Cultivation Capital Archives - Serious Startups

St. Louis Gets New Financial Startup Accelerator SixThirty, Named After The Gateway Arch

The infamous St. Louis gateway arch is both 630 feet high and 630 feet wide. That’s where Cultivation Capital and The St. Louis Regional Chamber came up with the name for a new startup accelerator aimed at financial services startups.

The new SixThirty accelerator will invest $100,000 into four financial services startups twice a year (8 total). Those startups selected will go through a four month accelerator program from St. Louis’ proven leaders in the startup acceleration space. In addition to the typical startup accelerator training, Six Thirty will focus on offering mentors and a curriculum focused around the things financial services startups needs.

St. Louis is rich in financial services companies. Edward Jones, Scottrade, Stifel Financial, Wells Fargo Advisors, and US Bancorp CDC all call St. Louis home. The St. Louis financial services sector currently employs approximately 85,000 people—and is growing rapidly. Employment in financial investment services expanded by an incredible 84% between January 2007 to September 2012 in St. Louis, according to a recent Wall Street Journal article. During the same period the four largest financial services metros lost employment, according to data cited from Moody’s Analytics.

The founding team of the SixThirty accelerators is made up of three individuals with deep ties to the St. Louis startup scene:

Jim McKelvey, co-founder of Square, and general partner at Cultivation Capital
Hal Gentry, serial entrepreneur, and general partner at Capital Innovators
Joe Reagan, president and CEO of the St. Louis Regional Chamber

“We saw a real opportunity to leverage our regional strengths as a financial hub,” Jim McKelvey said in a statement. “Between the growth capital, the experience of our founding team, and the connections with the financial services community, SixThirty will be a welcome addition to the St. Louis startup scene.”

“This is a particularly important initiative, considering the local strength of the financial services industry in St. Louis and how they strive to constantly improve their services,” said Daniel Ludeman, CEO of Wells Fargo Advisors and Chair of the St Louis Regional Chamber, and founding co-chair of the Chamber’s Financial Forum. The Greater St. Louis Financial Forum is charged with accelerating economic development throughout the region in the financial and information services sector.

The Chamber is making a three year financial commitment to SixThirty. Reagan, referencing the recent launch of the Regional Entrepreneurship Initiative, said “We were inspired by the Initiative’s call to action and thought this was a great way to make an impact in a hurry.”

You can find out more about Six Thirty or apply to their first cohort here at sixthirty.co

Interview With St. Louis Startup Systematic Revenue, Eons More Efficient Than Constant Contact

Earlier this month we reported that Cultivation Capital had invested $100,00 in Sytematic Revenue.

Systematic Revenue is a great automated system that allows you to keep consistently following up with your contacts, customers and prospects. According to many sources it takes up to 6 follow ups with a contact to make a sale. With Systematic Revenue those followups are automated, but learned and made to feel genuine. This is achieved because Systematic Revenue’s system learns about your contacts.

You start by importing all of your contacts from your major social networks, Outlook, Google contacts or any other relevant data file. From there you can create campaigns with any number of steps you like and any frequency that you like. You can also incorporate Systematic Revenue with your contact form on your company’s website so that when you get a new contact it’s automatically entered into Systematic Revenue’s database and entered right into the campaign.

Systematic Revenue takes the premise of ConstantContact and makes it relevant to the business world by providing some features originally only found in robust CRM systems and applying them to your contact database, making the followups relevant and easier to create sales and revenue.

We got a chance to interview Systematic Revenue below:

Video Interview With St.Louis Startup: LockerDome

Back in April we asked if St.Louis startup LockerDome was the Groupon for St.Louis,you know the standout startup that stays in their hometown and grows. By all accounts LockerDome is shaping up to be that startup.

LockerDome is a social networking site focused on team sports from just about every level. Whether your son or daughter is on a neighborhood soccer team, you’re a high school athlete playing on the football team or you’re a professional athlete LockerDome allows you to make a profile to correspond with the type of team your on.

With your profile you can keep friends, family, teammates, scouts and anyone interested up to date with how you’re doing as an athlete. For kids, think back to when you had trading cards made with the team photos, now grandma and grandpa across the country don’t need to wait for the mail, they can just go online and check out your profile.

One of the great things about LockerDome is that athletes of all levels can be found on the network. Pro Athletes are often the inspiration for many young athletes and you can find pro athletes from all kinds of sports on LockerDome. Imagine playing pee-wee hockey or pee-wee football and having a LockerDome profile just like your favorite professional athlete.

LockerDome has already attached some major attention. St.Louis native and Square co-founder Jim McKelvey sits on the LockerDome board and has invested into the company through Cultivation Capital. LockerDome has raised $2.1 million to date with their latest round totaling $1.04 million, which closed in June.

Check out our video interview below:

How about some Linkage:

Click here to check out LockerDome, start a profile why don’t ya?

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Cultivation Capital Invests In Two More St. Louis Startups: Yurbuds & Systematic Revenue

Two weeks ago we got a chance to meet Rick Holton of Holton Capital, Arch Angels, and Cultivation Capital among other things. We talked about the thriving tech scene in St. Louis and the synergy created when a meeting at Holton’s office formed VentureSTL.

Cultivation Capital is back in the news again as they’ve announced their two most recent investments. Cultivation Capital’s principals include Holton, along with Square co-founder Jim Mckelvey, Brian Matthews and Peter Esparrage. Back in April we reported on Cultivation Capital’s first three investments, including a $250,000 investment in St.Louis favorite, LockerDome.

In the latest round of investments Cultivation Capital invested $219,000 in Yurbuds a company that makes sports headphones. The company makes earbuds that can withstand the heaviest of workouts. In fact at the International Consumer Electronics back in January, Yurbuds had acrobats walking on their hands while the earbuds stayed firmly in their ears. To prove that there was no PR hocus pocus on-lookers were encouraged to open brand new packs of the earbuds for the acrobats to use. Yes they were awesome.

The other startup to receive funding from Cultivation Capital was Systematic Revenue. While not as sexy as earbuds that won’t fall out of your ears, Systematic Revenue is an online automated marketing solution to help track potential clients. Back in May the startup reported that they had 25 businesses signed up in their beta test.

Systematic Revenue received $100,000 from Cultivation Capital.

“We look forward to assisting the vibrant Yurbuds team and the calculated Systematic Revenue teams as they continue to define St. Louis as an entrepreneurial hub,” saidCliff Holekamp, a general partner of Cultivation Capital, in a statement.

Cultivation Capital plans to invest $500,000 in the most promising startups in the Fall 2012 and Spring 2013 classes of Capital Innovators.

Linkage:

Here’s Cultivation Capital’s website

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St.Louis: New Venture Capital Group Cultivation Capital Announces First Three Investments

Yesterday we brought you the story of the exciting St.Louis startup LockerDome. LockerDome, the first social network for athletes (that’s been done right) has attracted the investment of Jim McKelvey, one of the co-founders of Square. LockerDome has so much going for it right now, that yesterday we asked is LockerDome the Groupon of St.Louis. Many folks from St.Louis chimed in on Twitter suggesting that LockerDome was even better than that.

Today we’re reporting on a new St. Louis venture capital group. Cultivation Capital has announced it’s first three investments. Not surprising, LockerDome is one of those investments.

Cultivation Capital announced a $250,000 investment into LockerDome, which co-founder Gabe Lozano told us was a new investment for the company, complimenting the $750,000 they raised at the end of last year.

“Cultivation Capital brings much needed financial resources to the rapidly growing number of early stage tech startups in the St. Louis area. We decided to work with Cultivation Capital because they’re run by a solid team of local entrepreneurs that have collectively built some of the area’s most successful startups. I have a lot of respect for the individuals behind the fund and look forward to seeing these guys positively contribute to evolving the local landscape.” Lozano told nibletz.com

Cultivation Capital’s second investment was also $250,000 which went to JBara Software. JBara Software provides deep customer intelligence analysis for enterprises to manage customer success and minimize churn. JBara is a leader in supporting the executive in charge of customer satisfaction by providing actionable insights into the customer experience and key customer metrics.

They also made a strategic investment into Capital Innovators. Capital Innovators is a St.Louis based technology accelerator which provides mentorship and seed funding into select companies.

“These three companies mark an exciting entrance for Cultivation Capital into the Missouri startup market,” says Peter Esparrago. “Their innovative approaches to business set a strong precedent for future investments in the Midwest.”

The Cultivation Capital team is led by General Partners and experienced entrepreneurs Brian Matthews, Peter Esparrago, Jim McKelvey and Rick Holton, Jr., who have a combined track record of more than 25 companies started, over $200 million raised and multiple exits. The team includes Associate Partners Kyle Welborn and Israel Vicars.

Linkage:

If you’re a St.Louis area entrepreneur you can apply to Cultivation Capital here

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