Everywhere Else Archives - Page 79 of 145

DC Startup Quad 2 Quad Offering Halloween Treat To College Bound Teens

Last month we brought you the story of two DC area women who are old enough to be Mark Zuckerberg’s mom, and have launched a startup based on the pains they faced as parents during the college bound process. If you’ve been to college, or have a student planning on attending college than you know how rigorous planning a bunch of college visits can be.

You’re probably already juggling soccer practice, drama club, glee club, the student newspaper, karate and 16 other extra curricular activities. Add to that needing to go out of town to a strange city full of college students and you’ve got a recipe for a huge headache. Pushing through the visit process, you know that the ultimate goal is for your kid to make you proud at whatever college they select.

Well Susan Jones (68) and Elizabeth Van Sant, feel your pain. That’s why they’ve created Quad 2 Quad a mobile app for parents and students taking college visits. The app serves as your own virtual tour guide in your pocket with a directory of services, hours of operation, local food spots and other things you need to know, but don’t often think about ahead of time.

When you think of entrepreneurs launching startups you don’t typically of women Van Sant and Jones’ age, you think of their fresh out of college age children (and for the record we joke about their age all the time via email in fact Jones is typically the one who starts the joking).

Between the two of them they’ve got some serious college visit experience. Their two families have visited over 30 different campuses as they put their kids through high school and then college.

Quad 2 Quad is now available for sale and if you’ve been down this road before you know all too well that Halloween is almost a time marker for when the visits start. With that and mind, and to spread some halloween loving, Quad 2 Quad is on sale in the iTunes store for just $2.99 from October 30th-31st (next Tuesday and Wednesday)

Linkage:

Check out Quad 2 Quad here

Download it from the app store here

Come see Jones and Van Sant at “everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference” click here

Take A Look At St.Louis’ Thriving Tech And Startup Scene INFOGRAPHIC

St. Louis’ Information Technology Entrepreneur Network released a great infographic on Tuesday highlighting the goings on in St.Louis. This was just ahead of the Startup Connections conference that happened in St. Louis yesterday.

Although we’re not based there we do consider St. Louis one of our second startup and technology homes and even spotlight their tech scene, sometimes more than their own local sites. St. Louis is ripe for startups and entrepreneurs. In fact when looking at St. Louis from the outside, all of Brad Feld’s “Boulder Thesis” is in place in St. Louis.

Aside from that though, the infographic put together by iTen tells a great story. Take a look at some of these factoids.

New York’s cost of living is 145% higher than St. Louis
Seattle, Silicon Valley, Boston and Austin also have higher costs of living than St. Louis
Washington University (St. Louis) Entrepreneurship Program is ranked 6th in the nation
Missouri ranked top 10 (6th) in the Kauffman Foundation’s Entrepreneurship Index
St. Louis has 9 strong investor firms
St. Louis startups have raised nearly half a billion dollars

We’ve covered some great startups in St. Louis. Lockerdome is a big success story in St. Louis, one that founder Gabe Lozano hopes to keep in St. Louis. In fact Lozano is speaking at “everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference and App Fest” There are a lot of reasons to pay attention to the things going on in St. Louis. See for yourself, check out the infographic below:

Boston TechStars Startup: Saverr Offers Coupons From Receipts, You Know The Things You Actually Buy

The intuitiveness of the algorithms used to deliver Google adsense and Amazon suggestions can seem eerily close to home, but even as good as they are they still sometimes miss grasping what you are really looking for and what you really want to buy. Proximity based coupon apps are great but unless they are generic in nature it’s hard to say what you’re going to buy.

That’s why Boston startup, and Techstars alum, Saverr offers the best couponing proposition to the coupon user. Saverr gives you coupons based on what you actually buy based on what you actually bought using your receipt.

You know those machines that set next to the register tape at Target and the grocery store? You know the ones that spit out the coupons at the end of your visit? Well Saverr is giving you that machine, inside your phone. Pretty bad ass huh?

Saverr uses your actual receipt, the entire receipt, to give you coupons on the items that you just bought. Most likely you are going to buy them again right?

The idea came about when the Israeli team was trying to create a shopping discovery app of sorts. What they quickly found wasn’t that the world needed another discovery app, but the world needed a money saving app. Their proprietary receipt scanning technology is the back bone of their app.

The best part for the consumer is since Saverr is working on the manufacturer coupon side of the world, you can get coupons based on receipts from all types of stores. You’re not relegated to the store that you’re currently shopping in.

We got a chance to talk to the Saverr team which relocated to Boston for Techstars and is staying around for a while. Check out the interview below:

North Carolina Startup: BuyStand Introduces Name Your Price Goods Buying

Name your price was a concept introduced and revolutionized by the negotiator, William Shatner, in his ever so popular commercials for Priceline.com. Typically when talking about Priceline.com these days in regards to startups, it’s mentioning Scott Case the founding CTO of Priceline.com, and now the CEO of Startup America. Well we’re talking about Priceline.com because of that infamous name your price concept and a new startup in the Raleigh area of North Carolina called BuyStand.

BuyStand is the latest startup from North Carolina serial entrepreneur Joe Davy. His most recent startup EvoApp failed, of course as any good founder and entrepreneur knows failure leads to success. Failing fast is just one of the methodologies entrepreneurs in 2012 live by.

BuyStand is completely different than Davy’s previous startup.

For concept demonstration purposes Davy used one vertical market, outdoors. Obviously the platform will work for any retail good but outdoors was a great place to start.

As you can probably imagine, reading this far, BuyStand takes the “name your price” concept and applies it to outdoor goods. Whether you’re looking for the latest running shoes or the best all terrain jacket or back pack, you’ll find it at BuyStand. But you won’t find a typical priced out click through e-commerce portal.

With BuyStand the user selects the item that they want, names the price they’re willing to pay and then BuyStand sets that payment aside. Once a buyer has named a price, the BuyStand system lets the buyer know they have a taker and from there the “bid” is either accepted or rejected. If the “bid” (price) is accepted than BuyStand pays the vendor and the buyers product is shipped to their home.

It’s a two click process, name your price and click.

Davy says the need for BuyStand arises from the fact that buyers waiting for items and buying them second hand, used or “off the truck” at sites like e-Bay and Craigslist account for $200 billion dollars in lost profit.

“BUYSTAND solves this problem by eliminating the price and creating an open, efficient, free market.” Davy told the CED Start Something blog.

BuyStand is open in an limited Beta at the moment and you can sign up for a beta invite by visiting the link below.

Linkage:

Source: CED Start Something Blog

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Fair & Square How To Divide Equity In A Startup (Guest Post)

How to Use a Dynamic Equity Split Program in Your Start-up

You and a partner start a company and split the equity 50/50. You do all the work and your partner flakes out. He owns half your company and wants to keep it. Now what?

This is called a fixed equity split program and it is the most common method of splitting up equity among founders. However this painful situation is very common. It is virtually impossible to design a fixed split equity program that doesn’t cause problems. A dynamic equity split program, on the other hand, provides most fair way to divide up shares in a start-up company among founders, early employees, partners and anyone else that deserves a slice of the pie. It will allow you to determine exactly the right number of shares each person deserves based on (and here is the key) the relative value of their individual inputs.

In a dynamic equity model the founder or founders who provide 90% of the great ideas, early seed money, sweat equity and other resources will wind up with 90% of the reward and the junior developer who provides only 2% of the great ideas, early seed money, sweat equity and other resources relative to the founders will receive 2% of the reward. This is how it should be; anyone who thinks differently is probably someone who wants more than their fair share.

The book, Slicing Pie: Funding Your Company Without Funds, is essentially a user guide to dynamic equity splits for entrepreneurs. It provides detailed instructions on making one work. However, here is the nutshell version of how a dynamic equity spilt model works:

Step One: Have (or be) a trustworthy leader

Only join a start-up company where you can trust the other people, especially the leader. The leader will control 100% of the equity while a dynamic model is being used. This means that an unscrupulous leader can take advantage of everyone. The leader is responsible for tracking the shares and keeping things fair. He or she will provide the appropriate cap table to the lawyers who create the formal equity agreement when the time is right. The right time to issue the equity is when the company shows real, actual, concrete evidence of value.

The leader will also make sure that when a person leaves they are treated fairly. I’ve posted a summary of how to treat people fairly when they leave a company on my blog at SlicingPie.com.

Step Two: Assign values to the various inputs provided by each participant relative to other inputs

A relative value is not the same thing as an actual value. Actual values in a pre-money start-up company are pretty much impossible to determine. Relative values are much easier to calculate and much more meaningful. The key is to set a relative value that is fair given someone’s background, experience and job responsibilities. For instance, the sweat of an experienced CEO with a couple of homeruns under her belt is relatively more valuable than that of an entry-level graphic designer. However, two founders with similar skill-levels may have a similar value to the firm.

When it comes to the value of someone’s time the relative value should not only take into account their skills and experience, but also the requirements of the job. You should be sure to subtract any current compensation the person receives in cash. Equity compensation is provided in exchange for what people put at risk in a new company. If you pay them a fair salary you shouldn’t have to give them any equity because they aren’t risking anything.

Time isn’t the only input an individual can provide. Other inputs include cash, loans, ideas, intellectual property, important resources (like equipment and supplies), strategic relationships and even things like office space. Nearly everything in a start-up company that can’t be bought with cash (if you don’t have it) can be acquired with equity. A dynamic model will tell you exactly how much each is worth relative to other inputs. Everything has a relative value that is fair to the provider and the other participants. Over time these relative values really add up. I’ve posted a summary of how to calculate relative values on my blog at SlicingPie.com.

Step Three: Calculate shares by dividing an individual’s contribution to the company by the total contribution (individual value ÷ total = shares %)

This will give you exactly the percentage of equity a person deserves. No more and no less. I call the total contributions to the firm a “Theoretical Base Value” or TBV. It’s theoretical because it’s not real. It simply adds up the values of the inputs based on the value you assigned in step two. So, you may determine that a founder is “worth” $200 per hour. But, if he works 1,000 hours the company may not actually be worth $200,000 more. I hope it’s worth a lot more than that, but the point is that the value of inputs are only important as a relative measure. I’ve posted a calculator spreadsheet on my blog at SlicingPie.com to help keep track.

This means that over time the potential equity split will change depending on what someone contributes. This is why it’s called a dynamic split. When you get a major investor or start generating enough cash flow to pay people you can calculate the equity, issue official shares, sign a shareholders agreement and be on your way. So, the sooner you raise money or the sooner you make money the sooner you can “lock in” the equity.

Dynamic equity splits make no assumptions about the future value of a company. It doesn’t matter what the future value will be. All that matters is that when you actually create future value everyone who risked something to help you get there should get their fair share of what’s created. Only a dynamic equity split can achieve this. Only a dynamic equity split provides a framework of fairness and respect for all participants. All other methods are prone to failure in their ability to treat people fairly. When I say “all others” I mean all others and “others” is what is commonly used today. That means the model you used or are planning to use in your start up is putting you and your team at risk of unfair equity allocation.

Sorry!

Dynamic equity splits are very uncommon, however, because the process isn’t well understood. Additionally, the dynamic nature of the split scares people who want to grab the biggest possible piece for themselves. Even the founder who errs on the side of generosity will ultimately fail because they, themselves, will be treated unfairly.

I’m on a personal mission to make sure that every entrepreneur on the planet understands dynamic equity models before they make the horrible mistake of using a traditional fixed model. Too many start- up companies are destroyed due to conflicts that arise when people on the team are treated unfairly. The dynamic model can accommodate all possible outcomes in a way that motivates and inspires a person who is treated with fairness.

To learn more about dynamic equity models visit my blog at SlicingPie.com and buy my book, Slicing Pie. If you can’t afford it let me know and I’ll give you a copy!

Mike Moyer is the author of “Slicing Pie: Funding Your Company Without Funds”

Linkage:

Moyer’s Blog

Get the Book “Slicing Pie: Funding Your Company Without Funds” here at Amazon

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CEO Remorse? After Firing Mollie Spillman On Vacation Is Marissa Mayer Eyeing Baltimore Startup Millennial Media?

The 37 year old fireball we’ve all come to know and love, Marissa Mayer, has been hard at work in her new role as CEO of Yahoo. During that time she’s mandated free smartphones for her staffers, made meals free, hired a new CFO and even had a baby of her own with just a few weeks maternity leave. Mayer knows that Yahoo’s share holders are looking for a big change and quick. So far she seems to be delivering.

The next thing Mayer and the Yahoo team have to do is lock down solid revenue streams.

It appears that Mayer is going to attack revenue from all angles and focus on the angles that she knows the best. A new version of the Yahoo home screen recently leaked out that showed a higher profile for search. For those that didn’t know Mayer had a long tenured history at Google.

She also seems to be honing in on Yahoo’s content properties and cutting away other under performing properties.

Mayer’s also focusing heavily on mobile a place she knows well from her Google days. Yahoo held their first quarterly conference call under Mayer, Monday afternoon. During that call Mayer spoke about her plan to focus the company’s efforts on mobile. At one point in Yahoo’s long dot com history the page, with their silly tv commercials, was a destination of browsers everywhere to find just about anything in a portal design moreso than a straight search engine.

In the early days of Google, Yahoo search was actually powered by their Mountain View rival. A time Mayer knows all too well from the other side of the fence.

Mayer is hoping to make Yahoo and it’s many apps a go to destination on mobile devices. Once their mobile product line is beefed up they are going to need a better monetization strategy than they currently have in place.

To that end, this past weekend Business Insider reported that Mayer may have her eye on Baltimore mobile ad startup giant Millennial Media.

Millennial Media was created by a group of former advertising.com and Verizon Wireless employees and is led today by co-founder and CEO Paul Palmeri who was integral part of the creation of Verizon Wireless’ v-cast service. With their engagement and developer centric mobile ad strategy Millennial Media quickly rose to prominence as the second largest mobile ad company in the world, eclipsing even Apple. Google is of course at the top, and by all accounts they are not for sale.

Millennial Media went public back in March. They debuted at $13 and quickly shot up to $25 with a high on opening day of $27.90. Unlike many of the tech companies and “startups” that went public this year, Millennial Media trades on a day to day basis, very close to where they debuted at, closing yesterday at $14.25.

All around it’s a solid company and a solid acquisition candidate for Yahoo.

Of course no one at Yahoo or Millennial Media is speaking about this however Yahoo could truly benefit from having the second largest mobile ad network behind Google in their stable.

There’s also a huge connection between Yahoo and Millennial Media. Millennial Media’s Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer is Mollie Spilman. You may remember Spilman’s name as the CMO from Yahoo that was fired by Mayer while she was on her vacation. Perhaps there isn’t such bad blood between Mayer after all.

Linkage:

Millennial Media

Source: SAI

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Colorado Startup Employtown Says They’re Flip Flopping The Job Market

Employtown,Colorado startup,startup,startups,startup interview

Scott Balster co-founder of Employtown

Innovation in the job and recruitment space seems to be a weekly occurrence. The neat thing about jobs related startups is that every one of them knows that something different needs to happen.

Monster.com, the leader in jobs sites has become stale. It’s also become a breeding ground for recruiters, head hunters and agencies. It’s hard these days to sort through real ads verses cattle calls for talent pools. Entrepreneurs are attacking this problem from all angles. Some are crowd-sourcing and using social media, some are putting job markets into silo’d verticals, while others are putting an entirely different spin.

Colorado startup Employtown is one of those startups that’s trying to do things totally different.

Husband and wife founders Scott and Andrea Balster have taken the job market and turned it around. Now instead of focusing on open slots, they are focusing on human capital. Employtown is about the people and not the job openings. Dare we say match.com for job seekers looking for employers?

In our interview with Scott he talks about how with their startup, those looking for jobs set up profiles, showcasing their style, creativity, skill sets, and resume items. The next thing they do is where Employtown separates themselves from other startups. Job applicants put what they’re looking for in terms of a job. They let employers know their criteria, are they looking for a 100% smoke free environment, are they looking for flexible hours, are they looking for a cafeteria and a weight room? Are they looking for more creativity in the work place? Whatever the applicant’s criteria for a new job is they can place it in their profile and employers can sift through profiles and find candidates that match.

Check out the rest of our interview with Scott below.

Pittsburgh Startup Songwhale Born From Beowulf! INTERVIEW

A Pittsburgh startup with a funny name is engaging customers from brands across multiple touch points. SongWhale specializes in taking customer engagement to a new level using the web, text, pay and direct solutions.

The unique company offers multiple products to drive engagement and even a pay product of their own called PayWhale which offers the ability to text a payment. Paying via text is very popular in emerging countries but no one in the US has really embraced the technology. It’s actually one of the easiest ways to pay.

While interactive engagement may not seem sexy some of the things SongWhale is doing are. Not only that but the story about how Songwhale came about is one of the most interesting ones we’ve heard.

Songwhale’s four core business areas, Web, Text, Pay and Direct can be summarized like this:

Web: Songwhale can get a companies brand or message through the web on any screen; smartphone, tablet, or computer all optimized for each size.

Text: Songwhale offers engaging SMS campaigns including games, and interactives.

Pay: Songwhale’s Paywhale product offers a text payment solution that is possibly the easiest form of mobile commerce and one wildly adopted in emerging countries.

Direct: Songwhale offers direct branding and engagement campaigns that encompass web, text and pay solutions.

We got a chance to interview Songwhale. Check out the interview below:

Mother & Daughter DC Startup Dormify, Changing Dorm Rooms Everywhere

What can you do with the limited space of a dorm room, or shared living space while you’re in college? Well unless you’re an interior designer for Ikea you may think your options are limited. That’s not the case thanks to the mother and daughter team of Karen Zuckerman (mom) and Amanda Zuckerman (daughter).

The Zuckerman’s have created a new Washington DC startup called Dormify that looks to serve those college age students with ideas, and tools to help transform their living space for their four years of college life. Everything from crafty ideas, to room furnishings, trinkets and even college flair can be found on the Dormify site.

Dormify gives college students everywhere the freedom to stop combing the aisles of Ikea and Target in hopes to find some idea that all the other students aren’t using.

Towels, pillows, home furnishings even stylish school supplies and sweets can be found on the Dormify website.

As you can imagine Dormify came about when Karen was helping Amanda move into her first dorm room at Washington University in St. Louis. Both Zuckerman women have been known for their creativity throughout their lives and the neon colored towels, matching trash cans, rug mats and computer chairs on sale at Target weren’t going to do the trick.

After shopping for Amanda’s dorm room at a variety of boutique shops in downtown St. Louis, a look Amanda could live with was born. The Zuckerman women realized that there is no centralized place to build looks like this, so they did what any entrepreneurs would do and built it themselves.

We got a chance to talk with Dormify’s employee #1, Nicole Gardner, who tells us more about Dormify, below:

Miami Startup: Kipu Systems, Transforming The Substance Abuse Industry

Tobias Franoszek, the CTO and Co-Founder of KIPU Systems, a cloud-based records management system for the substance abuse industry, is no stranger to startups and technology. In the mid-nineties he achieved great success with CONCEPT!, a Frankfurt stock exchange digital interactive agency, were as Client Services and Technical director he led the technological growth of the company from 4 to 250 employees. At the turn of the decade, Concept identified the growing Latin-American Tech Sector in Miami and he was delegated as the Managing Director for the Region. As history goes, not long after he began his tenure the burst of the dot come bubble occurred. He endured it after obvious adjustments, and then adopted Miami as his hometown transitioning into technological consulting and various other digital service offerings.

In the beginning of 2012 Tobias was contracted by The Right Place Residential Detox center to evaluate electronic medical records systems. After reviewing more than 30 vendors he couldn’t recommend any of the solutions evaluated and instead offered to create one – and so the journey to create KIPU SYSTEMS began.

Not surprisingly, Tobias witnessed huge inefficiencies while studying the procedures in place and it became a big motivating factor for him, as he says: “to begin with, the detox industry is not easy to manage because each patient is different and the procedures change according to the type of addiction, age, sex, consent of guardians, you name it, and it’s not easy for the caregivers to keep up with all the paperwork, so it became an opportunity to improve upon an antiquated system.” Today KIPU is completely functional at The Right Place Residential Detox center where it has proved that its implementation reduces Initial Evaluations, Patient Intake, and Doctor Review times by more than 50%.

And the reasons for this improvement can be seen at the center on a daily basis. Now caregivers use an iPad with the Kipu software to process sign-in information and every other procedure they implement on their daily routine, whereas before the norm was endless paper handling. But one of the most impressive achievements of the KIPU team is the transition from manual “bed boards” into “electronic bed boards” (this boards show the current census, bed assignments, and incoming and leaving patients, at any given moment). This means caregivers no longer have to write and erase information on whiteboards; instead the system creates the electronic version in real time. No wonder KIPU is the subject of adoration at the center.

Knoxville Startup: Credit Virgin To Educate And Protect Young Adults From Credit Whoas

Nate Buchanan a graduate of the University of Tennessee and the founder of a new startup called “Credit Virgin” is looking to help as many young people, and college students make their credit lives easier. The Knoxville news reports that when Buchanan and a friend went to rent an apartment, the friend couldn’t get approved for the apartment because he had no credit history. It didn’t matter that the friend worked fll time and both perspective tenants made more than enough to afford the apartment. Because Buchanan’s friend hadn’t established any credit they were turned away.

Of course Buchanan knows that as young adults between 18-24 credit can be a double edged sword. Although it’s not as prevalent as it was in the late 90’s and early part of the 2000’s, there are still plenty of credit card companies and other finance companies that prey on college students who are already racking up enormous amounts of debt with student loans.

According to the UT Federal Credit Union, the average college student graduates with $8,000 in credit debt,outside student loans.

Through Credit Virgin, Buchanan hopes to first educate college students and young adults on the pro’s and cons of credit and how to establish credit via videos delivered on the startups website. He hopes to also integrate the site with a credit card evaluation tool which will compare terms and conditions as well as interest rates and other need to know information about credit cards typically offered to college students.

Buchanan hopes to also offer a credit monitoring service for students and their parents so they can monitor their credit together.

Credit, when used responsibly, can be a tool for young adults starting to establish themselves.

“Younger people don’t realize the implications of that until they go to buy a car and they have to get a loan, or they try and buy a house and don’t have a down payment,” Melinda Wood, Vice President of Marketing at the UT Federal Credit Union said to the Knoxville News.

Linkage:

Source: Knoxville News

Find out more about CreditVirgin here

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California Startup: Bubbs Connects You To Charitable Products INTERVIEW

A new Orange County startup called Bubbs is looking to become the go-to place to find products that are being sold to benefit charities and causes across the globe. When you go to mybubbs.com you’ll see a familiar online mall experience, except in this case all the products are benefiting some kind of charity.

Bubbs is somewhat similar to DoGoodBuyUs, a New York startup that we covered back in June. The main difference is that DoGoodBuyUs connects products that were specifically made for charity whereas most of the Bubbs products are more traditional in nature but somehow proceeds are benefiting charity.

Red Beats By Dre headphones, where $5.00 of the purchase goes to AIDS research, can be found on Bubbs. An iPad case which gives a week’s worth of HIV medicine to someone living in Africa can also be found on the page. Clothing, food, other gadgets and even makeup with a purpose can be found on the mybubbs site. Now you can shop for charity in one spot rather than scouring the internet looking for charity kick backs, site by site.

We got a chance to talk to Atila Lotfi the founder of Bubbs, check out the interview below:

19 Year Old Entrepreneur Poised To Take On Big Data With His St.Louis Startup

St. Louis startup Evtron, and it’s pair of founders still too young to drink alcohol, are looking to take on stage server hardware space.

The story of Evtron co-founders Andrew Mayhall and Kyle Goeken, will be one for the entrepreneurial history books, if their innovative startup takes off. To kick off their story though, they went on a road trip.

Mayhall and Goeken had received the almost golden ticket. Their startup was selected to pitch at the recent DEMO conference at the Santa Clara convention center in Silicon Valley. We say “almost golden ticket” because they weren’t quite lucky enough to get one of the highly coveted “scholarship” spots, but nonetheless the opportunity to pitch that crowd is one you can’t pass up.

Now most bootstrapped startups have a hard enough time coming up with the $8,000 to just get on the stage at DEMO, (that’s why conferences like everywhereelse.co charge much less). Combine that with the fact that Mayhall is only 19 and Goeken is just 20 and that’s a lot of lawns to mow and burgers to flip.

Regardless of the hardwork the duo had to put in to raise the $8,000 the story of their road trip hardly ends there. The St. Louis Post Dispatch reports that to save money they elected to drive from St.Louis to Silicon Valley. Surely that’s no big deal for two young adults but the Post Dispatch continues on to report that the folks at DEMO mistakenly double charged the teams debit card, rendering them completely broke in route.

Goeken was able to save the day because he luckily had a Shell gas card. So with a card for fuel and all the beef jerkey and other great gas station food they could buy, the two would finally make it to the conference.

Mayhall is one of those prodigal entrepreneurs. He began tinkering with computers when he was 8 or 9. He dropped out of high school to attend college early and then dropped out of college to work on his own ideas.

One of those ideas is Evtron. Mayhall synced up with now Evtron’s Chief Technology Officer, Brady O’Brien to revolutionize the server industry. Evtron has found a way to stack server hard drives vertically instead of horizontally. They also found a way to use the base as a “heat sink”. When coupled together the Evtron server uses 45% less electricity, generates 38% less heat and takes up 66% less space. When considering huge data centers the size of say Google’s (that were revealed to the public earlier this week) you’re talking about savings in the tens of millions.

While we are constantly covering the St. Louis startup scene , St. Louis isn’t known for being a hardware town.

Brian Matthews a local St. Louis tech entrepreneur who’s been advising Evtron, agreed that St. Louis isn’t a hardware town.

“If it’s really going to scale up and mass-produce data servers, Evtron will need two things that are hard to find here: money and an experienced management team” Matthews told the Post Dispatch.

As St. Louis’ startup community continues to grow, hopefully Evtron will be able to find a fit, and a way to stay in the city. Mayhall said that is one of his goals.

Linkage:

Check out Evtron the next generation storage platform here.

Here are more startup stories from St. Louis

Source: St. Louis Post Dispatch

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Seattle Startup: WompMobile Promises Easy Web To Mobile Conversion

One of the most frustrating things for some web publishers is exactly how they’re going to get their sites onto mobile devices. Some choose to go with a native mobile app, meaning that a mobile app is created for each smartphone platform from scratch for the site. Others choose to use WordPress plugins or other competing platforms. We’re fortunate that our site scales to mobile nicely.

Seattle startup WompMobile is hoping to make the process much easier for their web publishing clients. WompMobile uses their own proprietary design engine to scale a desktop website to mobile maintaining the integrity of the desktop design. They promise to make “going mobile easy”.

While their process takes just under ten days, once the WompMobile team has run your website through their engine, every update the publisher makes to their website is instantly updated on the mobile version.

Madison Miner the company’s founder, says that their secret sauce is in their conversion engine. Things like fonts, styles, and branding remain consistent from web to mobile and the publisher doesn’t need to sacrifice their web presence by using a generic mobile format.

We got a chance to talk to Miner about WompMobile and the Seattle startup scene in the interview below.