Speek Partners With Dell, Also Gets Praise From Edward Norton & Sophia Bush

Well Tuesday morning we started working on a big story about Speek, a great Washington DC startup we’ve been covering since before they launched. Speek is the “easiest way to conference” and it really is. Speek’s co-founders John Bracken and Danny Boice are big supporters of Nibletz and Everywhere Else.

So we were excited when Boice emailed us to tell us about an exciting new partnership with Dell. The partnership, which went live yesterday afternoon, has the Fortune 50 computer manufacturer promoting Speek through several of their digital marketing channels to over 10 million+ of the company’s business customers. Speek is the only startup that’s part of this new partnership which Dell calls “Dell Marketplace”.

Dell’s Marketplace is launching on Dell’s Center For Entrepreneurs. That site is a highly curated collection of companies that provide services for the entrepreneur community. Dell has embraced the entrepreneurial community with several efforts including recruiting Ingred Vanderveldt as their Entrepreneur in Residence.

Through the Marketplace Dell offers entrepreneurrs access to special deals from companies ranging from FedEx to Speek. Our good friends at Influence & Co are also featured in the Marketplace.

But that wasn’t the only big news this week for the DC based startup. On Wednesday afternoon the company received tweets praising their conference calling platform from Academy Award winning actor (and Maryland native) Edward Norton and Teen Choice Award winning star Sophia Bush.

Norton started his day off with a string of tweets about Speek

He also tweeted another four messages including a link to a special deal for his followers (hint click here and take advantage)

Also Wednesday morning, Sophia Bush, who played young entrepreneurial starlet Brooke Davis on the CW hit series One Tree Hill, also said she was obsessed with Speek.

What’s all the hype about? Sign up for your Speek account here at Speek.com

You can conference call me anytime at Speek.com/kyle

Check out the new Dell Marketplace for entrepreneurs here.

See Speek co-founder Danny Boice at this huge national startup conference in Memphis.

Ben Milne Threw Away Cash, What It Means For Startups Like Dwolla

Plastic credit cards and debit cards have taken over a lot of people’s use of cash. More often than not, when I’m walking in a major city and I’m asked by a homeless person for money, my go to (and true) reason for not giving a guy a quarter or a dollar is I simply don’t carry cash.

Now, mobile wallet startups are starting to replace credit cards. Pocket loads are shrinking thanks to startups like Dwolla and PayTango and companies like Google and Paypal. And things are only going to get easier, at least for some.

While speaking at the Money2020 conference in Las Vegas this week, Business Insider reports that Milne told an interesting story to the audience. He mistakenly threw away cash because he thought it was an old burrito wrapper.

“I reached into my pocket the other day and felt crumpled paper in there,” Milne told the audience. “I thought I had absentmindedly put my burrito wrapper from lunch in there, but it was actually some dollar bills.”

Milne was speaking about how easy money transactions are going to be.

For years Paypal has been the leader in the digital payments space. Millions of people have Paypal, and now with Paypal’s mobile app you can send someone money via the service in just seconds. If they have one of Paypal’s debit cards or they’re signed up for PayPal wallet, users can just as quickly spend the money. The same is true for Google’s wallet product and the ability to use an Android phone with NFC technology at hundreds of thousands of PayPass locations across the country.

Milne’s own startup Dwolla is making it incredibly easy to send money from one user to another, and they only charge $.25 per transaction (transactions under $10 are free). Milne hopes that sending money via the internet becomes as easy as sending a photo of pop queen Miley Cyrus.

“Our world is already virtual, we just don’t realize it yet,” he said. “If all you have is an Internet connection, you can’t send money around the world very easily, but it’s no problem to send someone a picture of Miley Cyrus. What we’re doing – easy Internet payments – is an inevitability. We may not be the people to do it, though I’m working my ass off to make sure we are.”

Oversee Your Business Without Being Chained to a Desk

Guest post, Startup tips, startup monitoring You would think that advances in technology would reduce the amount of hours you spend at work. You’d be wrong, as Technology Digital finds that white collar jobs are sitting at a 60-hour work week, and anyone chasing that elusive 40-hour beast is written off as a part-time dabbler. While it will take quite some time to change the societal and corporate culture, you can put technology to work for you in at least making your time more comfortable. You don’t have to be chained to a desk day in, day out to oversee and manage your business, departments and employees. Instead, put your smartphone to work so you can get a change of scenery.

Bring Your Own Device

BYOD policies bring more benefits than headaches to most corporations, but if you’re a CTO or needing to manage a variety of mobile devices in a secure and safe manner, it takes some time to work out a cross-platform solution. One such solution, Blackberry’s Mobile Device Management, allows you to take advantage of Blackberry’s secure setup. The Blackberry 10 OS allows you to create a virtualized environment that is kept entirely separate from everything else installed on the device, and supplies mailing and calendar functions, among others. MDM is a cross-platform version of that so you can increase the safety and security of every mobile platform accessing your work network.

Productivity Apps

Productivity apps streamline your day-to-day tasks, as well as keeping you on track with employee activities and essential business information. Stocks is a solid, free Blackberry app that keeps you on track with the stock market, an essential bit of information if you’re a publicly traded company. Evernote is an essential bit of software that works well with small or large teams, or for your own personal notes. Since it’s a cross platform app, you can access your notes from any location, whether it’s your phone or computer. When you need to keep your notes on hand when you’re out of the office, this is the perfect choice for you.

Cloud-based Storage

Cloud-based storage is essential to unlocking you from your office. When you can access your files from any location, at any time, there’s no real reason for you to stick around work if you’re not otherwise needed on-site. Instead, you can head down to the beach and work on your tan while you’re getting the profit and loss statements ready for your department. Many cloud services are compatible with Blackberry, such as Google Drive and Dropbox. However, one the most useful apps you can get is one that allows you to access all your files in any of the cloud storage sites supported. This app is called Playcloud, and it also lets you bring up FTP and local files.

Skillshare And Levi’s: Take Amazing Classes And Help Kids

The concept is no simpler than it is in the headline. Take classes from New York startup Skillshare’s select offerings of online classes, where you can learn creative skills from visionary experts and share your own experiences, and 100% of the proceeds will go to arts and music education for students in grades k-8.

Skillshare is a New York startup that serves as a marketplace linking people to hundreds of online classes across many disciplines. While there have been a handful of startups that have tried to compete in the space, Skillshare has remained the market leader.

Now, in a unique partnership with Levi’s, not only is the site offering some premium classes with amazing instructors, it’s all for a good cause.

The classes are taught by renowned artists such as Cubby Graham, David Carson, Bang Bang, Benjamin Samuel, Brock Davis, and Linda Eliasen. The program is called “The School Of Make Our Mark”

The classes are only $10, with all of that money going towards the musical education program. The classes being offered include:

Urban Explorer Photography: Shooting the forgotten and the familiar, taught by Cubby Graham
Beautiful Ink, Designing Meaningful Tattoos, taught by Bang Bang
Vintage Postcard Design: Back To The Future, taught by Linda Eliasen
Stop Motion Video: Create & Animate, taught by Brock Davis
Creating Typographic Art Inspired By Sound, taught by David Carson
Flash Fiction: How To Tell Pint Sized Stories, taught by Benjamin Samuel

The classes will help you learn new skills, and meet new people across the globe. You will be able to share your completed work with the group and some of the projects will be chosen to go into a time capsule that Levi’s and Skillshare will open in the future.

You can use promocode: OURMARK to take one of the classes for free!

Find out more and sign up now here at skillshare.com/makeourmark.

1776 Turns Google Doc Into Unfurlough.us

Last week we broke the news that the entrepreneurs at 1776 in Washington, DC jumped into action when the federal government was first shut down. The first thing they did was hold an impromptu event which brought together the startups at 1776 with furloughed federal workers in the area.

What came out of that was the Google Doc we reported about last Friday. 1776 found a clear path between workers on furlough and startups that needed paid workers, volunteers or people to do small projects.

They’ve now turned the simple GoogleDoc into unfurlough.us which is picking up a lot of traction. The new jobs site, set up to connect furloughed workers with positions in startups, caught the eye of Mashable on Tuesday.

Mashable revealed that all kinds of people are signing up, even people that aren’t on furlough. 1776 cofounder Donna Harris told Mashable that they aren’t going to take down anyone’s profile.

So is it working?

Mashable reports that Josh Hurd, the founder of Nonprofitmetrics, used unfurlough.us to find a blogger who he is paying a minimum of $35 per post. Lily Bradley who works for the Department of Health and Human Services is also on furlough. She found a temporary job taking pictures for a startup that pays more than her day job.

1776 does have a warning posted on the unfurlough.us website reminding furloughed workers to check their agency’s “ethics guidance” to make sure they are allowed to engage in outside work while on furlough.

1776 even has their own listing looking for someone to do PR & Marketing research.

Building unfurlough.us was a community effort between blen and 1776 and built on the open source platform drupal, reportedly in under five hours.

Co-Founders Lab Heads To Nashville’s Entrepreneur Center Next Week

When Shahab Kaviani sat down and had some time to reflect about his previous startup, HyperOffice, he realized that the cofounding team behind that startup drove its success. He admits that they bootstrapped almost the entire project. He also says in hindsight their timing was lousy, but the cofounding team kept the startup together.

Finding the right cofounders should actually be at the top of the priority list in any startup. CoFounders lab is one of many startups that look to match people with cofounders. FounderSync is one of those startups that uses an online approach. FounderDating uses a hybrid online offline approach merging an online community with in-person events.

Unlike other events that can turn out to be unorganized get togethers where people only talk to the people they know, Kaviani has gone to great lengths to make sure that CoFounders Lab events are laser focused on one thing, introducing cofounders to each other.

Also unlike other events and startups claiming to connect cofounders, there’s no prerequisite, vetting process, or cliques you need to join to be part of the network. CoFounders lab goes beyond founder dating by cutting out all the superfluous clutter aimed at boosting egos and not connecting founders to help people build real companies.

CoFounders Lab is now headed to Music City USA–Nashville, Tennessee–next week on October 15th. They’re hosting their event at the brand new state of the art entrepreneur center and hope to connect founders with each other and get some real companies off the ground.

The event is Tuesday, October 15th starting at 6:30pm and it’s free. You just need to register here.

Make sure you mark your calendars for Everywhere Else Tennessee, the national startup conference focused on startups “everywhere else” pulls into Memphis Feb 17-19th 2014. More here.

Pilot Jim McKelvey Continues Empowering People With An Individual Accelerator For Programmers

Jim McKelvey, LaunchCode, Startup, St. Louis startup

(img: Flickr)

How the death of a St. Louis Pizza Delivery Boy Sparked Jim McKelvey’s Latest Startup:

I got to spend a lot of quality time on a 1:1 phone interview with Square co-founder Jim McKelvey yesterday. After bumping into McKelvey at numerous events and talking startups or otherwise shooting the shit, I finally had time to dive in with one of St. Louis’ biggest startup community advocates.

We wasted no time during the interview call, so I went right for the “how does a glass blower get into startups, investing and now being a catalyst for the St. Louis startup community?” McKelvey explained that so many people are eager to give just one label to others, when in fact there are multiple labels for just about everyone. McKelvey is a professional, now hobbyist, glass blower. Blowing glass is something he enjoys when he can now, and he hasn’t been a professional glass blower since 1992.

McKelvey was formerly trained as an engineer and making things is something he’s great at. Over the years, one of his other hobbies, flying, has filled a lot of that time that he had for glass blowing, adding “pilot” to the list of labels attached to him.

We were supposed to talk about Six Thirty, the new St. Louis accelerator specifically for fintech (financial tech) startups. McKelvey is one of the co-founders of the Six Thirty accelerator. With companies like ScottTrade, MasterCard, and Wells Fargo (plus many more) based in St. Louis, a fintech accelerator is a natural fit. They even have a fintech fund in St.Louis called FinServe Tech Angels, which is headed by Kyle Wellborn.

McKelvey points to the launch of Square for the reason there was a need for a fintech accelerator

“We were able to build the technology for Square in 3 weeks. We were running transactions in no time. It took 18 months though to get legal,” McKelvey told me. He firmly believes that anyone with a great team, a good idea, and money behind them can launch a product to market. Launching a financial product is a whole other can of worms. Insurance regulations, PCI compliance, licensing and other legal hurdles stand in the way of a great startup just going for it with a financial product.

Through a cohort-based model, 4 companies will get the mentorship, training and connections they need to hopefully see their fintech startups get to market.

That was the quickest part of our talk, though. McKelvey is actually knee deep in two current working projects. One is Six Thirty; the other is still an “experiment,” but one that he is truly passionate about. LaunchCode is something that truly seems to fulfill McKelvey’s calling right now.

Jim loves teaching, and he loves empowering people. We briefly talked about how now you can walk the streets of Baltimore before a Ravens game or Cincinnati before a Reds game, and see the street vendors accepting credit cards through Square. “I love those kinds of stories” McKelvey said. Those stories show Square has been able to empower people to take their businesses to another level.

LaunchCode is another way people can get to another level.

“There’s only one industry I’ve ever seen where you can go from zero knowledge to a $100,000 salary in one year, and that’s programming,” McKelvey said. There are tens of thousands of folks out there who would absolutely agree.

You need to be driven, have a little bit of scientific or computer knowledge and want to learn, besides the technological tools like a computer. If you have those things you can learn to program.

Throughout his career McKelvey has seen all types of people learn to code and become legitimate programmers. Of course there are the high school computer science misfits, the college graduate engineers, and even people like a WalMart maintenance man who taught himself to code on the side. McKelvey knows that one personally. “He literally mops the floors at a local Walmart and he’s taught himself to code, and he’s good at it”.

Before diving into what LaunchCode is, it’s important to know how McKelvey, who’s admittedly been “rich” for decades, got started with this latest project.

This story begins with pizza, but not in the way you would think with startups.

A friend of McKelvey’s had brought his family over to the US for a better life from Russia. That dream turned tragic for that family in May of 2012 when their 22-year-old son Daniel Maksimenko was shot and killed delivering a pizza in St. Louis. The young man was shot and killed before he even got out of the car, “and for–what–maybe $60,” McKelvey said.

This story has been eating away at McKelvey for quite some time. He didn’t understand why anyone would do something like this. It’s not like the pizza guy carries a lot of cash, and there obviously wasn’t time for an argument. McKelvey came to the realization that these people weren’t crazy. They did it because they thought they had no other hope.

In the same breath McKelvey points out that there are over 5,000 programming jobs available in St. Louis right this second, but the system is flawed and LaunchCode is changing that.

“When Boeing announces they are bringing 700 jobs to St. Louis, they aren’t bringing 700 jobs. They are bringing 700 job openings,” he points out.

LaunchCode doesn’t have an exact label just yet, and besides everything has multiple labels (see above). I likened LaunchCode to an individualized accelerator for programmers, and McKelvey liked that description.

LaunchCode is bridging the gap between the number of “job openings” and the talent pool. You see, most companies (and when we say most it’s most) require two years experience before hiring a programmer. Schools are churning out programmers left and right, and thousands of people are teaching themselves how to code through online courses and other study at home classes. So when these people are finished learning, they have nowhere to go because they don’t have that experience.

Through LaunchCode Mckelvey has teamed up with 100 businesses in St. Louis ranging from the city’s corporate flagships like ScottTrade, Energizer, and Entreprise, to St. Louis startups like aisle411.

“If you take those 100 startups, just two of them were hiring programmers with less than 2 years experience,” McKelvey said. The other 98% basically just swap employees around.

As an example, McKelvey explained “Say Boeing is working on a new plane and they need developers. They put out a call to their HR channel and recruiters recruit developers from Ralston Purina and Enterprise.” Then those companies hire away someone from another company and so on down the line. New people weren’t put to work; people were just moved around.

The problem has been apparent and glaring at people for decades, and now LaunchCode is fixing it.

McKelvey has convinced these 100 companies both big and small to take a crack at an experiment in peer programming that worked well for Square.

New programmers sign up for LaunchCode. Candidates need to have the basic skills, be eager to learn, take criticism well and a handful of other attributes outlined here. Nothing too hard, really.

While in the program, the new programmer will be paired with an experienced programmer, “mentor” on location with a participating company. During that time the programmer will make $15 per hour and gain a vast knowledge of programming in the real world.

“While we were paying double for one output at Square, we were getting a better quality product,” McKelvey said of peer programming. “When you pair an experienced programmer with a junior programmer, the junior programmer picks up quickly.”

Then you have two experienced programmers.

The program (like an accelerator) lasts 2-3 months. After that time the participating companies will evaluate the new programmer through a more equal lens and decide whether to hire them on full time. These companies all have programming openings, and the candidate will have then spent 2-3 months in their company, in their company culture, and with their company work flow. It seems that staying employed with the company will be pretty easy.

LaunchCode is disrupting the way talent is being hired. McKelvey reminded me several times that LaunchCode is still an experiment. He’s hoping with some success to evaluate LaunchCode to see if expansion vertically, horizontally or both is the next step. In the mean time many have their eyes on what’s going on in St. Louis.

Check out LaunchCode here.

Jim McKelvey image: Bob Lee, Flickr

Cincinnati Startup Pressing Issues Wants To Re-Invent Journalism

There are problems with digital journalism, or so says Brad Merrill, the founder of Cincinnati startup Pressing Issues. After years of experience in digital journalism, Merrill and his cohort of journalists decided they wanted to do something new.

“It all started when a group of journalists decided they wanted something new to read. They were looking for a news magazine that not only told them everything that was happening around the world each week, but that did so in an entertaining way. Ideally it would be gleefully sweary and eager to offend the rich and powerful. They realized this meant it probably wouldn’t include any ads,” Merrill told us in an interview.

Pressing Issues is launching today with a model similar to NSFWCorp in Las Vegas. All of the content is subscriber based and behind a paywall. They’ve eliminated ads entirely. Pressing Issues is going to have to demonstrate the strength of their content in bulk and fast.

To do that they are making sure their paid contributors provide thought provoking, and entertaining content, both are important parts for Merrill.

Check out the rest of our interview with Merrill on launch day, below.

What is your startup called?

Pressing Issues

What does your company do?

As the death of real journalism looms over the horizon, we’re paying great journalists to produce investigative pieces and long-form essays about topics other publications aren’t covering, and we’re making their jobs even harder by demanding that their stories be entertaining. We’re employing a paid subscription model with a strict paywall on our digital edition (print is coming in a couple of months!), and we’re going the 100% reader-supported route with no ads.

Who are the founders, and what are their backgrounds?

It all started when a group of journalists decided they wanted something new to read. They were looking for a news magazine that not only told them everything that was happening around the world each week, but that did so in an entertaining way. Ideally it would be gleefully sweary and eager to offend the rich and powerful. They realized this meant it probably wouldn’t include any ads.

Upon realizing that this magazine didn’t actually exist, they decided to create it.

I am founder Brad Merrill, and I’ve written for and edited many digital publications in the past. I’ve long recognized the problems with digital journalism, and I decided that by not being part of the solution, I’m being part of the problem.

Where are you based?

I’m based in Hamilton, Ohio, just outside of Cincinnati. I was very disappointed to have missed out on Everywhere Else – I hope you guys will be back in the area in the future!

What’s the startup scene like where you are based?

As a tech/startup blogger myself, I’ve had the pleasure of connecting with so many brilliant entrepreneurial minds here in the Cincinnati area. The startup community is fantastic.

What problem do you solve?

We don’t have a mission statement, but if we did it would probably say something about “reinventing journalism.” It’s a broken business. Everyone wants to make an app and make journalism smaller and smaller. I say it’s time to make journalism big again. That’s why we’re publishing 3,000-word pieces online, and 10,000-word pieces in print. We’re serious about this.

As for topics, we just like good stories. Bonus points for really big stories. For example, one of our first pieces is about a former cop in Las Vegas who wrote a book encouraging the use of hostage negotiation techniques to manipulate women for sex and, in his words, “get past no.” He’s now in charge of a downtown watch group intended to keep people (particularly women who get off work late) safe in the city—presumably from the very things he advocates in his book. Not the best man for the job, I’d say, so we’re exposing the whole thing.

Where can people find out more? Any social media links you want to share?

People can find out more and subscribe at pressingissues.net

Show Your Team Pride With Your Socks With Sock 101’s New Kickstarter Campaign

Sock 101 is all about the socks. The startup built in Kansas City is bringing fashion back to socks. We’re not talking about your average Gold Toe or even the latest in argyle socks. Sock 101 makes a fashion statement with socks that complement any man’s fashion-sensible wardrobe.

Speaking of fashion sense, the durable, nice looking socks are affordable as well. Every pair of socks the company sells are only $7. The have awesome names as well like the blue infused “KC,” the red, white, and blue “Patriot,” the polka dotted “Dapper Dot,” and President George H.W. Bush’s favorite “The Johnny,” a crimson and white sock that the former President insists will be “perfect for days in College Station, Texas.”

In true startup fashion, Sock 101 also offers a subscription sock service where you get a new pair of socks delivered to your door once a month without even having to think about it.

If you’re like me and have a different pair of shoes to match every outfit, the socks from Sock 101 are absolutely perfect.

Now the company is looking to expand on their “Johnny” sock and do color combinations to match every major school.

Not convinced yet? Sock 101 offers these 5 ideas where your socks from Sock 101 will be a huge hit:

1. At the Game

Lift a little pant leg and show of your school spirit at the game. You have hats and shirts. Why not socks?!

2. At the Office

The first thing that most people notice about your look are your shoes. The second? Your socks! Imagine sitting down in a meeting and crossing your legs. The next thing you know, somebody is wide eyed staring at your socks. Will they think you are cool? You betcha.

3. At the Bar or Party

Whether you are watching the game or looking for love, our socks are guaranteed to make you stand out. Please see our warning above. Although we’d love to hear from you, please do not send us complaints about too much attention from the opposite sex.

4. On a Date

Do you want a second date? Wear our socks with your outfit. You will look more fun and more stylish. We guarantee it. If you don’t want a second date or are designated wingman, just wear plain white socks or gold toes.

5. On the Course

These socks are great for golf! They are lightweight, breathable, comfortable, and durable. One of our owners has walked eighteen holes over a dozen times this year in the same pair of socks with no holes, rips, or tears. They still look great. As you can see, our socks are seriously versatile!

They’ve got several winning testimonials on their Kickstarter page where they are looking to raise $25,000 so that they can bring the team line to fruition. Nothing is as telling as the testimonial from President Bush, sent in a personal letter you can even read on the Kickstarter page.

11 Marketing Tools Your Startup Needs For Launch

Question: What ONE must-have tool should small businesses include in their marketing campaign when launching a new product? (events, pop-up shops, swag, social media campaigns, etc.)

Mailchimp Is a Must

“For every new product launch, we collect emails via MailChimp. We use their email campaign and auto-responder functionality to draft countdown emails so that our customers receive regular updates and pre-specified intervals prior to launch. These email campaigns get customers excited about our launch and result in increased conversion.”

– Bhavin Parikh | CEO, Magoosh Test Prep

Landing Pages with Unbounce

“Landing pages are a must when launching a new product. They let you easily focus the potential consumers attention on the actions that you deem desirable. With new products, money is scarce, so having the highest conversion rate is of necessity. My product of choice is Unbounce — it’s dead simple to use, and they also have new and improved features for the advanced user.”

– Lawrence Watkins | Founder & CEO, Great Black Speakers

Create a Dedicated Email

“As you’re building buzz for your product, there must be a customer and sponsor support team ready to handle incoming questions. Put your email out there everywhere and encourage questions, ideas and communication. Don’t just have the email account, but be ready with resources, FAQs and engagement specialists to nurture your early adopters and raving fans and help them promote you further.”

– Kelly Azevedo | Founder, She’s Got Systems

Set Up Google Analytics Properly

“You can’t have a good marketing campaign without tracking in-depth analytics throughout the entire process. Not only is Google Analytics great because it’s free, but they continue to add more robust features for tracking every detail of each visitor on your site, which will help you understand the location, referrers/keywords, behaviors, site usage, and transactions of each of your visitors.”

– Seth Kravitz | CEO, Technori

Incorporate Retargeting Pixels.

“Use a service like ReTargeter or AdWords Remarketing in order to drop cookies for first-time visitors to your website, so that you have the opportunity to remarket to them later and stay top of mind. Start building your remarketing list from day one.”

– Matt Mickiewicz | Co-Founder, Flippa and 99designs

Utilize Hacker News

“Hacker News is a great place to launch a product. If you submit your site correctly, it could drive thousands of visits within a few hours and collect excellent feedback. Make sure to read how to use Hacker News first though!”

– Ben Lang | Founder, Mapped In Israel

Put In a Squeeze Page

“If I had to recommend one tool for any product launch, it would be a “squeeze page,” also known as an opt-in page. Get an account with an email service provider (ESP), create a squeeze page, and point potential customers to it during your pre-launch. Send emails to your subscriber list building anticipation for the launch, and then offer your subscribers a limited-time offer upon the launch.”

– Pete Kennedy | Co-Founder and Managing Partner, Main Street ROI

Let People Use Your Product!

“If the goal is to get people to use your product and talk about your product, then it seems logical that you should get that product into as many hands as possible. If it’s online, this means a trial. If it’s food, it means having tons of samples. If it’s jeans, give away your jeans. You can talk and hype something all you want, but the product speaks for itself. A worthwhile investment.”

– Luke Burgis | Director, ActivPrayer

Bloggers Create the Buzz

“A lot of small businesses focus on long-lead, print media without realizing the power of blogs. Even relatively small blogs have the power to convert sales with links in a much more powerful way than print ever can — and even have the potential to take on their life of their own through social sharing.”

– Alexis Wolfer | Founder/CEO, The Beauty Bean

Coordinate a Social Media Push

“Including fans in the conversation or decision-making process prior to launch is by far the most valuable pre-promotion you can do. We generally narrow new watch designs or colors down to three or four options before running a vote on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest. It’s our “Threadless meets Kickstarter” model: whether we receive 100 votes or 1,000, we learn from our biggest advocates!”

– Aaron Schwartz | Founder and CEO, Modify Watches

Collect Real Testimonials and Reviews

“No matter what else you do to market a new product, you need to have proof that it does what you say it does. Getting people outside your company to try the product and talk about it is the only initial source of that proof that you can set up before the product goes on the market. So make the effort to get testimonials and reviews from beta testers and pre-launch customers.”

– Thursday Bram | Consultant, Hyper Modern Consulting

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.

New York’s General Assembly Closing Co-Working Space

General Assembly has become one of the benchmarks for coworking, startup, and incubation space. They just recently expanded to Washington, DC in a partnership with 1776 in which they will offer classes, information sessions, and other startup support resources.

What started as a place to “support the growing NYC startup community,” has expanded to becoming a “global educational institution that has helped empower nearly 70,000 to pursue the work they love,” General Assembly CEO Jake Schwartz posted on their blog.

When they originally opened three years ago, they had no idea GA would become what it is today.

“Over the past two and a half years, our community has grown much larger than our amazing co-working members. It now encompasses the tens of thousands of students who’ve come through our doors and the more than 3,000 alumni of our long-form courses, not to mention the hundreds of instructors and the 2,000 hiring partners who come to GA in search of top talent. Similarly, support once meant desks and space, but has come to also mean instruction, opportunity and talent for our students and hiring partners,” Schwartz said.

The crew at General Assembly has decided that their higher calling will become the focus of their efforts going forward in 2014. They will convert the space they use for coworking in New York City to expand their events, career fairs, hackathons, fireside chats, panels and other educational resources for startups and entrepreneurs.

Over the past few years Schwartz and the team at General Assembly have seen the explosion of coworking spaces across New York City and other regions across the world.

In Washington DC, for instance, General Assembly’s focus is with education and community events while 1776 houses the coworking space. Models like this are why GA is confident that this is the right move for them at their flagship location.

General Assembly has set up a transition team of sorts to make sure that their coworking members are able to find similarly priced space with the same services that GA provided for coworkers. Of course those members will still participate in the other community building efforts that General Assembly is offering.

St. Louis’ Capital Innovators Opens Up Applications For Spring 2014 Cohort

St. Louis Capital Innovator’s accelerator program has opened up applications for their Spring 2014 program. This will be the 6th cohort to go through St.Louis’ highly successful program.

Capital Innovators is backed by the most influential people in the St. Louis startup ecosystem, including Jim McKelvey who is firmly planted in the startup community. We just reported last week on the inaugural cohort at the new SixThirty accelerator, an accelerator for fintech startups that takes its name from the height and width of St. Louis’ famous arch.

Capital Innovators provides $50,000 in seed funding for their startups and also provides them with project-based mentorship, collaborative learning, and more. The entire St.Louis startup community gels around each class in the Capital Innovators accelerator program, which is housed at the T-Rex startup, co-working, and incubation space downtown.

Our good friends at Bonfyre, who have provided the engagement app for our Everywhere Else national startup conferences, is an alumni of Capital Innovators. LockerDome, who’s founder Gabe Lozano was a big hit earlier this year at Everywhere Else conference in Memphis is also a graduate of Capital Innovators as are BidRazor, Adfreq, and many more.

Applications are being accepted through November 15th, and the cohort will be announced in January. Meanwhile, the current Fall 2013 cohort will graduate in December. We’ll be there to cover all the action. You may want to hurry up and apply now, before I decide to go and apply. Here’s the link.

Wow! 19 Chicago Startups Raise $265M In Q3 2013

On Friday Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s office, in conjunction with Built In Chicago, announced that 19 startup and technology companies in Chicago’s Tech Sector raised a collective $265 million dollars in Q3 2013. This is an amazing testament to the success of Chicago’s startup and technology ecosystem.

“Capital investments like these in Chicago’s growing companies are solid proof that what is happening for our technology sector will have a lasting and substantial effect on Chicago’s economy,” said Mayor Emanuel. “These companies are creating jobs and the technologies they are developing will shape the future of the city’s economic landscape. I am proud of their success and I look forward to working with all of these companies as they continue to grow.”

The biggest raisers were Network Merchants with $100 million, Cleversafe with $55 million, and Avant Credit with $20 million. Additionally, the breadth and depth of Chicago’s growing digital economy was evident in this fiscal quarter with nearly 40 startups receiving funding, 19 of those raising more than $1 million or more. 44 new startups came online.

Matt Moog, founder and chairman of Built in Chicago added, “The growth of funding and new digital technology startups being created combined with the breakout growth of companies founded in the recent past is helping fuel a job creation boom in the digital sector. And there is more to come. We are seeing the benefits of a culture of innovation and risk taking.”

Last week, Built In Chicago released the Top 100 Digital Companies report on the Chicago technology sector, which had some outstanding news for Chicago’s digital technology sector. In 2012 367 startups launched– that is one new startup every 24 hours in Chicago (up from one every two days in 2011). The total employment in the tech sector ballooned to over 40,000 people, up more than 20 percent from the previous year. And more than 1,500 technology companies now call Chicago home.

The diversity of Chicago’s technology companies is also notable. No sector of the digital economy occupies more than 33 percent, ensuring that all five major sectors (software, ecommerce, agency, consumer web, and b2b web) have a significant share of the digital market. Additionally, 90 percent of the technology companies in Chicago are now more than 5 years old, meaning that there is a level of maturity in the companies as they move into the next stage of their development.

Chicago is preparing for Chicago Ideas Week next week, which will bring together entrepreneurial speakers, innovators, and thought leaders from across the country to Chicago for a week of amazing discussions, talks, lectures, hacking and more. You can find out more about Chicago Ideas Week here.

1776 Connecting Federal Employees With Startups

By now everyone knows that the federal government is in a shutdown, the first one in over 20 years. “Non essential” federal government employees are furloughed, or temporarily laid off, so that the federal government can save money. Although most predict the shutdown could be over by October 17th, others aren’t sure of the future beyond that. At this point, who wants Congress controlling your future?

One thing is for sure though, and that’s the fact that over 800,000 people are currently sidelined by this shutdown. The shutdown is affecting all kinds of skilled workers, ranging from grounds keepers to people with executive level skill sets. Tens of thousands of affected workers are those with IT skills, some who even have startup experience.

1776, the entrepreneurial hub, coworking space, and incubator in downtown DC is closest to all the action. On day one of the shutdown, they held a federal government shutdown open house/cocktail party where affected federal workers with relationships with 1776 and the startups housed there, came to mingle.

It was after that event that some of the 1776 community came up with an idea for a database aimed at matching displaced federal workers with startups looking for workers. The database, located here, is looking for startups to post job opening and for workers to post their skill sets and find a match.

If your startup has a paid or volunteer position open, you should post it. In some cases federal workers are looking for something to pass the time. In others, they are looking to earn some money on the side.

What a startup will hopefully get, is a skilled worker and maybe even a long term team member that may perhaps, transition to working for the startup when the furlough is lifted.

In addition to the database, DC entrepreneur and designer Mike Aleo, who previously worked at the White House as a designer, has created this site to keep people up to date with how long the shut down has been going on. Now he’s looking for resources for people who have been displaced.

As for the database itself, while it started in DC and DC has the highest concentration of federal workers, there are no restrictions or geographic boundaries. There are federal workers in just about every city across the country.

If your startup is looking for help now, check it out.