point provides crowd-sourced prediction software.
Creative Allies	Asheville	NC	Creative Allies is a crowdsourced merchandise design business used by musicians.
Distil Networks	Arlington	VA	Distil is a content protector network/cloud-based intelligent gatekeeper.
Do 5 Things	Knoxville	TN	Do 5 Things is a marketing optimization platform.
Everly	Memphis	TN	Everly makes drink flavor packets.
Evermind, Inc.	Nashville	TN	Evermind is a consumer-friendly senior monitoring system.
Facedeals	Nashville	GA	FaceDeals allows users to check in to a location on Facebook through facial recognition scanning.
Fuelzee	Nashville	FL	Fuelzee is a product development stage app that allows users to identify cheap gas and rewards associated with gas and then check in to specific gas stations to redeem these awards.
Gamemaster	Greenville	SC	Gamemaster is a scavenger hunt business platform.
Gastke Inc.	Greeneville	SC	Gastke is a cloud-based accounting software.
iCitizen	Nashville	TN	iCitizen is a social media platform connecting constituents to local leaders.
Kufikia	Memphis	TN	Kufikia is a code school for experienced programmers.
LeanKit, Inc	Franklin	TN	LeanKit is a workflow IT system for large businesses.
Maxx Tech d/b/aBarMaxx, LLC	Fort Lauderdale	FL	Maxx Tech is a liquor inventory management system that works on mobile devices.
NextGxDx	Nashville	TN	NextGxDx is an online marketplace for genetic testing.
Oqulus	Gainesville	FL	Oqulus is a medical imaging analysis company for detecting eyesight related issues for diabetics.
OverDog, Inc.	Nashville	TN	OverDog connects fans with athletes via video games.
PatientFocus	Nashville	TN	PatientFocus is a health care billing company.
Populr.me	Nashville	TN	Populr.me allows users to easily create and share single web pages.
PowWowHR	Atlanta	GA	PowWowHR provides online benefits administration, including HR & payroll.
PushLocal	Natchez	MS	PushLocal is an application that allows you to send daily specials to your followers.
Quickcue	Chattanooga	TN	Quickcue is an app that handles a restaurant waitlist, reservation system and table notifications.
RedeApp	Louisville	KY	RedeApp is a mobile messaging service for large companies to send secure messages to various audiences, including employees.
RidePost Inc	Greeneville	SC	RidePost is an online transportation company.
Sagent Partners, LLC	Nashville	TN	Sagent Partners is a vendor-buyer procurement matchmaking service.
ScrewPulp	Memphis	TN	Screwpulp is a platform for online publication for independent authors.
Sideqik	Atlanta	GA	Sideqik is a web platform that allows marketing teams of different companies to cross-promote their products or services and track how many leads are coming to their Sidequik designed landing page.
Skuid	Chattanooga	TN	Skuid is a tool that layers on top ofsalesforce.com to simplify user experience and improve user interface.
splitsecnd	Nashville	TN	splitsecnd is a plug-in crash detection device.
Streamweaver	Nashville	TN	Streamweaver is a mobile video app capable of split screens.
The Royalty Exchange	Raleigh	NC	The Royalty Exchange is a marketplace to buy and sell royalties from movies, music, etc.
Variable, Inc.	Chattanooga	TN	Variable is an expert technology and network security consultant.
Vatex Explorations LLC	Cocoa Beach	FL	Vatex Explorations provides blister packs with chips embedded providing data via GPS system to know when the medication was opened and how frequently.
Vendor Registry	Knoxville	TN	Vendor Registry is an online portal connecting vendors and buyers that matches vendors and buyers by type of service.
Verdeeco	Atlanta	GA	Verdeeco is a smart grid analytics company offering big data solutions for utilities.
viaCycle	Atlanta	GA	ViaCycle is a bike sharing system.
VIPAAR	Birmingham	AL	VIPAAR is remote presence software.
VoiceHIT	New Orleans	LA	VoiceHIT is an emerging electronic health records (EHR) and clinical documentation software provider with a mission to use technology to drive improvements in care quality, coordination and collaboration.
World Housing Solution Inc.	Orlando	FL	World Housing Solutions provides reusable, energy efficient housing structures.
Yellow Jacket, LLC	Baton Rouge	LA	Yellow Jacket is a stun gun iPhone case.

Source: VentureNashville.

Check out ScrewPulp one of the three startups selected from Memphis Tennessee.

Mike Muhney The Godfather Of CRM & 22 Others To Speak At Chicago TechWeek

Customer relationship management, or CRM has been big business since the late 1980’s. Sure these days everyone is very aware of Salesforce the cloud based CRM solution, but before there were clouds, the internet, mobile devices and salesforce there was ACT. ACT was the standard in CRM solutions starting in 1987. There are thousands of companies that still use ACT today.

While the backbone of any CRM software is a robust database, by name and by virtue CRM software is designed to help manage relationships. How do you know somebody, what do you know about somebody, how is one person related to another. These are all things that effective sales people, marketers, managers, and entrepreneurs count on to help reach the bottom line.

Mike Muhney is one of the cofounders of the original ACT software and over the past year he’s been taking over 25 years of experience in customer relationship management and pouring it into VIPOrbit, barnone the best mobile CRM solution out there.

We first met Muhney last year at Chicago TechWeek where he was introducing the world to VIP Orbit. We spent a lot of time with him during techweek and learned so much about not just VIP Orbit but about effectively managing relationships. Stuff that hundreds of books have been written on since the introduction of ACT.

I remember in earlier parts of my worklife reading about CRM and using ACT. ACT and by proxy now, VIPOrbit, allow you to manage the littlest details that can result in so much more when applying that information down the road.

For instance back in the 90’s during my radio career as a Music Director and Program Director I had the chance to use ACT at various stations. I would keep my ACT up to date with little information about record reps that would call on me, what we could get from them, who they could help us out with and even kids names and birthdays. They would keep a lot of the same information on the radio people they called on. It would insure great birthday cards but in one instance I vaguely remember one rep that was courting me on a record who knew I loved Jerry’s Subs and Pizza from Washington DC. I had moved on to a station in North Carolina but that rep brought me down a steak and cheese on a visit. I asked him how he remembered and he said he put it in his ACT.

The same holds true today for me and my VIPOrbit database. It’s easy for me to keep track of who knows who in the startup world and where I met them. I even have notes about various gate keepers. You can charm your way past a gate keeper if you know the right information.

While the application is phenomenal, what Muhney can teach people about relationships and how to apply it them in the entrepreneurial world will really help in the long run. The amount of data you can find on the internet and then apply to your CRM solution can give anyone the cutting edge.

VIPOrbit will be set up in booth 8-9121 near the Bar TechWeek area during the conference. There you’ll be able to find out all about VIPOrtbit and how it can really help you manage your relationships. You can test drive the iPad and iPhone apps. You can also pick up a copy of Muhney’s book, “Who’s In Your Orbit, Beyond Facebook, Creating Relationships That Matter”.

More importantly Muhney is one of 23 top shelf speakers who will be speaking during TechWeek. His talk “The Business of Meaningful Relationships: Perils & Opportunities” will be presented at 10:30 am on Saturday June 29th. I highly suggest if you’re attending TechWeek you don’t miss it.

Some of the other great speakers include: Matthew Bellows ,founder & CEO of Yesware; Robin Chase, founder and CEO of Zipcar and now Buzzcar; Tony Conrad, founder of About.me; serial entrepreneur Adam Goldenberg; PJ Hyett founder of Github; Matt Jacobson VP at Battery Ventures, and many more.

You can still register for Chicago Techweek happening June 27-29th at the Merchandise Mart. Follow this link to registration.

Check out these stories from last year’s Chicago TechWeek!

Check out more of our Southland coverage here!

Here’s more coverage from Southland 2013 at Nibletz.com The Voice Of Startups Everywhere Else.

Here’s more of our Southland Coverage at nibletz.com

Check out more of our Southland coverage here.

Check out more of our Southland coverage here.

See how these 10 year olds are sparking happiness and entrepreneurship.

Mobile Polling Done Right, Check out 1776DC startup YoPine here.

Check out ScrewPulp one of the three startups selected from Memphis Tennessee.

Check out these stories from last year’s Chicago TechWeek!

Muhney will also be keynoting here: