Comments Off on Xoogler Spotlight: Splenvid Zero Button Movie Creation [SXSW]0LikeLike 3,692
Two former Googlers (xooglers) who once worked on the UX team at the internet giant have put together something new and exciting called Splenvid. They spent over a decade at Google building maxable scalable systems so they are taking what they learned there and putting it into their new startup.
Splenvid is the self proclaimed “Zero Button Movie Creation” platform that allows users to tell stories through photos and videos uploaded to the cloud. That’s where the magic happens.
Splenvid is also fully collaborative and content can be combined to make even fuller movies.
All of the media that is uploaded from the user is then intertwined together automagically by Splenvid and spit back out as a complete story.
We got to see the pitch for Splenvid at the TechCocktail Pitch Jam event as SXSW (where I was a judge). While the app hasn’t been released yet, it may be just what the world needs in terms of easy ways to do media. Ease of operation are what make Instagram, Pinterest and Vine so popular.
Sure it’s not hard to string together movies using iMovie or a slew of other movie creation apps, but Splenvid’s value proposition is not having to do anything but upload and wait.
The app should be released later this spring. To get on their waiting list click here. Watch the video below:
Comments Off on Cookbook Create Brings The Family Cookbook Into The Digital Age [pitch video][sxsw]0LikeLike 3,819
Anna Curran, pitched her startup, Cookbook Create, to the panel of dolphins in the Startup America Dolphin Tank. The Dolphin Tank was designed to offer startup founders feedback rather than criticism, on the Startup America Live stage at SXSW.
Curran’s company is taking the old family cookbook and bringing it into the digital age. Many families have a cookbook (or two or three or more) that have been passed down from generation to generation. These cookbooks often times have a lot more than just recipes in them. Some have family notes, or reasons why the recipe in the book. These family cookbooks tell stories through food.
Cookbook Create, is a collaborative platform that allows users to create a cookbook, that tells stories through food. The cookbook’s are then manufactured and delivered to the users home as an actual book.
Back in February Curran announced that they are taking the Cookbook Create platform and creating an official SXSW cookbook that will tell the stories of the evolution of SXSW through food.
“When I attended the SXSW Festival for the first time, I was struck by the vibrant, interesting community,” said Curran. “These were the people who are making the culture we live in, and I wanted to share that spirit with the world. Cookbook Create helps people share their story through food — and we wanted to help SXSW tell their story with this cookbook.”
“SXSW Interactive celebrates massive creativity,” says SXSW Interactive Festival Director Hugh Forrest . “Cooking is one of the many areas where this innovation manifests itself. So compiling a cookbook featuring recipes from some of our most interesting speakers is a great way to show what SXSW is all about.
The published volume will be available for sale at the 2014 Festival in the SX Bookstore. It will include 100-200 recipes selected from SXSW Interactive’s 8000+ past speakers telling their fascinating stories of how the SXSW community has evolved.
Cookbook Create combines the best of Web 2.0 and Print-On-Demand technology to deliver a fun, easy-to-use tool to make personalized, custom cookbooks featuring recipes, pictures, commentary and more. Families, aspiring cookbook writers, or even at-home chefs can use CookbookCreate.com to make a collection of their favorite or most cherished recipes.
In the video below you can learn more about Curran’s company,by watching the pitch she made in “The Dolphin Tank”
Comments Off on Interview With Sheboygan Brand Engagement Startup: Yappem [SXSW]0LikeLike 3,499
Yappem is a social platform that allows users to engage with the brands they love and get rewarded for it. Sure there are other social networks that have brand sections. Facebook and Twitter both have heavy brand presence but they weren’t designed to talk about brands they were designed to talk about you. That’s the fundamental problem that Yappem has set out to solve.
Founded by Dave Sachse and Justin Webb, Yappem has already raised $2.5 million dollars in seed funding from private investors. They’ve also inked a partnership with McDonald’s to help with the relaunch of the Big Mac.
The startup just came out of beta and is using SXSW to launch their exciting new startup. While startup communities are growing extremely fast in cities like Madison Wisconsin and Milwaukee Wisconsin, Yappem was quick to point out that they were the startup scene in Sheboygan, but both founders are hopeful that their success will encourage others.
Yappem was a sponsor for TechCocktail’s SXSW celebration, TechCocktail’s SXSW video series, Mashable’s Mash Bash, and their own free events at SXSW. They were also giving Yappem coins away that can be used for $5.00 gift cards. They are giving away $150,000 worth of gift cards for the launch. They are also giving away gift cards redeemable for a free Big Mac.
Check out our video with Sachse and Webb below. For more info on Yappem visit yappem.com
We’ve got you covered for startup news at SXSW 2013, find more here
We’re sneaker strapping it in Austin and could use your help here
Comments Off on Move Over Mailbox, Taskbox Is Better For Us Working Folks [video][SXSW]0LikeLike 4,367
I’ve been pretty hard on the “Mailbox” app, and for good reason. In my opinion they had the best marketing I’ve ever seen (in 1 year with nibletz and 4 as thedroidguy) for any app release, ever. At the end though, the cute, hipster email sensation left me with email blue balls.
Low and behold, a messiah rose out of the email heavens on Friday afternoon at SXSW when Andrew Eye, the CEO at Taskbox pitched a new form of email, blending your email with your tasks in a way that’s natural for business. My only regret so far is not spending time with him on Thursday night on the ATX startup crawl, so I could have started to use Taskbox even earlier.
So in his pitch Eye reveals some interesting information that makes sense. With the rise in smartphones and the mobile first experience, people are checking their email 40% more by mobile than on a computer. My hand is raised on that one for sure. On the computer there are plenty of ways to delegate your email flow, on mobile not so much. On the Mailbox app, delegation just sucks.
Eye is no stranger to technology, he’s been a software architect for NASA and the U.S. Marines. Taskbox is also a Capital Factory startup, which just happens to be run by email startup king Joshua Baer.
So after using Taskbox for the last 18 hours or so and driving the crap out of it, here’s what I like.
deleting: even though its swipe deleting it doesn’t require that long press that Mailbox does, just swipe to the left real fast and it’s gone. It leaves a second ask up on the screen but if you’re deleting quickly once you swipe the next message the first is gone
calendar priority assignment. If you want to delegate an email for later in the day or week you can do it easily. You’re not just throwing it in a “later” bucket, you can assign a date. For example, I’ve gotten a bunch of emails during SXSW that I want to return when I get home, I just assign them for the day I’m home. They don’t sit in a later bucket with 100 other emails they go to the date I want. (it makes you look more punctual)
Folders, all of my gmail labels are in Taskbox, where Mailbox only had three labels and labels I didn’t use.
So if you fell for the Mailbox app like I did, I highly suggest you check out the right box, task box. Check out Eye’s pitch below from the SXSW panel “Startups Immune To The Series A Crunch”, and for more visit taskbox.co
Comments Off on Startups Immune To The Series A Crunch, Capital Factory Startup StormPulse [SXSW]0LikeLike 3,066
On Friday at SXSWi, Capital Factory hosted a pitch off featuring 6 startups that are “immune to the Series A crunch”. Despite the fact that all of the startups talked about raising a Series A round, the concept behind the pitch contest was that these 6 startups didn’t need a Series A to get to profitability.
Getting startups to profitability, rather than rolling the fundraising dice, is the backbone behind The Capital Factory, the biggest accelerator in Austin Texas and one of the driving forces behind the Austin startup community.
Capital Factory Managing Director, Joshua Baer, hosted and emceed the pitch contest, highlighting the fact that when startups can’t raise a series A they often times find themselves closing their doors.
While all accelerators would love to see their cohort startups raise additional funds, get to profitability and create jobs, Capital Factory hones in on what it will take to get them to profitability from the onset of the program.
Getting to profitability is actually a theme for Austin’s startup community, one that’s echoes from multiple points. In a panel earlier in the day, Austin angel Rick Timmons said “I ask each and every startup how they are going to get their first customer and get them to keep coming back”.
Storm Pulse was one of the six startups to pitch in this “Startups Immune To The Series A Crunch” pitch off. Their idea is great and could save companies hundreds of millions of dollars.
They take historical weather data, predictive weather data and a company’s supply chain data and put it all on a map. This shows their client companies the impact a natural disaster or other huge supply chain disruption, could have on their business and their bottom line.
Co-Founder and CEO Matt Wensing had some startling remaks in his presentation. One of those being, that 2012 was the worst year for natural disasters disrupting business since the 1970s.
Check out the pitch for this very interesting startup below and for more information visit stormpulse.com
Comments Off on Listenup.FM Pitches At Spark Nashville0LikeLike 2,283
Listneup.fm CEO Mykas Degesys pitches at Spark Nashville (photo: NMI 2013)
Tennessee startup Listenup.fm just got back from pitching at everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference. Their platform is designed to engage fans with their favorite artists and bands while also returning bands and record labels with valuable analytics.
Their streaming music platform is built on top of the highly successful Spotify platform and rewards fans for sharing the music they’re listening to across their social networks.
CEO Mykas Degesys explains that as the music industry moves from an ownership to an access model, bands need more and more ways to engage with fans and of course generate extra revenue.
Even just a few years ago it was important to own your music collection. Whether it be vinyl, cassette, CD or mp3, most people who loved music owned it in some media format or another. Now with services like Rhapsody,Rdio,Slacker and Spotify, and high speed internet, more and more people are turning to all you can eat access packages with libraries millions of songs deep.
Royalties are baked into services that range from $4.99 a month to $19.99 a month, all supplying some sort of unlimited listening.
Bands can now find ways to get to their exact target market. They can reward fans with prizes and Listenup.fm even allows fans to earn points to purchase prizes like limited edition swag and backstage passes.
Check out Degesys’ pitch from the Spark Nashville event in the video below.
Listenup.fm also pitched at everywhereelse.co 2013, don’t miss everywhereelse.co 2014 with tickets now at 2013 prices through March 27. Click here
Comments Off on Founder Of Memphis Startup Mentor.Me Crowdfund’s In Person For Everywhereelse Booth0LikeLike 3,125
This weekend was a big weekend for Memphis entrepreneurs, specifically women founders and entrepreneurs. Upstart Memphis, the latest initiative by Launch Memphis, officially kicked off with the 48 Hour Launch, women’s edition. During the 48 hour period four women CEO’s from Memphis built 4 exciting new startups; Care2Manage, AfocusED Path, Pink Robin Avenue and Mentor.me.
Throughout the weekend the women were rushing to gain as much business knowledge as they could, test their idea out and validate it with customers, and work on their pitch deck. They were also competing for a free booth space at the upcoming “everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference” event being held in Memphis in February.
The three day event is bringing entrepreneurs, founders, and investors from across the country and around the world to Memphis for three days of startup knowledge. A smorgasboard of panels, discussions, fireside chats, networking opportunities and parties. There’s a huge list of nationally known speakers as well. (here’s more info on the event).
Mentor.me is solving a big problem for non profit groups that are linking mentors with mentees. Until now the systems used by most mentoring non profits has been flawed.
For instance Brittany Fitzpatrick said in her pitch that a few people she knows that connect mentors and mentees have to go through thousands of applications and then they link mentors with their mentees by looking at a simple sheet of paper. This paves the way for bad connections and relationships. We also learned that most mentor relationships dissolve in six months or less and that’s actually worse for the mentee than not having been mentored at all.
Check out Mentor.me’s Friday pitch:
And here’s Fitzpatrick’s Sunday pitch:
Fitzpatrick’s web based platform will allow both mentors and mentees the opportunity to build a much more robust profile with likes, interests, needs and goals. This way both the mentor and the mentee have a better chance at vetting each other out to see if they’re likely to be compatible.
When the judges convened after hearing all four pitches on Sunday evening it was a very close call between Mentor.me and the startup that won, Pink Robin Avenue.
Undeterred, once Fitzpatrick realized she wasn’t the winner she started approaching the folks in the audience with a simple proposal, help me get my startup into the conference.
Very quickly Fitzpatrick got sponsored to the beat of $265 and at that point I kicked in the last $30 to get her startup into the conference.
Hopefully both Fitzpatrick and the winner Danielle Inez, will wow the investors the way they wowed the judges this weekend and raise some venture capital.
Comments Off on A Travel Startup For The Young Sexy & Broke NY Startup: Off Track Planet0LikeLike 2,404
Brooklyn based entrepreneur Freddie Pikovsky is no stranger to startups. Pikovsky is the founder of Brooklyn’s Dumbo Startup Labs, a hot spot for entrepreneurial and startup activity in Brooklyn. In fact our good friends at Justdecide.com work out of Dumbo Startup Labs.
In a true testament to the power of The Brandery startup accelerator in Cincinnati, Pikovsky, who could have easily gotten his latest startup into any incubator or accelerator in the New York region, applied to, and got accepted at, The Brandery. It was The Brandery’s focus on marketing and branding that Pikovsky was hoping would help shape Off Track Planet. It’s apparent that his decision to take a 3 months sabbatical from Dumbo Startup Labs and head to Cincinnati paid off.
Off Track Planet, in it’s 1.0 form, had already attracted the attention of young, broke, millennials who loved to travel. Pikovsky knows this market well. In fact he worked alongside Diego Saez Gil, founder of inbed.me which for politically correct reasons became wehostels. Pikovsky ventured out on his own with Off Track Planet to target a different segment of the $108 billion dollar a year travel industry.
Off Track Planet targets the millennial generation by offering great content on the best places to travel to, affordable things to do, even great swag and gadget ideas for the millennial traveler.
“In order to change the world, we must see the world first. The new Off Track Planet makes it easier to explore, plan, share, and experience the world in a way that makes sense to our generation.” Pikovsky said in a statement.
In addition to a relaunch of the Off Track Planet online offering, Pikovsky has added a traditional print magazine and has also written a book that will be available at Urban Outfitters. The attraction to the millennial traveler is definitely there. In his introduction of Off Track Planet at the Brandery Demo Day, OTP Mentor and DFJ Mercury Managing Director, Blair Garrou said:
“Off Track Planet is not for the 80 million baby boomers but for the 80 million millennials.”
Check out Pikovsky’s pitch video below from The Brandery’s Demo Day:
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 Wednesday’s demo day for the Brandery though my opinion totally changed.
There are hundreds of thousands of rental cars available at just the top 30 airports in the United States. There’s also hundreds of thousands of cars that sit in long term parking lots at those same airports. FlightCar solves this problem.
Using the FlightCar platform somebody about to go on a trip can sign up to rent their car for the rate they want and the mileage they’ll allow. They indicate what time the car will be available and what time it will need to be back by. When they arrive at one of Flight Car’s satellite parking lots they are greeted by a friendly FlightCar team member who takes their keys and their car. FlightCar then cleans the car and waits for the renter.
The renter checks the FlightCar website and can see what’s available by kind of car, time available, mileage allotment and price. Because this is a peer to peer sharing product there is much more variety in the cars available than your standard 5 model rental car lot. Did we mention this is also a lot cheaper.
FlightCar rentees keep 65% of the cost of the rental after taxes and fees, so rather than spending money on long term parking they’ll make money off the rental itself.
FlightCar is beta testing in Cincinnati and plans to bring San Jose and Oakland online in the next month.
As a very frequent business traveler my biggest concern was what if I rent my car out using FlightCar and when I get back from my trip the car is not back yet, or worse in an accident.
On the accident side, FlightCar has a million dollar insurance policy on each vehicle. They’ve secured this policy through the only insurance company currently insuring peer-to-peer car rental companies. Not only that but they have secured a deal with their insurance company that prohibits that company from insuring a competitor. That’s something investors will love.
On the pure timing side, the FlightCar guys said customer service is of the utmost importance to them. Their lot attendants will have the authority to give you another rental until your car comes back or get you a ride to wherever you need to go, and then bring your car to you.
See what this amazing trio of young entrepreneurs has cooked up in their pitch video below. They are currently raising $850,000 and have $200,000 committed. They should have no problem raising the entire round, and quickly.
The Brandery, Cincinnati’s branding and marketing tech startup accelerator, held demo day on Wednesday at the Great American Ball Park. They showed off 11 new graduate startups to a packed house of nearly 400.
REPP was one of the startups we actually missed on our last trip to Cincinnati at the end of June. What we saw, was a team that knew how to dress in some awesome hot pink pants. After getting over their keen sense of fashion, REPP is actually a great new spin on a variety of old ideas rolled into one.
Have you ever met a girl that you tried to date, but a year to make love she wanted you to wait… oh wait that’s a song lyric. Have you ever met a girl that you tried to date and after she stood you up you found out she “pre date stalked you”? Well that’s exactly what happen to REPP founder Michael Bergman, when he actually met his now wife. Luckily for Bergman he’s got a pretty popular name. In fact, Chris Bergman, the founder of Chore Monster (which is a previous graduate of The Brandery) isn’t even related to Michael.
So sure we internet stalk everyone now. The first thing I do when I get a new business card or meet someone at a conference I find intriguing is go right to good ole Google. The problem with that in the dating world is that there is a lot of stuff out there that may be better suitable after a few dates.
Now take a situation at the complete other end of the spectrum. It’s time to sell your iPhone 4s on Craigslist. Now this is a hot item and you may want to know a little bit more about the man who just pulled up to a panel van and appears to be packing a pistol in his sweatshirt.
In both of these cases you want more information about someone. If you were the someone in question, with REPP at myrepp.com, you can control that flow of information.
REPP aggregates your social graph and can even integrate a background check into a profile that you can give people access to. You can also control how much information is given out in that profile.
You may want the ladies to know a little more information than the guy you’re buying the stolen Xbox from. Nonetheless both the Craigslist seller and the nice young lady would be more comfortable with more information about you.
So REPP is a background profile platform. With it’s wide variety of customizations and it’s great variety of information sources, REPP stands apart from anything else in it’s space. REPP costs $9.99 per month but for that you get a whole lot more than any other similar service. Also, the person that wants to meet you or wants to do business with you doesn’t have to foot the bill. To make that $9.99 an even better value proposition, REPP has a way to gift subscriptions of their service to other potential users.
Watch Bergman’s Demo Day pitch below. After you get over their hot pants, you’ll see why REPP won’t ruin your REPP.
Now in their third year the cohort based startup accelerator Jumpstart Foundry, in Nashville Tennessee has ironed out a lot of kinks. We got a chance to spend some time with Marcus Whitney a co-founder at Jumstart Foundry, who also serves as the accelerator’s Managing Director. Through each of the last three cohorts Whitney has spent the most day to day time with all of the classes.
Throughout the Jumpstart Foundry demo day the theme surrounding Whitney’s role was consistent. Whitney, while a great and likable guy, means business. He’s a serial entrepreneur himself who’s founded a handful of his own successful startups. That also means he knows the struggles first hand at what a founder and a founding team at a startup goes through. That’s why he’s one of the best possible people in Nashville to serve as Jumpstart Foundry’s Managing Director.
While a three month boot-camp style accelerator can be a fun and life enriching experience, Whitney is known for telling teams like it is and establishing the ground rules on day one. He’s also known for pushing entrepreneurs to their limit. As far as the program goes there’s no bs in the selection process. Whitney told us that they don’t take teams without a technologist. We’ve seen teams at accelerators all over the country who come with an idea guy, a business development guy and no developer or coder. Often these teams blow most of their seed money on outsourcing and barely have a product ready for demo day. One of the biggest things we noticed at Jumpstart Foundry’s demo day is that all seven teams had a product up and running. No wireframes, no mock ups, no business plans, every team had a working product you could go out on the internet and try right now.
We asked Whitney along with Baker Donelson’s Emerging Business Practice Chair, Chris Sloan, what team at the Jumpstart Foundry this year, was the most improved. They both unanimously and at the same exact time said PhotoRankr. In fact they both agreed that PhotoRankr captured the essence of what a cohort style accelerator program was all about.
Whitney talked about PhotoRankr’s day one pitch. Sloan, who is a pro-amateur photographer in his s
pare time recalled thatPhotoRankr’s pitch on day one included a slide show with no photos. Who does that? A photo platform slide show with no photos.
When Sloan introduced the PhotoRankr team on Thursday he spoke very proudly letting the audience know that not only was their pitch deck filled with photos, every photo in their slide show was procured from PhotoRankr.
So what is PhotoRankr, it’s an online community for photographers. It allows photographers to chat with one another, get advice, vote pictures up and down and the biggest part, it provides a platform to sell photos. As PhotoRankr co-founder Tyler Sniff pointed out in the presentation, the stock photo resources on the internet right now are relatively weak, most have had the same images for years and the ones with great photos are way too costly.
Now, someone looking for a photo for their website, book, magazine, movie or any other use can peruse the pages of PhotoRankr and find what they need. The photographers themselves set the prices for the photos, along with the licensing terms which typically means they will be fairly priced.
Sloan recently joined PhotoRankr and wasn’t sure what to expect. He had tried most of the other photo sharing services out there, but he was excited when he started receiving emails notifying him that people had liked his photos.
As for the team itself, they work and operate like a family. That could possibly be attributed to the fact that three of the four members of the founding team are actually brothers. Tyler serves as the company’s Head of Business Development. Their CEO is Jacob Sniff who will be graduating from Princeton this year. Their third brother Matthew Sniff serves as the company’s CEO. Noah Willard, a family friend, serves as the Creative Director.
Whitney said that one of the teams keys to success throughout the program was their reaction to criticism. Rather than being head strong and ego driven, the PhotoRankr team took every piece of criticism in stride, often asked questions about what their mentors were telling them, and then sought advice immediately after making changes.
From where we stand the biggest challenge for PhotoRankr is going to be exposing the features to the market place and what sets them apart from Flickr, Photo Bucket and that product formerly known as Picassa.
When you watch the pitch video below you’ll see what a great job PhotoRankr did during the Jumpstart Foundry program:
Comments Off on Nashville Startup: OurVinyl’s Final Pitch From Jumpstart Foundry Demo Day VIDEO0LikeLike 1,592
Demo Day at Jumpstart Foundry was amazing. The class was great and miraculously every single team that presented had a working product. Of course that’s the goal behind every accelerator but we’ve been to quite a few accelerator demo days where that wasn’t the case.
So what is OurVinyl, no it’s not an online record shop for vinyl buffs. OurVinyl is actually a music video platform that encompasses the user and allows the user to curate their own channels, playlists and discovery new music. Where most music discovery startups focus on just the audio, OurVinyl is all about video.
OurVinyl has started with indie artists and other video content that you won’t find anywhere else on the web. The founders have backgrounds in video and it shows with the intuitive user experience created within OurVinyl.
The OurVinyl team has equated most of their best practices to Spotify rather than Pandora. Of course neither Spotify nor Pandora actually do video, they are both just audio only. OurVinyl is changing that by offering a streaming video platform accessible by Google TV, Apple TV, Xbox and Roku.
They have an easy to understand subscription model which guarantees you access to all of your favorite videos on the platform and customization features for your specific tastes. Many don’t realize that YouTube is one of the top places people go to source not just videos, or music videos but music itself. OurVinyl is capitalizing on that fact with their unique new platform.
In their pitch video from Jumpstart Foundry’s Demo Day, they explain exactly how the platform works and how they plan on monetizing it through advertising and subscription plans.
Another feature that’s rather new and baked into OurVinyl is not just the ability to like or not like songs and music videos themselves, but the advertising as well. After an ad unit plays you can tell OurVinyl whether you like ads like that or not. If you say “no” you won’t have to see the same ad again.
Comments Off on New York Startup Jamplify Presents At Jumpstart Foundry Demo Day0LikeLike 1,833
What do you get when you take a bunch of good ole Goldman Sachs financial guys from New York and throw them into an accelerator in Nashville Tennessee? You get a social media, hybrid, promotional, crowdsourcing platform called Jamplify. Now at the first glance of the description I just gave them you may think we’re dealing with another Vooza, no that’s not the case at all.
Jamplify’s finished product, that’s actually available now (what a novel idea building an actual product at an accelerator), you get the most logical promotional vehicle for bands, musicians, and bloggers that’s available to date.
Jamplify crowdsources people for promoting the bands that they love. Rather than crowdsourcing for actual capital Jamplify is crowdsourcing for social capital and human capital, and then there’s the payoff.
Jamplify is like the kickstarter for fan based, crowd based musical promotion. As a fan of a band or a promotional ambassador you can agree to promote a band or musician. Based on your social graph and the amount of people that you actually touch with the campaigns short, trackable url you will become eligible for prizes from the band or artist you’re promoting.
The most interesting promotional “reward” or “perk” to date has been from a hip hop band where the artist actually recorded the outgoing voicemail message for that Jamplifier’s personal voice mail. Cool huh?
If you’re lost, you really shouldn’t be, but it would be great to check out the pitch video from JumpStart Foundry’s demo day in Nashville below:
Comments Off on Nashville Startup: The Skillery Pitches At Jumpstart Foundry Demo Day VIDEO0LikeLike 1,521
The Skillery CEO Matt Dudley pitching at Jumpstart Foundry demo day (photo nibletz llc)
Jumpstart Foundry demo day continues with the team from The Skillery. When their mentor introduced the team she talked about how CEO Matt Dudley started his entrepreneurial roots when he was just 7 years old and put up signs in his neighborhood advertising his services as a GhostBuster.
The Skillery in it’s simplest description is a platform to sell tickets to workshops. They are in the same space as Dabble and Skilshare but with a twist. Dudley and his team are specifically targeting small business owners who want to teach classes.
For instance, the local woman who owns a shop selling hemp and weaved products could start a class on The Skillery. Here in Nashville they’ve had teachers come out of the community that did whiskey tastings and even classes on the value of cotton diapering as opposed to disposable diapers. In fact the woman with the disposable diaper business saw 25-30 people come to her workshops that were listed and promoted on TheSkillery, and she was able to convert students to customers.
Dudley is charismatic and explained his pitch in a way that everyone in the room understood exactly what he was talking about but with the passion that would come with the next Instagram and not a learning platform. As for a learning platform, Dudley is quick to point out that The Skillery is not about online classes, it’s one of those startups that bridging the online world back with the real world, something that will be vital to the next wave a startups, according to the New York Times.
Kyle
Two former Googlers (xooglers) who once worked on the UX team at the internet giant have put together something new and exciting called Splenvid. They spent over a decade at Google building maxable scalable systems so they are taking what they learned there and putting it into their new startup.
