NY Startup: Slate Science Launches SlateMath, Closes $1.1M Angel Roud

With a fresh $1.1 million dollars in the bank, New York EdTech startup Slate Science has announced the launch of their newest STEM educational product, SlateMath.

SlateMath can be downloaded in multiple languages and is available now in Apple’s App Store.

The SlateMath series was conceived to address a global frustration with math learning. The company’s breakthrough learning methodologies tap into children’s natural and intuitive learning processes, and help them acquire knowledge and competence constructively, using self-guided as well as teacher-guided exploration. “SlateMath has two purposes,” said Prof. Shimon Schocken, one of the company’s co-founders, “to teach math proper through self-paced and engaging discovery, and to expose children to the ways mathematicians think and reason about the world. We see a tremendous opportunity to use tablet technology and constructive pedagogy to endear math to children, and to help them develop into confident and competent thinkers.”

The SlateMath series was designed from the ground up for an environment consisting of tablets, cloud computing, and standardized curricula. The series is based on a huge portfolio of modular, richly-indexed, and recombinant educational apps that Slate Science is now developing. Subsets of the SlateMath portfolio can be assembled to support existing textbooks and learning programs as well as the new wave of emerging digital textbooks. The software also adapts the contents dynamically, to address the learner’s revealed strengths and weaknesses in real time.

“SlateMath is a game changer because it offers a new and innovative approach to teach math. The product is based on an experiential context, hands-on learning, and self-discovery, making the best utilization of the tablet’s touch interface I’ve seen thus far in educational apps. This approach allows children to acquire and understand math ‘in their bones’. The Slate Science technology and learning methodologies are applicable not only to math, but to many other STEM subjects as well,” said Robert Scoble.

In conjunction with the launch, Slate Science announced the closing of a $1.1 Million angel round of funding led by private investors. The funds will be used for continued product innovation, marketing and operational costs.

Slate Science was founded by an A-team of educators and engineers with more than 100 years of combined experience in science education, instructional software development, and mobile platforms. The company developed a proprietary technology and a field-proven methodology for teaching STEM fields. Rather than oferring frontal videos and drill and skill practice, the company is focusing on crafting constructive learning environments that guide children through a rewarding process of self-discovery and intuitive exploration. The company’s proprietary authoring technology enables it to develop and deploy its learning apps in a remarkably efficient and timely manner.

Slate Science builds portfolios of educational apps designed to support standard STEM curricula while allowing students to develop, deeply understand, and experience hands-on conceptual learning. The company’s first series of products is SlateMath, intended for the consumer market and aimed to support math instruction according to the Common Core Standards. A school version of SlateMath, intended for classroom use and equipped with a suite of teaching aids, will be released soon.

For more information visit: slatescience.com

Nevada Startup SocialMatic Bringing Instagram To Life With Polaroid

I guess someone forgot to tell the founders of Las Vegas startup SocialMatic that bringing Instagram to life was done over 50 years ago with the first Polaroid. Of course the technology needs an update and a digital camera with an Instagram style face, some filters and Polaroid prints may just do the trick.

For now the company has entered into a binding agreement with C&A licensing an authorized Polaroid licensee and the same one that licenses the Polaroid One Step SX-70 image and likeness to Instagram.

Currently SocialMatic only has some really good mockups but they reportedly plan on bringing a product to market by 2014.

(photo: socialmatic)

“We are so proud to work together with C & A and Polaroid, giants of digital photography.” – said Mr. Antonio De Rosa, CEO of Socialmatic. “It ‘s been a long and difficult negotiation but we were strongly motivated to reach an agreement to create a small revolution in digital photography. This mix of Hardware and Software, together with our brand new photo social network will fill the gap between virtuality and reality.”

While the licensing deal has been struck with Polaroid it’s unclear whether they will need to do any licensing with Facebook, the owners of Instagram. The mockups look like one gigantic Instagram without the word Instagram on it.

One place where it may get a little hairy is the fact that Socialmatic plans to use the hardware to share pictures on their own photo based social network.

Would you buy an actual “Instagram Camera” tell us in comments below.

DC Startup Her Corner, Our First Interview With A 1776 Startup

As most of you know we are big supporters and partners with Startup America. That’s why when Startup America Managing Director Donna Harris and Startup DC Director Evan Burfield launched 1776dc, a new incubator and accelerator in our nation’s capital, we were very excited.

We’re going to be making a trip to DC to cover 1776 more in-depth. In the meantime we got a chance to interview Frederique Camapagne Irwin, founder of DC startup Her Corner.

“Her Corner is a resource for women entrepreneurs who are committed to growth in their companies. We build forum networks (or circles) of women business owners, in a hyper-local (neighborhood based) and face-to-face setting, so that women can come together to collaborate and work on building their businesses. We are a membership-based organization with requirements to join and monthly dues. We are currently DC / VA / MD based with plans to expand outside the DC region in 2013.” Irwin told nibletz.com in an interview.

Check out the rest of the interview below:

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

If a woman business owner is at least 1 year into her business, building her own brand (sorry, no stell and dot resellers, or realtors with larger brands,) and fully committed to growth (doing this full time and not also working elsewhere,) we encourage her to apply for a seat in a group near where she lives.

Each neighborhood group meets over dinner, in member’s homes, with a professional facilitator to discuss business growth topics, remain accountable to one another and to help each other with business opportunities or challenges. Outside the group meeting, members receive an accountability partner with whom to work with on a regular basis, as well as an invitation every other month to attend a speaker series where they can meet and network with the other members of Her Corner across the region. We also have a private social network that was built specifically for Her Corner where members and build a profile, include an “offer” to other Her Corner members, see what events other members are attending, and they can also join sub-groups (e.g. women in manufacturing, women looking to raise capital, etc.)

Overall, we create the community and the resources around women to help them grow their business.

Who are the founders and what are their backgrounds?

Our founder is Frederique Irwin, a former management consultant and serial entrepreneur. Frederique Irwin has more than 17 years of management consulting and entrepreneurial experience. She has served as strategic advisor to CEOs of global companies focused on strategic planning, and growth management. Frederique has also built several companies, including an international import company that is still running and several service-related companies. Today she applies her entrepreneurial experience, management consulting background and business operations expertise with a strong network of personal connections to help business owners achieve the next stage of business growth through the in-person business groups offered via Her Corner.

We also have three (3) DC-Area facilitators, women who are also running their own business, but who work for Her Corner to run and facilitate groups. Each facilitator comes from a business background, either an MBA or a strategy or business operations background. They must also be strong personal facilitators and natural connectors. All Her Corner facilitators start as members first.

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

Intense. Very long hours, so much to do, a crazy amount of opportunity to pursue; but the most rewarding experience and most fun I have ever had. [Even my kids know and support how much I love Her Corner, and they’ve said that they hope my new baby will be a girl so that she can get involved in Her Corner too! J]

How did you come up with the idea for HerCorner?

I built Her Corner for myself. A few years ago I was building my 3rd business and while I was very involved in local area networking and in some lead-share groups, I was also looking for something where I could meet more women “like me” who understood that women build businesses for different reasons than men do, and that we build them differently too. I wanted to find something near where I lived, at hours that fit my busy life and family, in a more feminine setting – and I wanted to build real relationships. I realized that women naturally will help one another, and that there’s nothing more irritating to us than someone handing us a “deal sheet” to track what we’ve done for others – because we’re going to do it anyway! I ran my own personal Her Corner group, as well as 4 other neighborhoods, for about 2 years before I decided there might be a market for this on a much larger scale.

Why now?

It’s a perfect time for a woman-only business owner network like Her Corner: we’re seeing a rise in women-owned businesses (7.8M in 2007 vs. 8.3M in 2012), interest in starting a business is coming even earlier for women (a recent Sage study showed half of all women 18-24 want to start their own businesses,) the access to capital is beginning to thaw (there are more services to teach women how to go after capital, as well as more women-led funds like Women’s Venture Capital Fund and Illuminate Ventures.) And finally, women are more educated than ever before; they’re looking to share that education and experience with one another to help one another accelerate growth.

Why 1776?

Lots of reasons, really! The energy and exposure to other entrepreneurs is one of the most valuable things a business owner can expose him or herself to. The ideas around the office, the access to speakers, visitors and even potential investors is unique and difficult to find all under one roof. The founders of 1776, Donna Harris and Evan Burfield, are former business owners whom I have known and admired for years – they know what it takes to build a business and they are trying to create that environment for those of us in the development stage today. And finally, as a woman, it is so important to be surrounded by fellow entrepreneurs and colleagues and not to isolate oneself.

What problem does Her Corner solve?

Most women business owners are not fans of networking in the traditional sense; they often feel isolated in their business, and they miss the collaboration and team environments of previous companies. They are very smart and motivated but sometimes they get “stuck” trying to move through a decision, opportunity, or change, and they want to talk though some of the decision points they are facing. Given how busy women are, they don’t have a high tolerance for the posturing and potential bologna that you sometimes find in other peer-group forum settings.

Her Corner creates a positive environment where we encourage our members to think bigger, to collaborate to accelerate the possibilities, and to look at networking differently – rather than coming to a large event and handing out business cards, we ask you to start with your small group and start by asking, “tell me about yourself and how can I help you.” We have created an environment that is intrinsically feminine – we meet in one another’s homes, over dinner, and we build relationships first. This unique approach is driving business referrals, business leads, new business development, and new business partnerships in ways we had never imagined.

What is your competition?

There are lots of competitive networking events available to business owners (for example Chamber of Commerce events,) and also lots of forum-like groups for business owners (for example Vistage or EO.) But we have yet to find a network that is exclusively for women business owners (vs. all women in business,) and a forum-like group that is for women only and run by actual business owners with MBAs and strategy background (vs. information marketers, for example.) We don’t compete with the education seminars or the consultants; we only compete for women’s time and commitments to other groups.

And what’s your secret sauce?

We’re members too! Everything we do in Her Corner was built first for us and every decision we make is based on whether this is something that we would have wanted or needed for our own business. We’re not trying to build something new and hoping that it works, we’re building what we know works and packaging it the way women would want it – the way we would want it!

What are some milestones you’ve achieved?

Since we launched Her Corner, we had to prove that members would be willing to pay for the service, that we could teach others to facilitate and run groups beyond the founder’s ability to run them herself, and that we could recruit, launch, and run groups in neighborhoods that were outside the founder’s personal network.

We launched in August 2012, and within the first 6 months we have interviewed and accepted 125 new paying members (expected to hit 250 by August), hired 3 (soon to be 4) new facilitators to run new groups, we now have 13 groups running across the DC area (planning for 20 by August) and we’ve expanded into areas like Leesburg, VA (and soon Baltimore, MD) where the founder does not have a personal network.

We have also secured sponsorships with organizations like AU’s Kogod School of Business, local area businesses like Xenith Bank, Urban Igloo, Glen’s Garden Market, and La Ferme restaurant.

What’s your next milestone?

Critical for us in 2013 / 2014 will be our ability to implement Her Corner in new cities and to prove the model outside the DC area. This will allow us to build a more robust growth plan with hard numbers and real time frames that will allow us to talk to potential investors about our growth plans.

Who are some of your mentors and business role models?

My mentors are some of the men I worked with in management consulting, the men who taught me how to build, run and optimize a business – but who also taught me leadership skills and the importance of family and values. I also have mentors around me who are women who have built and sold companies before me and who are in my close circle of friends, keeping an eye on what I am building to help me avoid land mines. And my business role models today – Marissa Meyer and Sheryl Sandburg – two women who encourage other women to push forward and not be defined by our personal lives.

What’s next for Her Corner?

These days we’re launching new groups every month, while also filling the few open spots in existing groups. To a certain extent, I’d like to stabilize our growth in the DC area, get my founding members more involved in the improvement and representation of Her Corner, hire a few strategic position, and begin to focus my attention on the development and implementation of Her Corner in new cities.

Where can people find out more:

Online people can find us at: www.hercorner.org, On Twitter, we’re at @hercorner And on Facebookwe recently launched a new page (our presence has been private so far and for members only)

Get tickets to everywhereelse.co 2014 at 2013 prices now, here!

TechStars’ Katie Rae On What Drives An Entrepreneurial Community

Entrepreneurial and startup communities are growing everywhere across the United States. The recent everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference event highlighted entrepreneurial communities “everywhere else” outside the major hubs like Silicon Valley and New York.

We’ve recently started up our “Sneaker Strapped Nationwide Startup Road Trip Part Deux”. During our first journey, that started at SXSW 2012, we visited over 60 startup communities across the country. Since going back on the road we’ve visited Atlanta for Startup Georgia’s kick-off, Nashville for Spark Nashville and Arkansas for Think Big Arkansas and the kickoff of Startup Arkansas.

Last month, Katie Rae, the Managing Director at TechStars Boston, spoke at Grid New Haven. Gris is a hub or startup community catalyst, that’s part of Connecticut’s “innovation ecosystem.” They hold several programs including CEO Boot Camp, Startup Weekend New Haven, Launch New Haven and several speaker sessions designed to help entrepreneurs on their journey.

On January 24th Rae spoke at Grid New Haven and offered what she thinks are the four backbones to a great entrepreneurial community. In addition to being the managing director at TechStars Boston (one of their most successful accelerators) she is also a founder of Project 11 a firm that invests in and helps early stage startups.

Check out her video below and add these things to your list of important things for startup communities.

See Startup Community Activist, and Startup America CEO Scott Case on the importance of Startup Marketing here.

Check out the LAUNCHedu Higher Ed Startup Finalists at SXSWedu

Earlier this morning we told you about LAUNCHedu a new startup initiative going on now at SXSWedu. The educational festival as part of SXSW continues to grow and now offers four full days of programming, panels, keynotes and startups. The biggest startup portion for SXSWedu is the LAUNCHedu event.

LAUNCHedu celebrates the convergence of “today’s dynamic educators, and entrepreneurs transforming classrooms and revolutionizing schooling.” Four great educators and entrepreneurs will emcee the LAUNCHedu festivities. They are: EdSurge co-founder Betsy Corcoran, Trinity Education Group partner and CIO Clyde Boyer , GSV founder and managing partner Deborah Quazzo, and Trinity Education Group founder and CEO Hugh Norwood.

The criteria the LAUNCHedu startup finalists were judged on was:

Creativity (Originality of Idea)
Potential (Longevity, Actualization and Profitability of idea)
Functionality (Usability of interface for idea)
Team / People (Who is your team and how will they make your company a success?)

Here are the Higher Ed startup finalists from the LAUNCHedu website:

CollegeSnapps

collegesnapps.com
CollegeSnapps™ is a mobile communication platform that facilitates students’ progress to-and-through college by pairing an innovative mobile app that delivers just-in-time, high quality information and alerts to students with a multi-functional web-based dashboard in order for high school counselors and college advisors to effectively communicate with and support their students.

Flinja

flinja.com
Flinja is an exclusive, college-centric marketplace where students, staff and alumni can hire and be hired. We provide a vetted, freelance workforce of talented college students and alumni. Our mission is to innovate the hiring process by connecting user participation with college affiliation.

Kahoot!

getkahoot.com
Kahoot! is a platform that enables learners to play with knowledge in a collaborative and social manner. A web-based, mobile and tablet friendly educational platform, with a core emphasis on user experience design in a social, fun and game-like environment.

LRNGO

LRNGO.com
LRNGO.com is a marketplace where people can teach their skills and connect through learning. On LRNGO, you can buy, sell or trade what you know for leisure or achieving your goals. Teach. Learn. Share. LRNGO, INC. is a company that develops social learning utilities to accelerate the transfer of knowledge.

Matchbox, Inc.

matchbox.net
Matchbox disrupts undergraduate and graduate admissions by replacing outdated software with an iPad app. Our streamlined system gives customers a competitive advantage by arriving at decisions faster and gaining visibility into the incoming class. This insight enables universities to proactively adjust their recruitment efforts improving yield and increasing tuition revenue.

MediaCore

mediacore.com
MediaCore’s video learning platform is the fastest way for anyone at any institution to easily capture, manage and share media content securely and privately. Currently it serves over 500,000 students at 300+ schools and universities worldwide.

More Than Money Careers

morethanmoneycareers.com/
MTM Careers helps college students and graduates get clear, get connected, and get hired for well-paying jobs in CSR, sustainable business, and social enterprise. Since 2010, over 30 universities have leveraged our process and resources via our online staff and faculty training programs or our ‘Netflix for Impact Careers’ library.

School Yourself

schoolyourself.org
We’re reinventing math textbooks by making them more fun and affordable. So far, we’ve launched three e-books (most recently “Hands-On Calculus”), each of which we wrote and published ourselves. Unlike almost all other textbooks on the market, our books make math come alive with engaging content and touch-based interactive demos.

scrible

scrible.com
We make useful online reading and research apps that enable you to annotate/comment on webpages in your browser and then save, share and manage them in the cloud. Our Student Edition adds academic features (e.g. citations, bibliographies, reports, etc.). Instructors use scrible for thoughtful and collaborative e-reading assignments.

SpeakingPal

speakingpal.com
SpeakingPal is an innovative education company with a unique focus on teaching English speaking skills using automatic speech recognition on smartphones, tablets and Smart TVs. Founded in 2009, SpeakingPal’s multidisciplinary team has created highly engaging and interactive educational products that are used by over 1M people worldwide, and growing.

MapStory

mapstory.org
MapStory, a compliment to Wikipedia, is a new dimension to the global data commons that empowers a global user community to organize knowledge about the world spatially and temporally. Perhaps more important, MapStory is an infrastructure enabling ‘MapStorytelling’ as a means of communicating important issues to a global audience.

USEED

useed.org
USEED is re-engineering philanthropy in Higher Education. We provide universities and colleges with an innovative online fundraising solution specifically tailored to the unique challenges within the industry. USEED builds a large pipeline of new donors for the institution while simultaneously empowering students to pursue their dreams and discover their passions.

SXSW Virgins: Norfolk Startup VinylMint

This week starts our 12th South By Southwest, the last four have been spent as a tech journalist and before that I attended the music portion during my radio career. SXSW can be intimidating for a first timer, especially a first time startup, that’s why we’re featuring some great SXSW Virgins, seek them out, find out more about them and help them out if you can.

VinylMint is a cool startup in Norfolk part of the Hatch Norfolk accelerator program. As a startup in the music business, SXSW is two fold for them.

What is your startup?
Vinylmint has crowd-sourced the sound design and recording process and
organized a new marketplace for transactions between sound creators.

Where are you based?
Vinylmint is based in Norfolk, Virginia

What do you do?
Vinylmint is built for creative directors and musicians. Vinylmint delivers a contest
sourced pre-production utility for sounds for on-the-go users through both web-
and mobile-based apps. Vinylmint functions as the collaborative front-end for the
users to integrate apps that increase the speed of productivity, better organizes data
and social connections, and decreases the cost of production adding convenience to
the process overall.

Vinylmint meets the following needs of the creative directors:

Simplifies project management and centralizes communication with
freelance musicians to a reliable, standardized process
Creates a fixed cost in creative budgets by organizing an open-bid contest
system in a global community of talented, competitive musicians
Quick and endless access to a marketplace equipped with a variety of sounds,
effects, voiceovers, and translations from around the world
Digitizes the process of signing and submitting legal documents, which
streamlines transactions.

Vinylmint allows musicians to:

Socially connect with music talent around the world.
Rich, near-time collaboration
Simplicity and user friendliness
Mobility and portability
Introduces the music production process to the amateur musician
A low cost solution for cash strapped educational institutions

Is this your first time to SXSW?
This will be Vinylmint’s first time at SXSW.

What are your plans at SXSW?
Our plan is to connect with key tastemakers in the music and film business to
expose them to Vinylmint in unique ways. We will blend the use of Vinylmint in the
performances of some of the DJs in unique ways, so that they may test the product
and become product evangelist of the brand. SXSW’s Music and Film week presents
a premier opportunity to grow Vinylmint’s brand.

How can people connect:

Website: www.vinylmint.com

Twitter: @vinylmint

Facebook: facebook.com/vinylmint

Check out more of our SXSW 13 coverage here

Bad Ass Startup Chicks: Jeannette Balleza Director, Ark Challenge

As you probably heard, women in startups played a big roll in the inaugural everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference. The conference which had over 1200 attendees on site featured panels like “Kick Ass Female Founders From Everywhere Else” and other panels which featured startup founders from everywhere else.

One of those bad ass startup chicks that was in the audience and networking all conference long was Jeannette Balleza the director of Ark Challenge, Arkansas’ premiere startup accelerator, and member of the Global Accelerator Network.

Balleza is no stranger to startups. After college she went straight to startup life launching her own company, Scribe Marketing. She is also the co-founding archivist of the award winning family history website DeadFred.

Balleza is a busy busy woman but always finds time to strengthen the Arkansas startup community every chance she gets.

She serves as a Board Member of the Northwest Arkansas Entrepreneurship Alliance, advises a number of small businesses and non-profit organizations and is part of the team spearheading the region’s first co-working space, The Iceberg. She is a member of The CEO Forums of Northwest Arkansas, and she coordinates the Professional Women’s Network Washington County. She was honored as one of Northwest Arkansas Business Journal‘s “40 Under 40” in 2008, and in 2009 she was selected as one of 135 U.S. entrepreneurs by British Airways to attend The Face of Opportunity Global Business Summit Conference in London.

We caught up with her, not in NorthWest Arkansas but rather in Central Arkansas for the ThinkBig Arkansas event and the kick off of Startup Arkansas. She provided a quick speech to attendees with an update about Ark Challenge and the exciting new Iceberg coworking space. Check out our interview below, the first of many to come in our series Bad Ass Startup Chicks.

Ark Challenge is still accepting applications for their second cohort, click here for more info.

Boston Augmented Reality Startup PAR Works Gets Two Big SXSW Honors

Augmented reality has been a hot space for startups for the last three years. Now in 2013 it’s starting to expand outside of just cool games. One Boston startup, PAR Works, has done some amazing things with augmented reality and for that they’ve received two pre-show honors from SXSW.

First off the company was selected as a finalist for the mobile technology category at the 5th annual SXSW accelerator competition. The competition is one of the biggest events as part of SXSW Interactive’s Startup Village. Startups showcase some of the most impressive new innovations to a panel of handpicked judges and a live audience. More than 500 companies submitted to present at SXSW Accelerator, where PAR Works was selected out of 56 finalists in seven different categories.

The company’s MARS mobile application, which will be unveiled for public beta for the first time at the SXSW Trade Show, also was named a finalist in the SXSW Interactive Awards. This competition uncovers the best new digital work while celebrating those who are building the interactive trends of the future. The ceremonies for both awards will take place at the SXSW 2013 conference in Austin next month.

MARS is the first technology to offer instant 3-D recognition for products and places, allowing companies to offer content to consumers the instant they take a simple photograph. Available to operate on either Android (version 2.3 or above) or iOS (version 5.0 or above), MARS quickly and precisely delivers on-demand branded content to users, a technology that has become increasingly important as more consumers and businesses adopt, and become dependent on, mobile devices. The speed and millimeter-level accuracy of the image detection and content overlay in MARS is unparalleled.

“Businesses and consumers will be able to experience for the first time at SXSW the power of our MARS technology, which will allow brands to find even more ways to engage with their customers through any mobile device, anywhere,” said Dr. Jules White, co-founder and Chief Scientist for PAR Works. “We would like to thank SXSW for the unique honor of being nominated for both awards this year.”

The three-day Accelerator competition will be held Monday, March 11th – Wednesday, March 13th. As a key event of SXSW Festival’s Startup Village, the Accelerator competition will take place on the 4th floor of the Downtown Austin Hilton and will feature finalists across categories including Innovative Web Technologies; Social Technologies; Entertainment and Gaming Technologies; Mobile Technologies; Health Technologies; News Technologies; and Music Technologies. On March 12th, judges will announce a selected winner in each of the categories presented except Music Technologies, which will be revealed on March 13th

“Some truly ground-breaking and disruptive companies once stood where this year’s 56 SXSW Accelerator finalists will pitch to venture capitalists, entrepreneurs and press,” said SXSW Accelerator Event Producer, Chris Valentine. “I am confident that this year’s SXSW Accelerator finalists will bring equally exceptional and unique products and services to the table, with high potential to impact their respective industries.”

See more of our team coverage of SXSW 2013 here

SXSW Virgins: Columbia MO Startup Digital Talent Agents

Digital Talent Agents, a startup based in Columbia Missouri has a rockstar team all working on an awesome goal, to help build credibility for experts through thought leadership and content marketing by getting them consistently published in online reputable publications.

In addition to being an agency for credible content the crew at DTA are passionate about startups and often write themselves on things that matter most to startups. In fact it was DTA’s John Hall, who called everywhereelse.co a “Must Attend” startup conference at Forbes.com.

Kelsey Meyer, the company’s Senior Vice President, offered these tips on promoting your startup.

DTA is making their way across the country and networking with startups of all kinds every chance they get. They were in Memphis for everywhereelse.co and several events in between then and SXSW. This is their first time at SXSW.

1) What is you startup? Digital Talent Agents is an agency that builds your credibility through thought leadership and content marketing.

2) Where are you based? We’re headquartered out of Columbia, Missouri but have remote locations in St.Louis, Mo and Dallas, Tx.

3) What do you do? We help clients leverage their expertise by getting consistent content placed in reputable online publications through by-lined articles and interviews to build thought leadership and credibility for the client and the companies their representing.

4) Is this your first time to SXSW? Yes, its our first time.

5) What are your plans at SXSW? It’s always exciting to see what other startups, brands and varied artists are doing. It’ll be a great place for us to network, create relationships and see what cool things companies are doing. I can’t forget to mention the amazing parties and concerts that are being held at SXSW that I’m sure you’ll see several of our team members. :)

6) How can people connect:

Twitter: @DTAgents

Website: www.digitaltalentagents.com

Natalie Stezovsky (Vice President): natalie@digitaltalentagents.com

We’ve got even more SXSW13 coverage here at nibletz.com the voice of startups everywhere else.

See These LAUNCHedu K-12 Startup Finalists At SXSWedu

South By Southwest’s education event, sxswedu, continues to grow. This year they have four full days of programming beginning today and running through Thursday March 7th. SXSWedu takes place at the Austin Convention Center and surrounding hotels, and is quickly gaining popularity.

While many startups are participating in SXSWinteractive, EdTech or educational startups are launching at sxswedu as part of the new LAUNCHedu event. Startups in the LAUNCHedu finals will be presenting at the Hilton Austin Downtown in room 404 throughout the event. The complete schedule of presenting startups in the LAUNCHedu Startup Showcase can be found here.

Here are the 2013 LAUNCHedu K-12 Finalists from the SXSWedu website:

Actively Learn

activelylearn.com
Reading is the bedrock of education, but two-thirds of eighth graders cannot understand what they read. Actively Learn has created a reading environment to teach students to be advanced readers. Educators are empowered with tools for personalized instruction and analytics of student learning within the context of Common Core standards.

Classroom, Inc.

classroominc.org
Classroom, Inc. prepares struggling middle and high school students for success in and beyond school. Acting as bankers, editors, and lawyers in our workplace simulations, students use their academic, critical-thinking, and 21st century skills to solve authentic problems.

Clever

getclever.com
Founded by a teacher tired of chaos in the computer lab, Clever solves a common frustration with educational software: logins. Clever automatically syncs student accounts from a school’s information system (SIS) into programs students use. Over 50 companies and 3,000 schools use Clever to make their classroom software “just work”.

Common Curriculum

commoncurriculum.com
Common Curriculum is building the Google Docs of education. Our free site lets teachers collaboratively plan units and lessons while aligning them to the Common Core. Teachers and districts will be able to sell their work through our online marketplace or purchase new material by dragging it into their plans.

DigitWhiz

digitwhiz.com
DigitWhiz is all about making sure kids master foundational math skills in a fun and effective way. We evaluate, prescribe individualized games and guide kids to master the skills they need. Play on desktops or iPad. Teacher-built and kid approved!

Duckie Deck

duckiedeck.com
At Duckie Deck we provide smiles. Over eight million toddlers played our games and smiled. We teach things that are important for their future, things that matter to their parents. We explain why sharing with others is so important. Why we should brush our teeth and what does friendship mean.

instaGrok

instaGrok.com
instaGrok is a research engine: we make it incredibly simple to discover, learn, and share information. Users explore graphical concept maps that show how ideas connect. They can also customize the maps (with key facts, links, and images) and then share them with friends, colleagues, and classmates.

Learnsprout

learnsprout.com
LearnSprout simplifies systems integration and reveals key insights on student performance and engagement with the first universal API to pull live data from leading student information systems. Free to schools and districts, LearnSprout is the easiest and most secure, FERPA compliant method for integrating an SIS within the edtech ecosystem.

Slate Science

slatescience.com
Slate Science is transforming mobile devices into interactive, adaptive learning platforms for K12 STEM education. Our platform enables rapid, multi-platform development of modular learning units, designed to offer performance-based, student-specific learning experiences. The SlateMath CC-compatible portfolio includes hundreds of recombinant learning units, each imparting a specific mathematical skill or concept.

Teaching Channel

teachingchannel.org
Teaching Channel is a community of educators focused on self-improvement that attracts 250,000 users/month. Visitors to the website find a high-quality video library – featuring exemplar teachers – paired with intuitive annotation tools. With TchTeams, Teaching Channel’s private collaboration platform, schools and districts can now enable their teachers to learn together.

ThinkCERCA

thinkcerca.com
ThinkCERCA is a Chicago-based company passionately committed to improving the quality of K-12 education. Developed by a team of nationally recognized literacy experts, the online platform allows teacher teams to design, deliver, and assess lessons using the CERCA argumentation framework. The expert lesson library delivers rigorous, personalized learning across disciplines.

zondle

zondle.com
A games-based learning web and mobile platform grounded in neuroscience that enables teachers and students to create, play and share games to support teaching and learning. User-created questions (multiple formats, any language, any age group) can be combined with multiple casual games for students to play and practice.

We’ve got much more SXSW13 coverage here!

Andrew Mason’s Farewell Memo Gets Rap Geniused By Marc Andreessen And Ben Horowitz

Andrew Mason was hot news this week. As you all undoubtedly know by now, the CEO of Groupon is CEO no longer. We didn’t report on Mason’s firing earlier because everyone else did and our good friends at Business Insider wrote so many articles about it we made up a drinking game.

Today though, we found out some epic news. Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, of Andreessen Horowitz fame, have used their own portfolio startup, Rap Genius, to decode Andrew Mason’s epic farewell memo.

Andreessen Horowitz were in Groupon pretty deep, so it’s great that they’ve basically come to the aid and support of Mason via Rap Genius. They are also major investors in the lyric website that decodes rap lyrics.

Andreessen and Horowitz pointed out early on that Rap Genius could be used to annotate lots of things like poetry, stories, news and now farewell memos. What’s even better is that both founding partners worked on the memo together and while some of the entries are funny others are long form and offer great explanations.

For example in the first paragraph of Mason’s letter he says “controversial metrics in our S1,” Andreessen goes on to make this lengthy explanation:

Andrew is referring to the use of non-standard financial metrics in the company’s SEC filings, particularly in the IPO filing (S1).

As someone who was in the room as an observer at the Groupon board when the decision to use these metrics was made, I think Groupon was honestly trying to provide additional information that investors would find useful, which mirrored the way management thought about running the business.

However, no good deed goes unpunished, and widespread media paranoia about business metrics still lingering from the 2000 dot com crash combined with other missteps on Groupon’s part combined to make the use of those non-standard metrics highly controversial and ultimately negative for the company.

Horowitz shows his support of Mason when Mason says “As CEO, I am accountable.” Howoritz writes:

Andrew does the stand up thing and claims accountability. Make no mistake though—although he’s the only one accountable, he’s certainly not the only one responsible for all the things that went wrong. The board decided to take the company public prior to putting all the proper controls in place. The material weakness was nearly guaranteed at that point. Every one on the board plus the CFO and the bankers agreed those were good metrics at the time. But here as in every case, it’s not all the CEO’s doing, but it’s all the CEO’s fault.

On the lighter side, when Mason says “maybe I’ll figure out how to channel this experience into something productive,” a Rap Genius community contributor says that this means:

“FYI World. I’m open to a killer deal if you want to hire me. But I ain’t gonna be cheap!”

See the entire thing here at RapGenius.com

We’re on the nibletz sneaker strapped nationwide startup road trip part deux and we cold use your support.

Startup Marketing Lessons from the Everywhere Else

Brandery,Startup Branding,Mike Bott, Startup Tips, Guest Post

Mike Bott GM of The Brandery and former P&G Brand Manager talks about Branding for startups at everywhereelse 13 (photo: Allie Fox for NMI)

By Joe Recomendes, Command Partners

I recently had the opportunity to attend the Everywhere Else conference in Memphis, TN to meet and learn with many promising startups from across the country – Dan Rogers of Millenium Search, LLC has outlined some of the most promising companies in attendance on his blog – but I was there to focus on marketing for the startup community. The conference was founded to provide a networking opportunity for startups not based in the hubs of New York or Silicon Valley, but rather those entrepreneurs cutting their own paths “everywhere else” in the country.

I was there not as a startup, but as a marketing agency looking to see what startups are doing to market themselves and learn from other successful founders. Scott Case, the CEO of Startup America, provided a crucial wake-up call to the founders in attendance – “It’s not ‘if you build it, they will come,’ it’s ‘If you market it, they will come.” Startups everywhere need to pay attention – you may have a great idea, but if no one knows about it, it will not work as a business.

A branding session by The Brandery outlined the following steps that every startup should consider when beginning a marketing strategy and build a brand pyramid, the foundation of all marketing messaging:

Brand Promise – The essence of your brand, and the highest-level benefit that your company or products contributes to the consumer.

Brand Positioning – The value statement of your company or product, similar to an elevator pitch. Why does anyone need the idea that you are bringing to market?

Brand Character – The portrayal of your idea that should convey truth and inspiration while demonstrating the need for your idea.

Brand Attributes – The base level of your brand, which should illustrate points of difference and points of parity between your product or idea and your competitors.

Once you have your brand defined, it’s time to consider how you will market your idea, and through which channels. Startups should consider the following strategic marketing initiatives:

A Website – Absolutely, a must have for traffic, leads, and information about your company. This should be the foundation of your marketing channels, and should be optimized to capture and convert leads. All other marketing efforts should drive people to the site. While I won’t go into detail here, it is also important to support your website through SEO, PPC, email marketing, and other website marketing efforts.

Public Relations – Depending on the quality of your media outreach efforts and the potential importance of your idea or business, public relations can either be a huge boon or wasted time. As a technology startup, getting coverage in Mashable, Techcrunch, VentureBeat, etc. can catapult you into the public sphere, but the chances of getting this coverage without properly curating your pitch and relationships are slim.

Social Media – While time-consuming, a well-groomed presence on social media can give an air of credibility to your brand, while allowing for communication distribution and engagement with your key audiences. Start with a presence on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Angel’s List. These four networks will allow you to engage existing consumers, find new leads, and show a presence to potential investors.

A Pitch Deck – For getting new investors, a pitch deck will be a crucial piece of your marketing mix. Ensure that it is short but impactful by providing the information that investors need, and consider revising your deck for each pitch based on the conversations that you have had with the investor prior to your meeting.

Marketing a new startup can be time-consuming, but is of paramount importance to achieve awareness, recognition, and success. If you’re unsure where to start, hire a startup marketing agency to help define your brand and business goals, and execute your marketing strategy for you.

What have you found to be the most valuable channel for marketing your startup, or what other advice would you give? Let us know in the comments.

Command Partners is a Charlotte based internet marketing company with a passion and love for startups. Find out more at commandpartners.com

Don’t miss everywhereelse.co 2014 more information can be found here

Arkansas Thinks Big Everywhere Else

Arkansas, Startup Arkansas, Think Big Arkansas, Lee Watson, Startup Communities

Lee Watson organizer of Think Big Arkansas and Startup Arkansas (photo: NMI 2013)

Hendrix College in Conway Arkansas was bursting at the seams with young entrepreneurs and seasoned corporate executives. They’ve come together this morning to celebrate the kick off of Startup Arkansas and to Think Big Arkansas.

Event organizer, Lee Watson, did a great job of bringing startup community leaders from the entire state in to Conway for this event.

Scott Case the CEO of Startup America and founding CTO of Priceline will be keynoting today. Brad Feld, the author of Startup Communities should be at the event in the evening as well.

The morning session kicked off with entrepreneurs and event organizers from

Mike Smith, Innovate Arkansas (photo: NMI 2013)

organizations like BarCampConway, Startup Weekend, Innovate Arkansas, Ark Challenge, Made By Few and many others, to talk about what’s going on with their organization and how to bridge it all together in one cohesive unit.

In a pre-event dinner Thursday night Startup Arkansas Regional Champion Luke Coleman reached out to myself and Scott Case to address the problem that there are “cliques” in each part of Arkansas. Noooooo I had never heard of that before????

Case was able to give him some great advice which was summed up as “do you want the good news or the bad news first”, of course Coleman elected to take the bad news first which was “every region in Startup America has been in that same spot”, the good news? “Every region in Startup America has been in that same spot”.

Tennessee is no stranger to where Coleman sees a huge opportunity for growth, however in Tennessee we’ve done a great job of overcoming our hyper local focus and celebrating the victories in each of the 9 accelerator regions. It’s not uncommon to see a van or bus ful of Memphians at a Nashville or Chattanooga startup event, and vice versa.

Friday morning the parallels continued, confirming the main theme of the recent everywhereelse conference, startups and startup communities everywhere else have commonalities in problems and growth areas.

At the beginning of the event Arkansas Regional Champions Dave Moody, along with Coleman, brought 5 attendees up to the mic to share their ideas for a better community.

Abbey Keever with RedClay echoed one of Scott Case’s favorite themes,which was don’t try to be the next Silicon Valley. Keever, an experienced business woman and the fearless leader at RedClay, said she would love to see Arkansas expand in startups in their biggest areas, of course retail (Walmart) and logistics (Walmart and JB Hunt).

Most every startup community we’ve seen is starting to get their patriarch companies or at least their industries intertwined in the growth of the community.

Other ideas included keeping the dialoge open and holding vertical specific summits to give entrepreneurs access to closer related resources.

If you haven’t seen this amazing video from Thursday night, Go here now!

Baltimore Startup Woofound; Psychology & Personality Based Discovery

Discovery apps are nothing new. There are hundreds of event discovery apps, career discovery apps and even people discovery apps. Most of them simply match your interests with other interests. They may take your social graph into consideration or a short survey. Discovery apps were hot last year at SXSW.

Glancee was one of the hot apps going into SXSW 2012. The people discovery app matched people based on things they liked on Facebook. While the company was later acquired by Facebook, it failed miserably in real life applications. For instance at one point I had liked a picture of Mark Zuckerberg’s dog Beast. When I powered up Glancee at SXSW it matched me to 20 or so people who had also liked Beast.

Baltimore startup WooFound is doing things differently, and more efficiently. Their personality driven platform is built on psychology and personality assessment.

“It all started when co-founder Josh Spears had a blind date and realized he had no way to determine what kind of things he could do with his date that they would both enjoy. Spears and Sines agreed that it would be great if there was a way to match people based on their interests based on common personality traits.” Daniel Waldman, the startups PR guru told nibletz.com in an interview.

The company has launched two products and a mobile app to date: “We recently launched Compass and Compass Lite, a web application with Facebook integration that offers personalized career recommendations based on the user’s personality. Both are image-based personality assessments that deliver a personality profile within minutes and instantly make recommendations. Compass is our private-label solution for colleges and university career centers, while Compass Lite is free and open to use by anyone. Last summer, we launched a mobile app last year called Woofound Explore, which matches people to places and things to do based on personality.” Waldman said.

The personality assessment tool is extremely accurate, according to Woofound they give accurate results in “98.5% of all cases”.

The company has raised $2.2 million dollars to date including a $75,000 investment from the Maryland Technology Development Corporation. They aren’t the only startup finding success in Charm City,

“Baltimore has a thriving startup scene. There are a lot of new companies that have sprung up in recent years with a handful of highly visible successes such as mobile ad platform Millennial Media. Baltimore also sports some highly venerable technology companies, such as Bill Me Later (which was acquired by PayPal) and AOL (formerly Advertising.com). Additionally, there are an amazing amount of networking events for startups locally, and with our proximity to DC, Philly and New York, Baltimore in many ways an ideal location for startups. ”

So what’s next for Woofound?

Woofound’s ultimate goal is to provide a personalization platform for our day to day lives. We have a few other projects cooking to expand the use of our personalization technology to other verticals and we are always looking to add new features and expand our current applications. We are preparing for a major update of our Explore application that will really skyrocket its relevance and open up its usability to people everywhere.

We covered Woofound earlier here. You can also find out more about them here at woofound.com