OneSpark Comes Alive In Downtown Jacksonville

Downtown Jacksonville has come alive with thousands of entrepreneurs, do-ers and creators in the first of it’s kind Crowdfunding Festival called OneSpark.

The five day festival runs from now through Sunday. Creators in music, art, science and technology are all showing off their wares while also competing for attendee dollars and attendee votes.

The festival has taken the crowdfunding concepts introduced by sites like kickstarter and Indiegogo and brought them offline and in person to hundreds of venues throughout the downtown area of Jacksonville.

Nibletz is on the ground in Jacksonvillr and we look forward to introducing you to the creators from across the country and around the world, exhibiting here at OneSpark.

But make no mistake about it, this is far more than an exhibition. All of the creators (startups) are looking for people to crowdfunding their ideas in person.

As for the voting, OneSpark has over $1,000,000 committed for a fund that will distribute money to the creators with the most votes. One of the biggest supporters of OneSpark, and the biggest contributor to the fund is Jacksonville Jaguars owner Shahid “Shad” Khan.

Throughout the event creators will be pitching their ideas to the audience at pitch stages set up all over downtown.

Today all ready we’ve seen a very innovative startup called Quick Solar. This company is working on a drag and drop platform for homeowners and other interested folks to drop solar panels on google maps images of their home.

Quick Solar will take these users through the cost saving benefits of moving to solar energy and eventually the company will link with providers that can install your solar system.

Creators from every corner of the globe and business are here. We also saw crowdfunding at the local level with Red Sable Art Supply.

This company is hoping to create an art supply store and collaborative work space for artists in St.Augustine Florida.

Currently, artists in the area are driving 1-3 hours away to find an adequate art supply store where they can learn about their supplies, techniques and actually squeeze bottles, feel paint brushes and talk to real humans.

Stick with us for OneSpark coverage here.

Evernote Launches No Equity Accelerator For Developers

Evernote is known for it’s great relationship with developers. They hold hackathons on just about every continent, they hold the “devcup” and they support every single bit of creativity that developers can build using Evernote as the backbone. Some of the things that have come out of Evernote developers are really cool, and go way beyond the “notepad app” that Evernote started as. (my favorite Evernote app is Hello).

Now Evernote has announced they are expanding on the relationship with their developers once again. Evernote is opening a new on-site accelerator bringing their developers to SiliconValley. Docomo and Honda have partnered with Evernote to make the accelerator possible.

No matter where you are based, if you’re selected for the Evernote accelerator you and your team will be flown to Silicon Valley, you’ll get living accommodations, free food, office space, access to Evernote developers and engineers, group work sessions and feedback sessions and more. At the end of the program Evernote’s Rafe Needleman told Venturebeat, that “they’ll hold a demo day for Silicon Valley investors and press.”

Currently there are six billion API’s per month across the Evernote platform and Needleman and team are looking for even more. “There’s a million different ways to store, use, and get access to personal and private data, and so far we’ve only built eight of those apps,” Needleman says.

Teams chosen for the accelerator will come from the DevCup. Once they arrive in Silicon Valley not only will they be working with Evernote but they will also be working with Docomo Innovation Ventures and Honda Silicon Valley Labs. This could be a big benefit for Evernote developers whose apps deal directly with mobile and wireless or transportation.

Interested in learning more? Check out Evernote’s developer’s site here.

Unfortunately money doesn’t grow on trees in Silicon Valley, read here.

Brandery 2012 Alumn Flightcar Nabs $5.5 Million From Investors Including Ryan Seacrest

So back in July when we heard the original idea behind FlightCar I thought this group of teenage ivy league dropouts was absolutely crazy. Their Cincinnati startup Flightcar is a crazy idea. Their simplest pitch, “let someone else rent your car while you’re traveling” seemed a little far fetched. Combine that with the fact that there’s maybe 10 years driving experience between the three of them and even less business traveling experience, and I was totally disconnected.

Sometime during the Brandery’s demo day back in October my opinion changed. By the end of their pitch, and then a brief meeting with all three founders and I was completely sold.

With the “sharing economy” becoming more and more popular, why wouldn’t someone let another person borrow their car while they are away on a trip. People are doing it with their homes all the time now, by way of Vayala and Airbnb.

The concept is fairly simple. You’re flying out of town for a trip and you have to pay for parking for your car. Rather than paying for parking, Flightcar allows you to park your car in their lot and then while your gone it gets rented out to someone else who is coming into town for the same length or a shorter amount of time. Now, instead of spending money to park, you’re making money with your car that would otherwise be sitting in a parking lot.

To make the value proposition work Flightcar founders Rujul Zaparde, Kevin Petrovic and Shri Ganeshram had to insure a few things for their customers to be comfortable with the transaction.

Insurance: Of course the entire transaction, car, renters, drivers and passengers would need to be fully insured. Flightcar has done this by securing a $1 million dollar insurance policy.

Ease of transaction: The Flightcar team has managed to build in several factors to make the transaction as easy and painless as possible. The Flightcar website helps pre-determine the “borrowing”. Once at the airport (participating airports), you park your car at the Flightcar lot where a ride is provided to the gate. Flightcar will also wash and clean your car prior to renting it out and prior to you picking it up.

After the Brandery, Flightcar was accepted into the YCombinator accelerator program in Silicon Valley. Now they’ve raises $5.5 million dollars from investors. This first round of funding comes from General Catalyst, Softbank Capital, Ryan Seacrest’s Seacrest Global Group, founder of Airbnb Brian Chesky, with participation from a host of other investors including First Round Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, according to TechCrunch.

Check out their pitch video from Brandery’s 2012 demo day below:

Find out more about Flightcar here at flightcar.com

The Brandery is one of the country’s top 15 accelerators, check out all of our Brandery coverage here.

St. Louis Arch Grants Sees 707 Applicants For 2013

Startups who applied, and have made the finals for the St. Louis Arch Grants startup program, are waiting on pins and needles leading up to the final pitch offs and winner announcements.

Arch Grants is a program that kicked off last year in St. Louis. They provide startups with a $50,000 grant (disbursed quarterly over a year). Of course, being that it’s grant money, there is no equity exchanged. Startups selected for the program will relocate to St. Louis where they will enjoy deeply discounted residential and commercial rent, free legal, accounting, marketing, cloud computing and mentoring support, and access to the St. Louis angel investment network.

Arch Grants will award 20 such grants this year and plan on making the announcement early next month. All 20 startups will serve as spokespeople for the St. Louis entrepreneurial community and also be eligible for $100,000 follow on grant money (again no equity).

Our good friend Edward Domain, at media company Techli was one such winner last year. Domain had frequented the St. Louis startup scene from his base of operations, which was Chicago at the time. Once receiving the grant Techli moved to St. Louis and the T-Rex co-working, incubation space.

Domain just recently profiled three of the finalists for this years grants at techli.com

While many startups from across the country apply, and are more than willing to move to St. Louis for it’s rich, budding startup community, some local entrepreneurs have applied too.

Ron Story, a local St. Louis resident and founder of LeadWarmer, told Domain:

“As a resident of the St. Louis metro area, St. Louis is a no-brainer for me. I’ve worked for a St. Louis based startup myself and now that I’ve launched my own venture and have some traction, I am more convinced than ever that St. Louis is exactly where I need to be to grow my business. Being an Arch Grants finalist is humbling and exciting all at once. It makes me proud an East St. Louis entrepreneur can grow a great business here.”

Check out the rest of the story at techli.com

St.Louis has a great startup community, check out more St. Louis startup stories here.

Pittsburgh Startup PayTango Moves Mobile Wallet To Your Fingertips

As the mobile wallet begins to catch on, the next wave of mobile wallet startups are starting to come alive as well. Back in January we interviewed New Jersey startup PulseWallet at CES 2013 in Eureka Park. There we learned that PulseWallet is working on biometrics to serve as someone’s mobile wallet.

Simply put, with this kind of technology you’ll be able to ditch your credit cards, debit cards, and loyalty cards. Instead, your finger will become your secure wallet. With a finger scan and a pin you’ll be able to pay for anything with any number of payment forms in a much safer, fraud resistant way.

PulseWallet isn’t alone. Biometrics is a hot space as is mobile wallet. Four Carnegie Mellon University students have also recently launched a biometrics based mobile wallet called PayTango.

According to the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, using PayTango a customer would swipe there finger and in less than 15 seconds they would be linked to their payment sources.

“We wanted to eliminate the need to carry anything around to identify yourselves. Like you have these plastic credit cards and if you lose them or get the numbers stolen off them, essentially someone could wipe your bank account,” said co-founder Kelly Lau-Kee.

Lau Kee says that credit cards are antiquated and haven’t really evolved in the last 40 years since their introduction. Yes security has gotten better and reconciliation is much more reliable with phone lines and the internet,but storing the information on the magnetic strip is still the same technology today as it was back in the 70’s.

PayTango was brewed in Pennsylvania. All four founders; Brian Groudan, Umang Patel, Christian Reyes and Lau-Kee, are all either seniors or recent graduates of Carnegie Mellon. They conceived the idea in the fall of 2012 for a TechLab startup course at CMU and then continued working on it during the University of Pennsylvania’s PennApps Hackathon.

The technology is currently up and running at three eateries on the Carnegie Mellon campus. For the live beta at CMU, over 700 students have registered their fingerprint which was linked to their student ID which has their meal plan attached. To eat at those eateries, students in the beta just swipe their finger at checkout.

Now they’ve relocated to Mountain View California after being accepted into the prestigious Y Combinator accelerator program. They’ve already expanded PayTango into gyms, restaurants and convenience stores in Silicon Valley.

What they’re doing is bringing a very simple idea into reality,” said Garry Tan, a partner at Y Combinator. “Payments should be easier, and we’re now capable of doing it without fancy cards or readers or anything besides what we carry around with us all the time right now — our fingerprints.”

Find out more about PayTango here

Now check out New Jersey startup PulseWallet

Startup Front, There’s Something Brewing Outside Of Chicago

We’re pretty confident that over the course of the last year Chicago’s thriving tech startup scene has proven the folks at PandoDaily wrong, very wrong. Chicago has one of the fastest growing startup tech scenes in the world. Their 1871 incubator and startup epicenter is amazing, producing hit after hit and now home to TechStars Chicago.
It’s this eruption of startup activity that got serial entrepreneur Kelly Schwedland and entrepreneur Nat Finn talking about what they could do on the other side of Chicago, in Valparaiso Indiana.

We’ve reported on Indiana’s other thriving startup communities, like Indianapolis, home to the Speak Easy, Developer Town and Verge Indy events. We even featured Speak Easy Executive Director Denver Hutt as one of our Bad Ass Startup Chicks.

Now, those in Northwest Indiana don’t need to head into the big city to have access to startup resources thanks to Schwedland, Finn and a host of other collaborators.

Startup Front started out as a lunch meet up for tech leaders, entrepreneurs and startup founders. Like every great startup though, they pivoted and have now become an accelerator, which will launch next year, with a ten year plan of cranking out at least 2 startups per session ripe for an IPO.

Nibletz co-founder and new CEO, Nick Tippmann, was a guest speaker at the kick off event for the new Startup Front last week in Valparaiso. Over the next two weeks we will feature a series of videos from Startup Front that discuss building startup communities in the heartland.

Check out the video below where Tippmann interviews both Finn and Schwedland. They discuss bringing some of the attributes of the third largest city in the United States, just miles down the road to North West Indiana.

Check out Startup Front at startupfront.org

We’ve got more startup stories from Indiana here at nibletz.com

Dallas Entrepreneur Launches HealthSparx Web Series On Startups & Innovation

HealtSparx,Michael Walsh,Dallas Startup,Health startup,startup podcast

(photo: meetup.com)

Dallas based entrepreneur Michael Walsh has been extremely busy lately. First off, his Austin Texas based startup, Cariloop, just launched. We interviewed Walsh about his startup that uses the “Expedia” model for geriatric care back in January.

Walsh also just recently launched a new web series called “HealthSparx”. This online web based radio show deals with the intersection of three important industries: health, technology and business.

Each webisode runs about 30 minutes and features commentary, information and an interview with an influential person in health or technology.

Healthsparx is already on it’s fourth webisode.

Episode #1 English majors rock as much as mechanical engineers

Episode #2 How IT plumbing will help healthcare

Episode #3 Every little bit helps in healthcare

Episode #4 Creating the perfect social and private experience

Walsh explains the three big reasons he decided to launch HealthSparx:

1. There is seriously so much cool stuff going on in healthcare right now that no one knows about, and that’s thanks to the innovative entrepreneurs and technology that are finally giving this industry the makeover it so desperately needs. Make no mistake, this makeover is going to take a LONG time for us to really see how great it looks, but we will get there…I am sure of it! I want to share these great stories from across the country and make people more aware of the cool products and services being born. If you have one of these stories for me, go submit your info to me on the “Be A Guest” page, I want to hear from you!

2. No easy way to say this, so I’ll just level with you…Healthcare has gotten ridiculously confusing. This confusion is affecting everyone – you, your business, your employees, on and on. I want to pull the curtain back a bit on what’s going on so you might finally make heads or tails of it. Maybe here, in the HealthSparx community, we can even come up with some things that the “powers that be” aren’t thinking about.

3. I love entrepreneurship – I love talking about entrepreneurs, I love helping entrepreneurs, and I love trying to light a spark within an entrepreneur who doesn’t yet know they are an entrepreneur. So, I’m going to do just that, bring people on the show that might be able to help someone else build that amazing idea they’ve been thinking about. This might include developers, designers, lawyers, financial advisors, investors, accelerators or any other people who think they know what it takes to bring a product or service to life. Take this information, digest it, and if possible, make something happen with it!

The shows are well produced and thought out and if you fit into one of HealthSparx categories feel free to apply to be a guest here.

There’s much more to Dallas than oil and JR, check out these Dallas startup stories here.

NTEN Honors Memphis Startup Founder Tal Frankfurt

NTEN, the Nonprofit Technology Network, closed out their 2013 Nonprofit Technology Conference in Minneapolis Minnesota Saturday evening. The event brings together NTEN members from across the country who’s companies use technology for the benefit of non profit organizations across the United States and globally.

Memphis based Cloud For Good, is one of those technology companies. The startup, led by Israeli native tech entrepreneur and SalesForce pro Tal Frankfurt, designs enterprise class data systems operating on the SalesForce platform specifically for non profit clients.

Some of the largest non profit organizations, churches and synagogues across the country rely on Cloud For Good to give them the same class of service that a Fortune 100 company would come to expect.

Each year NTEN recognizes entrepreneurs who go above and beyond over the course of the year to be “true NTENnies”.

This year’s honors were bestowed upon members in the format of “senior superlatives” or “most likely to’s”

Frankfurt was said to be Most likely to: “Live In The Cloud And Help You Get There”.

Tal Frankfurt, Founder and CEO of Cloud for Good, was chosen in 2010 to be one of the first Salesforce MVP Program members, an exclusive club representing the top 1% of the Salesforce community, and have maintained that status to date.

Prior to his involvement with Salesforce.com, Tal was the Director of Resource Development for an Israeli nonprofit organization that worked with at-risk immigrant youth. He was looking for tools to better manage his donors, participants, and volunteers. It was through this experience that Tal learned about Salesforce. The adoption of Salesforce into his everyday work was what sparked the inception of Cloud for Good, a Salesforce implementation partner working primarily with nonprofit and educational institutions to create and implement strategic solutions based on cloud technology.

Tal has been involved with Salesforce.com and The Salesforce.com Foundation for almost 8 years. He was the founder and leader of the Salesforce Nonprofit User Group in Israel and recently founded the first Salesforce Nonprofit User Group in Tennessee. Frankfurt is a Certified Salesforce.com Administrator and a Certified Salesforce.com Consultant.

NTEN wrote in the web version of their conference program.

We’ve got more south east startup coverage here.

Xoogler Gets Acquihired By Google

Funf an open sensing framework created by a Xoogler founded startup called Behavio, won the accelerator competition at SXSW 2012.

The platform, launched in October 2011, uses mobile phones as sensors for tracking location, movement, app activity and extended network of it’s users and communities.

The company won a $355,000 grant from the Kauffman Foundation for winning the accelerator competition.

According to Business Insider, and a subsequent update to their original story, Behavio is being acquihired for talent and the Funf product will remain a standalone side project for Nadav Aharony who worked on Google’s Android team before leaving for MIT to finish his PhD. Alan Gardner and Cody Sumter, Behavio’s other two cofounders will be joining Google as well.

This is a great move for Android’s new head Sundar Pichai, who took over after Andy Rubin switched departments.

Check out more Xoogler startup stories here at nibletz.com

Fueled By Cardboard: Kidpreneurs Kid President & Caine’s Arcade Spark Happiness & Entrepreneurship

Truth be told I’ve been waiting for the exact right moment where I could sneak in a story about an awe inspiring 9 year old from Memphis Tennessee. If you’re not familiar with Kid President, Robbie Novak, you have to be living under the proverbial rock.

Novak’s this awesome little 9 year old boy who has a brittle bone disease. He’s had over 70 breaks in his short nine years. He’s also adopted (like me) and loves to dance. Aside from the casts he’s often stuck in, you would never know that he had the disease. You wouldn’t know anything sad about him, he makes people laugh and have fun.

Just for fun Novak and his adult brother in law Bradley Montague stared making videos. They cam up with a character, Kid President, and built a set out of cardboard, and used furniture you could find at any good yard sale to create an Oval Office. Novak sits behind a desk (and sometimes on it), and offers his words of wisdom, great interviews, hilarity and sometimes just dancing.

When Novak has a guest in his videos he talks to them through a can and a string and typically gets them to dance as well. Josh Groban, MC Hammer and most recently President Barack Obama have appeared alongside Novak.

But way before the celebrities started catching wind of the 9 year old President, Rainn Wilson from NBC’s “The Office” and the creator of the YouTube channel Soul Pancake found Novak and recruited the boy wonder to release his videos on the Soul Pancake channel.

While no one knows the terms of any revenue split or profit sharing, Novak had one requirement before joining the Soul Pancake channel, and that was of course to eat pancakes. Which he did.

Kid President’s videos have been seen tens of millions of times and he’s been featured on just about every decent sized media outlet known to man. In fact the Obama administration had Kid President be their April Fool’s Day prank this year. With that every major tv network picked up Novak from behind the podium in the White House briefing room.

Montague and Novak never set out for fame or money, they just wanted people to be happy, to get along better and to dance (so far the only celebrity that Novak hasn’t asked to dance has been Obama).

Being in the content business we are sure there is some money being made, and it’s most likely all being saved up for Novak and his sister’s college funds. They offer some Kid President merchandise and since Kid President’s White House appearance for April Fool’s Day and as a grand marshall of sorts for this year’s easter egg roll, his popularity has again increased ten fold.

And it all started with a cardboard set that he and his brother in law made for fun.

Coincidentally today is the year anniversary of Caine’s arcade video going viral on the web.

Caine Monroy was also nine years old (last year) when some cardboard made him famous. For him he wasn’t looking for fame either, he was just having fun putting his entrepreneurial mind to work in his father’s used auto part store.

Over the previous summer Monroy had created an “arcade” out of used cardboard boxes from his dad’s shop. At one point a filmmaker named Nirvan Mullick walked into the shop looking for a door handle for his 96 Toyota Corolla. Curious about the boxes shaped like games, Mullick asked Monroy what he was doing and he said he made an arcade.

Some of the boxes turned into games required more imagination than skill, but some games actually had mechanical function.

It’s amazing what a lot of heart, a big imagination and a smart smiling 9 year old can do.

Monroy told the filmmaker he could pay $1 for two turns or $2 for an all day fun pass and 500 turns. Intrigued by what the 9 year old had built Mullick paid for the all day fun pass.

Caine’s Arcade from Nirvan Mullick on Vimeo.

A short while later Nirvan had returned to the auto parts store because he wanted to make a short film about the innovative cardboard arcade. He found out that day that Nirvan was Monroy’s first and only paying customer. To Monroy’s surprise Nirvan recruited a flash mob of paying customers which made Caine’s day.

The short film went viral and with that a campaign to create a college fund for Caine was born. That college fund raised $228,000 and then it was matched dollar for dollar to support the Imagination Foundation.

Find out more about Kid President here

Find out more about Caine’s Arcade here

Startup Act 3.0 Aims to Open Borders for Entrepreneurs

Some pieces of legislation refuse to die. For a third time, lawmakers introduced a bill that would create visas for foreign entrepreneurs looking to start a business in the United States. The Startup Act 3.0 is a bipartisan bill that would grant entrepreneurs who employ at least two full-time employees or raise investments up to $100,000 an additional three years to grow, with the possibility for permanent status, according to Mashable.com

Democrats and Republicans don’t agree on much at the moment, but the Startup Act 3.0 has support on both sides of the aisle. Even President Obama has voiced his support for these “entrepreneurial visas.” Obama noticed that bright foreign students are studying at American Universities, but don’t have the opportunity to continue toward the American Dream. “Once they earn that diploma, there’s a good chance they’ll have to leave our country,” Obama said.

Not every bill gets three strikes. But the Startup Act 3.0 could be the next step toward economic recovery and social reform.

Potential Impact

The beauty of new businesses isn’t just the jobs or innovation. It’s also the secondary consequences. Foreign entrepreneurs, B2B businesses and consumers all stand to gain from the Startup Act 3.0. Obviously, foreign born entrepreneurs gain access to launch business in the United States. While many will argue that the U.S. is becoming a less and less fertile place to start a business, it still boasts the largest economy in the world, according to Economywatch.com. As startups launch, they strengthen B2B businesses through partnerships. A startup usually can’t facilitate credit card transactions on its own, but a company like Capital Processing Network offers expertise and support. The result? Both businesses become stronger. From the consumer’s perspective, there’s no downside to new startups. Competition means lower prices, higher quality and increased innovation. Considering the vast positives and potential for more job opportunities, it’s no wonder the Startup Act has come back to life.

Visas and Immigration

Part of the reason the Startup Act has needed three renditions is because it dives into a currently unsettled territory: immigration. According to Huffingtonpost.com, previous renditions of the bill failed to pass because of their controversial nature. Immigration is no less controversial, but once again, entrepreneurial visas are on the table. During his recent State of the Union address, President Obama called for a comprehensive immigration reform bill in “the next few months.” It remains to be seen whether this comprehensive reform will interfere with the Startup Act 3.0.

Inside the Bill

According to a press release from Virginia Senator Mark Warner, one of the bill’s sponsors, the Startup Act 3.0 includes provisions beyond creating new visas. Additional provisions include:

A mandate that grants U.S.-educated foreign students who graduate with a master’s or Ph.D. in science, technology, engineering or mathematics a green card and allows them to stay in the United States
Research and development credits for startups less than five years old
Elimination of per-country caps for employment-based visas
A mandate that makes permanent the extension of capital gains taxes on the sale of startup stock held for at least five years

These provisions reveal that the Startup Act 3.0 packs a punch. Perceived by some as a small piece of immigration reform, lawmakers hope 3.0 will jumpstart the economy.

Did you see these 48 startup stories from SXSW?

Mark Cuban Backed Apptopia Tops $1 Million In Sales

Boston startup Apptopia is another startup we’ve been tracking for quite some time. We first brought you the story about this company that helps app developers actually sell their apps and app businesses, back in March of 2012.

While app markets seem to be a dime a dozen these days, Apptopia is not an app market at all. Apptopia allows developers to take their developed app projects and sell them for whatever reason they want. Perhaps they just got a thrill out of creating something and they’re ready to move onto the next idea. Or maybe developers are just creating apps to sell in a marketplace like Apptopia.

The vision for Apptopia caught the eye of ABC Shark Tank shark, and investor Mark Cuban, who likes to invest in original ideas that can cause a disruption. Cuban led the startup’s $1 million dollar seed round.

Last October we reported that Apptopia had cleared $25,000 in sales. Last week the company reported that they had participated in over 275 app acquisitions which amounted to over $1 million dollars in sales.

With growth like this in an entirely new market, Apptopia was named one of the “World’s top 10 most innovative companies in mobile” by Fast Company.

Apptopia isn’t just like “ebay for apps” they have a sophisticated algorithm built into the background that is able to take an apps current downloads, ratings and other metrics and triangulate it’s current valuation, to project future earnings.

“Take the popular app Temple Run, for example. Apptopia’s unique algorithm uses public data about Temple Run (245.7 million downloads, 4.7 million ratings) to triangulate its current valuation ($41.2 million) and project future revenues ($11.2 million over the next six months). Apptopia can perform this analysis on any app, making it an extremely useful tool for developers and investors alike.” an Apptopia spokesperson told us by email.

To find out more about Apptopia or sell your own app check them out at apptopia.com

Here’s a way not to get an investment from Mark Cuban.

Huge Crowdfunding Festival: One Spark Kicks Off In Jacksonville Next Week

The first OneSpark festival will kick off next Wednesday night in Jacksonville Florida, and it’s going to be huge. The festivities kick off at 6pm at Hemming Plaza with an opening ceremony.

The kickoff event will feature party band The Sunbears, free food, drinks and plenty of opportunity to network with creators from all over the world.

Once the event kicks off Jacksonville will turn into one huge in person crowdfunding festival from Wednesday (April 17th) through Sunday (April 21st).

What is a “crowdfunding festival”,

Well think SXSW music and SXSW interactive meet in Jacksonville Florida, where the weather looks to be perfect. Then add creators who’ve created something in either the arts, music, science or technology. Now think Kickstarter and taking those project creators and bringing them into the real world.

This is the first festival of it’s kind. Creators will be staged in venues throughout downtown Jacksonville where attendees will be able to see their creations, ask questions, hear pitches and then decide if they want to crowdfund the creator in person. Talk about eliminating the risks of online crowdfunding.

Event organizer Elton Rivas and the OneSpark committee have wrapped the crowdfunding concept up into a huge event that has three main focus areas:

The creator zone: This is where you can go from venue to venue and see all of the creators and their creations, think gallery hop with some ultra cool new ideas and creativity overflowing like a volcano.

Pitch Decks And Stages: You’ll be able to hear live pitches and keynote speakers throughout the five day festival in these areas.

Entertainment District: here OneSpark will showcase all of what Jacksonville has to offer in the entertainment realm. Party with creators, VIPs, A-listers and jam out to some of the best musical offerings in Jacksonville.

Learn more about OneSpark at beonespark.com

Stay up to date with our OneSpark coverage here.

stopped.at Returns To The Dolphin Tank At SXSW 2013

Mara Lewis, the founder of California startup stopped.at returned to pitch her startup in the Dolphin Tank at SXSWi. The Dolphin Tank is a pitch panel session held at the Startup America Live stage in front of influential judges. The reason it’s called the Dolphin Tank is because the judges are instructed to give constructive feedback rather than criticism as seen on the hit ABC show Shark Tank.

This was the second time Lewis has pitches stopped.at in the Dolphin Tank. After here appearance in 2012 she was able to secure an angel investment. We ran into Lewis while on the LaunchYourCity mission trip to Silicon Valley on Thursday where she told us she’s working on raising another round, it’s time to move her startup out of her apartment and eat more nourishing than Ramen Noodles.

She’s also received a bit of traction for stopped.at which is a platform that turns users onto the newest sites on the web by recommending sites that friends are using. According to her pitch, over 150,000 websites are launched every 24 hours in the US alone.

Check out her pitch below. For more info visit stopped.at

Check out more of our startup coverage from SXSW 2013 Here!