The Sneaker Strapped SXSW TakeOver, and Now We’re Back On The Road

Nibletz celebrated their first birthday as “The Voice Of Startups Everywhere Else” at South By Southwest 2013. The idea was born last year after the now infamous Startup Bus standoff. That’s when founder, and content director, Kyle Sandler (that’s me and I hate writing in third person), found that there were so many more startups outside Silicon Valley, than inside. 94% to be exact.

With that an idea was born and we immediately went to bootstrapping. Well our two man team, and our photographer put the words sneaker-strapped to entirely new levels. First off we would not have been able to perform like we did if it wasn’t for the “free food for founders” GroupMe group at SXSW. That list kept us informed for 5 days as to where all the great food was.

We also could not have done it without the help of Kelly Krause at the SXSW press office. You see in the previous four years we had press credentials through my previous site thedroidguy. This year, in planning everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference, we totally forgot the press deadline. A little groveling and some sponsor help allowed us to strike a deal with Krause and the SXSW press team where we came in early, covered the crap out of SXSWedu (which was a great show) and they would let our little oversight get swept under the rug. (that will never happen again).

So now here are some of the milestones, remember one writer (Kyle), One biz dev guy (Nick) and one photographer (Allie) and less than $300 when we got on the ground did all this:

– We were ranked 3rd on Twitter for SXSWi coverage (@nibletztweets) on Sunday and finished top 5

– We’ve already published 40 stories and have another 30 that are still being prepped

– We shot 100 videos

– Made friends with over 200 startups

– Sold a bunch of tickets to everywhereelse.co 2014

– and didn’t get into serious trouble

We stayed 20 miles out and took a combination of buses to get to and from the hotel. We caught up on a lot of rest in the Hilton lobby. And we truly brought out the voice of startups everywhere else.

Now as we get back on the road to again continue our roadtrip we need some major community support. We’re sneaker strapping it and we’re reader supported. We are charged with being on the road for the balance of 2013 as we wrap up our book that will be released Q4 2013. We’ve already been to 65 cities now and plan on visiting another 40 more.

We stopped in over 60 different cities across the country, went to startup meetups, startup weekends, startup weeks, incubators, accelerators and anything with a startup pulse. We made some awesome friends and met some great startups, many of whom came to Memphis for everywhereelse.co.

We can’t do this alone. Last year in 4 campaigns we raised around $5,000 on indiegogo. For this leg of the trip we’ve got some interesting things we can offer our sponsors and we’re doing it directly below. Thank you so much for your continued support and let us know what city and state you’re in so we can connect on the road trip.

Sponsorship levels

Attaboys (The Extra Value Meal) $6.00 (face it $5.00 doesn’t get you an extra value meal anymore)

This is our “attaboy” sponsorship feel free to get us as many extra value meals as you’d like. We’ll gladly thank you with a link in a thank you weekly wrap up on nibletz.com and give you a shot out on our twitter accounts.

A Taco, from Moe’s Or Chipotle $10.00

This sponsorship will help get us a taco from Moe’s or Chipotle, food is fuel, fuel is good . Feel free to get us as many taco’s from Moe’s and Chipotle as you’d like we will be extremely grateful.

For this sponsorship we will give you a paragraph shout out with your link, description and Twitter handle in a per stop thanks for the Taco’s post. We’ll also give you a shot out on Twitter (info captured in the butto below).

Bus Ticket $25.00

We take the Bolt Bus, Megabus and other regional cheap bus services everywhere we can because we boot strap to the point we call it sneaker-strapping. Your $25 donation can get us a lot more places than you would ever imagine on Megabus and Bolt Bus.

For this sponsorship you’ll receive a new “nibz” short form story about your startup (identified as a sponsored nibz) along with a linkback in the logo and at the bottom of the story you’ll also get 2 shout outs on Twitter.

A Tank Of Gas and A Tank You! $50.00

For the stops on the trip that we can’t make by bus we have to drive and your $50.00 sponsorship for gas comes in quite handy.

With your $50.00 sponsorship you’ll get a nibz featured post on nibletz.com as well as a thank you mention in our weekly thank you post with linkbacks. You’ll also get 4 tweets with your Twitter handle and link.

Hotel Money $120

You’ll breathe easier knowing that the nibletz crew will get most likely 2 nights out of this hotel money. We may not sleep, but rather stay up and work all night, but that’s ok with you because we’re all startup founders.

With your hotel money sponsorship you and your startup will receive a “sponsored” nibz feature story about what you do. We’ll tweet the story out on our regular tweet schedule to nearly 150,000 followers and share across all of our social networks.

Sneaker Strapped Patron Sponsor $550.00

The nibletz sneaker strapped patron sponsorship includes one “startup village” booth package for everywhereelse.co 2013, February 17-19th, 2014 in Memphis Tennessee. The Startup Village booth includes booth space, wifi, a chance to pitch for over $10,000 in cash and several other contest opportunities, name in program, description in virtual village and 3 attendee tickets.

As part of the road trip patron sponsors your website will be mentioned in a rotation with other sponsors on our youtube videos from the road trip (not including SXSW).

You’ll also get a sponsored feature story. Which will run in our social streams.

Also, if you choose, you can send two t-shirts one XL and one M and we will wear them in videos from the trip.

Sneaker Strapped Saint $1000

With the sneaker strapped saint sponsor package you will get everything in the Patron package including the startup village booth for next years conference. You will also get your logo prominently featured on the 2014 everywhereelse.co conference SWAG bag.

Provided it fits in the tour schedule we will also stop by your startup for an event or meetup.

If you choose we will wear your t-shirt in our videos as well.

Nibletz/Everywhere Else Saint Sponsor $1800

This sponsorship includes everything in the Saint sponsorship however the perks will be included during the SXSW 2013 coverage. This is an excellent opportunity for startups that can’t be at sxsw but still want added exposure.

At $1800 Nick or Kyle will wear your startup t-shirt for an entire day and an entire day’s worth of on camera videos. Your startup will also be featured in all of our AOL Radio coverage as demonstrated here.

Finally, we will write two stories about your startup and tweet them out over the course of a week. We will also give you 20 additional Tweets

Platinum nibletz & everywhere else sponsor (3 Available) $2700

This sponsorship includes everything in the Saint sponsorship however the perks and more

Your startup will be featured in every video that we do during the “outro” see this link for an example.

At $2700 Nick or Kyle will wear your startup t-shirt for three entire days and an entire day’s worth of on camera videos

Finally, we will write two stories about your startup and tweet them out over the course of a week. We will also give you 40 additional Tweets.

Thank you so much for your continued support!

Want To Get Into Investing? Start With $1 And KC Startup TreeSwing [video][sxsw]

If you’ve always wanted to start an investment portfolio, but getting thousands of dollars together was out of reach, than you’re in luck. A new Kansas City startup, TreeSwing, is releasing a mobile app that will allow investors to start investing in mutual funds with as little as $1.

If the company takes off, TreeSwing will open up a new world of investing to people across the country, with no brokerage fees, no minimum balances, and no required monthly investment, investors can contribute any amount they’re comfortable with.

TreeSwing will allow investors to select from a marketplace of professionally managed mutual funds offered by some of the top names in the industry. By keeping the marketplace purposefully small, using plain language, and providing independent data from Morningstar, TreeSwing aims to give investors an easy way to make informed choices.

According to Brian Smith , Design and Product Manager for the TreeSwing application, the app was created specifically to serve the millions of Americans who aren’t currently investing.

“I believe we’ve built something that will lower the financial, behavioral, and emotional barriers to the investment process,” said Smith.

We ran into TreeSwing a bunch of times while in Austin for South By Southwest. Their entire team was at the TechCocktail celebration of startups event at The Stage on Sixth, talking to people about their new way of investing.

We finally caught up with Smith at the SXSW trade show who took a little time to explain TreeSwing in the video below.

While crowfunding is gaining world wide popularity, TreeSwing offers an option for people who want to get their feet with with investing, at a much lower risk and barrier to entry.

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

Check out all these other great startup stories we found at SXSW 2013

KillSwitch, The Ultimate Broken Heart App With A Touch Of Slacktivism [video][sxsw]

We bumped into Clara DeSoto and Erica Mannherz, of Clearhart digital, in the Startup America Live lounge at SXSW 2013. Clearhart digital is a digital agency and app creation studio out of New York, that just happens to be founded by women.

They told us all about their first app, KillSwitch. This app is for the broken hearted, and does exactly what the name suggests.

After you break up with someone you use KillSwitch in conjunction with your Facebook account. It quickly purges your entire Facebook and gets rid of any references, photos, status updates, etc, of your X. Useful, huh?

Now both ladies are well aware that there are different degrees of breaking up, and KillSwitch allows for those degrees. If it’s a soft break up, you can easily get your photos and statuses back. If it’s a hard break up, and it’s totally over, you can neturalize your account from any reference of your X.

The idea for KillSwitch came about when Mannherz and DeSoto were talking to a third mutual friend. The girlfriend of theirs had just gone through a break up and was doing what most people do when they break up with someone, she was deactivating her Facebook account.

That can really suck for all your other friends though, they can’t tag you in photos, invite you to events or send words of wisdom over the break up on your Facebook wall.

KillSwitch makes it seamless. Now the broken hearted can just move on. And, of course it makes playing the field the next time around, much easier.

As for the slacktivism piece, a portion of the proceeds from the KillSwitch app are going to the American Heart Association so you can help fix broken hearts when you’re broken hearted, pretty neat huh?

Check out the video below. Geeks are going to love DeSoto and Mannherz, who’s agency Clearhart Digital, they liken to a double edged light sabre, you can find out more about that here. For those looking to make break ups suck less, check out KillSwitch here at killswitchapp.com

See more of our Startup Coverage at SXSW 2013, here

Steve Case & Ted Leonsis, Can These Two AOL Men, Save Social Local Commerce?

Steve Case,Ted Leonsis,Daily Deals, Groupon,Living Social,sxsw,sxswi

Steve Case (file photo: NMI)

Two of Washington DC’s powerhouse investors, Founder of AOL Steve Case, and owner of the Washington Capitals and Washington Wizards, Ted Leonsis, work side by side on many deals. Both are heavily involved in Case’s investment company Revolution.

Leonsis has been involved with Revolution Growth since it’s founding, however he has no financial stake in Revolution Growth I investments. Leonsis and Case have worked together since the AOL days, where Leonsis was a member of active management for 13 years, retiring in 2006.

They continue to work together today, although both are invested as individuals and separately in daily deal competitors Groupon and LivingSocial.

While many know that Groupon’s typical strategy, at least pre-ipo, was to quickly buy up competitors across the country, Living Social has always been on it’s own and will most likely stay that way.

We’ve seen the turmoil that both companies have been going through as of late. Groupon fired it’s founding CEO poster boy, Andrew Mason and quickly installed Leonsis and Groupon co-founder Eric Lefkosky as Co-CEO’s until a new CEO can be named.

Back in the DC area Living Social has been going through some problems of their own.A little over week ago, the investors in Living Social basically took back the company with an emergency $100 million dollar investment, which according to many sources, including privco.com, rendered all previous stock, even employee stock, worthless.

(PrivCo EXCLUSIVE): LIVINGSOCIAL Receives Emergency $110M Debt (“Equity” In Name Only) Infusion From Existing Investors With Oppressive Terms, JUST DAYS FROM BANKRUPTCY, Effectively Handing Over Distressed Co. to Today’s Financing Participants…Implied Valuation Incl All Req’d Payments: JUST $330M, DOWN 94% FROM $5.7 BILLION In Dec. 2011 V.C. Round…Pure Equity Was NOT Issued Today (As Has Been Widely Misreported)…Instead, A Desperate LIVINGSOCIAL Accepted A COMPLEX Series of Secured-Convertible-Debt-Like Securities With Onerous Terms (PrivCo Has Confirmed Exclusively) Including: (1) Liquidation Preferences of SEVERAL TIMES the $110M In Debt (2) Mandatory Cash Dividends Due (3) “Super-Warrants” And/Or Large Lump-Sum Cash “Elimination” Payment, (4) Secured Against Co. Assets and Stock, (5) Repayment of the $110M “Loan” in 4 Yrs w Add’l Payments, and (6) Re-Pricing of Participating Investors Earlier Rounds…Employees’ and Founders’ Common Stock Now Worthless. (industry trade publication privco said on their site)

A former LivingSocial employee, on condition of anonymity, told nibletz.com that friends of hers in the sales department hadn’t seen a paycheck in nearly two months, before the most recent cash infusion. A current LivingSocial employee, also speaking on the condition of anonymity, told us that the company was right on the cusp of some big ideas with both technology and sales and that no one wanted to see the company shut down.

Case was rater bullish on LivingSocial when speaking at the TechCocktail event at SXSW on Saturday afternoon. He said that despite what’s going on with the company, LivingSocial does have the potential to become the next AOL.

Many may recall how Case was instrumental in the biggest media merger of all time beween Time Warner and AOL. Although he is held highly responsible for the merger, he agreed to step down as CEO after that merger closed. While the outcome was far from the results they were expecting, AOL is still a big player in online media and is again seeing forward momentum.

Groupon has already pivoted since their value began declining shortly after going public. They now offer Groupon Goods, an almost Amazon competitor, that is the backbone to where the company is headed.

While LivingSocial hasn’t done anything that drastic just yet, they do have some new technologies in the works.

Case has never been one to turn down the long hall. At 54 he has plenty of time to see some of his investments pay off ten fold. ZipCar, a big investment for Revolution, was just recently sold to Hertz with a huge return to investors. The company was in a position where they didn’t necessarily need to take that deal, but it was right.

While four years may seem like an eternity to a startup, from reading all of the language in various stories about the recent LivingSocial bail out, the investors are giving the team four years to turn things around. Which, may be just enough time.

Meanwhile across the hall at Revolution, Leonsis has taken on much more responsibilities for day to day operations at Groupon. “There is a ton of negative sentiment in the press about this company, and I think people don’t separate the signal from the noise,” Leonsis told The Verge, “We have $1.2 billion in the bank. We have basically zero debt. And this last quarter, we had an operating profit. Yes, with one-time write downs, there was a loss. But the fundamentals of this business are sound.”

With Leonsis balancing Lefkosky’s Yang, and Case and company giving Living Social four years more breathing room, two men from AOL may have just saved daily deals.

Watch this video with Case’s remarks, this past Saturday at SXSW, on Living Social:

Steve Case talks about the importance of crowdfunding to early stage startups.

Where Do You Go With An Idea? Startup Weekend Of Course! [video][sxsw]

Startup Weekend is a great event. To date they’ve done over 560 Startup Weekend’s in 107 countries and that keeps on growing. While they hold events in Silicon Valley, Startup Weekend is a huge, community catalyst “everywhere else”.

Many cities like New York, Columbus, Cincinnati, Dallas and Los Angeles have had multiple Startup Weekend events, Startup Weekend CMO Joey Pomerenke told nibletz.com they still get excited when newbies organize their first event.

So what role does Startup Weekend play in the grand scheme of startup communities and startup ecosystems?

Well at a panel at SXSW, Startup Weekend CEO Marc Nager, talked about that role specifically. “Where do you go with an idea” he asked the audience. Do you go to an investor, no that’s not going to work out. Do you go spend thousands of dollars on a lawyer, and team just to start AB testing?

Startup Weekend provides a great platform to see if ideas have what it takes to move to the next level. During the 54 hour experience your peers will vote on whether they like the idea, then you’ll create something, do market research, and present it again. Doing this on your own, could take weeks, or months, with Startup Weekend you have 54 hours, and you’ll know whether to move on or not.

Does it work? Absolutely, companies like Zaarly, Rumgr, and Fundable are all Startup Weekend graduates.

Startup Weekend’s roots in the community go much further than a testing platform though. Nager said on the panel that they are working on getting different components of their own ecosystem to function in unison across the country and around the world. Startup Weekend is looking for their Startup Weekend, Startup Weekend NEXT and Startup Weekend EDU facilitators to work together in their communities. They are also looking to the Startup Digest curators to do that as well.

When all of the components work in harmony the entire Startup Weekend ecosystem, and the hundreds of communities it touches, benefit.

On the panel, moderator Lesa Mitchell, of the Kauffman Foundation, a major supporter of Startup Weekend, kept prying with Nager to find out what doesn’t work. He was hard pressed to find something that doesn’t work. Obviously at the entrepreneur level there can be issues. Egos can get in the way and even underhanded moves, like this, can get in the way.

Overall though, Startup Weekend continues to do a great job of driving communities worldwide.

Here’s that video. We’ve got more Startup Weekend coverage here, and you can find out more at StartupWeekend.org

Check out more of our SXSW 2013 coverage here.

New Hampshire Startup: Rock Lobby Shows Off At SXSW 2013 [sxsw]

New Hampshire startup RockLobby is like Yelp for live shows, which is a great reason for demoing at the SXSW trade show which bridges the interactive with the music festival.

RockLobby allows the user to find live shows and venues and write reviews on the shows themselves. If the live show isn’t already there, the user can create it. From there other users can read the feedback and the sliding rating scale to make informed decisions on which shows to attend.

We got a chance to interview Peter Kruger, founder and CEO of RockLobby who also took us on a tour of the app.

The mobile app has a global review feed that allows users to see a list of current live show reviews. The user can then click on the reviews they want to see more in depth. They’ll be able to see the live show’s star rating, comments, photos and even share it on their own RockLobby feed.

When a user wants to review a liveshow the realtime app allows them to click “I’m at a show”, “I saw a show”, or “I’m going to a show” where they can then add their narrative review photos and a star based review. The review is then published to the global review feed where others can read it, share it and comment on it.

Check out our video interview below. For more info visit RockLobby.com

See even more startup coverage from SXSW 2013 here!

Chattanooga’s GigTank Extends Application Deadline

GigTank,Chattanoga,startup,startups,accelerator

Last year’s GigTank winner Banyan, relocated permanently to Chattanooga from Florida. (photo: NMI 2012)

If you’ve been a nibletz for a while, then you acutely aware of the fact that Kansas City is not the first gigabit city, Chattanooga Tennessee is. With that, Chattanooga hosted their first GigTank accelerator last year.

The GigTank accelerator functioned with two tracks,students and entrepreneurs. The idea behind it was to accelerate companies that would use Chattanooga’s extremely fast internet as a conduit for their business.

This year, the cohort based program will run from May 13-August 16th. There’s a sliding scale for seed money, based on the number of founders. There’s also a pool of $150,000 of guaranteed follow on funding.

Here are the rest of the details:

· Access to Chattanooga’s “living lab” – The city’s 170,000 businesses and homes are connected to one another by a $300 million, one-gigabit fiber infrastructure, and GigTank participants will have this access at their fingertips.

· Access to a “tool kit” of unparalleled technology – Participants to the program don’t need to start from scratch. Every participant will have the opportunity to take advantage of GigTank’s “toolkit,” which ranges from existing prototypes in need of startups to enabling technologies that can be combined to create new concepts. More information about the “toolkit” can be found here. http://www.thegigcity.com/gigtank/toolkit/

· Workspace: All participants will share workspace in the heart of downtown Chattanooga.

· Mentors: GigTank is driven by mentors to help accelerate the process of bringing products to market. This year, participants will have access to industry experts from hundreds of companies around the world.

· Demo Day: Startups will present on Demo Day to crowd of strategic corporations, VCs, angel investors, mentors and media. In 2012, Demo Day had over 500 in attendance. Top performing teams will be taken on a cross-country investment tour as well including Silicon Valley and New York City.

· Funding: Accepted two person teams receive $10,000, plus another $5,000 if there are three or four founders. Individual specialists receive a $3,000 stipend for the whole summer. Teams can get access to additional prototyping capital from Alcatel Lucent, depending on the focus of the concept. These decisions are made independently by Alcatel Lucent. Promising concepts earn access to a pool of follow-on investment capital up to $150,000 per team.

For more information or to apply, interested entrepreneurs and teams can visit this site.

We’re on a sneaker strapped nationwide startup road trip, can you help?

Tony Hsieh, Founder Of Zappos And Downtown Project On Startup Communities [video][sxsw]

Tony Hsieh,Zappos,Downtown Project,Vegas Tech,startup,startups,startup communities,sxsw,sxswi

Tony Hsieh proudly points out that he is wearing a Zappos t-shirt. (photo NMI 2013)

Tony Hsieh isn’t just a guy who created a household brand, made money and then decided to give some to charity. Although his Downtown project, an effort to revitalize downtown Las Vegas, is funded largely by him, he is quick to point out that it takes a village to raise a startup community.

At South By Southwest over 200 people who identified as being part of the Vegas Tech community made the trek (on their own dime) from Las Vegas to Austin to be part of SXSW. More than double that number are participating in rebuilding the downtown area of Las Vegas that “tourists don’t really see” according to Hsieh.

Hsieh and other investors have pulled together $350 million dollars to build up the community around the old city hall building, which in six months will be the new world headquarters for Zappos. Hsieh originally thought that Zappos would build it’s own campus around the block city hall is on, but than decided that doing so would be too inward focused. While Google has a lot of real estate in Mountain View and Apple has a lot of real estate in Cupertino, both company’s campuses, for the most part, keep to themselves.

“Those campuses are really insular and don’t really integrate or contribute to the community around them” Hsieh said of Nike, Google and Apple.

Hsieh is hoping that, by recruiting statup companies, small businesses and others to the downtown area, an ecosystem will flourish and surround his own company with creative, forward thinking people.

The Downtown Project has committed $50 million to invest in small businesses, $50 million to tech startup companies, $50 million to arts, education and music and $200 million to real estate. They are trying to deal with the statistic that when a cities size doubles productivity goes up 15%, but when companies get there productivity generally goes down.

Hsieh and company have already recruited 20 startups to downtown Las Vegas. They’ve also been able to get commitments from folks that love what they are doing in Las Vegas but for some reason can’t move there. Many people have committed to speaking to the Vegas Tech Community, holding office hours or doing other community minded things.

This entire plan was demonstrated in high gear through many events at SXSW where people were packed wall to wall. It wasn’t just the 200 Las Vegas people either, people from startup communities across the country and around the world were clamoring for the opportunity to hang out with the positivity bubble that surrounds Vegas Tech.

The Vegas Tech community was also on hand throughout SXSW Interactive to show off what the community is like in hopes that the SXSW Las Vegas event this summer will be a huge success.

Check out the video below of Hsieh speaking on the Startup Communities panel at SXSW 2013.

Vegas Tech threw an awesome party at SXSW click here for photos and video

We’ve got a ton more startup coverage from SXSW here

Juan DotCo Takes A Break From His Birthday Party To Talk To Nibletz [SXSW]

Several people lay claim to being “Mr. DotCom”. Of course there’s Mega Upload founder Kim DotCom who reportedly, legally changed his last name to DotCom, then there’s former Vice President Al Gore, who some still believe invented the internet.

One thing’s for sure though, and that is that Juan Diego Calle, is Mr.DotCo. As the founder and CEO of .co, it was his vision that turned an old country top level domain into the top level domain that’s being used by startups and their support organizations across the country. In fact we use a .co for our annual conference and conference series, “everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference”.

On Friday at SXSW 2013, Calle celebrated his birthday with about 100 of his closest startup friends at a luncheon held at the Capital Factory. The celebration continued late into the night at Pete’s Piano Bar, where Calle was a great sport as the piano players roasted him.

Calle celebrates his birthday with entrepreneurs, founders and Startup America by being roasted at Pete’s Dueling Piano Bar at SXSW

.co is actually the ccTLD for Colombia. Through a unique partnership and licensing agreement with Colombia, .co the company has become the official registrant for sites ending in .co. There are over 1 million domain names registered as .co and some of the biggest brands in the world, took advantage of single letter domains that .co had to offer. Of course there were only 26 of them and 9 of them are gone.

Google (g.c0), Twitter (t.co), Startup America (s.co) and Overstock.com (o.co) are just a few of the companies that have taken advantage of the single letter domain.

Calle is no stranger to entrepreneurship. The native of Colombia, grew up in a family of entrepreneurs in the beer and wine distribution business. When Calle was 15 though, his parents had him, his brother and his sister move to the United States for safety, while his family stayed back and ran the family business. He and his siblings’ first entrepreneurial roots came in the form of a car stereo installation company.

At age 22 he went for his first internet startup, a hybrid between goto.com and Askjeeves. That company succumbed to the internet bubble burst, but that didn’t deter Calle from continuing as an entrepreneur, and keeping the servers on at the company, TeRespondo. He eventually sold that company to Yahoo in 2005.

As for .co, before launching the registration company that is now known as .co, Calle commissioned a research study of the top level domain .co. 80% of the respondents thought that .co was short for company and 3% knew it stood for Colombia. The country Colombia soon realized there was opportunity to be had with the .co domain name but didn’t have the know how to execute a plan. Calle did, and he responded by providing an outline for all the problems that the country we need to overcome to start making money off the TLD.

“In addition to having very strict registration requirements, an ill-conceived effort to protect the country’s identity on the Internet resulted in the extension existing only in the third-level (for example, .com.co) prior to our administration,” Calle said. “It was also the reason why Colombia, the 30th largest economy in the world, with a population of 40 million, had only 28,000 .com.co domains registered as of February 6th, 2010. There were 4 times more .coms registered by Colombians than .com.co’s! If anything, the effort to protect the country’s internet identity through restrictive policy, was in fact killing it.” Calle said to dn journal in 2010

Calle ended up bidding on the administrative rights for the .co TLD and through a joint venture with Neustar Inc .co the company was born. With the partnership in place Calle declared “Colombia is now a player on the internet”.

Calle is still operating as a startup. His small team is based in Miami where they handle the administration duties of the domain extension. They are also deeply entrenched in the startup scene. They quickly realized that .co was becoming a preferred extension of startups. They also entered into a partnership as a major sponsor of Startup America. Startup America’s website is s.co.

As an entrepreneur himself Calle gets excited talking with and hanging out with other entrepreneurs, which is why his entire birthday was spent doing just that.

He took a break from his luncheon festivities to talk with us in the video interview below. For more information on .co visit go.co

We’ve got more sxsw stories here, a LOT more.

You can help us on our sneaker strapped nationwide startup roadtrip here

Vegas Tech Brings The Heat To Austin Texas For SXSW

Tony Hsieh, the founder of Zappos and the Downtown project in Las Vegas has been all over the SXSW Interactive festival talking about startup communities. The Vegas Tech community, which according to Hsieh is a bi-product of not just his but the entire community, had a major presence throughout the festival as well. They hosted a lounge event, and had a party bus with bull horns on the front.

Even @zappos gettin down tonight #vegastech rox #sxsw #sxswi nibletz.com vine.co/v/bwEL7LtFZHK

— Startup Tech Guy (@startuptechguy) March 12, 2013

All of their SXSW goodness was celebrated at a very well attended party on Monday night. The Vegas Tech party celebrated all of the Las Vegas startups that have helped build the community in downtown Vegas.

But it wasn’t just Las Vegas tech companies in attendance. Startup Chile, Startup Weekend, Startup America, Silicon Valley Bank and countless others were at the big event. Check out some of the photos below.

There are a whole bunch more photos from the Vegas Tech Party here

Bad Ass Startup Chicks: Denver Hutt, Executive Director Speak Easy Indy.

We first met Denver Hutt in person when the first leg of the nibletz nationwide startup roadtrip went through Indiana. We were at Verge Indy that particular night and the co-working space for startups was packed. That’s because Executive Director Denver Hutt plays an integral role in the Indianapolis startup community.

Hutt oversees the SpeakEasy coworking space, plans events and mentors startup. She is also working on developing the first ever nationwide network for coworking spaces.

Hutt is in tune with the startup community in Indianapolis and wears many hats. She also loves to check out what works and doesn’t work for co-working spaces and like any true founder, she knows that iteration gets to perfection.

One of the main reasons she’s a bad ass startup chick is because she doesn’t just stay in Indianapolis, she likes to go to where the action is and help startups wherever she can. She was one of over 1200 attendees at Everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference, 2013.

Check out our video interview with Hutt below and for more info on SpeakEasy, visit speakeasyindy.com

Here’s more startup coverage at SXSW 2013

Interview With Sheboygan Brand Engagement Startup: Yappem [SXSW]

Yappem is a social platform that allows users to engage with the brands they love and get rewarded for it. Sure there are other social networks that have brand sections. Facebook and Twitter both have heavy brand presence but they weren’t designed to talk about brands they were designed to talk about you. That’s the fundamental problem that Yappem has set out to solve.

Founded by Dave Sachse and Justin Webb, Yappem has already raised $2.5 million dollars in seed funding from private investors. They’ve also inked a partnership with McDonald’s to help with the relaunch of the Big Mac.

The startup just came out of beta and is using SXSW to launch their exciting new startup. While startup communities are growing extremely fast in cities like Madison Wisconsin and Milwaukee Wisconsin, Yappem was quick to point out that they were the startup scene in Sheboygan, but both founders are hopeful that their success will encourage others.

Yappem was a sponsor for TechCocktail’s SXSW celebration, TechCocktail’s SXSW video series, Mashable’s Mash Bash, and their own free events at SXSW. They were also giving Yappem coins away that can be used for $5.00 gift cards. They are giving away $150,000 worth of gift cards for the launch. They are also giving away gift cards redeemable for a free Big Mac.

Check out our video with Sachse and Webb below. For more info on Yappem visit yappem.com

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Atlanta Startup Medicast Is Uber For HealthCare [video][sxsw]

Even though it’s 2013, Obamacare is kicking in and people are clamoring for insurance, there is a wave of “old school” healthcare sweeping the nation. It’s not about going retro to the olden days, but more about convenience in the hustle bustle, no time to stop lifestyles that plenty of American’s have grown accustom too.

What is it you ask? House calls, and doctors are starting to make them again. That’s where Atlanta startup Medicast comes in.

Medicast is an on-demand, doctor hailing application, similar to Uber for black cars.

Using the app, a patient would say what kind of doctor they need, order the doctor and then the doctor would come to their home or office to administer care. Doctors on the system will have another version of the app, designed for the medical provider. They can respond to requests by type of service, distance or what the patient is ready to pay.

Medicast founder Sam Zebarjadi came all the way down from Atlanta to Austin for TechCocktail’s celebration of startups event. It was there that he got to pitch Medicast during the Pitch Jam session and where we caught up with him.

Check out the video interview with Zebarjadi below and for more information visit medicast.co

Check out over 30 stories we’ve already filed for SXSW 2013, here

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You’re Not Going To Believe That Market For This Startup We Saw At TechCocktail’s SXSW Pitch Jam

30 startups pitched on Saturday night at SXSW as part of TechCocktails startup pitch jam. They were competing for several prizes including startup services and free flights from American Airlines.

We saw some great startups in a wide range of categories but we can honestly say we’ve never seen anything that pertained to this specific market. How about you watch the video below, and lets just say this is like Fred and Barney meet the Jetsons.

We’ve got more startup coverage from SXSW 2013 here