Comments Off on Nashville: Jumpstart Foundry Startup, Jamplify, Raises $600K0LikeLike 2,440
One of the highlights at the 2012 Jumpstart Foundry Demo Day in Nashville Tennessee last August, was how many startup teams actually had a product ready to go. Jamplify was one of those teams.
Jamplify crowdsources people for promoting the bands, brands and products that they love. Rather than crowdsourcing for actual capital Jamplify is crowdsourcing for social capital and human capital, and then there’s the payoff.
Jamplify is like the kickstarter for fan based, crowd based musical promotion. As a fan of a band or a promotional ambassador you can agree to promote a band or musician. Based on your social graph and the amount of people that you actually touch with the campaigns short, trackable url you will become eligible for prizes from the band or artist you’re promoting.
What’s even cooler is you wouldn’t know it if you saw them pitch, but Jamplify was founded by two friends that met while they were coworkers in New York at Goldman Sachs. Andy Pickens and Moses Soyoola, left one of the most prestigious addresses on Wall Street and spent last summer iterating, developing, pivoting and reworking Jamplify to the product that it is today.
They’ve already started seeing great results. Business Insider reports that Jamplify was able to drive 190,000 views to a 15 year old pop stars YouTube video. What’s even more impressive is those 190,000 views were referred by 670 fans, meaning each fan drove about 280 views.
Their $600,000 round came from a number of unnamed Nashville and New York based investors and will allow the team to continue working on a product that’s been tried,proven and is developing traction.
Here’s their pitch video from the Jumpstart Foundry demo day:
Comments Off on Listenup.FM Pitches At Spark Nashville0LikeLike 2,279
Listneup.fm CEO Mykas Degesys pitches at Spark Nashville (photo: NMI 2013)
Tennessee startup Listenup.fm just got back from pitching at everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference. Their platform is designed to engage fans with their favorite artists and bands while also returning bands and record labels with valuable analytics.
Their streaming music platform is built on top of the highly successful Spotify platform and rewards fans for sharing the music they’re listening to across their social networks.
CEO Mykas Degesys explains that as the music industry moves from an ownership to an access model, bands need more and more ways to engage with fans and of course generate extra revenue.
Even just a few years ago it was important to own your music collection. Whether it be vinyl, cassette, CD or mp3, most people who loved music owned it in some media format or another. Now with services like Rhapsody,Rdio,Slacker and Spotify, and high speed internet, more and more people are turning to all you can eat access packages with libraries millions of songs deep.
Royalties are baked into services that range from $4.99 a month to $19.99 a month, all supplying some sort of unlimited listening.
Bands can now find ways to get to their exact target market. They can reward fans with prizes and Listenup.fm even allows fans to earn points to purchase prizes like limited edition swag and backstage passes.
Check out Degesys’ pitch from the Spark Nashville event in the video below.
Listenup.fm also pitched at everywhereelse.co 2013, don’t miss everywhereelse.co 2014 with tickets now at 2013 prices through March 27. Click here
Comments Off on PhotoRankr Shows Off A Better Stock Photo Model At Everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference0LikeLike 2,544
By David Morris, University Of Memphis Entrepreneurial Journalism Student
CEO Jacob Sniff is headstrong and passionate about his first entrepreneurial project, PhotoRankr.
PhotoRankr a platform that covers all the needs of today’s photographers and some needs they may not even be aware of yet. The PhotoRankr platform is web-based and lets photographers handle several key tasks, including the sale of their work, social interaction with fellow members , and an internal job market for clients to list jobs for photographer members.
What makes PhotoRankr different from stock photo sites such as istockphoto.com and shutterstock.com is the photographer keeps 70 percent of their photo sales, and “photo ranker battles,” said Sniff. These battles let photos be placed side by side so site members can easily compare them and select which photo is better. The site generates battles automatically while also allowing users to create their own battles. This information gathered from these battles is of great value to photographers in order to gauge the quality of their work against peers.
“Social media is our current marketing channel,” said Sniff. Current integration with large social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Google+ set the stage for information exchange for PhotoRankr and its photographers. Photographers can seamlessly share their photos to any one of these social media sites.
Currently, PhotoRankr is free for anyone who signs up. At the beginning of March this year, PhotoRankr will roll out an annual, three-tier subscription model. “The base plan will remain free,” said Sniff.
Comments Off on Record Industry Veteran Heather McBee Joins Nashville Startup Populr0LikeLike 2,394
Nashville startup Populr has been in the news a lot lately. Back in November, the company led by founder Nicholas Holland, raised $425,000 before launching into beta. Back in January Populr officially launched after just two months in beta.
Populr.me, one of a handful of technology providers entering the micropublishing space, already has an edge in that it allows users and groups the ability to collaborate on POP’s as a team. This functionality, allows organizations the ability to create, co-manage and share their interactive one-pager’s both publicly and privately. POP’s can be delivered instantly to both individuals and groups by use of it’s sharing function, which includes connectivity to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, email and instant messaging. POP’s are accessible by a Populr.me sub-domain, or through use of a designated URL.
Many business people have the need to quickly share impactful media, but lack the resources in which to do it. Creating an entire website is too time-intensive. Creating a blog is too public. Populr.me allows everyone to create high-impact one page presentations in a matter of minutes, and then share them instantly either internally, or through their favorite social media platforms, according to Holland.
Today it was announced that record industry veteran Heather McBee has joined Populr.me as Senior Communications Strategist. McBee spent several years on Nashville’s Music Row, most recently she spent many years with Sony Music Nashville.
“HEATHER was looking for a new perspective and we were looking for someone who had organic connections to the business community in NASHVILLE and abroad. We needed a broad business thinker with a technical mind and she presents the perfect blend of both,” Holland told radio and record authority, allaccess.com.
This isn’t the first time Populr has reached out to Nashville’s music industry. Music and technology entrepreneur Mark Montgomery is an investor as well, telling the Tennessean last year that Populr could be “a game changing venture that could boost Nashville’s position on the digital map”
Check out Populr and nearly 100 other startups from across the country and around the world at this huge startup conference.
Comments Off on Former Facebook Chief Invests In Nashville Startup Streamweaver0LikeLike 2,189
Nashville startup, Streamweaver launched in September. The company offers a new, more socially integrated video experience.
According to TechCrunch, Streamweaver has actually found a way to make video more social. This is achieved by not only sharing videos with friends, and tagging video recordings, but in playback StreamWeaver allows for split screen. This way friends at the same event can watch their friends videos in a more complete, multiscreen display.
Early on Streamweaver was able to raise $2.6 million dollars locally from Tennessee Community Ventures and Mountain Group Capital according to the Tennessean. Both firms are part of the TNInvestco program.
Now they’ve raised a $1.3 million dollar Series A round that was led by former Facebook Privacy head Chris Kelly. Kelly joined the social giant in 2005 when there were only about 25 employees. He left in 2010 and began investing in startups. Kelly also recently invested in video startup GoDigital that produces documentaries.
“As mobile users, we all love to share content and connect with others on the go … and I’ve seen a lot of social startups,” Kelly told TechCrunch, “but Streamweaver is making a difference in how we collaborate with each other and collectively create interactive content.”
Comments Off on Nashville Startup: TalkApolis Brings Locally Produced High Quality Video To The Smartphone0LikeLike 2,193
As media consumption continues to move the direction of the smart, connected, handheld device, companies need to continue to adapt. Or of course just launch new companies. Such is the case with Nashville startup TalkApolis. The Nashville startup is headed by John Bransford
“You can watch locally focused, entertaining, high quality video shows on your smartphone or mobile device that were made to be watched on it. Download our app for your device and watch TalkApolis content with a touch of your screen” Bransford told us in an interview.
The microcasting company was originally selected for the 2012 Jumpstart Foundry cohort but dropped out before the program ended in August.
Even without the accelerator program Bransford’s background in media (real media like HBO) and development, including Drupal, helped bring TalkApolis to fruition.
Bransford has designed the TalkApolis platform to operate smooth and efficiently with the ability to produce relevant content extremely fast. ” Our production suite is so adept, we can test out a show from something we see trending on the internet and see if it sticks almost immediately. If it doesn’t get traction or the host get an audience, we move on to the next one. Licensees will benefit from this agility of the back-end system by being able to do the exact same things in their local markets. Our plan is to allow licensees to apply their unique local knowledge where it matters.” Bransford said.
Check out the rest of our interview with Bransford below.
Comments Off on Exclusive: Nashville Startup RentStuff Acquired0LikeLike 2,382
We’ve been covering the wild, but awesome ride that Nashville startup RentStuff has been on since May. RentStuff is a 2011 graduate of the JumpStart Foundry startup accelerator in music city.
Over the summer the Nashville startup relocated to the 1871 startup incubator in Chicago.
RentStuff started off as a peer to peer rental platform. Got a lawn mower rotting away in the garage. You could use RentStuff to rent it out to someone who needed it for a few days. Items like iPads, DSLR cameras and even powerful leaf blowers could be found at RentStuff.
In August the RentStuff team, led by Chris Jaeger, pivoted away from that model in favor of a more traditional rental search utility. Jaeger told us then that they would continue to support both platforms however the original model, despite rave reviews, wasn’t scaling fast enough. You could find a lawnmower for rent in Nashville and a DSLR camera in Pennsylvania, with the people who actually wanted to rent them hundreds of miles away.
Today we found out that RentStuff has been acquired by RentalCompare, the largest searchable database of things to rent across the country. Terms of the sale were not disclosed by press time.
Jaeger has always been a big proponent of the Nashville startup scene, especially the Entrepreneur Center and JumpStart Foundry. Tennessee venture firm Solidus backs several Tennessee accelerators including JumpStart Foundry and also participated in a follow on round for RentStuff.
RentStuff alerted their user base to their acquisition with the message below posted on their Facebook page:
Comments Off on Nashville Startup WannaDo Finds You What You Wanna Do0LikeLike 1,914
It seems like, on the surface, the event discovery space is a big space. When you peel it back though there aren’t many event discovery apps that are doing it right. The two we like the most are Louisville startup Impulcity and Nashville startup WannaDo.
Wannado, under the leadership of founder Steven Buhram, is starting out local in Nashville for now with plans on scaling out soon. Impulcity on the other hand is going all in, connecting their user base to music, and entertainment events nationwide and hyper local.
Wannado has a different approach though, than the average event discovery nut. The first thing that we noticed when testing Wannado in their home town was that everything was laid out in very easy to understand categories.
Play- obviously encompasses fun things to do, artsy stuff, plays and music (which Nashville has a lot of).
Work & Network is your guide t company events and career minded conference.
Eat & Drink, is pretty self explanatory
Learn, is all about learning and can be anything from health and wellness events to CPR courses.
You can even peel back layers and get to geek categories, nerd categories, artsy categories and more.
Once you find the event that’s for you, you can easily save it to your wannado list or share it using this unique share tool that allows you to share it by email, Facebook, text message of Twitter. Why not invite all your friends in the world to the great events you find on wannado.
That’s not the only way wannado differs from other traditional event discovery platforms though. Like any other app you can invite all of your Facebook friends to use wannado and you can see if any of your Facebook friends are currently using wannado. Naturally you’re going to trust a friends opinion about an event.
With wannado though, they also have guides, more seasoned people from an area that may know the lay of the land a little better. You can see what the guides are recommending or you can ask the guide something which makes the experience socially engaging.
So does it work?
Well in one night in Nashville we were able to use Wannado to take in Luke Bryan and Rodney Atkins at two different events free. We found some awesome hamburgers and realized we missed out on what would have been a fun startup breakfast event.
Comparatively speaking Wannado actually showed us more of what was going on in Nashville in one night than any other app we’ve tried. While it seems Buhram is comfortable with building scale with baby steps, if they could replicate this user experience to scale quickly across the country it could become our event app of choice for all events from seminars to cooking lessons to concerts.
Comments Off on Nashville Startup Jamplify Exhibiting At DEMO Courtesy Of Startup America0LikeLike 2,411
As we reported earlier this morning, Startup America revealed the 8 startups that won their contest for a free trip to DEMO in Santa Clara California this week. Four startups are exhibiting in the DEMO Showcase Pavilion. The other four startups are presenting on the main stage.
Nashville Jumpstart Foundry graduate Jamplify was one of the four startup selected for the exhibit space in the DEMO Showcase Pavillion.
Jamplify is a hybrid, promotional, crowdsourcing platform. With Jamplify’s finished product, you get the most logical promotional vehicle for bands, musicians, and bloggers that’s available to date.
Jamplify crowdsources people for promoting the bands that they love. Rather than crowdsourcing for actual capital Jamplify is crowdsourcing for social capital and human capital, and then there’s the payoff.
Jamplify is like the kickstarter for fan based, crowd based musical promotion. As a fan of a band or a promotional ambassador you can agree to promote a band or musician. Based on your social graph and the amount of people that you actually touch with the campaigns short, trackable url you will become eligible for prizes from the band or artist you’re promoting.
Jamplify arrived at Nashville’s Jumpstart Foundry from New York City where the founders worked on Wall Street.
Check out their video pitch from Jumpstart Foundry’s demo day in August below:
Comments Off on Nashville Startup: Edo Interactive Closes Another $15 Million In Venture Funding0LikeLike 2,277
Edo Interactive, a startup headquartered in Nashville TN has just announced another $15 million in venture funding. Silicon Valley based VantagePoint Capital Partners led the latest $15 million dollar round. Baird Ventures also participated. Bair led Edo Interactive’s $20 million dollar round last year and cumulatively Edo Interactive has raised $54 million in venture funding.
So what does this Nashville startup do that’s garnered such huge venture capital investments? They provide a deals service, similar to Groupon, but through banks and retailers vs mom and pop restaurants, coffee shops and other businesses. Retailers pay banks a fee to market deals to their databases of credit and debit cards. This gives Edo Interactives client base a much more lucrative market.
Using Edo Interactive’s proprietary technology bank cards are directly tied to participating retailers cash register systems, delivering an instant rebate right back to the customer utilizing the deal. The retailer can then notify the customer by email, text or voicemail. Chicagobusiness.com reports that Edo has relationships with 140 banks with 150 million card holders. They also work with 5 of the 10 largest credit card providers.
Ed Braswell is the CEO of Edo Interactive which is headquartered in Nashville Tennessee and has an additional 20 employees working in the Chicago area. They employ 75 total right now.
“Payments and advertising are colliding; to stay competitive, banks must deliver value to cardholders that goes beyond the traditional realm of services, while advertisers are searching for solutions to drive customer acquisition, loyalty and return on marketing investment,” CEO Ed Braswell said in the statement. “This latest investment will help Edo expand our market leadership position and scale our advertising content, merchant partnerships and growth within the highly competitive local business market.”
Braswell has said that he hopes to offer 140 million new offers per week by 2013. Crate & Barrel, Nordstrom, Target and Subway are just some of the companies that work with Edo Interactive’s platform.
Comments Off on Nashville’s Griffin Technology All In On iPhone 50LikeLike 1,744
While Griffin Technology hardly qualifies as a startup since it was launched in 1992, the company founded (and still remaining) in Nashville Tennessee is a driver of innovation. Griffin started out by making computer parts beginning with DB15 connectors and launching USB peripherals in 1998. However, it was the release of the original iPhone and a barrage of well designed accessories created in Nashville Tennessee that drove Griffin to “household name” status.
With the announcement of the iPhone 5 last week and the release of the device next Friday, Griffin, like the rest of us, waited with eyes glued to projectors, screens and monitors throughout their Tennessee campus, reports Nasvhille Business Journal’s Jamie McGee. Over 150 Griffin employees gathered around to watch the release of the iPhone 5, all seeing the same images that we saw thanks to live blogs and other information. They watched with pens and paper and immediately went to work on their designs.
Griffin Technology and other iPhone accessory manufacturers got a welcomed break when the last iPhone update was from the 4 to the 4S. There was no real form factor change.
“To have something happen like a complete form-factor change, like we’ve seen on the screen, means our industrial design people are going to be really, really busy for the next couple of weeks,” said Web Wester, who handles social media for Griffin told local news station WKRN.
By the next morning Griffin had a plan. About mid-morning the sent out a press release confirming that their Survivor and Protector collections along with their Reveal, Chevron, Moxy, Mustachio & Wise Eyes, Kazoo and Animal Parade lines will all be quickly updated for the new iPhone 5. The company also plans on adding some more cases to the mix as time goes on.
The iPone 5 hits Apple stores, Best Buy and carrier partner retailers on Friday. Griffin Technology hasn’t said when you’ll be able to pick up their accessories for the iPhone 5 but it should be soon. A Griffin spokesperson has also said that the power accessories the company is known for will be released for the iPhone 5 shortly. However, Apple changed the 30 pin cord design for the first time since the original iPod so those may take a little longer.
Griffin also has alumni startup founders among their ranks. The group behind Nashville Startup Evermind, a device that helps keep tabs on the elderly, all got their start at Griffin.
Comments Off on Nibletz Is At The DNC And We’re Using Nashville Startup: KiWi0LikeLike 2,017
The Obama Administration continued to pave the way for Startups all over the country with the creation of Startup America, the passing of the JOBSAct and many other initiatives that have been it in place to help entrepreneurs and startup founders across America.
Thats why it’s our honor to cover the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte North Carolina. We’ll be partnering with Startup America and the guys at StartpRockon.com to bring you guys everything there is about Startups at what’s sure to be one of the best DNC’s of our time.
We’ve got some great access to bring the best coverage for Startups across America.
We’ll be representing one of the best states “everywhere else” for Startups and entrepreneurs and that is Nibletz home state, the great state of Tennessee. Not only that but starting Tuesday we’ll be using one of the exciting new startups that just graduated from JumpStart Foundry’s 2012 class, KiWi,
We got off to a rough start with KiWi after their founder ad libbed at the end of his presentation. Since then KiWi and it’s co-founder Jayme Hoffman has come highly recommended by Michael Burcham, Vic Gatto and Marcus Whitney,
Hoffman and his team couldn’t catch a break after demo day as they’ve been working tirelessly since then to make sure we’ve got something great to use at the Democratic National Convention.
KiWi is like Instagram except instead of photos you are taking short videos. The UI is extreme
As for Demo Day, Hoffman had said that he would be looking for term sheets in Nashville for thirty days. It came off to me that he was giving Nashville an ultimatum, give us a term sheet in 30days or we’re leaving. That was far from the case. Hoffman was trying to convey that things have been moving so fast for the KiWi team that an opportunity for local investors to get in at the ground level may not exist in 30 days. Of course we may speed that process along this week.ly user friendly. Filter selection is topnotch and from capture to share, the experience is fast and fluid. It’s actually not nearly as clunky as SocialCam.
We’re looking forward to the next few days here in Charlotte representing our home team: LaunchMemphis,LaunchYourCity,Launch Tennessee and Startup Tennessee.
Ok so here’s a concept we’ve never seen before and it’s quite interesting. A Nashville startup called Street Jelly has put street performers online for the world to enjoy. But not only that they’ve created a system of using virtual currency called “tokens” so that you can fill up that street performers jar, guitar case, hat or bucket. Yes, any kind of street performer be it a clown, a mime, a great saxophone player, guitar player or any other street performer, can go virtual with Street Jelly.
The street performers can take the “Rocker Pins” that viewers have purchased with tokens and cash them out for real money via PayPal. Now you can sit in the comfort of your own home and watch street performers until your hearts content.
Have you ever come back from a trip and told people about a great street performer you’ve seen? Now you can take them online to Street Jelly and show them first hand.
Street performers add to most cities culture. Most street performers are actually really good and some just prefer to be street performers rather than working late night in smoky dark clubs or trying their luck at studios and record deals. Street Jelly captures the essence of great street performers and puts them online to share with the rest of the world.
This idea was born in Nashville, a city that has no shortage of street performers. In fact Nashville, because it’s Music City USA, has some of the best street performers in the world.
Street performers was founded by serial entrepreneur Frank Podlaha, who’s history with music goes way back to his childhood and playing in the drum line. He’s had some other successful startups which he talks about in the interview below.
Now in their third year the cohort based startup accelerator Jumpstart Foundry, in Nashville Tennessee has ironed out a lot of kinks. We got a chance to spend some time with Marcus Whitney a co-founder at Jumstart Foundry, who also serves as the accelerator’s Managing Director. Through each of the last three cohorts Whitney has spent the most day to day time with all of the classes.
Throughout the Jumpstart Foundry demo day the theme surrounding Whitney’s role was consistent. Whitney, while a great and likable guy, means business. He’s a serial entrepreneur himself who’s founded a handful of his own successful startups. That also means he knows the struggles first hand at what a founder and a founding team at a startup goes through. That’s why he’s one of the best possible people in Nashville to serve as Jumpstart Foundry’s Managing Director.
While a three month boot-camp style accelerator can be a fun and life enriching experience, Whitney is known for telling teams like it is and establishing the ground rules on day one. He’s also known for pushing entrepreneurs to their limit. As far as the program goes there’s no bs in the selection process. Whitney told us that they don’t take teams without a technologist. We’ve seen teams at accelerators all over the country who come with an idea guy, a business development guy and no developer or coder. Often these teams blow most of their seed money on outsourcing and barely have a product ready for demo day. One of the biggest things we noticed at Jumpstart Foundry’s demo day is that all seven teams had a product up and running. No wireframes, no mock ups, no business plans, every team had a working product you could go out on the internet and try right now.
We asked Whitney along with Baker Donelson’s Emerging Business Practice Chair, Chris Sloan, what team at the Jumpstart Foundry this year, was the most improved. They both unanimously and at the same exact time said PhotoRankr. In fact they both agreed that PhotoRankr captured the essence of what a cohort style accelerator program was all about.
Whitney talked about PhotoRankr’s day one pitch. Sloan, who is a pro-amateur photographer in his s
pare time recalled thatPhotoRankr’s pitch on day one included a slide show with no photos. Who does that? A photo platform slide show with no photos.
When Sloan introduced the PhotoRankr team on Thursday he spoke very proudly letting the audience know that not only was their pitch deck filled with photos, every photo in their slide show was procured from PhotoRankr.
So what is PhotoRankr, it’s an online community for photographers. It allows photographers to chat with one another, get advice, vote pictures up and down and the biggest part, it provides a platform to sell photos. As PhotoRankr co-founder Tyler Sniff pointed out in the presentation, the stock photo resources on the internet right now are relatively weak, most have had the same images for years and the ones with great photos are way too costly.
Now, someone looking for a photo for their website, book, magazine, movie or any other use can peruse the pages of PhotoRankr and find what they need. The photographers themselves set the prices for the photos, along with the licensing terms which typically means they will be fairly priced.
Sloan recently joined PhotoRankr and wasn’t sure what to expect. He had tried most of the other photo sharing services out there, but he was excited when he started receiving emails notifying him that people had liked his photos.
As for the team itself, they work and operate like a family. That could possibly be attributed to the fact that three of the four members of the founding team are actually brothers. Tyler serves as the company’s Head of Business Development. Their CEO is Jacob Sniff who will be graduating from Princeton this year. Their third brother Matthew Sniff serves as the company’s CEO. Noah Willard, a family friend, serves as the Creative Director.
Whitney said that one of the teams keys to success throughout the program was their reaction to criticism. Rather than being head strong and ego driven, the PhotoRankr team took every piece of criticism in stride, often asked questions about what their mentors were telling them, and then sought advice immediately after making changes.
From where we stand the biggest challenge for PhotoRankr is going to be exposing the features to the market place and what sets them apart from Flickr, Photo Bucket and that product formerly known as Picassa.
When you watch the pitch video below you’ll see what a great job PhotoRankr did during the Jumpstart Foundry program:
Kyle
One of the highlights at the 2012 Jumpstart Foundry Demo Day in Nashville Tennessee last August, was how many startup teams actually had a product ready to go. Jamplify was one of those teams.
Guest
