Founder Spotlight: Matt Ehrlichman CEO & Co-Founder, Porch

Matt Ehrlichman is the CEO of Porch, where you can get inspired by the best home projects your neighbors have completed, see what any home project will cost, and find the best service professional your neighbors and friends recommend. Previous to Porch, Matt was a founder and CEO of Thriva (acquired by ACTV) and Chief Strategy Officer of Active Network (2011 IPO). Matt lives in Seattle, WA. Follow him @mattehrlichman.

Who is your hero?

My personal hero is Pete Carroll. My business hero is Warren Buffett.

What’s the single best piece of business advice that helped shape who you are as an entrepreneur today, and why?

No one will ever remember how much money you made or what your title was. They will only remember you for how you changed and impacted the world in a durable way. Because of this, I am on a mission to build a truly great company that improves the world one household at a time with Porch.

What’s the biggest mistake you ever made in your business, and what did you learn from it that others can learn from too?

The first company I ever started was a sports summer camp in Western Washington at age 14; later, I needed to transition the camp into new leadership. With the change in leadership, the camp failed to continue. Had I known better, I would have worked harder at diligently finding the best way to balance not only the camp sustainability but a successful exit as well.

What do you do during the first hour of your business day and why?

I methodically organize my week to make sure I provide appropriate attention to our key efforts: management, consumer growth, product, marketing, and sales. During the first hour of each day, I speak with the respective discipline leader (walk and talks). We go over priorities and execution, and I roll up my sleeves to dig into subject matter challenges.

What’s your best financial or cash-flow related tip for entrepreneurs just getting started?

Entrepreneurs by nature make mistakes and take opportunistic risks. We track key financials and metrics that provide us with health and appeal for investors. The only one that matters at the end of the day is your last day. Keep strong watch on your cash runway end date, and ensure that you know what the date is with no revenue as well as with conservative estimates.

Quick: What’s ONE thing you recommend ALL aspiring or current entrepreneurs do right now to take their biz to the next level?

Turn the tables and ask your employees to give you a 360 review!

What’s your definition of success? How will you know when you’ve finally “succeeded” in your business?

Success to me is building a truly great company that solves a really big problem. I will know that I am successful if I build a company that delights customers, creates beautiful experiences, helps millions of small businesses, and forms a culture and team passionate about embarking on a joint mission.

The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, the YEC recently launched #StartupLab, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses via live video chats, an expert content library and email lessons.

Columbus Entrepreneurs Sparking Innovation With Sundown Rundown Events

With a name like Paul Proffitt, it’s easy to picture this Columbus-based entrepreneur helping people make money. He just wants to make sure it’s done the entrepreneurial way. In an interview Proffitt told us that he’s been a lurker in Columbus, Ohio’s tech community since the 90’s, when he worked with the now defunct Talon New Media Ventures and OnVentures incubators. Since then Proffitt has been working in higher-ed and digital marketing.

In 2006 though, he got re-bitten by the entrepreneurial bug when his team took second place at the OSU business plan competition for a biodiesel startup. Nowadays you can find Proffitt at Columbus State Community College where he is an adjunct faculty member and being a judge and mentor for the OSU Business Plan Competition. With all that experience Proffit wanted to do something even more.

Proffitt has created a monthly pitch focused startup event called Sundown Rundown. These aren’t business card pushing events. Sundown Rundown calls for 5 minute pitches with 5 minutes of feedback, and startups are vetted in advance. Sundown Rundown connects investors, mentors, and talent across the Columbus region.

We got a chance to talk with Proffitt about Sundown Rundown.

What does your company do?

We are a monthly evening business idea pitch event series that connects entrepreneurs with investors, mentors, and talent to help get their companies to the next step.

Who are the founders, and what are their backgrounds

Paul Proffitt – A lurker in the Central Ohio Entrepreneurship scene since the late 1990s who had worked with now defunct Columbus based incubators Talon New Media Ventures and OnVentures. Got bit by the entrepreneurial bug in 2006 when his team took second place at the OSU Business Plan Competition for a biodiesel startup. Besides having full-time gigs in higher-ed and in digital marketing, he spends his remaining professional time being an adjunct faculty member at Columbus State Community College and acts as a judge and mentor for the OSU Business Plan Competition.

What’s the startup scene like in Columbus?

Its growing. There was some progress in the late 1990s, but the dot com bubble forced a reboot in the early 2000s. The state figured they needed to diversify their economy and created the Third Frontier Fund and state money backed, private non-profit incubators started popping up.

At best the startup scene is fragmented. A lot of attention is paid to those low investment, potential high return software based startups and capital intensive, long development medical and bio tech. Nothing solid right now in the middle, small to mid-sized business startups.

What problem do you solve?

Trying to defragment the scene and get a self-sustaining community running in Central Ohio to help bring good business ideas to the forefront regardless of their industry.

Why now?

It feels right… if you take your shoes off and stand in the grass you can feel the karma starting to align in Central Ohio… it could go good or bad at this point… say the same set of factors happen around the 2000s. I kind of want to help put Central Ohio in a position this time for something good to happen and not have another reboot that will take another 15 years to get to another make or break point.

What are some of the milestones your startup has already reached?

We’ve established credibility in the Central Ohio entrepreneurial community as something that can be trusted to give people a fair shake at getting an idea out into the community. Showing we don’t play favorites for people who come in and pitch. We’ve got an audience that shows up and we have interest in people wanting to pitch their ideas each month.

What are your next milestones?

Keep growing…. The bar we hold the event at holds, 150 people. We would love to have to find a bigger place at some point.

Get funding for this events. We do it on a shoestring and right now the rental for the space is the biggest cost.

Where can people find out more?

http://sundownrundown.org

Checkout this huge national startup event in Cincinnati Ohio.

Image: sundownrundown.org

Meet Everywhere Else Cincinnati Speaker Blake Miller, Managing Director Think Big Accelerator

With Everywhere Else Cincinnati rapidly approaching, we’re going to spend some time introducing you to our great speakers. There are still a limited number of early bird discount attendee, investor, and Startup Village tickets still available at eecincinnati.com

As a partner at Think Big Partners, Blake Miller is the Managing Director of the Think Big Accelerator program, consults for both local and national startup companies, and manages the Think Big in-house dev team (also known as Think Big Labs). Blake’s strengths are in ideation, innovation, UI/UX, growth hacking, and connecting the dots. Blake has co-founded a number of tech startups, including BodeeFit, WeeJay, Inboun, and Pitchcaster. He sits on the board of Keyzio and is an adviser to SquareOffs and Kahootz.

What was your first experience with startups?

I’ve always kind of had my own “startup” in that I’ve been building websites for small businesses since I was 13. However my first true startup was not in tech. About 4 years ago, I got into a new Consumer Packaged Good called The Secret Sauce. The BBQ Sauce was outstanding, it won the American Royal BBQ Competition (out of 500+ sauces) 2 years in a row. We did well at first when we started bottling, but starting a CPG company is REALLY HARD and EXPENSIVE. We ended up failing after getting a large purchase order from Costco, but couldn’t get a bank to loan us the money to produce the order because of Costco’s terms.

What made you want to become an entrepreneur?

Doing the same thing the rest of my life terrifies me. I just can’t imagine having the same routine for the rest of my life. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But I get to work with some of the smartest people anywhere day in and day out solving real problems. It also probably stems from my parents, they’ve been entrepreneurs ever since I can remember.

What has been the most important thing you’ve learned running an accelerator?

Two things actually: no matter how experienced the entrepreneur… EVERYONE NEEDS help because building a company is hard. Two, there’s no such thing as “the traditional accelerator model.” We realized this early on. Although many problems that arise for entrepreneurs start to look the same, every company is a bit different and needs a slightly different approach. To add to that, not everyone is always in the same space and not every company can naturally progress at the same speed.

What has been your biggest failure and biggest success at Think Big Partners and what did you learn from them?

We’ve made A LOT of mistakes and I think depending on who you ask in our organization, you’ll probably get a million different answers. I’d say the biggest is our initial approach to the accelerator model. It was definitely a “me too” approach, which I think you are seeing a lot of across the country. We quickly realized that we needed to do a lot more then just hand an entrepreneur a check, tell them here’s our list of mentors, let us know if you want to be connected, and “oh yea we will have office hours once a week.” This model obviously works for some, but what we experienced was that entrepreneurs need more resources.

In my opinion one of our biggest success is a result of that failure. We quickly realized that many entrepreneurs need help actually building their product. Luckily we didn’t realize this too late. We built a team of devs and designers so that we could help the entrepreneurs build MVP’s and get to market faster. Our success in this instance is that out of 6 companies in our first cohort, 5 are in the market, gaining customers, and generating revenue.

What do you like most about working with startups?

Solving Problems. I could expand on that a million different ways, but it always comes back to the challenge of solving real problems. It sounds far reaching but there is something extremely sexy to me about waking up every morning and solving problems for potentially millions of people. It also doesn’t hurt that I get to wear Jeans and T-shirt every day.

How can people keep up to date with you online?

Follow me on Twitter @ImBmills

Connect on Linkedin

Find ThinkBig at thinkbigpartners.com

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Los Angeles Startup Treats Amateur Athletes Like Superstars

A brand new startup in West Los Angeles is hoping to make amateur sport players feel like superstars, giving them the tools that they need to organize and manage their sports leagues, pick up games, and teams. With Sportifik the founders want amateur athletes to have fun, meet new people, and keep up with sports that often fall to the wayside.

Still a little over two weeks away from launch, the team behind Sportifik is “throwing the pigskin around,” meaning they’re putting the finishing touches on their platform and making sure it’s ready for the after work league and the local pick up game.

In the meantime we got to talk with Marco Franzoni, Sportifik’s co-founder and CEO about this new twist on sports.

What is your startup called?

Our startup is called Sportifik. A mix between sports and fantasterrific, only with a k.

What does your company do?

We are creating a global community of athletes and changing the way people participate in sports. We are providing amateur athletes and avid sports fans with the best means to easily organize and manage their sporting activities through a user friendly one-stop-shop mobile and web solution. Our platform will enable users to seamlessly organize sports games in a fun and rewarding way while enabling them to meet members of their local communities who share a passion for the same sport.

Our goal is to push new boundaries, make any game feel like a national championship, and make every amateur player feel like a superstar.

Who are the founders, and what are their backgrounds

We are three co-founders and friends.

Marco, our CEO, is an all-around athlete hailing from Italy with a consulting background. He’s the soul of this operation. It’s his inspiration and drive that brought us together in a common belief that sports should be uniting people.

Josh, our CTO, is an avid golfer with various experiences in web development and startups. He’s the heart of the operation as he is the one keeping us going (as well as the most important person in our lives today).

Chris, our head of biz dev, is passionate about all sports and comes from investment banking and social enterprise backgrounds. He’s the brain at Sportifik – not in that he’s intelligent but he makes sure everything is running correctly and logically.

Where are you based?

We’re currently based in West LA where we think the outdoors environment is the best to start an active sports venture.

What’s the startup scene like where you are based?

Pretty amazing. For years the LA and Santa Monica startup scene have been growing. It’s a phenomenal environment of smart dedicated people who are always looking to help each other out. We’ve been really fortunate to kick things off on the shores of Silicon Beach.

What problem do you solve?

We solve the problem of having to spend copious amounts of times and several different platforms to organize sports games. We spent too much time every week trying to get people together at the same spot to play soccer or basketball for games that would inevitably get canceled anyway. We thought there’s a better solution out there.

Why now?

People are becoming more active and mobile and at the same time we’re busier than ever with a ton of different things to do. Finding the time for collective sports games has become harder but they’re no less important in our lives.

What are some of the milestones your startup has already reached?

We launched a beta product in April and collected a bunch of early adopters. We’re re-launching on the 31^st of August (join us for our launch party through our website!).

We’ve also created a promotional clip to feature the community and outreach aspects of what we do. This includes supporting our friends who have a wheelchair basketball team and are looking to raise money for their upcoming season. If you are interested in helping Alvin and his team, get in touch with him at alvin.malave@gmail.com.

Finally, we’ve established an informal sports hierarchy internally. Josh is our golf master, Chris rules the ping pong table and Marco does pretty much everything damn well.

What are your next milestones?

Launching (see above)! We’re looking to get as many users as possible starting in West LA and the UCLA community and expanding as soon as possible to the rest of LA. We’re going to be looking to partner with local sports leagues, stores and venues to offer a more comprehensive service to our users and drive local businesses.

Where can people find out more? Any social media links you want to share?

Follow us on Facebook (www.facebook.com/sportifik), Twitter (www.twitter.com/sportifik_), WordPress (www.blog.sportifik.com), and youtube (www.youtube.com/sportifik)

Indiana VC Kelly Schwedland Has Advice for Startups Everywhere Else

Kelly Schwedland is no stranger to entrepreneurship. After a few startup successes, he moved to Chicago to attend the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. During his 5 years in the city, he spent a lot of time in and around the infant Chicago startup scene.

Now back in Indiana, Schwedland is using all those years of experience to help local entrepreneurs on the road to success. As an Entreprenuer-in-Residence at Elevate Ventures, he spends most of his days traveling northern Indiana, coaching dozens of teams at various stages in the startup process.

In a traditional venture capital arrangement, the VC provides money, occasional connections, and often a vote on the board. They have little to do with the actual development of a company.

With the help of the Indiana Economic Development Corporation, Elevate Ventures does things a little differently.

“We try and surround the entrepreneur through the entire process,” Schwedland explains.

One way this happens is through varying levels of funding. There are grant opportunities for entrepreneurs looking to develop a product. Angel funds are available for companies with a little bit of early traction, and there is also a diversity fund for women, minorities, and veterans.

Elevate works with a broad range of companies, but they all have 2 things in common:

They are Indiana-based. The core mandate of the organization is to build Indiana companies.
They are innovation-driven, usually with a national or global scale.

Once a company wins investment from Elevate, the entrepreneurs-in-residence like Schwedland step in. He helps companies start where they are, both geographically and in the life of their company. From there, he coaches them on how to maximize funds to gain traction and how to pivot into the right business models.

So, what advice would Schwedland give to entrepreneurs everywhere else looking to catch the eye of a VC?

“Traction! It’s hard not to underscore this enough. Unless you have been successful several times in the past, VC’s still look at traction with customers as the primary proof that what you say is true. And, really, they are looking for traction on your business model, proof that a dollar of marketing gets 2+ dollars of profit.”

He acknowledges there are different kinds of traction. 10,000 email addresses of people waiting for your launch is a good starting point. Actual paying clients is even better.

“In the end it all comes down to customer validation,” he says. “And the best validation is when customers give you dollars in exchange for your products.”

In his “spare time” Schwedland is also developing his own resources that give advice based on his own experiences. He likens them to the Silicon Valley pitchbooks, collections of VC advice passed from company to company.

Schwedland’s version will be developed in several different formats. One is a slide deck on SaaS companies and the freemium model. Pulling from research he did in Chicago, the deck breaks down the whys and hows of a successful freemium model.

Another resource will discuss crowdfunding, a popular way to gain both money and traction without a lot of capital. There are plenty of successful and unsuccessful crowdfunding campaigns, and Schwedland will use them to point out a few best practices. One successful campaign he will pull from is that of JustFoods. This Indiana company is developing real food meals for people that must eat from a tube. Their Indiegogo campaign provided just the traction and money they needed to move from idea to product development.

It’s common “knowledge” that funding is one of the biggest challenges for startups everywhere else. We tend to believe that all the money lives on the two coasts.

But Kelly Schwedland and Elevate Ventures are disproving that belief. Not only is there money available for promising companies, VC firms everywhere else are innovating their own industry. Because of them entrepreneurs are better served and more able to succeed.

To learn more about Kelly Schwedland and Elevate Ventures, check out their website.

disclosure: Elevate Ventures is one of our Indiana content sponsors.

Saving Detroit: Grand Circus Is One Of Many Startups Hoping To Reinvigorate Detroit’s Economy

When we think of startups, tech, and entrepreneurs we don’t usually think of the industrial revolution, or the invention of things like the automobile. We don’t often equate names like Henry Ford, William C Durant, Charles Stewart Mott, or even Berry Gordy. Decades ago these were the innovators and entrepreneurs that bucked the system, created companies and created jobs. Henry Ford created Ford Motor Company, Durant and Mott were behind General Motors, and Gordy is the king of the R&B music we know today, the founder of MoTown.

All we think, when we hear Detroit today, is $10,000 mansions in foreclosure and a city government that’s filed for bankruptcy. Now it’s up to the next generation of entrepreneurs and innovators to refuel the city that was once a thriving mecca of modern day technology, innovation, and entrepreneurship. Detroit startups are at the foreground now of breathing life back into one of America’s industrial beacons.

One of those startups is Grand Circus. While Grand Circus is a startup itself, they are on the ground floor of Detroit’s technological revolution. Grand Circus is 15,000 square feet of tech training space. But we’re not talking about traditional certificate-based classroom learning.

“…we dismiss that true skill comes with a certificate. We focus instead on outcomes that matter. With project based instruction our training delivers real world expertise. We call it training with a purpose. Our curriculum is based on the latest in technology, business, and design, and we have partnered with the best and brightest. Our instructors are real world practitioners who are at the top of their field and committed to the success of their students. [We’ll offer] More than 30 different classes this fall – including Build an iPhone App, The Design Process, and Digital Marketing,” Grand Circus’ Kelly LaPierre told Nibletz in an interview.

Michigan, and Detroit specifically, already have a handful of great startups, that if successful will continue to create jobs in the Motor City. But this time instead of motors they’re using keyboards, computers, laptops, the internet and iPhones. We’ve recently covered myfab5, a Detroit startup making restaurant reviews and decision making much easier. Two weeks ago we reported on UpTo, a Detroit shared calendar startup that raised a $2 million series A. DVP (Detroit Venture Partners) has also graced the pages of Nibletz quite a bit over the last year. So there’s no doubt that people in Detroit are stepping up.

Grand Circus is making it even easier for people to step up by learning the skills that they really need to create the next wave of startup companies. They will also play an instrumental part in grooming the next generation of employees for these startups.

We got a chance to interview the team behind Grand Circus. Check out the interview below:

What is your startup called?

Grand Circus – named after Detroit’s historic Grand Circus Park that our new space overlooks in downtown Detroit. We are located in 15,000 square feet of space in the newly renovated Broderick Tower.

Who are the founders, and what are their backgrounds?

Grand Circus was kick-started when co-founders Damien Rocchi and Brad Hoos met while working at Detroit’s collaborative tech space in the M@dison building. “We saw the opportunity and quickly converged on a mission to create an amazing home for tech training in Detroit, a city with immeasurable talent that is just starting to reach its full potential,” said Rocchi.

What’s the startup scene like in Detroit?

Detroit startup scene is booming – SA Today names Detroit one of the “10 Great Places to be Inspire by Innovation” Fast Company’s piece “How A Young Community of Entrepreneurs is Rebuilding Detroit” called the city a “refuge for techies looking to tackle real problems.” The New York Times also spotlighted Detroit’s tech scene, nothing that hiring in the city’s tech sector is pulling developers from the coasts. Detroit has seen a 10 percent year-over-year increase in tech job listings, which makes the city the fourth in the nation for total employment in the tech industry.

What problem do you solve?

There is an ever-growing need for tech professionals in Detroit’s burgeoning digital hub. “As Detroit continues to grow and evolve its technology core, developing creative and talented technology professionals is critical. We are excited about the important role Grand Circus will play in the city’s continued revolution,” said Josh Linkner, Managing Partner of Detroit Venture Partners.

Why now?

“Detroit’s tech scene is dynamic and there’s a certain vibe and feel that exists here that you just have to experience,” said Hoos, COO and Co-Founder of Grand Circus. “We’re excited to be at the epicenter of Detroit’s tech earthquake just as it’s making waves.”

What are some of the milestones your startup has already reached?

Grand Circus joins Detroit Venture Partners’ (DVP) portfolio, a venture capital firm formed by Detroit business leaders Dan Gilbert, Josh Linkner, and Brian Hermelin.

What are your next milestones?

Classes start this fall

Where can people find out more? Any social media links you want to share?

grandcircus.co or www.facebook.com/GrandCircus or @grandcircusco

Join lot’s of Michigan and midwest startups at this huge, national startup conference Sep 29-October 1 in Cincinnati.

Teams, This Baltimore Startup Has The Answer To Sharing Passwords

When you’re collaborating remotely or even if you’re working in the same office, sometimes it’s necessary for teams to share passwords. Here at Nibletz our core team needs to share site passwords, social passwords, analytics passwords, and more.

There isn’t really an easy way to share passwords amongst your team. If you’re a team with employees rather than just co-founders, there may be a risk in sharing a spreadsheet filled with all of your important passwords. If there is a great element of trust on your team it can just be cumbersome and inconvenient.

Well a Baltimore startup called, TeamPassword (see how easy that is to remember) has come up with a way to share passwords across your teammates and keep them safe and secure.

We got a chance to talk with Alex Zaremba about TeamPassword. Check out our interview below.

What does your company do?

We do collaborative password management, for teams that need to share and manage passwords in their company. Think 1password with sharing. Our mission is to replace that shared excel spreadsheet companies use to keep track of their accounts.

Who are the founders, and what are their backgrounds?

TeamPassword was founded by a group of friends with decades of combined tech experience. Their combined experience covers every facet of product development, including deep experience with product design, programming, UI and UX, Marketing, Sales, and operations.

Where are you based?

Sunny Baltimore MD.

What’s the startup scene like where you are based?

It might be surprising, but Baltimore has a great community for start-ups. Since I’ve been on the scene, I’ve seen a huge growth in the number of institutions and programs focused on fostering and accelerating entrepreneurship. Additional, we have a great technology community with a huge Ruby on Rails and Javascript meetups, which is a huge advantage when it comes time to scale our team.

What problem do you solve?

We solve the password management and sharing issues for Companies, which really has two components: Productivity and Security.

Right now, the prevailing method of managing passwords is a spreadsheet, shared some way with all the employees on a need to know basis. There are a number of problems with this:

1) It’s really inconvenient to get to and update, which means

2) It’s usually out of date

3) There’s no great way to segment the data; meaning your marketing team sees your server credentials, and

4) If this document got into the wrong hands, or, leaves with a disgruntled employee, you’re in trouble.

Here’s how we solve these problems: when users interact with TeamPassword through their Chrome extension, they have instant access to the accounts that are shared with them, and only the accounts shared with them. They can fill the username and password directly into the password, making getting into the accounts they need to do their job easy. Additionally, since users don’t need to remember the password, you can use a long, secure, randomized string.

Why now?

Why not? If TeamPassword would have been around while I was working at my past 3 companies, I would have been the first in line to get signed up. Having a great shared password solution mirrors the trend in software being replaced by the web: servers, error tracking, social media, banking, invoicing, and all important business operations are handled online. Companies have great systems to manage finances, employees, paperwork, so it’s about time we have a system to manage the information that protects everything we do.

One piece of enabling technology is the proliferation of Javascript frameworks—all of the tricky encryption we do at the user level would of been really hard to do even a year or two ago, we’re riding the wave of pushing more intelligence to the browser.

What are some of the milestones your startup has already reached?

We launched at a Startup Weekend late last year, incorporated in January of this year, powered through our alpha, and just recently launched into open beta. We now have dozens of customers, growing daily.

What are your next milestones?

We’re working on increasing our user base by a large factor over the next few months, and we also have some very cool, top secret technology in the works that we think people will get excited about.

Where can people find out more? Any social media links you want to share?

TeamPassword.com and @teampassword are the places to go.

Now check out: Here’s how NOT to pitch nibletz, or any other site for that matter.

Founder Spotlight: Ryan Frankel CEO & Co-Founder VerbalizeIt

Ryan Frankel is the CEO and Co-Founder of VerbalizeIt, the company that delivers instant access to a global community of translators. Ryan received his MBA from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 2012 and a Bachelors of Arts degree from Haverford College in 2006. Ryan is a 2012 TechStars alumnus, former private equity investor for Goldman Sachs and an endurance athletics enthusiast. Follow him @rvfrankel.

Who is your hero?

My dad, hands down.

What’s the single best piece of business advice that helped shape who you are as an entrepreneur today, and why?

Surround yourself with people who are smarter than you. If you find yourself at the top of the intelligence chain at your company, you’ve done something wrong. In creating a team of intelligent and driven individuals, encourage healthy debate. Disagreement is a good thing, and many times, it’s the best of things in plowing the right path forward. Encourage people to air their opinions and take a stance, even if it’s against the broader consensus.

What’s the biggest mistake you ever made in your business, and what did you learn from it that others can learn from too?

The biggest mistake has been spreading myself and our team too thin by chasing after too many different opportunities. One of the best pieces of advice I have received is that the worst word in any entrepreneur’s vocabulary is “and.” As in, “We’re focused on X, and Y, and Z ….” Be laser focused and avoid becoming a mile wide and only an inch deep.

What do you do during the first hour of your business day and why?

I scroll through all of my emails and pick the highest value emails to respond to first. It’s my own 80:20 rule and it helps me focus on the most important outcomes. I also don’t neglect or push back emails to family and friends. When I first launched my business, family and friends naturally took a back seat and I have since re-prioritized my time to make time for those who support me beyond by business.

What’s your best financial/cash-flow related tip for entrepreneurs just getting started?

There’s a fine line between (a) being so scrappy that you miss out on the right opportunities or are not able to hire the best talent and (b) being ineffective or inconsiderate with cash management. As a naturally scrappy person, I have found myself in situations where being pennywise and pound-foolish has detracted more value than it has saved me capital. I make a conscious effort to remain mindful of our cash position but cognizant of how my naturally scrappy personality can be an impediment to meeting business objectives.

Quick: What’s ONE thing you recommend ALL aspiring or current entrepreneurs do right now to take their biz to the next level?

Find someone who will absolutely rip your vision apart and engage them in a constructive debate. Even if 95 percent of their feedback is off base, you’re bound to find some real pearls of wisdom in there. Accelerate success and failure by pushing yourself outside of your preconceived notions of the right approach.

What’s your definition of success? How will you know when you’ve finally “succeeded” in your business?

Success for me is encapsulated in both personal and professional achievements. Finding personal satisfaction and enjoyment in my work and ensuring that I’m enjoying the journey and not just focused on the destination is important to me. I know I have a penchant for being too focused on the end result. Professionally, setting and achieving specific goals for revenue, market share and brand awareness is how I evaluate when I’ve finally “succeeded.” I constantly revisit these goals and our relative progress.

The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, the YEC recently launched #StartupLab, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses via live video chats, an expert content library and email lessons.

DC Startup Bracketeers Engages Customers With March Madness All Year Long

Contesting is one of the best ways to enhance customer engagement. People love to win prizes and are typically willing to give up their contact information and other data to get something free. The problem with this is that after the contest is over, the engagement is over as well.

Facebook and Twitter may seem like excellent forms of engagement, but they have one big drawback. The problem with engaging on these social media platforms is that you’re sending customers to other websites instead of keeping them engaged on your site. Social media is an amazing source of engagement, but there is risk that you could lose your audience.

Well DC-based serial entrepreneur Craig Zingerline, one of the cofounders of Barrel of Jobs, has launched a new startup called Bracketeers. They offer longer tail engaging contests, typically tournament style like March Madness. The goal: keep the customer engaged and coming back.

“All businesses want hardy, exciting relationships with customers and more potential to reach new ones. However, engagement and list building is challenging and costly. Existing social marketing and contest platforms are expensive – often starting over $5k/month – and businesses are at the same time sending users out to Facebook when they could be keeping them on their own websites. We provide a cost-effective, easy-to-use, and FUN way to enhance customer relationships,” Zingerline told us in an interview.

In addition to providing customers with a fun and engaging way to improve a customer relationship, the user, or brand is getting valuable data from the experience itself.

We got a chance to talk with Zngerline about Bracketeers. Check out the interview below.

What is your startup called?

Bracketeers

What does your company do?

Bracketeers is a SaaS web-based platform for connecting companies & brands to consumers through voting and list contests. We offer “March Madness” style tournament Prediction & Voting Brackets as well as matchup based voting. Our clients grow their audience and marketing list with high engagement contest tools, and have more fun while spending less money doing so.

Who are the founders, and what are their backgrounds?

Craig Zingerline, Co-founder & CEO – Craig is a 15 year veteran of web technology and brings deep team building, product development and strategy to the team. Craig provides pragmatic leadership and direction to the company and started developing web-based applications while in college. He has been both founder and executive of multiple startups, and has also worked for and consulted with dozens of small to large firms. Craig earned his Bachelor of Science in Information Management and Technology from Syracuse University.

Stephen Phillips, Co-founder & CTO – Stephen’s career has spanned close to 20 years, building enterprise applications in a myriad of technologies for major brands. During that time he has held the role of CTO, Technical Architect, Consultant, Senior Software Engineer, and business owner. Prior to founding Bracketeers, Stephen held the role of Technical Architect for Accenture, one of the world’s largest consulting firms, working with major brands like Google, Motorola, Godiva, and Taylormade-Adidas-Ashworth. Prior to this, he founded Cardiff Creative, an interactive consulting firm, building an impressive portfolio of premier life science companies.

Where are you based?

We’re based in Washington, DC and San Diego, CA.

Why now?

We are the only company offering prediction & voting bracket contests that we know of. Our platform is getting great input from the market, and with all of the high profile enterprise acquisitions of social contest tools (i.e. Wildfire acquired by Google) there is an opportunity in the lower cost SMB segment to reach a huge number of clients who have been priced out of other platforms.

What are some of the milestones your startup has already reached?

We have multiple paying clients now, including monthly and yearly subscriptions and are just getting started! Our system has collected tens of thousands of leads for our clients, and we’ve seen over 1.6 million votes tallied so far.

What are your next milestones?

We’re looking to raise a seed round to continue building our team, refining our product, and ramping up marketing and sales efforts – we’ve been growing solely on word of mouth so far.

Where can people find out more? Any social media links you want to share?

People can follow our updates at www.bracketeers.com. We’re on twitter @bracketeers and facebook

Bracketeers will be in the Startup Vilage at this huge startup conference.

Berlin Startup Tame Launches First Context Search Engine For Twitter

Twitter is a treasure trove of content. We actually source quite a bit of startup news and new startups from everywhere else using Twitter. The problem is, until now there was no great way to do a contextual search. You can use the Twitter search tool built into Twitter and most of the good third party Twitter apps, but they fall short when looking for context. For example, a search for accelerator brings up tweets about car parts and incubator talks about babies.

The team behind Berlin startup Tame have been tirelessly working on solving that problem. They want to make it easier for people to find what they’re looking for on Twitter. That can be tough when at peak loads there can be 300,000 tweets per minute.

The company has launched their product today at tame.it. We got a chance to talk with them, check out the interview below.

What does your startup do?

Tame is the first context search engine for Twitter delivering relevant content around a specific topic in real-time. Aimed at journalists, PRs, marketers and politicians, Tame analyses content from Twitter, sifting through the huge amounts of noise to find exactly what is relevant.

Who are the founders, and what are their backgrounds?

Frederik Fischer is founder and CEO of Tame. Fischer has five years of professional experience as a staff and freelance journalist for TV, radio, online and print.

Arno Dirlam is founder and CTO of Tame. The developer guy!

Torsten Müller is founder and CMO of Tame. He has three years professional experience as freelance journalist for online and print including the German Press Agency dpa, stern.de, Zeit Online.

Where are you based?

Berlin, Germany

What’s the startup scene like where you are based?

Berlin is a perfect place to start a business. It may be over-hyped, but we find that the scene is indeed very active, people help out each other a lot and are very open. Since the city is attractive for living, many people from Europe or beyond flock into it which helps creating international teams with a global approach from the start, which we think is important. We came to Berlin with not much more than an idea and thanks to the Humboldt University’s spin-off team and many others we could get Tame off the ground in a bit more than a year.

What problem do you solve?

Tame aims to address information overload on Twitter. Nearly every user follows more people than they can manage. At peak times, more than 300,000 tweets are sent out per minute, hence people miss a lot of important content. Professionals working with social media need to identify relevant topics, users and content quickly. A solution to ‘Tame’ the social web is needed.

Why now?

In 2011, Google stopped indexing Twitter and has since left a gap in filtering real-time information. Twitter has continued to grow and has a global impact as not only an alternative, but often primary news source (think of Arab spring). Our mission is to tame the wealth of real-time information in social networks so as to empower people to make sense of the world.

What are some of the milestones your startup has already reached?

We got an initial € 94k ($125,725) funding from the German Federal Ministry of Technology and Economics (BWMi) in 2012

Tame has secured € 250k ($334,375) from a crowd-investing campaign with Companisto

A product already used by thousands of journalists and PRs, first paying customers and first cooperations with outlets

We won a spot in the Germany Silicon Valley Accelerator (also by BMWi) and will be working from San Francisco from October on for at least 3 months.

What are your next milestones?

rolling out more features for Tame including a refinement of our Algorithm that will improve the results by ie filtering out spam on Twitter

starting our global launch by entering the US market from October onward

looking in to the possibility of including more real-time information services

Where can people find out more? Any social media links you want to share?

People can find out everything they need at tame.it. We’re also on Twitter – https://twitter.com/tame_it – and Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/tameapp.

Detroit Startup To Make The Dinner Decision Easier Beginning Thursday

Many of you know that for a long time in a previous life I was involved in top 40 radio in medium and major markets. As a music director and program director at several stations, I had access to very expensive, all-consuming research tools. Focus groups, call out research trade reports, and more were designed to make “picking the hits” much easier. What I found, though. was a little concept a few of us had come up with called “3 favorite songs.” Go to events, go to the mall, and ask the people, what are your three favorite songs.

What the heck does this have to do with a startup in Detroit? Well our best research, the research that led to great ratings was just asking what are your three favorite songs, without clutter and all this excess meat and fat.

Clutter, and fat, are what clogs up the arteries of what would be good recommendation engines and apps for discovering things like restaurants. On our sneaker strapped road trip a few weeks ago, I got invited to a brain picking. A funded startup wanted to bounce some ideas off me and offered to take me to any restaurant in Chicago at any cost for the time. I started Googling, yelping, urban spooning and every other -ing I could think of to pick a restaurant. I came across the restaurant I ultimately picked, but this was maybe 2 hours after I got the invitation call in the first place. It was also after I had read a review that would have taken up 10 written pages. What a time suck.

The team at Detroit startup myfab5 takes that simple, clutter free way of asking or recommending, to help people navigate a restaurant decision. Users just rate their 5 favorite restaurants in any food related category and voila, the magic happens. The app takes all of that data and serves up good recommendations.

Startups in Detroit are looking to help the city make a comeback sweeter than Twinkies. myfab5 is one of those startups. The company has residence in both the TechArb accelerator in Ann Arbor and the Launch Detroit accelerator in Detroit. We got a chance to interview co-founder Calvin Schemanski. Check out the interview below.

What does your company do?

myfab5 is a platform that reinvents the restaurant review. Designed to mimic offline human behavior, myfab5’s platform let’s people recommend restaurants by talking about their favorite. On myfab5 you can rank up to five of your favorite restaurants in any food related category (e.g. my favorite places for #DeepDishPizza in Chicago). myfab5 instantly aggregates everyone’s rankings to power dynamic search results that tell you how popular each restaurant is for different types of food (e.g. how a pizza place ranks in the #DeepDishPizza and #ThinCrustPizza categories).

Who are the founders, and what are their backgrounds

Omeid Seirafi-Pour is the Co-Founder and CEO of myfab5 and has previously worked in consulting where he helped fortune 500 companies develop winning growth strategies. He gained experience with online reviews when helping a big box retailer understand how consumers use reviews/recommendations when going about the multi-channel shopping experience. Omeid and his Co-Founders are passionate entrepreneurs and are members of the University of Michigan startup accelerator known as TechArb.

myfab5 Co-Founder Calvin Schemanski paid his way through college when he owned and operated a pedicab business for three years. Through this, he gained experience working with local businesses managing the growth of a venture, and managing a small workforce.

myfab5 technical Co-Founder John Gulbronson has a diverse software development background and previously worked at the University of Michigan Pathology department, developing algorithms that identify gene fusion pairs found in the genomes of cancer patients.

All three co-founders are graduates of the University of Michigan. John and Omeid graduated in 2011 and Calvin graduated in 2012.

What’s the startup scene like where you are based?

The startup scene in Ann Arbor and Detroit is small but quite energized. There is a big movement to revitalize Detroit; and entrepreneurship is at the heart of it. Several large corporations have relocated their headquarters to downtown Detroit and some venture capital firms and business accelerators have set up shop downtown as well. Even the State of Michigan is getting involved through economic development programs targeted at launching and growing startups in Michigan.

45 minutes to the west, Ann Arbor’s entrepreneurship scene is also developing. The University of Michigan is alma mater of some of the world’s greatest entrepreneurs. Many are now getting involved in educating and mentoring UM’s next entrepreneurial generation. The university is also churning out thousands of highly qualified engineers and other professionals every year. More and more of these talented individuals are choosing to stay in Michigan to either start a company or join a young startup.

What problem do you solve?

Star ratings and long reviews make finding and recommending restaurants time consuming and frustrating. Imagine searching for a pizza place on a site like Yelp; you will see a list of places between 3.5-4.5 stars, but will not be able to tell which of those places is popular for deep dish pizza, thin crust pizza or cheesy bread. To find out you’ll have to read a bunch of long reviews that bury the useful information. It’s bad enough having to read those reviews, it’s even more time consuming to write them.

With myfab5 you never have to deal with these problems again. myfab5 makes discovering and recommending fabulous restaurants easy and fun by getting rid of star ratings and long reviews. On myfab5 you can rank up to five of your favorite restaurants in any category (i.e. pizza or thin crust pizza). myfab5 adds up everybody’s votes so that if you search for pizza, not only will we show you the most popular pizza places, we’ll also show you the other categories each pizza place is popular for (i.e. deep dish pizza or cheesy bread).

Why now?

The social era has dawned, and people are tired of review sites that make recommending a business so time consuming that less than 1% of people contribute reviews. Furthermore, people are using mobile devices more than ever and demand content that is concise and consumable on a mobile device. Ratings and reviews go against the social and mobile experiences consumers need and demand

What are some of the milestones your startup has already reached?

In November 2012, we began developing and testing a prototype in Ann Arbor, MI.

In January 2013, myfab5 recruited our technical co-founder.

In March 2013, myfab5 launched an alpha version of myfab5 in Ann Arbor, MI.

In May 2013, myfab5 secured over $20k in startup grants.

On June 27, 2013 myfab5 won the Detroit Technology Exchange pitch competition in Detroit, taking home the grand prize of $15,000 in marketing/branding services.

On August 2nd, 2013 myfab5 graduated from the LaunchDetroit accelerator and received the “MVP” grant for being the best contributor to the program and the “Go” grant for being most commercially-ready company.

myfab5 users have made over 3600 rankings. On average, each ranking includes 3 businesses, resulting in over 11000 business recommendations.

What are your next milestones?

Launch nationally and gain traction in key markets outside of Michigan.

Iterate within food category to increase myfab5 use cases and engagement.

Offer more categories on myfab5 besides “Food & Drinks.”

Where can people find out more? Any social media links you want to share?

www.myfab5.com

@my_fab5

Check out this amazingly awesome, gigantic hackathon in Michigan.

GigTank Demo Day Kicks Off With Princeton Startup Mira

Chattanooga’s GigTank accelerator kicked off their second annual demo day on Tuesday afternoon. In perusing the startups in the second cohort before they took the stage, we quickly realized that startups from around the world were accepted into the program in the first GigCity in the U.S. (sorry Kansas City).

GigTank attracted startups from Bulgaria (HutGrip), The Cayman Islands (Tidbit.co) and of course across this country. One of those startups hailed from Princeton and chose to come to Chattanooga for access to the extremely fast internet and the wide range of mentors, lead mentors, and seed capital that Sheldon Grizzle, Mike Bradshaw, and the team at GigTank have provided.

Mira is the latest startup to tackle the offline retail experience with data points and information typically only found online. Now we’ve talked with a few startups in the space, but what they lacked was an actual hardware/software platform in the store that would allow the customer to get an online experience within the walls of the retail store.

During the presentation they talked about a woman, Michelle, who is looking for running shoes specifically for a 10k. She forgot to do research so rather than postponing the purchase or going “window shopping,” she was able to use the Mira Pod, an in-store interactive sign to choose the shoes that she needed. After she went through her personal experience, she was able to try the shoes on, pay, and get on with her day.

There is definitely value in bringing that kind of web experience into a retail outlet. Check out the pitch below to better understand Mira.

You can find out more about Mira here at shopwithmira.com

Here’s our interview with Mira Designs:

And here’s their pitch video:

Startups In The Fastlane: Flashstarts Startup RegulatoryBinder

While Richard Arlow was pursuing a dual MD/PhD at Case Western Reserve University he experienced the pain first hand that so many doctors, researchers and scientists experience far too frequently.

“I realized that my clinical collaborators were killing themselves to painstakingly record data in hundreds of pages in paper regulatory binders. They would get audited and after two days of searching, the auditor could always find some way to show that the documentation was not accurate, complete or current. Their trial would then be completely shut down, sometimes just over a single missing signature.” Arlow told us in a FastLane interview.

We’ve heard this before from our friends going though the ZeroTo510 accelerator in Memphis, and others in the medical and life sciences startup fields. We also found out that restarting a trial, even after being shut down for something as small as a signature can cost thousands upon thousands, if not millions of dollars. This of course is a huge pain point and a huge problem.

Arlow is hoping to solve this problem with his SaaS solution for the regulated medical industry. RegulatoryBinder is an enterprise document management (EDM) web app specifically for clinical trial regulatory documentation. When researchers, scientists, and doctors integrate their research with RegulatoryBinder, the system will help them keep all of their documentation organized, current and in compliance, saving millions of dollars.

Check out our Startups In The Fastlane interview with Arlow below:

Where is your startup originally from?

Cleveland, OH

Tell us about your current team?

As the sole founder of RegulatoryBinder.com, I am a medical geek who unexpectedly became an entrepreneur. I was trained as a biomedical engineer and started a device company at Lehigh University in PA. The company created a clinical grade device, several patents, and was named one of BusinessWeek’s Top 25 Under 25 in 2010.

As for my education, I went to Case Western Reserve University to pursue a dual M.D. / Ph.D. degree again in biomedical engineering. I conducted clinical trials, particularly supercomputer simulations for medical research. I have presented at conferences and have been published in top journals, including Elsevier Neuroscience.

Throughout my involvement in clinical trials

So, I started RegulatoryBinder.com and have since taken leave from the M.D. / Ph.D. program to pursue this opportunity full-time. I have built a strong team of advisors and developers that compliment the vision.

What does your startup do?

We are a software and service provider for the regulated medical industry.

We developed the first clinical trial regulatory software (CTRS). The software is an enterprise document management (EDM) web app specifically for clinical trial regulatory documentation.

We are also the only hosting provider that assumes responsibility for eRecord regulation compliance for instant, risk-free use.

Without RegulatoryBinder.com, institutions need to perform additional procedural controls (i.e. training, backups, tech support, access control) and validate software technical controls, in order to comply with regulations. The performance of these controls comes with additional cost, time to implement, numerous procedures and still the risk of non-compliance.

Existing comparable eClinical software takes $3-5M and over 1 year to implement. We bundles these procedures and risk for the user whining their license cost, and provide them with the ability to electronically complete their regulatory binders in the shortest possible amount of time. We can thus exceed both customer and regulatory expectations while lowering total cost.

What are your goals for the accelerator program?

Throughout the rest of the accelerator program, I plan to close more clients, finalize our next major release and start our next funding round – while ensuring that the needs of existing customers are still being met.

What’s one thing you’ve learned in the accelerator?

Iterate everything. As a startup, you have to iterate—or rethink, adjust, change everything you think you know. Iterate your client and investor materials. Iterate your product. Iterate your quality, support and sales strategies. Then iterate your vision, which will cause you to iterate all the former. Of the most importance, iterate how you iterate and manage operations. Have defined and realistic goals, metrics and timelines for all iterations.

What’s the hardest piece of advice you’ve had to stomach so far?

Doctors don’t make great businesses (on average), so if I want to make a great business, I need to focus 110% of my energy solely on that goal.

I became a doctor to help individuals.

I’ve become an entrepreneur to make a great business and help society.

What is your goal for the day after demo day?

It’s just another day. I’ve got to talk with potential clients, support users, engage the developers and raise money.

Why did you choose this accelerator?

I was not looking to join an accelerator. I did not need the money or experience of being in an accelerator. And, if you look at the math or history, almost all companies from accelerators fail.

I chose FlashStarts because of the team, environment and enterprise-IT focus. It was the right choice for me and has enabled me to scale the company.

If you relocated for the accelerator are you staying in your new city?

I am a Clevelander.

What’s one thing you learned about an accelerator that you didn’t know when you applied?

I was gratefully surprised by the integration of business, development and designer interns that work with my team.

This enabled me to start assigning tasks and focus on core deliverables, like learning how to be a CEO. :)

Where can people find out more?

www.RegulatoryBinder.com

Check out more of our Startups In The Fastlane interviews here.

Startups In The Fastlane: Jumpstart Foundry Startup Gun.io

Gun.io, like “gun yo, think hired guns,” Teja Yenamandra told us about the name of his startup. Gun.io is currently going through the Jumpstart Foundry accelerator in Nashville’s brand spankin new Entrepreneur Center. They’re the latest startup we’re featuring in our new Startups In The Fastlane series.

Jumpstart Foundry is in the midst of its fourth class, which will graduate on August 22nd.

Gun.io is connecting clients with hackers. If a company is looking for a rockstar ninja developer, they will find him or her on gun.io. The team at gun.io realizes there are plenty of startups already in the space. Even venture backed startups that have expanded nationally have succumbed to failure, like the popular path.t0.

That doesn’t have the gun.io team worried one bit. In our interview below Yenamandra tells us “Other sites let you hire adequate software developers; we try to cater to the best. Software development is a subtle art, and the difference between a shitty developer and a great one is pretty significant. There are a few sites that are working on the same problem, and many of them are quite good. Others are not. It would be rude to mention any by name, but we think we’ve got the problem identified better than they do, and we think we’re able to keep building a solution both sides (hirers, hackers) want more.”

Check out the rest of our interview with Yenamandra below:

What is the name of your startup?

Gun.io (gun-yo). Think hired guns.

What accelerator are you in?

We’re a part of Jumpstart Foundry in Nashville, TN, one of the oldest accelerators in the country. It’s backed by Solidus Company, one of the best, most progressive VCs in the game right now. And we say that as entrepreneurs. In fact, we were pretty reluctant to accept money, even a nominal amount, since we were already making it. But Solidus is awesome. They get it. The South’s technology ecosystem owes them a tremendous amount. Shout out to Vic Gatto, Townes Duncan, and all of the LPs who made it possible.

Where is your startup originally from?

We’re a distributed team out of CA, TN, and PA. It’s cheap, there’s less distractions with management process, and much more freedom to produce. Plus, our community of made up of freelancers and clients who work often in a remote fashion, so it’s fitting that it’s exactly how we built our own company.We get it how we live. And we encourage others to do so as well. That said, it’s nice to mostly be in the same place for now. We’re not entirely what the future holds for us, however. You can build a massive technology company anywhere these days — and that’s the exciting part.

Tell us about your current team?

Hackers and hustlers, baby. Rich Jones is a technology beast, and was named by Intel as one of the “30 under 30 to watch.” JohnPaul’s worked in business development for an Asian master franchising firm and as a portfolio analyst for Merrill Lynch. Teja Yenamandra’s worked for a consulting firm as well as an early employee for a startup in Shanghai that sold for $65M in under two years. They all know each other from university, and from working together in Shanghai, China.

What does your startup do?

Gun.io helps clients hire hackers. Other sites let you hire adequate software developers, we try to cater to the best. Software development is a subtle art, and the difference between a shitty developer and a great one can produce is pretty significant. There are a few sites that are working on the same problem, and many of them are quite good. Others are not. It would be rude to mention any by name, but we think we’ve got the problem identified better than they do, and we think we’re able to keep building a solution both sides (hirers, hackers) want more.

What are your goals for the accelerator program?

Build more awesome stuff, sell said awesome stuff. The only two goals any startup should have.

What’s one thing you’ve learned in the accelerator?

We knew agile software development. We now practice agile business development.

What’s the hardest piece of advice you’ve had to stomach so far?

Shave.

What is your goal for the day after demo day?

Build more awesome stuff, sell said awesome stuff.

Why did you choose this accelerator?

Vic Gatto, David Ledgerwood, Julia Polk and Shawn Glinter. They’re awesome, all are major players within the startup ecosystem here in Nashville, and were the four people who convinced us us to join Jumpstart Foundry.

What’s one thing you learned about an accelerator that you didn’t know when you applied?

Speed is the only advantage a startup has.

Where can people find out more?

http://gun.io