Comments Off on Startup Weekend Cincinnati: A Platform For Buying Your Homework Being Built0LikeLike 1,486
If you’re an entrepreneur or a startup founder chances are you were the guy or gal, that sold their homework, or maybe even made a few bucks doing someone else’s homework. Whether it was in high school or college, there is always a market for homework. Parents and teachers don’t want to admit it but it’s there. It may borderline on plagiarism but heck they’re hoping to build a startup that’s out in the open.
One of the Friday pitches that was chosen to build is a startup that is a platform for people to outsource their homework to somebody else. It’s a fairly simple idea and regardless of what it is on the surface, if implemented correctly there is a market for it and they’ll have no problem cornering the market.
When the idea was pitched it was brought up that we currently outsource every kind of work there is except homework, so why not outsource homework.
Check out the pitch video below and stay tuned to nibletz.com Sunday evening to see who wins Startup Weekend Cincinnati.
Comments Off on Startup Weekend Cincinnati: Blue Collar Project, Selected To Build0LikeLike 1,276
Here’s a great Friday pitch video from Startup Weekend Cincinnati. Blue Collar Dog is an idea we haven’t seen before. It borderlines on non-profit which are typically hard to win when it comes to Sunday pitches because the investors can’t get a return on a non-profit, it’s more of a donation.
Nonetheless 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.
Blue Collar Dog 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.
What do you think of this idea, let us know in the comments. Watch the video below:
Comments Off on Startup Weekend Cincinnati Is This Weekend0LikeLike 1,344
Baby if you’ve ever wondered, wondered whatever became of me, I’m building a company in Cincinnati, at Startup Weekend Cincinnati
A little background on the altered quote up there. If you’ve been reading nibletz.com for a while and you’ve been watching our videos you may have noticed that while we’re on the road trip we like to use “old school” hip hop from the city we’re in for our video intro. Like in Memphis we use Tennessee by Arrested Development and Twerk by Three Six Mafia. In New Orleans we use any vintage Cash Money Millionaires. In St. Louis we’ve got Nelly. Sorry Cincinnati but we can’t find a decent song by Hi-Tek and don’t want to embarrass anyone by using 98 degrees.
I can tell you first hand that Cincinnati’s startup scene is umpteen million times more innovative than their history with popular hip hop and pop music. That’s why we’re really excited that Startup Weekend is back in Cincinnati this weekend.
The 54 hour hackathon style startup building contest puts people from all over the place together to build startups and compete in a nice little pitch fest on Sunday evening. Startup Weekend’s are exciting, innovative, and usually bursting at the seams with good food.
The event kicks off on Friday when all those signed up for Startup Weekend will pitch their ideas in a 60 second quick pitch contest. After the pitches the crowd will vote on the startups that will be built over the next 53 hours.
Mentor’s from Cincinnati’s thriving tech and business scene will be on hand throughout the weekend to help the teams in just about every aspect of building a business. Cincinnati’s mentors for this weekend include: Robert W. McDonald, an attorney at Taft and co-founder of The Brandery (we love the Brandery); Bob Gilbreath, Entrepreneur in Residence at CincyTech; Bill Cunningham, Co-Founder at OneMorePallet.com; James J Cunningham, Executive Director of C-Cap.net and Ryan Walker, Founder at Engagement.iO. Of course nibletz.com will be around most of the weekend too and we typically get roped into helping out (no really we love to help).
A couple of gut checks later, gallons of caffeine and typically as much pizza as you can eat later, the teams assemble on Sunday evening to pitch their final projects to the judges. It’s best to have a great pitch deck, minimum viable product, mock up and make sure you’ve tested the viability of your concept.
Cincinnati’s judges are: 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.
Entrepreneurs, developers, founders, as you can see you’ve got your work cut out for you. If you haven’t signed up yet you better head here now. The event takes place at the Startup Mall (Carew Tower). Registration is at 6:30pm. Good Luck.
Comments Off on Startup Weekend Memphis: And The Winner Is…. CoachSpeak0LikeLike 1,538
Startup Weekend Memphis saw some great ideas formulated from the Friday pitches. The four finalist teams were: BuyersUnite,Capta Vita (Legacy Interview), RightNowPal (Event Czar) and CoachSpeak. After Saturday evenings gut check all four finalist teams and the three individual entrepreneurs that would pitch on Sunday started to hunker down and focus on the prize at the end of the weekend. Three startups would walk away with $1000 cash, 9 hours of legal services and 9 hours of accounting services. One team would walk away victorious as the winners of Startup Weekend Memphis 2012.
By 10pm Saturday night the 7 presenting startups had pivoted a total of 24 times (seriously). The mentors had been in for hours on Saturday and everyone was scrambling. Around nine PM I checked in with Derek Chapman and Joseph Dees the two guys behind CoachSpeak and they were in an intense debate on several different key issues. We put in a call to a good friend of Nibletz.com Gabe Lozana the founder of St. Louis startup LockerDome who agreed to a quick by phone mentoring session.
That late night phone call sure paid off as CoachSpeak came in first place with the judges on Sunday evening.
Chapman walked the judges through the concept, the revenue and the execution of CoachSpeak which is a social network for professional coaches and athletic personnel from the high school level on up.
Chapman, who is the founder of CoachSpeak, demonstrated a great use case for when coaches change jobs and cities and need to fill coaching team positions very quickly. Startup Weekend Memphis judge, and entrepreneur, Ekundayo Bandele threw Chapman a curve ball asking what happens if a collegiate coach moves his whole team from one school to another, doesn’t that make the service irrelevant.
Simple answer, that never ever happens, but more so Chapman was able to explain how if that did happen that would leave openings to fill at the school the coach came from. More important than that though is that CoachSpeak is already up and running and has 120 professional coaches in their network.
The network isn’t just about filling jobs, it’s about sharing information, camaraderie between coaches, sharing scouting information, job hunting, vendor placement and more.
Dees, who is a financial advisor at Regions Bank in Birmingham Alabama had come into Memphis for his first Startup Weekend. Since graduating from UAB Dees had always had a knack for creating business plans and has actually consulted on several successful business plan. He was the perfect partner for Chapman who had ironed out the entire concept except for the revenue streams and subscriber base.
Obviously the judges liked the collaborative effort between the two!
Chapman plans on continuing to build out CoachSpeak and will probably go to some of the judges who are local entrepreneurs eager to invest in the latest tech startups brewing from Memphis.
LaunchMemphis/SeedHatchery’s Elizabeth Lemmonds was on-site Sunday evening for the final pitches and actually enjoying attending an event that she didn’t have to organize. Prior to her taking a position with Launch Your City (Launch Memphis/Seed Hatcher’s parent) Lemmonds would attend entrepreneurial events in Memphis.
As we reported on Friday, this Startup Weekend was organized by local entrepreneurs James Ruffer and Chris Przybyszewski who are not affiliated with any other organization. The two of them organized this Startup Weekend as a fun and laid back way to spur more startups and entrepreneurship in Memphis. Ruffer, Przybszewski and Lemmonds let all of the finalists know along with any attendees that the resources of Launch Your City, Launch Memphis (and if they apply) Seed Hatchery are all available to these new startups and entrepreneurs at Emerge Memphis.
The LaunchPad free drop in co-working space and Launch Memphis were sponsors of Nibletz coverage of this Startup Weekend.
Chicago startup Groupon has confirmed to the world the power of the group. LivingSocial and countless other startups compete in the same group daily deal model as Groupon with great success.
Joe Kennedy, a self proclaimed serial entrepreneur, has decided to flip that group daily deal model on it’s head. Instead of coming up with the group deal, and having a buy in, his startup puts the group together to form an adhoc buyers group. If you’re not familiar with the buyers group concept the best comparison would be to a food or grocery co-op. This is where communities are able to force a discount by joining together for a group buy.
Kennedy presented the idea at Startup Weekend in Memphis on Friday evening and got more interest from the group in attendance than he thought. Local young entrepreneur Harold Strong from Yadoog, a startup birthed at 48 Hour Launch in June, dove head first into assisting Kennedy and leading the team of 6 into product development.
Kennedy confirmed at press time that they will definitely be ready to show off proof of concept if not more Sunday evening during the Startup Weekend Memphis finals. In addition to reserving their intellectual property, and hashing out the technical infrastructure they also had to come up with the first vertical that Buyer’s Unite would tackle. The concept itself can work on any vertical but the team chose health insurance to insure (see what we did there), easy quick scalability.
Buyer’s Unite will offer several buying groups that their users can join but for the first group they hope to go to insurance carriers with thousands of people in the group ready to buy. That would in effect force the carrier to offer a sizable discount to guarantee that much business.
There are several monetization options and revenue models but Kennedy likes the idea of a very small fee on the transaction once the deal is complete. Paying $3.50-$5.00 for the ability to save over $100 on health insurance is a win win for everyone. We’ll see tomorrow if it’s a win for the judges.
Comments Off on Nashville Startup: ClockOut Gamifying Taking Off From Work, Small Business Will Love This0LikeLike 1,353
The Startup Weekend Memphis team has taken a few solo entrepreneur projects and given them a spot to present in tomorrow’s finals for $1000 a piece. One of those solo entrepreneurs Brandon Heller from Long Island NY by way of Nashville.
Heller is working on ClockOut. When pitched Friday night it was a simple app to take the process of asking off a shift at work and making it social. Through the ClockOut app smaller restaurants, franchisees, bars and small businesses, with shift type work, would have the ability to let their employees take ownership of swapping shifts.
With the app, integrated through Facebook, two employees could swap shifts, or get a shift covered, have a historic log of it on a private Facebook network, and then inform the manager. This way the manager knows the shift is covered, and everything goes on like a well oiled machine.
To take any need for fees away from the small business Heller also decided (with the help of one of the Startup Weekend coaches) to ganmify the process. Now employee A who needs a shift covered pays $5.00 to ClockOut. ClockOut holds onto the $5.00 less their fee. Now employee B who picks up the shift gets a point for every shift they covered. When employee B has covered 10 shifts they get all the remaining money in that pot of $5.00 payments.
For some shift workers $5.00 may be a little steep but it also may be worth it for whatever reason they are calling out. The $5.00 shift covering game encourages people to pick up shifts, knowing that when they’ve covered enough shifts they’ll get the money they earned plus an incentive from ClockOut.
Definitely an interesting concept. Check out the initial pitch video from Friday below:
This is the first time we’ve seen an idea quite like this presented at a startup hackathon. Legacy Interview works off the concept of chronicling a friend of loved ones life through interviews with mini-questions and video interviews. The idea comes after the founder realized that his father may not live forever.
As we get older we get into more in more in-depth conversations with our closest loved ones, as they get older though those conversations get harder and harder to have. The sad realization is that the friend of loved one won’t be here forever and you want them to share their lives with you as long as they can. Hold onto those moments with Legacy Interview and save them down the road for generations to come.
I’m in mid 30’s and I constantly wonder what would life have been like if all of these resources were available since my childhood.
Time capsuling our digital lives is becoming quite popular. My grandchildren, and yours as well will have way more access to our lives and legacies than ever before. Legacy Interview will contribute to that by providing a very easy mobile platform.
Legacy Interview will present on Sunday in the Startup Weekend Memphis finals. We’ll see where this idea goes after Startup Weekend. It would be a shoe in for integration with ancestry.com and even deadsoci.al
Startup Weekend Memphis produced some great ideas. Sunday we’ll get to see how they did with the important part, execution.
One of those ideas is a new startup called CoachSpeak. Coach Speak is a new professional social network aimed specifically at higher level coaches, for example college football coaches. Now that most everyone has a social media account on one of the mainstream social networks like Facebook,Twitter, Google+ or LinkedIn, it’s time to branch back out with niche networks.
Yesterday we brought you the story about Florida startup PitchShark which is a social network specifically for those producing independent films.
CoachSpeak will link coaches together in new ways.
Here’s how the concept was explained and why it makes sense. Let’s say we’re back in December of 2008 and Auburn University has just released Tommy Tuberville. Once they announced Gene Chizik he needed to get moving, he needed to get to Auburn and immediately work on building his staff up.
Now lets say Chizik has a LinkedIn page. Now, after the announcement that he’s headed to Auburn, he is going to be flooded with people who even on LnkedIn’s professional network, are only linking in because he’s the coach at Auburn. He has a lot of people to wade through in order to get straight to other coaches like an offensive line coach, defensive line coach or special teams coach.
If Chizik was part of a closed, professional social network of coaches he could easily access the coaches he knew or had met personally and even coaches that he didn’t know. A niche social network in this case is abetter alternative.
Over the past few weeks I find myself in more and more conversations about niche social networks. Are they over-saturating the social landscape or are they needed?
If you look at professional social networks like CoachSpeak or PitchShark, while they are online and social they are more like professional organizations. So there is a clear advantage to something like CoachSpeak.
Sure I’ll go ahead and acknowledge the elephant in the room right now, event apps are becoming a dime a dozen. However it looks like Event Czar has a different idea in the event space.
Event Czar wants to be your event aggregator and discovery engine on a local level wherever and whenever you’re going out looking for anything to do. Event Czar plans to do this by leveraging big data, data mining and an algorithm that will match your interests up with events that may appeal to you.
Say you’re not in the mood for your “normal” time event, you’ll be able to see all the events in the area as well.
Event Czar is also going to cut out some of the noise associated with more traditional platforms for finding events, for example when conversations start diluting the results, and when there is chatter coming from a future event. Event Czar wants to be you’re right now app (although you will be able to see events in the future to plan accordingly).
This was by far the biggest team at the end of Friday night and they hope to have a proof of concept if not an MVP by the end of the weekend.
Check out the original idea pitch for Event Czar below:
Comments Off on Startup Weekend Memphis Kicks Off After Four Year Hiatus0LikeLike 1,258
The first officially sanctioned Startup Weekend event in Memphis TN was back in 2008. This year Startup Weekend is back in Memphis and has been spearheaded by startup evangelist James Ruffer along with Chris Przybyszewski and Amanda Lewis.
Ruffer and Przybszewski kicked off the event Friday night with some great authentic Memphis Barbecue provided by Baby Jacks. After that the fun and games started with a general overview of the event, the sponsors and of course the prizes.
For this years event there will be three finalists selected who will each receive $1000 in cash, 9 hours of free legal services from Butler Snow and 9 hours of free financial advice from local accounting firm Collins Thomas & Associates. Also the “grand prize” winner will receive consultation services from Southern Growth Studios who are local experts on developing business plans. The national sponsors also kicked in with free cloud based services including the use of AWS for the weekend, should one of the ideas need it.
16 ideas were pitched from a variety of categories including elder care, music education and instruction, services for spanish speaking people, an auction site for nearly abandoned startup ideas and even a web app idea to “Keep politicians on the straight and narrow”.
The four ideas that were selected were, an local event aggregation and discovery app tentatively called “Event Czar”; CoachSpeak a social network for professional coaches; Buyers Unite an almost flash like buyers group; Legacy Interview, a mobile application that lets anyone capture interview vignettes on video question by question in separate files; and Clockout a socially enabled time clock management system for small businesses. Yes that’s five but clockout is a solo entrepreneur who will develop his idea on his own this weekend and compete against the other four teams on Sunday.
Both Ruffer and Przybyszewski are no strangers to entrepreneurism. Ruffer has a variety of entrepreneurial endeavors under his belt. Right now he works in social media security, financial security and online security. This is Ruffer’s 13th Startup Weekend that he’s either attended or help organize.
Przbyszewski (I’m hoping that’s the last time I need to type that), is currently working on his third startup right now down the street at the Launch Memphis, LaunchPad which actually is in the field of veterinary medicine. Their startup is under wraps but the team behind it has a great idea, that’s being tested and will help curb a problem that kills animals, is a big concern for dogs and can affect people as well. It targets one of the top 10 diseases that doctor’s must inform the CDC about, really big impotent stuff.
So with both of this weekends organizers enmeshed in pretty big day jobs they wanted this startup weekend to be a little light, fun and collaborative. In Ruffer’s experience attending 13 Startup Weekend events he’s seen the entire gambit from hardcore, bootcamp style Startup Weekends to the lighthearted and laid back, creative juice flowing weekends like this.
At the end of the day, or actually the end of the weekend, the ideas that want to continue to grow have a variety of resources available to them including Launch Memphis, the Launch Pad and Seed Hatchery. When asked about competing with Launch Memphis’ 48 hour launch event just six weeks ago, Ruffer said that Memphis has grown so much that the city itself can support a variety of events adding “When the tide rises all the ships sail”. At the end of the day it’s about everyone supporting entrepreneurship and startup culture in Memphis.
Comments Off on Memphis Preparing For Startup Weekend0LikeLike 1,317
Memphis is hosting their first official Startup Weekend in four years this Friday through Sunday at Lab Four in Memphis. Over the three day weekend we will see some great ideas turned into startups and hopefully some emerge as actual companies, after all that’s the point behind Startup Weekend events.
The 54 hour event kicks off with preliminary idea pitches on Friday evening. Saturday is a day of working with mentors, teams and developing ideas and Sunday the finalist teams will pitch in front of the judges.
“We promise that this will be a fantastic, fun weekend, whether you want to come and work on your own idea for a company or hang out and help other people with theirs,” Co-event organizer James Ruffer told James Dowd’s Commercial Appeal. “The program has matured a lot in the past four years, and that’s why we wanted to bring it back. Not only will this energize the Memphis entrepreneurial community, but it’ll show other cities around the world that Memphis is serious about entrepreneurship.”
The early bird registration was extended through the 16th, but it’s not too late to register so if you’re in or around Memphis you should sign up here.
If you’re traveling from out of town there are two hotels participating in the fun. We’re sure we are going to see folks from Chattanooga, Knoxville and Nashville in Memphis for the big event. Memphis has a thriving startup scene.
What happens after Startup Weekend? Well if you’re serious about building your business in Memphis there are resources like the LaunchPad, LaunchMemphis and SeedHatchery all based at Emerge Memphis downtown. The LaunchPad features free drop in co-working space and office hours with the staff there to help cultivate your idea and develop your business.
Comments Off on Startup Weekend Hits Houston Next Weekend July 27th0LikeLike 1,399
If you read nibletz.com or any other startup focused website for that matter than you’re familiar with Startup Weekend. The official Startup Weekend events are held in conjunction with Startup Weekend an organization in Seattle backed by the Kauffman Foundation. Over 200 Startup Weekend organizers can be found around the country and the world.
There are two startup weekends next weekend, Houston and Cincinnati. The Houston event is being held at Start Houston, 1121 Delano Street, Houston TX 77003. The event starts at 6pm on Friday and ends on Sunday at 9:00pm after the final pitches.
If you’re not familiar with an officially sanctioned Startup Weekend event, they kick off on Friday with pitches from anyone registered. You don’t have to have a team or be from a company. After all the initial presentations finish everyone votes on the ideas that will be built over the 54 hour weekend. Teams will be organically picked and everyone is encouraged to join a team even if their idea isn’t picked. Some startups, like Zaarly for instance, have come out of Startup Weekend. Zaarly is now a funded startup and their investors include Ashton Kutcher.
There’s no guarantee where the startup will go after Startup Weekend, but people who pitch and leave after their idea doesn’t get picked, could be leaving an opportunity of a lifetime.
Saturday the teams develop their idea, work on a proof of concept, code code code, and work with the mentors for Startup Weekend. In Houston the mentors are: Bryan Guido Hassin, CEO of Smart Office Energy Solutions; Jeff Reichman, Principal at January Advisors; Nathan Eror, Founder at Free Time Studios, and Mark Stretch a Startup Advisor.
On Saturday, and part of Sunday team swill pick the coach’s brains and the coach’s will pick apart their ideas, all in preparation of Sunday pitches.
Sunday the teams will pitch their final ideas to a group of judges who will provide vital feedback on the ideas, and sustainability and ask great questions that the startup teams will need to focus on to get to the next level. The coaches, minus Mark Stretch will all be judging the pitches on Sunday.
Startup Weekend events are fully catered and plenty of caffeine will be on hand.
Comments Off on Startup Weekend Heads Back To Los Angeles, Register Now0LikeLike 1,663
The 54 hour Startup Weekend program is headed back to Los Angeles next weekend, starting on July 20th which is the same weekend as Memphis’ Startup Weekend.
Los Angeles just completed a Startup Weekend back in February that was a great success.
The February event saw 13 teams pitching on Sunday evening before the judges. The judges that time around included: Howard Marks (Start Engine), Paige Craig (BetterWorks), David Waxman (PeoplePC, Firefly Networks, SpotRunner) and Tyler Crowley (Sqweal, OAF, Launch, TWiST, Mahalo).
The judges for this round haven’t been announced yet but we are sure they will be just as good.
Organizing the Los Angeles event are Tyler Koblasa, Cameron Rasouli and Avesta Rasouli.
Registration started July 2nd and the organizers warn that last spring’s event sold out in 10 minutes. As of right now the eventbrite page shows tickets still available.
Startup Weekend LA kicks off Friday July 20th at 6:00pm and is being held at Coloft (920 Santa Monica Blvd, Santa Monica, CA 90401).
Memphis has a thriving startup scene. In fact for a city of just over 650,000 they have more startup resources than most cities twice their size. Tennessee has a thriving chapter of Startup America and their are other organizations like Emerge Memphis, Seed Hatchery and Launch Memphis that cultivate startups throughout the region.
Now, after a four year hiatus, the official, nationally sanctioned “Startup Weekend” event is coming back to Memphis. Four years ago the main Startup Weekend Organization was still very new. Now, organizers of the Memphis Startup Weekend are thrilled to welcome the brand back to Memphis.
“We promise that this will be a fantastic, fun weekend, whether you want to come and work on your own idea for a company or hang out and help other people with theirs,” Ruffer told James Dowd’s Commercial Appeal. “The program has matured a lot in the past four years, and that’s why we wanted to bring it back. Not only will this energize the Memphis entrepreneurial community, but it’ll show other cities around the world that Memphis is serious about entrepreneurship.”
Startup Weekend Memphis will follow the traditional 54 hour StartupWeekend model. The event kicks off on Friday July 20th at 6:30pm. At that time, registered entrepreneurs will pitch the ideas they hope to have developed over the 54 hour period. After a quick voting period the startups to be developed will be selected.
Saturday, the startup teams will work with each other and with top notch mentors like Clay Banks, Demarcus Love, Cliff McKinney, Karen Spacek, Ted Townsend and Bioworks’ Allan Daisley who’s day job involves mentoring startups as well.
Sunday the teams will refine their ideas, try and have a proof of concept and practice their pitches. Sunday evening is make it or break it time as the teams will pitch their ideas in front of a panel of judges including James Dowd of Commercial appeal, who’s also the local media sponsor.
The teams are competing for over $20,00 worth of prizes that all startups would need. In fact one of the organizer’s Chris Pryzbyszewski says they still may have more prizes coming in.
The national and local organizers of StartupWeekend Mempis want the teams to stay around as long as they can all weekend long to flush out and build their ideas. There will be a virtually endless supply of caffeine and catered meals from Baby Jacks and more. If you haven’t been to a StartupWeekend event it’s an experience you must see first hand.
We’ll be there as well to cover the entire event, and support Memphis’ startup community one of the most thriving startup communities “everywhere else”
Kyle
If you’re an entrepreneur or a startup founder chances are you were the guy or gal, that sold their homework, or maybe even made a few bucks doing someone else’s homework. Whether it was in high school or college, there is always a market for homework. Parents and teachers don’t want to admit it but it’s there. It may borderline on plagiarism but heck they’re hoping to build a startup that’s out in the open.
