DC Startup Quad2Quad Goes Free Just In Time For Spring Break

Susan Jones (68) and Elizabeth Van Sant (54) co-founders of Quad2 Quad in their booth at everywhereelse.co (photo: Allie Fox for NMI)

Two amazing ladies from Washington DC are working on their startup Quad2Quad at warp speed. You would think that these were two twenty something entrepreneurs, young, hungry and ready to work 100 hours per week. Well they’re hungry and working 100 hours per week, but Susan Jones is 68 and co-founder Elizabeth Van Sant is 54.

These two mothers, business women and now startup founders in Washington DC are old enough to be Mark Zuckerberg’s moms. Their startup, Quad 2 Quad, was actually created because Van Sant and Jones have become somewhat pro’s at getting their kids off to college. They know the ins, the outs and “the ropes”.

We’ve interviewed and profiled quite a few college bound startups at nibletz.com. We interviewed Cleveland startup CollegeSkinny who’s platform helps high school students transition from high school to college. We featured CiteLighter which is a highlighting bookmarklet app that allows users to easily make citations in their research. Exceleratr, a New York startup, connects high school students to much needed extra-curricular activities outside of the high school campus. We also interviewed Swedish startup Studemia, which is a collaboration tool for students as well as CampusShift, a Youngstown startup looking to take a bite out of college debt.

Jones and Van Sant’s startup aims to help parents of perspective college students, simplify the college visit planning process. Quad2Quad essentially becomes the college visitor’s personal assistant.

Quad2Quad took part in the AppNation conference in San Francisco earlier this year and everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference. Despite having post college aged children Jones and Van Sant mix it up, network and mingle with the best of the college aged entrepreneurs.

Currently they are looking for avenues to raise money, continuing to iterate on their app and developing as much traction as they can.

Quad2Quad just announced that they are going “free” in the app store, just in time for college spring break. The app currently offers 74 colleges and 12 itineraries. They add more and more colleges all the time. They plan on adding another 35 schools in the month of April.

You can find out more about Quad2Quad here and download the iOS app here.

Check out these other Washington DC Startup stories here.

New Jersey Startup Refundo Puts The Bank In The Palms Of The Hands Of The Underbanked

Mobile banking is nothing new. Just about every bank in the world has some kind of mobile presence that can be accessed in a variety of places. Most banks are starting to allow camera phone pics of checks for deposits, even PayPal allows you to add to your account using your phone’s camera.

New Jersey Startup Refundo has started with the mobile bank. “Refundo gives millions of Americans (68MM in the US alone) the opportunity to transition into the financial mainstream, by allowing them to open a bank account right from their mobile phone in 30 seconds or less. Their mobile bank account comes with a MasterCard debit card and mobile app which will provide them with their bank balance, transaction history, access to tens of thousands of ATM and deposit locations in the US, and more” CEO Roger Chinchilla told nibletz.com in an interview.

The underbanked and unbanked tend to be low-moderate income individuals who don’t have access to or can’t afford a traditional bank. With Refundo, if you have a phone, you have a bank.

We got a chance to talk more in-depth with Chinchilla, check out the interview below:

What is Refundo?

Refundo is a provider of high-quality and affordable financial products and services that are unmatched in this industry, tailored to meet the unique needs of the underserved communities.

Refundo founders Grimaldy Dominguez and Robert Chinchilla (photo: cnn.com)

Who are the founders and what are their backgrounds?

Roger Chinchilla CEO- Roger currently resides in New Jersey with his wife and 2 kids and is an avid open source developer. After brief stints at Queens College where he studied accounting and NYU where he studied computer science, he founded a tax preparation office in Elizabeth NJ. A year later (2005) he hired his good friend from high school that had recently graduated from college and wanted to put his knowledge to use.

Grimaldy Dominguez CFO- Grimaldy currently resides in New York City and currently controls the finances at Refundo. He graduated from Paul Smith College in NY with a Bachelor’s in Business Administration. Together with Roger, they built a tax practice that currently serves over a thousand clients annually with offices both in NY and NJ and clientele across the US. He currently oversees 150 professional tax preparation offices nationwide.

Bryan Amason SVP SALES & MARKETING- Bryan Received his BS Degree in CMP at Oral Roberts University, Tulsa OK. Bryan began his software career working for a privately held tax and accounting software company that was later acquired by Intuit. He worked in the tax software industry for 15+ years and has a lot of experience on how traditional tax software companies operate. He has always been ranked as a top sales executive earning ranks such as National Account Manager / Premier Accounts at Intuit. He managed a national/premier sales team of 5 while at Intuit, which managed millions of dollars in software sales.

Jeremiah Nivar COO- Jeremiah holds a BA degree in Accounting with a minor in Business Administration. He brings over 20 years of legal accounting and banking experience to Refundo. At the NYC Bar Association he was a staff accountant and handled the day-to-day activities of the association. He then became a member of an AM LAW 100 international firm for 12 years. He began as a portfolio accountant, transitioned to the role of escrow manager / banking liaison and finished his career as assistant to the treasurer.

Where are you based?

Elizabeth, New Jersey, United States

What’s the startup scene/culture like where you’re based?

Being headquartered so close to NYC is advantage for us, as the city has a thriving startup scene and is now firmly established as the number two innovation hub behind Silicon Valley. New York City is big on several industries including tech, finance, and media, which give us the opportunity to draw on a wide-range of resources.

How did you come up with the idea for Refundo?

My co-founder, Grimaldy Dominguez, and I grew up in Queens, New York watching workers pay enormous fees to simply cash paychecks at check cashing locations. In 2009, two years after launching the accounting software company Rushtax, we realized an opportunity to help this underserved community. Many of the customers who turned to us for tax preparation did not have a bank account to deposit their tax refund. Seeing the dire need for a change, we decided to create a solution that would allow our clients to establish and access a bank account right from their mobile phones.

How did you come up with the name?

At the time, we were focused almost entirely on tax refund products, so it was a logical approach. I just added an “o” to Refund. It doesn’t get easier than that. The name complements our philosophy: No junk fees. The fees that we do charge, however, are market competitive, often below industry average, and always fully disclosed. We refund the junk fees that traditional banks like to charge. That’s Refundo.

What problem does Refundo solve?

Due to the recent financial system crisis, financial institutions began targeting those who maintained low account balances by introducing some new, and not very transparent, fees; resulting in an increasing amount of people with no access to traditional and the most basic bank products. Refundo aims to tackle these social problems head on with an incredible mobile banking experience minus the unnecessary (junk) fees that are usually associated with this type of product. Mainly founded on the principle that the underserved community deserves an easy to use and fresh alternative to banking, as they know it.

What’s your secret sauce?

I would say our secret sauce is being committed to our broader social mission of achieving long-term, meaningful change for marginalized communities and utilizing technology to make this change. With the right team -working towards the same common goal- and technologies, all kinds of obstacles can be overcome.

Are you bootstrapped or funded?

Bootstrapped

What are some milestones you’ve achieved?

Refundo now employs a team of 25 with experience from all across the financial services industry and over 500 tax professionals nationwide now offer to process returns through our program.

What’s your next milestone?

Our next milestone is to launch our mobile banking application to the general audience, people who are actively seeking a banking product that fits their need. We are currently in QA testing and expect to launch beta in March 2013.

Who are some of your mentors and business role models?

I don’t really have business role models or mentors. I just try to emulate chess grand masters.

What’s next for Refundo?

Ingenuity is what started Refundo in the first place, so the revolution does not end here. Our plan is to introduce our great product to the rest of the World. We are actively seeking partnerships in Latin America and Canada with established businesses, where the percentage of underserved customers is significant and keeps rapidly increasing every day. Three of our Four founders are 1st generation immigrants who understand the underserved community in LATAM better than anyone else. Equipped with groundbreaking technology, awesome products, and a clear understanding of the market, our team is the best for this particular mission.

Where can people find out more?

Request your invite at: www.refundo.com Follow us on Twitter: @refundo Like us on FB: facebook.com/refundos

Have you seen these startup interviews at nibletz.com?

Tourize Gamifys Sign Up Process With Madness In March

Indiana startup Tourize is working on a new way to travel. Where most travel apps focus on booking flights or hotels cheaply, Andrew Heil, founder of Tourize, wants to put the “tour” back into travel.

“We believe that often times knowledge is missing as each tourist experiences a new attraction or is planning a new trip.’ Heil told nibletz.com in an interview. They’re currently accelerating in the “RunUp Labs, the travel technology accelerator which runs through demo day on May 10th.

RunUp Labs is part of a new wave of vertical accelerators, that many accelerator proponents feel is the model to go with. This accelerator only caters to startups in the travel sector and as such they can refine their mentors.

” It’s been great. My team and I have been working around the clock and of course learning a whole lot.” Heil said about RunUp Labs and the program they offer.

So how do you get people to sign up for a beta of a startup that’s doing things differently, especially if you’re based “everywhere else”. Well you do what it takes to create excitement and buzz and in the case of Tourize that means taking advantage of the NCAA tournament with their Madness in March sign up promotion.

Heil said “I thought if “Hipster” could get 10k signups with just a launch page and mailbox app could make a que of 600k signups, certainly I could make madness in march happen!”

“And it’s starting to – we launched on Sunday 3/24 and have already passed 1,000 page views rather quickly in the first 5 hours. We’ve continued to that rate and are at 2,500 page views in the first 36 hours. After reaching out to people who have signed up, people are interested in the hype of a new way to travel and of course, being part of the tournament!” Heil continued.

Tourize is tweeting out the tournament stats via their Twitter feed @tourizeapp.

They will shortly narrow down the field to see who the final four early adopters of Tourize are.

You can find out more about Tourize here.

Thinking about an accelerator check out these startup accelerator stories.

Little Rock Entrepreneurs Prepare For Startup Weekend April 5-7th

We were recently in Arkansas for the kickoff of Startup Arkansas, it was there we got to meet some of the Arkansas community leaders. Arkansas has four major startup regions and Little Rock is one of them.

Over the course of SXSW we got to spend a lot of time with the Startup Weekend team and provided some non traditional coverage of the organization that’s not only supporting entrepreneurs but entire communities as well.

Startup Weekend is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a three day hackathon style event to create businesses. It’s also the best place to go when you have an “idea” according to Startup Weekend CEO Marc Nager.

The three day event heads to Little Rock next weekend April 5th-7th at the Clinton School of Public Services, 1200 President Clinton Ave, Little Rock, AR.

Registration will begin on Friday evening at 6:30pm. That will be followed by great networking dinner where attendees will be able to size up the competition and the possible teammates for the weekend. The presentation will begin at 7:20pm. At around 7:30pm the “Friday Night” pitches will begin. We’ve covered a lot of startup weekends and you can see plenty of Friday night pitches here at nibletz.com.

The Friday night pitches are 60 seconds and hard timed by a Startup Weekend official. In that 60 seconds you need to sell the audience your idea and why it should be built over the next 53 hours. After everyone who wants to pitch has been given the opportunity, community voting will commence. It’s a rather diplomatic process. Usually the pitchers will hold up a sign with their startup name on it and attendees will put a sticker on the idea they like the best. At the end of the process, those with the most stickers will have their ideas developed.

Friday evening typically tops off with team selection and then some icebreaker time with the teams. From there the teams break off and start working on the startup idea.

Saturday, the community coaches come into play. These seasoned entrepreneurs and local business folks are there to help answer questions for each team and provide ideas and suggestions. The coaches for Startup Weekend Little Rock are Kristian Anderson, KA+A Founder and President; Dustin Williams, UX Architect and Designer; Josh Clemence, CEO, Founder BLKBOXLabs; Mike Smith Jr, Advisor at Innovate Arkansas, Whitney Horton, Arkansas Small Business and technology development center marketing specialist; John Twyford, Arkansas Small Business and Technology Development Center Startup Finance & Management Consultant; Mike Steely, eCommerce and Entrepreneurship Coordinator, Arkansas Capital Corporation; Lee Watson, Owner of Clarovista; Ted Dickey, Advisor at Innovate Arkansas; Stuart McLendon, Senior Financial Analyst at CFO Network, Adjunct Professor of Finance at UALR; and Luke Coleman, Software Developer III at ABC Financial Services.

Saturday is also the day that most teams take to the streets, the phones, the emails and the interwebs to get customer validation on their startup project. All the while designers, developers and coders are working on pitch decks, wire frames, prototypes and products.

Sunday is the day the teams put the finishing touches on both their products and their presentations. At 5:00pm and not a second later, the selected teams will have five minutes to pitch their idea and have a brief Q&A with the judges. Startup Weekend Little Rock judges are: Millie Ward, Co-Founder/President Stone Ward; Jeff Amerine, Venture Capitalist/leader Innovate Arkansas; Arlton Lowry, Designer / Founder, Made by Few / Adjunct Professor of Art, UALR; Jeff Stinson, Director, Center for Innovation & Commercialization at UALR; and Jeanette Balleza, Bad Ass Startup Chick and Director ARK Challenge.

You can register for Startup Weekend Little Rock here

Here’s more Startup Weekend Stories at nibletz.com

Tampa Bay Wave Announces First Accelerator Class

The paint is hardly dry at the Tampa Bay Wave incubator and accelerator. No, literally they just opened their doors on March 15th and with that, the center that prides itself on being by entrepreneurs, for entrepreneurs, announces it’s inaugural class.

Michael LaPlante, the curator of the Tampa Bay Startup Digest announced the first 8 startups to accelerator at Tampa Bay Wave in Monday morning’s digest. Here they are:

SHOOTRAC: Provides organizations of all sizes a simple way to capture big data on its customers, assets and workforce and use the information to leverage these resources for maximum efficiency and customer service using a cloud-based, scalable Software as a Service solution

Cartooga: Through its proprietary e-commerce platform and expert staff, Cartooga, Coracent offers shopping cart hosting and a variety of conversion optimization features designed to help businesses open an online store, drive traffic and increase conversion rates.

Secondhand Living: An e-commerce site where consignment, antique and thrift shops, as well as architectural salvage material suppliers promote their businesses and offer their products for sale. There are thousands of these independently owned shops in North America (even more abroad) and the majority of them have no online presence.

Drawer: A technology product expressed initially through a mobile application that provides a framework for capturing and cataloging real-life recommendations between friends and acquaintances. Drawer helps to catalog across various verticals – places, movies, music, products, books, etc. – in order to provide a comprehensive and centralized place for storing this information.

Commendable Kids: It is a community of children striving to be the best they can, as they work toward earning badges that can then be proudly displayed and shared with their supporters. Commendable Kids helps encourage and challenge children to learn new skills and reach new milestones.

Confy.co: Confy.co helps track and organize an event from start to finish by providing targeted solutions and management tools to conference organizers, sponsors, hosts and other event-related personnel to successfully manage the myriad of data, requirements and essential organizational needs.

Kite Desk: A personal cloud information manager that lets users connect their cloud service accounts and automatically links and organizes their messages, contacts, files, events and more into useful streams of information. Kite Desk provides the unique value of personalized, contextual computing to both web and mobile clients.

SavvyCard: A mobile web platform for actively referring business transactions. It combines features of an online business card with an intelligent referral system that generates measurable leads and sales. SavvyCard offers a convenient way to pass “warm” referrals from any web enabled device, track and respond to referrals in real time, reward referral behavior and build mobile-friendly referral networks.

Obviously Tampa Bay Wave is off to a great start, we expect to hear a lot more from them. If you’re in the Tampa Bay area you can find out more here.

We’ve got more accelerator stories here.

Gangnam (style) SpringBoard Startup Flitto Is THE Translation App

Flitto, a SpringBoard London graduate has the Gangnam style for sure, that’s because they are based in Gangnam South Korea. They are truly rockstars for graduating from SpringBoard London which has become TechStars.

When you think about Flitto don’t think translation app. Simon Lee, Flitto’s founder describes the app as: “a social translation platform that lets you access all kinds of content in your own native language. Any user can add translation and earn points and ‘karma’ from other fans for your translation work.”

Flitto serves up translation from the crowd, making it easy to get quick, real life translations on content rather than mechanical translations which can sometimes leave the user just as lost as before the translation.

“The language barrier can be broken down by hiring professional translators. But we’ve tried to be smarter than that. We can get rid of the language barrier without hiring one single translator just by using the greatest tool humans have ever made – the Internet.” Lee said on the SpringBoard/TechStars London Blog.

We got a chance to catch up with Lee at the SXSW Interactive Tradeshow in the Gangam Style startups showcase.

Check out these other stories from SXSW

We’ve got more TechStars coverage here.

Everywhereelse.co 2014 Early Bird Tickets Down To 12, Village Booths 5

After the huge success of everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference last month in Memphis Tennessee, we immediately went to work on 2014.

Dell, American Airlines, Amazon, .co, Baker Donelson, and Archer Malmo have signed on to support the 2014 event of the year and we’ve got more programming, more workshops, FOOD and more for 2014.

Everywhereelse.co 2013 the startup conference featured three days of programming, three startup pitching contests with $60,000 in cash given away, three amazing after parties and every attendee (1280) went to the Memphis Grizzlies NBA game that sunday night.

Everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference is the event for startups “Everywhere Else” we saw attendees from 41 different states and 7 countries with 72 startups from across the country. It’s the largest single venue startup conference in the country and the largest startup conference in the world dedicated to startups everywhere else.

If you’re interested in sponsoring email info@everywhereelse.co

1280 people packed in the ballroom for everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference 2013

Some of our speakers in 2013 included: Scott Case (CEO of Startup America and Co-Founder of Priceline), Ingrid Vanderveldt, Rohit Bhargava, Danny Boice, Brant Cooper, Pat Vlaskovitz, Gabe Lozano, 500 startups graduate Sara Ware and more.

2014 we add more content, a hackathon with Amazon Web Services, Free breakfast and lunch and more.

We introduced the 2014 tickets at 2013 prices, ending on March 27th when our first price increase kicks in. We set aside 400 attendee tickets at the early bird rate and 50 startup village booths. As you can see below we’re down to 12 attendee tickets and 5 startup booths (at least at the time this was written)

Event Registration Online for Everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference 2014 powered by Eventbrite

For more on the conference check out these stories at nibletz

“Early Bird” Tickets And Startup Village Booths Running Out For EE2014

Everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference was the largest single venue startup conference in the US and the biggest startup conference in the US focused entirely on startups outside the valley. Over 2000 tickets were sold and 1287 people checked in at the three day event in Memphis Tennessee.

Everywhereelse.co 2014 is poised to be bigger and better, especially because we’ve had a lot longer to plan and the first event is under our belts so we know what needs to be improved.

Great sponsors like Baker Donelson, archer>malmo, Independent Bank, Dell and American Airlines are already on board for 2014 with many more announcing soon. If you’re interested in sponsoring send an email to info@everywhereelse.co

With our sneaker strapped road trip, SXSW and our recent trip out west we haven’t been keeping an eye on the early bird tickets and Startup Village booths, well we just looked and as of the publishing of this article there were only 9 Startup Village booths left at the early bird rate and only 18 attendee tickets. The early bird rate ends in 5 days on March 27th and it gets you in the conference as an attendee or Startup Village booth at 2013’s rates. After that they go up!

The Startup Village booth ticket gets your startup booth space, in multiple pitch competitions and three attendee tickets. The booth space includes a table, two chairs, backdrop, and a waste paper basket. This year it will also include a sign with your startups name on it! Startups also get access to a private party and their name and contact info in the take home program, and their description on the website.

Don’t wait once these tickets are gone they’re gone and at the rate they’re going they’ll be gone this weekend.

Event Registration Online for Everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference 2014 powered by Eventbrite

Check out all the coverage of everywhereelse.co 2013 click here

500 Startups Company Waygo Talks To Nibletz [video][500 startups]

Earlier this morning we brought you the interview with Spinnakr founder Michael Michael Mayernick who talked with us about laying their foundation in Washington DC which helped them prepare for and then graduate from 500 Startups in Silicon Valley.

Ryan Rogowski, the cofounder of translation startup WayGo, also talked with us about their experience in Rhode Island before being chosen for 500 Startups.

In the video below Rogowski talks to us about the much lower cost of overhead in Rhode Island, and how it allowed them to speed up their development process. Waygo was able to catch the eye of 500 Startups founder Dave McClure, who is a very frequent traveler, the kind that Waygo was designed for.

As for what they do?

Waygo is a mobile app that allows you to hover your smartphone camera over text or images and get a translation. For instance, if you want to order Chinese Food from a Chinese menu written in their native tongue, Waygo would allow you to scan the menu and get real time translations. The best part? Everything is done locally on the device side which makes the translations come extremely fast.

Waygo is designed with the tourist in mind. You can use Waygo to translate Chinese food menus, and signs on the road, bars and restaurants.

The idea came about over two years ago when Rogowski was living in China and realized how hard it was to translate things in real time.

Check out our video interview with:

Check out more 500 Startups coverage from nibletz!

Detroit Startup Glocal: Share Your Local Content With 113 Cities Around The World [video][sxsw]

Detroit startup Glocal is a new local sharing site that allows you to share your pictures, videos and other content with 113 cities worldwide.

Glocal aims to be the source for localized content, shared with the world. Content creators can share their articles, photos and videos from their city. Content consumers can use Glocal to find out what’s going on, what to do, where to eat, local news and more for any of the 113 cities (and growing) that Glocal has a community for.

The company, founded by Lincoln Cavalieri, launched back in October after a three year development period, and after raising $1 million dollar seed round from Compuware’s venture capital arm.

One of the things that makes Glocal unique is the diverse range of content being created by community members. For instance, content creators in the Memphis community have offered everything from great burger and restaurant suggestions, to photos from a tour of the Fedex world headquarters.

A quick check in Chicago has highlights captured from various Saint Patrick’s day parties, to fan pics of the Chicago Bulls and even local news like a recent lawsuit in McDonald’s.

A tour of the Berlin community turns up beautiful photos of the city, the newest Mercedes Benz and a variety of local news.

Right now Glocal can be accessed via mobile web but Cavalieri already has his team working on native apps for Android, iPhones and iPads.

You can sign up to contribute content, or peruse the Glocal offerings here at Glocal.com

Check out our quick video interview from SXSW below.

We’ve got a truckload more SXSW 2013 coverage here.

500 Startups Alum: Spinnakr On The Importance Of Laying A Foundation At Home

This week nibletz, the voice of startups everywhere else, is participating in the first annual LaunchYourCity, mission trip to Silicon Valley. The trip, sponsored by American Airlines and Uber, is a chance for startups, and ecosystem influencers from Memphis to experience the high paced startup life in the Valley.

Through Memphis native and 500 statups alum Frank Langston, and our good friend Sarah Ware at Markerly, we got to spend a good portion of the day at 500 startups.

Internally at nibletz we actually debated taking this trip up until the last minute. So while we’re the voice of startups everywhere else, there is a lot to be learned from founders out here in Silicon Valley. First things first about 90% of them aren’t actually natives, most have moved from somewhere else.

To that end, we got a chance to talk with two startups, Spinnakr and WayGo, about the role laying foundations in their hometowns played in building their startups prior to heading out west.

500 Startups has no requirement on where a startup has to reside after the completion of their 4 month program. We gathered that about half of the founders in each cohort choose to stay in Silicon Valley while the others either move back home or to cities that strategically work better for their companies.

Spinnakr is one of the startups that stayed in the valley. They actually graduated out of the 500 startups accelerator in 2012 (the 2013 class just graduated last month). Michael Mayernick, co-founder at Spinnakr, talks to us in the video below about the importance laying roots and a foundation at home played in Spinnakr’s growth and success.

Maryernick is still intune with what’s going on in Washington DC, itself a city where innovation is progressing at a very fast pace. Mayernick was named a Tech Titan by Washingtonian Magazine in 2011. He curates the DC Startup Digetst and co-organizes the DC Tech Meetup.

Check out the video below and for more info visit: Spinnakr.com

Check out more of our 500 Startups coverage at nibletz.com

Chicago Startup Bus Team: MyBestRX Pitches In Startup Bus Finals At [sxsw]

A team of ambitious entrepreneurs, that hope to tip the scale when it comes to enabling affordable local healthcare, completed the first in their suite of mobile apps, designed for just that, while on board The Startup Bus.

The idea behind MyBestRX is simple. When people purchase prescription drugs from the pharmacy, there is no standard “MAP” pricing. You could very well find your prescription at your pharmacy for hundreds of dollars, and find it a mile down the road for half of that.

MyBestRX hopes to solve the problem of looking for the best price on prescription drugs. The app will allow you to key in or speak your prescription and it will return results based on both proximity and cost.

Other features include the voice response, as described above, and the ability for the user to take a photo of their current prescriptions and have it filled by way of email or fax directly from mobile.

MyBestRx positions themselves as “A Personalized Rx Concierge”, perhaps the easiest way to find and purchase prescriptions.

Check out the video below and for more info visit nibletz.com keyword: SXSW

5 Rules For Naming Your Startup: Memphis Firm Offers Advice In SXSW Panel [sxsw]

60 year old Memphis advertising and PR firm archer>malmo presented their panel “When Bad Names Happen To Good Startups” last Monday at SXSW Interactive. Over 100 people attended the panel discussion and stayed throughout the entire hour long session.

archer>malmo Chief Creative Officer Gary Backaus and Senior Copy Writer Justin Dobbs presented the entertaining hour long session for startups curious about naming. The duo of advertising executives mixed humor with the session which made it quite entertaining.

Despite having a client roster that includes names like Pfizer, Verizon and RJ Reynolds, Dobbs broke the ice and established credibility by making light of the fact that the firm is located in Memphis. He showed a few slides of new technologies that archer>malmo currently employs including; email, and intranet. He also showed a slide of a rack card rack that you would find at a hotel, saying they were creating something new called the “Take One”.

When it came down to content though, Dobbs and Backaus gave out some great tips in their “5 Rules for Naming Your Startup”.

1) you’re not naming a startup you’re naming a brand.

2) Create a first impression that’s positive, intriguing and clear

3) Don’t create conceptual or technical hurdles

4) When necessary be descriptive, whoa whoa not that descriptive

5) If it ain’t broke.

It was during the fifth rule where Backaus discussed the work that the firm is doing with nibletz.com The Voice Of Startups Everywhere Else. (disclaimer: nibletz is a portfolio company for archer>malmo a>m ventures arm).

One of the biggest takeaways we got from the panel wasn’t an actual rule “You don’t need a big idea for your name you just need a name for your big idea” Backaus told the audience.

Find out more about archer>malmo here and a>m ventures here.

Here’s more of our great startup coverage from SXSW 2013

Meet The 10 Startups In The Nike Techstars Accelerator

Techstars, the world renowned accelerator network has been beefing up there offerings with new locations, like Techstars Chicago and new vertical accelerators in conjunction with Microsoft and Nike. When announced late last year, the startup space was on fire over the possibilities that would come from an accelerator driven by Nike and TechStars.

The Nike accelerator is buit around their NikeFuel digital platform and the Nike Fuel band.

“We are excited by the response to the Nike+ Accelerator and the high caliber of applicants to the program,” Stefan Olander, Nike’s vice president of digital sport, said in a news release. “We recently celebrated the first year of NikeFuel, and the Accelerator program is a natural next step to broaden and enhance the Nike+ ecosystem – allowing Nike to offer richer experiences to athletes of all levels.”

As with most TechStars branded accelerators, hundreds of teams applied. Here are the 10 that were chosen, as reported by the Portland Business Journal.

FitDeck (San Diego, Calif.) — Digital decks of exercise playing cards that deliver ever-changing workouts for fitness and sports. (Fitdeck.com)
GoRecess (New York) — Helps users find, book and review fitness activities. (Gorecess.com)
Chroma.io — Indie game studio that creates virtual worlds tied to real-world activity. (jumpbots.chroma.io)
CoachBase — Provides a digital sports coaching platform. (Coachba.se)
GoFitCause — Leverages fitness data as a means of raising money for charities. (Gofitcause.com)
HighFive — Ad network for health and fitness apps that helps people achieve goals by rewarding them along their journey. (Highfive.io)
Sprout At Work (Toronto) — Provider of corporate wellness solutions using social and gamification tools to inspire employees and employers. (Sproutatwork.com)
GeoPalz (Boulder, Colo.) — An interactive gaming and rewards platform for kids and families. (Geopalz.com)
Incomparable Things — Creates activity-driven fantasy sports leagues. (Incomparablethings.com)
RecBob (Cedar Rapids, Iowa) — Offers a platform that makes recreational sports easy by organizing play. (Recbob.com)

Find out more about TechStars here.

Check out more accelerator stories at nibletz.com