Comments Off on Startup Village Booths At Everywhereelse.co 2014 On Early Bird Special0LikeLike 4,777
Everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference, was a smashing success. 1287 people from across the country and around the world came to Memphis Tennessee to celebrate entrepreneurship “everywhere else”.
The conference featured great speakers like Scott Case, Ingrid Vanderveldt, Danny Poice, Patrick Vlaskovits, Brant Cooper, Gabe Lozano and many many more.
The conference featured over 75 startups in the startup village that came from all over the country. There were several panels, workshops and of course great parties.
The next conference is going to be even better. American Airlines,Amazon Web Services,.co, Dell, Baker Donelson, Independent Bank, and Archer Malmo have already signed on as major sponsors for next year and we still have room for more. The convention center has been paid for and the catering has as well. We’re also planning three smaller events in Miami, DC and Cincinnati.
Many attendees have already taken advantage of the attendee ticket special going on now. Now through March 27th you can buy your attendee ticket for the same price as 2013. Well now we’ve added the same early bird special for Startup Village booths. Now through March 27th you can get a startup village booth, with preferred placement, logo on the promotional t-shirt which prints in May and many other perks for just $295. But on March 28th that goes up to $550.
Comments Off on KillSwitch, The Ultimate Broken Heart App With A Touch Of Slacktivism [video][sxsw]0LikeLike 5,252
We bumped into Clara DeSoto and Erica Mannherz, of Clearhart digital, in the Startup America Live lounge at SXSW 2013. Clearhart digital is a digital agency and app creation studio out of New York, that just happens to be founded by women.
They told us all about their first app, KillSwitch. This app is for the broken hearted, and does exactly what the name suggests.
After you break up with someone you use KillSwitch in conjunction with your Facebook account. It quickly purges your entire Facebook and gets rid of any references, photos, status updates, etc, of your X. Useful, huh?
Now both ladies are well aware that there are different degrees of breaking up, and KillSwitch allows for those degrees. If it’s a soft break up, you can easily get your photos and statuses back. If it’s a hard break up, and it’s totally over, you can neturalize your account from any reference of your X.
The idea for KillSwitch came about when Mannherz and DeSoto were talking to a third mutual friend. The girlfriend of theirs had just gone through a break up and was doing what most people do when they break up with someone, she was deactivating her Facebook account.
That can really suck for all your other friends though, they can’t tag you in photos, invite you to events or send words of wisdom over the break up on your Facebook wall.
KillSwitch makes it seamless. Now the broken hearted can just move on. And, of course it makes playing the field the next time around, much easier.
As for the slacktivism piece, a portion of the proceeds from the KillSwitch app are going to the American Heart Association so you can help fix broken hearts when you’re broken hearted, pretty neat huh?
Check out the video below. Geeks are going to love DeSoto and Mannherz, who’s agency Clearhart Digital, they liken to a double edged light sabre, you can find out more about that here. For those looking to make break ups suck less, check out KillSwitch here at killswitchapp.com
Comments Off on Cookbook Create Brings The Family Cookbook Into The Digital Age [pitch video][sxsw]0LikeLike 5,482
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 Chattanooga’s GigTank Extends Application Deadline0LikeLike 2,842
Last year’s GigTank winner Banyan, relocated permanently to Chattanooga from Florida. (photo: NMI 2012)
If you’ve been a nibletz for a while, then you acutely aware of the fact that Kansas City is not the first gigabit city, Chattanooga Tennessee is. With that, Chattanooga hosted their first GigTank accelerator last year.
The GigTank accelerator functioned with two tracks,students and entrepreneurs. The idea behind it was to accelerate companies that would use Chattanooga’s extremely fast internet as a conduit for their business.
This year, the cohort based program will run from May 13-August 16th. There’s a sliding scale for seed money, based on the number of founders. There’s also a pool of $150,000 of guaranteed follow on funding.
Here are the rest of the details:
· Access to Chattanooga’s “living lab” – The city’s 170,000 businesses and homes are connected to one another by a $300 million, one-gigabit fiber infrastructure, and GigTank participants will have this access at their fingertips.
· Access to a “tool kit” of unparalleled technology – Participants to the program don’t need to start from scratch. Every participant will have the opportunity to take advantage of GigTank’s “toolkit,” which ranges from existing prototypes in need of startups to enabling technologies that can be combined to create new concepts. More information about the “toolkit” can be found here. http://www.thegigcity.com/gigtank/toolkit/
· Workspace: All participants will share workspace in the heart of downtown Chattanooga.
· Mentors: GigTank is driven by mentors to help accelerate the process of bringing products to market. This year, participants will have access to industry experts from hundreds of companies around the world.
· Demo Day: Startups will present on Demo Day to crowd of strategic corporations, VCs, angel investors, mentors and media. In 2012, Demo Day had over 500 in attendance. Top performing teams will be taken on a cross-country investment tour as well including Silicon Valley and New York City.
· Funding: Accepted two person teams receive $10,000, plus another $5,000 if there are three or four founders. Individual specialists receive a $3,000 stipend for the whole summer. Teams can get access to additional prototyping capital from Alcatel Lucent, depending on the focus of the concept. These decisions are made independently by Alcatel Lucent. Promising concepts earn access to a pool of follow-on investment capital up to $150,000 per team.
For more information or to apply, interested entrepreneurs and teams can visit this site.
We’re on a sneaker strapped nationwide startup road trip, can you help?
Comments Off on Tony Hsieh, Founder Of Zappos And Downtown Project On Startup Communities [video][sxsw]0LikeLike 4,897
Tony Hsieh proudly points out that he is wearing a Zappos t-shirt. (photo NMI 2013)
Tony Hsieh isn’t just a guy who created a household brand, made money and then decided to give some to charity. Although his Downtown project, an effort to revitalize downtown Las Vegas, is funded largely by him, he is quick to point out that it takes a village to raise a startup community.
At South By Southwest over 200 people who identified as being part of the Vegas Tech community made the trek (on their own dime) from Las Vegas to Austin to be part of SXSW. More than double that number are participating in rebuilding the downtown area of Las Vegas that “tourists don’t really see” according to Hsieh.
Hsieh and other investors have pulled together $350 million dollars to build up the community around the old city hall building, which in six months will be the new world headquarters for Zappos. Hsieh originally thought that Zappos would build it’s own campus around the block city hall is on, but than decided that doing so would be too inward focused. While Google has a lot of real estate in Mountain View and Apple has a lot of real estate in Cupertino, both company’s campuses, for the most part, keep to themselves.
“Those campuses are really insular and don’t really integrate or contribute to the community around them” Hsieh said of Nike, Google and Apple.
Hsieh is hoping that, by recruiting statup companies, small businesses and others to the downtown area, an ecosystem will flourish and surround his own company with creative, forward thinking people.
The Downtown Project has committed $50 million to invest in small businesses, $50 million to tech startup companies, $50 million to arts, education and music and $200 million to real estate. They are trying to deal with the statistic that when a cities size doubles productivity goes up 15%, but when companies get there productivity generally goes down.
Hsieh and company have already recruited 20 startups to downtown Las Vegas. They’ve also been able to get commitments from folks that love what they are doing in Las Vegas but for some reason can’t move there. Many people have committed to speaking to the Vegas Tech Community, holding office hours or doing other community minded things.
This entire plan was demonstrated in high gear through many events at SXSW where people were packed wall to wall. It wasn’t just the 200 Las Vegas people either, people from startup communities across the country and around the world were clamoring for the opportunity to hang out with the positivity bubble that surrounds Vegas Tech.
The Vegas Tech community was also on hand throughout SXSW Interactive to show off what the community is like in hopes that the SXSW Las Vegas event this summer will be a huge success.
Check out the video below of Hsieh speaking on the Startup Communities panel at SXSW 2013.
Comments Off on Juan DotCo Takes A Break From His Birthday Party To Talk To Nibletz [SXSW]0LikeLike 6,454
Several people lay claim to being “Mr. DotCom”. Of course there’s Mega Upload founder Kim DotCom who reportedly, legally changed his last name to DotCom, then there’s former Vice President Al Gore, who some still believe invented the internet.
One thing’s for sure though, and that is that Juan Diego Calle, is Mr.DotCo. As the founder and CEO of .co, it was his vision that turned an old country top level domain into the top level domain that’s being used by startups and their support organizations across the country. In fact we use a .co for our annual conference and conference series, “everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference”.
On Friday at SXSW 2013, Calle celebrated his birthday with about 100 of his closest startup friends at a luncheon held at the Capital Factory. The celebration continued late into the night at Pete’s Piano Bar, where Calle was a great sport as the piano players roasted him.
Calle celebrates his birthday with entrepreneurs, founders and Startup America by being roasted at Pete’s Dueling Piano Bar at SXSW
.co is actually the ccTLD for Colombia. Through a unique partnership and licensing agreement with Colombia, .co the company has become the official registrant for sites ending in .co. There are over 1 million domain names registered as .co and some of the biggest brands in the world, took advantage of single letter domains that .co had to offer. Of course there were only 26 of them and 9 of them are gone.
Google (g.c0), Twitter (t.co), Startup America (s.co) and Overstock.com (o.co) are just a few of the companies that have taken advantage of the single letter domain.
Calle is no stranger to entrepreneurship. The native of Colombia, grew up in a family of entrepreneurs in the beer and wine distribution business. When Calle was 15 though, his parents had him, his brother and his sister move to the United States for safety, while his family stayed back and ran the family business. He and his siblings’ first entrepreneurial roots came in the form of a car stereo installation company.
At age 22 he went for his first internet startup, a hybrid between goto.com and Askjeeves. That company succumbed to the internet bubble burst, but that didn’t deter Calle from continuing as an entrepreneur, and keeping the servers on at the company, TeRespondo. He eventually sold that company to Yahoo in 2005.
As for .co, before launching the registration company that is now known as .co, Calle commissioned a research study of the top level domain .co. 80% of the respondents thought that .co was short for company and 3% knew it stood for Colombia. The country Colombia soon realized there was opportunity to be had with the .co domain name but didn’t have the know how to execute a plan. Calle did, and he responded by providing an outline for all the problems that the country we need to overcome to start making money off the TLD.
“In addition to having very strict registration requirements, an ill-conceived effort to protect the country’s identity on the Internet resulted in the extension existing only in the third-level (for example, .com.co) prior to our administration,” Calle said. “It was also the reason why Colombia, the 30th largest economy in the world, with a population of 40 million, had only 28,000 .com.co domains registered as of February 6th, 2010. There were 4 times more .coms registered by Colombians than .com.co’s! If anything, the effort to protect the country’s internet identity through restrictive policy, was in fact killing it.” Calle said to dn journal in 2010
Calle ended up bidding on the administrative rights for the .co TLD and through a joint venture with Neustar Inc .co the company was born. With the partnership in place Calle declared “Colombia is now a player on the internet”.
Calle is still operating as a startup. His small team is based in Miami where they handle the administration duties of the domain extension. They are also deeply entrenched in the startup scene. They quickly realized that .co was becoming a preferred extension of startups. They also entered into a partnership as a major sponsor of Startup America. Startup America’s website is s.co.
As an entrepreneur himself Calle gets excited talking with and hanging out with other entrepreneurs, which is why his entire birthday was spent doing just that.
He took a break from his luncheon festivities to talk with us in the video interview below. For more information on .co visit go.co
Comments Off on Eric Ries, Author Of The Lean Startup Offers Great Advice At SXSW [sxsw]0LikeLike 3,748
Eric Ries, the author of “The Lean Startup” and creator of the Lean Startup methodology gave a keynote discussion at SXSW on Sunday afternoon.
He offers an entrepreneur some great advice on testing product and preparing for launch. He also comments about the new movement that is becoming Lean Startup and how they are looking to grow the organization both nationally and internationally.
Comments Off on Bad Ass Startup Chicks: Denver Hutt, Executive Director Speak Easy Indy.0LikeLike 5,030
We first met Denver Hutt in person when the first leg of the nibletz nationwide startup roadtrip went through Indiana. We were at Verge Indy that particular night and the co-working space for startups was packed. That’s because Executive Director Denver Hutt plays an integral role in the Indianapolis startup community.
Hutt oversees the SpeakEasy coworking space, plans events and mentors startup. She is also working on developing the first ever nationwide network for coworking spaces.
Hutt is in tune with the startup community in Indianapolis and wears many hats. She also loves to check out what works and doesn’t work for co-working spaces and like any true founder, she knows that iteration gets to perfection.
One of the main reasons she’s a bad ass startup chick is because she doesn’t just stay in Indianapolis, she likes to go to where the action is and help startups wherever she can. She was one of over 1200 attendees at Everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference, 2013.
Check out our video interview with Hutt below and for more info on SpeakEasy, visit speakeasyindy.com
Comments Off on Interview With Sheboygan Brand Engagement Startup: Yappem [SXSW]0LikeLike 4,661
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 Startups Immune To The Series A Crunch, Capital Factory Startup StormPulse [SXSW]0LikeLike 4,320
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 EdTech Startup MatchBox Lets Colleges Manage Applications On An iPad, SXSWedu Pitch Video0LikeLike 5,760
Stephen Marcus, the founder and CEO of Matchbox has created a product that colleges and universities are quickly adopting and loving. Matchbox is a complete solution that allows admissions staff to manage the applications process via an ipad app.
“For us, using Matchbox was a no brainer,” said Sundar Kumarasamy, vice president for enrollment management and marketing at the University of Dayton, in a prepared statement released by the company. “Matchbox provides us with an intuitive solution that empowers our readers to give each applicant the critical attention they deserve while saving us countless hours in the process.” EdTech times reported last July.
Matchbox and their new and innovative way to handle admissions, made it to the finals in the higher ed category at the LAUNCHedu startup showdown as part of SXSWedu earlier this week.
Although SpeakingPal was the ultimate winner in the HigherEd category, Mathbox still beat out 10 other high caliber startups targeting college students and educators.
Check out their pitch video from the finals on Wednesday afternoon. For more info on Matchbox and how it can help your admissions process, visit matchbox.net.
Comments Off on Interview With Shari Wynne Founder & CEO Of Austin’s Incubation Station [SXSW]0LikeLike 4,753
The ATX Startup Crawl at SXSW 2013 brought us to the offices of Incubation Station, a consumer packaged goods accelerator program.
The program, founded by Shari Wynne, just announced it’s selections for their second cohort which runs from March 19th to June 11th. The session will close with a Showcase day that will attract hundreds.
Austin is on fire about this new CPG program. At their recent event to announced this year’s cohort it was standing room only. In a city known for it’s budding tech startup community, Incubation Station doesn’t do tech they focus on helping to build consumer packaged goods, and the program is working. Wynne told us in an interview that 5 out of 5 teams in the last cohort received the funding they needed to accelerate to the next level.
Wynne is no stranger to startups of the tech variety though. This firecracker woman who functions like a 25 year old caffeine filled founder, practiced law at two of the biggest firms in Washington DC. After that, she hung her shingle out and worked with the phone on the floor, to help bring legal services to entrepreneurs and startups. Her law firm, MWR, has the big firm experience with the boutique firm feel, and entrepreneurs love the attention she and her lawyers can give them.
As for the Incubation Station, check out the video interview with Wynne below and for more info visit theincubationstation.com
Comments Off on Clever Wins The K-12 Category At LAUNCHedu, SXSWedu With This Pitch0LikeLike 5,643
Clever, a platform that connects educational software providers with legacy Student Information Systems, has already caught the eye of major venture capitalists. Back in October, after completing the summer round at Y-Combinator, they raised $3 million dollars from some of the tech world’s elite venture capitalists including SVAngels, Google Ventures, Bessemer and Mitch Kapor of Kapor Capital.
While getting into Y-Combinator, graduating and raising a big round of funding are all great, Wednesday night at SXSWedu they were crowned K-12 champions of the LAUNCHedu startup showdown. This award is better than your average pitch competition because it’s an award from their peers and their user base, educators.
What began as a simple idea for a simple, yet aggravating problem, eventually prompted founders Dan Carroll, Tyler Bosmeny and Rafael Garcia to quit their jobs and pursue this opportunity full time. Another startup called LearnSprout is attacking the same problem, and a Startup Weekend EDU startup, Student Dash, attempted it but had to abandon the project because founder Kevin Tame didn’t have time to continue. Tame was featured in the recent Startup Weekend EDU movie.
Clever has already received major traction and is building scale at a quick rate. Carroll said in his Wednesday pitch that the startup had already been deployed in 3,000 schools and has over 1 million student users. They also have over 40 paying app customers who pay them to access their platform.
50 years ago, a student challenging a teacher would be cause for a good paddle beating or wrapping on the students fingers with a ruler. Today, not so much.
Argumentation is now at the core of the new Common Core State Standards, and distinguished Chicago educator, Eileen Murphy Buckley, understands that with a passion. As the former Director of Curriculum and Instruction for over 100 Chicago Public Schools, Buckley oversaw the implementation of this kind of curriculum system wide.
Now she’s turned these important fundamentals into ThinkCerca a platform that helps build students critical thinking ability.
With argumentation we’re not talking abut back talking the teacher, Buckley and progressive educators worldwide are teaching students how to create valid arguments about everything built on five principles; claim, evidence, reasoning, counter argument and audience.
“ThinkCERCA is harnessing the unique combination of deep subject area knowledge, hard-earned, pedagogical design skill, and research-based expertise to build a marketplace that will give school districts economic access to the world’s largest selection of high quality literacy lessons. Unlike a the limited selection available in a static textbook, our dynamic marketplace will offer a distribution channel for expert teachers to refresh and deepen the lesson library in ways that both students and teachers find valuable.” Buckley wrote in a guest post to Chicago based Technori.
ThinkCera made it to the final round in the LAUNCHedu startup showdown as part of SXSWedu in the K-12 category.
Kyle
Everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference, was a smashing success. 1287 people from across the country and around the world came to Memphis Tennessee to celebrate entrepreneurship “everywhere else”.
