Nashville’s Jumpstart Foundry Announces Summer 2013 Class

We told you today was going to be a big day for summer startup accelerator classes. Earlier today we reported on Memphis’ highly successful medical device accelerator Zeroto510 and their summer class. Before that we reported on Techstars Boulder class for summer 2013.

Now we turn to Nashville Tennessee and the Jumpstart Foundry. This startup accelerator offers an intense program in Music City USA, that will “graduate” during the summer. Last year there were three startup accelerator demo days in Tennessee in the month of August. Gigtank, Zeroto510 and Jumpstart Foundry all had cohorts conclude their program and pitch at demo/investor day, in a succession of Thursdays.

Jumpstart Foundry supports it’s cohort with over 125 mentors and an intense program. Also as an added bonus, midway through the program the cohort will move to Nashville’s new entrepreneur center, slated to open next month.

Check out this year’s cohort.

● eVisit a secure and convenient mobile platform to facilitate communications between primary care providers and patients

● Chalky an elearning video platform where experts can earn money through remote coaching and teaching

● Gun.io an exclusive Elancelike marketplace to connect with the bestofthebest open stack developers

● InvisionHeart a secure mobile platform for emergency responders to communicate critical medical statistics to doctors during emergencies

● LoadTag a SaaS mobile platform for trucking and freight companies

● MyMedMatch a service to match underutilized specialized rehab equipment to patients who need it

● NewsBreak Media Networks videobased advertising, interaction and promotion platform for gas stations and convenience store networks

● Poliana an online matching service for politicalbased social networking and advocacy

● Rocket Link Mobile a platform for SMSbased text ads that pay users to sharing them

● Zingfin a financial services SaaS platform that facilitates ETF analysis

Check out these two Nashville entrepreneurs talking about the “yes mentality”

Memphis Startup ScrewPulp Launches Disruptive Self Publishing Platform

With one week to go in the Memphis based Seed Hatchery startup accelerator program, one of their startups, ScrewPulp, has officially launched (isn’t it nice to see real products at demo days).

Long time readers of nibletz.com, The Voice Of Startups Everywhere Else, are very familiar with ScrewPulp and it’s founder, Memphian Richard Billings. Billings comes from a wide background of creativity, and media. At one point in his career, Billings was a radio disc jockey. Throughout though, he’s been a tinkerer on a very grand scale. For instance his home has a full movie theater and he’s building arcade and pinball machines in his spare time.

So what’s ScrewPulp? It’s a way for self publishers to generate traction by trading their wares for social media mentions, reviews and ratings. In it’s simplest form the model works like this:

– Author publishes their book on ScrewPulp
– The first 25 copies are given away free
– Those people are expected to engage with the material through reviews, ratings and social media mentions
– Readers can continue to get the newest books free as long as they support the model.

After the initial free period, publishers start making money on their book. Pricing is based on how well the book was received, or sales. What’s especially nice for publishers is the platform is non-exclusive and publishers get 75% of the take.

“I want to change a broken industry,” Billings said in a statement. “Screwpulp is removing the obstacles that discourage so many authors, and empowers everyone to take control of publishing’s future.”

ScrewPulp is a product of the entire LaunchMemphis ecosystem. The idea was conceived at a 48 Hour Launch event in June of 2012. From there, ScrewPulp was one of the startups selected to compete in a Global Entrepreneurship Week challenge, which included pitching the concept to Federal Court Judge John Fowlkes. At that contest, ScrewPulp won over $5,000 in cash and prizes.

ScrewPulp founder Richard Billings pitches his startup to Federal Court Judge John Fowlkes.

It was only natural for ScrewPulp to continue iterating and preparing for launch under the development and instruction of Seed Hatchery, Memphis’ cohort based technology accelerator.

“It’s been a fun uphill battle all the way, but we have our work cut out for us after investor day next week.” Billings told nibletz.com in an interview. He’s also very excited about the progress they’ve made to date. ScrewPulp soft launched last week with four books and four authors. In just one week, and with no promotion, marketing or media they now have 23 books from 23 authors, and 250 readers signed up for the platform.

To add to that momentum, ScrewPulp’s mentor, Publishing executive Joe Wikert, will be flying into Memphis to introduce the ScrewPulp team at Seed Hatchery Investor Day next week. Wikert was the Publisher and Chair of O’Reilly Media’s Tools Of Change conference. Wikert has also had executive positions with publishing giants, Wiley and Macmillan Publishing.

You obviously like to read, so go read a book at ScrewPulp.com

Here’s ScrewPulp’s first ever pitch at 48 Hour Launch

This Memphis founder also launched her startup at 48Hour Launch and is now a finalist in the Black Enterprise Elevator Pitch Contest.

Memphis Answers Call To Task On Women Entrepreneurs With Upstart Accelerator

On Tuesday at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013, Alexia Tstotsis got some of the more influential names in the tech/vc community to talk about women entrepreneurs and venture capital. David Tisch offered this tidbit in regards to what really pisses him off when VCs are talking to women. Aaref Hilaly (Sequoia) offered this opinion on why there is such a divide. Hilaly also called everyone to task to help increase the number of women entrepreneurs ready for venture funding.

While startup communities everywhere are starting to embrace and cultivate their women entrepreneurs. One startup community in particular has taken a very proactive role.

Eric Mathews, Andre Fowlkes and Elizabeth Lemmonds the team behind Launch Your City and Launch Memphis started a women’s initiative in 2012 called Upstart. Upstart is a multifaceted initiative with their latest phase coming into fruition now. It began with a meetup group, office hours for women entrepreneurs and a 48 Hour launch event for women founders.

Upstart is just one of the many startup community initiatives that Launch Your City has developed. They are also responsible for Seed Hatchery, a general tech accelerator that is two weeks away from their third graduation (demo day). Interestingly enough there are two startups in the class of six that have women founders; Boosterville and Mentor Me. A third woman entrepreneur, Rachel Hurley, started as a co-founder for one startup, Soundstache and has since segued to another team, Musistic. Hurley has always been active in the Launch Memphis startup community and took the challenge to apply to this years Seed Hatchery class.

In addition to all of this, Lemmonds, served as the moderator for the “Kick Ass Female Founders From Everywhere Else” at the everywhereelse.co inaugural conference. It was there and on a trip to Silicon Valley that Lemmonds continued to forge relationships with women entrepreneurs across the country, some of which will serve as mentors for the upcoming first session at Upstart.

The Upstart Accelerator basically starts as soon as Seed Hatchery graduates. The application deadline is May 24th and the application can be found here.Those accepted will be notified by May 31st. The session starts in Memphis at the Launch Your City Launch Pad on June 20th and runs until October 3rd.

Upstart participants will get access to the four M’s, mentors, milestones, money and Memphis. The Upstart team is encouraging women led startups from across the country and around the world to consider their program. Memphis is a great place to launch startups, cost of living is incredibly low and the startup community is close knit and growing. And YES their can be men on the team as well, but one of the cofounders must be a woman.

You can find out more here at upstartmemphis.com

See why this woman, and her husband, the founding CTO at Cha-Cha moved to Memphis for an acceleartor.

Indy Couple Getting Their Grit & Grind On At Memphis’ Seed Hatchery Accelerator

Memphis’ Seed Hatchery accelerator is less than a month away from demo day for their third cohort of startups. This years class has some major standouts and Boosterville is one of them.

Boosterville was founded as Sodbuster by married couple Pam and Tom Cooper. The Cooper’s hale from Indianapolis Indiana and they are the only “out of town” team for this years Seed Hatchery class. I met Pam Cooper on Brad Feld’s alternative to Hacker News, the Startup Revolution Hub. Meeting woman entrepreneurs is nothing new these days however Pam and Tom admittedly have adult children, sometimes older than the other founders on the Startup Revolution Hub, and the other founders at Seed Hatchery.

I quickly struck up an online friendship with Pam that resulted in her presenting at the startup conference and facilitated an introduction into the Seed Hatchery program.

What makes the Coopers even more interesting is that Tom is the founding CTO of Cha-Cha and has been a distinguished CTO for the last 30 years. While I wouldn’t call them “startup rich” the Cooper’s have done well. Pam founded a successful cleaning business. Tom has hit a few doubles and triples in his career. Tom enjoys flying his prop plane when he can pull away from the computer screen.

That’s what makes Cooper’s truly unique. They aren’t in the Seed Hatchery program for the seed investment (which of course helps any startup, Boosterville included), they are in it for the grit and grind and the whirlwind business training that happens during a three month, intensive accelerator program.

While Pam sometimes jokes about being the “class mom” with this year’s Seed Hatchery, they work with the best of them, until late hours of the night and back again first thing in the morning. Tom made arrangements with his development job in Indianapolis to work from Memphis every morning before working on Boosterville.

So what is Boosterville?

It’s a new platform that combines the mobile wallet with a loyalty and rewards type program that benefits local schools. Pam and Tom grew tired of neighborhood kids hitting them up with the same popcorn tins, wrapping paper and World’s Finest Chocolate bars. The school fundraiser was destined for a disruption.

Boosterville has partnered with Peabody Elementary in mid-town Memphis and merchants in the Overton Square and Cooper Young neighborhoods for their beta testing.

The Boosterville mobile app is tied in with local merchants and local schools who have agreed to give a kickback to the school of the user’s choice when they checkout with the Boosterville mobile wallet. The Cooper’s live on the cusp of new technology, and to that end, where others have used Paypal or Google Wallet for checkout, Boosterville uses fellow midwestern startup Dwolla as it’s wallet back bone.

Dwolla’s founder Ben Milne knows Tom well and is very enthusiastic about what Boosterville is doing.

Despite their age, and experience, Boosterville is treated the same way every other startup in the Seed Hatchery class is treated. They’ve been going up and down in the weekly rankings like every other startup and they went through a name change and a couple pivots during the past two months.

Boosterville will graduate from the Seed Hatchery program on demo day which is May 16th and will coincide with the Memphis in May festivities. For more info on Boosterville visit boosterville.com.

Find more startup news from the south east here.

Nashville Courting New Startup Accelerator,From Silicon Valley, Hattery!

Hattery,Entrepreneur Center, Michael Burcham,Nashville startup,startup,startup news

Hattery strategist, and Engine Advocacy co-founder Michael McGeary (photo: hattery.com)

Nashville’s Entrepreneur Centre Director, Michael Burcham, played host to Mike McGeary, a strategist with Silicon Valley innovation lab, Hattery.

Currently the Hattery has a west coast location in Silicon Valley and an east coast location in New York City. Hattery invests in early stage startups and helps the startups with support in design, engineering and business development.

If you think you’ve heard McGeary’s name before it’s because you probably have. In addition to being a strategist with Hattery, McGeary is also the co-founder and chief political strategist with Engine Advocacy a group connecting startup founders and entrepreneurs with government officials to create change in the entrepreneurial/startup space. They were recently intricate in a startup pilgrimage to congress. McGeary also worked with TuneIn and on two presidential campaigns.

Hattery is looking to take their unique model to another state and Nashville seems to have caught McGeary’s eye.

“There is a great energy here and I’ve read about it and heard about it because Nashville has been really good about talking about its success stories,” McGeary told the Nashville Business Journal during the Nashville Technology Council’s TechVille event. He continued; “It has been really fun and interesting to see the companies created here, how the community is being built in a really unique way. I think there is a lot of growth potential here.”

Burcham, who is one of Nashville’s biggest advocates for entrepreneurship and startups as well as the leader for Startup Tennessee, Startup America’s Tennessee region and the second region in the United States, characterized the possibility of Hattery relocating to Nashville as a “giant deal”.

“He already works with so many investors and organizations in San Francisco and Silicon Valley, so for us to have someone sitting here that has access to those places, that’s enormous,” Burcham said, who reached out to McGeary about three months ago via Twitter. “My goal is to turn that from a conversation into something real.”

Burcham is looking to overflow the new 22,000 square foot, multi million dollar entrepreneur center with as much programming and resources as possible. The Hattery program would add another great avenue for Tennessee startups to take advantage of. Although still under wraps,we do know that there are other nationally known accelerator brands looking to partner with the new entrepreneur center when it opens in June.

If anyone can sell Nashville’s startup and entrepreneurial community it’s Burcham. He’s a salesmans salesman and with his vast experience in the startup space, coupled with his down home Nashville personality, it’s hard to not fall in love with the guy and his passion.

The team behind the Hattery is filled with Silicon Valley success stories and they’re looking to spread the wealth across the country. Their portfolio includes; Bright Funds, Cloud Physics, Zubhium, and Hipiti.

Find out more about Hattery here and the Nashville Entrepreneur Center here.

Take a tour of the new multi-million dollar 22,000 square foot Entrepreneur Center here.

Warner Music Exec Ping Ho Gives Important Tips For Music Startups

Music startups academy, Nashville, music startup,startup,startup tips,startups

Larry Miller, Medianet (L), Ping Ho, Warner Music Group (R) (photo: NMI 2013)

Warner Music Group’s Director of the Digital Strategy Team, Ping Ho, was in Nashville today for the Music Startup Academy. The event is meant to merge musicians, labels, lawyers, publishers and entrepreneurs working on startups that are touching the music business.

In my startup experience I’ve get to talk to a lot of startups. I’ve also sat on a few committees that have vetted startups for accelerator programs. So often I’ve met music based startups who have no idea how big the can of worms is when they want to do something with commercial music.

Ho, has been with Warner Music Group over the last 8 years, and always with the digital department. She’s been through just about the entire boom of the digital music age.

We’re going to continue to dive more into music focused startups in the future here at nibletz.com but in the mean time, at the event today Ho gave some very good advice to music startups.

First things first, in my experience, I’ve met quite a few founders who want to offer some kind of “radio” or “streaming” service and are adamant about doing their own thing and not using an API from someone like Spotify or Rdio. That may be the biggest mistake you’ll ever make.

Licensing music directly from a major label and can be very costly. Legitimizing your startup among independent artists can be a very long tail process. If you don’t have millions (and I’m not exaggerating) you may want to reconsider those Spotify API’s until you can build up traction.

Stubborn? Headstrong, oh ok you have the greatest idea in the world and want to go directly to the label then read on…

For starters Ho did say that it’s a lot easier to score a meeting or at least a chance to get your startup in front of her team than it would be for an artist to get in front of a traditional A&R. But pay attention here or you’ll blow it.

The Boy Scout Rule: Be Prepared.

Sure this is common knowledge but for Ho, and her counterparts at other labels this means.

– knowing your pitch
– knowing your market
– knowing your competition
– knowing what you need from the label
– having a white paper or deck, but they want to see both business plan and product, and in depth.

On this, here is the absolute biggest thing Ho said that will get your meeting shut down…

Have a ProtoType, DO NOT BE IN A CLOSED WORKING BETA.

Ho said that many times startups have pitched her. They get to a meeting and have set up a wonderful login for her to use to access their startup. They are happy, headstrong and proudly say, “We’re in a closed beta with 5000 users, and they love it”, “They’re using our service four hours a day each”. Then she, or an executive in her position, goes to the actual product and they’re using Warner’s music in the “beta”. Well guess what, your great idea and great startup are now stealing WMG’s product, and with 5,000 users using the service four hours a day, you’re stealing a lot of that.

The music business is going through it’s biggest fundamental change ever. An executive with Sony earlier in the program said “The album is dead, we need to find more high margin product businesses”, digital licensing is now the catalog vault.

“I’m going to rely on the artist to help build my customer base” makes Ho cringe the way that “we’re going to grow socially and organically over the first two years” makes me cringe.

Artists aren’t going to get involved until they see how your startup is impacting their bottom line. This can be a double edged sword as well because remember, the death of the album is affecting artists just as much as it is labels. They’re getting into more and more businesses, and a lot of them are digital.

So now that you’ve got all that, check out digitalmusic.org they’ll help you get to that next step.

Here are more great startup stories from Nashville.

Memphis Native Kimberly Bryant Named To 25 Most Influential African Americans In Technology List

Kimberly Bryant, Black Girls Code,BlackGirlsCode,startup,entrepreneur,Memphis

(photo: influencercon.com)

Business Insider published a great list this morning of the 25 most influential African American’s in technology.

We were very pleased to find that native Memphian Kimberly Bryant, the founder and creator of Black Girls Code, was ranked number 19 on such an important list.

Kimberly Bryant is an award winning social entrepreneur, technology junkie, an engineer by trade and a native Memphian. She relocated to Silicon Valley and now she’s launched a program that’s rolling out across the country. That program, Black Girls Code, promotes teaching coding and development to young African American Girls.

Bryant describes the mission for Black Girls Code on her website as:

“to introduce programming and technology to a new generation of coders, coders who will become builders of technological innovation and of their own futures.”

Like many others, Bryant believes there’s a “dearth” of African American women in science, technology, engineering and math professions. While some may say it’s because there’s a lack of interest, Bryant knows that it’s more like a lack of access and exposure to STEM topics. The Black Girls Code program is about making STEM topics accessible to African American girls and exposing them at a young age. It’s also done in such a way that it’s fun and positive.

Bryant has held programs through Black Girls Code in cities all over the country and some around the world. Black Girls Code has had events in San Francisco, Chicago, Oakland, Las Vegas, Atlanta, Detroit, Los Angeles, New York and even in Johannesburg. Her most recent event was this past Saturday in Atlanta where they taught kids how to develop their own apps using Google’s App Inventor.

Black Girls Code in Memphis debuted back in January at an Open House, they also had booth space at everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference. The weekend following that huge startup event Black Girls Code Memphis held their inaugural event which was met with great success.

Here is the complete list:

1. John Thompson, CEO Virtual Instruments
2. Shellye Archambeau, CEO MetricStream
3. David Drummond, SVP, Chief Legal Officer, Google
4. Ken Coleman, Chairman MIPS Technologies Inc
5. Kirk McDonald, President PubMatic
6. Lisa Lambert, VP and Managing Director of Software & Service, Intel Capital
7. Malik Ducard, Director of Content Partnerships, YouTube
8. Ime Archibong, Manager of Strategic Partnerships, Facebook
9. Ty Ahmad-Taylor, Head of Smart TV, Samsung
10. Erik Moore, Founder and Managing Partner, Base Ventures
11. Tristan Walker, Entrepreneur In Residence, Andreessen Horowitz
12. Kanyi Maqubela, Partner, Collaborative Fund
13. Charles Hudson, Partner at SoftTech VC
14. Michael Siebel, Justin.tv & SocialCam
15. Brian Weston, Analyst, Union Square Ventures
16. Angela Benton, Founder & CEO NewMe Accelerator
17. Tony Guada, CEO and co-founder Bitcasa
18. Jon Gosier, Founder & CEO Metalayer
19. Kimberly Bryant, Founder, BlackGirlsCode
20. Wayne Sutton, Founder & CEO, PitchTo
21. Majora Carter, Founder, Sustainable South Bronx, Startup Box
22. Don Charlton, CEO, Resumator
23. Hamet Watt, Co-Founder MoviePass
24. Stacy Spikes, Co-Founder, MoviePass
25. Will Lucas, Founder & CEO Creadio

Now see 3 things every new startup should do.

Nashville’s MedSolutions Innovation Challenge Apps Close Next Week

MedSolutions is partnering with Nashville’s tech accelerator Jumpstart Foundry to offer one startup that has an “innovative idea to help consumers improve healthcare decisions”, the opportunity to be a full fledged member of the summer 2013 cohort.

They are taking applications from healthcare focused startups now through April 12th.

“When you combine MedSolutions’ leadership in medical cost management and Jumpstart Foundry’s program to quickly accelerate innovation, all housed in Nashville’s booming healthcare community, the opportunity for entrepreneurs who participate in the Innovation Challenge just doesn’t get much better,” said David Ledgerwood, COO of Jumpstart Foundry.

Through this program, MedSolutions will partner with selected entrepreneurs to develop and introduce new products and services that help consumers make better decisions around their utilization of the healthcare system. These innovations will allow patients to capture maximum savings and improve the overall quality of care they receive.

“Our company places a high value on entrepreneurship, and we’re always looking for new, problem- solving innovations, so this is a natural partnership for us,” said Gino Tenace, chief strategy officer for MedSolutions.

The startup selected through the Innovation Challenge will go through the same rigorous 14 week program that the other applicants selected for Jumpstart Foundry participate in. They will also get the opportunity to present to over 400 investors at Jumpstart Foundry’s investor/demo day in August.

To get rolling on that application click here

More startup news from the midsouth can be found at siliconmidsouth.com

Memphis’ Biggest Entrepreneurial Success Story Turns 40

FedEx,Fred Smith,Entrepreneur,Memphis,Memphis startup

(photo: FedEx Facebook)

In 1970 Frederick Wallace Smith embarked on a journey that would change the way that people do business. Smith purchased controlling interest in an aircraft maintenance company called Ark Aviation Sales. In 1971 he started trading used jets and on June 18, 1971 he founded Federal Express. He used a $4 million dollar inheritance (about $25 million today) and raised $91 million dollars in venture capital.

Along the way Smith was criticized because many though his idea about merging ground transportation and aviation to deliver packages overnight was well, crazy. Of course many present day entrepreneurs have been in the same boat.

In 1973 (40 years ago), he began offering overnight delivery services in 25 cities using a fleet of 14 Falcon 20 (DA-20) jets. The foundation for the way FedEx operates today began in 1973 in a model similar to bank clearinghouses. Packages would be brought to Memphis Tennessee and then re-routed out to their destination.

Today, FedEx Express serves 220 countries and territories around the world, and their main hub is still in Memphis Tennessee.

At age 69 Smith is still alive and well and is still at the helm of FedEx which is innovating in several other logistical spaces, while dealing with the disruption in even overnight delivery caused by new ways of communicating (the internet). Sensor products, cloud based services and even taking over the merged FedEx Kinko’s which are now just FedEx Office stores, are helping FedEx continue to deliver on the bottom line.

In his spare time what does Smith do? He serves on boards, like Startup America. Smith is a great friend to entrepreneurs and startup ecosystems at home and across the country.

FedEx is just beginning to celebrate getting “over the hill” and of course they’re doing it with jet power.

Happy Birthday.

Jonesin for more high growth tech news from the South, Click here.

Everywhereelse.co 2013 In Just About 3 Minutes (Ticket News for 2014) [video]

If you missed everywhereele.co The Startup Conference 2013, then you missed the largest single venue startup conference in the United States dedicated to one thing. That thing is, startups “everywhere else”.

Everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference 2013, and Everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference 2014 provide programming, celebrations, pitch contests, parties and networking opportunities that are extremely relevant for startups outside Silicon Valley.

The 2013 conference featured a huge startup village exhibition, along with workshops, keynotes, small groups and round table discussions on the issues that matter to startups in entrepreneurial pockets across the country and around the world.

Kick Ass Female Founders From Everywhere Else, Legaleeze, You Only Launch Once, applying and graduating from accelerators and more were at the forefront of the 2013 event. After parties that included free tickets to a Memphis Grizzlies NBA game, a historic brothel (Ernestine & Hazels), and the craziest throw back disco ever, dj’d by a world famous pimp (Raifords), were just some of the great social events.

2014 features a lot more similar content focused on acceleration, access to capital, access to talent, branding, design and pitching. Mike Muhney the godfather of CRM (co-creator of ACT which was the standard before SalesForce), Baker Donelson legal panels and workshops, and design, naming and branding with the folks at nationally known archer>malmo are just some of the discussions, topics and content coming in 2014.

The Marriott is offering $109 per night rooms for the event which runs February 17-19th 2014. American Airlines is also offering reduced fares and Avis is offering reduced rental cars.

This year we are also providing breakfast and lunch on both conference days.

Tennessee startup GreenPal and J Brant Films, Jeffrey Brant, who’s worked with national country recording artists in Nashville, have provided the video montage below. Check out Everywhereelse.co 2013 in nearly 3 minutes below.

The early bird special, where you can purchase attendee tickets and Startup Village booths at 2013 prices for the next conference, has been extended from March 27th to March 31st (Sunday night) or until the early bird tickets and startup village booths run out. Check out the ticket registration form below the video for availability.

Event management for Everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference 2014 powered by Eventbrite

Tampa Bay Wave Announces First Accelerator Class

The paint is hardly dry at the Tampa Bay Wave incubator and accelerator. No, literally they just opened their doors on March 15th and with that, the center that prides itself on being by entrepreneurs, for entrepreneurs, announces it’s inaugural class.

Michael LaPlante, the curator of the Tampa Bay Startup Digest announced the first 8 startups to accelerator at Tampa Bay Wave in Monday morning’s digest. Here they are:

SHOOTRAC: Provides organizations of all sizes a simple way to capture big data on its customers, assets and workforce and use the information to leverage these resources for maximum efficiency and customer service using a cloud-based, scalable Software as a Service solution

Cartooga: Through its proprietary e-commerce platform and expert staff, Cartooga, Coracent offers shopping cart hosting and a variety of conversion optimization features designed to help businesses open an online store, drive traffic and increase conversion rates.

Secondhand Living: An e-commerce site where consignment, antique and thrift shops, as well as architectural salvage material suppliers promote their businesses and offer their products for sale. There are thousands of these independently owned shops in North America (even more abroad) and the majority of them have no online presence.

Drawer: A technology product expressed initially through a mobile application that provides a framework for capturing and cataloging real-life recommendations between friends and acquaintances. Drawer helps to catalog across various verticals – places, movies, music, products, books, etc. – in order to provide a comprehensive and centralized place for storing this information.

Commendable Kids: It is a community of children striving to be the best they can, as they work toward earning badges that can then be proudly displayed and shared with their supporters. Commendable Kids helps encourage and challenge children to learn new skills and reach new milestones.

Confy.co: Confy.co helps track and organize an event from start to finish by providing targeted solutions and management tools to conference organizers, sponsors, hosts and other event-related personnel to successfully manage the myriad of data, requirements and essential organizational needs.

Kite Desk: A personal cloud information manager that lets users connect their cloud service accounts and automatically links and organizes their messages, contacts, files, events and more into useful streams of information. Kite Desk provides the unique value of personalized, contextual computing to both web and mobile clients.

SavvyCard: A mobile web platform for actively referring business transactions. It combines features of an online business card with an intelligent referral system that generates measurable leads and sales. SavvyCard offers a convenient way to pass “warm” referrals from any web enabled device, track and respond to referrals in real time, reward referral behavior and build mobile-friendly referral networks.

Obviously Tampa Bay Wave is off to a great start, we expect to hear a lot more from them. If you’re in the Tampa Bay area you can find out more here.

We’ve got more accelerator stories here.

Tennessee Showcasing Startups, Culture And More At Southland June 11th and 12th

Launch Tennessee and the Music City Music Council have teamed up to hold a new startup and innovation conference in Nashville in June. The conference, called Southland, butts up to two of the regions biggest music events, Bonaroo and the Country Music Association Music Festival.

This unique scheduling allows fans of both music and innovation to plan a nice 10 day trip to Nashville and enjoy a mixture of both.

Southland will feature venture capitalists and angel investors from across the country along with an extensive lineup of speakers and panelists with a firsthand knowledge of the power of innovation and its ability to transform a region’s ecosystem. Speakers include Sarah Lacy (Founder, PandoDaily), Michael Sippy (Vice President of Consumer Products, Twitter), Michael Marquez (Co-Founder, Code Advisors), KC Estenson (SVP & GM, CNN Digital), Ali Partovi (Co-Founder, Code.org), and many more from CNN, Scripps Networks Interactive, IBM and others.

“The Southeast is a hotbed for technology startups,” notes Charlie Brock, CEO of LaunchTN. “This conference is going to be the premier event for bringing together the best our region has to offer in entrepreneurs and cultural tastemakers, along with investors, technology and health care executives from around the country.”

In addition to the usual startup conference programming, like a startup village, and engaging keynotes speakers and panels, Southland will also offer a “Makers Marketplace” of southern culture featuring local musicians, BBQ pit masters, small batch distillers and southern artisans.

Unlike the national everywhereelse conference hosted in Memphis Tennesse, which highlights startups and innovation across, Southland is poised to be the largest regional conference for innovation and startups. Sandwiched in between the two major musical events, the Southland conference will offer an unheard of and very attractive cultural and innovation injection to all attendees.

Tickets are only $300, interested in attending visit southlandse.com

Nibletz provide the best startup coverage in the southeast, here’s more!

Chattanooga’s GigTank Extends Application Deadline

GigTank,Chattanoga,startup,startups,accelerator

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

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

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

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

Here are the rest of the details:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Listenup.FM Pitches At Spark Nashville

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Listneup.fm CEO Mykas Degesys pitches at Spark Nashville (photo: NMI 2013)

Tennessee startup Listenup.fm just got back from pitching at everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference. Their platform is designed to engage fans with their favorite artists and bands while also returning bands and record labels with valuable analytics.

Their streaming music platform is built on top of the highly successful Spotify platform and rewards fans for sharing the music they’re listening to across their social networks.

CEO Mykas Degesys explains that as the music industry moves from an ownership to an access model, bands need more and more ways to engage with fans and of course generate extra revenue.

Even just a few years ago it was important to own your music collection. Whether it be vinyl, cassette, CD or mp3, most people who loved music owned it in some media format or another. Now with services like Rhapsody,Rdio,Slacker and Spotify, and high speed internet, more and more people are turning to all you can eat access packages with libraries millions of songs deep.

Royalties are baked into services that range from $4.99 a month to $19.99 a month, all supplying some sort of unlimited listening.

Bands can now find ways to get to their exact target market. They can reward fans with prizes and Listenup.fm even allows fans to earn points to purchase prizes like limited edition swag and backstage passes.

Check out Degesys’ pitch from the Spark Nashville event in the video below.

Listenup.fm also pitched at everywhereelse.co 2013, don’t miss everywhereelse.co 2014 with tickets now at 2013 prices through March 27. Click here