Drive Capital Announces First Investments In OH Startups, RoadTrippers (Cincinnati) And CrossChx (Gallipolis)

When Mark Kvamme left Silicon Valley for the Midwest he went all in. Kvamme took a position as the lead for JobsOhio, where he helped create jobs across the state. He used his vast experience as a VC with Sequoia, where he was one of the first investors in LinkedIn, to help spur innovation across the state. He and cofounder Chris Olsen continue to do that with their VC firm Drive Capital, which just announced the closing of their first fund yesterday.

The firm reported to the SEC that they have raised $181 million dollars with a goal of raising $300 million.

“Since moving here, I have had the opportunity to meet several companies and entrepreneurs that would rival those in any other place in the world, and these two companies and these entrepreneurs are among the very best,” Kvamme said in a statement. “We can’t wait to see what they become.”

With that announcement they also revealed the first two startups the firm has invested in. Kvamme gave the audience at the Southland Conference in Nashville, TN in June a hint about one of their first investments saying that they had invested in a Brandery startup. That startup, revealed yesterday, was RoadTrippers.

RoadTrippers graduated from The Brandery two summers ago. They built a platform that offers more intricate road trips than just hopping on hotels.com or kayak. The company, America’s fastest growing startup travel site, just announced a partnership with Travel Oregon. The terms of Drive Capital’s investment weren’t reported.

“In very practical terms, Drive Capital’s investment has given us the financial resources to allow me to spend less time fundraising and more time on growth. When I’m not fundraising, our company grows faster,” said James Fisher, founder and CEO of Roadtrippers. “But more than that, the experience they bring has helped us scale up and execute our vision at an accelerated pace. They understand not just the opportunity we have, but the challenges we will face. There was great alignment between all parties, and they have backed my vision as founder of this company 100 percent.”

Fisher said that since he began working with Drive Capital about three months ago, Roadtrippers has grown from 200,000 unique visitors per month to 750,000.

The second investment for Drive Capital was with CrossChx, a biometric startup based in Gallipolis, Ohio. The company, led by founder Sean Lane, uses biometric security at doctor’s offices, pharmacies, and hospital systems to prevent medical fraud. Lane told The Wall Street Journal last summer that he became interested in biometric security when he was deployed in Afghanistan.

“When CrossChx was exploring growth options, we made a conscious decision to partner with accomplished investors that could provide more than just capital, and we found that strategic partner in Drive Capital,” Lane said in a statement “Drive Capital grasped our long-term vision and has been instrumental to the rapid growth of CrossChx.”

Both Olsen and Kvamme have long track records with Sequoia and plan on investing aggressively across the Midwest. “The region is set up for more success,” Olsen said. “(The incubators) have really been the seedlings of a tremendous growth economy.”

Now check this out: National startup conference heads to Cincinnati

Columbus’ 10x Startup Accelerator Now Taking Applications For Fall 2013

Columbus’ cohort-based startup accelerator, 10x, is gearing up for their 2013 fall session. The accelerator, started in 2011, has successfully accelerated startups like UFunded, Ribbon, and LaunchGram, which was acquired in February by Referly.

10x takes 10 startups for 10 weeks and seeds them with $20,000 in seed funding, office space, and a strong mentor network. The class will “graduate” at the end of 10 weeks with an investor day held in Columbus.

“Perhaps the greatest value teams will receive from the 10x program is the mentor network comprised of successful entrepreneurs, CEOs, VCs, and business veterans from the startup world,” Brooke Paul, Founder of Founders Factory and a director of the 10x program told metropreneur.com. “10x alums have effectively leveraged our mentor network for follow-on funding, access to customers, and more.”

10x’s mentor network includes people like Eric Corl, founder of Fundable, Ben Blanquera, founder of TechLife Columbus, and Mark Kvamme founder of Drive Capital. 27 startups have gone through the 10x program and have collectively raised over $9.4 million in follow on funding.

The next session begins September 4th and will run for 10 weeks. Startups interested in applying can use this application. The application deadline is July 14th.

Find out more about 10x here.

Bob Metcalfe, the inventor of ethernet, is speaking at this accelerator demo day in Chattanooga.

Columbus Startup: AboutOurWork Disrupting The Chamber’s Networking Events

I’m going to go out on a limb here. I’ve been to several Chamber of Commerce events at cities across the country and for the most part their networking mixers suck. Not much real networking actually happens at business after hours events, business before hours events and holiday parties. Most Chamber of Commerce network events are a huge circle jerk and ego strokes for people that already know each other. In fact in most cases you’ll find more cliques at a Chamber of Commerce mixer than you will in the cafeteria of your favorite middle school.

With everyone being so deeply entrenched in the internet, we’ve been waiting for a startup to come along and offer what most Chamber’s of Commerce charge hundreds of dollars for, real networking, real introductions. Sure LinkedIn is great, but again most of LinkedIn is built on who you already know. Even when you might kind of know someone or you want to meet someone you heard about but “didn’t do business with”, LinkedIn discourages it.

Well a Columbus startup called AboutOurWork has created a new network connections platform that promises to link small businesses (and startups) with other small businesses (and startups).

Co-founders David Hungenaw and Brooke Paul are serial entrepreneurs, both with successful exits. Now they are setting out to solve a problem no one wants to talk about (but I just did), finding a way for small businesses (and startups) to actually network.

We got a chance to talk to Hungenaw about his startup that’s disrupting the Chamber of Commerce mixer.

Columbus Startup: Objra Provides An Easy Do It Yourself HTML 5 Platform

A one man startup in Columbus Ohio called Objra is making it easier for people with just a little bit of graphics experience to reach past animated gifs and do actual animation renders using HTML5. Objra’s founder Eddie Bowen created Objra after noticing the poor methods used to share graphics on sites like Reddit.

“It struck me that jpegs and gifs are terrible ways of sharing graphics, but there isn’t an easy alternative. It’s just one step from rendering vector graphics to animating vector graphics. Then a light bulb went on and I realized I was fumbling towards a great design product.” he told nibletz.com in an interview. With that Objra was born.

For lack of more technical verbage, Objra allows anyone to get to their website and create animations using simple drag and drop placement. You can watch the animations render before your eyes, edit, and change whatever you would like before downloading them to share. If you’re on a budget or looking for something fast and easy, Objra may be the way to go.

We got a chance to talk with Bowen about Objra. Check out our interview below.

Ohio Startup Huddlewoo Wants To Know What You’re Extraordinary At? Launches Today

A new startup based in Columbus Ohio and Phoenix Arizona, called Huddlewoo, is launching today. This video platform gives ordinary people like me and you access to people we admire. Huddlewoo also lets ordinary people show off the things that they are extraordinary at.

Through Huddlewoo’s unique platform you can schedule 1:1 video conversations with people that you may not get the opportunity to meet in person.

Huddlewoo users create a profile and highlight what they are extraordinary at. The user than sets up an availability calendar through a tool within the web app. Once those two things are in place the user can set a price for their time, they can then decide if they want to make a little extra income or donate the fees from the video sessions to charity.

Are you a Zen SEO master and want to share a few tips in private settings? How much do you think that information is worth? You can set the price and the times and wait for people to line up to have Huddlewoo sessions with you. Maybe you’re a great baker and want to share some kitchen tips for making the best cupcakes, you can do that too. Whatever you are extraordinary at and willing to share (even for money) can be added in your profile and easily discovered by other members of the Huddlewoo community.

This unique video, mentoring, online class hybrid, startup opens up in alpha today. We got a chance to talk with the Huddlewoo team as they prepared for their alpha launch.

Check out the interview below.

To Ship Or Not To Ship, That’s This Weeks Just Decide Startup Dilemma Of The Week

As you may already know nibletz.com the voice of startups “everywhere else” has partnered with New York startup JustDecide for the Startup Dilemma Of The Week. In this feature we use a dilemma that a startup from “everywhere else” has faced in the startup process. We then take that dilemma and crowdsource advice for the startup sing the JustDecide platform at JustDecide.com

This week’s Startup Dilemma Of The Week, is a dilemma that many startups face. It has to do with, when do you launch. It was brought to us by Columbus startup Resition which we featured earlier this week. Resition is a web based platform that helps displaced (laid off) workers transition to new positions.

As the startups co-founder, Mike Chapman, has explained; Resition was functionally ready to go. It is also a much needed platform. There is a direct problem, and a growing problem, that Resition handles for displaced workers. The platform runs smoothly but the design is a little rough around the edges and the feature set that Chapman hoped to roll out is still growing.

Startups across the country and around the world face this very problem every day; ” To Ship, or Not To Ship”. With statistics about startups working against all of us, the decision on when to ship your final, consumer facing product, can prove vital to a startups success. You don’t want to leave an “alpha” or a “beta” tag up too long or people grow doubtful that you will ever finish your product.

You also don’t want to pull the trigger to early. An incomplete design or a feature flaw can make a user go away and never come back.

Conversely, pitching your startup to people, crowds and investors can be exhilarating. When an entrepreneur comes up with an idea for a startup and then gets a team to buy into that idea, the internal clock starts ticking immediately. When can I get the product out.

Head on over to the Startup Dilemma Of The Week feature at justdecide.com here and help weigh in on the decision making process. Remember for the purpose of this great educational feature for startups, you need to go here to comment and weigh in. It only takes a minute and you may need the same community help one day and it’s free.

If you have a startup dilemma of the week send it to startups@nibletz.com and we’ll get in touch with you about featuring your dilemma.

JustDecide.com founder Jay Amato is working to perfect justdecide.com and they recently launched this survey, when you have a second weigh in on that as well.

Linkage:

Check out previous startup dilemmas of the week here

Check out the justdecide.com survey information here

Are you a startup “everywhere else” then you need to be here

Columbus Ohio Startup: Resition Easing The Layoff Process INTERVIEW

Do we even need to say something like “Getting laid off is one of the hardest things in the world”. Probably not. Getting laid off is a fact of life though, especially in these trying economic times. There’s no way to sugar coat the lay off process but what happens immediately afterwards is crucial to the laid off employee.

Historically, the longer a laid off employee waits to start the next job hunt, the harder it gets. As time goes on people who are laid off tend to get disengaged from the work life experience and also disheartened by their lack of leads. Often times this is because people who have been laid off don’t know exactly where to go.

This is where Columbus startup Resition comes in. Resition is a platform created by Mike Chapman (CEO), Chris Domino (CTO) and Walter Akana (COO), to help facilitate a transition to another job and ease the blow of getting laid off. Resition is actually paid for by the company that is doing the layoffs. Adding Resition at the time of separation allows the companies that are laying people off to give those people access to career coaches, mentoring, and a socially driven job search. The companies then get valuable analytic data back from Resition that can help them manage the morale at the company for the remaining employees.

While the job displacement space is definitely not a sexy one, Chapman and his team have left no stone unturned and have made sure that Resition does exactly what they’ve set out to do.

How is it done? We got a chance to interview Chapman. Check out the interview below:

Find The Best CrowdFunding Site Using Columbus Startup: StandOffer

CrowdFunding is taking the world by storm. There are traditional crowdfunding, artist crowdfunding, project crowdfunding, tuition crowdfunding, civic crowdfunding, fundraising crowdfunding sites popping up everywhere. We’re expecting even more crowdfunding concepts to come out of the woodwork in the next two years. There are even crowdfunding sites to invest in startups, starting pop up now in anticipation of the JOBSAct regulations that should be released around the first part of the year.

A startup based in the “Cool Tech” city of Columbus Ohio, called StandOffer, is setting out to make the troves and troves of crwodfunding sites easier to navigate. Using their proprietary algorithmic system, dubbed “crowd control” StandOffer is going to connect users with the crowdfunding site that will work best for them and their needs. You may think your project is great for Kickstarter, but StandOffer may know there’s a different site out there for it. StandOffer would then show you what to do to move forward.

The founding team at StandOffer has been working closely with crowdfunding startups everywhere to insure that they offer the best, most up to date data, and an easy way for people to apply for crowdfunding across multiple sites that fit their goals.

StandOffer is like a hotels.com for crowdfunding sites and it could not have come at a better time.

We got a chance to talk with Mason Estep the founder of StandOffer in the interview below:

Columbus OH Startup: Brand Thunder Connects Brands With Fans’ Browsers

As the smartphone gains popularity more and more smartphone users are making their phone more personal with themes, wall papers and skins. Sure you can change your computer wallpaper, and you’ve been able to forever, but with smartphones, themes became totally immersive. Now all of the sudden your favorite sports teams, celebrities and even brands took over.

A Columbus OH startup called Brand Thunder, is creating that experience for your web browser. Now a fan of just about anything can trick out their FireFox,Chrome or even Internet Explorer (people still use that?) browser. The background, buttons and just about every corner of your browser is transformed into the theme of your choice. The only browser they don’t currently support is Safari.

While Brand Thunder offers themes from most of the major sports teams, celebrities, news, and holidays, what they also offer is the ability to brand businesses in a new and immersive way. Now a really cool startup or company can use BrandThunder to make their own custom theme that doesn’t just turn the browser into a great advertising and branding vehicle, but it also allows end users to connect with information in a variety of ways for the brand.

We got a chance to interview Brand Thunder, check out the interview below: