Chattanooga Startup Skuid, The Easiest Way To Build Salesforce Pages

Salesforce, the cloud-based customer relationship management platform, is feature packed and quite possibly the best way to retain customer data. There are literally thousands of features, and customizations built into the platform. For a lot of companies, the easiest way to get their employees on the platform is to scale it down or build custom Salesforce pages, apps, and UI’s based on the information relevant to that company.

Normally, building interface components can be a long, drawn-out process. Salesforce has attempted to make it easier by providing shortcuts and one click access to certain features, but there’s still quite the learning curve.

Now a Chattanooga startup called Skuid has built a drag and drop platform that allows just about anyone to quickly build customized Salesforce pages. You can take one data field and move it to wherever you need it on the interface.

The company launched four months ago and has already bulked up to a staff of 12 and moved to the Southern Saddlery building, home to some other “ramp up” companies. Nooga.com reported that the company was able to go cash flow positive without taking a venture capital investment.

“We thought when we started out that we would need investment to get launched, and we don’t need it at this point,” Ken McElrath, co-founder and president, said. “We started with in-pocket capital, and we’re already cash flow-positive. We had numbers we were trying to hit in our first quarter, and we blew those out of the water. I think we were too conservative in our growth plans.”

Skuid isn’t the only Salesforce startup to go straight to revenue in Tennessee. Memphis based Cloud For Good, a company that does SalesForce development for non-profits and religious institutions, went straight to revenue.

Check out our video interview with Skuid from The Southland Conference below. For more information visit squidify.com

Here’s more Southland coverage at nibletz.com

oDesk’s Gary Swart Has Advice for Startups Everywhere Else

The Valley has done what the Valley is good at.

So said Sarah Lacy–native Memphian and founder of PandoDaily–during her Southland fireside chat with oDesk’s Gary Swart. This is great news for entrepreneurs everywhere else. While Valley companies have spent the last 30 years focused on tech, startups everywhere else think more about solving problems in every other industry. Families, healthcare, education, logistics, publishing. The list of industries ripe for disruption and innovation could go on. And, thanks to the tech created in Silicon Valley, those companies can build right where they are.

When asked if startups could legitimately stay out of the Valley, Swart encouraged entrepreneurs to take it slowly and really weigh the options. Depending on the company, moving to a tech hub could make sense. But, services like oDesk make it easier to hire workers from anywhere, and free tools like Skype and Google docs enhance collaboration. Gone are the days when people have to move across the country to work with one company. Now, according to Swart, “Work is not a place. Work is about finding the right people.”

And the perennial struggle to find investment outside Silicon Valley?

Paul Santinelli actually addressed that issue later in the day.

Stay put. Find great talent. Tackle a big problem. The money will follow.

Easier said than done, of course. Silicon Valley is a compact space, filled to the brim with entrepreneurs and capital. “Everywhere else,” on the other hand, is vast. It can be pretty difficult to find the best people, at just the right time, and an investor willing to take the risks associated with an early stage startup.

But, if–as Lacy says–the Valley is tech and millenial-focused and that market is saturated, there is huge opportunity out there. So, how do startups around the world make it happen?

Swart has some ideas:

Don’t ride the rollercoaster. Entrepreneurship is full of extreme highs and extreme lows, often both within a minute’s time. In order to keep focused, entrepreneurs should stay even-keeled throughout the process.
Ideas are great, but we all know ideas aren’t everything. Your big idea needs a big market and money, followed by great execution.
So, what if you have all these things, but nothing seems to happen? External validation is important. Every idea has some naysayers, but if literally NO ONE is interested in what you’re building, it probably won’t ever sell.
Always stretch yourself. Lacy said that early in her career, she purposely forced herself to “jump off cliffs” to keep herself uncomfortable. It’s the only way to keep your edge.
Start as narrow as you can. Pick one thing and become the best at that one thing. After establishing expertise, then you can branch out into one or two other areas.

Lacy and Swart weren’t encouraging delusions. They both talked about how hard it is to be an entrepreneur, and any founder outside Silicon Valley can list the ways it’s especially difficult. But, it seems the tide is turning. Ecosystems around the world are thriving, and more companies are tackling big problems. Throw in some of the irrational optimism we entrepreneurs are known for, and it might just be possible to build the company of your dreams after all.

Here’s more Southland coverage at nibletz.com

Founder Spotlight: Brittany Hodak CoFounder ‘ZinePak

Brittany Hodak, alongside Kim Kaupe, is co-founder of ‘ZinePak, a company that creates custom publications for entertainers, brands, and celebrities. The ‘ZinePak configuration combines a small-format magazine with one or more CDs and exclusive merchandise items together into one engaging, exclusive package. Follow her @zinepak.

Who is your hero?

My heroes are all the men and women who enlist in the Armed Forces. People tell me all the time that it takes courage to start a business; while that is probably true on some level, it doesn’t even begin to compare to the courage it takes to fight for one’s country.

What’s the single best piece of business advice that helped shape who you are as an entrepreneur today?

“It’s easier to get forgiveness than permission.” This is something my dad said to me for the first time when I was about 13. I remember thinking how profound it was, and how it could work as a “free pass” for just about anything. More than 15 years later, I still live by this mantra every day.

When you’re an entrepreneur, it often means writing your own rules and getting creative in the ways you go about getting things done. Sometimes this means ignoring a chain of command, moving forward on a project without formal sign-off, or any number of other “violations” of the training of otherwise well-meaning soldiers of Corporate America. When given the choice between trying to get something approved the “right” way (e.g. submitting a formal proposal and spending six weeks pitching the same idea to successively senior team members) or the “wrong” way (e.g. happening to bump into the CEO at Starbucks and pitching her the idea over a latte), we always choose the latter.

There is very little that can’t be smoothed over with a heartfelt “oops” email or a nice Edible Arrangement when someone’s corporate feathers have been ruffled!

What’s the biggest mistake you ever made in your business? What did you learn from it that others can learn from too?

One of the biggest mistakes Kim and I made with ‘ZinePak was not hiring enough staff quickly enough to support the company’s growth. In a startup where there isn’t a huge amount of funding, founders are often faced with “the chicken or the egg” scenario of when to expand the full-time employee count. Is it better to hire help in anticipation of new work materializing, or secure the business first and then worry about the man (or woman!) power?

For our first big experience with growth, we chose the latter. The decision led us to experience several weeks in a row where everyone was working 18-hour days just to keep our heads above the water.

Luckily, we were able to learn from the experience. We made the strategic decision to take about eight weeks off from actively working on projects and hire two more full-time team members. This break gave us plenty of time to find amazing support staff and get them totally up to speed before the next wave of projects began.

What do you do during the first hour of your business day?

As an entrepreneur, every day is different and often unpredictable. I try to spend the first hour of each day catching up on entertainment trades and news and sending quick notes to anyone whose names come up during that reading. For example, I’ve found that early mornings are a great time to send someone a quick note congratulating them on a recent promotion or campaign that’s been covered in the press. I also try to drink at least 16 ounces of water in the first hour of the day, because if I don’t set the pace early I won’t stay hydrated throughout the day.

What’s your best financial/cash-flow related tip for entrepreneurs just getting started?

Hire an accountant right away! We tried to manage our own books online when we started ‘ZinePak, and we quickly got in over our heads. There are so many things to worry about when starting a business, from product development to lead generation to sales to marking to contracts, etc. — the list goes on and on. Time is a very precious commodity, and it is wise to spend your time on things can’t be easily outsourced to someone else.

Even if you have an accounting background, take the time to find a great CPA or bookkeeper to help you keep tabs on your business. He or she can offer strategic advice about cash flow, growth, and spending, and, most importantly, free up your time to work on closing deals instead of itemizing credit card statements.

Quick: What’s ONE thing you recommend ALL aspiring or current entrepreneurs do right now to take their biz to the next level?

Email three interesting people from your past who you haven’t seen in at least two years and ask them to get together for lunch or coffee dates. Some of the best business connections can come from the sources you least expect. Plus, reconnecting with old acquaintances is almost always a good time.

What’s your definition of success? How will you know when you’ve finally “succeeded” in your business?

My definition of success is being happy, confident, and secure in my own venture. When Kim and I started ‘ZinePak, our paramount goal was to not have to report in to bosses who treated us poorly. We set a definition of success as, “let’s quit our jobs, start a company, and try not to make significantly less money this year than we would if we kept our jobs.”

Two years later, we’ve passed the $3 million revenue mark and sold almost $15 million of product in the United States and 17 other countries. The feeling of success comes from knowing that we’ve built an awesome company and no longer have to answer to anyone other than ourselves.

The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, the YEC recently launched #StartupLab, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses via live video chats, an expert content library and email lessons.

Bad ass startup chick Denver Hutt reminds us we’re entrepreneurs not super heroes.

Columbus’ 10x Startup Accelerator Now Taking Applications For Fall 2013

Columbus’ cohort-based startup accelerator, 10x, is gearing up for their 2013 fall session. The accelerator, started in 2011, has successfully accelerated startups like UFunded, Ribbon, and LaunchGram, which was acquired in February by Referly.

10x takes 10 startups for 10 weeks and seeds them with $20,000 in seed funding, office space, and a strong mentor network. The class will “graduate” at the end of 10 weeks with an investor day held in Columbus.

“Perhaps the greatest value teams will receive from the 10x program is the mentor network comprised of successful entrepreneurs, CEOs, VCs, and business veterans from the startup world,” Brooke Paul, Founder of Founders Factory and a director of the 10x program told metropreneur.com. “10x alums have effectively leveraged our mentor network for follow-on funding, access to customers, and more.”

10x’s mentor network includes people like Eric Corl, founder of Fundable, Ben Blanquera, founder of TechLife Columbus, and Mark Kvamme founder of Drive Capital. 27 startups have gone through the 10x program and have collectively raised over $9.4 million in follow on funding.

The next session begins September 4th and will run for 10 weeks. Startups interested in applying can use this application. The application deadline is July 14th.

Find out more about 10x here.

Bob Metcalfe, the inventor of ethernet, is speaking at this accelerator demo day in Chattanooga.

Michigan’s Newest Accelerator, Coolhouse Labs, Launches Tomorrow

Michigan’s new startup accelerator is launching its first cohort tomorrow. It’s not in Detroit, Pontiac, or even Ann Arbor. The Coolhouse Labs accelerator is based in a resort town off Lake Michigan called Harbor Springs, the hometown of 27-year-old Jordan Breighner, co-founder and Managing Director of Coolhouse Labs.

Harbor Springs is a small town with under 2000 year-round residents. It was once a popular summer destination for autoworkers, the life bread of Michigan’s economy. Like many others, Breighner sees the path to improving an economy is through entrepreneurship and startups.

Although he has no “formal” entrepreneurial experience, Breighner has a diverse background, including a stint working for the Obama administration and going to college in Utah to become a ski racer. His vision, passion, and tenacity to get things done has helped him secure the seed investments for the first five teams in this first cohort. He’s also stocked his team with a Program Director, Resident Designer, and Resident Developer. Breighner has also been able to attract a top notch advisory board.

Now, just four months after launching the idea, the first cohort is ready to move into Coolhouse Labs. Coolhouse has attracted teams from New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Taiwan. 3 out of the 5 teams have a female co-founder, 3 out of the 5 teams have an international co-founder, and the average co-founder is traveling over 2700 miles to be part of Coolhouse Labs.

Here are the five teams.

Every Last Morsel – Every Last Morsel is a community marketplace for locally grown food – like an Etsy for small farms and backyard gardeners. It provides growers with web-based record-keeping tools and easy-to-use sales outlets that allow farms to focus on doing what they love: growing good food.

Lorious – Lorious is an online marketplace for expertise, where users can buy and sell one-on-one live video chat consulting services, at any time and from any location. Lorious empowers people to gain skills, from crafting to accounting, and to take ownership of their professional identities in response to this ever-changing economy.

Novi Times – Novi is aiming to redefine mobile news discovery through search. They have developed an editor-guided algorithm that helps users discover news through topics they want to follow.

QuickFixNow – QuickFixNow delivers fast and reliable home repair, connecting consumers with contractors on-demand through a mobile and web-based platform.

TRNK New York – TRNK New York is the online shopping destination for the discerning male who seeks an inspired and character-filled home.

Find out more about Coolhouse Labs here.

See what accelerator Drive Capital’s Mark Kvamme said was “One of the best outside Silicon Valley”

5 Tips For Succeeding In An Emerging Industry

Wouldn’t it be great if someone would hand you a road map when you decide to launch your own business in an emerging or unproven industry? Of course, that doesn’t happen, but I have found, as many entrepreneurs have, that with a lot of hard work and determination, an emerging industry can become a profitable one. Here are five keys to success I’ve learned along the way while building my digital agency, The1stMovement, in the emerging digital marketing/advertising industry and having the honor of leading it to become one of Inc. 500 “fastest growing companies in America”:

“Fish where the fish are.” Focus on meeting an existing demand instead of creating one. This is one of the most important lessons I learned from going through the dot-com bust while working in Silicon Valley in the early 2000s. It’s far better to address an existing need in the marketplace than it is to create a product or service that you think people need and then try to generate demand for it. I started at a time when I felt like the advertising industry was “craving” technology excellence. So my decision to move from Silicon Valley, with my “geeky” technical background, to Los Angeles, known for its creativity but not so much for technical execution, proved to be a perfect springboard for me to start my business.
Improvise and innovate. Find new ways of doing the same old things. Instead of trying to reinvent our competitors’ products and services, we believe in observing their successes and mistakes, then come up with innovative new ways do it better and more efficiently. In a time when Los Angeles advertising agencies were competing for the attention of big Hollywood Studios by pitching their best “ideas,” we focused our efforts on getting the attention of well-funded Fortune 50 clients like Adobe and Cisco with our technical expertise and track record for getting things done. That “sales pitch” proved to work and we continue to lead with technology, but complement it with ROI-driven strategies and sexy creative for all of our clients.
Adopt the mindset of a bootstrapper. Even if you have millions in funding from outside investors, run your business as though every dime is coming from your own pocket. You’ll quickly find that you’ll be forced to be more creative and innovative in your decision making. Not only will you avoid wasteful spending (another dot-com lesson), but your funds will go much, much further toward meeting your business objectives. Challenges will arise, as they have for us. Right before the recession, we were forced to let go of some staff because I opted not to go for investment. It was one of the most painful professional experiences I’ve ever had to personally go through, but it forced us to re-look at our structure and be nimble and flexible in a tough, unknown economy.
Never forget that execution is everything. Even the best idea in the world is worthless if it just stays on the drawing board. As Thomas Edison once said, “The value of an idea lies in the using of it.” Yes, putting an idea into action takes a lot of hard work, research and testing, and there are obvious risks. But if you execute your ideas with a “bootstrapper” mindset, you will be able to minimize your risks and the payoff could be significantly larger in the long run.
Keep moving forward. Indecision is far worse than making the wrong decision. Fear of failure can be a paralyzing influence when it comes to making business decisions. Yet an entrepreneur and a strong leader can never move a business forward by being indecisive. I have made my fair share of mistakes in my business decision making, but keeping my business nimble, flexible, and most importantly, independent, has allowed us to correct our mistakes quickly and move on.

Entrepreneurs who are starting a business in an emerging industry are like pioneers who are navigating a new landscape where not many people or firms know what they’re doing. But the good news is that the greatest rewards will go to those who are willing to work the hardest, take calculated risks, and believe in their ability to succeed. As the Zen saying states, “Leap and the net will appear.”

This post originally appeared on the author’s blog.

As CEO of The1stMovement, Ming Chan was named as one of the “Top 10 Asian Entrepreneurs in America” by Inc. Magazine and has led the agency to numerous accolades including 3-time Inc. 500 “Fastest Growing Private Companies in America”, 3-time “Best Places to work” in Los Angeles, “Top 20 agencies” in LA & Denver, and 5000% growth in 5 years with his passion for innovation and company culture.

The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, the YEC recently launched #StartupLab, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses via live video chats, an expert content library and email lessons.

We’re using Chicago startup Centup here’s why.

Google’s New Wifi Technology, Nina Wrote A Song About It

Ok, so it’s not 99 red balloons, but today Google announced that they are beta testing a program in New Zealand that, according to The Washington Post, will connect billions of people to the Internet. The Internet giant has released 30 giant helium filled balloons into the skies over New Zealand. They have 50 people on the ground testing out WiFi that is being beamed from the balloons.

The balloons will move across the stratosphere along the 40th parallel in the Southern Hemisphere where the beta testers will hopefully be able to receive the signal and actually use the Internet.

The balloons were released earlier this week and are said to be transmitting WiFi signals comparable to those found on 3G data here in the U.S.

Partly because the idea is so crazy and partly because it involves balloons, the project coming out of Google’s Project X labs has been appropriately dubbed “Project Loon”.

According to this TechCrunch report, Google engineers will remotely control the balloons using data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to help predict the ballons flight paths. The engineers will be able to move the balloons up and down to catch the right winds and keep the balloons on their correct flight path.

The main goal behind Project Loon is getting Internet access to the two thirds of the people that don’t currently have it. In fact, in the introductory video (below) they start off by saying that for every one person that has Internet access, two don’t. Google is hoping that Project Loon will bring access to remote areas as well as areas where terrain and other factors prohibit more traditional Internet infrastructure. Some examples maybe jungles, rain forests and even deserts. TechCrunch also speculates that Project Loon could help make the Internet affordable to those areas as well.

You can find out more about Project Loon here and by watching the introductory video below.

Is Itunes Radio the Pandora Killer?

NY Startup StoryKid, Born At The TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon, Prepares For Launch

Two literature PhD candidates from Columbia University decided to attend the TechCrunch Disrupt NY hackathon this year with their startup idea that bridges their love of literature, kids, and technology. Tianjiao Yu and Lu Xiong, have created StoryKid, an app for the iPad that allows children to create stories of their own using images and features created by StoryKid.

If you’re a parent (like me) with a kid who uses an iPad, then you’re well aware that there are thousands children’s books in the iTunes app store. Some of the books are interactive, others are simply read along stories. Yu and Xiong’s app allows kids to make the story up from start to finish.

After the child has created a story, they can save it to the iPad and also share it across multiple channels.

When the app releases next month, it’s going to be fun for all young children, but naturally as a child gets older and starts developing their comprehension skills, the stories will start flowing better. StoryKid will help kids foster those comprehension skills. This feature could be very helpful to early education teachers, a market that Yo and Xiong hope to penetrate.

What is StoryKid?

StoryKid is an app on iPad that encourages kids to create their own stories by using images provided by us.

It is known to all that kids love stories, but listening to stories created by adults is one thing, creating something according to their own minds is quite another adventure. Kids are surprisingly good at this. They have totally fresh ways to think, and they don’t abide by many rules. So unlike other interactive apps in the store that let kids play with existing stories, StoryKid provides an exciting stage for the youngest to create new relationships: organizing characters, locations and all elements seen in stories according to their wish. It allows kids to fully play with their imagination.

Because of it’s both fun and educational, we think this app can be both used in families and in schools. Teachers can use this app to let kids rewrite stories they are just told about. We believe this app can also be used for the sake of special education.

In the meantime, StoryKid will make the time parents spent with their little ones really fun and will make that fun last. When papa & mama sticks in getting a new story for the bed time, StoryKid is a good source. The stories finished by kids can also be saved and exported, so that the intimate moments in the childhood could always be preserved and revisited.

In layman’s terms, how does it work? (In other words how would you explain it to your grandmother)

First, the youngest selects a situation that interests him/her mostly to start with. For example, a situation could be “Jesse finds he can suddenly understand his dog’s barking….” Along with each situation, several images would be provided as the elements to help kids structure the development of the story line. Then they will enter the creation page. There are a number of possibilities of how to arrange the images and how to note down what they want to express. The finished stories can be exported and shared by parents.

Who are the founders and what are their backgrounds?

Tianjiao Yu and Lu Xiong are co-founders of StoryKid. We are school mates from Columbia University; we were both literature Ph.D students. Lu had great experience in humanity book publishing before joining the Ph.D program. Born to inherit and soak in literature, Lu gives the soul to this app. She is the content producer. Tianjiao is a kind of hard to find: thinks profoundly, executes efficiently and handles multitasks at ease. She manages the product, runs business and designs UX. We are very supplementary in a good way.

Where are you based?

We are based in New York. Btw, to show off, we have three roof windows in our apt/office.

How did you come up with the idea for StoryKid?

It was born when we were at Techcrunch Disrupt Hackathon NY 2013. One spirit we both greatly value is being creative. As literature students, it’s natural for us to favor the space provided by fictions/stories that allows people to be as creative as possible. So we thought it would be exciting to build a tool for people to easily and freely tell stories. Immediately we decided to focus on kids, who haven’t had boxes to jump out of yet and who will naturally unfold all kinds of possibilities in stories. iPad is just right for this idea.

Why now?

In short, the timing, the New York City, and the people we meet are just very right for us. We left the graduate program to explore other possibilities to make use of our knowledge. We soon realizes using current technologies, for example, the iPad, can introduce humanities subjects to more people and let people have fun with them, because to interact with the content is actually inviting users to become a part of the content, which automatically increases the intimacy. The tablet market grows like a rocket, and the early childhood education is also booming. That always receiving encouragement and suggestions from parents and teachers is another big incentive for us to start this marching. In addition, New York doesn’t frighten you when you are on the threshold of touching something new.

And what’s your secret sauce?

As with cooking, sometimes the amazingness is the result of lacking of something. In our case, we do not have a technology co-founder. Hence, almost all our product and UX ideas derives directly from daily life experiences, very intuitive, human, and breathing, which cannot be more appropriate for kids. We’d like to say that our product itself is like a kid. We hope StoryKid and other kids will be good friends.

What are some milestones you’ve achieved?

Our first milestone should be the demo presented at Techcrunch Hackathon. The demo day was the birthday of this app. We immediately received lots of great suggestions, pushing the baby app to grow really fast. We also got lucky that Ms. Ingrid Lunden from Techcrunch gave us an interview immediately after the presentation, so we got a bit viral in that week.

The second milestone we achieved was under the help of Mr. Trip O’Dell from Audio Book of Amazon. He gave us fabulous suggestions on how to improve our feature and UX when we met at Big Apple Redux 2013 in Bloomberg. That short conversation was a magic.

Most recently, we were contacted by several schools and online platforms who are interested in forming partnership with us in the long run.

What’s your next milestone?

We will have our BETA version in early July. We will invite kids to test the app and the teachers to review the app.

Where can people find out more and what is your Twitter username?

We so far suggested people to go to Techcrunch website where the interview was posted: http://tcrn.ch/Yfbcej. But we will soon finish the construction of the app intro site: storykid.me Our twitter account: @imstorykid

Check out over 50 startup stories from everywhere else at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013

Image: TechCrunch

5 Tips For Growing Your Startup At The Right Pace

Startups are often in a rush: bigger, better, faster. I see it all the time: businesses striving to scale, to accelerate the growth of their business as quickly as possible — consequences be damned! Scaling is certainly a goal for businesses at some point, but scaling as soon as possible isn’t the answer. Scaling will require your company to use more resources. If you’re not prepared, scaling too quickly can be dangerous — leading to failure instead of success.

If you haven’t yet found a viable business model that will allow you to acquire customers at a lower cost than the lifetime value of that customer, you simply are not ready to scale. But you can ready your company by focusing on your finances first. Consider the following suggestions to help you to refocus your company development in a thoughtful and calculated way:

Understand how growth will impact your cash burn. Your burn rate is simply how much capital you go through every month. Staying on top of your burn rate is essential all the time, and, perhaps, even more so when you’re considering scaling. When you scale, your cash burn will be amplified. Any issues you have with your working capital requirements will be magnified exponentially. So keep a close watch on your cash-flow statement and a tight rein on your expenses. Bootstrap as much as possible to keep your business lean.
Hire only as needed. When you scale, you will need to expand your staff to support your acceleration. But before you scale, it’s a good practice to get into the habit of only hiring when absolutely necessary. Hiring is a significant cost — not only payroll, but the costs of recruiting, training, retention, etc. To cut costs, outsource as much as possible, especially non-core functions like accounting, finance, and human resources.
Create milestones for your company. Identify target milestones, create a realistic timeline, and then manage your cash to those milestones. In some cases, this may mean that you need to raise the cash to match and support these milestones. If you’ve already raised cash or are bootstrapping, you’ll need to reduce your burn rate so you can achieve the milestone before your cash is gone. Once your milestones are set, don’t let them slip. Your main focus must be executing to these milestones.
Get systems in place. Before scaling, make sure you have a solid infrastructure for managing financial processes. How will you manage billing and invoicing on a larger scale? Or, the bigger potential headache of payment collection? If your customer base and earned revenue are still small, that’s when you need to find and establish successful systems and processes.
Plan for cash-flow positive. If you have revenue, create a plan to help you understand how and when you’ll be able to get cash-flow positive. Scaling requires an increase in cash flow. You need to be prepared to match this with earned revenue.

If you think you’re ready to scale, you may be right. But before you press on that gas pedal, ask yourself: are you sure you have a viable business model, your processes are repeatable, and the market is ready? Once you scale, you’ll be entrenched much more deeply in your processes and making changes will be much more difficult. So take these early days to establish your company model and processes, and gain an understanding of — and control over — your finances, before rushing to scale.

David Ehrenberg is the founder and CEO of Early Growth Financial Services, a financial services firm providing a complete suite of financial services to companies at every stage of the development process. He’s a financial expert and startup mentor, whose passion is helping businesses focus on what they do best. Follow David @EarlyGrowthFS.

The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, the YEC recently launched #StartupLab, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses via live video chats, an expert content library and email lessons.

Now check out “The Case For Remote Work”

Image: YEC

We Found The Future Of Loyalty & Rewards At Southland

Loyalty and rewards, loyalty and rewards, loyalty and rewards. It’s like a broken record. Everyone thinks they’ve stumbled onto the next big thing with loyalty and rewards. But maybe Nashville-based startup Facedeals actually has.

Facedeals uses a 100% opt-in facial recognition platform that is non-obtrusive to facilitate in person loyalty and rewards in a very passive way.

Users simply sign up for a Facedeals account using Facebook, and the magic starts. When that person walks into an establishment using Facedeals, their face will be captured using an eye-level, inconspicuous camera. In fact, the facial recognition software in the camera can capture the person’s image at their normal pace. They don’t have to do anything but simply walk past it.

The backend software in Facedeals already knows what that user likes and doesn’t like and their habits when patronizing a Facedeals establishment. Facedeals also specializes in relevance as co-founder David McMullen told 60 Minutes’ Leslie Stahl in this interview that aired last month.

In that 60 Minutes piece, McMullen and Stahl walked into a participating merchant, and as they were getting ready to decide what to order, Stahl was delivered a deal to purchase a Ceasar Salad and get a free Diet Coke. Both items, were things that Stahl actually likes. McMullen was offered a different deal on a local beer that he likes.

The secret to this relevance is that when users opt-in to Facedeals and let the service see their Facebook page, it builds a profile based on things they’ve liked..

McMullen told us (and 60 minutes) that the beauty behind Facedeals is that the deals are coming when you’re ready to make a purchase and not in an email first thing in the morning.

The company is working with a variety of different merchants including retail, restaurants, and bars. The robust back-end makes it the easiest way to do loyalty and rewards for any business. In fact they don’t have to do much of anything except let the customer redeem the deal.

Check out our own interview with McMullen from the Southland conference in Nashville.

You can find out more about Facedeals here at getfacedeals.com

Here’s more of our Southland coverage.

Drive Capital’s Mark Kvamme: Brandery Is One Of The Best Accelerators Outside SV

Mark Kvamme, Co-founder and Partner at Drive Capital and a former partner at Sequoia, is high on startups and entrepreneurs outside of Silicon Valley. Kvamme, a life long Valley guy, moved out to Columbus, Ohio, to start Drive Capital and help spur innovation “everywhere else”.

Appearing on a panel Wednesday afternoon at the Southland conference in Nashville, Tennessee, Kvamme defended the hustle outside of Silicon Valley.

“I know people here in Nashville, I know people in the midwest that I think actually work harder than Silicon Valley people. Because Silicon Valley people are all into the appearance of what I’m doing versus actually getting down and “gettin’ ‘er done,” Kvamme said in response to a question from panel moderator and Solidus Partner Vic Gatto.

Gatto had eluded to the fact that he feels that some entrepreneurs in the Southeast don’t hustle the way people in the Valley do because there is no competition.

Through Solidus, Gatto funds multiple accelerators in Tennessee including Nashville’s Jumpstart Foundry and Memphis’ Seed Hatchery. Earlier in the discussion Gatto had brought up accelerators so Kvamme took the opportunity to talk about one accelerator in particular: the Brandery.

Most Nibletz readers know that our co-founder Nick Tippmann has been through the Brandery with two different startups, and we work out of the Brandery facility in Over The Rhine when we’re in Cincinnati.

During the panel Kvamme spoke very highly of the Brandery calling it “one of the best accelerators outside Silicon Valley,” in effect putting The Brandery in league with Techstars and MassChallenge.

Kvamme said he just funded a company out of The Brandery, as did Khosla and Tony Hsieh. He goes on to say that the Brandery is successful because of the ecosystem that surrounds it, and that the ecosystem could be replicated in Nashville and pretty much everywhere. Check out the video clip below:

We’ve been tracking The Brandery, and their companies, heavily over the last two years. Check out more of our Brandery coverage here.

Here’s more from Southland.

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