The Big Day Is Here For Memphis Startup ScrewPulp

Last week we were pleased to bring you the story of ScrewPulp’s launch. The new self publishing platform is helping authors and publishers with much needed traction and engagement through a different model.

Publishers/authors sign up for ScrewPulp which helps them market their books by giving away the first 25 copies in exchange for a social media mention, review or rating. From there, as books gain popularity they increase in price by $1.00 per level. This format gives authors/publishers, much needed exposure and the benefit of having ratings and reviews built in to their profile.

Publishers hold all the rights to their books. ScrewPulp takes a small percentage and leaves the author/publisher with no less than 75%. They only ask that submitted works stay on the site for 90 days.

Screw Pulp founder Richard Billings launched the startup at 48 Hour Launch in June of last year. From there he went on to take the top prize at Launch Memphis’ Global Entrepreneurship Week event, which included pitching in front of Federal Court Judge, John Fowlkes. The Seed Hatchery accelerator was the next natural step for the team.

We’ve chronicled the life of ScrewPulp from that very first pitch in June, consequently the same 48 Hour Launch event that attracted Nibletz to Memphis, through demo day. Check out more Screwpulp coverage here and watch Billings’ pitch video here:

Check out more of our Seed Hatchery coverage here.

Musistic Debuts At Seed Hatchery Demo Day, Finally A GitHub For Musicians

What do you get when you cross two musicians and two recording studio employees in Memphis one of the earliest cities in the world with a globally musical pulse? Musistic.

The Musistic team is made up of Justin Olita, Vince Rogers, Brian Wentzloff and Rachel Hurley (who joined them after leaving the soundstache team). The four of them together are pioneering a new collaborative music platform that allows musicians to collaborate in a meaningful way, similar to how programmers collaborate on GitHub.

Users can find others to collaborate on a song or album together via the Musistic platform. From there each musician can post their parts and tracks for the others to “pull down” and record on top of. The best part is that the Musistic platform is DAW friendly across many types of popular software.

Gone are the days when musicians need to upload enormous email attachments or figure out which drop box, box.net or other cloud account has enough space for their project.

Using Musistic they can easily find the parts they need, re-record, edit and get them back up for the collaborators to continue working on. This isa welcomed tool in the music community and it’s made from a team that is rich in their musical background.

To date they’ve secured a creative capital investment from Loaded For Bear equal to $100,000 per year for five years. They are also working on strategic partnerships with the Memphis Music Foundation and the Folk Alliance International. It also helps that Hurley, who leads marketing and business development, has deep relationships with hundreds of Memphis musicians.

To get a better idea of what Musistic is and where it’s going, check out the pitch video below.

You can find out more at musistic.com

We’ve got more Seed Hatchery coverage here.

Star & Micey’s Nick Redmond Pitches Soundstache At Seed Hatchery Investor Day

Memphians, and for that matter a lot of folks in Tennessee are familiar with the name Nick Redmond. Nick is the frontman for the very popular indie band, Star & Micey. It was through touring, singing, performing and engaging with fans that Redmond had this great idea for a startup and Soundstache was born.

Through fellow Memphian Rachel Hurley who is knee deep in the Memphis music scene through working with the Poplar Lounge and other Memphis music spots, and through being active in the Memphis startup community, Redmond got the opportunity to apply for Seed Hatchery.

Hurley says that it was actually at famous movie director and local Memphian, Craig Brewer’s birthday party where Redmond pitched the idea for an interactive app that worked both online and off line and connected fans to musicians. Soundstache is a geo-caching app/game that allows fans to search for “staches” that bands put out for them to find. They could be in plain sight or maybe tucked under a tree, in a set of stairs or attached to a sign post.

Bands plant staches for fans to find and the app directs them to it.

Never afraid a challenge, just days into the Seed Hatchery program Redmond decided to try SoundStache out at one of the biggest playgrounds in the music world, SXSW and there it was met a ton of positivity. Fans loved the exclusive nature of the prizes they were winning. Speaking of which, bands can give away whatever they want, a used drum stick, concert tickets, cd’s, demos whatever.

Most people know that indie music fans, real indie music fans not fake ass hipsters, go all in on their favorite bands and support them anyway they can. Soundstache gets them off the couch and out from behind the macbook, onto the street looking for “staches”.

In between his hard touring schedule Redmond just went through the Seed Hatchery accelerator program. Here’s their investor day pitch video.

Here are more SeedHatchery stories at nibletz.com The Voice Of Startups Everywhere Else.

Launch Your City Takes A Dose Of Their Own Medicine, Unveils Startco

Eric Mathews, Founder and co-President of Memphis-based Launch Your City, is no stranger to entrepreneurship. His family owns a very successful steel door business based in Little Rock, Arkansas. But rather than falling into the security of the family-run business, Mathews,a chemistry student at the time, wanted to be his own entrepreneur. Better than that, he saw, through entrepreneurship, ways to give back to the community, becoming a “social entrepreneur” of sorts before it was the cool hipster thing to do.

In his early 20’s, Mathews became the assistant director at the Fedex Institute of Technology, an academic and tech initiative at the University of Memphis.That wasn’t enough, though. Mathews wanted to help launch companies and startups in Memphis without a tie in to the University. He wanted anyone with a good idea to be able to benefit from an entrepreneurship program. So in 2006 he took the plunge and started the organization that became Launch Your City.

“Iteration trumps perfection,” an “Eric-ism” oft-repeated in Memphis’ startup circles, is a motto that Mathews practices as well as preaches. Launch Your City has seen a slew of iteration over the past 7 years and continues to evolve today.

While choosing a name that would easily transition to startup communities and ecosystems in any city, Mathews honed it in to Memphis by officially launching LaunchMemphis, a division of LaunchYour City, in 2008.

Over the next few years, Andre Fowlkes grew tired of the investment banking and private equity landscape on both coasts and started looking for opportunities to return home. In late 2010 the native Memphian and son of Federal Court Judge John Fowlkes gave up the private equity and investment career and the salary that went with it. After meeting Mathews he realized that Launch Your City is where he wanted to be.

Those who know them know that Mathews is very analytical, quiet, and a little introverted. Fowlkes on the other hand is very outgoing, a relationship builder and connector. With his outgoing personality and business acumen, Fowlkes was the perfect complement for Mathews. In 2011 they became co-presidents of the organization that now oversees Launch Memphis, Seed Hatchery, Upstart, Memphis Venture Mentors, and Wolf River Angels.

With their plates filling up fast and so many different names to keep track of, Fowlkes and Mathews went to work with local agency and huge startup supporter archer>malmo* on re-branding. What began as a project to subtly adjust their branding and message came together as a whole new brand that’s more reflective of the future for the organization.

Today, as Fowlkes kicked off the Seed Hatchery 2013 Investor Day, they revealed the new branding for the organization as Start Co.

The new name and branding fit the overall goals much better, putting everything together in one easy to remember and understand brand. The three lines of effort for the organization remain in tact.

–Educating talented founders

–Accelerating their businesses

–Building the ecosystem of support resources around the entrepreneurs

With the new Start Co branding, their vertical efforts that support accelerators, mentors, raising capital, and supporting the startup community will be better served.

During the transition you can find out more at neverstop.co

*disclosure, archer>malmo holds an equity interest in Nibletz through their a>m ventures arm.

Indiana Couple Pitches Their Startup, Boosterville, At Seed Hatchery Demo Day

Attracting great talent to an accelerator that doesn’t have the name Techstars or YCombinator in it can be a difficult task. Attracting great talent that’s already had success in the startup space can be even more daunting. That’s what happened in the case of Indiana startup Boosterville.

I actually met Pam Cooper the CEO and co-founder of Boosterville, while it was still called Sodbuster, on Brad Feld’s Hacker News alternative site, the startup hub. Pam and I quickly became friends. It was then I learned that she was a little more “seasoned” than other founders, having started a very successful small business in Indiana. Her quick wit and thought provoking questions made it easy to interact with her on an online platform.

Pam decided that despite a failed attempt at Indianapolis startup conference “Powder Keg” her and her co-founder/CTO husband, Tom Cooper, would make the trek to Memphis for everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference. At the same time we were accepting applications for Seed Hatchery and I quickly introduced her to the organizations leader, Eric Mathews, and they got in.

We learned through the vetting process that Tom was actually the founding CTO of question and answer site Cha-Cha. He also has a long resume of engineering work at several successful startups and companies. The Cooper’s have done well. They’ve got kids in college, a rather large home in Indiana, oh and Tom has his own plane as well. So why come all the way to Memphis for an accelerator?Great question, the answer: For the accelerator.

From day one both Pam and Tom dove head first into the curriculum, learning, sharing and development that is offered through the Seed Hatchery program. They took criticism like the best of them, often times from leaders and mentors that didn’t have even a fraction of the startup experience that Tom had. Both Cooper’s have said over and over again how much they’ve learned here in Memphis.

“I really didn’t know what to expect, so we went for it and Seed Hatchery was the best thing we’ve done for our company” Tom told us in an interview.

During the accelerator the coopers went through a name change, a huge pivot and even worked hand in hand with MBA students for discovery, and to help refine their product.

Boosterville combines digital wallet with loyalty and rewards and all for the benefit of schools and non profits. Using Dwolla, another midwest startup, as their mobile wallet conduit, users sign up for a school they want to donate to. From there they can see a list of merchants in their community that use the Boosterville platform. When they make a purchase at one of the establishments in the program, they check out using their phone, the merchant gets paid, the school gets a donation and Boosterville takes a small cut.

“Putting children who are now grown, through school I’ve seen my share of wrapping paper and World’s Finest Chocolate Bars”, Pam loves to tell anyone who will listen. Of course we all agree.

The company is a great mesh of Pam’s community minded nature and business savvy, with Tom’s over three decades of programming experience.

What’s next for Boosterville, well while Tom has an open invitation to return full time to his engineering job in Indiana, they are going to continue to raise money and bring Boosterville to live.

Check out their investor day pitch video below:

Find out more about Boosterville here at boosterville.com

We’ve got more Seed Hatchery coverage here.

Techstars Opens In Austin, Mashing The Best Of Texas’ Startup World

Some may be surprised to find out that Techstars has no “official” presence in Austin. What??? That’s right, even though they throw one of the best parties at SXSW and you can find most of the Techstars team roaming about during the festival they’ve had no real presence.

Until now.

Techstars announced via their blog that they are going to take up residency in the already epically awesome Capital Factory (home to DreamIt Austin as well), and begin an official Techstars cohort in August.

That’s not all though. They are bringing over TechStars Cloud Director, Jason Seats, from San Antonio to run the program. Seats sold his company Slicehost to Rackspace and has since been involved with Techstars. He’s also part of the StartupGrind program. Having a Techstars class in an environment like Capital Factory gives the young startups a huge advantage. Austinpreneurs are always hanging out at Capital Factory, in addition to the huge mentor network Techstars already has to offer.

David Cohen announced the new Techstars program this morning and also opened up the application process.

“Forbes and Bloomberg have been calling Austin the No. 1Boomtown and the best place for your startup for years now, and Google recently chose it as the second city to receive the fastest Internet on the planet. TechStars exists to put the best mentors and the best entrepreneurs together in the best startup communities so Austin is a natural next stop for us. We will run our first program starting this August and applications are open as of today!” Cohen said in the blog post.

Here’s the application for Techstars Austin

Speaking of Austin here’s over 40 startup stories from SXSW 2013.

Top 5 Reasons Startup Founders Blow Through Money

There’s a lot of reasons why companies don’t make it, and sometimes it’s not that the idea or product isn’t good — it’s just that you run out of money. Even though we know that blowing through money is a “bad” thing, I’ve been talking a lot with founders and investors about what “bad” means. What have they noticed as common themes when they sit down with founders that exhausted their money too quickly at the seed stage? So here are the top 5 reasons startup founders blow through money.

Let me know your thoughts and if this aligns with what you’ve personally seen. What have you regretted spending money on, or what do you roll your eyes at as an investor?

1. “I have a business meeting in Thailand!”

We all know these founders. They travel somewhere new every week. Their meetings take them around the world–frequently. They are always tired and busy from travelling, and they make sure to check-in at every luxurious hotel they stay at.

Why this fails: The desire to pre-maturely live a life of luxury through funding raised for business development extends to other poor choices. It goes — fast.

Understanding this entrepreneur: Typically extroverted and commands control of the room. Works efficiently on little sleep and cares a lot about appearances.

Can benefit by: Making sure that meetings are efficiently scheduled. One entrepreneur told me they combat this by making a “day trip” rule. If the meeting is important enough to fly for the day and return, it’s a go. It helped this entrepreneur cut down on meetings that could be conducted via phone without sacrificing quality.

2. “That’s way too expensive!”

This is another extreme–founders that don’t want to spend anything and opt for cheap solutions…cheap everything. This sends bad signals to clients and investors and often costs the entrepreneur more in the form of lost opportunities.

Why this fails: Some founders are very conservative. They need money in the bank–a cushion. They are risk takers with anxiety and they want to ensure that they get the results that they need for the next raise.

Understanding this entrepreneur: Typically introverted and mathematical. Usually overly conservative in their predictions.

Can benefit by: Giving up some control and working with investors and advisors to create healthy budgets.

3. “It’s a marketing spend!”

We all enjoy celebrating successes of startups for special launches or funding announcements. Sometimes startups plan evenings with open bars and chalk it up to a good use of marketing dollars. Chances are this isn’t the best use. Same can be said for overly-spending on trade shows, fancy promotional videos, or sponsoring an event before the time is right.

Why this fails: Marketing is extremely important, but many startups will exhaust their “marketing spend” without focusing on basic things first — like establishing a healthy blog presence, or discovering ways to become “experts” in a topic by speaking at conferences. If you’re spending money on marketing and you don’t have a blog, you’re doing it backwards.

Understanding this entrepreneur: Typically extroverted and creative and full of ideas. Too focused on big picture instead of steps to get there.

Can benefit by: Forcing themselves to write plans about their spends. Marketing is about ROI, so if you are planning on spending money you need to know what a worthwhile conversion will be for you. Are you looking for customers, users, app downloads? What result will make you happy?

4. “We’re going to hire salespeople!”

A great mentor told me that you only need one salesperson. She didn’t mean literally one – but she meant that you, as a founder, need to be able to sell your product yourself before trying to hire others to sell it for with/for you. Managing a sales team without getting your hands dirty in the sales process only makes you disconnected from your product, and will frustrate future early sales employees.

Why this fails: As a founder you are the product, don’t expect to hire and watch the numbers soar. Your product won’t sell itself unless you sell it first. It doesn’t matter how many sales people you hire if you don’t have the sales process down in the first place.

Understanding this entrepreneur: Typically they don’t have a background in sales and think that hiring sales employees will magically make numbers appear on a sales board. Typically technical, sometimes egotistical.

Can benefit by: Selling the product. That’s all there is here. If the founder is technical and won’t be doing sales, someone on the founding team must be a hustler. Founders are either selling or building. Choose one and do it well.

5. “I’ll never work for anyone, ever!”

This entrepreneur is right out of college. They don’t want to get a job, or can’t last at a job for more than a few months. They have great ideas and plans and want to change the world, but need some reality first. These founders just spend money in all the wrong places for all the wrong reasons, which could be anything from 1-4 mentioned above. Great mentors seem to make or break these types of entrepreneurs.

Why this fails: If you haven’t had a job before you may lack judgement of certain realities and what it really requires to start a business.

Understanding this entrepreneur: Typically driven, these founders need to get broken in a bit before reaching the point of being able to successfully manage others.

Can benefit by: Getting a job and showing that you can work well with others and under the management of others. The goal is to show that you are able to learn and adapt.

Sarah Ware is the co-founder and CEO of Markerly, next generation publisher tools. Markerly is a recent graduate of 500 Startups. Nibletz has used Markerly’s publisher tools since their launch last year. Right click on anything on the site and see the magic happen.

Last year Sarah appeared on Bad Ass Female Founders From Everywhere Else and the “I Survived An Accelerator Panel” hosted by GAN’s Pat Riley,at everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference! Find out more about the next everywhereelse.co here.

Mark Cuban Crowdsources Next Maverick’s Uniform

Ever since our co-founder and CEO Nick Tippmann got Mark Cuban to come to his Shark Tank Season 3 Premiere party in Indianapolis, we’ve covered Cuban and his investments in startups. Cuban’s personal blog, blogmaverick, describes the billionaire investor, Shark Tank Shark and owner of the Dallas Mavericks, to a “T’. Not because he’s the owner of the NBA team with the same name, but because he’s a maverick himself.

Cuban isn’t one to do things the “normal” way. After a dismal season this year, Cuban has decided that maybe the Mavs need a change in uniform. He wants to implement the change in the 2015-2016 season.

On his blog, Cuban announces to the world and the Maverick’s fan base that this change is coming. More importantly though, Cuban isn’t hiring some big shot consultant or spending millions of dollars to come up with 10 mediocre designs. He’s crowdsourcing. He wants fans of his beloved Maverick’s to design the teams next uniform.

Now he wants the uniforms to fit the NBA uniform format. He also wants to keep the logo intact and try not to stray far away from the current color scheme. Of course he’s looking for creativity stemming from the great people that love his team.

He’s quick to point out that any design submitted immediately becomes the property of the Dallas Mavericks and if you don’t want to adhere to that you need not submit.

“Who will own your design ? The minute you post it, the Mavs will. If you think its horrible that the Mavs own your design. Do not post. If you think its cool that the Mavs could possibly use your design and you will have eternal bragging rights , then post away.” Cuban writes.

If Cuban feels up to it he may throw in some tickets for the designer. There’s no promise of anything except bragging rights, and he may not select any fan design at all. “That is life in the big city. Move on.” Cuban adds.

The contest is open until the end of May, click on over to Blogmaverick for more.

Check out more of our Mark Cuban coverage here at nibletz.com

Founder Spotlight: Ryan Buckley, Co-Founder & COO At Scripted.com

Ryan Buckley is Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of Scripted.com. Ryan holds an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management and an MPP from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Still and always a Cal Bear, Ryan graduated from UC Berkeley with degrees in economics and environmental sciences. He likes to dabble in PHP, Python, Ruby, Quickbooks, and whatever else needs to be done at Scripted HQ. Follow him @rbucks.

Who is your hero?

Abraham Lincoln.

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

Focus. Early on, in the first iteration of our company, we were building screenwriting software to help screenwriters work their way up in Hollywood. It was a lofty goal. Our first version of the product did everything from writer profiles to contest submissions and screenplay filters for producers.

It was too much. An advisor came down on us and reminded us that on our small budget (we had raised $37,000, which really felt like a lot of money) we couldn’t boil the ocean. Not even close. So we focused on one feature we were most excited about: web-based screenplay editing. Google Docs for screenplays.

That decision allowed us to hit a point where we could pivot off of that business and start Scripted.com. The reminder to focus on one problem has stuck with us, and our investors and new advisors tell us that our focus on the writing vertical is what makes us attractive.

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

My biggest mistake was entering a market where my customers were short-term and broke. In retrospect, the business plan competition results were right: you can’t build a business around amateur screenwriters. Our first business model was having them pay subscriptions to use our product. Then we discovered reality and tried to move to a model where studios pay us to access our 100,000 scripts.

Although studios have much deeper pockets, the sales cycle proved far too long and costly. The next pivot, to sell marketing content (not screenplays) to businesses (not studios) was the business decision that worked out.

Lesson learned: Make sure your customers can afford your product and it’s not too hard to sell to them.

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

I wake up at 7 a.m. and try very hard not to check email. By 7:30 I’m usually on the couch with my wife and watching Morning Joe (a terrific political morning show) with our coffee. Then I’ll either work from the couch for a bit or go straight to the office.

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

Spend as little as possible so you don’t have to stress about cash on a daily basis. Check your accounts monthly at least and always check your credit card bill for subscriptions you no longer need. Put off paying yourself for as long as possible too. It’ll make you appreciate and respect your business.

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

Subscribe to Fortune and Inc. And get a smartphone app to make it easy to read the blogs every day.

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

When we become a talent magnet, I’ll know we’ve made it.

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.

Startups: Is your PR strategy outdated?

Milan Startup Styloola Helps People Share Their Passion About Fashion

Imagine you’re a fashionista or a somewhat high profile fashion blogger and you have say 100,000 twitter followers and a very popular blog. Well how would that boutique store you just walked into know you’re there? That’s just one of the problems the founders of Milan based startup Styloola hope to fix.

Their social platform allows fashionistas and those who just love good fashion, to sync up over the things they love.

It’s like Pinterest for fashion, on crack with a purpose. You can upload your favorite fashions, pin fashions from others and even curate your own collection. Styloola can then share your collections with designers and boutiques to make owning your favorite fashions a reality.

Styloola also has a checkin twist that allows users to check in to their favorite fashions and stores.

There one of a handful of startups that we saw at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013 that actually understand how to effectively bridge online and offline commerce. 3 Other Things also has a great social approach to drive traffic to brick and mortar stores.

The company received an angel round of funding last fall and officially launched the next phase of Styloola at TechCrunch Disrupt two weeks ago. Check out our video interview below and for more info visit Styloola.com

Over 50 more startup stories from TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013 can be found here at nibletz.com

Shark Tank’s Daymond John Invests Time & Money In Chicago Startup Resultly

It’s gotta be exciting for Resultly founder Ilya Beyrak who just two months ago penned a blog post on the companies blog about what “I’m Out” means on the hit reality series Shark Tank. Now, Beyrak and the team at Resultly are celebrating bringing Fubu Founder and Shark Tank Shark, Daymond John on board as an investor.

More importantly though, John is excited about the product and part of his investment is a partnership where he will help the team grow their product that allows people to search for something and then get updated on it.

“Kim Kardashian sent a tweet last year stating how she keeps checking eBay for a pair of shoes everyday that’s sold out,” Beyrak said, . “If even Kim can’t find a pair of shoes and keeps repeatedly checking online, imagine how many others suffer the same fate,”

Resultly provides users with a mobile app to stay on top of all their interests. Tapping into the web’s largest ecommerce, travel, news, and social sites lets Resultly bring users items exactly matching their interest the second they hit the web. Resultly aims to eliminate the need for users to continue checking the Internet for updates on the things they care most about.

“When I first tried Resultly, I was blown away by the product in the first couple seconds of playing with it. It easily solves one of the biggest problems with search in a way that all of the big competitors aren’t addressing,” said John. “It was hard not to get excited about the product and additional value that I could bring.” Resultly realized there was a real world problem of users repeating search behavior online to get the freshest content: the need for constantly checking if something has been added or updated online. Thru its service, once a specific interest is added to a users’ account, Resultly stays on the lookout for things matching that interest automatically. Users then receive detailed alerts to their mobile device with the key information around those items. Products receive key information like images, price, color, and condition, while Job alerts show salary, location, and position.

John invested in Resultly throgh his “shark branding” investment arm. Sharkbranding scours the country to find interesting startups and companies that would compliment John’s current portfolio of companies or that would make great partners. We met SharkBranding’s, Jared Nixon, at the GigTank Investor Day in Chattanooga Tennessee last August.

Shark Tank’s Mark Cuban leads $1 million dollar round for Florida startup.

Social Entrepreneur Sticks It To Ambercrombie’s Douche Bag CEO Mike Jeffries

The stories about Mike Jeffries,the king of retail douche baggery, have been all over the interwebs over the last two weeks. That’s when he went on the record saying that he doesn’t sell his clothing to plus sized women and that Abercrombie is elitest and only wants a certain kind of customer.

Jeffries actually said, in regard to this policy, ” In every school there are the cool and popular kids and then there are the not so cool kids. We go after the cool kids. A lot of people don’t belong and they can’t belong”.

This has prompted a wide range of reactions across the country. Boycotts, meme’s, and the latest endeavor, one social entrepreneur’s way to get back and give back.

Los Angeles based Greg Karber, who bills himself as a writer, philosopher, performer, video maker, cultural critic and entrepreneur set out on a journey in hopes that others will join him.

He went into a Los Angeles GoodWill store and bought up their entire inventory of Abercrombie and Fitch clothing, in a variety of sizes and styles. He then set out to L.A.’s skid row, an area with one of the largest homeless populations in America and started giving away the clothes.

In the video below Karber says he can’t do it alone. He wants anyone that can to go through their closets, their friends closets and their neighbors closets and donate all their A&F clothing to their local homeless shelter. And when you do this, tag it #fitchthehomeless.

What Is Everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference, EE2014

For the inaugural everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference, over 2000 entrepreneurs, founders, investors and media registered for the first ever conference dedicated to startups outside Silicon Valley “everywhere else”. Although there was a huge winter storm event over the northeast part of the country over 1280 attendees filled the halls of the Memphis Cook Convention Center to enjoy three days of networking, keynotes, panels, fireside chats and some unbelievable night life.

Speakers at the Inaugural everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference included Bill Harris, the first “parental supervision” CEO of Paypal, Scott Case, founding CTO of Priceline.com and the CEO of Startup America, Mo Bridges, Danny Boice of 500 startups backed Speek.com, Gabe Lozano, Sarah Ware, Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits, and countless others.

All attendees at everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference received a free ticket to the Memphis Grizzlies vs Minnesota Timberwolves

Panels included topics like “raising money everywhere else”, “kick ass female founders from everywhere else”, a workshop with Cooper and Vlaskovits, Branding with the Brandery and so much more. All of the programming was geared towards early stage to series A startups that face the common problems of not growing up in Silicon Valley, and to some degree New York. These startups have a different subset of obstacles and we navigate them together.

The overall goal of Everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference and Nibletz, the voice of startups everywhere else, is to help startups stay home and grow their own communities.

EE2014, everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference 2014, is already generating a lot of buzz. Over 200 folks have purchased tickets and startup booths. To that end, with “everywhere else” in mind we make it very easy for bootstrapping startups to afford to attend the three day event. Tickets are currently on sale for $59 (last years price) but will increase by the end of the month.

hundreds of attendees poured into the clubs on Beale Street for the “Grasshopper Bar Hop” after the Grizzlies game.

Startups can exhibit in our Startup Village which includes the booth, table, chairs, and pitching on the main stage. It also includes a total of three attendee tickets so your team can attend. The early bird discount is $395 and also goes away later this month. The best part is we are a startup ourselves and now that things change so the Startup Village booth is fully refundable less $75 up until December 31, 2013. The Startup Village booth is intended for early stage startups through Series A. Longer tail startups should consider a sponsorship.

EE2014 will be held February 17-19th 2014 in beautiful Memphis Tennessee, a beacon for entrepreneurship “everywhere else”. We are planning shoulder events for the 16th as well as the weekend leading up to the event that are out of this world. Also, developers can count on a hackathon this year.

For those traveling to Memphis (which is most of the attendees and startups) our hotel discount this year is $109 at the Marriott Downtown which is conveniently located across the street from the convention center with a foot bridge.

Also new this year, we’ve partnered with American Airlines for a great discount. If you’re flying into Memphis for Everywhereelse.co, book your travel as early as possible and use the promotion code 3824AA. Make sure you sign up for American Airline’s Busines ExtrAA program while you’re at it to let this trip count!.

This year we’re pleased to announce that all attendees registered by June 30, 2013 will be able to access three summer webinars in our summer learning series absolutely free. We will have a branding webinar with archer>malmo, an accounting webinar with The Marston Group and a sneak preview of Legaleeze, one of the most popular panels at last years conference, with Baker Donelson.

Startups from everywhereelse came including SportsTradex from Florida

You can register for a startup Village booth by using this buy it now button below which includes:

3 conference passes for your team. Exhibitors will have the same access as paid attendees to everything found here
Tickets to all of our after conference events
pitch contests
8×10 exhibit booth space
6 foot table
Description in our professionally printed program
Description on the everywhereelse.co website (startups will be posted starting October 15)
Early access on to set up and late access to take down
Yes you can purchase extra tickets for team members beyond the initial three tickets. Those “exhibitor guest” tickets are only $50
Can we sell stuff at our booth YES
Can we demo our app at our booth YES
Just so we’re clear if your team is 3 people or less, you DO NOT need to buy additional attendee tickets.
We do ask that your booth is manned by at least one human being from your team during all exhibition hours but feel free to rotate that human and enjoy the rest of the event.

If you’re looking to attend everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference 2014, here’s the discount button for that. Both discounts end later this month.

Attendee Ticket Discounted Rate ($59)

Nashville’s Jumpstart Foundry Announces Summer 2013 Class

We told you today was going to be a big day for summer startup accelerator classes. Earlier today we reported on Memphis’ highly successful medical device accelerator Zeroto510 and their summer class. Before that we reported on Techstars Boulder class for summer 2013.

Now we turn to Nashville Tennessee and the Jumpstart Foundry. This startup accelerator offers an intense program in Music City USA, that will “graduate” during the summer. Last year there were three startup accelerator demo days in Tennessee in the month of August. Gigtank, Zeroto510 and Jumpstart Foundry all had cohorts conclude their program and pitch at demo/investor day, in a succession of Thursdays.

Jumpstart Foundry supports it’s cohort with over 125 mentors and an intense program. Also as an added bonus, midway through the program the cohort will move to Nashville’s new entrepreneur center, slated to open next month.

Check out this year’s cohort.

● eVisit a secure and convenient mobile platform to facilitate communications between primary care providers and patients

● Chalky an elearning video platform where experts can earn money through remote coaching and teaching

● Gun.io an exclusive Elancelike marketplace to connect with the bestofthebest open stack developers

● InvisionHeart a secure mobile platform for emergency responders to communicate critical medical statistics to doctors during emergencies

● LoadTag a SaaS mobile platform for trucking and freight companies

● MyMedMatch a service to match underutilized specialized rehab equipment to patients who need it

● NewsBreak Media Networks videobased advertising, interaction and promotion platform for gas stations and convenience store networks

● Poliana an online matching service for politicalbased social networking and advocacy

● Rocket Link Mobile a platform for SMSbased text ads that pay users to sharing them

● Zingfin a financial services SaaS platform that facilitates ETF analysis

Check out these two Nashville entrepreneurs talking about the “yes mentality”