Startup Weekend Archives - Page 3 of 5

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Check out Pranther’s Friday pitch below:

Linkage:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There’s still space left. Hit the link below

Linkage:

Check out our 48 Hour Launch coverage from June 2012

Check out Launch Your City here

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

Startup Weekend Heads To Providence October 5th Doing It Big & In 3D

An official Startup Weekend event is headed to Providence Rhode Island on October 5th 2012. Startup Weekend is a 3-day hackathon style competition drawing founders, entrepreneurs, developers, coders, designers and more to put together businesses in 54 hours.

Startup Weekend Providence 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 Johnson & Wales University Pepsi Forum. 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.

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 in Providence include; Kipp Bradford, Technology consultant and entrepreneur; Coryndon Luxmoore, Buildium Interaction Designer; Charlie Kroll, President and CEO of Andrea; Cary Collins, Bryant Trustee Professor of Entrepreneurship;Eric Parrish, Sr. Product Marketing Manager, G-Tech; and Jason Barrs, Product/Solutions Manager, GTech.

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 Providence judges are: Don Stanford, Chief Innovation Officer at GTech; Allan Tear, Founder & Managing partner at Betaspring; and Tom Napolitano, also with GTech.

Things got a little more interesting yesterday when the organizers of Startup Weekend Providence announced that Johnson and Wales and AS220 Labs would give the Startup Weekend teams access to their 3D printing equipment for prototyping. These labs have a variety of 3D printers and tools that will help teams working on physical products develop actual prototypes to show off on Sunday during presentations. This isn’t a typical part of Startup Weekend but it shows how the organization lets the local organizers innovate their events in their own special ways. It will be amazing to see these ideas come to life through the use of 3D printing.

Startup Weekend Providence has a great list of prizes to, including legal packages, branding packages, press opportunities and more. What are you waiting for, hit the link below to register:

Linkage

Startup Weekend Providence is here

Check out some of our past Startup Weekend Coverage

Nibletz is the voice of startups everywhere else, if you’re everywhere else you need to be here

Startup Weekend Toledo Coming September 14-16th Further Validates Ohio’s Startup Ecosystem

By now most everyone who visits nibletz.com knows exactly what an officially sanctioned Startup Weekend is. As a refresher though, Startup Weekend is a 54 hour hackathon event where entrepreneurs, developers, designers and local business mentors gather to build companies in one weekend. The officially branded “Startup Weekend” events are organized in partnership with Startup Weekend based in Seattle. The organization has put on nearly 500 events worldwide.

Startup Weekend is headed to Toledo in just a couple of weeks. This will be the first officially sanctioned Startup Weekend event in Toledo however the state of Ohio is no stranger to the concept. Startup Weekends have already occurred in Cincinnati, Columbus and Cleveland.

Since Toledo is new to the Startup Weekend concept, the organizers are holding an orientation style event on September 6th. The mixer will be held at Seed Coworking 25 South Saint Clair Street in downtown Toledo from 5:30-7:30. Interested entrepreneurs, designers, and developers should attend this event to comingle with other like minded individuals and meet the local organizers.

Startup Weekend Asheville August 24th-26th

Startup Weekend is coming to Asheville North Carolina in less than two weeks. The festivities will kick off on Friday August 24th at 6:30pm at the A-B Tech Community College Enka Campus.

The Startup Weekend Asheville team describes the three day hackathon as “the 48-Hour Film Fest for techies, marketers & entrepreneurs”, making reference to an annual film fest in North Carolina’s mountainous cultural hub.

Asheville has a thriving startup scene, in fact a startup from Asheville called Corpora, just completed the GigTank startup accelerator in Chattanooga Tennessee (check out their pitch video here). In fact we met quite a few people from the Asheville area who had come to Chattanooga to check out their startup scene.

If you’re not familiar with Startup Weekend (and you should be if you read nibletz.com regularly) It’s a 54 hour hackathon style event where marketers, entrepreneurs, developers, and coders work together to develop ideas presented on Friday evening into companies come Sunday evening.

Friday starts off with registration, dinner and then Friday pitches. This is when everyone who has registered for the event and has an idea, can pitch that idea in sixty seconds or less. After the initial Friday pitches those who pitched are scattered throughout the room and the audience votes on the ideas to be developed by placing a sticker on a poster board with the idea on it. At the end of the voting period those ideas with the most stickers are developed.

After the Friday winners are selected, teams are formed. From there the teams spend the next 50 hours working on developing a product, testing their idea with consumers (consumer validation), and putting together a minimum viable product (MVP), mock up, working demo or actual product.

Saturday the teams reconvene early in the morning and continue to work on their startups. Throughout the day the event’s mentors (coaches) provide valuable advice to each and every team. The coaches for Startup Weekend Asheville are:

Rob Zazueta, Partner and Integration Manager at Vertical Respons; Denise Gaskin, Chief Operating Officer at Van Winkle Law Firm; and Traci Sigler COO at WallStCheatSheet.

On Sunday evening the teams will pitch before the judges and then go through a grueling Q&A session. After all the teams have finished their pitches and Q&A’s the judges disappear off to judge land and decide on the top teams of the weekend. Most Startup Weekend winners win valuable business related prizes and some Startup Weekend’s even have cash prizes.

Startup Weekend Asheville’s judges are: Jonathan Lawrie, PhD. Executive Director of the Western Office of the North Carolina Biotechnology Center; John Stainer, Managing Director at Carolina Financial Group; Joe Emison VP Research and Development at BuildFax.

It looks like Startup Weekend Asheville is going to be a great time in a beautiful city. If you’re in Asheville or surrounding areas it may be the perfect weekend event to get your entrepreneurial juices flowing. To register and for more information, visit the link below.

Linkage:

Startup Weekend Asheville

Nibletz coverage of Startup Weekends

We’re on an international sneaker-strapped startup road trip through Sep. 2013 and need your help

Bloomington Indiana Startup Weekend Is Back November 9th

Bloomington Indiana, home to Indiana University, is a hotspot for startups and entrepreneurial activity in Indiana. It was while attending the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University that Nick Tippmann not only helped organize Startup Weekend Bloomington, but also a Shark Tank Season Premiere Party with Mark Cuban.

Now, Startup Weekend Bloomington is back. While a lot of cities Bloomington’s size are embarking on their first or second official Startup Weekend event, this will be the fourth in the town of just 81,000.

This time around the organizers include Matt Burris, Jessica Falkenthal, John Adamson, Paul Simacek and Chris White. They also have Steve Bryant the Executive Director for the Cook Center for Entrepreneurship at Ivy Tech on board as a coach. They also have Kyle Johnston, President of Onsite OHS signed up to judge. They will announce more coaches and judges soon enough.

For those of you not familiar with Startup Weekend, it’s a 54 hour startup hackathon that starts on a Friday evening and finishes up on Sunday evening.

Friday kicks off with “Friday Pitches” those entrepreneurs and founders who have registered and have an idea they would like to see turned into an actual startup have 60 seconds to pitch that idea. After the pitches the crowd votes, by show of sticker, on which startups will be built over the next 52 hours. After the ideas are picked, teams form and breakout into groups for the next 50 or so hours to develop, build out their ideas and prove customer validation. This is a daunting task for some.

Some Startup Weekend venues allow the teams to work around the clock in true hackathon fashion. Others typically break for the evenings around midnight and come back first thing in the morning at 8am or 9am.

On Saturdays, teams dive head first into creating websites, designing mock ups for apps, and hitting the streets interviewing potential users about their idea. Some of the teams are lucky enough to have outside people they can go to by phone, skype or in person to work out the kinks. Coaches and mentors are also on hand to help answer key questions about viability, design, legality and everything else a business would need to know to launch.

Sunday is the day of reckoning for the remaining teams. At the end of the evening they will have five minutes to present their idea in it’s finished state and get grilled by a panel of local judges.

Startup Weekend’s are typically fueled by tons of food (Pizza, donuts etc) and plenty of caffeine.

Lunker, a social app for fisherman, was the winner of Bloomington’s last Startup Weekend event which was held in May. The team received a grand prize package featuring goods and services from local businesses and organizations, including three months of office space at The Solution Lab, legal services from Mallor and Grodner, accounting services from BKD, a free marketing campaign from BizProps and a free business plan review from Localstake.

If you’ve got what it takes, head on over to the official Startup Weekend website at the link below.

Linkage

Here’s the page for the next Startup Weekend Bloomington

Here’s our coverage of Startup Weekend

Nibletz needs some help, you can do it yes you can!

Cincinnati Startup BringMeSomeFood Was One Of The Best Ideas At Startup Weekend

We’re not sure if the judges conceptually understood the concept behind Startup Weekend Cincinnati startup Bringmesomefood.com . The idea is simple, it helps party and event organizers keep track of attendees, themes and who’s bringing what. It’s the ultimate potluck platform.

Potluck has surged in popularity over the last few years s the economy has suffered. People love to go to parties whether times are good or bad. Presumably parties and social gatherings are a way to break away from the ups and downs of everyday life and a way to make people feel good.

Potluck events make it easier for the host or hostess to have a better party.

The problem with Potluck is typically people have no idea what to bring. Also, no one really keeps track of the potluck list as well as they should. Then, what ultimately ends up happening is the party is inundated with ice, red solo cups and chips.

Using bringmesomefood.com party organizers can keep up with who has RSVP’d for the party and who hasn’t. They can also pick a theme for the party and then Bringmesomefood.com will curate a menu based on what is typically served at whatever theme the party is. A tailgate party for instance will call for hamburgers and hotdogs. A toga party may call for gyro’s and baklava. Who knows? Bringmesomefood does.

Bringmesomefood, pulls from some of the best restaurant API’s to come up with great menus. It then assigns dishes to the guests attending the event and can supply those guests with the recipes for their dish.

Bringmesomefood also tracks attendance so when it gets closer to the event you can prepare the right amount of food. You don’t want to prepare a small bowl of potato salad for a party of 100 and you don’t want to prepare 100 brownies for a group of 10. Bringmesomefood keeps up with all that for you.

During their final pitch on Sunday the judges asked the Bringmesomefood team why one of the major event sites like PlanCast, eventbrite and e-vite.com couldn’t just incorporate that system into their existing system, which was a sharp indicator that they may not have understood the robustness of the concept. You can see for yourself in the pitch video below, the startup was explained well and hopefully will move forward into development.

Here’s more of our Startup Weekend Coverage

Oh yeah, nibletz could use your help

Cincy Serial Entrepreneur Comes In 2nd Place At Startup Weekend With 3DLT

Pablo Arellano Jr is a busy man. He is currently working on a startup in stealth mode that was just accepted into the Ark Challenge accelerator in Fayetteville Arkansas. We can’t tell you much about it but Arellano is excited about Ark Challenge, especially with it’s proximity to Bentonville.

This past weekend though he wanted to develop another idea, that’s equally as good. His startup 3DLT will be launching soon as a platform to buy and sell 3D printer templates online. Think of it as an iStock Photo or 99 Designs, except for 3D printer templates.

With companies like Makerbot thrusting onto the scene this last year, 3D Printing is starting to rise in popularity. Within the next few years it may become a household concept. In our video interview with Arellano he points out that most major college institutions already have a 3D Printer, the same way that they used to be the only place to find a good laser printer or a big computer.

While 3D printers will probably never fall as cheap as a Lexmark ink jet printer that you can buy at Walmart for under $30, they could start popping up in pro-sumer homes in the next few years.

The biggest pain point for 3D printers is the actual programming and design work. In his Sunday pitch Arellano showed a video of TV late night host and car enthusiast Jay Leno who uses a 3D printer in his garage to make prototypes for parts that are no longer available for purchase. After he and his 3D printer guy, make the plastic prototype they can take the mold to a machine shop and have the same part made of metal.

Architecture is another industry that has embraced the 3D printer concept. Now instead of paying someone to skillfully make models for buildings and neighborhoods out of little pieces of wood and plastic, these buildings, houses and even trees can be cut from a 3D printer. Heck there’s even a 3D printer out there now that prints chocolate bars.

Arellano is hopeful that by providing a template resource for 3D Printer users, he can help drive sales and the price of 3D printers down, while still making between 30-60% commission off the sales of the templates.

Check out our video interview with Arellano below:

Linkage:

Here’s more of our coverage of Startup Weekend

Check out Ark Challenge here

Nibletz is the voice of startups “everywhere else” and we’re on a sneaker strapped road trip “everywhere else”

So What Does Brandery Startup CrowdHall Do On Startup Weekend?

CrowdHall is definitely one of the Brandery stand out startups. They are developing a unique and innovative platform for celebrities, politicians and popular bloggers, journalists and other people to effectively communicate with their crowd,fans and constituents. As you may imagine it’s in a town hall/crowd hall setting.

The premise for the idea is great and they’ve been testing out the platform and in fact last week they did a public test with “Bachelorette” winner Jef Holm. Holm sent out one tweet the day before the test saying that he would be taking questions on CrowdHall. He didn’t include a link to the site or the secret page that would hold his CrowdHall forum, but his fans were relentless, they went to the CrowdHall site, and founder the private page. The end result was that when Holm logged in for his CrowdHall session during the test he already had 29 questions waiting for him. Phenomenal.

All in all the results were a great success, you can see them here.

As we told you in our interview with Brandery co-founder Rob McDonald and their General Manager Mike Bott, the CrowdHall companies are very active participants in the Cincinnati tech scene. Bott explained in our video interview that all of the Brandery class was given free access to Startup Weekend and they came, helped mentor and build teams.

What does CrowdHall CEO Austin Hackett do on Startup Weekend? Well he starts another startup. His Startup Weekend startup was called “SportsGamr” it’s a fun virtual sports betting site. It gives those die-hard sports gamblers the ability to bet in a friendly manner with no actual money changing hands.

Players get virtual currency which they can use to bet against their friends or others on the website. Once they deplete that virtual currency, or just to make more virtual currency they can watch and engage in premium content video advertising. This video advertising is of course a great monetization strategy. It’s also great to know that if you come and have a bad day on the site you can still continue to play.

Hackett’s CrowdHall team worked all weekend, and even Hackett split his time between Startup Weekend and working on CrowdHall. He said he is definitely full speed ahead with CrowdHall which might mean his SportsGamr startup will have to wait. But it’s a great idea with an even better presentation.

Check out his pitch video from Sunday below:

Check out Hackett’s day job here

Here’s more of our coverage from Startup Weekend

We need YOU!

Startup Weekend Cincinnati: And The Winner Is Project Blue Collar

Startup Weekend Cincinnati came to a close on Sunday evening with 9 great pitches in front of the judged who were: Dave Knox, CMO at RockFish and Co-Founder at The Brandery (we love the Brandery); Tarek Kamil, Executive Director at InfoMotion Sports Technologies; Dov Rosenberg, Director at Allos Ventures; Rahul Bawa, Director of Digital and Software at CincyTech; and Jeff Weedman CEO at Centrifuse and VP of Global Business Development at this little company called Proctor & Gamble. In addition Kamil’s daughter helped judge as did Dave Knox’s dog.

The nine teams that were selected:

SportsGamr- an online platform for virtual sports betting which provides a venue for sports fans to bet on their favorite sports and a venue for advertisers to clear premium content ads.

ProBakery- Is a startup similar to pro-flowers or ftd.com that provides an online portal to traditional bakeries that may or may not have access to e-commerce and also provides a conduit for taking delivery orders for premium baked goods.

Homework Hustlers- is an online platform for college students to outsource their homework. During their pitch they said that 61% of college students admit to cheating and that 80% of the people they surveyed when doing customer validation, revealed that they would most likely share the idea with a friend, whether they used it or not.

3DLT is a template market place for 3D printer templates. Their revenue model was solid, they said they could take between 30 and 60% commission off each template.

Revolent is a new idea to provide better reviews of products by matching product reviews up to the reader. They called it the match.com for reviews.

Email Diet was probably the idea I liked the least. It’s an email analytics startup that will provide information to employers on how much wasteful email there actually is. I didn’t like it because truth be told email is an integral part of my work day. While the founder was pitching how wasteful email is, I still believe phone calls can lead to a much more wasteful use of time.

ArtsSeen was an arts event aggregator that provided the end user with information about the arts scene in Cincinnati right now along with reviews, recommendations and a social aspect that allow users to connect over these kinds of events. In essence it was Impulcity for the arts.

BringSomeFood: I really liked this one even though it wasn’t picked as a winner. The idea is great its like a potluck party event organization app. The judges had asked them if it could be incorporated into an e-vite or eventbrite and the answer was no. This particular platform allows you to pick your party theme, suggests a menu, lets you invite attendees, organize attendees and assign food items for the attendees to bring. I’m hoping they continue this project.

The overall winner was Project Blue Collar

This startup is a for profit that is looking to spread the word about dogs coming from rescues and shelters. Their motto “support the underdog”.

the idea is great and there may be a profit mechanism built in somewhere. One things for sure and that’s that dog owners and animal lovers will love the mission behind the idea.

Project Blue Collar is about raising awareness for dogs and animals that are adopted out of shelters to make sure resources are provided for those dog owners and to let potential animal owners know that shelters are a great way to get a new family companion for life. It all focuses on the blue collar which is similar to the yellow “live strong” bracelets. Dog owners with rescue dogs will buy the collars to promote that their dog is a rescue. Blue Collar Project is also considering a companion bracelet in the same blue to show that the wearer is a proud owner of a rescue dog.

Here’s our interview with the founder of the winning team Project Blue Collar.

Linkage:

Here’s the future site for Project Blue Collar

Here’s more of our Startup Weekend coverage

Nibletz is on the sneaker-strapped global startup roadtrip, help us stay on the road here:

The Brandery’s Rob McDonald & Mike Bott Explain Why Their Program Works VIDEO

The Brandery, an incubator founded in 2010 in Cincinnati is uniquely different from most of the incubator’s across the country. A blanket description of what an incubator does for startups wouldn’t justify what co-founder; Rob McDonald, Dave Knox and JB Kropp have put together at 1411 Vine Street in Cincinnati’s Over-The-Rhine neighborhood (Voted Cincinnati’s best neighborhood in 2011 and 2012)

First off The Brandery is in what appears to be a traditional older storefront in a building dating back to the 1860’s. The building the Brandery is in as well as the surrounding buildings typically housed a storefront on the bottom floor and then residential units above. In the case of the Brandery, the first floor has been converted to bull pen style desk space where each of the 11 startups in this session can collaborate, bounce ideas off of each other and inspire each other through competition.

The second floor houses a group classroom like area and the third floor is what Brandery GM Mike Bott says they’re informally calling the “alumni penthouse”.

We got the chance to have an in-depth interview with Bott and McDonald who are very proud of what they’ve built so far. While the Brandery runs a familiar model, which most of the Global Accelerator Network accelerators utilize, there are things about the Brandery which are inherently different, that make it a special place to grow a business.

First off the Brandery is a non-profit organization. Yes the companies selected for the program give up six percent equity for a $20,000 seed investment. However, that investment is coming from the Brandery, and not the founders, or investors. In other words, as Bott confirmed, when Brandery alumni start to make big exits, the money goes back to the Brandery directly to run the program and invest in more worthwile startups.

Next, the Brandery keeps the class size small. This year there are only 11 companies. Companies move in at the start of the session. They have three months of vigorous boot camp style work, training, seminars and business education, but after Demo Day they don’t move out, in fact they are encouraged to stay around where they still get the benefits of the mentors who show up to the Brandery for basketball, beer pong and the latest new and interesting lecture.

Even after the first year, alumni companies can pay very minimal rent and move up to the alumni penthouse.

The Brandery companies are also encouraged to play a big role in the Cincinnati entrepreneur and startup community. For instance, just after arriving in Cincinnati this year, all of the Brandery companies participated in the BunBerry TechBurry Pitch Wars, which 2012 Brandery company Crowd Hall actually won. But what’s great about that event was that all three Brandery classes were represented there.

Also at Startup Weekend Cincinnati all of the Brandery companies have been given a free pass to help Startup Weekend teams, and were even encouraged to pitch. In fact, CrowdHall’s Austin Hackett pitched one of the ideas that’s being built this weekend. While there was a lot of banter on Impulcity about Hackett and his Startup Weekend venture, he assured us that his team is 100% committed to Crowd Hall and we’re working on that all weekend too. Even Brandery co-founder Rob McDonald was an official mentor for Startup Weekend as well.

The involvement with the community works both ways though as Bott explained later on. For instance 11 different local advertising agencies in Cincinnati have donated time to work with each of the Brandery companies. There are also a lot of area mentors who work closely with each Brandery company.

Check out our indepth video interview with Rob McDonald and Mike Bott here:

Linkage:

The Brandery’s Website

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

We’re on a nationwide, sneaker-strapped startup roadtrip. Check this link out

Startup Weekend Cincinnati: 3D Printer Template Platform Chosen To Present On Sunday

3D printing has really surged into popularity lately. There are 3D printers now printing everything from models for architects to toys and even chocolate.

Some industry experts are expecting the cost of 3D printers to come down enough that they will still be pricey but somewhat attainable by consumers and small businesses. The problem with that is, that designing for the 3D printer still requires a lot of skill and it’s not skills that are easy to learn.

One of the ideas pitched on Friday was to make printing in 3D as easy as using 99designs to rebrand your image. The idea is to make a platform where 3D printer templates are bought, sold and exchanged, much the way that you can buy logo templates, website templates and even Word Press templates.

This startup could easily make it out of Startup Weekend Cincinnati. The only caveat is that it has to come out fast because we’re sure with the rise in 3D printing over the last year and a half or so, someone else is working in their basement or at their development house on this exact same idea.

Check out the pitch video below:

Linkage: Here’s more of our coverage of Startup Weekend

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

We’re on a sneaker strapped, international startup road trip, here’s more info for ya