$319 Million Pledged On Kickstarter In 2012

Kickstarter, the crowdfunding website used as a Launchpad for entrepreneurs across the globe announced this week that $319 million dollars had been pledged in 2012.

The money was pledged for a variety of projects from cd/album releases to gadgets, apps and software. 2.2 million people accounted for the pledges.

18,109 projects were funded with the $274 million collected out of the $319 million.

Business Insider reported that 177 countries helped projects raise money, which is 90% of the countries in the world.

There are three crowdfunding panels at this startup conference.

Are Accelerators from “Everywhere Else” Better at Producing Groundbreaking Innovation? Maybe. Here’s Why GUEST POST

There’s been a lot of press lately about the lack of true, groundbreaking innovation in Silicon Valley. I don’t think that’s completely true, but reading about it made me think a bit about the nature of innovation and whether the current system is built to foster it.

I live in this little city called Memphis and we have a small but growing tech community and a great little startup accelerator called Seed Hatchery that is currently taking applications for its third class.

Now the thing about Seed Hatchery is that it doesn’t get near the number of applicants as a Y Combinator or a TechStars or even some of the less well-known accelerators. They’re okay with that and they’re okay with plugging along and making improvements year after year and meeting goals and milestones that are at a somewhat smaller scale. And there are a lot of accelerators just like Seed Hatchery, all over the world.

There have been arguments made that these accelerators will die out. That may be true for some. But I happen to think that before they do they will have trained and produced more innovative entrepreneurs than some of their larger counterparts. Why? Because, generally, the enrollees in these programs have a high appetite for risk to begin with, and because they won’t have that appetite beaten out of them by the time they finish.

True innovation typically happens at the knife’s edge between failure and success. It doesn’t come from the safer and satisfied middle. That’s good news for tiny accelerators, and may be bad news for some of the more successful ones.

A program that gives me a ton of money, a good to great chance of raising more, and an almost 100% chance of landing softly even if I fail tends to convince even big risk takers to play things a bit more safe. It seems like the opposite should be true, right? I have all these benefits with virtually zero chance of absolute failure, so why shouldn’t I give it a go? But, as we see time and time again, that kind of thinking just doesn’t happen very often.

For these programs, getting in is the big challenge, and once you’ve achieved that you’re granted superstar status. Your success rate jumps to 70% or more. And if the success rate is 70% or more, then beating everyone else isn’t as important as not being in the bottom 30%. So, often enough at least, you don’t build something that has a 10% chance of glorious success. You play it safe. You try not to f$%k it up.

For other programs, by contrast, getting in is potentially easier, but success after graduation is much much harder. A lot of smaller accelerators have one or two companies out of ten successfully raise follow-on funding. When the success rate is that low, the companies tend to take bigger chances in the hopes of finding themselves among those one or two success stories. Except in extraordinary cases, it doesn’t matter what kind of human being you are. The company you build will be different based on whether you’re motivated to succeed above all others or motivated to not screw things up.

Now, before you jump all over me, I will say that there are things that continue to make Y Combinator and TechStars amazing programs, and you would be a fool not to join them if invited. The mentor networks, and the advice participants receive from those mentors, are probably by themselves worth the price of admission. But, imagine for a moment the kinds of companies that might be produced by a Y Combinator should, say, only five to ten of the 80 companies receive follow-on funding. Might that look different? My bet is yes, and that they would be much more groundbreaking.

I’m also betting that the smaller accelerators—so long as they don’t measure success by Y Combinator standards—can produce these kinds of companies. There will be more failures, sure, but that’s okay by me. The near certainty of failure is one the most compelling features.

Author Biography:

Cliff McKinney is CEO of Work for Pie, a company that is changing the way software developers get recruited and hired by changing the way they communicate with

Here’s another take on accelerators “everywhere else” from nibletz.com

500 Startups Backed, Speek, Releases iPhone App

Last year after TechCrunch Disrupt NYC, most people thought that conference calling app Uber Conference was the bees knees. They had won the TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield and were all the rage from the big publications. Meanwhile, back in the Washington DC suburbs Evite founder John Bracken and co-founder and PandoDaily contributor Danny Boice were busy working on Speek.

Speek is actually the easiest way to execute great sounding conference calls. Everything is handled through a web/cloud based interface and all you do to initiate a call is direct the participants to your Speek page, for instance mine is http://speek.com/kyle from there I can control who’s in the call, file sharing, information and anything else that pertains to a conference call.

The whole process is extremely easy and doesn’t require jotting down pin numbers or long codes, which can be quite cumbersome driving down the highway.

Well today Speek has released their iPhone app which makes it just as easy to initiate conference calls from your iPhone as it is from the web (although it was pretty easy just using a mobile browser like Chrome).

With Speek’s iPhone app, you can make super simple, free and visual conference calls. Reserve an easy-to-remember username (i.e.,http://speek.com/YourName) for your calls, instead of fumbling for a traditional phone number and PIN.

Features:

Talk instantly with one-click calls
Know who’s joined the call
Know who’s talking
Share images from your phone
Comment, mute and add/remove participants

Avoid the hassles of traditional conference calls with:

No telephone numbers and PINs
No scheduling
No elevator music
No interruptions

Check out Speek in the iTunes app store and go register your user name before all the good ones disappear. If for some reason you want to try it out feel free to Speek to me at http://speek.com/kyle

Join the nearly 1800 people who’ve bought tickets to the largest startup conference in the United States, more info here!

Fitness Startup PumpUp Picks Up The Pace Again With iOS App

Back in May when the high princess of startups inside the valley Sarah Lacey suggested there were no good fitness startups we found out about Waterloo startup PumpUp.

What makes pumpup.co so great are a number of things. For starters the three founders behind pumpup.co know their roles and do them well. In an industry that can run a little top heavy on the ego side they have the entrepreneurial founder, the sales, marketing and bizdev founder and of course the athletic trainer founder. You couldn’t have a fitness startup without one.

The UI is intuitive and it’s made for the average person, not the overly buff set that don’t need the gym as much as us normal folks.

Now, to make things much easier to manage PumpUp on the go, they’ve released an iOS app for iPhones and iPod Touch, both devices that make it into the gym while you’re working out.

With over 40% of new gym memberships cancelled in less than a year, people are looking for an easy-to-use solution that gives them the guidance and motivation needed to get fit. By asking a few simple questions about people’s fitness goals, where they want to work out and the equipment they love to use, PumpUp automatically builds a highquality workout designed specifically for each user.

PumpUp is meant for people who want to get started with a fitness routine but don’t know what to do, or those who want to take their fitness to the next level. PumpUp shows users what to do, how to do it,and over time, adapts their plans to ensure they continue to improve.

“People aspire to be fit and live a healthy life but most people find difficulty in reaching their goals,” says Phil Jacobson, co-founder & CEO of PumpUp. “We’re simplifying the experience by asking you what you want and taking care of the rest. Getting fit doesn’t have to be tough; people just need to be shown what to do. With PumpUp, that’s exactly what we’re doing.”

The PumpUp App is available as a free download on the Apple App Store on iPhone or iPod Touch at http://itunes.com/apps/pumpup. PumpUp is free to try for 30 days and costs $4.99/month on an annual subscription. To celebrate the launch and New Year, an annual subscription for PumpUp is only $2.99/month for the rest of January 2013.

Pumpup your startup everywhere else at everywhereelse.co The startup Conference, details here!

CES 2013 Preview: Indian Startup Emo2 To Launch Large Touch Screen OS

An Indian startup called Emo2, or Emotional Squared Technologies is set to launch what looks to be a great operating system and large multi user touch screen tablet. The device itself is 42″ and allows multi user input at the same time.

The 42″ touch screen surface is great for hotel lobbies, operating rooms, electronic casino gaming, retail environments and collaborative work spaces. The underlying operating system is designed to support the hardware without any hiccups, lag or delay, making for a pleasing user experience no matter what the application.

The company based in Chennai India, has been working on the technology since 2010 under the leadership of CEO and cofounder Mir Abid Hussain.

Emo2 is venture backed with an early stage investment from Indian firm Blume Ventures. Although the exact funding has not been reported Blume Ventures specialized in angel, and seed investments between $50k and $250k. Rajan Anandan, Zafar Baig and other angels also contributed to Emo2’s angel funding.

To date emo2’s technology has already been deployed in a coffee shop chain with 30 locations.

Although they weren’t specific early on, Emo2 has officially announced that they will launch Tuesday when the International CES show opens in Las Vegas. Before returning back to India they will be showing off their technology in Silicon Valley and New York the weeks immediately following CES.

After CES but before SXSW you can come to the biggest startup conference in the U.S. everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference

$9 Million Raised By Wisconsin Startup Study Blue For Digital BackPack

Madison Wisconsin startup Study Blue has raised $9 million dollars for their digital backpack company. Study Blue helps students store and organize their class study materials and turns them into digital flash cards and quizzes. The platform also allows the study materials to be compared with other students that are taking the same subjects.

Study Blue is cross platform which allows students to pick up where they left off whether they’ve moved from a laptop or desktop to an tablet or smartphone.

The $9 million dollar Series A-1 funding round was led by Great Oaks Venture Capital, the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation also participated as well as existing investors. This new funding will allow them to continue building on their existing user base which is already 2.5 million users strong. Those users have created and shared 100 million study materials across the web and their mobile apps.

“We are experiencing rapid growth. This financing allows us to further expand our community and platform to help students master their course material faster, said Becky Splitt, StudyBlue’s CEO. “Our online, mobile and social tools connect students to a comprehensive crowd-sourced library of content on nearly any subject, and to each other, in a highly relevant way.

“We are really excited to be a part of the StudyBlue movement,” said Andy Boszhardt, Partner, Great Oaks Venture Capital. “The entire edtech industry is seeing tremendous growth and StudyBlue has particularly impressive traction in the space with over 2.5 million registered users who use its platform across a myriad of devices. They are in a perfect position to expand the audience of students they serve and we’re really pleased to be a part of that.”

“We see Great Oaks as a perfect complement to our efforts” said StudyBlue Founder Chris Klundt. “Their breadth of experience across consumer, mobile and online businesses as well as a commitment to the edtech industry makes this a great partnership.”

You’ll be able to check out some great EdTech startups at the largest startup conference in the U.S. everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference!

500 Startups Launching New York Co-Working Space

500 Startups New York based partner Shai Goldman announced on Twitter earlier today that the popular seed fund and accelerator program is opening up a new co-working space in New York. TNW reports that the co-working space is open to 500 Startups portfolio companies and early stage startups.

While 500 Startups in based in Mountain View California (Silicon Valley), founder Dave McClure and partner Paul Singh are very committed to startups outside the valley. McClure is known, for among other things, his Geek On A Plane adventures which get entrepreneurs to build companies in planes flying above far off exotic places.

The 500 Startups accelerator cohorts are always a good mix of companies from across the country and around the globe. We’ve featured interviews with many of the current class here on nibletz.com.

If you’re interested in working at the 500 Startups co-working space, it will cost you $500 per month per desk. In addition to portfolio companies they are looking for startups that are either: bootstrapped, angel/seed funded or series A funded. They have space for 40 people. You can apply here at wufoo.

The space is located at 27th & Park Avenue South and here is a video of the space:

everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference will feature several 500 Startups backed companies from “everywhere else” including a kick ass panel called “Kick Ass Female Founders From Everywhere Else” led by Markerly’s Sarah Ware.

Mark Cuban: Shit! That Sound You’ll Hear From The Valley As The Fund Manager Turns Out The Lights

Marc Cuban, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley Bubble, startup,startups

Mark Cuban (center) with nibletz co-founder/CEO Nick Tippmann (left) hanging out in Indiana

Like, Dave McClure, entrepreneur, Dallas Mavericks owner and investor Mark Cuban is a strong advocate for starutps outside Silicon Valley, “everywhere else” as we call them here. It seems that almost every time Cuban is asked to speak at a startup investor conference or in front of entrepreneurial students, someone asks him about the next bubble.

Cuban is a self made business man all around. One of his earliest business endeavors was selling computers. The kicker though was that he didn’t even own one. He read manuals and documentation on whatever he could about computers working for someone else, until he ventured out on his own.

His earliest success came during the first dot com “bubble” when he sold Broadcast.com to Yahoo in 1999 for $5.7 billion dollars. Not too shabby. He was able to parlay that into purchasing the Dallas Mavericks and founding HDnet which is now axs.tv.

Cuban has spead his latest investments around. He’s invested in companies (outside of Shark Tank) in Los Angeles, New York, Atlanta and other cities, keeping his portfolio out of harms way in the event of a Silicon Valley bubble 2.0. And that’s just where he thinks the next bubble will occur.

He doesn’t think the next “bubble” will actually be a bubble but rather the results of a pyramid scheme or modern day chain letter.

“It’s almost the 2011 version of a private equity chain letter,” Cuban said, as reported by PEHUB.

“Remember the old chain letter, where you put up some money, then you got other people to put up some money, and you gave it to the people who were in the deal before you? That’s what’s happening today,” says Cuban. “The early [VCs] are getting the new [VCs] to invest enough money at high enough valuations that they get most, if not all of their money back. Then the next round [sees] someone else invest more money at a higher valuation, returning cash to the last two rounds of investors. By the time you get to the last [VC] standing, those last few rounds hope they can get a return from the public markets. That may be very tough. But the only players really on the hook are the guys from the last rounds. Just like in a chain letter.”

Lately there’s been a lot of talk as to whether Silicon Valley is on the brink of another bubble explosion. The first one saw startups quickly become brand names like Pets.com and Toys.com, and then just as quickly evaporate into a bankrupt land of nothingness.

Several things over the last three months in particular have caused investors to look more cautiously. Back in mid december the Dow Jones VC Edge report came out. That sent a tremor through Silicon Valley and New York City. Fred Wilson blogged about it as a signal that there was a “Series A Crunch” coming. That same week Paul Graham the founder of YCombinator shook things up some more when he reported that startups in the world famous accelerator program would receive less seed funding and that they were taking less startups in the next YC class.

Today, people are watching anxiously as companies like Zynga and Facebook were expected to make billions in IPO’s and then carry investors off into the sunset. That didn’t happen for either company, Zynga much worse off today than Facebook, and that was all in the last year.

Cuban banks on winners, in fact on and off the court he says “No one hates losing more than me”. He’s practical though and knows not everything he invests in is going to have $5.7 billion dollar exit but he’s going to work relentlessly to insure as much success as possible.

What he does say though is that eventually, like with a chain letter, Silicon Valley investors are going to be left holding empty envelopes. He won’t be one of them.

“When the market has a correction, stock prices will correct dramatically, and that sound you’ll hear from the Valley?” says Cuban. “[It] will be of a fund manager screaming, ‘Shit!’ as he turns out the light on his fund.”

Startups “everywhere else” join 1700 other entrepreneurs and founders who’ve already bought tickets to everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference

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.

Teen Thinks “Facebook is for Old People” and “Snapchat is Getting Boring”

This post may be a little outside of our mission here at Nibletz to be “The Voice of Startups Everywhere Else” but after reading Josh Miller’s, founder of Branch, Tenth Grade Tech Trends the conversation seems appropriate.

Over the holidays I was lucky enough to head back to my hometown in Indiana to spend plenty of quality time with my younger siblings.

My siblings are your typical, Midwestern middle school and high schoolers. One Direction and Taylor Swift dominate their Pandora while interacting with friends is priority number one.

My two sisters are 13 and 16 respectively and my brother is an 18 year old senior. My youngest sister, 10, would cry if I didn’t mention her but her thoughts are not discussed. Although it should be noted her and her friends are already addicted to Instagram, using my parents’ phones to check it whenever she gets the chance.

I asked the older three a wide range of questions about their usage of social media and the overall sediment amongst theirs peers of the various networks.

What I heard was a bit of a shock.

Facebook

The biggest surprise had to come when I asked my 13 year old sister if she used Facebook? “No, it’s for old people and it’s stupid! Nobody has it anymore.” (yes, I realize you’re supposed to be 13 to have a Facebook account but the majority of her friends we’re on it well before). While I laughed at her choice of words, my jaw almost hit the floor. Is it true? Has Facebook become so “uncool” that they had all already left?

I heard similar responses when I asked the other two. My brother had recently deleted his account but said that many of his friends hadn’t because, “their whole high school career is on there.” It seems my brother’s friends, who mostly adopted the service about four years ago, currently use it to look back at the good times they’ve had, not to post new content.

Instagram

I got a very difference response when I asked them about Instagram. Each uses it everyday. It has completely replace Facebook as their default photo service.

This echoes Josh’s takeaway that Facebook was smart to buy Instagram.

Twitter

But what about Twitter? Are the kids as hooked as you and me? It’s been pointed out before that Twitter is not a mainstream technology and Josh’s sister said, “I guess a few kids use it.”

I found a little different response. Both my brother and 16 year old sister, along with “most” of their friends, check it daily (but less than Instagram). However, It’s primary function for them is to broadcast things that make them look funny or cool and to find out what their friends are doing, not to find links and join interesting conversations.

The 16 year old said her friends are really into sharing quotes and other things to get them more retweets and followers. As for the youngest, “None of my friends use it.” The 16 year old was relatively new to the service while my brother had been on it for a few years. This lead me to believe Twitter is adopted more as they get older.

Snapchat

Now it was time to ask about Snapchat. Is it really a sexting app?

Probably not the most appropriate conversation to have with your little sisters (let alone get honest responses) but I drilled my brother on it. He said, “Yeah, I’ve heard some people use it for that but it’s definitely not its main purpose.”

All of them proclaimed that it was used to, “share funny pics with close friends that are too ugly or ridiculous for Instagram.” As for their frequency of usage, “basically everyday.”

The most insightful takeaway regarding Snapchat came from my 16 year old sister. “I’ve used it for a while now but it’s getting boring. I feel like I have to respond to my friends though.”

This makes me wonder, is Snapchat a fad? More of a viral service that goes out of vogue after receiving the 1000th picture of your friend pulling their cheeks apart in the mirror?

Conclusion

Teens are “so over” Facebook. Instagram is now the de facto photo sharing app. Twitter has their foot in the door. Snapchat isn’t just for sexting.

One final point is age seems to be the largest determinate in how teens use these networks and for the most part not geography or cliques

While these observations are clearly anecdotal and are by no means meant to be scientific (I can hear the comments on Hacker News now), it does provide another interesting look at how teens are currently using the world’s largest and fastest growing social networks.

Let me know what you think? Does this go along with what you’ve seen or is my family an anomaly?

CES 2013: CEA Partners With Launch.It For Eureka Park Coverage

Launch.it a New York startup that bills itself as an event news and social information management platform announced earlier this month that they’ve partnered with the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) to power the official news channel for Eureka Park, the startup zone at the 2013 International CES.

Eureka Park is in it’s third official year and has grown 40% year over year. This year there are 140 startups exhibiting throughout the duration of the show. In addition Startup America will host a content stage with speakers, panel discussions and even pitches throughout the event.

“Every great company starts with a eureka moment, a unique idea that launches the next must-have product or service. And through our partnership with CEA, we have ensured that you can now find these companies within their dedicated home in the Eureka Park TechZone and online through their dedicated interactive news site,” said Brian Cohen, CEO and Co-Founder of Launch.it said in a post on the company’s website. “I’ve worked at and attended CES for more than thirty years and it has been one of the best places to find these fledgling start-ups and diamond in-the-rough companies waiting to be discovered and make it big.”

Launch.it will provide access to all of Eureka Park’s startups to these important tools:

· In-depth social analytics

· Wiki-like environment to make story updates in real-time

· Investors and media can follow companies to get real-time updates

· An action box to engage readers for investment and media opportunities

· Facebook comments for insight and feedback

· Rich multimedia, tags and geo-location for enhanced engagement and discoverability

· “Buy it and Trial it” buttons to drive users directly to point of purchase

· Customized tweets for precise messaging and branding

“CEA recognized early on that startups are now an integral part of the consumer electronics industry and created Eureka Park to cultivate and support the passionate entrepreneurs,” said Trace Cohen, President and Co-Founder of Launch.it. “Having attended CES for the past few years, Eureka Park, in it’s first year last year, was one of my favorite areas to walk through because of the innovative startups looking to disrupt multiple industries. Best of all, I had the opportunity to ask questions, meet the passionate founders behind the ideas and can now support them through our partnership to make sure all their news can be easily found, discovered and shared.”

Of course nibletz.com the voice of startups everywhere else, will be covering the entire show including Starutp Debut and the entire Eureka Park experience as well. We’re looking forward to in depth interviews, pitches and reporting on all of the innovative startups in Eureka Park.

Through our previous web properties, and now nibletz, we’ve covered CES for the last decade. Typically with shows like CES we turn to BusinessWire or TradeShow Wire for up to the minute news releases.

CEA partnering with Launch.it, a startup in it’s own right, will better position the Eureka Park startups to make a bigger splash among the over 3500 companies exhibiting during the week in Las Vegas. Launch.it is better positioned in terms of the newest trends in news delivery and social media over the more traditional news services. This way the startups in Eureka Park have their own clear and coherent voice that’s a bit more relevant than traditional newswire services.

How To Raise Money Everywhere Else Find Out At Huge Startup Conference

Everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference is being held in Memphis Tennessee February 9-12th at the Memphis Convention Center. Over 1700 attendees have already purchased tickets including over 400 angels and vcs. The conference will offer startups at any stage pre series-A unparalleled access to investors, fellow entrepreneurs, founders and speakers.

In addition to great speakers like Scott Case, Bill Harris and countless others, “everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference” is going to help startups outside of Silicon Valley unlike any other event in the world.

In talking with hundreds of startups every week we’ve found (and you probably know first hand) the biggest obstacle for founders outside the valley is access to capital. Sometimes we hear about it to nauseam.

Everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference is going to tackle that issues in a variety of ways starting with a panel of some great startup founders who struggled bootstrapping until they had their big break, most of them staying right where they are.

We’ll talk with Gabe Lozano founder of St. Louis Startup LockerDome who’s raised over $2 million dollars to date from names including Jim McKelvey, co-founder of Square. Lozano is firmly planted in downtown St. Louis.

Rob Kischuck the founder of Atlanta startup bad.gy, who on a chance meeting at a party for Mark Cuban hosted by Nibletz co-founder and CEO Nick Tippmann, met Cuban who loved the idea. Cuban is a big fan of founders putting in enormous amounts of sweat equity and Kischuck could write a book on the topic. Kischuck has now raised nearly three quarters of a million dollars for his startup. Kischuck will talk about his experience at everywhereelse.co

Shawn Flynn, co-founder of Memphis based Restore Medical Solutions will talk about moving his startup from Atlanta to Memphis Tennessee for the ZeroTo510 accelerator. After the accelerator program he and co-founder Ryan Ramkhelawan went on to raise a series A round of $2.5 million dollars in Memphis Tennessee.

McKeever Conwell the co-founder and CEO of Baltimore startup Given.To has had the opportunity to move to Silicon Valley and get in the venture capital rat race but stayed in his native Baltimore to grow his company and help others through his involvement with organizations like Accelerate Baltimore.

Scott Case, founding CTO of Priceline.com and the current CEO of Startup America will facilitate the panel and also talk about Priceline’s experience building a billion dollar company outside Silicon Valley.

Be part of the Startup Village at everywhereelse.co for your chance to pitch in three different contests for $100,000 in cash. Click this link for tickets.

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

60 Startups From Everywhere Else Gear Up For Startup Debut At CES 2013

60 startups from “everywhere else” are set to take the stage next Sunday January 6th as part of the annual “Startup Debut” at CES 2013. This event puts early stage startups in front of as many as 800 journalists and tech media aficionados in an intimate setting where founders can get 1:1 about their companies.

Last year, Liquipel, debuted their product at Startup Debut, held at the HardRock in Las Vegas. The waterproofing product for smartphones had an exceptional award winning year after their initial debut at the event.

Startups from Texas, New York, Toronto, LA, Virginia and even Budapest will exhibit at the Bali Hai Golf Course, two blocks south of Mandalay Bay.

SocialRadius one of the earliest social media marketing agencies, and a die hard supporter of startups, started the event in January 2010 at CES. They now hold five annual events with their two biggest being CES and SXSW.

Nibletz, the voice of startups everywhere else will bring you all of the startup goodness from Startup Debut as part of our ongoing team coverage at CES 2013.

Linkage:

Complete team coverage of CES 2013 can be found here

The next big startup event after CES is this