Comments Off on Salt Lake City Startup: Text Me Tix Is The Ultimate Fire Sale Ticketing Startup INTERVIEW0LikeLike 3,201
No venue, promoter, sports team, or stadium likes empty seats. Not only is there a loss in revenue but if you go to a show or a ball game and the stands are not filled to capacity it looks bad. The problem lies in the fact that there’s never really been a good last minute ticketing platform.
Sure scalpers are abundant, especially outside of popular sporting events and concerts. You’ll notice that scalpers will charge a high premium an hour or two before an event, but once the event has started, or as the minutes countdown to show time or game time, those scalpers even lower their prices. Nobody wants to take a loss.
The ticketing space is a very difficult one to crack. TicketMaster/LiveNation has a stranglehold on most large venue tickets and they don’t seem to budge as the clock narrows down. Separate venues and groups that like to stick it to the man, like Pearl Jam, and of course your local bands have other alternatives for ticket sales.
Salt Lake City startup Text Me Tix, provides a really great way for venues, promoters and teams to fire sale tickets. The method of delivery is text messages, which according to Text Me Tix Founder and CEO Mark Harmsen, are read within 3 minutes of receipt. Why not use that urgency in the text message realm to sell tickets.
Text Me Tix is picking up a lot of traction. They just won the opportunity to pitch Zappos founder and Mr. Startup Las Vegas Tony Hsieh as the first place winner of the Crowdfunder.com, Crowdstart Las Vegas competition.
In the interview below Harmsen explains how Text Me Tix saves ticket buyers a lot of money and solves a huge problem for ticket sellers.
Comments Off on Michigan Startup: Meritful, LinkedIn For Students?0LikeLike 3,570
One of the hottest spaces for startups these days actually seems to be high school students. Recently we’ve reported on a handful of startups that are geared towards this demographic.
Washington DC startup Quad2Quad is a mobile application geared towards high school students and their parents who are going on college visits. The two lady entrepreneurs who founded the startup have over 100 college visits between their two families. A startup in Cleveland OH called CollegeSkinny aims to give high school students applying for college a place to vet their college selections and keep track of them. Back on September 10th we featured Exceleratr, a New York startup that helps high school students select and keep track of extra-curricular activities outside of the school itself.
Meritful founder Azarias Reda (photo: annarbor.com)
Meritful is a new startup based in Ypsilanti Michigan, was founded by Azarias Reda, a former researcher and data analyst for Mountain View based LinkedIn. Meritful is a social network for students. High school students build a profile on the platform that highlights their achievements in high school along with their extracurricular activities.
Reda told Xconomy Detroit that students are creating a lot of content online but it’s not positive content and nowadays it’s starting to take a toll on people down the road when employers and college admissions offices Google these students. “They’re actively generating content, except not a lot of it is useful to their future selves,” Reda explains to Xconomy. “It’s starting to bite them back—employers and school admissions offices Google you. It’s important to build a positive presence on the Web.”
Reda has already planned ahead incase inappropriate predators take to Meritful. “Students have complete control over who they interact with,” he says. “The interactions are public and monitored by teachers and parents.”
Meriful has a few meritful missions. The first of course is to provide a gateway to admissions offices and perspective employers. The second is to promote positivity and achievements in high school to friends, family and peers. The third is to curb some of the content currently being produced online that some may perceive as inappropriate. Reda would like those that use Meritful to have a more positive online graph for their student users.
A lot of startups have tried to attack the event space. Some are concentrating on ticketing, others are concentrating on sharing the experience. Moment.me wants to be the destination for capturing the overall experience through media, in one big hub. Moment.me is looking for everyone who attends an event to have one centralized place for photos, videos and tweets of an event.
As an example, say you were attending the iHeartRadio festival in Las Vegas this weekend. If you were part of the moment.me community you could share every photo, video and tweet from the iHeartRadio festival with everyone else who was at the festival and a member of moment.me. Then, the public has one big place to see all the content that everyone has created.
“People want to see more points-of-view from their experiences and love to share because in essence, we’re social creatures,” said Ronny Elkayam, CEO and Co-Founder of Moment.me. “When we share photos, what we really intend to share are experiences, but traditional photo sharing only captures one piece of a larger puzzle. Moment.me’s mission is to enhance shared experiences with context, social connection and real-time viewing to become a window to the world’s trending moments.”
Moment.me is taking this beta launch to Singapore for the SingTel 2012 Formula 1™ Singapore Grand Prix. In addition to moments being uploaded onto the moment.me platform, they have teamed up with SingTel to show all the moments on gigantic screens in the paddock area of the race. This will be a great way to show off the platform and app and also show brands the power of such a platform.
“The mobile app will transform the way people experience popular events all over the world like the Singtel Formula 1™ Singapore Grand Prix, as well as concerts, parties and political rallies by providing simultaneous multiple perspectives of the dozens, hundreds and even thousands of others in the crowd who are tweeting, taking pictures and shooting videos. It will also allow users to find personally relevant, interesting and trending moments materializing nearby, bringing an element of social discovery to the app and a new way for marketers to connect with fans and followers.” Elkayam added.
“At Singtel, we have a constant finger on the pulse of emerging consumer technologies and understand how mobile broadband, smart phones and tablets continue to transform the way people connect with each other and the world around them,” said Mr. Loo Cheng Chuan, Head of Local L!fe, Group Digital L!fe at SingTel. “We are interested in finding a platform that could automatically fetch, match and present multiple points-of-view of this exciting event in real time. Our partnership with Moment.me will provide Formula 1™ enthusiasts a new way to view the experience that was never possible before.”
Signing up for moment.me is a breeze anyone with a valid Facebook, Google+ or Twitter account can sign up and use the service right away.
It’s Investor Day/Demo Day season across the country. We’ve got Brandery’s demo day in Cincinnati in two weeks on October 3rd. RevTech in Charlotte’s demo day is also October 3rd. MassChallenge has a class graduating soon, and so do many more.
Here at nibletz, the voice of startups “everywhere else” we attend a lot of demo days and we get asked for feedback by lot’s of startups. So here we’re going to show off some pitch videos from investor/demo days and share what we personally like to see. Of course take our advice however you’d like.
Product Product Product
Product is the most important thing at Demo Day, at least in my opinion. We’re going to go out on a limb here and assume that a business plan, pitch deck or wireframe is what brought you to the accelerator in the first place. Now you’ve completed a three month accelerator and received a decent amount of seed funding. I don’t care what the reason, you better have a product. The accelerator staff may blow smoke up your ass but if I personally had given you the seed money, and I don’t see a product, youre going to be cutting my grass for many years to come.
Enough on the startup lingo
The point of the three month accelerator was not to hear about minimum viable products, bandwidth, game changing, disruption or that you’re a change agent. I also don’t want to hear “at the end of the day”. Truth be told most investors know the buzzwords and it’s often times a BS alert in the pitch, either that or a crutch. So at the end of the day those investors are going to go home to their families without investing.
Statistics are as boring as your statistics class
I love startup pitches on investor day that use real world examples of problems and not a hodge podge of statistics and a boat load of slides to show them. Remember that you rattling off statistics is nothing more than you rattling off statistics. Use your key statistics in nice colorful charts, leave them up for a few seconds but I’m sure you have your pitch deck in an emailable file or better yet on slideshare. If someone is jonesing to see all your stats, follow up later. Don’t put anyone to sleep
Growing organically and virally in the first year and making revenue in the second year
This is absolutely NOT a viable go-to-market strategy. We, and of course investors, want to know where your revenue is going to come from, the first year. In fact they want to know where your revenue is going to come from tomorrow. I don’t care what you told yourself in the mirror this morning, chances are very high that you’re not the next Kevin Systrom.
Stealth Mode
If you’re a nibletz reader you know we hate stealth mode, it’s bull shit. Somebody else already has your idea, it’s about execution and product not about keeping secrets. Now at investor day/demo day all of your cards should be on the table. If you’ve got a video capturing app and more features coming that are in stealth mode, why aren’t they in the product now. Perhaps you should have spent less time playing foosball and more time working on the product.
You can’t listen if you don’t stop talking
Whether you’re in a Q&A session right after a pitch, or fielding questions at a booth or in the crowd after the event, you can’t listen if you don’t stop talking. A lot of people are going to tell you what a great job you did. Take those compliments in stride. But when it comes time to answer questions, answer them concisely, and quickly. If you don’t understand the question, let the person asking it know that, they’ll respect you more. If an investor asks you something and you don’t know the answer to it, tell them it’s a really good question, jot a note down and either research the answer on your iPhone or with your team and get back to them that night, or follow up. If you bullshit they’ll smell it.
Don’t forget personality.
There’s a good chance that you were picked for the accelerator not because your ticket selling app was going to take on Ticketmaster and Live Nation, but rather because the board liked you, or your personality. Don’t forget to interject some of that in your pitch.
And now a video…
This is Banyan, they won a $100,000 in the GigTank challenge which was an investor day challenge for the Gig Tank accelerator in Chattanooga. Here’s why I love this pitch.
– First off I’m not big into the product I’m not sure how big the market is. It’s a collaborative research tool, it’s a great concept but again there’s not a huge market and researcher’s aren’t the best at sharing. That’s not the point though. I thought Toni Gemayel had a great pitch.
– Banyan had a product. Banyan was up and running and had been thoroughly tested
– Gig Tank’s theme was literally “high bandwidth” startups. The accelerator was built around Chattanooga’s 1Gb fiber. Researchers who use Banyan have to transmit enormous amounts of data. Gemayel conceptualized this by saying if a researcher wanted to send 2 terrabytes of data from Stanford to the UK under traditional bandwidth constraints it would be quicker to get on a plane and fly there.
– Banyan offered several plans at making money immediately, not two years down the road.
– Finally, Gemayel had everyone laughing with a really small joke at the end of the presentation. Watch the video to see it.
Move over Judge Judy and Judge Joe Brown, when you have a dispute now, you don’t need a tv show, a judge or a lawyer. Now you can settle your disputes in an online forum called eQuibbly.
eQuibbly is an incredible idea founded in Toronto by Lance Soskin, a lawyer, investment banker and now entrepreneur.
The concept is pretty easy to grasp. eQuibbly is an online forum where two people can post their legitimate disputes. Those involved in the dispute can choose to post their dispute in a private room with just the two parties, an arbitrator or a mediator or, they can take it to the people, socially. The idea behind the public forum isn’t to bash either party but rather to get feedback and constructive ideas on how to solve the dispute.
With eQuibbly, no matter what your dispute is, you can take it to the platform and get people to give their ideas for resolution and then the public can vote on them. Did the plumber do a bad job on your shower and you want a refund? Did the dry cleaners rip your favorite blouse? Is the dog next door barking and driving you crazy?
Both parties in an eQuibbly dispute can state their side of the story and offer resolutions. Then get help from the crowd. It’s a lot easier, and even more fun than wasting lots of money with lawyers and courts.
We got a chance to talk with the team from eQuibbly about this great new Toronto startup. Check out the interview below:
Comments Off on University Of Minnesota Has Record Year For Incubated Startups0LikeLike 1,928
The University of Minnesota has reported that they’ve had a record year for startups incubated within the University System. U of M has spawned 38 startups since they’ve started keeping track six years ago. Of those 38, 30 of them are still operating today.
Last fiscal year alone the University spawned 12 startups which is 3 more than the previous year. Startups coming out of the University of Minnesota span a number of industries. Last year they ranged from a vaccine to treat brain tumors to a smartphone based software that is said to improve driving.
“This record number of startups shows that the overhaul of our technology commercialization function that was initiated five years ago is clearly paying off,” said president Eric Kaler. “The diverse range of disciplines represented in these 12 startup companies demonstrates what a valuable resource the University of Minnesota is to businesses in this state, and beyond.”
cycleWood Solutions: Low-cost biodegradable and compostable bags (Simo Sarkanen/ CSE)
Drive Power: Web- and smartphone-based products that leverage emerging measurement technologies and predictive analytics to enable people to make more informed driving decisions (Max Donath, Craig Shankwitz and Alec Gorjestani/CSE)
Epitopoietic Research Corporation: Vaccine that engages the immune system to treat brain tumors (John Ohlfest and Walter Low/Medical School)
Heat Mining Company: Process uses sequestered carbon dioxide to extract geothermal energy from the earth in order to generate electricity (Martin Saar/CSE)
Omicron Health Systems: Technology that helps clinicians monitor patient progress and improve the process of performing clinical research (Kevin Peterson/Medical School)
SMART Signal Technologies: Hardware and software solution that can be used to reduce traffic congestion on major signalized arterial highways (Henry Liu/CSE)
VitalSims: Simulated practice setting that enables the observation, analysis, and improvement of physician decision-making (Paul Johnson/Carlson School and George Biltz/CEHD)
Vytacera Pharma: Antidote for the prevention and treatment of cyanide poisoning (Bob Vince, Steve Patterson and Herb Nagasawa/Center for Drug Design)
The University’s Tim Mulcahy, Vice President of Research, says that the startups produced within the University system include startups from faculty, staff and students. The University is hoping to create as many new businesses as possible.
“This is extraordinarily good news that further illustrates the momentum we’ve established in our tech transfer operations,” said Tim Mulcahy, vice president for research. “Jay Schrankler and his team did an exceptional job in an economy where launching new companies was challenging, to say the least.”
Comments Off on Startup Weekend Heads To Providence October 5th Doing It Big & In 3D0LikeLike 2,115
An official Startup Weekend event is headed to Providence Rhode Island on October 5th 2012. Startup Weekend is a 3-day hackathon style competition drawing founders, entrepreneurs, developers, coders, designers and more to put together businesses in 54 hours.
Startup Weekend Providence is an officially sanctioned event being administered in conjunction with the Startup Weekend organization based in Seattle, which receives major funding from the Kauffman Foundation. All “official” Startup Weekend events follow the same general format.
Registration will begin on Friday evening at 6:30pm at Johnson & Wales University Pepsi Forum. That will be followed by great networking dinner where attendees will be able to size up the competition and the possible teammates for the weekend. At around 7:30pm the “Friday Night” pitches will begin. We’ve covered a lot of startup weekends and you can see plenty of Friday night pitches here at nibletz.com.
The Friday night pitches are 60 seconds and hard timed by a Startup Weekend official. In that 60 seconds you need to sell the audience your idea and why it should be built over the next 53 hours. After everyone who wants to pitch has been given the opportunity, community voting will commence. It’s a rather diplomatic process. Usually the pitchers will hold up a sign with their startup name on it and attendees will put a sticker on the idea they like the best. At the end of the process, those with the most stickers will have their ideas developed.
Friday evening typically tops off with team selection and then some icebreaker time with the teams. From there the teams break off and start working on the startup idea.
Saturday, the community coaches come into play. These seasoned entrepreneurs and local business folks are there to help answer questions for each team and provide ideas and suggestions. The coaches in Providence include; Kipp Bradford, Technology consultant and entrepreneur; Coryndon Luxmoore, Buildium Interaction Designer; Charlie Kroll, President and CEO of Andrea; Cary Collins, Bryant Trustee Professor of Entrepreneurship;Eric Parrish, Sr. Product Marketing Manager, G-Tech; and Jason Barrs, Product/Solutions Manager, GTech.
Saturday is also the day that most teams take to the streets, the phones, the emails and the interwebs to get customer validation on their startup project. All the while designers, developers and coders are working on pitch decks, wire frames, prototypes and products.
Sunday is the day the teams put the finishing touches on both their products and their presentations. At 5:00pm and not a second later, the selected teams will have five minutes to pitch their idea and have a brief Q&A with the judges. Startup Weekend Providence judges are: Don Stanford, Chief Innovation Officer at GTech; Allan Tear, Founder & Managing partner at Betaspring; and Tom Napolitano, also with GTech.
Things got a little more interesting yesterday when the organizers of Startup Weekend Providence announced that Johnson and Wales and AS220 Labs would give the Startup Weekend teams access to their 3D printing equipment for prototyping. These labs have a variety of 3D printers and tools that will help teams working on physical products develop actual prototypes to show off on Sunday during presentations. This isn’t a typical part of Startup Weekend but it shows how the organization lets the local organizers innovate their events in their own special ways. It will be amazing to see these ideas come to life through the use of 3D printing.
Startup Weekend Providence has a great list of prizes to, including legal packages, branding packages, press opportunities and more. What are you waiting for, hit the link below to register:
Comments Off on Kauffman Foundation Backs Silicon Prairie News0LikeLike 1,789
A big congratulations goes out to Jeff Slobotski and the team at Silicon Prairie News. Since 2008 SPN has been serving the high growth tech and startup community in the midwest with a concentration in a triangle between Kansas City, Des Moines and Omaha Nebraska. In addition to providing great news coverage for startups and entrepreneurs in the region, SPN has either hosted, sponsored or covered all of the major events in the region.
It’s their unwavering commitment to the startup community in that region which has sparked a major sponsorship from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. The Kauffman Foundation sponsors start efforts, events and initiatives across the country. They are also a major research resource for startup, entrepeneurial and job data in the United States.
With its sponsorship, the Kauffman Foundation becomes the site-wide sponsor of siliconprairienews.com; lead sponsor of Silicon Prairie News’ flagship event series in Omaha, Des Moines and, new in 2013, Kansas City; lead sponsor of the 2013 Silicon Prairie News Awards; and lead sponsor for a new series of Silicon Prairie News’ events in California, New York and other entrepreneurial hubs that will target entrepreneurs who were raised or educated in the Midwest but have relocated to other parts of the country.
“This sponsorship aligns with the Kauffman Foundation’s mission to educate entrepreneurs by supporting efforts that provide the knowledge, skills and networks needed to start and grow businesses,” said Thom Ruhe, Kauffman Foundation vice president of entrepreneurship. “We are proud to support Silicon Prairie News as it recognizes successful entrepreneurs in Kansas City and throughout the region and celebrates the jobs and wealth they create for society.”
All in all the goal of most startups, and ecosystem supporters, like SPN (and nibletz) is to help spur economic growth and create jobs. To that end Slobotski plans on adding a full time staff in Kansas City, with an official launch in November.
“Today marks an important step in our organization’s future,” said Jeff Slobotski, co-founder and chief community builder of Silicon Prairie News. “Together, with the resources and support of the Kauffman Foundation, we are excited to continue building the region’s startup and entrepreneurial ecosystem.”
Comments Off on Israeli Startup: Summer Lets You Easily Look Up Anyone On A Web Page0LikeLike 2,509
Summer, a new Israeli startup, has designed a way to easily look up the people who’s names you come across on web pages. Using their Google Chrome extension (coming soon to Safari & Firefox), Summer uses a semantic web engine that crawls the web site you’re on and then allows you to look up those mentioned by name on the page through over 70 different sources.
For example let’s take Mark Cuban for instance. Now we realize a lot of websites may link key figures names’ to previously published articles on their site, however when you use Summer, the plugin will quickly check ESPN, the New York Times and several other sources for information about Mark Cuban. When you click on Cuban’s name in an article on nibletz.com a side wall will pop up giving you information on Mark Cuban in a biography format, other story links and links to people that Cuban is somehow connected with. As the startup continues to grow, more and more information will be added.
Ohad Frankfurt, Lior Degani, Shlomi Babluki and Oz Katz have been friends for nine years and they are all co-founders of this unique new startup.
We got a chance to talk with Summer. Check out our interview below:
Comments Off on Nashville Startup: Edo Interactive Closes Another $15 Million In Venture Funding0LikeLike 2,906
Edo Interactive, a startup headquartered in Nashville TN has just announced another $15 million in venture funding. Silicon Valley based VantagePoint Capital Partners led the latest $15 million dollar round. Baird Ventures also participated. Bair led Edo Interactive’s $20 million dollar round last year and cumulatively Edo Interactive has raised $54 million in venture funding.
So what does this Nashville startup do that’s garnered such huge venture capital investments? They provide a deals service, similar to Groupon, but through banks and retailers vs mom and pop restaurants, coffee shops and other businesses. Retailers pay banks a fee to market deals to their databases of credit and debit cards. This gives Edo Interactives client base a much more lucrative market.
Using Edo Interactive’s proprietary technology bank cards are directly tied to participating retailers cash register systems, delivering an instant rebate right back to the customer utilizing the deal. The retailer can then notify the customer by email, text or voicemail. Chicagobusiness.com reports that Edo has relationships with 140 banks with 150 million card holders. They also work with 5 of the 10 largest credit card providers.
Ed Braswell is the CEO of Edo Interactive which is headquartered in Nashville Tennessee and has an additional 20 employees working in the Chicago area. They employ 75 total right now.
“Payments and advertising are colliding; to stay competitive, banks must deliver value to cardholders that goes beyond the traditional realm of services, while advertisers are searching for solutions to drive customer acquisition, loyalty and return on marketing investment,” CEO Ed Braswell said in the statement. “This latest investment will help Edo expand our market leadership position and scale our advertising content, merchant partnerships and growth within the highly competitive local business market.”
Braswell has said that he hopes to offer 140 million new offers per week by 2013. Crate & Barrel, Nordstrom, Target and Subway are just some of the companies that work with Edo Interactive’s platform.
MatchFWD is a startup based in Montreal that is hoping to change the paradigm in the job hunting game. They want to cut out the middleman by leveraging social media and sharing. MatchFWD provides a platform that allows hiring managers to share new job opportunities with people and then down the social landscape, in a word-of-mouth style that will hopefully connect good candidates with great jobs.
MatchFWD works both ways though, job seekers can leverage the same social media networks to promote themselves to potential hiring managers and jobs. The pinnacle of MatchFWD is when, through social networks, a person that’s seen and shared a job can connect a person that’s looking for a similar job.
While recruiters are sure to frown on the concept behind MatchFWD the power is granted back to the people and the hiring becomes a smoother process. Also, hiring managers benefit by seeing the real time recommendations that are coming through shares.
MatchFWD is using the sharing economy to disrupt the job changing experience and make it a more level playing field. Job seekers will love this platform because they won’t waste their time applying to blind box ads where recruiters are just fattening their talent pool.
The startup launched this sharing platform back in March even before Washington DC based startup “Barrel of Jobs” launched. Barrel of Jobs is also using the social economy to help place candidates but in a different way.
We got a chance to interview MatchFWD co-founder Phil Gauvin about their new approach to the job hunt. Check out the interview below:
Comments Off on Google Acquires German Company Nik Software For It’s SnapSeed Startup0LikeLike 3,009
While the Instagram staffers were taking their new offices at Facebook on Monday and Tuesday, Google announced that they have acquired German company Nik Software and with that, their photo sharing startup SnapSeed. Instagram officially moved it’s modest staff of under 20 into Facebook’s headquarters Monday where they will be able to integrate and innovate closely with the existing Facebook team.
Nik Software, which has been around since 1995, catapulted in recent days with their picture sharing app SnapSeed. Forbes recently called SnapSeed “Instagram and a lot more”. SnapSeed has more features and more ways to edit and play with photos in the mobile environment.
Nik Software has a few photo apps out there already but none as popular as SnapSeed. SnapSeed boasts 9 million users, which may seem like very little compared to the 100 million that Instagram says they have. However, SnapSeed’s 9 million users have paid $4.99 for the app, opposed to Instagram which is free.
Parmy Olson at Forbes Magazine suggests that SnapSeed may fit in better with Google+. Google+ has a huge community of semi pro and pro-mateur photographers who have taken a liking to Google+ and the fact that they allow you to save high resolution photos directly to the Google+ network.
Vic Gundotra, the Google executive who oversees Google+ said this about Nik Software “We want to help our users create photos they absolutely love, and in our experience Nik does this better than anyone…”
Nik Software’s US office is in San Diego. The terms of the Google deal were not disclosed. It’s unclear whether or not Nik Software employees will immediately move to Mountain View or if they’re staying on at all. It’s also unclear as to whether SnapSeed will remain a stand along product or if it will be integrated into Google’s Picassa product.
In regards to the acquisition, Nik Software said “We’ve always aspired to share our passion for photography with everyone, and with Google’s support we hope to be able to help many millions more people create awesome pictures.”
Comments Off on Grow Utah Changes To Grow America Wants To Create 5M US Jobs Through Startups0LikeLike 2,757
Utah entrepreneur Alan E. Hall is a very successful business man. He is the founder and chairman of MarketStar and many other Utah based businesses. Hall is also rather philanthropic but rather than taking the easy route to philanthropy and contributing to the same few causes every year, he prides himself on teaching people to fish.
You know the old saying “Give a man a fish and you feed him for the day, teach a man to fish and you feed him for life”. For the past six years through one way or another Hall has been teaching people to fish by investing in startups and entrepreneurs with a goal to create jobs. How many jobs? He hopes that through his newest effort Grow Utah,now known as Grow America, to add 5 million us jobs.
Thestandard.net says that Hall’s idea to start helping people came years ago when an acquaintance of his lost his job. That guy ended up working 3 part time jobs, accounting, working at a convenience store and delivering newspapers. Hall had one of his company supervisors hire that man and Hall personally funded the man’s salary until he was properly trained.
“And it dawned on me how many other people are unemployed or underemployed,” Hall says. “As a private citizen, I can give of my own wealth to inspire entrepreneurs to get up and running with their ideas, and jobs will be created. They will hire people.”
Grow America started out last year as Grow Utah. Hall kicked in $250,000 worth of awards and services that was divided between 9 startups. Grow America is working on one more session strictly based in Utah and then Hall plans to take the Grow America concept nationwide in April.
“The goal is to do everything we can, not just in Utah but around the country. In January, the prizes will be worth half a million dollars in cash and services.
Hall plans to grow and create 5 million US jobs within the next five years. For the nationwide rollout Grow America has enlisted corporate sponsors, Zion’s Bank, Comcast, Kunzler Law Group and the Utah Jazz.
Comments Off on Xoogler Spotlight Interview With Boston Startup Price Intelligently0LikeLike 3,223
Although it may not seem like it, pricing products and services is one of the hardest things that a business owner has to do. They of course need to make money and make a profit but at the same time, it’s a scary thought to most that a bad price could leave product sitting on the shelves for an indefinite amount of time. There is a huge problem with the way prices are calculated these days, and that just shouldn’t be in the 21st century.
Former Boston based Googler (Xoogler) Patrick Campbell has set out to find a way to more accurately and more effectively price products. As he tells us in the interview below, until now business owners have relied on weak data, archaic practices and even “gut feelings” when it comes to pricing. Price Intelligently’s technology is built on a scientifically proven methodology that leverages existing and potential customers to determine a products price.
How important is pricing? Campbell tells us that a 1% improvement on price correlates to an average increase of profits of 12.5%.
Kyle
No venue, promoter, sports team, or stadium likes empty seats. Not only is there a loss in revenue but if you go to a show or a ball game and the stands are not filled to capacity it looks bad. The problem lies in the fact that there’s never really been a good last minute ticketing platform.
