It’s Day One For These 5 Startups From Gener8tor’s Summer Session

Wisconsin’s dual city accelerator, Gener8tor, is one of the most successful startup accelerators in the midwest. Just last week we reported that two graduates from the Winter 2013 session held in Madison Wisconsin raised $610,000 in seed rounds.

WeMontage, a company that has new ways for users to have their mobile phone pics printed as wallpaper, and Quietyme, a company that monitors the environmental conditions in normally quiet places like hospitals, hotels and nursing homes, raised $310,000 and $300,000 respectively.

A third startup, Abodo, also raised $325,000, they too were a member of that winter class at Gener8tor. Not bad for a general tech accelerator that typically runs cohorts of 5.

Today is Launch Day for the summer cohort at Gener8tor. The Gener8tor founders alternate between Madison and Milwaukee. The summer 2013 cohort was based in Milwaukee.

While many accelerators call the day at the end of the session demo day, or investor day, and we call it graduation, Troy Vosseller, one of the Gener8tor cofounders tells us that they call it launch day. With the teams working all session long and building their companies, demo day doesn’t signify an ending but more importantly a beginning.

Gener8tor’s summer session yielded five great startups:

Maillift

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Optyn

Optyn makes marketing simple for small businesses by providing easy, automated tools to acquire and engage their customers. Optyn’s marketing platform helps business owners decide what message to communicate and then enables them to create, schedule and send an email campaign in less than 2 minutes. Optyn also ensures consumers only get emails from merchants they have chosen.

Catalyze.io

catalyze.io provides health cloud solutions for application developers, enabling rapid application development, enhanced data integration and industry-standard security. Our vision is to offer the hosted core infrastructure required to build modern apps for health and wellness. catalyze.io takes care of the plumbing for app owners and empowers developers inside and outside of enterprises to quickly build, test and deploy health and wellness applications−all without worrying about data sources and models, interoperability or HIPAA technology security.

OpenHomes

OpenHomes provides modern, professional tools for the “for sale by owner” market. With OpenHomes, it is easy, affordable, and secure for people to buy or sell their homes themselves. Openhomes’ simple, elegant technology connects buyers and sellers directly online, enabling everything from scheduling a showing, giving feedback, or asking questions, to making an offer from your tablet or smartphone. OpenHomes’ services enable home owners to sell their homes themselves with confidence – for only 1% commission.

Docalytics

Docalytics is an easy to implement, cross-platform technology that enhances how businesses use their marketing and sales documents to interact with and capture actionable data from their prospective customers. Docalytics enables users to efficiently:

– CAPTURE more leads from their content.
– CONVERT more sales from these leads.
– CREATE better, more engaging content.

You can find out more about Gener8tor here at gener8tor.com

2 Gener8tor Startups Raise Over $600,000 In Seed Funding

Wisconsin’s duel city accelerator, Gener8tor, is producing startups in both Madison and Milwaukee Wisconsin. Two of their Winter 2013 graduates (Madison program), WeMontage has just closed out a $310,000 seed round. Quietyme has raised a $300,000 seed round.

The Greater Milwaukee Business Journal reports that the startup that allows users to turn their mobile pics into actual wallpaper, received their funding from Angels On The Water LLC, Gener8tor and an “undisclosed” Wisconsin based angel investment fund as well as several private investors.

While turning your mobile pics into decals, stickers, wallpaper and other forms of art is nothing new, WeMontage has found a way to does it in a way that’s better for the wall and looks better overall. Unlike their competition, WeMontage uses “premium high-tac adhesive, fabric-based wall covering, which adheres to textured walls, while not damaging the wall or paint,” the company told the Business Journal.

We are excited to have closed our seed capital round and are working hard to build a premium brand for WeMontage and acquire new customers,” said James Oliver, Jr., founder and CEO. “Since closing the seed round, we’ve been able to hire an outstanding software developer, Chris Schmitz, from Green Bay, as technical co-founder.”

Quietyme has developed a technology that allows hospitals, hotels, nursing homes and property owners to monitor the quality of indoor environments like noise, temperature, humidity and water leaks, the Business Journal reported on Wednesday.

In addition to Gener*tor and Angels On The Water LLC, American Family Insurance, KSFI Partners LLC and a private investor participated in this round. The startup previously received $20,000 in seed capital from Gener8tor at the on-set of the program.

“Hospitals and hotels now have an unprecedented tool that can put a spotlight on when and where customer sleep experiences are in jeopardy,” said CEO John Bialk in a press release. “Just imagine how special you feel when a front desk manager or nurse recognizes that your sleep may have been disrupted. By being proactive about disruptions, businesses can demonstrate their sincere commitment to a high-quality customer experience.”

Find out more about Gener8tor here.

Madison Entrepreneurs & Civic Leaders Team Up To Create Starting Block

Madison, Wisconsin has a budding entrepreneurial and startup community. Last year, on our sneaker-strapped startup road trip, we had an impromptu trip to Madison, and they assembled about 40 startup founders in less than 3 hours to meet with us. The following day we toured their startup ecosystem, and we were quite impressed.

While the startup ecosystem in Madison continued to grow, they lacked an epicenter like Chicago’s 1871 or DC’s 1776.

Well, a few weeks ago, Madison Alderman, entrepreneur, and founder Scott Resnick told us they were working on something big and now that has become a reality.

A group of Madison entrepreneurs and civic leaders announce the formation of StartingBlock Madison and the signing of a memorandum of understanding with the property owner to explore development of the Kleuter Building (former Mautz Paint building) into an entrepreneur center. StartingBlock Madison has solicited requests for proposal for development from leading development companies and anticipates selecting a development partner later this summer.

StartingBlock Madison’s goal is to create a centralized location for the Madison region’s entrepreneurial activities. The facility will provide Madison-based startups with affordable, flexible office and co-work space, accelerator support, peer and mentoring resources, education and training, and community building activities.

StartingBlock Madison’s facility will provide:
• a permanent home for Sector67, Madison’s successful makerspace/prototyping center for next-generation manufacturing technologies
• a location for gener8tor, a startup accelerator that provides expertise, mentorship, and capital through a 12-week intensive curriculum
• subsidized office space with short-term leases and flexibility for young startups
• quality at-market office space for high growth companies
• a healthcare IT incubator to support the growing number of healthcare IT startups
• space for other entrepreneurial resources, such as funders, investors, law firms, and other professional service providers
• community and auditorium space for Capital Entrepreneurs and other entrepreneurial activities and events.

“gener8tor is thrilled about the possibility of harnessing the cumulative brainpower, innovation, and array of resources from across the Madison entrepreneurial ecosystem into one unified, community hub. We anticipate the synergies and random connections that will be created by StartingBlock will lead to exponential benefits for Madison and the surrounding region,” gener8tor co-founder Troy Vosseller told Nibletz via email.

Resnick says that they hope to open the doors on the new Starting Block next fall.

Image: Kleuter Building

Milwaukee’s Gener8tor Accelerator Kicks Off Summer Session With These 5 Startups

Wisconsin based startup accelerator Gener8tor, is holding it’s summer session at their Milwaukee location this year. To date, the accelerator that operates out of both Madison and Milwaukee, has graduated 13 startup companies that have raised $5 million dollars in venture capital and created over 70 jobs. They hope to add to that impressive group with this year’s summer session.

Gener8tor co-founder Troy Vosseller and Joe Kirgues take a more hands on approach with their startups and keep the class size small. This seems to have paid off so far in terms of follow on funding and job creation. Of the 13 startup “graduates” so far, only one has been from outside of Wisconsin. That startup, MobileIgniter, relocated from Colorado.

This year’s summer session includes startups from Chicago, Austin Texas and Minneapolis. The other two startups are from Wisconsin, one from Madison, the other from Milwaukee.

This session begins today and runs through August 29th when the startups will participate in what Gener8tor co-founders call “Launch Day” (a much better name than Investor Day or Demo Day). Both Vosseller and Kirgues know that a startup really begins at the end of the program.

“The Summer 2013 Program consists of some of the most innovative startups from around the country,” Troy Vosseller, co-founder of gener8tor, said in a news release. “We’re really looking forward to helping these companies grow and achieve their full potential.”

Here are the five startups selected for Gener8tor’s third cohort.

Catalyze.IO Catalyze.IO offers cloud-delivered backend infrastructure for health and wellness applications to make it easier, cheaper and faster for developers to create solutions for healthcare. (Milwaukee, WI)

DeckPresenter DeckPresenter is a web presentation tool built for businesses designed to host, manage and track PowerPoint decks. (Austin, TX)

Docalytics Docalytics builds online tools to help marketers get more from their content marketing activities. The Docalytics platform gives marketers a more efficient way to generate and qualify new leads, while gathering actionable information about how their prospective customers interact with their documents. (Minneapolis, MN)

OpenHomes: OpenHomes is a safe, affordable, modern way to buy or sell a home. OpenHomes uses technology to connect homebuyers and sellers as well as helping real estate agents serve their clients better and more efficiently. (Madison, WI)

Optyn Optyn optimizes the marketing relationships between businesses and consumers. For consumers, Optyn is the first ever “marketing inbox” that lets consumers easily control their connections with businesses and automatically organizes their marketing emails. For businesses, Optyn increases conversions and revenue by acquiring and engaging customers through a simple, quick and inexpensive “opt-in” process. (Chicago, IL)

Check out the pitches from Memphis startup accelerator, Seed Hatchery’s recent investor day.