Andrew Mason’s Farewell Memo Gets Rap Geniused By Marc Andreessen And Ben Horowitz

Andrew Mason was hot news this week. As you all undoubtedly know by now, the CEO of Groupon is CEO no longer. We didn’t report on Mason’s firing earlier because everyone else did and our good friends at Business Insider wrote so many articles about it we made up a drinking game.

Today though, we found out some epic news. Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, of Andreessen Horowitz fame, have used their own portfolio startup, Rap Genius, to decode Andrew Mason’s epic farewell memo.

Andreessen Horowitz were in Groupon pretty deep, so it’s great that they’ve basically come to the aid and support of Mason via Rap Genius. They are also major investors in the lyric website that decodes rap lyrics.

Andreessen and Horowitz pointed out early on that Rap Genius could be used to annotate lots of things like poetry, stories, news and now farewell memos. What’s even better is that both founding partners worked on the memo together and while some of the entries are funny others are long form and offer great explanations.

For example in the first paragraph of Mason’s letter he says “controversial metrics in our S1,” Andreessen goes on to make this lengthy explanation:

Andrew is referring to the use of non-standard financial metrics in the company’s SEC filings, particularly in the IPO filing (S1).

As someone who was in the room as an observer at the Groupon board when the decision to use these metrics was made, I think Groupon was honestly trying to provide additional information that investors would find useful, which mirrored the way management thought about running the business.

However, no good deed goes unpunished, and widespread media paranoia about business metrics still lingering from the 2000 dot com crash combined with other missteps on Groupon’s part combined to make the use of those non-standard metrics highly controversial and ultimately negative for the company.

Horowitz shows his support of Mason when Mason says “As CEO, I am accountable.” Howoritz writes:

Andrew does the stand up thing and claims accountability. Make no mistake though—although he’s the only one accountable, he’s certainly not the only one responsible for all the things that went wrong. The board decided to take the company public prior to putting all the proper controls in place. The material weakness was nearly guaranteed at that point. Every one on the board plus the CFO and the bankers agreed those were good metrics at the time. But here as in every case, it’s not all the CEO’s doing, but it’s all the CEO’s fault.

On the lighter side, when Mason says “maybe I’ll figure out how to channel this experience into something productive,” a Rap Genius community contributor says that this means:

“FYI World. I’m open to a killer deal if you want to hire me. But I ain’t gonna be cheap!”

See the entire thing here at RapGenius.com

We’re on the nibletz sneaker strapped nationwide startup road trip part deux and we cold use your support.

Startup America Bring’s Steve Blank’s NEXT Program To SXSWi

Back in October, Startup Weekend, Startup America and Steve Blank teamed up to give an uber intensive startup program on customer discovery to startups across the country. The curriculum in the NEXT program is a kin to the courses taught at Stanford, Berkeley, Columbia, Caltech,Princeton, the University of Michigan and Georgia Tech.

Ten startups attending SXSWi will have the chance to go through a condensed version of the program taught in person by top industry veterans.

“In just the few short months since its launch, NEXT has enabled hundreds of startups across the country to refine their customer development process, a critical component for any young company trying to reach their goals,” stated Scott Case, CEO of Startup America. “We’re excited to partner with Startup Weekend and Steve Blank to introduce this curriculum at one of the leading startup events in the country: SXSW Interactive.”

Participating startups will receive hands-on feedback throughout the four-day period, including morning program sessions and one-on-one mentoring. In addition, the teams will then spend their days engaging potential customers, honing their business model, participating in office hours and receiving invaluable feedback from investors, media, and large corporations.

“This is a fantastic opportunity for startups attending SXSW to learn from the man who literally wrote the books on Customer Development,” said Marc Nager, founder of Startup Weekend. “We’ve put together an incredible schedule for the startups and can’t wait to see what they can accomplish in four short days in Austin.”

This is just one of a number of great events hosted by Startup America at SXSWi. For the full schedule visit Startup America’s SXSW page, here.

Holy Peaches Atlanta’s Airwatch Raises $200M Series A

Airwatch, a company that has been bootstrapped since 2003, just closed a $200M series A round led by Insight Venture Partners.

The company helps untangle the mess created by companies that are going the BYOD (Bring your own device) to work trend. BYOD is saving companies a lot of money by allowing employees to use their own smartphones, tablets and laptops. The company cuts hardware expenses but headaches for IT departments mount.

Airwatch, offers a device management solution for IT departments that helps companies manage overall compatibility and security within their enterprise.

Business Insider reported that this is the biggest enterprise category funding to date. More at TechCrunch

Here’s A Way Not To Get An Investment From Mark Cuban

Mark Cuban (c) hanging out with nibletz co-founder Nick Tippmann (r)

You may have heard through the grapevine that Mark Cuban is an aggressive investor in early stage startups. Take the Shark Tank out of the equation and Cuban is still eager to invest in good technology.

Many people also know that Mark Cuban is one of the nicest and most approachable billionaires in the world. You can pretty easily find his email address online and if you’ve got a good question or a good pitch he’ll actually respond to you. Heck he’ll even let you talk smack about basketball.

But earlier today one startup founder took the absolute wrong approach to win over Cuban’s ears and investment. It seems that this founder is in the process of closing a round. He apparently has a commitment from Peter Thiel and wanted Cuban to get in as well.

So what does he do? He emails Mark Cuban with the subject line: “Peter Thiel invested so you’re lucky I’m emailing you”.

Cuban took to Twitter for his response:

Cuban than tweeted this message to follow up:

Techstars Boston Unveils Spring 2013 Class

Techstars, one of the most widely respected accelerator programs in the world, has just announced their Spring 2013 class for their Boston location. The session kicked off yesterday and will end on May 23rd with Demo Day.

Techstars Boston has graduated 57 companies since their first class back in 2009.

One of the biggest advantages to accelerating in a Techstars program is their huge mentor network of successful entrepreneurs, business leaders and community leaders. Some of the Boston mentors include Brad Feld, Rich Miner and Dharmesh Shah. They have over 100 mentors in their network to date.

Here is the entire Spring 2013 class, as reported by our friends at Bostinno.

CheckiO
An interactive and educational game and competition platform for developers.

Codeship
A hosted continuous integration and deployment platform.

CONSTRVCT
A crowd-sourced fashion label, where anyone can create and sell their unique designs with our 3D design tools, custom fit, and on demand production.

coUrbanize
Helps communities and developers build better real estate projects.

Fancred
A new social app for sports fans.

Freight Farms
A scalable farming platform can be installed anywhere and operated by almost anyone, transforming shipping containers into a source for high yield crop production.

Jebbit
Jebbit’s pay per performance model benefits both brands and consumers, guaranteeing a brand that their message is comprehended while rewarding consumers with cash for actively answering questions that educate them on the brand.

LinkCycle
LinkCycle helps manufacturers manage resource consumption across product lines to reduce costs without any extra hardware or data collection.

Neurala
We build brains for bots.

Outline
Using advanced economic modeling and data visualization to improve government transparency, efficiency, and performance.

PillPack
Pharmacy simplified.

qunb
A “YouTube for numbers,” a platform that makes data broadcasting and data visualization accessible to anyone.

Rallyt
Helps organizations achieve their goals by connecting and engaging communities around meaningful actions.

Synack
Redefining vulnerability discovery.

We’re back on the Sneaker Strapped Startup Road Trip, Part Deux, here’s how you can help.

Kauffman Foundation Teams Up With AARP Proving You’re Never Too Old To Launch A Company

The Kauffman Foundation has teamed up with AARP to launch a new initiative that will hone the entrepreneurial skills of people over 50 years old. We’ve seen our share of these golden entrepreneurs, who have either retired or left the corporate world to start a new business venture.

Two such entrepreneurs are 54 year old Elizabeth Van Sant and 68 year old Susan Jones, launched at Washington DC startup called Quad2Quad that serves as a platform providing much needed information to parents, families and students visiting colleges.

Kauffman Foundation, AARP, Quad 2 Quad, Accelerator,startup

The two baby boomer founders of quad2quad at everywhereelse.co 2013 (photo: Allie Fox for NMI 2013)

When we interviewed Jones last September, she proudly said that she was old enough to be Mark Zuckerberg’s mom. Although some may consider them too old to roll with today’s startup hipster, they’ve been touring the conference scene across the country with appearances in San Francisco at Appnation and at everywhereelse.co in Memphis.

Now, the Kauffman Foundation has announced a new program targeted to baby boomer entrepreneurs 50 and over.

Three pilot courses of FastTrac NewVenture™ for the Boomer Entrepreneur will be offered in 2013 by Kauffman FastTrac affiliates. Up to 20 qualified applicants will be accepted per course, and AARP scholarship funds will cover $500 of each participant’s course fees.

The three Kauffman FastTrac affiliates selected to participate in the baby boomer pilot are ProperoHCA, New York City; Tech Coast Venture Network, Irvine, Calif.; and the Miami Innovation Center for Entrepreneurship, Inc., Miami.

ProperoHCA has scheduled its weekly course for April 3-June 5. Tech Coast Venture Network plans to offer its Boomer course this summer. The Miami course, which will be taught in Spanish in an outreach to the region’s large Hispanic population, is also slated for a summer start.

“We look forward to partnering with Kauffman FastTrac to better serve our members interested in expanding their entrepreneurship business skills,” said Jody Holtzman, AARP’s senior vice president of thought leadership. “Through this coursework, they will acquire new insights and tools, explore available resources, and expand their networking opportunities to start and grow successful businesses.”

Content specific to baby boomers was recently added to the Kauffman FastTrac curriculum in recognition of changing U.S. demographics and research that finds a higher rate of entrepreneurial activity among Americans aged 55 to 64 than much younger age groups in recent years.

The initial 10-week baby boomer class was held in fall 2012 in Kansas City.

“We believe there is pent-up demand for entrepreneurship education among more mature audiences,” said Kauffman FastTrac president Alana Muller. “Whether they’re pursuing a lifelong passion, shoring up their retirement accounts, or utilizing skills and experience in a new way, boomer entrepreneurs make big contributions to our economy by creating new businesses and, in turn, new jobs.”

You can find out more about this program here

Startup Weekend Heads To Columbus In A Pre-SXSW Extravaganza

Startup Weekend is headed back to Columbus Ohio this weekend, as a pre festivity to the huge startup mega festival we all know and love, SXSWi. In fact, the Ohio area Startup Bus is leaving Sunday from Ohio.

This weekend will pit together entrepreneurs, startup founders, developers, designers and mentors to see what Columbus can hack together in just one weekend.

The Startup Weekend crew in Columbus is one of the most seasoned. We got to meet a few of them at Cincinnati’s startup weekend event last summer. This one is being organized by Startup Weekend veteran; Suzy Bureau, by day she does marketing & communications for Columbus startup Bringshare; Serial Entrepreneur Steve Gacka; and Brian Billingsley the Director of Strategic Business Development at Allaince Data Systems.

Startup Weekend Columbus holds events every six months and they always have great attendance. This weekend’s event will be held at TechColumbus (1275 Kinnear Road). It will kick off with registration at 6:30pm on Friday night and will end with final pitches on Sunday at 5:00pm. All is expected to be wrapped up by 9:00pm, and then the weekend is done (unless you’re heading down to sxsw).

Dan Rockwell, the cofounder of Big Kitty Labs and Program Manager of the software prototyping center at Ohio State is the featured speaker.

At around 7:30pm the “Friday Night” pitches will begin. We’ve covered a lot of startup weekends and you can see plenty of Friday night pitches here at nibletz.com.

The Friday night pitches are 60 seconds and hard timed by a Startup Weekend official. In that 60 seconds you need to sell the audience your idea and why it should be built over the next 53 hours. After everyone who wants to pitch has been given the opportunity, community voting will commence. It’s a rather diplomatic process. Usually the pitchers will hold up a sign with their startup name on it and attendees will put a sticker on the idea they like the best. At the end of the process, those with the most stickers will have their ideas developed.

Friday evening typically tops off with team selection and then some icebreaker time with the teams. From there the teams break off and start working on the startup idea.

Saturday, the community mentors come into play. These seasoned entrepreneurs and local business folks are there to help answer questions for each team and provide ideas and suggestions. The mentors for Startup Weekend Columbus are: Tanisha Robinson, co-founder of TicketFire; Nick Seguin, Partner at Dynamit; Patrick Pohler, Founder at Anecka; Brooke Paul, Founder at Founder’s Factory & Taivara; Alan Gilbert, Vice President of Engineering at CoverMyMeds; and Matt Scatland, co-founder at CoverMyMeds and President at Innova Partners.

We also have it on good authority that Kyle Sandler, Co-Founder and Content Director of Nibletz.com The Voice Of Startups Everywhere Else, and the founder of everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference, the largest startup conference in the world dedicated to entrepreneurship outside the valley, and Nick Tippmann the co-founder and CEO of nibletz.com will also be in attendance..hmmm.

Saturday is also the day that most teams take to the streets, the phones, the emails and the interwebs to get customer validation on their startup project. All the while designers, developers and coders are working on pitch decks, wire frames, prototypes and products.

Sunday is the day the teams put the finishing touches on both their products and their presentations. At 5:00pm and not a second later, the selected teams will have five minutes to pitch their idea and have a brief Q&A with the judges.

For more info on Startup Weekend Columbus or to register click here

Nibletz & The Everywhereelse.co Team Are Looking For A Few Good Sponsors

As many of you know prior to putting on everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference 2013, we are on the nibletz, sneaker-strapped startup road trip. We stopped in over 60 different cities across the country, went to startup meetups, startup weekends, startup weeks, incubators, accelerators and anything with a startup pulse. We made some awesome friends and met some great startups, many of whom came to Memphis for everywhereelse.co.

Well right after the conference we had to get right back on the road in order to finish our book in time for a December ’13 publishing (that seemed like so long ago when we first struck the book deal). We’re no officially on the road for the next 100 days. Our immediate next stops are Cincinnati, Columbus, St. Louis, Austin (sxsw), an outreach trip in San Francisco, Kansas City, Portland, Baltimore and more.

We can’t do this alone. Last year in 4 campaigns we raised around $5,000 on indiegogo. For this leg of the trip we’ve got some interesting things we can offer our sponsors and we’re doing it directly below. Thank you so much for your continued support and let us know what city and state you’re in so we can connect on the road trip.

Sponsorship levels

Attaboys (The Extra Value Meal) $6.00 (face it $5.00 doesn’t get you an extra value meal anymore)

This is our “attaboy” sponsorship feel free to get us as many extra value meals as you’d like. We’ll gladly thank you with a link in a thank you weekly wrap up on nibletz.com and give you a shot out on our twitter accounts.

A Taco, from Moe’s Or Chipotle $10.00

This sponsorship will help get us a taco from Moe’s or Chipotle, food is fuel, fuel is good . Feel free to get us as many taco’s from Moe’s and Chipotle as you’d like we will be extremely grateful.

For this sponsorship we will give you a paragraph shout out with your link, description and Twitter handle in a per stop thanks for the Taco’s post. We’ll also give you a shot out on Twitter (info captured in the butto below).

Bus Ticket $25.00

We take the Bolt Bus, Megabus and other regional cheap bus services everywhere we can because we boot strap to the point we call it sneaker-strapping. Your $25 donation can get us a lot more places than you would ever imagine on Megabus and Bolt Bus.

For this sponsorship you’ll receive a new “nibz” short form story about your startup (identified as a sponsored nibz) along with a linkback in the logo and at the bottom of the story you’ll also get 2 shout outs on Twitter.

A Tank Of Gas and A Tank You! $50.00

For the stops on the trip that we can’t make by bus we have to drive and your $50.00 sponsorship for gas comes in quite handy.

With your $50.00 sponsorship you’ll get a nibz featured post on nibletz.com as well as a thank you mention in our weekly thank you post with linkbacks. You’ll also get 4 tweets with your Twitter handle and link.

Hotel Money $120

You’ll breathe easier knowing that the nibletz crew will get most likely 2 nights out of this hotel money. We may not sleep, but rather stay up and work all night, but that’s ok with you because we’re all startup founders.

With your hotel money sponsorship you and your startup will receive a “sponsored” nibz feature story about what you do. We’ll tweet the story out on our regular tweet schedule to nearly 150,000 followers and share across all of our social networks.

Sneaker Strapped Patron Sponsor $550.00

The nibletz sneaker strapped patron sponsorship includes one “startup village” booth package for everywhereelse.co 2013, February 17-19th, 2014 in Memphis Tennessee. The Startup Village booth includes booth space, wifi, a chance to pitch for over $10,000 in cash and several other contest opportunities, name in program, description in virtual village and 3 attendee tickets.

As part of the road trip patron sponsors your website will be mentioned in a rotation with other sponsors on our youtube videos from the road trip (not including SXSW).

You’ll also get a sponsored feature story. Which will run in our social streams.

Also, if you choose, you can send two t-shirts one XL and one M and we will wear them in videos from the trip.

Sneaker Strapped Saint $1000

With the sneaker strapped saint sponsor package you will get everything in the Patron package including the startup village booth for next years conference. You will also get your logo prominently featured on the 2014 everywhereelse.co conference SWAG bag.

Provided it fits in the tour schedule we will also stop by your startup for an event or meetup.

If you choose we will wear your t-shirt in our videos as well.

SXSW 2013 Nibletz/Everywhere Else Saint Sponsor $1800

This sponsorship includes everything in the Saint sponsorship however the perks will be included during the SXSW 2013 coverage. This is an excellent opportunity for startups that can’t be at sxsw but still want added exposure.

At $1800 Nick or Kyle will wear your startup t-shirt for an entire day and an entire day’s worth of on camera videos. Your startup will also be featured in all of our AOL Radio coverage as demonstrated here.

Finally, we will write two stories about your startup and tweet them out over the course of SXSWi 2013. We will also give you 20 additional Tweets during the course of SXSWi.

SXSW 2013 Platinum nibletz & everywhere else sponsor (3 Available) $2700

This sponsorship includes everything in the SXSW Saint sponsorship however the perks and more.This is an excellent opportunity for startups that can’t be at sxsw but still want added exposure.

Your startup will be featured in every video that we do during the “outro” see this link for an example.

Your startup will be featured all day long on AOL radio, listen to this for an example.

At $2400 Nick or Kyle will wear your startup t-shirt for one entire day and an entire day’s worth of on camera videos. Your startup will also be featured in all of our AOL Radio coverage as demonstrated here.

Finally, we will write two stories about your startup and tweet them out over the course of SXSWi 2013. We will also give you 40 additional Tweets during the course of SXSWi.

Thank you so much for your continued support!

SouthernAlpha’s Spark Nashville A Success RECAP

Southernalpha.com co-founder and Editor In Chief Walker Duncan, speaks to a capacity crowd at Spark Nashville (photo: NMI 2013)

We visited Southernalpha.com’s Spark Nashville as part of our next 50 stop leg on our sneaker-strapped startup road trip. One of the biggest key’s to our success has been getting out in the trenches with startups everywhere else.

Southernalpha.com was founded by Nashville serial entrepreneur Marcus Whitney and Walker Duncan who serves as the sites Editor in Chief. They cater to “High Growth Technology for the South East” specifically Nashville and New Orleans.

Armed with a seed investment of $150,000 from Duncan’s father’s venture capital firm Solidus, they’ve ramped up nicely and attracted a couple hundred local startups, entrepreneurs and power players to 3rd and Lindsley in Nashville last Thursday.

Whitney, Nashville Technology Council’s CTO of the Year, serves as a visionary and advisor. At the event Whitney credited Duncan and Southernalpha’s Marketing Director Kelley Boothe with the great turn out that saw 11 startups from across Tennessee pitch in a competition for $1000 dollars and an iPad.

Southernalpha.com launched during the late summer. Despite the early investment the site is struggling to gain traction outside of it’s inner circle.

Duncan is no stranger to journalism. He left his post as the Health Care, Manufacturing, Technology and Tourism Reporter for the Nashville Post, a publication also owned by the elder Duncan’s investment firm, to start SouthernAlpha.

As for the event itself, it was alive with startups, entrerpeneurs and investors. It kicked off with a fireside chat between Duncan, Whitney and Nick Holland the founder of CentreSource and now Populr.me.

The discussion was great, highlighting why Nashville has such a strong startup community and many lessons Whitney and Holland learned growing their businesses in Nashville immediately following the first dotcom bubble burst.

Holland and Whitney talked about being inspiring and the yes mentality. They also shared the dumbest thing they’ve done as an entrepreneur with the audience.

After the pitches there was more time for networking and people stuck around well into the night.

For more coverage of this great event click here. We’ll be in Lexington KY, Cincinnati, Columbus, DC, Austin, Kansas City and even Silicon Valley, all in the next 5 weeks on our sneaker-strapped startup road trip.

Were you one of the 1287 people at everywhereelse 2013? Don’t miss everywhereelse 2014 with a stronger lineup, more panels, even better parties oh and free breakfast and lunch, click here.

Ready For Weed Startups? Conference Coming To New York

With two states adopting laws around the recreational use of marijuana and more states adopting laws for medical marijuana it’s just a matter of time before weed startups start cropping up (no pun intended). Cannabis industry trade publication has announced a business seminar for investors and entrepreneurs eager to learn about the business of marijuana.

The event will be held on March 14th at The Lofts At Prince (177 Prince Street Penthouse in New York City). The seminar runs from 6:00pm until 10:15pm and features a panel of industry experts and time for networking.

Chris Walsh, Editor of MJJ Business Daily; Tripp Keber, Medical Marijuana Inc; Jessica Billingsley co-founder, MJ Freeway Software Solutions; and Eric Williams, President, CT Medical Cannabis Alliance, will all speak on the latest trends and industry data.

There will also be four sessions:

Session #1. New Financial & Business Benchmark Data for the Cannabis Industry

Session #2. Investing Advisory on the Cannabis Industry

Session #3. Typical Cannabis Business Mistakes & How to Avoid Them

Session #4. Tri-State Area Cannabis Business Opportunities & Regulatory Outlook

MJJ Business Daily was launched in 2011 with offices in Denver Colorado and Providence Rhode Island.

Tickets for the event are $149 in advance and $199 at the door. MJJ Business Daily warns that the event is for serious investors and entrepreneurs and not for patients or consumers.

For more information or tickets visit this site.

SXSW 13 Preview: When Bad Names Happen To Good Startups

South By Southwest Interactive 2013 is less than two weeks away and for those of us who are actually going to attend the great panel sessions, keynotes and workshops held throughout downton Austin there’s a great one, no startup wants to miss.

archer>malmo our creative agency and an equity holder in nibletz media, through their am>ventures arm, is holding a panel discussion at the Four Seasons entitled “When Bad Names Happen To Good Startups”

Last August when the SXSWi committee took suggestions for panels archer>malmo submitted this panel that is a must attend for all startups.

archer>malmo has been around over 60 years, and is one of the largest and most widely respected firms located off Madison Avenue. They’ve worked with Fortune 100 companies and some of the top brands in the world including Verizon, Pfizer and RJ Reynolds.

archer>malmo has taken an interest and startups and created an investment arm called am>ventures, for which nibletz is a portfolio company. This experience, working with new entrepreneurs and companies, prompted the creative minds at archer>malmo to start talking about names.

Sometimes entrepreneurs and startup founders don’t fully consider the ramifications of their new name. Many startup founders go for a name based on a creative URL while others use a name ripe for great SEO. Still others have other reasons for a name, like nibletz.

When we originally created nibletz it was a companion site to thedroidguy.com and the original idea was to deliver capsulated tech and startup news. The tag line came first when I thought of the name. “Small Crunchy Bytes From The Tech & Startup Scene” was the line I had come up with. I took it to our massive “Thedroidguy” Twitter following at the time and more than 100 followers suggested the word niblets.

We found that niblets meant corn so we changed the S to a Z. At that time we didn’t look at the Urban Dictionary of the word. In fact it wasn’t until we cleared the 50,000 mark on social followers (we’re now at 130,000) that I bothered to look at the Urban Dictionary meaning (go check for yourself).

Another great story about names came by way of a demo day graduation at Chattanooga’s Gig Tank over the summer. The startup was called Corpora. I was writing a story during their live pitch and while one of our staffers was editing video I began to write but I needed a graphic. So I did what anyone would do and went to Google Images. (now go do it for yourself), pretty bad huh.

These things happen all the time and we don’t want to spoil any of the panel so you should check it out and then decide if you’re too invested to create a better name.

The panel will be hosted by archer>malmo’s Chief Creative Officer Gary Backaus and Senior Copy Writer Justin Dobbs.

Check out our interview with Dobbs about the panel below to get more insight:

archer>malmo was a sponsor of everywhereelse.co 2013 and a presenting corporate sponsor for everywhereelse.co 2014 get your tickets here.

DC Startup TouchdownSpace Is The ZipCar Of Workspace

Co-working space, office space, conference rooms, computer lab space, whatever your need a new startup in Washington DC called TouchdownSpace is there to help. Caleb Parker and Svet Voloshin, the founders of this new startup that’s going to disrupt the current commercial office space model dub it as “The Zipcar for professional space”.

Working isn’t like it used to be. With so many small businesses, entrepreneurs, freelancers and startups, office space needs change. One day a startup founder may need simple desk space, and later in the day they may need a meeting room for 20. On a small business and startup budget it’s impossible to try and rent something that encompasses all the flexible space options someone may need.

Freelancers on the other hand may enjoy co-working at the new co-working space or they may rather sit and sip Starbucks for five hours while working on their latest project. Again this is great until you need to meet a client with a whiteboard, or discuss confidential information.

Some startup spaces and incubators have access to a wide variety of spacing needs, but for those that don’t there’s TouchdownSpace.

“We are on a mission to help people work better,” says CEO and co-founder, Caleb Parker. “The nature of work is changing. More people are working outside of the office than ever before. The old real estate model of high rent and lengthy lease terms must change too. It just doesn’t make sense to pay high rent on a space you’re not in all the time.”

TouchdownSpace has partnered with office business center operators at the leading edge of the workspace-as-a-service (WaaS) industry, such as Carr Workplaces, AdvantEdge Business Centers, Intelligent Office, and others, to aggregate their available workspaces and offer them on-demand to TouchdownSpace members

While TouchdownSpace is starting in Washington DC they already have their eyes on five other markets.

Parker has been an active member of the DC startup scene for quite sometime. Personally he has some great role models and mentors.”

Local angel investor and turnaround CEO, Glen Hellman, who is on our Advisory Board, has been a good mentor. Brad Feld and Steve Case are great business role models, and you can’t forget Richard Branson as a role model on building a strong brand. When it comes to morality/integrity, I can always turn to my Dad for his perspective on what the right thing to do is.” he told us in an interview.

TouchdownSpace members have access to a wide variety of features:

Convenience: find the closest available space in real-time; book and manage reservations instantly from within the app.
Choice: compare availability, pricing and amenities.
Flexibility: No contracts or commitments
Productivity: touch down within our network of professional locations.
Private Spaces: No distractions

For more information, and to sign up visit touchdownspace.com

500 Startups And More Back Philippines Startup Payroll Hero

500 Startups, LX Ventures, the Futura Corporation, 8capita Partners, Ryan Holmes (founder of Hootsuite), Dan Martell (CEO of Clarity), Benjamin Joffee and other angels have all backed Philippines/Canadian startup Payroll Hero to the tune of $1 million.

Payroll Hero was dubbed the IT Startup Of The Year in the Philippines for their back end HR platform that provides payroll, attendance and scheduling services for companies both large and small. Tech In Asia says that the company is software that makes sure “people actually work”.

The company currently has customers in the USA, Philippines, Canada, Cambodia, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, and India. They plan on using part of this investment to expand across South East Asia.

Payroll Hero was one of 16 international startups to participate in Startup Arena, a pitch contest held over the summer. Ben Joffee, who is sometimes referred to as “Mr. Asia” was one of the judges at that contest and then put his money where his mouth is by investing in this round.

More available at the source.

Mississippi Startup Muddy Water: Next Stop Shark Tank

Muddy Water Camo, Mississippi startup,Shark Tank

Steve Maloney co-founder of Muddy Water Camo (photo: muddywatercamo.com)

Long time readers of nibletz.com know that we’re big fans of Shark Tank on ABC. Naturally as entrepreneurs, Shark Tank is a must watch show (you can see our Shark Tank coverage here). We’ve even reported on when an entrepreneur on Shark Tank has their deal reneged on after the show airs.

The show puts entrepreneurs from across the country up against some of the most brilliant investor minds there are. Mark Cuban, Damon John, Kevin O’Leary, Barbara Corcoran, Lori Greiner, and Robert Herjavec. All of them are multi-millionaires, and Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks is actually a billionaire.

In the four seasons the show has been on the air we’ve seen a wide variety of startups pitched in the Shark Tank. Ideas ranging from homemade peanut butter to VIP club service have all been pitched in the tank.

Friday night, February 22, Madison Mississippi startup “Muddy Water Camo” will get their chance to pitch the sharks. The company’s founders Steve Maloney and Stephen Kirkpatrick were selected out of over 30,000 entries to pitch. The show is currently averaging 6.8 million viewers per episode.

The company designs and manufacturers camo products ranging from caps, hats, masks, waders, and gear bags, in what onlinemadison.com called “the most realistic camo pattern ever created”

Maloney told onlinemadison.com that they created the line because most camo is designed for deer hunters, not duck hunters.

“I realized that every available camouflage pattern seem designed for hunting deer in the woods,” Maloney says. “None of those patterns looked like the marshes and flooded fields where I was hunting ducks. And it seemed to me that if you’re hunting a bird with webbed feet, your camo really ought to feature water.”

Where the innovation really comes in is how Maloney and Kirkpatrick have created and designed their camo. Their designs are based on photographs and not computer drawings. This allows their camo to be manufactured for any kind of terrain for any kind of game.

“We can make realistic camo for the mountains, the prairies, the forests – any kind of terrain, for any kind of game.” Kirkpatrick said.

Although the founders already know the outcome of their appearance they are sworn by secrecy not to reveal it until after their episode airs.

We’re curious to see how they do, as hunting and camo don’t seem to be in any particular sharks wheelhouse. Lori Greiner, who rotates her chair with Barbara Corcoran, has had lots of success marketing products on QVC, so if Greiner one of the sharks for Muddy Waters’ episode, they may be in luck. Otherwise it’s going to be a hard fight.

Find out more and see how realistic their designs really are at muddywatercamo.com