12-Year-Old Vegas Tech Rockstar Set To Speak At SXSW V2V

Ethan Dugga, Rick Duggan, VegasTech, VegasStartups, Startups, SXSW V2VWe’re hearing about more and more kidpreneurs and teenpreneurs. There was a 14-year-old who won Cincinnati’s most recent Startup Weekend. Another 14-year-old won Tampa’s most recent Startup Weekend as well.

Ethan Duggan may not be the winner of a recent Startup Weekend, but he is an app developer and startup founder. His app “LazyHusband” launched at SXSW this year in Austin, Texas.

Ethan is growing up in the Las Vegas startup community, VegasTech for those in the know. His father Rick Duggan, is the cofounder of vegasstartups.com.  The elder Duggan is also “coach,” with the younger Duggan preferring the keyboard and the app store to the baseball diamond or the football field.

The young but witty tween, knows a thing or two about apps, launching, startups, founding, and entrepreneurship. He also knows about monetization. When asked about monetizing his app, he told Vegasstartups.com’s John Lynn “$0.99 per download…Coder’s gotta eat.”

Lynn reports that down in Austin during SXSW, the young Duggan scored over 10 interviews and several high profile posts including one by Brad Feld, and another from GigaOM that ended up on CNN Money. Not too shabby for a member of the VegasTech community that couldn’t even get into the legendary VegasTech party. No worries though. The elder Duggan and the VegasTech community made sure Ethan could join the party via FaceTime. (How 2013 is that?)

Now father and son are going to host a talk at SXSW V2V next month in Las Vegas. They’ll be talking about how Ethan overcame stereotypes of proper childhood activities. They’ll also talk about how Rick Duggan is his “coach,” the app Ethan has created, and how  you’re Never Too Young.

You can still purchase passes for SXSW V2V here. and sign up for Duggan’s session here.

Nibletz will be on the ground in Vegas for SXSW V2V, with your help. We’ve got great sponsorship opportunities here where you can get your startup, or startup support organization in front of millions at the most high profile startup event of the summer.

NIBV2V

 

 

 

 

Ethan Duggan image: vegasstartups.com

Whoa! SXSW Is Next Month! Are You Ready?

SXSWV2V, startups, startup newsDon’t worry. The entrepreneur’s spring break is still happening in Austin next March. The fine folks at SXSW didn’t change the date.

But we are excited about the newest SXSW event called SXSW V2V. This new SXSW festival in Las Vegas will run August 11th-14th at the luxurious Cosmopolitan Resort on the heart of the strip in Las Vegas.

While most people instinctively think Austin, March, bands, and startups when they hear the name, the the festival we all just call SXSW is actually 3 separate events all in one.  The March event is the SXSW music festival, movie festival, and interactive festival. The interactive part is the “startup” one. Interactive and film run concurrently while music starts as Interactive ends.

SXSW also has SXSWeco, held in the fall in Austin, Texas, and SXSWedu which is the week before the main event in March. So that makes SXSW V2V the 6th event that SXSW produces, and this one is startup focused as well.

The theme surrounding SXSW V2V is “Vegas is For Entrepreneurs.” With that in mind two of the biggest promoters of building startups everywhere else, Tony Hsieh and Steve Case are the main keynote speakers. Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos and founder of the Downtown Project in Las Vegas, talks about the cultural impact of startups on August 12th at 2pm.

Case, the founder of AOL, Revolution, and the founding chairman of Startup America, will talk about starting up everywhere as well as business development and strategy.

SXSW has assembled over 140 recognizable entrepreneurial and startup speakers from across the country. Names we know here very wel like Speek’s CTO Danny Boice, a>m ventures Managing Partner Patrick Woods, oDesk CEO Gary Swart, TechCocktail CEO and Founder Frank Gruber and many more will all take part in mentor sessions, panel discussions, 20/20 vision discussions and more.

The entire event is happening at the Cosmopolitan, one of the newest and nicest hotel and casinos on the infamous strip and badges are still available at this link.

 

NIBV2V

SXSW Bringing Startup Event To Vegas Baby: SXSWV2V

SXSW,SXSWi,SXSWv2v,startups,startup events,hugh forrest,downtown project,Tony HsiehThe SXSWi or South By Southwest Interactive show, as part of the annual South By Southwest festival held in March every year, continues to grow. This year all hotel rooms in the immediate vicinity are already sold out. Last year, despite torrential downpours for three days SXSWi had it’s biggest year ever.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Linkage:

Looking to participate,speak or volunteer at V2V click here

Want to pitch at V2V click here

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