Handprint Selected For Brad Feld’s Fiber House

fiberhouse

Brad Feld,Fiber House,Kansas City,Kauffman Foundation,Handprint,StatupWhat do Brad Feld, Kansas City, and Google Fiber have in common?  Well combine them all together and you have the subject of a social experiment that Feld is doing to further the startup community in Kansas City.

Kansas City was the second city in the United States to get 1 gb fiber available to consumers, the first was Chattanooga Tennessee. Unlike Chattanooga though, Kansas City was the first city chosen for Google Fiber, the search giant’s first soiree into the land of internet providers. In Kansas City, and soon to be Austin, Google is running 1gb fiber optic lines for internet which allows ultra fast downloads and uploads. This will also put them in competition with several cable companies in markets where they expand their fiber product.

So how did Brad Feld get involved? The Kauffman Foundation’s Lesa Mitchell spoke at SXSW about how she took a phone call from Brad sometime over the Christmas holidays and he was excited about putting his money where his mouth is. He wanted to buy a house in the Google fiber neighborhood in Kansas City, but he wasn’t going to live there.

Feld teamed with the Kauffman Foundation and Startup America CEO Scott Case, who quickly devised a plan. They ran a contest for startups, where one startup would get to live in the house rent free for one year, and with the Google Fiber internet paid for as well.

Is crazy as this idea seemed at first, it was done before, right in Kansas City. Back in October we reported that Ben Barreth had the idea to buy a house and let hackers live in it rent free, again with Google fiber, to work on their startups. Barreth, who’s just an average guy, leveraged his own personal finances to put together his “Homes For Hackers” project and open up the first house.

Feld credit’s Barreth for inspiring him to do this. The two met at the Thinc Iowa startup event where the idea for the Fiber House was made.

Now, the judging committee, which included Case, has selected Handprint as the first year long occupants of Brad Feld’s Fiber House. Handprint is working on 3D printing and editing technology which Feld said “really captured our imagination”.

Handprint founders; Mike Demarais, Alexa Nguyen, Jack Franzen, and Derek Caneja will move to Kansas City and into the Fiber House where they can continue to develop their startup.

For more check out this story at Startup Revolution.

This was the first house purchased for hackers in Kansas City.

Are you a member of Brad Feld’s alternative to Hacker News, Startup Revolution?

OneSpark Comes Alive In Downtown Jacksonville

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stick with us for OneSpark coverage here.

Evernote Launches No Equity Accelerator For Developers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

St. Louis Arch Grants Sees 707 Applicants For 2013

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Check out the rest of the story at techli.com

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

Student Organization nvigor Hosting Philadelphia Student Startup Summit April 20th

                                                           
nvigorAn organization hoping to raise awareness and collaboration between Philadelphia’s college student community and business and industrial leaders in the region is hosting a startup event at the University of Pennsylvania. The event called the “Philadelphia Student Startup Summit” takes place this coming Saturday as part of the Philly Tech Week festivities.

The students in the organization come from a variety of schools in Philadelphia including the University of Pennsylvania, Temple and Drexel University where nvigor co-founder Abhiroop Das is a junior.

The Philadelphia Student Startup Summit is hoping to serve as an “Introduction To Philadelphia Startup Community” for many of the students, and business people who attend the day long event.

Event organizers have done a great job of keying up some of Philadelphia’s top startup community leaders as speakers. Josh Kopelman managing partner of First Round Capital and Karen Griffith Gryga, managing partner at Dreamit Ventures are both on tap to speak at the inaugural event.

The event will also feature a “startup alley” showcasing some of the regions best startups. Some of the startups are also looking to hire students right out of college.

Tickets can be picked up here, they are free but they’re running out quickly.

You can find out more about Philly Tech Week here.

Startup Front, There’s Something Brewing Outside Of Chicago

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

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

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

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

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

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

Check out Startup Front at startupfront.org

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

Startup Grinding Into San Antonio

Startup Grind,Startup Grind San Antonio,startup,startup event,startup commnityStartup Grind is one of the fastest growing startup movements in the country. The Mountain View based organization is “fostering entrepreneurship through story telling” at localized “fireside chat” style events.

Startup Grind was founded by Derek Anderson and his quickly grown to 40 chapters across the country. One of the latest chapters to join was Startup Grind Philly which we reported on last week.

Each city’s chapter of Startup Grind tries to attract top tier speakers, giving their local entrepreneurs and startup communities access to higher profile speakers’ than you would find at other events.

San Antonio is the newest chapter to join Startup Grind, and their first event is just under two weeks away. The April 23rd inaugural Startup Grind San Antonio event will happen at Geekdom in downtown San Antonio.

Jason Seats the cofounder of SliceHost and Managing Director of TechStars Cloud (which graduates this Thursday), is the fireside chat for the first event. The May speaer will be David Spencer, founder of OnBoard Systems. Pat Condon cofounder of Rackspace is on deck for June.

This month’s event will begin at 6pm with pizza and beer and the fireside chat with Jason Seats will kick off at 7pm. There will also be an interactive Q&A session. Early bird tickets are still available for just $10 at this link.

You can find out more about Startup Grind in your area here.

Startup founders including Jermaine Dupri talk about “Why Atlanta”

 

Dallas Entrepreneur Launches HealthSparx Web Series On Startups & Innovation

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

(photo: meetup.com)

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

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

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

Healthsparx is already on it’s fourth webisode.

Episode #1 English majors rock as much as mechanical engineers

Episode #2 How IT plumbing will help healthcare

Episode #3 Every little bit helps in healthcare

Episode #4 Creating the perfect social and private experience

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

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

Oregon Startup To Begin Testing Potato Drones

Drones,Potato Drones, Paradigm,Oregon Startup,startup,startup newsDrones are a hot button discussion these days. Most of the talk has been about non-manned aircraft used for military and surveillance. An Oregon startup called Paradigm in conjunction with Boeing and Oregon State University are preparing to start test flights of Potato Drones.

The Federal Aviation Administration has authorized the use of two remote-controlled aircrafts which will monitor potato fields in Eastern Oregon.

Komonews reports that the drones are about the size of a suitcase and equipped with cameras that can zoom in on a single leaf plant. The drones are expected to be able to determine if the plants are getting enough water and fertilizer. If they aren’t, they will alert the farmers who can take immediate corrective action.

The use of drones is a lot quicker and the technology makes it much easier to see, verses the old fashioned way of walking through the crops to spot plants that need fixing.

The Potato Drones will fly over fields at the Hermiston Agricultural Research Extension Center and also at a private farm west of Boardman Oregon. The group picked potatoes because they are expensive and difficult to grow. Phil Hamm the director of the research extension center said that potatoes cost about $500,000 for the average crop circle.

Trial flights are expected to start Monday weather permitting.

Here are more Oregon startup stories at nibletz the voice of startups everywhere else.

 

NTEN Honors Memphis Startup Founder Tal Frankfurt

http://seriousstartups.com/2012/11/27/memphis-startup-cloud-good-introduces-product-synagoguecloud/NTEN, the Nonprofit Technology Network,  closed out their 2013 Nonprofit Technology Conference in Minneapolis Minnesota Saturday evening. The event brings together NTEN members from across the country who’s companies use technology for the benefit of non profit organizations across the United States and globally.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NTEN wrote in the web version of their conference program.

We’ve got more south east startup coverage here.

The Never Ending Marker Finalist: In St.Louis’ go!-celerator

goBRANDgo! Partners Brandon Dempsey and Derek Weber

(photo: St. Louis Business Journal)

St. Louis may be known for it’s world famous beer, but lately their startup community has been growing and thriving. They have an awesome angel network in place, St. Louis Arch Angels. They also have an accelerator that’s producing real results (and not pre-lining up follow on deals from accelerator partners), Cap Innovators. They have an awesome community focal point in the co-working space T-Rex, and when one of their startups or entrepreneurs faces tough times they rally around them, rather than distancing themselves.

So far the St. Louis startup community is operating by the handbook, Brad Feld’s “Startup Communities”.

Now one of St. Louis’ startup community supporters has launched a new incubator. goBRANDgo! a local marketing firm has decided to open up a new incubator.

Their new incubator, dubbed; go!-celerator is designed for early stage startups. Three finalists are competing for a year’s free office space, networking opportunities, and mentoring to the tune of $50,000 in agency resources.

Saint Louis University student Gregory Keogh and his startup, Remarkable, are finalists for the first spot in the go!-celerator. Keogh is developing a refillable white board marker station that will keep the dry erase marker full at all times.

While this seems like a great idea for any business, startups, who are known for endless “whiteboarding” would certainly take advantage of the value proposition posed by an endlessly refillable,never ending dry erase marker.

According to the St. Louis Business Journal, goBRANDgo! founders Brandon Dempsey and Derek Weber have a thing for going through lots of dry erase markers.

Remarkable is a finalist pitted against Bazaar Boy a tech startup creating a market place for local small businesses and HCP Unitedan integrated E-Dispensary platform designed for member-based purchasing groups that allows health care providers to deliver more affordable care. “

You can find out more about goBRANDgo! here.

This startup in Louisville teaches 5 year olds how to code!

 

Are VC’s Bypassing Early Stage Health Deals?

Healthcare startups,Venture Capital,startups,funding,seed round,series a

(image: policymed.com)

Success stories, like the one of Memphis’ medical device accelerator Zeroto510, where 80% of their first class received follow on funding, seem to be growing scarce on a national scale.  In their first class of six startups at the ZeroTo510 program 5 of the startups received follow on funding, with one, Restore Medical Solutions, going straight to a $2.5 million dollar series A round.

Well national medical startup publication MedCity News, released two graphs this morning that may be alarming to early stage medical startups, who often need a lot more seed money than your social, mobile, webtech startups.

The data, published by CB Insights, shows a significant number of VCs are skipping over  earlier stage “seed round” deals for healthcare startups. Conversely, the same data set shows that the “series A crunch” may not be as prevalent in healthcare startups.

As you can see clearly from the data set Series A and Series B seem to be the preferred stage for a VC firm to get into a startup business, at least over the last five quarters.

According to MedCity News VC Funding in healtcare was up over the last year, in fact reaching  a “multi year high”. Also worthy to note is that the medical device category is eating up the most VC funds. That should be good for the next round of ZeroTo510, Rock Health and Health Box.

Restore Medical talks to us about their $2.5 million dollar Series A round. 

Mark Cuban Backed Apptopia Tops $1 Million In Sales

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What is a “crowdfunding festival”,

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

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

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

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

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

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

Learn more about OneSpark at beonespark.com

Stay up to date with our OneSpark coverage here.