Nashville Entrepreninjas Take Flight (sort of)

By day Jared Marquette, Ryan Carter, Robbie Goldsmith, Sam Lingo, and John Murdock are Nashville-based entrepreneurs living the good life, making stuff, creating things and innovating. By night, they suit up in the ninja masks that they were reportedly born with, and become entrepreninjas.

Entrepreninjas is the name of the Michael Burcham and Nashville Entrepreneur Center backed team that competed this weekend in Red Bull’s Flugtag competition. Flugtag is a national competition that was held simultaneously across five US cities this past Saturday. The competition calls for teams to create a man powered flying machine. The machine is launched from a runway over water where it’s judged.

The celebrity judges were looking for creativity of craft, distance, and showmanship.

The Entrepreninjas built their craft in Nashville with part of the building taking place at the new Entrepreneur Center where team member Sam Lingo is the operations manager.

Entrepreninjas built most of their flying machine at the Nashville Entrepreneur Center (photo: Facebook)

Michael Burcham, along with the Nashville Entrepreneur Center, Polar Technology, Track Ref, and the Thinkery teamed up to back the Entrepreninjas with the expenses of building a flight machine, getting it to Miami and entering the contest. It seems like perfect sense. If these guys can build companies, they can easily build a flying machine, no problem.

The team competed against other teams in Miami as well as the four other locations. The top 3 teams from each location won prizes from Red Bull, including Red Bull sports and music experiences, and of course bragging rights.

The flying machine looked great, judging from the photos on the Entrepreneur Center and Burcham’s personal Facebook page.

The team seemed to do very well in the showmanship category, showing off their ninja moves on the runway before launching the flying machine into the sky (or the water as it was).

As you can see from the video below though, they didn’t get very far in flight. The Entrepreninjas, despite a valiant effort, gave new meaning to the theory “Fail Fast.” But alas they are entrepreninjas and iteration trumps perfection, so I’m sure we will see them back out again next year.

This was an awesome showing for Nashville and a great team building exercise. For your enjoyment their flight video is below.

Tennessee Showcasing Startups, Culture And More At Southland June 11th and 12th

Launch Tennessee and the Music City Music Council have teamed up to hold a new startup and innovation conference in Nashville in June. The conference, called Southland, butts up to two of the regions biggest music events, Bonaroo and the Country Music Association Music Festival.

This unique scheduling allows fans of both music and innovation to plan a nice 10 day trip to Nashville and enjoy a mixture of both.

Southland will feature venture capitalists and angel investors from across the country along with an extensive lineup of speakers and panelists with a firsthand knowledge of the power of innovation and its ability to transform a region’s ecosystem. Speakers include Sarah Lacy (Founder, PandoDaily), Michael Sippy (Vice President of Consumer Products, Twitter), Michael Marquez (Co-Founder, Code Advisors), KC Estenson (SVP & GM, CNN Digital), Ali Partovi (Co-Founder, Code.org), and many more from CNN, Scripps Networks Interactive, IBM and others.

“The Southeast is a hotbed for technology startups,” notes Charlie Brock, CEO of LaunchTN. “This conference is going to be the premier event for bringing together the best our region has to offer in entrepreneurs and cultural tastemakers, along with investors, technology and health care executives from around the country.”

In addition to the usual startup conference programming, like a startup village, and engaging keynotes speakers and panels, Southland will also offer a “Makers Marketplace” of southern culture featuring local musicians, BBQ pit masters, small batch distillers and southern artisans.

Unlike the national everywhereelse conference hosted in Memphis Tennesse, which highlights startups and innovation across, Southland is poised to be the largest regional conference for innovation and startups. Sandwiched in between the two major musical events, the Southland conference will offer an unheard of and very attractive cultural and innovation injection to all attendees.

Tickets are only $300, interested in attending visit southlandse.com

Nibletz provide the best startup coverage in the southeast, here’s more!

SouthernAlpha’s Spark Nashville A Success RECAP

Southernalpha.com co-founder and Editor In Chief Walker Duncan, speaks to a capacity crowd at Spark Nashville (photo: NMI 2013)

We visited Southernalpha.com’s Spark Nashville as part of our next 50 stop leg on our sneaker-strapped startup road trip. One of the biggest key’s to our success has been getting out in the trenches with startups everywhere else.

Southernalpha.com was founded by Nashville serial entrepreneur Marcus Whitney and Walker Duncan who serves as the sites Editor in Chief. They cater to “High Growth Technology for the South East” specifically Nashville and New Orleans.

Armed with a seed investment of $150,000 from Duncan’s father’s venture capital firm Solidus, they’ve ramped up nicely and attracted a couple hundred local startups, entrepreneurs and power players to 3rd and Lindsley in Nashville last Thursday.

Whitney, Nashville Technology Council’s CTO of the Year, serves as a visionary and advisor. At the event Whitney credited Duncan and Southernalpha’s Marketing Director Kelley Boothe with the great turn out that saw 11 startups from across Tennessee pitch in a competition for $1000 dollars and an iPad.

Southernalpha.com launched during the late summer. Despite the early investment the site is struggling to gain traction outside of it’s inner circle.

Duncan is no stranger to journalism. He left his post as the Health Care, Manufacturing, Technology and Tourism Reporter for the Nashville Post, a publication also owned by the elder Duncan’s investment firm, to start SouthernAlpha.

As for the event itself, it was alive with startups, entrerpeneurs and investors. It kicked off with a fireside chat between Duncan, Whitney and Nick Holland the founder of CentreSource and now Populr.me.

The discussion was great, highlighting why Nashville has such a strong startup community and many lessons Whitney and Holland learned growing their businesses in Nashville immediately following the first dotcom bubble burst.

Holland and Whitney talked about being inspiring and the yes mentality. They also shared the dumbest thing they’ve done as an entrepreneur with the audience.

After the pitches there was more time for networking and people stuck around well into the night.

For more coverage of this great event click here. We’ll be in Lexington KY, Cincinnati, Columbus, DC, Austin, Kansas City and even Silicon Valley, all in the next 5 weeks on our sneaker-strapped startup road trip.

Were you one of the 1287 people at everywhereelse 2013? Don’t miss everywhereelse 2014 with a stronger lineup, more panels, even better parties oh and free breakfast and lunch, click here.

Nashville Accelerator Jumpstart Foundry Announces Early Bird Applications Now Open

Here at nibletz.com we continue to provide superior national coverage of the southeast. With that in mind we love covering Nashville’s startup scene and especially their local accelerator program Jumpstart Foundry.

Jumpstart Foundry is a three month cohort based startup accelerator program. Several alumni have received follow on funding. RentStuff, a Jumpstart Foundry graduate from two years ago was acquired back in November..

JSF’s 2012 program accelerated the growth of ten startups and built on the overall Jumpstart Foundry track record of success. Like other national accelerators, JSF rates its success in part on the number of graduate companies that are able to raise capital or boot-strap operations without additional capital. Over the first three years of the program, JSF has achieved a very strong 65% success rate. Thirteen JSF alumni have raised follow- on capital and are building operations. These results combined with a rigorous program refined over multiple years, a deep mentor pool and affiliation with the Global Accelerator Network position Jumpstart Foundry as one of the top accelerators in the United States.

“Each year both the number and quality of applicants has grown,” Marcus Whitney, chief technology officer for Moontoast and one of Jumpstart Foundry’s managing directors said in a statement. “Given the program’s established track record of success for our graduates, I’m excited to see the group this year.”

“Year after year we increase the strength of the Jumpstart Program expectations in terms of Mentors, guest speakers and participating company performance. The tradition continues this year as we open up the application process for 2013” Vic Gatto, Partner at Solidus Company and Managing Director at Jumpstart Foundry told nibletz.com.

Startups interested in applying can head over to jumpstartfoundry.com

Meet Marcus Whitney, and Several Jumpstart Foundry startups at the biggest startup conference in the country.

Nashville Featured in CNN’s “Cities Where Startups Are Thriving”

For years Nashville Tennessee has been known as Music City USA. Country music starts in Nashville. This year ABC is even running an hour long drama based on country music and life in Nashville, called “Nashville”. To people from the midsouth it’s no secret that Nashville also has a thriving entrepreneurial, startup and tech scene, but now they’ve been highlighted in a piece on cnn.com called “Cities Where Startups Are Thriving”.

In 2010 the Nashville Chamber of Commerce in conjunction with the Nashville Technology Council opened the Entrepreneur Center. A team of 75 people in an “entrepreneur task force” began researching and discussing the possibility of creating a resource for Nashville entrepreneurs back in 2007, a year after a similar effort was started in Memphis Tennessee by entrepreneur Eric Mathews and Launch Your City.

The center started as an online resource, and eventually became a brick and mortar centralized location that serves as the startup and technology hub in Music City.

In May of 2010 it was announced that successful healthcare entrepreneur Michael Burcham was picked to lead the Nashville Entrepreneur Center after a six month search.

Now the community is thriving. Nashville investors have put $72 million dollars into 21 companies so far in 2012, nearly double the $38 million dollars and 8 companies they invested in in 2009.

Startups like Edo Interactive that originated in Nashville and now has offices in Nashville and Chicago, has raised over $50 million dollars in venture capital. Another startup, RentStuff, which got it’s formidable start in the Jumpstart Foundry accelerator program, housed at the Entrepreneur Center, followed in Edo Interactive’s footsteps, relocating to Chicago and leading to an acquisition first reported here at nibletz.com late last week.

Nashville is just one of 9 entrepreneurial pockets that LaunchTN is supporting with startup accelerators. The nine high growth areas include four major hubs, Memphis, Nashville, Knoxville and Chattanooga and also have five shoulder markets as well. Tennessee was the second state to formalize a Startup America region. That much entrepreneurial and startup activity in the state of over 42,000 square miles means that no Tennessee resident is more than an hour and a half away from an entrepreneurial hub.

Linkage:

CNN’s “Cities Where Startups Thrive”

No one covers high growth tech news for the southeast like nibletz.com

Tennessee is home to the largest startup conference in the world

Nashville: Jumpstart Foundry’s Marcus Whitney Named CTO Of The Year By Nashville Technology Council

Marcus Whitney, Jumpstart Foundry, Nashville startups,accelerator,Moontoast, Boston startup,startup,startups,startup news

(photo: marcuswhitney.com)

Marcus Whitney is a renaissance man of sorts when it comes to entrepreneurism and startups in Nashville and Boston Massachusetts. Some of his credentials include being an advisor and curriculum lead at Nashville’s Jumpstart Foundry accelerator where he traditionally fires up the troops on day one. He is also an advisor to several Nashville area startups, co-founder of Southernalpha.com and an overall leader in Nashville’s startup community.

It’s actually for his day job though, as the CTO of social marketing, commerce and analytics startup Moontoast that has earned him the title of CTO Of The Year by the Nashville Technology Council.

Moontoast was founded in 2008 as a social knowledge base provider that eventually led to the social marketing and analytics suite that they employ today to companies big and small including some on the Fortune 500. Their stable of top-shelf clients include branding power house Proctor & Gamble, Ford, Kirkland’s, and Universal. Even Nashville country powerhouse record label Big Machine records uses Moontoast, you may have heard of their superstar Taylor Swift.

Whitney has grown to become an expert in the world of social and email engagement. Prior to starting Moontoast in 2008 he spent the previous four years of his career as Director of Technology and Partner at Emma. Emma is an email marketing firm that uses creative, out of the box approaches, to again engage their over 10,000 customers.

Whitney’s energetic personality and real life experiences have led him to be engaging in person as well. In different discussions with Whitney we’ve talked about how he and his team at Jumpstart Foundry are able to pull the real entrepreneur and founder out of a startup. Some startups come into the three month accelerator program with a great idea and a horrible pitch. Whitney is able to pull the real message out which has actually led to follow on funding for several program startups.

Whitney’s latest startup is Southernalpha.com a regional tech blog focused on high growth potential startups and technology in the southeast. They’re centralizing out of Nashville at the moment with plans to rapidly expand across the south east in the same way that Silicon Prairie news covers the Silicon Prairie.

Whitney was honored at the annual Nasvhille Technology Council Awards on October 23.

Linkage:

Moontoast is here

Jumpstart Foundry is here

SouthernAlpha is here

Everywhere else is here

Two Down One To Go: Nashville’s JumpStart Foundry Prepares For Demo Day

Last week we were in Chattanooga Tennessee for GigTank. GigTank was the first ever accelerator focused on startups building around 1 GB ethernet. Chattanooga was the first city in the United States with one gigabit fiber optic internet to every home and business in a 600 square mile radius. They beat Kansas City, who’s 1 GB fiber project with Google debuted last month.

We saw some great startups present great ideas. Banyan, a collaborative research tool, that is both up and running,and demonstrated first hand the effects of super fast 1 GB ethernet, was the winner. GigTank broke the mold of the traditional accelerator demo day by offering a $100,000 cash prize to the startup that won their pitch contest in the entrepreneur category.

GigTank broke the mold yet again when they ran a student track along the entrepreneur track. The students received free room and board and incubated at the LampPost Group’s offices in downtown Chattanooga. The student track had a $50,000 cash prize won by two girls whose startup Babel Sushi, is an on the go translating platform. The entrepreneurs incubated at Colab a few blocks down the road from LampPost. The entrepreneurs however, received a $15,000 seed investment.

This Thursday was Demo Day for the ZeroTo510 accelerator in Memphis Tennessee. The ZeroTo510 accelerator was a joint project of the Memphis Bioworks Foundation and Seed Hatchery. It was also the first cohort based medical device accelerator.

Zeroto510’s demo day was more traditional in that there wasn’t a cash prize but rather a showing of what the six teams were working on and what they had accomplished in the 90 day period. All six teams did a great job presenting. They all had viable go to market strategies as well as thoroughly researched projects. Some actually had products to show off, which is a break from the traditional web based accelerators.

Patrick Woods, Director at archer>malmo’s a>m ventures group said “there was actually physical products you could touch” making reference to the several accelerator demo days he’s seen where everything was either on the web, in the cloud or still in pre-release formative stages.

You can see a quick background on the six teams at ZeroTo510 here.

Some of the presenters had already secured physical trials, others, like Restore Medical had great news, like the fact that they already had a purchase order for $3.75 million.

Next week marks the end of the current session of Nashville’s Jumpstart Foundry. Now in it’s third year, the JumpStart Foundry has a great class of startups that will be pitching next week.

Life in an accelerator is tough. Tennessee Venture Capitalist and Partner at Solidus, Vic Gatto, told nibletz last week that there were originally ten teams in JumpStart Foundry and three have since dropped out. The best of the best for next week are ready present and include:

Contigo Financial, an online consumer lender offering a suite of responsible loan products through the workplace.

Jamplify (formerly OKDJ), a social media marketing platform which turns fans into active promoters of online content.

The Skillery, a marketplace for classes and workshops led by experts in the community.

Evermind, the first consumer-friendly senior monitoring system. If you can plug-in a surge protector and use a smartphone, Evermind is easy.

Kiwi (formerly Wax), the best way to capture any exciting moment on video.

PhotoRankr, the first online photography marketplace to leverage the power of social media.

OurVinyl, allows users to discover new music through video. The modern day MTV minus the re-runs.

Nibletz is the voice of startups everywhere else and the national voice of startups in Tennessee we can’t wait to see what these great startups have to offer.

Linkage:

There are still a limited number of tickets available for JumpStart Foundry’s Demo Day get them here

Nibletz is the national voice of startups in Tennessee and everywhere else, check out our southern coverage here

Nashville Startup: PhotoRankr Prepares For JumpStart Foundry Demo Day INTERVIEW

It’s Demo Day month in Tennessee. Last week was Demo Day at the Gig Tank, Chattanooga Tennessee’s startup accelerator themed around the city’s one gigabit fiber optic network.

This week is Zero to 510’s Demo Day in Memphis Tennessee. Zero To 510 is the first cohort based medical device startup accelerator in the country. Their teams are preparing for this week’s big event with a series of rehearsals in Memphis this week. This makes the third big startup event in just as many months in the river city. 48 hour launch kicked off the summer, then there was Startup Weekend and Demo Day this Thursday.

200 miles east of Memphis the seven remaining teams in JumpStart Foundry are preparing for their Demo Day next week. Solidus Partner Vic Gatto told us last week that there were 10 teams originally but three teams couldn’t keep up with the rigorous training, working and perfecting their startup and dropped out of the program.

PhotoRankr is one of the seven startups preparing to present next week. They bill themselves as a community and a marketplace for passionate photographers. Of course right off the bat we noticed that PhotoRankr has an actual up and working product. The website for PhotoRankr is polished and aesthetically appealing to anyone, especially those photographers with a nose for design.

Within PhotoRankr members can get genuine feedback from fellow photographers. They can also find link minded photographers that they would want to learn from. They can find photographers based on portfolio, location or skill level which means the user can have role model photographers and peers to exchange experiences with.

PhotoRankr also offers a marketplace for their users own work. PhotoRankr members can sell their original work for whatever price they would like. It gives a much more creative and artistic source versus traditional stock photography sites.

In reading all of the profiles for next weeks startups it’s a tough call. We got a chance to talk to the PhotoRankr team in the interview below. Check out the interview and then after that hit the link and check out PhotoRankr yourself.

5 Angel.Co Startups From Everywhere Else: Nashville Edition

Nibletz.com is the voice of startups “everywhere else” and your source for Tennessee startup news. As many of our readers know we’ve been working on a series called “5 Angel List Startups From Everywhere Else”. It stems from the weekly traction email that most angel.co members receive. We’ve noticed time and time again that the “trending” startups on the Angel List email are predominantly from Silicon Valley. This of course isn’t the fault of angel.co it’s an amazingly great resource. But here you’ll find five startups profiled from “everywhere else”.

Since it’s Demo Day Month in Tennessee we thought what a great time to do “5 Angel List startups from everywhere else, Nashville Edition” if you’re looking for the Memphis edition, you can find it here.

Wannado

Let’s kick this thing off with one of the Jumpstart Foundry graduates from 2011. The startup called “wannado” is your guide to everything you wanna do. Great name, great concept.

We actually got to see a preview of wannado the other night in Memphis and it blew me away. The app has a robust feature set, yet an aesthetically pleasing user interface. It simply does exactly as they say it will, it tells you what’s available around you to do. If you’re looking for a show or a concert, it’s there. If you’re looking for a business networking event, it’s there. If you’re looking for a cooking class, a lecture, a speaker, a book club, they’re all there for you and everything is served up according to your preferences.

Wannado has an amazing sharing circle breakout piece which allows you to easily share an event any way you like. They also allow you to share events with friends that don’t have the wannado app without having to download the wannado app. They’re given a text message which takes them to a landing page for that event with an equally pleasing user experience.

Truth be told they weren’t on the Angel.co site but we like them that much so check it out here. They are still in private beta but sign up for an update and you’ll be the first person on your block to know wannado. (you like what we did there)

Find wannado on the web here and if you’re reading this wannado, you may want to sign up for the Angel List it’s free.

The next two entries come from the same entrepreneur. Phillip Maddox is the co-founder of Deedsy and VenueBlast.

Deedsy

Deedsy is a good deed engine. The premise is simple, do good deeds, and earn points. A good deed can be anything from a hug to house sitting, to picking up trash. Whatever good deed you do, with Deedsy you earn points.

You can create deeds for others to do and look for a “do gooder” to do that deed for you and then they’ll earn points. It’s a great feel good startup that will promote doing good in your life and community.

You can start off with 25 points if you head over here to the deedsy site and add your name to their LaunchRock.

Here’s a link to their Angel List page

VenueBlast

VenueBlast is the other entry from founder Phillip Maddox. VenueBlast is your ticket to live music online. Basically it’s a video streaming venue for live music and entertainment productions. For the end user they promise great quality productions that can be found in streaming or even pay per view offerings.

For the client they offer a robust set of features that can be delivered to the end user in a variety of ways. Their feature set is constantly evolving to stay up to date with the changes in streaming technology optimized for concerts and live entertainment. They also offer the ability for companies to sponsor live concerts and streaming events and offer analytics back to the customer.

Earlier this week VenueBlast reported that they’re working on some exciting new features and they hope to rollout to the public soon.

Find VenueBlast on the web here and on the Angel List here

Populr.me

Populr.me is the easiest way to quickly crete a great looking micro-site that the Nashville startup calls “pops”. Within minutes you’re able to create,deliver and manage your microsite for whatever the function.

One of their users, Jason Moore, is in the healthcare industry uses Populr.me to create microsites to push out to their healthcare industry partners in hospital and provider systems. Moore said that their custom communication via a secure portal is a game changer.

Populr.me offers a simple drag and drop layout engine making editing and publishing a cinch. They also offer unlimited custom domains with analytics available as well.

Populr.me is so popular that they won the 2012 Governor’s Innovation Conference and the $5,000 check to go along with it.

Here’s Populr.me’s website and here is their Angel List page

Meevl

Meevl is a Slovakian startup that graduated from Jumpstart Foundry in the 2011 class. They’ve actually relocated back to Slovakia but nonetheless they appear under Nashville on the Angel List.

Meevl is a unique startup. The Meevl platform easily allows employees to participate in reporting company news, typically a task handled by a PR person or team in large companies. With Meevl when an employee gets recognized for an achievement, has a baby, or maybe an employee related policy changes, Meevl crowdsources the news from the company employees.

“Currently, social media management platforms are mostly for small teams, where members watch their company’s presence on social media channels like Facebook, Twitter and so on,” Vladimir Tucek told BetaKit. “Even if it’s a really huge company, [social media] is managed by a very small team, and all content is produced by that team. We’d like to involve more employees in this process.”

By virtue of the employee participation in the Meevl platform companies can crowdsource news from their employee base, possibly reduce the PR budget for inhouse news and employee morale would stand to improve.

We’re on an international sneaker-strapped startup roadtrip here’s the details, we could use your support

Startups,It’s Demo Day Month In Tennessee: Chattanooga, Memphis And Nashville

There are a lot of spring/summer accelerator programs “everywhere else”, Tennessee has three significant programs that will be coming to a close in the coming weeks and culminating with a demo day at the end of their session. Chattanooga, Memphis and Nashville are exploding with startup and entrepreneurial growth and it shows in the graduating classes of Gig Tank (Chattanooga), Zero To 510 (Memphis) and Jumpstart Foundry in Nashville.

The next few Thursdays will be filled with great companies, great entrepreneurs, great angels and venture capitalists and great national coverage provided by nibletz.com, and to our ever growing list of some of the top members of the venture community that subscribe to us by email and follow us on Twitter. We’ve seen 17 startups that we’ve covered in the last year, pick up traction starting with a story written on nibletz.com and seen by the venture community “everywhere else”, which is what is why our mission, as the voice of startups everywhere else, is so important. We’ve received thank you cards, thank you emails and heck even some cash from these 17 startups and at last count they were collectively funded to over $20M.

That trend will hopefully continue over the next three weeks as we continue to case the national spotlight on one of the fastest growing startup ecosystems in the country, the great state of Tennessee.

Chattanooga

The Gig Tank started back in May. This is a unique accelerator program because it’s really two programs in one. First there is an entrepreneur track. The entrepreneur’s track started May 14th. All of the teams selected for that track received a $15,000 seed investment, lodging and a host of services from GigTank sponsors. Their season ends with a demo day and a $100,000 cash prize up for grabs for the most disruptive business plan.

The second track for GigTank is a student track. The students started their track on June 11th. They just needed to come up with a great idea to utilize Chattanooga’s gigabit internet, the first gigabit internet in the country (sorry Google). The students are competing for a chance to win a $50,000 prize and the chance to pitch their idea in front of a solid group of angels and VC’s.

GigTank comes to a close with a demo day on August 9th.

Click here for GigTank’s Website

Memphis

Memphis is bursting at the seams with entrepreneurial and startup activity. In the last few months alone we’ve covered their 48 hour launch event and Startup Weekend Memphis.

Memphis has a great infrastructure set up for entrepreneurs and startups, with most of it being based at Emerge Memphis. Launch Your City, Launch Memphis and of course the Seed Hatchery accelerator play a key role in the Memphis tech community.

August 16th it will be all eyes on Memphis again as the Zero to 510 accelerator holds their demo day. Zero to 510 is a medical device accelerator program and a joint venture between BioWorks and SeedHatchery. It’s the nation’s first cohort-based medical device incubator. The program is funded by Innova Memphis an early stage investment firm.

The companies presenting at demo day on the 16th are:

BioNanovations- a startup using bio nanotechnology for rapid detection and monitoring of bacterial infection

Handminder- has developed a technology that will help rehabilitate those with loss of function in their hands and fingers from a stroke.

NanOphthalmics- This company uses nanotechnology to more effectively treat corneal abrasions which leads to faster healing with less pain.

Randall Surgical- These guys have created an environmentally friendly alternative to traditional patient positioners used in 20 million+ surgeries in the US every year.

Restore Medical- has found a way to drastically cut down the time it takes to sterilize instruments in the OR while cutting costs and insuring compliance under the upcoming radical changes in healthcare.

Urova Medical- They’ve come up with a new way to treat feminine stress urinary incontinence.

Click here for ZeroTo510’s website

Nashville

Jumpstart Foundry is in it’s third year and they keep kicking out hit after hit after hit. One of our favorite Tennessee startups, RentStuff (who recently moved to Chicago’s 1871) is a product of Jumpstart Foundry. Co-founded in 2010 by serial startup founder Marcus Whitney, the Jumpstart Foundry follows the traditional accelerator model that has been so successful in other regions.

According to their site they’ve seen a 62% success rate to date, which is actually VERY high and quite impressive. Jumpstart Foundry (not to be confused with the national Cleveland based Jumpstart Inc) has seen a good number of their graduates see post program capital. Wannado (2011), Daio (2011), RentStuff (2011), Bizen (2010), NextGxDx (2010), and Spitsecnd (2010) have all received additional growth capital.

This years class is equally as impressive and will share their ideas on Demo Day August 23rd. Here are the companies presenting at their demo day: