Memphis Seed Hatchery Investor Day Draws Global Audience

On Thursday in a swank movie theater in Memphis’ revitalized midtown district, six startups presented their companies to a theater that was literally, standing room only by the beginning of the pitches.

BetterFed (farm to consumer), MentorMe (e-harmony for mentors), Soundstache (a fan engagement platform for bands), Boosterville (a huge disruption in fundraising), Musistic (Github for musicians) and ScrewPulp (a better way to self publish), took the stage for 12 minute investor pitches after concluding the three month Seed Hatchery accelerator program.

Investors and spectators from Mississippi, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee and as far away as Singapore and Silicon Valley were in attendance to take in the pitches.

Mara Lewis, a San Francisco based entrepreneur and founder of stopped.at, was in attendance for the Seed Hatchery festivities which included an after party at the world famous Memphis BBQ competition. Lewis, who’s pitched in front of plenty of crowds said that this group at Seed Hatchery was one of the best groups she’s seen. Lewis is currently working with Start Co’s co-President’s Andre Fowlkes and Eric Mathews on their upcoming Upstart women’s startup accelerator.

After playing host to a group of Memphis entrepreneurs (including myself) in Silicon Valley in March, Kuji Chahal of Fisher Investments made the cross country trek to hear the pitches from the Seed Hatchery cohort. Chahal stuck around throughout the festivities to talk with all of the new entrepreneurs.

Andre Mouton, an investor from Singapore has been ecstatic about Memphis’ entrepreneurship. He made a trip to Memphis in February which included visits to Launch Memphis, Bioworks and everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference. Mouton took meetings with entrepreneurs all weekend long at the BBQ Festival and over at the Peabody Hotel. Mouton told us that he was impressed at how hard everyone was working in Memphis, that my friend is the Grit N Grind.

Vic Gatto, a Managing Partner at Solidus, the investment firm that seeds the Seed Hatchery class along with Jump Start Foundry in Nashville, made it a point to call out investors in the room with a call to action to talk with the entrepreneurs, and see that all six businesses have a good chance of survival. Gatto’s partner Townes Duncan, along with his son Walker Duncan, co-founder and Editor in Chief at southernalpha also made it down from Nashville. The younger Duncan was returning from an event in Atlanta. Obviously the Grit N Grind of Memphis is expanding state wide.

Both Fowlkes and Mathews were quick to point out that Investor Day isn’t the conclusion of the Seed Hatchery program but rather the beginning. They recently added Rhodes graduate, Hillary Quirk, to the Start Co team as Community Manager. In her new role Quirk is forming an alumni association for Memphis’ accelerators which include the two cohorts at ZeroTo510.

You can find out more at neverstop.co and at their old site launchyourcity.com

See all the pitch videos from Seed Hatchery’s investor day here at nibletz.com The Voice Of Startups Everywhere Else.

Techstars Opens In Austin, Mashing The Best Of Texas’ Startup World

Some may be surprised to find out that Techstars has no “official” presence in Austin. What??? That’s right, even though they throw one of the best parties at SXSW and you can find most of the Techstars team roaming about during the festival they’ve had no real presence.

Until now.

Techstars announced via their blog that they are going to take up residency in the already epically awesome Capital Factory (home to DreamIt Austin as well), and begin an official Techstars cohort in August.

That’s not all though. They are bringing over TechStars Cloud Director, Jason Seats, from San Antonio to run the program. Seats sold his company Slicehost to Rackspace and has since been involved with Techstars. He’s also part of the StartupGrind program. Having a Techstars class in an environment like Capital Factory gives the young startups a huge advantage. Austinpreneurs are always hanging out at Capital Factory, in addition to the huge mentor network Techstars already has to offer.

David Cohen announced the new Techstars program this morning and also opened up the application process.

“Forbes and Bloomberg have been calling Austin the No. 1Boomtown and the best place for your startup for years now, and Google recently chose it as the second city to receive the fastest Internet on the planet. TechStars exists to put the best mentors and the best entrepreneurs together in the best startup communities so Austin is a natural next stop for us. We will run our first program starting this August and applications are open as of today!” Cohen said in the blog post.

Here’s the application for Techstars Austin

Speaking of Austin here’s over 40 startup stories from SXSW 2013.

Startup Weekend Gets Refreshed With Coca Cola As Their Newest Corporate Partner

Startup Weekend announced this week that they have a new global partner in Atlanta based Coca Cola.

Since the first serving of Coca-Cola at Jacobs’ pharmacy more than 125 years ago, innovation has been a part of The Coca-Cola Company’s DNA. With over 500 brands in more than 200 countries, Coca-Cola develops new beverages, packaging, equipment, and content on a daily basis. Startup Weekend is extremely excited to welcome a new global partner to the family: The Coca-Cola Company. Besides being one of the most iconic brands in the world, The Coca-Cola Company is dedicated to spurring innovation, inspiring entrepreneurs, and supporting the world’s greatest innovators. Startup Weekend posted on their official blog.

Coca Cola joins the ranks of Amazon, Google, FedEx, Microsoft and countless other big corporate companies, stepping up to the plate to further innovation across America and around the world.

Internally Coca Cola has introduced a more environmentally friendly bottle called the “Plantbottle”. The current Plantbottle is made of 30% plant based PET. They have a goal of creating a bottle that is 100% plant based PET. They also recently introduced the Coca Cola Freestyle Fountain at many restaurant locations across the country. Customers can go into places like Moe’s and Firehouse subs and dispense over 100 brands in limitless combinations.

Coca Cola has also introduced the 5by20 program with a goal of empowering 5 million women entrepreneurs by 2020. They also have a clean water program called the Slingshot Vapor Distillation device.

Coca Cola also support entrepreneurship in other countries, like their Coca Cola Africa Foundation. This multi million dollar program helps youth in 12 African countries and is a joint effort with Junior Achievement and Students in Free Enterprise.

Startup Weekend says that Coke will help entrepreneurs “By sharing knowledge, resources, and assets like infrastructure, scale, and expertise, Coke wants to help entrepreneurs succeed faster. They hope to help inspire invention and prototyping, and to help people gain the practical skills that it takes to imagine and deliver ideas.”

Coca Cola is Startup Weekend’s first non “technical” sponsor. Startup Weekend organizers can request a Coca Cola representative at their next event.

Check out more Startup Weekend stories here at nibletz.com the voice of startups everywhere else.

Techstars Chicago Reveals First Class!

Techstars Chicago revealed their first class today. Back in February Techstars announced that Excelerate Labs the Chicago based accelerator that operates out of the 1871 space was becoming TechStars Chicago. They began taking applications at that time and announced the first cohort on Thursday.

This first official “Techstars Chicago” class will start May 28th and end on August 28th. TechStars Chicago participants will receive a round of seed funding, work space, an intense startup curriculum and mentorship from one of the best accelerator mentor networks in the world.

As with all the Techstars classes there is a wide range of startups across SoLoMo, healthcare, big data, analytics and even fitness.

Here is a complete list of the 10 startups that made it into the first Chicago cohort, as originally posted on the Techstars blog.

CaptureProof – The platform through which patients can securely and easily share photos and videos with their doctors.

HIPOM – A cloud-based solution that gives parents total control of the Internet access on all devices in the home.

Nexercise – A mobile app that makes fitness fun through the use of friendly competition, smart alerts and real rewards.

Pathful – A Web analytics platform that captures every visitor interaction with every element on a website automatically, making it easier for marketers and designers to understand visitor behavior.

Peoplematics – A cloud-based search platform that unlocks the data users store in the cloud with intuitive search and sharing across applications.

Project Fixup – A digital matchmaker that fixes people up on fun one-on-one dates.

SimpleRelevance – An analytics-driven email marketing platform that provides customized digital communication for every customer and every message.

SocialCrunch – The marketing data provider presents a new way to unlock the most provocative human insights for brands and their agencies.

Sqord, Inc. – The fitness platform that makes healthy, active play more fun for kids by allowing them to compete and earn points for everyday activities.

TradingView – A browser-based community for investors and traders to share and discuss their ideas.

Check out these other startup accelerator stories.

5 Startups In Alabama Competing For $100,000 As Part Of Launch Pad Competition

Alabama’s startup supporters have put their money where there mouth is as the current Alabama Launch Pad competition prepares to come to a close late next week.

Alabama’s Launch Pad competition began in 2005 and gives early stage startups and small businesses a chance to compete for much needed funding that can help spark a company to the next level.

The current competition saw 12 startups compete in a pitch off style competition on March 3rd which initially cut the number of teams down to 7. They then had another “market assessment” which narrowed the field to five. Those five remaining teams will compete in a finale on May 3rd which will determine how much of the $100,000 prize each team will get.

“Our goal is to really feed the pipeline for early stage startups. Having just one competition per year is not enough,” Angela Wier told the Birmingham Business Journal. “What we would like to do is run a pre-seed four times per year, but we can’t leap to that overnight.”

The Economic Development Partnership Of Alabama raises the Launch Pad prize money from the private sector, the Alabama Research Alliance and seven Alabama Universities.

Launch Pad Programs Director Greg Sheek is hopeful that they will raise additional funds to run another program this year, possibly targeting “speed up” startups.

One of the challenges that Sheek and Wier are working with is that 50% of the money coming out of the Birmingham based Central Alabama Angel Network is going to out of state companies. Both are hoping to curb that by giving more companies access to programming that will prepare them better for pitching investor.

“We want to get in a place where we’d like to prepare more and more companies to pitch to the investment community and keep them right here,” Wier said.

Alabama ranks as one of the friendliest cities to small business, read that story here!

Portland Startup AboutUs’ Founder Finds Greener Pastures In The TLD Space

Ray King, a life long technology nut and a prominent Portland entrepreneur is venturing out on his latest startup.

King is the founder, and still a board member for AboutUs. When the site launched it was an editable encyclopedia of websites across the world, somewhat similar to Wikipedia. With a great domain name and a successful entrepreneur at the helm AboutUs was able to raise $5.1 million dollars from backers including Voyager Capital.

Despite putting his best effort forth, and getting funding, King wasn’t able to find the sweet spot for a scalable AboutUs to become a sustainable business. It pivoted several times and now AboutUs is a service that helps businesses evaluate their online marketing strategies.

“We were never able to get the formula right,” King said to OregonLive.com. “I was not able to get it to break out in the way that I had hoped.” King continued, “I was gradually getting into a more conservative mindset,” and added, “and maybe not the right guy to bring it forward.”

King’s latest venture is a new company called Top Level Design. He is hoping to ultimately become a domain registrar for the new top level domains that are waiting for approval. King has applied for .blog, .gay, .photography and .wiki. Based on the success of these top level domains, we will probably see King’s company apply for even more.

“It’s going to change the complexion of the Internet,” he said, “at least the naming complexion of the Internet, quite a bit.”

Source: OregonLive

This startup will help you conquer your bucketlist

Nashville Courting New Startup Accelerator,From Silicon Valley, Hattery!

Hattery,Entrepreneur Center, Michael Burcham,Nashville startup,startup,startup news

Hattery strategist, and Engine Advocacy co-founder Michael McGeary (photo: hattery.com)

Nashville’s Entrepreneur Centre Director, Michael Burcham, played host to Mike McGeary, a strategist with Silicon Valley innovation lab, Hattery.

Currently the Hattery has a west coast location in Silicon Valley and an east coast location in New York City. Hattery invests in early stage startups and helps the startups with support in design, engineering and business development.

If you think you’ve heard McGeary’s name before it’s because you probably have. In addition to being a strategist with Hattery, McGeary is also the co-founder and chief political strategist with Engine Advocacy a group connecting startup founders and entrepreneurs with government officials to create change in the entrepreneurial/startup space. They were recently intricate in a startup pilgrimage to congress. McGeary also worked with TuneIn and on two presidential campaigns.

Hattery is looking to take their unique model to another state and Nashville seems to have caught McGeary’s eye.

“There is a great energy here and I’ve read about it and heard about it because Nashville has been really good about talking about its success stories,” McGeary told the Nashville Business Journal during the Nashville Technology Council’s TechVille event. He continued; “It has been really fun and interesting to see the companies created here, how the community is being built in a really unique way. I think there is a lot of growth potential here.”

Burcham, who is one of Nashville’s biggest advocates for entrepreneurship and startups as well as the leader for Startup Tennessee, Startup America’s Tennessee region and the second region in the United States, characterized the possibility of Hattery relocating to Nashville as a “giant deal”.

“He already works with so many investors and organizations in San Francisco and Silicon Valley, so for us to have someone sitting here that has access to those places, that’s enormous,” Burcham said, who reached out to McGeary about three months ago via Twitter. “My goal is to turn that from a conversation into something real.”

Burcham is looking to overflow the new 22,000 square foot, multi million dollar entrepreneur center with as much programming and resources as possible. The Hattery program would add another great avenue for Tennessee startups to take advantage of. Although still under wraps,we do know that there are other nationally known accelerator brands looking to partner with the new entrepreneur center when it opens in June.

If anyone can sell Nashville’s startup and entrepreneurial community it’s Burcham. He’s a salesmans salesman and with his vast experience in the startup space, coupled with his down home Nashville personality, it’s hard to not fall in love with the guy and his passion.

The team behind the Hattery is filled with Silicon Valley success stories and they’re looking to spread the wealth across the country. Their portfolio includes; Bright Funds, Cloud Physics, Zubhium, and Hipiti.

Find out more about Hattery here and the Nashville Entrepreneur Center here.

Take a tour of the new multi-million dollar 22,000 square foot Entrepreneur Center here.

NJ Startup PoetCode Wins “Most Fundable Startup At Startupalooza 2013

The “Most Fundable Startup” award at the 2013 STARTUPALOOZA in New York City has been given to PoetCode, the New Jersey-based creative content company behind the breakthrough eBook and Massively Multiplayer Online game (MMO) in one, Dynasty of the Magi. PoetCode was selected as the winner of a group of 25 aspiring entrepreneurs.

With Dynasty of the Magi, PoetCode has created the first dual-platform interactive experience that allows the gamer/reader to shape the outcome of the eleven eBook fantasy series. This ecosystem of hybrid storytelling that PoetCode has developed has been named liMMO, short for Literary Immersive Massive Multiplayer Online Game.

The Dynasty of the Magi trial version for iPad was launched on the App Store in December of 2012. The app is now in the process of being updated based on user feedback and has an expected App Store and Google Play Store release in early summer 2013.

As a result of their STARTUPALOOZA win, PoetCode will be a Featured Entrepreneur Guest at The Yale Club New York’s Private Equity Forum on Thursday, May 2^nd. The New York Private Equity Forum is America’s premier business funding conference for early and later-stage companies seeking growth capital.

Dynasty of the Magi was also awarded the Publishing Innovations Awards’ Best Transmedia Project of 2012, as well as the Quality, Excellence, Design (QED) seal that serves as the “Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval™” for eBooks.

Visit the Dynasty of the Magi Website

Startup Front has something brewing for startups just outside of Chicago.

Brandery 2012 Alumn Flightcar Nabs $5.5 Million From Investors Including Ryan Seacrest

So back in July when we heard the original idea behind FlightCar I thought this group of teenage ivy league dropouts was absolutely crazy. Their Cincinnati startup Flightcar is a crazy idea. Their simplest pitch, “let someone else rent your car while you’re traveling” seemed a little far fetched. Combine that with the fact that there’s maybe 10 years driving experience between the three of them and even less business traveling experience, and I was totally disconnected.

Sometime during the Brandery’s demo day back in October my opinion changed. By the end of their pitch, and then a brief meeting with all three founders and I was completely sold.

With the “sharing economy” becoming more and more popular, why wouldn’t someone let another person borrow their car while they are away on a trip. People are doing it with their homes all the time now, by way of Vayala and Airbnb.

The concept is fairly simple. You’re flying out of town for a trip and you have to pay for parking for your car. Rather than paying for parking, Flightcar allows you to park your car in their lot and then while your gone it gets rented out to someone else who is coming into town for the same length or a shorter amount of time. Now, instead of spending money to park, you’re making money with your car that would otherwise be sitting in a parking lot.

To make the value proposition work Flightcar founders Rujul Zaparde, Kevin Petrovic and Shri Ganeshram had to insure a few things for their customers to be comfortable with the transaction.

Insurance: Of course the entire transaction, car, renters, drivers and passengers would need to be fully insured. Flightcar has done this by securing a $1 million dollar insurance policy.

Ease of transaction: The Flightcar team has managed to build in several factors to make the transaction as easy and painless as possible. The Flightcar website helps pre-determine the “borrowing”. Once at the airport (participating airports), you park your car at the Flightcar lot where a ride is provided to the gate. Flightcar will also wash and clean your car prior to renting it out and prior to you picking it up.

After the Brandery, Flightcar was accepted into the YCombinator accelerator program in Silicon Valley. Now they’ve raises $5.5 million dollars from investors. This first round of funding comes from General Catalyst, Softbank Capital, Ryan Seacrest’s Seacrest Global Group, founder of Airbnb Brian Chesky, with participation from a host of other investors including First Round Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, according to TechCrunch.

Check out their pitch video from Brandery’s 2012 demo day below:

Find out more about Flightcar here at flightcar.com

The Brandery is one of the country’s top 15 accelerators, check out all of our Brandery coverage here.

Oregon Startup To Begin Testing Potato Drones

Drones are a hot button discussion these days. Most of the talk has been about non-manned aircraft used for military and surveillance. An Oregon startup called Paradigm in conjunction with Boeing and Oregon State University are preparing to start test flights of Potato Drones.

The Federal Aviation Administration has authorized the use of two remote-controlled aircrafts which will monitor potato fields in Eastern Oregon.

Komonews reports that the drones are about the size of a suitcase and equipped with cameras that can zoom in on a single leaf plant. The drones are expected to be able to determine if the plants are getting enough water and fertilizer. If they aren’t, they will alert the farmers who can take immediate corrective action.

The use of drones is a lot quicker and the technology makes it much easier to see, verses the old fashioned way of walking through the crops to spot plants that need fixing.

The Potato Drones will fly over fields at the Hermiston Agricultural Research Extension Center and also at a private farm west of Boardman Oregon. The group picked potatoes because they are expensive and difficult to grow. Phil Hamm the director of the research extension center said that potatoes cost about $500,000 for the average crop circle.

Trial flights are expected to start Monday weather permitting.

Here are more Oregon startup stories at nibletz the voice of startups everywhere else.

NTEN Honors Memphis Startup Founder Tal Frankfurt

NTEN, the Nonprofit Technology Network, closed out their 2013 Nonprofit Technology Conference in Minneapolis Minnesota Saturday evening. The event brings together NTEN members from across the country who’s companies use technology for the benefit of non profit organizations across the United States and globally.

Memphis based Cloud For Good, is one of those technology companies. The startup, led by Israeli native tech entrepreneur and SalesForce pro Tal Frankfurt, designs enterprise class data systems operating on the SalesForce platform specifically for non profit clients.

Some of the largest non profit organizations, churches and synagogues across the country rely on Cloud For Good to give them the same class of service that a Fortune 100 company would come to expect.

Each year NTEN recognizes entrepreneurs who go above and beyond over the course of the year to be “true NTENnies”.

This year’s honors were bestowed upon members in the format of “senior superlatives” or “most likely to’s”

Frankfurt was said to be Most likely to: “Live In The Cloud And Help You Get There”.

Tal Frankfurt, Founder and CEO of Cloud for Good, was chosen in 2010 to be one of the first Salesforce MVP Program members, an exclusive club representing the top 1% of the Salesforce community, and have maintained that status to date.

Prior to his involvement with Salesforce.com, Tal was the Director of Resource Development for an Israeli nonprofit organization that worked with at-risk immigrant youth. He was looking for tools to better manage his donors, participants, and volunteers. It was through this experience that Tal learned about Salesforce. The adoption of Salesforce into his everyday work was what sparked the inception of Cloud for Good, a Salesforce implementation partner working primarily with nonprofit and educational institutions to create and implement strategic solutions based on cloud technology.

Tal has been involved with Salesforce.com and The Salesforce.com Foundation for almost 8 years. He was the founder and leader of the Salesforce Nonprofit User Group in Israel and recently founded the first Salesforce Nonprofit User Group in Tennessee. Frankfurt is a Certified Salesforce.com Administrator and a Certified Salesforce.com Consultant.

NTEN wrote in the web version of their conference program.

We’ve got more south east startup coverage here.

Mark Cuban Backed Apptopia Tops $1 Million In Sales

Boston startup Apptopia is another startup we’ve been tracking for quite some time. We first brought you the story about this company that helps app developers actually sell their apps and app businesses, back in March of 2012.

While app markets seem to be a dime a dozen these days, Apptopia is not an app market at all. Apptopia allows developers to take their developed app projects and sell them for whatever reason they want. Perhaps they just got a thrill out of creating something and they’re ready to move onto the next idea. Or maybe developers are just creating apps to sell in a marketplace like Apptopia.

The vision for Apptopia caught the eye of ABC Shark Tank shark, and investor Mark Cuban, who likes to invest in original ideas that can cause a disruption. Cuban led the startup’s $1 million dollar seed round.

Last October we reported that Apptopia had cleared $25,000 in sales. Last week the company reported that they had participated in over 275 app acquisitions which amounted to over $1 million dollars in sales.

With growth like this in an entirely new market, Apptopia was named one of the “World’s top 10 most innovative companies in mobile” by Fast Company.

Apptopia isn’t just like “ebay for apps” they have a sophisticated algorithm built into the background that is able to take an apps current downloads, ratings and other metrics and triangulate it’s current valuation, to project future earnings.

“Take the popular app Temple Run, for example. Apptopia’s unique algorithm uses public data about Temple Run (245.7 million downloads, 4.7 million ratings) to triangulate its current valuation ($41.2 million) and project future revenues ($11.2 million over the next six months). Apptopia can perform this analysis on any app, making it an extremely useful tool for developers and investors alike.” an Apptopia spokesperson told us by email.

To find out more about Apptopia or sell your own app check them out at apptopia.com

Here’s a way not to get an investment from Mark Cuban.

Alabama, Utah, New Hampshire And Idaho Friendliest States For Small Business

The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation has teamed up with thumbtack.com for their second annual survey of the friendliest states to small business. 7000 small business owners made up the sample study and for the sake of this research, startups were classified as small businesses.

The data was actually very eye opening. For instance, Alabama, Utah, New Hampshire and Idaho ranked at the top all garnering A+ ratings from the respondents.

Alabama improved from an A- in 2012 and ranked best in “ease of hiring”. Utah had he same A+ as last year and ranked best in “overall friendliness”. Idaho ranked best in “ease of starting a business” and also received an A+ mark in 2012. New Hampshire ranked best in “ease of starting a business” and improved from a solid A in 2012.

States were ranked on a survey which asked questions about; ease of starting a business, ease of hiring, regulations, health and safety, employment, labor and hiring, tax code, licensing, environmental, zoning and transportation and networking programs.

The three states at the bottom of the list, all with “F” ratings were; Hawaii, Maine and Rhode Island.

Maine worsened from a D+ in 2012 and fared worst in “overall friendliness”. Rhode Island saw the same score as last year with “licensing” being their biggest hurdle.

Despite being the “mecca” for all things startup, California came in with a D which was actually up fro their F last year. The worst thing for California? Their tax code.

As for cities; Austin, Virginia Beach, Houston, Colorado Springs and San Antonio ranked at the top. At the bottom were San Diego, Cincinnati, Sacramento and Newark. San Francisco saw their score increase from last years D+ to a solid C. They ranked best with a B+ in training and networking programs.

Columbus Ohio was one of the most improved bringing their score up from a C+ in 2012 to an A in 2013. They ranked best in “ease of starting a business” and worse in “environmental”.

You can check out the entire data set here at thumbtack.com

If you build it they will come is bull shit, says Startup America CEO Scott Case.

This Uber Case Should Be A Wake Up Call For Arrington Haters

Back in December we were one of the earliest startup focused sites reporting on these allegations of rape against an Uber driver in Washington DC.

The unthinkable, that some opponents of private car hiring app Uber had been anticipating, had finally happened. According to our good friends at In The Capital, a DC Uber driver had been accused of raping a customer.

The accusation came by way of the Cleveland Park Email listserv. Cleveland Park is a neighborhood in Washington DC. The Cleveland Park list serv post says the crime was caught on tape.

In The Capital reported that Metropolitan Police Department spokesperson Hugh Carew, had confirmed they investigated forcible sexual abuse case in Cleveland Park that occurred on December 8th. There are conflicting reports between the actual police report which suggests the attack happened on a Friday while the police report says it happened on a Sunday.

This email on the Cleveland Park listserv started it all:

A woman’s teen-age daughter used Uber car serve to return to her home
last night after a late evening. The car drove up the family’s driveway
around 3:30 AM. The girl walked to the door but the driver called her
back. When she went back, the driver struck her on the head and raped
her.The family has a security camera in the driveway. The camera showed the
driver carrying the girl’s limp body back to the house. She is now at
home, trying to rest. The entire family is of course very shaken.

Because of the cameras, they know who did it. As of this morning, he had
not yet been arrested, but many officers are involved and he will be.

On Friday, our good friends at InTheCapital were again on the case, this time reporting that the charges were dropped on Thursday.

InTheCapital reports:

As of now, the Washington Post has just come out with a report that the statements given by the woman and the driver regarding the sexual contact were in fact contradictory, and that the physical evidence as well as the testimonies given by both the driver and the woman seemed to indicate different stories. According to the driver, the woman was the one who initiated sexual contact as they were parked in her family’s driveway and they engaged in consensual oral sex. He also denied having intercourse with her, and after their encounter he carried her to the driveway where she then got up and walked inside. DNA evidence from the report does contradict the driver’s testimony to no intercourse, but security video of the woman’s driveway does show the woman walking to her side door and apparently waving to the driver as she walked in to her home. She also told authorities that she had no memory of having done this.

While both nibletz and InTheCapital both reported that these were just allegations, this should say something about all of those folks on the Mike Arrington witch hunt. In fact there are still no “charges” in that case…

Move on now and if you need a lift go download Uber.