Record Industry Veteran Heather McBee Joins Nashville Startup Populr

Nashville startup Populr has been in the news a lot lately. Back in November, the company led by founder Nicholas Holland, raised $425,000 before launching into beta. Back in January Populr officially launched after just two months in beta.

Populr.me, one of a handful of technology providers entering the micropublishing space, already has an edge in that it allows users and groups the ability to collaborate on POP’s as a team. This functionality, allows organizations the ability to create, co-manage and share their interactive one-pager’s both publicly and privately. POP’s can be delivered instantly to both individuals and groups by use of it’s sharing function, which includes connectivity to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, email and instant messaging. POP’s are accessible by a Populr.me sub-domain, or through use of a designated URL.

Many business people have the need to quickly share impactful media, but lack the resources in which to do it. Creating an entire website is too time-intensive. Creating a blog is too public. Populr.me allows everyone to create high-impact one page presentations in a matter of minutes, and then share them instantly either internally, or through their favorite social media platforms, according to Holland.

Today it was announced that record industry veteran Heather McBee has joined Populr.me as Senior Communications Strategist. McBee spent several years on Nashville’s Music Row, most recently she spent many years with Sony Music Nashville.

“HEATHER was looking for a new perspective and we were looking for someone who had organic connections to the business community in NASHVILLE and abroad. We needed a broad business thinker with a technical mind and she presents the perfect blend of both,” Holland told radio and record authority, allaccess.com.

This isn’t the first time Populr has reached out to Nashville’s music industry. Music and technology entrepreneur Mark Montgomery is an investor as well, telling the Tennessean last year that Populr could be “a game changing venture that could boost Nashville’s position on the digital map”

Check out Populr and nearly 100 other startups from across the country and around the world at this huge startup conference.

Seed Hatchery Announces 6 Team Class Of 2013

Memphis’ tech startup accelerator program, now in it’s third year, Seed Hatchery, has unveiled the six startup teams participating in it’s 2013 cohort. The cohort will begin next week on February 8th and end with a Demo Day during the legendary Memphis in May Barbecue Festival. The applications were plentiful and this years class features five local startups as well as one startup from Indiana. Also new for Seed Hatchery, and a growing trend across America, three of the startups are led by women.

Seed Hatchery teams will receive seed funding as well as an intense mentor driven program designed to cultivate their idea stage businesses and turn them into viable companies/products.

This year’s Seed Hatchery program will be full time. It also features teams that have been heavily vested in the Memphis startup ecosystem driven by the efforts of Launch Your City/Launch Memphis. Most of the teams, prior to even applying to Seed Hatchery, elected to participate in the Startup Village as part of the upcoming evverywhereelse.co, The Startup Conference.

Here are the teams:

Mentor.me

Mentor.me is led by Brittanny Fitzpatrick. Fitzpatrick pitched her startup at the Upstart Memphis 48 Hour Launch in December. Fitzpatrick has been working for the Ronald McDonald House in conjunction with St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital, which led her to developing this idea.

Mentor.me is essentially a match.com system for matching mentors with mentees. Every year mentor organizations are faced with a problem stemming from mismatched mentors and mentees. This problem actually takes up more time and resources than originally matching mentors. Mentor.me will be an algorithm based platform that matches mentors with mentees in a more efficient way.

IncreaseIF

IncreaseIF plans to match provides cost-analysis software to help scientific researchers figure out which in-house resources should be used. Several factors go into the decision making process for evaluating using an outsourced firm by scientific researchers. These factors include cost, quality, delivery responsiveness, technology and cycle turn around time.

IncreaseIF, where the IF stands for, impact factor, will help automate these decision making processes and speed up the time of scientific research. The startup is led by software engineer Scott Finney, a Memphis local who’s been dabbling in the startup scene and anxious to push forward with this new idea.

Kangaroo

Kangaroo is another local startup co-founded by CEO Nick Redmond and Rachel Hurley, one of the three startups featuring a female founder. Hurley is very active in the Memphis local music scene where the passion for this startup came about. She’s constantly promoting singer songwriters and local bands through venues in town. Redmond is one of the songwriters and founders of Star & Micey a local band which was named the number one band to see live in Tennessee by Paste Magazine.

The idea is to create a social network around bands and music. Sure that idea has been done a hundred times but Hurley and Redmond are putting a brand new spin on it by incorporating geocaching. With Kangaroo they plan to create a platform where touring bands and bands in town can leave behind hidden treasures. Fans can also turn around and leave tokens of appreciation for their favorite bands

“We want to abolish the limited creativity and loss of the personal touch with social media today. Connecting with fans is the only problem musicians have, and this is a huge opportunity to connect people and musicians in a active, real-time environment. From seeking out left behind items by musicians, to taking their personalized walking tours, to following them across a coast, this app and site allows the fans the most hands on experience in social media.” Hurley said.

ScrewPulp Publishing

ScrewPulp is an exciting startup for Memphis. It was originally pitched at the 48 Hour Launch event in June of 2012, the same 48 Hour launch that attracted nibletz.com to Memphis in the first place.

At the event, founder Richard Billings described the problems with self publishing. Self publishers live off reviews, ratings and recommendations which are impossible to drive in any organized way. Screw Pulp allows authors to give their book away to the first 100 readers, in exchange for a review (good or bad), rating or recommendation. Once the engagement is made the “promo copy” of the book is the readers to keep.

After the first 100 books Screw Pulp goes with a sliding payment scale increasing the cost of the book while it gains popularity. Billings has become a fixture in the local startup scene. Since pitching ScrewPulp in that 48 Hour launch he has been to subsequent launch events where he’s provided feedback and mentorship. They also won the “Risk City” challenge in November as part of Global Entrepreneurship Week in November. That contest involved the startups pitching their idea to Federal Court Judge John Fowlkes in open court.

SodBuster

Sodbuster is the startup that is relocating from Indiana. This startup has a different spin when it comes to founders. The husband and wife team of Tom and Pam Cooper both graduated from college in the early 80’s. They both have had long and prosperous careers in their field. Now they’re going all in on their social entrepreneurship startup.

The team has the benefit of Tom’s 30+ years of experience in programming running the gamut of programming languages from COBOL to C++ and newer languages like HTML 5 and Ruby on Rails.

Sodbuster is reinventing the way local nonprofits connect to their communities to communicate and raise money. They plan on doing this with a new e-newsletter format.

Musistic

Musistic was founded by Justin Olita, Vince Rogers and CTO Brian Wentzloff. This Memphis based startup wants to become the universal place for musicians to connect in a social network type setting. Once the musicians are matched up through an algorithm the platform will offer the tools necessary to collaborate with each other across the internet and even save the recordings.

Basically imagine a guitar player in Memphis, a bass player in New Hampshire, a drummer in Los Angeles and a singer in Texas. All four musicians can meet up through Musistic where their interests, styles and experience will be matched. They can then jump right into performing together from the comfort of their own homes.

“The problem is that there is no universal network for musicians to create, edit and share in real time and all startups for musicians are focusing only on selling and promoting the artist’s work.
Musistic will focus on the creation process” Rogers said.

For more info on Seed Hatchery visit seedhatchery.com here

Seed Hatchery startups will be featured at everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference, do you have your tickets yet? Get them here!

Disclosure: In the interest of journalistic integrity I am compelled to disclose that while I hold no equity interest in any of the startups in the Seed Hatchery program I am a mentor for the program and also on the selection committee.

Everywhereelse.co Outgrows Original Venue Moves To Memphis Cook Convention Center

Everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference has continued to grow, now to the point where the conference has moved from the original venue, The Peabody Hotel to the Memphis Cook Convention Center. That means that over 1000 entrepreneurs, founders, investors and startup supporters will have a lot more space to mingle, take in exciting startups and plot the takeover of the world.

Everywhereelse.co is the first conference of it’s kind, bringing together startups from across the country (and around the world) all under one roof providing investors, fellow startups and great startup resources like the Global Accelerator Network, the ability to reach more entrepreneurs and more startups than any other event.

The three day conference is being held in Downtown Memphis Tennessee with tickets sold as far away as Portland, Miami, San Francisco, Detroit, Toronto and even Israel. Attendees will take in the rich historical, musical and entrepreneurial history that has grown in Memphis Tennessee. Some of the biggest brands in the world like FedEx, Holiday Inn, Autozone, and even Mrs. Fields Cookies have roots that trace back to Memphis.

The conference has three main focal points that will speak to startup issues that entrepreneurs across the country experience; access to capital, access to talent and acceleration.

Speakers including: Scott Case, Rohit Bhangarva, Bill Harris, Tracy Myers and more will speak in keynotes, roundtables and fireside chats. FedEx will tell the story of how one man, Fred Smith, had an entrepreneurial vision in the 1970’s that on paper looked crazy. How he leveraged everything he had while bootstrapping and became the largest logistics company in the world.

Because of the overwhelming response we’ve had to move the event a few blocks down the road to the Convention Center. At the new venue there will be a lot more room, and we have decided to extend ticket sales a few extra days.

Over 100 startups are exhibiting in our Startup Village exhibition hall and we have a couple spaces left but they are running out quick. Check out the ticket form below.

For Startup Village startups and questions about hotel.

Feel free to continue to enjoy the charm and southern hospitality of the Peabody. There will be bus service in the mornings to the convention center and in the evenings back to the Peabody free of charge. There’s also the downtown Memphis trolley that picks up one block up from the Peabody and lets off at the doorstep to the convention center.

The Downtown Marriott connects to the Convention Center and has offered everywhereelse.co guests a room rate of $109 per night for Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. Rooms can be booked by calling (901)527-7300 or call the toll free reservation line at (888)557-8740. You must tell the reservation agent you’re with everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference.

We found out in speaking with the Marriott that our dates are a little heavy and we’re assuming that’s because some of our attendees have already booked at the Marriott because of points. If your rate was more than the $109 special rate the Marriott is giving the conference you can call the Marriott and they will rebook you under the new rate.

The official conference hours are:

Sunday:

7:30am-10:00am Startup Village Load In
10:00am-4:00pm Startup Village Preview and Registration

Monday & Tuesday:

9:00am-5:30pm

We look forward to seeing you in Memphis for everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference:

Event registration for Everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference powered by Eventbrite

Deadline to book rooms at the Marriott is February 1, 2013

Spottlife Aiming To Simplify Your Social Life

People in today’s world have been inundated with social networks. Many people want to be a part of as many social networks as they can because they don’t want to miss anything from anyone important to them. This is a daunting task though when you consider managing just the most popular social networks on a day to day basis.

Facebook, Twitter, Google + and Instagram can be a pain in the butt to manage. When you’re on your smartphone it’s a constant, battery draining, switch from network to network.

That’s why many startups have taken to creating social network aggregation tools. Spottlife is one of those tools with a different twist.

Using the Spottlife mobile app users can aggregate all of their social content into one app. They can also use the app to post to all or one social network at a time. These features certainly aren’t new, we’ve been using tools like Hootsuite for that part, for a long while. Where Spottlife differs in it’s clean and fairly intuitive UI. It also provides you with aggregated updates of not just your variety of social networks but based on what’s trending and popular with your friends.

For instance today the most popular topics are probably the Inauguration, the Super Bowl and Martin Luther King day. Spottlife with show you the most popular topics and a number indicating how many of your friends are talking about this topic. Users also have the ability to filter out certain topics that might not pertain to them.

Brandon Mihai and Scott Gammenthaler are the cofounders of the Chattanooga startup. Mihai tells us in an interview that he has put his studies on hold from Southern Adventist University in Chattanooga, to focus on Spottlife. Gammenthaler is pulling double duty, serving as the CEO of Spottlife and preparing for college graduation in the spring. The startup is incubating at co.lab in Chattanooga.

Check out our interview with Mihai below.

Everywhereelse.co Unveils “Best Of Everywhere Else” Startup Contest

All of the participating Startup Village startups for everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference are hereby invited to submit a video up to three minutes long, highlighting what your startup is, and what your startup does.

There will be another live pitch contest during the conference in downtown Memphis Tennessee February 10-12th where you’ll get to pitch investors. So you may want to keep your video geared towards consumers. You want to tell the general public why your startup is the best startup “everywhere else”.

This is your chance to get your social networks, friends and family to vote for you even if they aren’t coming to the conference.

If your startup is not signed up yet for the Startup Village, booths for the village will close officially on Tuesday January 22nd so go register now by clicking here.

Here are the requirements:

– The video can be anything you want highlighting you, your team, your product or your startup
– we would advise you to make the video great for the general public, consumers and investors
– Videos can be NO LONGER than three minutes.
– When your video is ready to go please upload it to drop box and share it with video@everywhereele.co or box.com and share it with video@everywhereelse.co.
– The videos will be uploaded to the internet next Sunday January 27th where voting will commence. The videos will be uploaded by everywhereelse.co the startup conference, for the express purpose of this contest only. After the contest the video and it’s contents remain your property. They will live on our channel indefinitely. We may use any video submitted for marketing for this or future events, and in news stories as they pertain to the business and the contest.
– Videos will only be accepted until 11:59:59pm Eastern Time on Sunday January 27th.
– The voting period will run from January 28th to February 3, 2013. The five startups with the most votes will do a final pitch off at everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference on Monday February 11, 2013 in front of the judging panel. The panel of the judges and an audience participation vote will decide the final winner.

If you have any questions please email video@everywhereelse.co

Nibletz Sponsor Baker Donelson Named One Of The Best Places To Work By Fortune Magazine

Thursday was a good day for Memphis based companies to make magazine lists. everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference made Forbes list of must attend entrepreneurial events.

At the same time, Nibletz and everywhereelse.co corporate sponsor Baker Donelson, made Fortune’s 16th annual “100 Best Companies To Work For” list. While it’s an honor in itself for any company to make this prestigious list, and it speaks to company moral and culture, Baker Donelson Caldwell & Berkowitz PC are no strangers to the list. This is the fourth year they made the list and the highest they’ve ranked so far coming in at 45.

Google topped the list at number one. Baker Donelson beat out companies like American Express, CarMax, Capital One and even customer service giant, Nordstrom.

Other Memphis based companies that made the list included FedEx (98th) and St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital which Baker Donelson edged out, with St. Jude’s coming in at 52.

“Each year, we are incredibly honored to be recognized among such a select group of companies,” says Ben Adams, the firm’s chairman and chief executive officer told the Chatanoogan. “This year, as we celebrate our best showing ever, I’m grateful to our employees because they are the reason Baker Donelson is a great place to work, and their dedication to the Firm, our clients and our communities is what sets us apart.”

Baker Donelson is very active in the entrepreneurial and startup community in all of the markets that they serve. At home in Memphis they are integral partners with Launch Your City and Launch Memphis, providing hours of mentorship, and reduced legal fees and advice. They also play a major role in the Nashville startup scene.

Vic Gatto Managing Director of Jumpstart Foundry, Nashville’s accelerator and Seed Hatchery, Memphis’ accelerator added “Baker Donelson has been a great partner in building the entrepreneurial ecosystem here in Tennessee and across the South. The firm does an excellent job representing their clients, but I have been most impressed with all they do in addition to the typical legal services. Baker is one of the largest financial sponsors for the Jumpstart Foundry and Seed Hatchery.accelerators. They also offer lots of educational content to free of charge designed to give entrepreneurs the info they need to make informed legal decisions.”

Baker Donelson is a key partner sponsor in everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference.

everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference Named To Forbes’ Must Attend Conference List For Entrepreneurs

Forbes Magazine’s online site forbes.com published their must attend conference list for entrepreneurs in 2013. The Small Business Summit held annually in New York and SXSWi held in March in Austin, of course made the list. However two key startup events in their first year also received accolades from forbes.com

Silicon Prairie News’ newest event Big Kansas City will be held March 26-28th. This event compliments their Big Omaha Conference and last year’s Thinc Iowa conference. In addition to Big Kansas City, SPN’s Jeff Slabotsky are again holding Big Omaha and also Big Des Moines, another new venture. On Wednesday they sent out an email release highlighting a “season pass” that will be available next week which will get conference go-ers in the midwest access to all three events.

Our own everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference also made the must attend list. everywhereelse.co has quickly become the largest single venue startup conference in the country with over 2000 attendee tickets sold as of this publishing. With a super strong speaker line up and unparalleled access to curriculum, investors and other founders from “everywhere else”, this inaugural event quickly caught the eye of the lists author John Hall CEO of Digital Talent Agents.

Ticket sales will wrap up early next week but there are still a handful of attendee tickets and a handful of startup village booths available. You don’t want to miss this awesome event.

see everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference on Forbes.com

Online Ticketing for Everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference powered by Eventbrite

No Really The Early Bird Attendee Ticket For Everywhere Else Is Going Away Tomorrow

Everywhereelse.co The Startup conference has quickly become the largest single venue multi day startup conference in the United States. It’s happening February 9-12th at the Memphis Convention Center in Downtown Memphis Tennessee.

The conference features amazing guest speakers and a panel line up geared specifically towards early stage, and pre series-A stage startups from outside Silicon Valley. Scott Case,Bill Harris, Rohit Bhargava,, Tracy Myers Techstars Alum, 500startups alum and many more will talk about their experiences outside Silicon Valley and give entrepreneurs, founders, developers, dreamers and do-ers what they need to be successful.

Startups that participate in the Startup Village will get three attendee tickets, booth space, electricity, wifi, a private party, and three pitch contests for $100,000 in cash (and then prizes) there are a few Startup Village spots left here.

Access to capital is one of the biggest obstacles facing startups outside the valley, this panel “How To Raise Money Everywhere Else” will feature some great funded startups and their founders from outside Silicon Valley, you can read more about that here.

Everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference has sold (not pans on selling but sold) over 1700 attendee tickets to date, with only 15% of them zipcoding to Tennessee so this is very much a national conference.

The early bird ticket price was originally supposed to go away Halloween, then before Thanksgiving, then before Christmas and then New Years eve. Well we’re about to officially name our CEO and he’s not happy that we keep extending the date on the conference early bird ticket, so it absolutely positively will end at midnight Pacific time tomorrow morning (Thursday).

You’ll get a great three day conference, access to over 400 angels and vc’s that have already purchased tickets, a Memphis Grizzlies game ticket and a chance to check out a town built on entrepreneurship like Holiday Inn, FedEx, Autozone, Sacks Fifth Avenue and many many more.

Stop reading and go get that early bird ticket now by clicking here.

Memphis Startup: Xtrant Named Official Project Management Tool For Everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference

Project management is an integral part of every startup and every startup conference. Often times founding teams are bogged down with multiple tasks. Without an effective project management solution, things can get chaotic quickly.

There are several project management tools out there like Basecamp and Asana however we found a new project management startup called Xtrant that allows collaboration, cloud based file storage and an extremely easy work flow. Xtrant is based in Memphis TN home to the everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference event.

Xtrant has a freemium model so it’s easy to sign up for an account and you simply pay to get more storage.

The startup was founded by James Sposto of Sposto Creative. It’s been evolving for the last 10 years and started as an internal tool that Sposto and his company used for managing web development, marketing and advertising projects. The different levels of access allowed them to share creative with their teams and important, more confidential information like contracts with the key stakeholders, a feature that’s made it into the public release.

Xtrant is in public beta at the moment but will officially debut at everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference. You’ll be able to find Xtrant on the conference level with our top tier sponsors like Baker Donelson, Archer Malmo, Startup America and others.

We’re also privy to some important, and cool information, you should sign up for Xtrant now. In the coming weeks we will have an official “everywhere else” project in the Xtrant system where attendees, and startups in the Startup Village can win cool prizes.

Xtrant will be hosting a few cool events as part of the conference so stay tuned for those details as well.

Linkage:

Check out Xtrant online here

Memphis Bioworks’ ZeroTo510 Class “All In” On Everywhereelse.co Startup Conference

The Memphis Bioworks Foundation’s partnership program with Seed Hatchery, called Zeroto510, is all in for the upcoming everywhbereelsse.co The Startup Conference event in February in Memphis Tennessee.

All 6 teams that participated in the summer acceleration program housed at Memphis Bioworks Foundation in Memphis’ Medical District, have committed to “Startup Village Booth Space” where they will pitch their companies to over 400 investors coming from out of town. They’ll also get the chance to talk about the most successful acceleration program in the United States with over 85% of the initial class receiving follow on funding.

The program was spearheaded by Steven Bares, President and Executive Director of the Memphis Bioworks Foundation, Lauren Bigger, Program Manager of Bioworks Business Association, Allan Daisley Director of Entrepreneurship and Sustainability for the foundation and Eric Mathews and Andre Folkes, Co-President’s at Launch Your City, the Seed Hatchery arm of the program.

Innova, an early stage investor group and MB Ventures, both of Memphis, were also major partners for the ZeroTo510 program.

The success of the Memphis Bioworks, Seed Hatchery joint venture has trickled across the country an around the globe. That prompted Dr. Laura Faulconer who runs an incubator program in Australia, to recently visit the Memphis Bioworks Foundation and spend some time learning from Daisley as well as some of the Seed Hatchery team.

Bionanovations, HandMinder, NanOpthalmics, Randall Surgical, Restore Medical and Urova Medical will all be present during the everywhereelse.co conference where attendees, investors and other startups who may be looking to go the medical device route, will get a chance to speak with the founders. Many of whom, uprooted themselves from other cities like Atlanta, and Durham NC to work with the likes of Daisley and the Memphis Bioworks Foundation.

Shawn Flynn, co-founder of Restore Medical Solutions, a company that just raised a $2.5 million dollar Series A round, will speak on a panel at the conference called “Raising Money Everywhere Else”.

Bioworks has already said they plan on running the Zeroto510 program again in 2013 but may change the focus slightly to another medical related vertical that’s exploding in the region.

Memphis Bioworks, which serves as the epicenter for biosciences entrepreneurs, startups and acceleration functions to address three very important areas in a community that thrives with Biosciences innovation. Those areas are: Building Infrastructure, Growing The Workforce, and Promoting Entrepreneurship.

One thing that you rarely hear with an accelerator is that 100% of the teams that built their businesses during the ZeroTo510 program at Bioworks, have stayed in Memphis to continue to grow their businesses. While HandMinder has roots in the Memphis area, the rest of the teams have had at least one co-founder that’s relocated to the area.

Linkage:

More about Bioworks here

More about everywherelse.co The Startup Conference Here

Want to exhibit alongside the ZeroTo510 teams? Click here

Founder Of Memphis Startup Mentor.Me Crowdfund’s In Person For Everywhereelse Booth

This weekend was a big weekend for Memphis entrepreneurs, specifically women founders and entrepreneurs. Upstart Memphis, the latest initiative by Launch Memphis, officially kicked off with the 48 Hour Launch, women’s edition. During the 48 hour period four women CEO’s from Memphis built 4 exciting new startups; Care2Manage, AfocusED Path, Pink Robin Avenue and Mentor.me.

Throughout the weekend the women were rushing to gain as much business knowledge as they could, test their idea out and validate it with customers, and work on their pitch deck. They were also competing for a free booth space at the upcoming “everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference” event being held in Memphis in February.

The three day event is bringing entrepreneurs, founders, and investors from across the country and around the world to Memphis for three days of startup knowledge. A smorgasboard of panels, discussions, fireside chats, networking opportunities and parties. There’s a huge list of nationally known speakers as well. (here’s more info on the event).

Mentor.me is solving a big problem for non profit groups that are linking mentors with mentees. Until now the systems used by most mentoring non profits has been flawed.

For instance Brittany Fitzpatrick said in her pitch that a few people she knows that connect mentors and mentees have to go through thousands of applications and then they link mentors with their mentees by looking at a simple sheet of paper. This paves the way for bad connections and relationships. We also learned that most mentor relationships dissolve in six months or less and that’s actually worse for the mentee than not having been mentored at all.

Check out Mentor.me’s Friday pitch:

And here’s Fitzpatrick’s Sunday pitch:

Fitzpatrick’s web based platform will allow both mentors and mentees the opportunity to build a much more robust profile with likes, interests, needs and goals. This way both the mentor and the mentee have a better chance at vetting each other out to see if they’re likely to be compatible.

When the judges convened after hearing all four pitches on Sunday evening it was a very close call between Mentor.me and the startup that won, Pink Robin Avenue.

Undeterred, once Fitzpatrick realized she wasn’t the winner she started approaching the folks in the audience with a simple proposal, help me get my startup into the conference.

Very quickly Fitzpatrick got sponsored to the beat of $265 and at that point I kicked in the last $30 to get her startup into the conference.

Hopefully both Fitzpatrick and the winner Danielle Inez, will wow the investors the way they wowed the judges this weekend and raise some venture capital.

Linkage:

Check out Upstart Memphis here

Check out “everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference” here

Memphis Startup: Pink Robin Avenue Wins Free Booth At Everywhereelse.co

This weekend was Upstart Memphis’ 48 Hour Launch weekend. Upstart Memphis is the newest initiative for Launch Memphis the catalyst behind all things entrepreneurial and startup in Memphis Tennessee. Upstart Memphis is about helping women entrepreneurs and startup founders through fellowship, education and events. 48 Hour Launch, Memphis’ take on Startup Weekend, was the first big even for the organization.

Launch Memphis has held several 48 Hour Launch events. They function the same way most weekend startup hackathons function. This time was a little different though because all of the ideas pitched needed to be led by women.

Care2Manage, A focusED Path, Mentore.Me and Pink Robin Avenue were the four ideas picked to build throughout the course of the weekend. As you can see from both the Friday and Sunday videos for each startup, they got a lot of work done.

Danielle Inez and her Pink Robin Avenue was the prevailing winner though, even after an original judges tie.

Pink Robin Avenue is an easy way to plan and decorate for an event. For those who like it broken down in it’s simplest form, Pink Robin Avenue is an “event in a box”.

Inez and her team used the weekend to work on their business plan, website, social channels, customer discovery and preparing a great presentation. Inez brought out her bubbly personality and really shut the crowd down with her enthusiastic responses to every part of the Q&A, having a sensible answer for every question thrown her way.

While Inez will initially grow Pink Robin Avenue in Memphis she plans on expanding nationwide and helping people plan events, and get all the decorations they need from top to bottom in a box delivered to their door step, instructions and all.

After checking out her Sunday pitch video you’ll see why she ended up winning a free Startup Village booth at everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference. Inez will be very busy over the next two months making sure that her idea is ready for prime time and ready to go onstage in front of over 1500 people, 400 of them investors.

As a testament to the weekend startup hackathon building model check out her Friday pitch here:

and here’s her wining Sunday pitch video

Linkage:

Get your ticket or booth space at everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference, the largest startup conference in the United States, by clicking here.

Find out more about Upstart Memphis here

Here are more startup stories from “everywhere else”

Nashville Startup: TalkApolis Brings Locally Produced High Quality Video To The Smartphone

As media consumption continues to move the direction of the smart, connected, handheld device, companies need to continue to adapt. Or of course just launch new companies. Such is the case with Nashville startup TalkApolis. The Nashville startup is headed by John Bransford

“You can watch locally focused, entertaining, high quality video shows on your smartphone or mobile device that were made to be watched on it. Download our app for your device and watch TalkApolis content with a touch of your screen” Bransford told us in an interview.

The microcasting company was originally selected for the 2012 Jumpstart Foundry cohort but dropped out before the program ended in August.

Even without the accelerator program Bransford’s background in media (real media like HBO) and development, including Drupal, helped bring TalkApolis to fruition.

Bransford has designed the TalkApolis platform to operate smooth and efficiently with the ability to produce relevant content extremely fast. ” Our production suite is so adept, we can test out a show from something we see trending on the internet and see if it sticks almost immediately. If it doesn’t get traction or the host get an audience, we move on to the next one. Licensees will benefit from this agility of the back-end system by being able to do the exact same things in their local markets. Our plan is to allow licensees to apply their unique local knowledge where it matters.” Bransford said.

Check out the rest of our interview with Bransford below.

Memphis Startup Restore Medical Raises $2.5 Million Seed Round

Restore Medical Solutions, Memphis startup, Zeroto510,funded startup

Shawn Flynn (L) Ryan Ramkhelawan (R) founders of Restore Medical Solutions

Memphis’ startup community has kicked it into high gear as of late. In 2012 Launch Your City, the organization behind the Seed Hatchery starutp accelerator, the Launch Pad free coworking space and Launch Memphis, the curriculum arm behind Memphis’ startup ecosystem, had a big year. They saw two cohorts go through their Seed Hatchery program this year. One group of web/tech entrepreneurs took their startups through Seed Hatchery. The other group went through a collaborative effort between Seed Hatchery and Memphis BioWorks called Zeroto510.

The Zeroto510 program is a medical device startup accelerator that relies on Bioworks for the medical part and Seed Hatchery for the startup, and business development portion of their training. After a rigorous accelerator program, and an intense demo day in May, the six startups in the program saw 85% follow on funding. Four of the graduating startup companies received $100,000 investments from MB Ventures and Innova. The fifth startup, Restore Medical Solutions, raised a $2.5 million dollar Series A round.

It’s no wonder that Restore Medical Solutions was able to close such a large round. Co-Founder Shawn Flynn announced that the company had a $3.75 million dollar purchase order, during his investor day pitch.

Restore Medical Solutions has come up with a concept and system to more efficiently sterilize surgical instruments. When we first met with Flynn and Co-Founder Ryan Ramkhelawan explained that not only was the current system for sterilizing surgical instruments filled with flaws, to a degree it’s also dangerous.

Currently surgical instruments are grouped in sets according to the surgery that the operating room is performing. The instruments are kept in a sterile container/tray until they are brought up to the surgical suite and used. However, if one piece of equipment is either missing, or shows signs of not being completely sterilized, the entire set is deemed unusable and another set is ordered up.

The problem with that is most hospitals don’t have a bunch of reserve sets for the operating rooms. The sterilization team has put together the sets based on that days surgeries. Waiting on instruments to be re-sterilized and recompiled can take hours. At that time the patient is either kept under anesthesia or they are woken up, either option can have risks.

Not only that but some hospitals still use sterilization procedures that are likened to the way silverware is washed in a restaurant, everything dumped on one big tray and run through a dishwasher type sterilization machine. The problem with that is the instruments at the bottom may not be as sterile as the instruments on the top. This is often the cause of hospital born infections.

Restore Medical Solutions system makes the process quicker, more efficient and completely sterile.

Flynn and Ramkhelawan get anxious and excited when talking about their process and the upside potential for hospitals. With the reduction in time, the more efficient sterilization and the cut down on infections, Restore Medical Solutions is in the business of sterilizing instruments, but more importantly to the bottom line, driving costs down. Quicker turn arounds in the sterilization process also mean quicker turn arounds in the operating rooms, and more surgeries.

How much money? We’re not talking a thousands here or a thousand there, we’re talking tens of millions of dollars per hospital.

The duo behind Restore Medical Solutions has already pitched a number of hospitals in Tennessee and along the east coast. To date they are proud to announce that they’ve at least secured a follow up meeting and in other cases, purchase orders.

While a $2.5 million dollar Series A round is great for the company and will allow them to start producing to fulfill their purchase orders, it wasn’t always easy. Both Ramkhelawan and Flynn quit their good paying day jobs in Atlanta to relocate to Memphis for the ZeroTo510 program. The program gave them a $50,000 seed round but waiting for that initial funding they were sneaker-strapping it like the rest of their cohort.

Both men left families back in Atlanta and Ramkhelawan and his wife had just had a new baby daughter. With kids, families, and houses in Atlanta these two middle aged entrepreneurs set out to live the ramen noodle eating, hipster lifestyle. They immediately went on the grind to make things happen.

And happen it did.

After finding out about the ZeroTo510 program from a friend of Flynn’s who has a marketing business in Memphis the two made the trip to Memphis to scope out the city and the program. They immediately fell in love with the town. They are sharing an apartment literally within feet from the new corporate headquarters for Restore Medical which officially opens Friday.

For what they’re doing, both entrepreneurs admit that the Memphis startup ecosystem is further along than things are in Atlanta. New initiatives have begun in Atlanta which will be great for the region but Memphis is already doing it. Also, Jackson Tennessee is doing it as well. Both entrepreneurs spend time in Jackson, helping to further that cities entrepreneurs along as well.

Flynn and Ramkelawan give a lot of credit to Launch Your City’s Eric Mathews and Bio Works’ Allan Daisley who were instrumental in the Zeroto510 programs inaugural class.

Linkage:

Check out Restore Medical here

Check out Zeroto510 here

Apply for Seed Hatchery’s next session here

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