Startup Weekend Memphis Archives

Nashville Startup: ClockOut Gamifying Taking Off From Work, Small Business Will Love This

The Startup Weekend Memphis team has taken a few solo entrepreneur projects and given them a spot to present in tomorrow’s finals for $1000 a piece. One of those solo entrepreneurs Brandon Heller from Long Island NY by way of Nashville.

Heller is working on ClockOut. When pitched Friday night it was a simple app to take the process of asking off a shift at work and making it social. Through the ClockOut app smaller restaurants, franchisees, bars and small businesses, with shift type work, would have the ability to let their employees take ownership of swapping shifts.

With the app, integrated through Facebook, two employees could swap shifts, or get a shift covered, have a historic log of it on a private Facebook network, and then inform the manager. This way the manager knows the shift is covered, and everything goes on like a well oiled machine.

To take any need for fees away from the small business Heller also decided (with the help of one of the Startup Weekend coaches) to ganmify the process. Now employee A who needs a shift covered pays $5.00 to ClockOut. ClockOut holds onto the $5.00 less their fee. Now employee B who picks up the shift gets a point for every shift they covered. When employee B has covered 10 shifts they get all the remaining money in that pot of $5.00 payments.

For some shift workers $5.00 may be a little steep but it also may be worth it for whatever reason they are calling out. The $5.00 shift covering game encourages people to pick up shifts, knowing that when they’ve covered enough shifts they’ll get the money they earned plus an incentive from ClockOut.

Definitely an interesting concept. Check out the initial pitch video from Friday below:

Linkage:

Check out more from Startup Weekend here

Nibletz is the voice of startups “everywhere else” here are more startup stories from “everywhere else”

Help Team Nibletz, here

Startup Weekend Memphis: Legacy Interview (Friday Pitch Video)

This is the first time we’ve seen an idea quite like this presented at a startup hackathon. Legacy Interview works off the concept of chronicling a friend of loved ones life through interviews with mini-questions and video interviews. The idea comes after the founder realized that his father may not live forever.

As we get older we get into more in more in-depth conversations with our closest loved ones, as they get older though those conversations get harder and harder to have. The sad realization is that the friend of loved one won’t be here forever and you want them to share their lives with you as long as they can. Hold onto those moments with Legacy Interview and save them down the road for generations to come.

I’m in mid 30’s and I constantly wonder what would life have been like if all of these resources were available since my childhood.

Time capsuling our digital lives is becoming quite popular. My grandchildren, and yours as well will have way more access to our lives and legacies than ever before. Legacy Interview will contribute to that by providing a very easy mobile platform.

Legacy Interview will present on Sunday in the Startup Weekend Memphis finals. We’ll see where this idea goes after Startup Weekend. It would be a shoe in for integration with ancestry.com and even deadsoci.al

Check out the video interview below:

Linkage:

Check out more of our coverage from Startup Weekend

Nibletz is the voice of startups “everywhere else”

We’re sneaker strapping it on the nationwide startup road trip through September 2013 help the cause here

Startup Weekend Memphis: CoachSpeak (Friday Pitch Video)

Startup Weekend Memphis produced some great ideas. Sunday we’ll get to see how they did with the important part, execution.

One of those ideas is a new startup called CoachSpeak. Coach Speak is a new professional social network aimed specifically at higher level coaches, for example college football coaches. Now that most everyone has a social media account on one of the mainstream social networks like Facebook,Twitter, Google+ or LinkedIn, it’s time to branch back out with niche networks.

Yesterday we brought you the story about Florida startup PitchShark which is a social network specifically for those producing independent films.

CoachSpeak will link coaches together in new ways.

Here’s how the concept was explained and why it makes sense. Let’s say we’re back in December of 2008 and Auburn University has just released Tommy Tuberville. Once they announced Gene Chizik he needed to get moving, he needed to get to Auburn and immediately work on building his staff up.

Now lets say Chizik has a LinkedIn page. Now, after the announcement that he’s headed to Auburn, he is going to be flooded with people who even on LnkedIn’s professional network, are only linking in because he’s the coach at Auburn. He has a lot of people to wade through in order to get straight to other coaches like an offensive line coach, defensive line coach or special teams coach.

If Chizik was part of a closed, professional social network of coaches he could easily access the coaches he knew or had met personally and even coaches that he didn’t know. A niche social network in this case is abetter alternative.

Over the past few weeks I find myself in more and more conversations about niche social networks. Are they over-saturating the social landscape or are they needed?

If you look at professional social networks like CoachSpeak or PitchShark, while they are online and social they are more like professional organizations. So there is a clear advantage to something like CoachSpeak.

Check out the pitch video below.

Linkage:

See more of our Startup Weekend coverage here

Nibletz is the voice of startups “everywhere else”

We’re sneaker-strapping a nationwide startup road trip through September 2013, details & how to help here

Startup Weekend Memphis: Event Czar Pitch Video

Sure I’ll go ahead and acknowledge the elephant in the room right now, event apps are becoming a dime a dozen. However it looks like Event Czar has a different idea in the event space.

Event Czar wants to be your event aggregator and discovery engine on a local level wherever and whenever you’re going out looking for anything to do. Event Czar plans to do this by leveraging big data, data mining and an algorithm that will match your interests up with events that may appeal to you.

Say you’re not in the mood for your “normal” time event, you’ll be able to see all the events in the area as well.

Event Czar is also going to cut out some of the noise associated with more traditional platforms for finding events, for example when conversations start diluting the results, and when there is chatter coming from a future event. Event Czar wants to be you’re right now app (although you will be able to see events in the future to plan accordingly).

This was by far the biggest team at the end of Friday night and they hope to have a proof of concept if not an MVP by the end of the weekend.

Check out the original idea pitch for Event Czar below:

Linkage:

Check out more of our Startup Weekend coverage here

Nibletz is the voice of startups “Everywhere Else”

Sneaker Strappin, we’re doin it, help us out here

Startup Weekend Memphis Kicks Off After Four Year Hiatus

The first officially sanctioned Startup Weekend event in Memphis TN was back in 2008. This year Startup Weekend is back in Memphis and has been spearheaded by startup evangelist James Ruffer along with Chris Przybyszewski and Amanda Lewis.

Ruffer and Przybszewski kicked off the event Friday night with some great authentic Memphis Barbecue provided by Baby Jacks. After that the fun and games started with a general overview of the event, the sponsors and of course the prizes.

For this years event there will be three finalists selected who will each receive $1000 in cash, 9 hours of free legal services from Butler Snow and 9 hours of free financial advice from local accounting firm Collins Thomas & Associates. Also the “grand prize” winner will receive consultation services from Southern Growth Studios who are local experts on developing business plans. The national sponsors also kicked in with free cloud based services including the use of AWS for the weekend, should one of the ideas need it.

16 ideas were pitched from a variety of categories including elder care, music education and instruction, services for spanish speaking people, an auction site for nearly abandoned startup ideas and even a web app idea to “Keep politicians on the straight and narrow”.

The four ideas that were selected were, an local event aggregation and discovery app tentatively called “Event Czar”; CoachSpeak a social network for professional coaches; Buyers Unite an almost flash like buyers group; Legacy Interview, a mobile application that lets anyone capture interview vignettes on video question by question in separate files; and Clockout a socially enabled time clock management system for small businesses. Yes that’s five but clockout is a solo entrepreneur who will develop his idea on his own this weekend and compete against the other four teams on Sunday.

Both Ruffer and Przybyszewski are no strangers to entrepreneurism. Ruffer has a variety of entrepreneurial endeavors under his belt. Right now he works in social media security, financial security and online security. This is Ruffer’s 13th Startup Weekend that he’s either attended or help organize.

Przbyszewski (I’m hoping that’s the last time I need to type that), is currently working on his third startup right now down the street at the Launch Memphis, LaunchPad which actually is in the field of veterinary medicine. Their startup is under wraps but the team behind it has a great idea, that’s being tested and will help curb a problem that kills animals, is a big concern for dogs and can affect people as well. It targets one of the top 10 diseases that doctor’s must inform the CDC about, really big impotent stuff.

So with both of this weekends organizers enmeshed in pretty big day jobs they wanted this startup weekend to be a little light, fun and collaborative. In Ruffer’s experience attending 13 Startup Weekend events he’s seen the entire gambit from hardcore, bootcamp style Startup Weekends to the lighthearted and laid back, creative juice flowing weekends like this.

At the end of the day, or actually the end of the weekend, the ideas that want to continue to grow have a variety of resources available to them including Launch Memphis, the Launch Pad and Seed Hatchery. When asked about competing with Launch Memphis’ 48 hour launch event just six weeks ago, Ruffer said that Memphis has grown so much that the city itself can support a variety of events adding “When the tide rises all the ships sail”. At the end of the day it’s about everyone supporting entrepreneurship and startup culture in Memphis.

Linkage:

The official Startup Weekend Memphis landing page

Nibletz is the voice of startups “everywhere else” here are more stories from Memphis

We’re on a sneaker-strapped nationwide startup road-trip going “everywhere else” until September 2013, help the cause here

Startup Weekend Memphis Reboots July 20th

Memphis has a thriving startup scene. In fact for a city of just over 650,000 they have more startup resources than most cities twice their size. Tennessee has a thriving chapter of Startup America and their are other organizations like Emerge Memphis, Seed Hatchery and Launch Memphis that cultivate startups throughout the region.

Now, after a four year hiatus, the official, nationally sanctioned “Startup Weekend” event is coming back to Memphis. Four years ago the main Startup Weekend Organization was still very new. Now, organizers of the Memphis Startup Weekend are thrilled to welcome the brand back to Memphis.

“We promise that this will be a fantastic, fun weekend, whether you want to come and work on your own idea for a company or hang out and help other people with theirs,” Ruffer told James Dowd’s Commercial Appeal. “The program has matured a lot in the past four years, and that’s why we wanted to bring it back. Not only will this energize the Memphis entrepreneurial community, but it’ll show other cities around the world that Memphis is serious about entrepreneurship.”

Startup Weekend Memphis will follow the traditional 54 hour StartupWeekend model. The event kicks off on Friday July 20th at 6:30pm. At that time, registered entrepreneurs will pitch the ideas they hope to have developed over the 54 hour period. After a quick voting period the startups to be developed will be selected.

Saturday, the startup teams will work with each other and with top notch mentors like Clay Banks, Demarcus Love, Cliff McKinney, Karen Spacek, Ted Townsend and Bioworks’ Allan Daisley who’s day job involves mentoring startups as well.

Sunday the teams will refine their ideas, try and have a proof of concept and practice their pitches. Sunday evening is make it or break it time as the teams will pitch their ideas in front of a panel of judges including James Dowd of Commercial appeal, who’s also the local media sponsor.

The teams are competing for over $20,00 worth of prizes that all startups would need. In fact one of the organizer’s Chris Pryzbyszewski says they still may have more prizes coming in.

The national and local organizers of StartupWeekend Mempis want the teams to stay around as long as they can all weekend long to flush out and build their ideas. There will be a virtually endless supply of caffeine and catered meals from Baby Jacks and more. If you haven’t been to a StartupWeekend event it’s an experience you must see first hand.

We’ll be there as well to cover the entire event, and support Memphis’ startup community one of the most thriving startup communities “everywhere else”

Links:

For more information on StartupWeekend Memphis click here

Check out our coverage of Memphis’ last startup event 48 Hour Launch

Nibletz is the voice of startups “everywhere else” here are more stories from “everywhere else”

Want your event covered, as long as it’s outside the Valley, email startups@nibletz.com

Have you seen this page yet, we could use it