Columbus Entrepreneurs Sparking Innovation With Sundown Rundown Events

With a name like Paul Proffitt, it’s easy to picture this Columbus-based entrepreneur helping people make money. He just wants to make sure it’s done the entrepreneurial way. In an interview Proffitt told us that he’s been a lurker in Columbus, Ohio’s tech community since the 90’s, when he worked with the now defunct Talon New Media Ventures and OnVentures incubators. Since then Proffitt has been working in higher-ed and digital marketing.

In 2006 though, he got re-bitten by the entrepreneurial bug when his team took second place at the OSU business plan competition for a biodiesel startup. Nowadays you can find Proffitt at Columbus State Community College where he is an adjunct faculty member and being a judge and mentor for the OSU Business Plan Competition. With all that experience Proffit wanted to do something even more.

Proffitt has created a monthly pitch focused startup event called Sundown Rundown. These aren’t business card pushing events. Sundown Rundown calls for 5 minute pitches with 5 minutes of feedback, and startups are vetted in advance. Sundown Rundown connects investors, mentors, and talent across the Columbus region.

We got a chance to talk with Proffitt about Sundown Rundown.

What does your company do?

We are a monthly evening business idea pitch event series that connects entrepreneurs with investors, mentors, and talent to help get their companies to the next step.

Who are the founders, and what are their backgrounds

Paul Proffitt – A lurker in the Central Ohio Entrepreneurship scene since the late 1990s who had worked with now defunct Columbus based incubators Talon New Media Ventures and OnVentures. Got bit by the entrepreneurial bug in 2006 when his team took second place at the OSU Business Plan Competition for a biodiesel startup. Besides having full-time gigs in higher-ed and in digital marketing, he spends his remaining professional time being an adjunct faculty member at Columbus State Community College and acts as a judge and mentor for the OSU Business Plan Competition.

What’s the startup scene like in Columbus?

Its growing. There was some progress in the late 1990s, but the dot com bubble forced a reboot in the early 2000s. The state figured they needed to diversify their economy and created the Third Frontier Fund and state money backed, private non-profit incubators started popping up.

At best the startup scene is fragmented. A lot of attention is paid to those low investment, potential high return software based startups and capital intensive, long development medical and bio tech. Nothing solid right now in the middle, small to mid-sized business startups.

What problem do you solve?

Trying to defragment the scene and get a self-sustaining community running in Central Ohio to help bring good business ideas to the forefront regardless of their industry.

Why now?

It feels right… if you take your shoes off and stand in the grass you can feel the karma starting to align in Central Ohio… it could go good or bad at this point… say the same set of factors happen around the 2000s. I kind of want to help put Central Ohio in a position this time for something good to happen and not have another reboot that will take another 15 years to get to another make or break point.

What are some of the milestones your startup has already reached?

We’ve established credibility in the Central Ohio entrepreneurial community as something that can be trusted to give people a fair shake at getting an idea out into the community. Showing we don’t play favorites for people who come in and pitch. We’ve got an audience that shows up and we have interest in people wanting to pitch their ideas each month.

What are your next milestones?

Keep growing…. The bar we hold the event at holds, 150 people. We would love to have to find a bigger place at some point.

Get funding for this events. We do it on a shoestring and right now the rental for the space is the biggest cost.

Where can people find out more?

http://sundownrundown.org

Checkout this huge national startup event in Cincinnati Ohio.

Image: sundownrundown.org

Kauffman Foundation’s 1 Millon Cups Heads To Georgetown, Delaware

The Wednesday morning coffee and networking event called 1 Million Cups, created by the Kauffman Foundation, has added its 10th location and its first northeastern city. It’s not New York, Providence, or Boston. Instead, the latest community to join the 1 Million Cups family is on the Georgetown, Delaware, campus of Delaware Technical Community College. Georgetown, Delaware, sits about 20 miles from the Delaware and Maryland beach resorts.

1 Million Cups began in April 2012 in Kansas City, the hometown of its founding organization, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. Kauffman Labs is a program of the Kauffman Foundation.

With its launch on the campus of Delaware Technical Community College in Georgetown, 1Million Cups is on target to expand its network to 20 cities by the end of 2013. Program leaders also plan to have at least one international city in the mix this year.

“We are thrilled to welcome Delaware entrepreneurs to the 1 Million Cups family,” Thom Ruhe, vice president of entrepreneurship at the Kauffman Foundation said in a statement. “Georgetown represents not only our 10th city overall, but it is our first Northeastern community and the first time 1 Million Cups has partnered with a community college. We expect to learn things in this new environment that can be applied as we continue to introduce the program to ever more diverse audiences and locales.”

The 1 Million Cups model is consistent in every market. Every Wednesday morning in each city, two early-stage startups present their companies to a diverse audience of mentors, advisers, and other entrepreneurs. Each founder presents for six minutes and then fields audience questions for another 20 minutes. The program is run entirely by local entrepreneurs who serve as community organizers.

Entrepreneurs, innovators, and interested community members from Georgetown and the surrounding region will meet at 9 a.m. each Wednesday at Java 101 in the Student Service Center on Delaware Technical Community College’s Jack F. Owens Campus. The college also hopes to attract attendees from its other two campuses in the state. The first week’s presenters will be Lead Your Way Solutions, a leadership and organizational development startup, and fast-casual restaurant go brit! fish + chips.

“We’re extremely pleased to be partnering with the Kauffman Foundation to bring 1 Million Cups to the College and to the citizens of Delaware,” said Dr. Orlando J. George Jr., president of Delaware Tech. “We look forward to hosting this very exceptional program at all of our campuses to support entrepreneurs statewide.”

Georgetown joins Kansas City; Des Moines, Iowa; Houston; St. Louis; Cedar Rapids/Iowa City, Iowa; Reno, Nev.; Chattanooga, Tenn.; Denver; and Chapel Hill/Research Triangle Park, N.C., in offering 1 Million Cups locally. Additional cities slated to launch 1 Million Cups in the next two months are Columbia, Mo.; Lawrence, Kan.; Orlando, Fla.; and San Diego.

1 million cups is great for startups everywhere else, so is this.

500 Startups Is Looking For The Unsexiest Startups, Everywhere

500 Startups the name brand accelerator out in Silicon Valley, that takes great pains to bring cohorts together from around the world, is looking for the “unsexiest startups”. 500 Startups founder Dave McClure is a ninja, renegade and pirate and would take a martian founded startup if they had a good product, a good team and the possibility of growing with one of the best mentor networks in the universe. Now, that startup doesn’t even need to be sexy.

500 Startups knows that even unsexy startups, bring home the bacon. 500 Startup is hosting a conference specifically for those ugly startups, ok not ugly but “unsexy”.

“Even Silicon Valley, the mecca of innovation, sometimes misses the point. While everyone drools over “sexy” consumer verticals that often lack business models, some of the most high-growth, profit-wielding companies are incredibly underrated and overlooked.Covering SMB/Enterprise, financial services, communications, email, data, infrastructure, and more, unSEXY is a 1-day conference about tech startups and companies who are actually doing something incredibly sexy—they’re making money!” 500 startups wrote on their page for the event at unsexy.coTop speakers from some of the most successful unsexy startups in the world are tapped to speak at the one day conference happening August 9th in Mountain View. Isaac Saldana (SendGrid), Rashmi Sinha (SlideShare), Jeff Lawson (Twillio), Ken Gullicksen (Evernote), Doug Wormhoudt (Lovely), Patrick Collion (Stripe), Matt Tucker (Jive), and Kathryn Minshew (The Daily Muse) are all slated to speak at this first of it’s kind startup conference.They’ll be speaking on topics like:

GET UR BLING ON: Strategies for Marketing, Branding, & PR
MAKIN’ BACON: SaaS, Freemium, Subscription, & More
DESIGN THAT CONVERTS: UI & UX for the SMB/Enterprise
CUSTOMER ATTRACTION: Acquisition in Fragmented Markets
BABY GOT BACKEND: New Tools for HR, Finance, Operations, + more
SOFTWARE HEARTTHROB: Building Raving Fans in Non-Consumer Markets
SCALING WITHOUT FAILING: Solutions for Customer Service

and more.

You can register for Unsexy.co right here.

And this huge startup conference is specifically for startups everywhere else!

Huge Crowdfunding Festival: One Spark Kicks Off In Jacksonville Next Week

The first OneSpark festival will kick off next Wednesday night in Jacksonville Florida, and it’s going to be huge. The festivities kick off at 6pm at Hemming Plaza with an opening ceremony.

The kickoff event will feature party band The Sunbears, free food, drinks and plenty of opportunity to network with creators from all over the world.

Once the event kicks off Jacksonville will turn into one huge in person crowdfunding festival from Wednesday (April 17th) through Sunday (April 21st).

What is a “crowdfunding festival”,

Well think SXSW music and SXSW interactive meet in Jacksonville Florida, where the weather looks to be perfect. Then add creators who’ve created something in either the arts, music, science or technology. Now think Kickstarter and taking those project creators and bringing them into the real world.

This is the first festival of it’s kind. Creators will be staged in venues throughout downtown Jacksonville where attendees will be able to see their creations, ask questions, hear pitches and then decide if they want to crowdfund the creator in person. Talk about eliminating the risks of online crowdfunding.

Event organizer Elton Rivas and the OneSpark committee have wrapped the crowdfunding concept up into a huge event that has three main focus areas:

The creator zone: This is where you can go from venue to venue and see all of the creators and their creations, think gallery hop with some ultra cool new ideas and creativity overflowing like a volcano.

Pitch Decks And Stages: You’ll be able to hear live pitches and keynote speakers throughout the five day festival in these areas.

Entertainment District: here OneSpark will showcase all of what Jacksonville has to offer in the entertainment realm. Party with creators, VIPs, A-listers and jam out to some of the best musical offerings in Jacksonville.

Learn more about OneSpark at beonespark.com

Stay up to date with our OneSpark coverage here.

Everywhereelse.co 2013 In Just About 3 Minutes (Ticket News for 2014) [video]

If you missed everywhereele.co The Startup Conference 2013, then you missed the largest single venue startup conference in the United States dedicated to one thing. That thing is, startups “everywhere else”.

Everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference 2013, and Everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference 2014 provide programming, celebrations, pitch contests, parties and networking opportunities that are extremely relevant for startups outside Silicon Valley.

The 2013 conference featured a huge startup village exhibition, along with workshops, keynotes, small groups and round table discussions on the issues that matter to startups in entrepreneurial pockets across the country and around the world.

Kick Ass Female Founders From Everywhere Else, Legaleeze, You Only Launch Once, applying and graduating from accelerators and more were at the forefront of the 2013 event. After parties that included free tickets to a Memphis Grizzlies NBA game, a historic brothel (Ernestine & Hazels), and the craziest throw back disco ever, dj’d by a world famous pimp (Raifords), were just some of the great social events.

2014 features a lot more similar content focused on acceleration, access to capital, access to talent, branding, design and pitching. Mike Muhney the godfather of CRM (co-creator of ACT which was the standard before SalesForce), Baker Donelson legal panels and workshops, and design, naming and branding with the folks at nationally known archer>malmo are just some of the discussions, topics and content coming in 2014.

The Marriott is offering $109 per night rooms for the event which runs February 17-19th 2014. American Airlines is also offering reduced fares and Avis is offering reduced rental cars.

This year we are also providing breakfast and lunch on both conference days.

Tennessee startup GreenPal and J Brant Films, Jeffrey Brant, who’s worked with national country recording artists in Nashville, have provided the video montage below. Check out Everywhereelse.co 2013 in nearly 3 minutes below.

The early bird special, where you can purchase attendee tickets and Startup Village booths at 2013 prices for the next conference, has been extended from March 27th to March 31st (Sunday night) or until the early bird tickets and startup village booths run out. Check out the ticket registration form below the video for availability.

Event management for Everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference 2014 powered by Eventbrite

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!

New Orleans Startups Prepare For Silicon Bayou 100 Event December 12th

New Orleans thriving startup scene is about to celebrate the second annual Silicon Bayou 100 release party. The event, being held December 12th at the Eiffel Society, will highlight a crowdsourced group of 100 top movers and shakers across the region known as the Silicon Bayou.

Registering for the star studded event will get you into see all the action live and if you can’t make it Silicon Bayou News will send you the list of winners so you’ll know who’s who for the next year.

Three of the regional organizations that support high growth startups and entrepreneurism will hold their monthly meeting in conjunction with the gala. Those organizations are NOLA, Net2NO and the Baton Rouge group, SeNSE.

Thanks to LaunchPad, Louisiana Technology Park, New Orleans BioInnovation Center and the Eiffel Society, tickets to the event are free (You just need to register).

Hit the links below:

Check out Silicon Bayou News’ story here

No one covers high growth tech news for the southeast like nibletz.com the voice of startups “everywhere else”

A lot of New Orleans startups are coming to the largest startup conference in the US

Everywhereelse.co Becomes The Largest Startup Conference In The Country

It’s hard to believe the headline above but it’s true. With over 1100 tickets sold and over 400 accredited vc’s and angels from across the country, who’ve already purchased tickets, by attendance everywhereelse.co is the largest startup conference in the history of startup conferences. Less than 10% of the tickets sold zipcode to the state of Tennessee.

We’ve got attendees and startups in our Startup Village from as far away as Israel, Romania, Lithuania and Buenos Aires. Of course we have investors and startups from just about every state in the country as well.

We had 104 startups in the village. Two have upgraded to larger booths, and one is going to launch on the stage at everywhereelse.co we’ve also weeded out a few that weren’t going to be ready by February 10th. That leaves a handful of spots in the village open but they will go incredibly fast.

Startup Village startups will be eligible for three different startup contests with over $50,000 in cash and $100,000 in other prizes up for grabs.

There’s no other conference in the world that will give you this level of access to the investor community. We’ve actually been shocked at the caliber of investors coming to the conference who love the idea to increase their deal flow from outside the normal entrepreneurial and startup hubs.

We’ve got a handful of speakers that we can’t contractually reveal until ticket sales are over. We’re hoping to sell out during the month of December and let everyone know the few top shelf speakers that have already committed.

Of course we all know we’ve got Scott Case,Bill Harris, Tracy Myers, several startup founders from YCombinator and 500 startups and many many more.

The schedule keeps on growing and the parties are even getting better. This will be one event you don’t want to miss.

Here’s the site for the conference

Here’s the link for tickets and Startup Village booth space

Launch Memphis Launches UpStart Women’s Startup Initiative And 48 Hour Launch Dec 7-9

Launch Memphis, one of the key ecosystem drivers for startups in Tennessee, has launched a new initiative aimed at women entrepreneurs and startups. Getting more women engaged in startup communities is a goal that most cities are working on. Driving entrepreneurial growth among women is also a key factor in the overall health and success of an entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Launch Your City and their Memphis arm, Launch Memphis, are no strangers to the startup ecosystem. They’ve been the driving force behind Memphis’ startup and entrepreneurial growth since 2006. Launch Memphis runs a free coworking space; The LaunchPad, curriculum based initiatives through Launch Memphis and a startup accelerator in it’s third year, Seed Hatchery.

With the success of their most recent endeavors, including playing host to over a dozen Global Entrepreneurship Week events, now is the perfect time to announce a women’s initiative.

The kick off event for the women’s initiative, dubbed “UpStart” is a 48 Hour Launch event being held December 7-9th at Emerge Memphis. The three day hackathon style, startup launching vehicle has been so successful in Memphis, the folks in Nashville recently replicated the event for their startup community.

The UpStart 48 Hour Launch is open to both women and men to participate however the ideas pitched will be from women. These women entrepreneurs will drive their teams through 48 hours of hacking, collaborating and building a viable product.

Unlike many of the “official” Startup Weekend events, 48 Hour Launch is coupled with the existing resources of Launch Memphis and Emerge Memphis which serves as the epicenter for startup and entrepreneurial activity in the mid south.

“We recognize that the disparity between men’s and women’s high growth potential startup companies is not unique to Memphis; however, Memphis can be unique in our deliberate approach to close this gap and fuel women’s innovation and entrepreneurship”. Elizabeth Lemmonds, Chief Brand Officer at LaunchYourCity told nibletz.com

Danielle Inez, a successful PR, marketing and event planning consultant in Memphis is anxious to pitch her newest idea at the UpStart 48 Hour Launch in December. Inez was among hundreds who participated in Launch Memphis’ Risk City Field Day event last Friday as part of Global Entrepreneurship Week.

Inez took to Twitter on Tuesday to express her enthusiasm for both events.

Eric Mathews, Co-President and CEO of LaunchYourCity said: “We are making a commitment to cultivate and fund a woman led and majority woman owned startup by the end of the first quarter of next year. We encourage women to reach out and get involved in all levels of our platform as mentors, investors, and of course as potential founders.”

UpStart programming also includes a women’s meetup and plans on being a permanent fixture in the LaunchMemphis programming.

Linkage:

Upstart Memphis is here

No one covers high growth technology in the south east like Nibletz

Make sure you’ve got a ticket to this grand event

SXSW Bringing Startup Event To Vegas Baby: SXSWV2V

The SXSWi or South By Southwest Interactive show, as part of the annual South By Southwest festival held in March every year, continues to grow. This year all hotel rooms in the immediate vicinity are already sold out. Last year, despite torrential downpours for three days SXSWi had it’s biggest year ever.

SXSWi has been the birth place to many great startups that we use today. Twitter, FourSquare, and Zaarly are just a few of the startups that successfully launched out of SXSW. Glancee (acquired by Facbeook), Highlight and Banjo were the talk of the town last year during the festival.

Thousands and thousands of entrepreneurs flock to Austin Texas to see and take part in the latest startups brewing across the country. In fact, there are even buses that head down to SXSW where startups are building “startup weekend style” along the way. There are many startups that set aside a great chunk of their marketing budget to participate in the SXSW festivities. Other startups use it as both a customer acquisition point and a launch pad.

SXSWi Director Hugh Forrest has seen how SXSWi has grown and taken off and now he wants to expand the property and brand outside the realm of downtown Austin. Forrest has announced V2V August 11-14 2013 at the Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas.

While the strip is still a short distance away from Zappos founder Tony Hsieh’s Downtown Project, the 4 day SXSW conference is a welcome event among all of Las Vegas’ tech community.

Forrest hasn’t decided what “V2V” means just yet but told the Austin Chronicle “Well, the idea there is that it is somewhat of a meaningless term, but if you really want to think of a meaning there, it could be visionary to visionary, or voice to voice, or voice to visionary, or visionaries to Vegas. We like that it’s an open palette and will afford us some room to grow and develop into whatever this event becomes.”

While the Downtown Project continues to grow and the Vegas tech scene is on fire we’re pretty confident that V2V will catch on just as quickly. If it doesn’t though, Forrest isn’t worried. He’s used to building things slowly and organically.

” I think that we can bring a lot of skill and expertise to the Las Vegas venture. On the other hand, one of the reasons SXSW is where it’s at now is it that it was allowed to grow somewhat slowly and organically. We were afforded the luxury of making mistakes on a fairly small stage and then learning from those mistakes and growing after it, growing better. It’d be great if the Las Vegas thing draws a big crowd the first year but at the same time, I don’t want to grow that too fast. I’m very much a believer of the slow, organic growth idea as a way to figure out exactly what you’re doing” Forrest said in the Austin Chronicle interview.

“With the growth and popularity of the startup-related programming across the SXSW family of events, it is clear that there is enough momentum to create a wholly unique and independent event focused on entrepreneurs,” said SXSW V2V Producer Christine Auten said in a statement. “SXSW V2V will follow the same general strategy we have followed with other SXSW experiences. It is about turning creative ideas into reality — bringing visionaries to Vegas.”

SXSW V2V will take place at The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas — a deluxe urban resort in the heart of the Vegas Strip — from Sunday, August 11 through Wednesday, August 14. SXSW V2V registration will include three days of programming, an opening reception, welcome dinner and an eclectic mix of evening and networking events. Register now at the discounted rate of $695 through December 14, 2012

Linkage:

Looking to participate,speak or volunteer at V2V click here

Want to pitch at V2V click here

Maybe you should warm up your pitch at “everywhereelse.co” click here

Bethlehem PA To Hold First Startup Weekend Lehigh Valley Next Week

The 54 hour weekend hackathon to build startups that we know and love “Startup Weekend” is coming to the Lehigh Valley region of Pennsylvania next weekend. After you’ve cleared your house of ghosts and goblins and a week before Startup Weekend’s big global jamboree, entrepreneurs, developers, founders, and startup ecosystem partners will converge at Ben Franklin TechVentures for Startup Weekend.

Startup Weekend Lehigh Valley, is an officially sanctioned event being administered in conjunction with the Startup Weekend organization based in Seattle, which receives major funding from the Kauffman Foundation. All “official” Startup Weekend events follow the same general format.

Registration will begin on Friday evening at 6:30pm at Ben Franklin. That will be followed by great networking dinner where attendees will be able to size up the competition and the possible teammates for the weekend. At around 7:30pm the “Friday Night” pitches will begin. We’ve covered a lot of startup weekends and you can see plenty of Friday night pitches here at nibletz.com.

The Friday night pitches are 60 seconds and hard timed by a Startup Weekend official. In that 60 seconds you need to sell the audience your idea and why it should be built over the next 53 hours. After everyone who wants to pitch has been given the opportunity, community voting will commence. It’s a rather diplomatic process. Usually the pitchers will hold up a sign with their startup name on it and attendees will put a sticker on the idea they like the best. At the end of the process, those with the most stickers will have their ideas developed.

Friday evening typically tops off with team selection and then some icebreaker time with the teams. From there the teams break off and start working on the startup idea.

Saturday, the community coaches come into play. These seasoned entrepreneurs and local business folks are there to help answer questions for each team and provide ideas and suggestions. The coaches for Startup Weekend Lehigh Valley are: Mark Lang, co-founder of the Northeast Ben Franklin Technology Partners; Yuriy Portyko, General Partner at Smart Start a cross-atlantic incubator and early stage venture capital investor; Scott Gingold, serial entrepreneur with several exits; Amar Reddy, Founder & CEO of Smart IMS; David Easton, Senior Business Development Manager Smart IMS; and Shahri Naghshineh, CEO Surface Chemistry Discovery.

Saturday is also the day that most teams take to the streets, the phones, the emails and the interwebs to get customer validation on their startup project. All the while designers, developers and coders are working on pitch decks, wire frames, prototypes and products.

Sunday is the day the teams put the finishing touches on both their products and their presentations. At 5:00pm and not a second later, the selected teams will have five minutes to pitch their idea and have a brief Q&A with the judges. Startup Weekend Lehigh Valley judges are: Jim Gordon, President & CEO Robert Rothschild Farm; Bob Moul, CEO appRennaisance; and Wayne Barz, Manager of Entrepreneurial Services – Ben Franklin Technology Partners.

Startup Weekend Lehigh Valley is being organized by: Anthony Durante, Wayne Barz, Anthony Josiah Braun, Mark Koberlein, Tim Lytle and Santiago Rivera.

Linkage:

Official Startup Weekend Lehigh Valley here

Check out Ben Franklin here

You gotta check out “everywhere else” here

Indy’s Powder Keg Startup Conference Announces 12 Startups In The Super Bowl

Startup evangelist, entrepreneur and founder of Verge Startups (Verge Indy), Matt Hunckler has been hard at work producing the upcoming Powder Keg regional startup conference in Indianapolis. Powder Keg is taking place in downtown Indianapolis with one amazing opportunity for 12 great startups, in a startup competition of Super Bowl proportions (can we say Super Bowl?).

“The Big Game” startup competition (see what we did there) will take place at Lucas Oil Stadium next Thursday, which just happens to be the same venue for last years Super Bowl. You know, the one where another Indiana startup evangelist put together this little Shark Tank party with Mark Cuban.

Yes, Indiana has it like that and Powder Keg will continue the tradition of great startup events produced by Hunckler on a much larger scale. Powder Keg has a great list of speakers including illusionist David Blaine, Scott Case (who’s also speaking at everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference), Dave Knox from RockFish and co-founder of The Brandery,and Erik Martin General Manager at Reddit. The event will feature two powerful days of sessions, the Startup Bowl, Startup Showcase and three great parties (what’s a startup event without parties).

Yesterday, the Verge Startups team announced the 12 startups competing for a $15,000 startup growth prize sponsored by Microsoft and Elevate Ventures. Here’s the list:

CoatChex
CoatChex is focused on bringing innovation and value through today’s technology to an industry that hasn’t been touched in decades. The patent-pending process optimizes coat check-in and retrieval functions and reduces the risks that are commonly associated with checking coats, making it the hassle-free solution to running a secure, profitable, and efficient coat check station.

Team Mash
TeamMash is a daily email for sports fanatics. Every day, their editors scour the web for the best sports content. Each morning, they email you a mashup of what happened with your favorite teams in the past 24 hours. It even contains links to hand-picked articles from around the web.

FoundOPS
FoundOPS is developing an operations platform to help small field service operate more efficiently by gamifying carbon savings. In one, easy to use cloud based system, they’ve incorporated GPS technician tracking, drag and drop dispatching, and intuitive customer service management. The platform is provided for free, but customers are incentived to purchase premium features such as route optimization, QuickBooks integration, and BI reports in order to increase their carbon savings.

Adproval
Adproval is a service that streamlines the process of direct ad sales for small and medium bloggers while allowing them to maintain relationships with their advertisers. Working with an approved advertiser lets bloggers use their voice – by means of product reviews, featured posts, etc. – to back them as a sponsor, making ad space on that blog more valuable. Bloggers set up their sponsorship offerings with Adproval and put a page on their blog where advertisers can choose what they want and make an offer. If the blogger finds the advertiser suitable and approves of them, the ad image is automatically uploaded to their blog, the payment is automatically transferred, and the relationship is managed through their dashboard on Adproval.

Lisnr
Lisnr aims to change the way that consumers experience audio by turning what has historically been a passive experience into an interactive engagement platform. Lisnr is an app that allows music or any other audio medium to passively trigger consumer interactions, direct to their mobile device, during a consumer’s listening experience. Lisnr is completely source agnostic as notifications can be sent from audio being played anywhere.

PetBookings
PetBookings.com is the first and only website to offer instant and confirmed online reservations to the $3.5 billion professional pet care industry. They are launching v2.0 of their website platform Friday October 5, 2012 and are armed with some remarkable test data going to market. Pet owners (B2C) are not only experiencing the convenience and benefits of booking online with instant confirmation, but pet care facilities (B2B) are also seeing a significant impact on their bottom line.

Lesson.ly
Lesson.ly is a teaching and learning marketplace. It’s like iTunes, but with lessons and courses instead of songs and albums. It is “the simplest way to learn” and is currently in beta-testing.

Bonfyre
Bonfyres are private groups created around events where you can share chats and photos. All of these shared photos become part of group photostreams, called Memories, and are accessible only to others at that bonfyre. Simple event planning, private real-time sharing and collective group photos in one app, just like it should be.

Squarejive
Squarejive is a free mobile application that recommends things to do nearby. The app is built upon a mosaic design that allows users to seamlessly find and share events across Facebook, Twitter, SMS Text, and Email. With Yelp integration, the app also includes business profiles for over 400 venues in Indianapolis. They intend to launch Squarejive version 1.0 on October 13th at the Broad Ripple Music Festival.

Modulus
Modulus helps developers spend less time configuring servers and more time building products. Modulus does this by providing a complete platform that companies can use to host and scale their internet-based applications. We add to that an integrated database and file storage solution, and wrap everything under a powerful statistics engine.

Visit Apps
Visit Apps empowers Convention & Visitors Bureaus (CVBs = tourism agencies) to harness the mobile channel to deeply engage their visitors. Visit Apps has built a proprietary platform that allows any CVB – from the quaintest of towns to a bustling metropolis – to have their own mobile app. Visit Apps is a SaaS startup in the explosively growing mobile sector (available in iPad, iPhone and Android devices). The Visit Apps team is led by Santiago Jaramillo (serial entrepreneur of University Storage & MyMusicCamp.com).

Diagnotes
In an effort to eliminate the problems associated with effective communication and care during on-call medical encounters, Diagnotes has developed an integrated software solution that provides critical information, secure communication and convenient documentation for healthcare providers via their smartphones, focusing initially on on-call physicians and the 50-100 million such patient encounters conducted annually in the US.

Tickets for PowderKeg are still available for $299 check the link below.

Linkage:

Get your tickets now for just $299 here for Powder Keg

Source: Verge Startups

Then, we’ll see you in February for this

StartuPalooza Headed To Louisville KY September 18th

If you’re in Louisville Kentucky and ready to get your startup on than the Startup America Partnership in conjunction with Startup Kentucky has an event for you. StartuPALOOZA is headed to Louisville Kentucky on September 18th from 5:30pm-8:00pm at the Ice House (226 E. Washington Street, Louisville KY),

The event will feature a cash bar and free appetizers.

The event will feature an exhibition of the up and coming startups in the Louisville region. We know first hand their are some great startups in Louisville. Also, Startup Kentucky is one of the more active Startup America regions in the country, in fact you should follow them on Twitter here.

If you’re a Louisville area startup and interested in showing off in the StartuPALOOZA startup fairground than you need to apply here.

The event is sponsored by by IdeaFestival, the statewide Innovation Network, the Office of Commercialization and Innovation, the Kentucky Science and Technology Corporation and Startup Kentucky, a Startup America region.

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