Miguel Ramirez is a serial entrepreneur who co-founded mediotiempo.com, the largest sports site in Mexico and one of the most relevant Internet success stories in Latin America. The company was acquired in 2010 by Time Warner. Today, Miguel is co-founder and CEO of soccerly.com, which was launched in January 2013 with the ambitious plan of becoming “the online destination for soccer fans in the U.S.” Miguel is also a partner at kiwilimon.com, a leading food/community site. Follow him @mrlombana.
Who is your hero?
My grandpa.
What’s the single best piece of business advice that helped shape who you are as an entrepreneur today, and why?
It is important to be humble. Always remember the day you started and where you come from; no matter how successful you become, it is important to have both feet on the ground and keep on working hard at all times. Successes and failures are just life episodes and should not change the way you act.
Also, being a good listener is a must — be close to your team and think of them as family, not employees.
What’s the biggest mistake you ever made in your business, and what did you learn from it that others can learn from too?
One of the biggest mistakes I remember making is when my partners and I decided to sell our stake in a company because at that point, we did not have the necessary time to devote to it; even though we did consider several options, I guess we were not wise enough to make the best decision. At the end, it not only cost us money but also a good opportunity for the future that we regret today.
We should have asked for advice from other people (mentors, family, etc.) — that might have had helped us to act in a different way, but unfortunately we didn’t. But every learning experience is valuable, and without mistakes there are no successes.
What do you do during the first hour of your business day and why?
I check my agenda and my “to dos” to set the best road map for the day. I like to be well-organized and do as many things as possible every day, as the following day is always loaded with new stuff and more unexpected things. It is essential to have an organized way to work in order to achieve tasks and objectives.
Define your priorities and never leave for tomorrow what you could do today.
What’s your best financial or cash-flow related tip for entrepreneurs just getting started?
Resources are always scarce, and it is always easier spending than saving. Focus only on those things that will bring you to the next level and cut unnecessary expenditures — even if they’re minimal, they could hurt you in the long run. The best of you is always there, within you, so use your brain first and then your wallet.
Quick: What’s ONE thing you recommend ALL aspiring or current entrepreneurs do right now to take their biz to the next level?
Work only with the right partners. Take whatever time you need to be 100 percent convinced of the partners you are bringing to a venture; work only with people that add value, balance and commitment.
What’s your definition of success? How will you know when you’ve finally “succeeded” in your business?
Success is not only about money. It’s about achieving personal goals, fulfilling society’s needs, generating employment for lots of people, making users happy and seeing others using your product; when most of these “achievements” are done, you will be happy and can toast your success.
The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, the YEC recently launched #StartupLab, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses via live video chats, an expert content library and email lessons.
A wife and husband founded startup in Seattle Washington is quickly becoming the goto place for everything, and anything having to do with your neighborhood. It’s a social networking platform that connects neighbors through anything and everything that relates to them.
LocalBlox already has over 77,000 neighborhoods listed in their platform which covers everything from getting to know your neighbors, to neighborhood events and even lost pets.
The company was founded by Sabia Arefin, a Duke MBA with a rich background in technology management and business analysis for Fortune 500 companies. Her cofounder is her husband, Ashfaq Arefin, a Microsoft Engineer who’s been the lead technologist for several companies ranging from startups to large corporations.
LocalBlox is a one stop shop for information about any given neighborhood. It’s like a mashup of Block Avenue, Patch, the Yellow Pages and the local community bulletin board. The feature rich platform has several uses including:
Discover your neighbors, Learn about a neighborhood, its residents and social vitality. Invite friends to the neighborhood. Know your neighbors from their social media profiles.
Explore what the neighbors say and like about the neighborhood. Connect & share with your neighbors (Neighborhood Wall, Neighborhood Ambassador).
Find out what’s going on around your neighborhood (events & announcements, news feed, neighborhood watch).
Neighborhood News Feed based on Resident activities, Neighborhood watch & alert.
Pet Alert : Is your Cat missing? Ask your Neighbors! Find out the neighbors and their children that your kid is playing with
Nearby amenities and services: Find out your neighbors’ recommendation. Rate goods and services around the hood.
Engage in social vitality around your neighborhood
Find a job close to home: babysitter, dog-walker, stylist, landscaper
Check nearby public transit stops
We got a chance to interview Sabira, check out the full interview below.
What is your startup, what does it do?
LocalBlox is a highly-scaled hyperlocal neighborhood platform that combines high-volume, high-value content aggregation, curation, real-time augmentation and updates, along with syndication, mapping and crowdsourcing with business and personal profile claiming services. To create a vibrant, interconnected social, local, mobile marketplace of content and tool sets, profile claiming, automatic mobile and web campaign content creation tools help local businesses and neighbors connect more efficiently. Proprietary scoring allows automatic Web and mobile campaign creation for local business owners and event organizers. We aspire to be “the Kayak” for neighborhoods & neighborhood businesses & more!
Who are the founders and what are their backgrounds?
The company was founded by me and my husband, Ashfaq Rahman.
I did my MBA from Duke University and I have years of experience in technology management and business analysis in Fortune 500 companies
Ashfaq is a serial entrepreneur technologist. He founded revolutionary technology platforms for companies ranging from startups to multi-billion dollar companies. An engineer from Microsoft in Redmond, he held the founding and key technologist roles in a number of successful companies, masterminding key inventions. He attended graduate school in computer science at the University of Pennsylvania.
Where are you based?
LocalBlox is based in Bellevue, WA.
What is the startup culture like where you are based?
The startup culture here is a strong and easily accessible, with regular events and meet-ups. There are a lot of really smart, educated and successful people here who help support startups and encourage entrepreneurs.
What problem does your startup solve?
We bring a diverse array of information, resources, tool & technology together in one place, and make it meaningful and locally relevant. People don’t have to go to 10 different sites when it comes to finding information about their neighborhood. It’s all in one place and validated for higher relevancy and accuracy. We place information into a neighborhood context. The LocalBlox infrastructure consists of data acquisition, parsing and extraction engines aggregating content to 112,000 neighborhoods in the U.S.
We have a large aggregation of local businesses and local events with extremely rich data-points, generating boundaries of the top neighborhoods in the U.S., with unique features like hyperlocal news and neighborhood crime watch built on top of our aggregation engine. We created some disruptive self-serve offerings for local businesses to gain a targeted reach and build their profiles in a more efficient way. We’re leveraging these assets to build a sustainable business model.
We have the scale and use big data and technology strategically, leveraging them to build partnerships focusing on our key strengths. We are not just a social network or another local site. There is unique depth in each of the modules offered at LocalBlox, which makes it possible for us to build a lot of interesting business models revolving around interesting technologies, algorithms and big data.
What is one challenge that you’ve overcome in the startup process?
We realized that staying focused was critical and not to get distracted or diverted into multiple directions by different opportunities, as it would be deadly for our little startup. After the failure of sites such as Judy’s Book and EveryBlock, it was difficult to overcome the idea that another local neighborhood site was “absurd and not fundable.”
What are some of the milestones your startup has achieved?
LocalBlox is live in 112,000 neighborhoods with 23 million comprehensive business profiles, millions of aggregated local content, news and events, crime mapped into neighborhoods, with social integration and a Mobile SDK. We have over 200,000 claimed business profiles, over 200,000 Twitter followers and more than 60,000 Facebook fans. We have trademarks and patents for some of our core proprietary discovery, validation and mapping engines.
What are your next milestones?
We are redesigning our site for a better user experience and focusing on a couple of key strategic partnerships for revenue monetization.
Who are your mentors and role models?
Our advisors Merrill Brown, founding team member of MSNBC, and Dane Madsen, founder of Yellowpages.com, are very inspiring. They’ve been very kind and contributed much to our company. They serve on our advisory board and we’re very fortunate to learn from them. I am personally thankful to Dane Madsen and Rick Blair[SR1] for their constant encouragement.
What are some of the advantages/disadvantages growing your startup outside of Silicon Valley?
I really didn’t feel any advantage or disadvantage of being outside Silicon Valley, though I imagine it would be much harder for anyone in the Valley, where every other person has a startup. We have funded the startup ourselves, bootstrapped all the way and have a solid, viable revenue model. I feel we are very fortunate to be in Seattle. People here understand and appreciate the hard work and technical merit that goes behind a solid scalable product and value team & technology.
What’s next for your startup?
We are focusing our efforts in a few key areas, redesigning our site for a better and more user friendly experience, and exploring opportunities with a couple of key strategic partners to take our company to the next level.
Where can people find out more, and what is your Twitter username?
We’ve all been there, either a party where the keg is tapped dry way before it’s time, or trapsing through the bar district to find that bars are out of your favorite brew on tap. That’s how the story of SteadyServ actually started.
SteadyServ is an Indianapolis based startup founded by Steve Hershberger after a buddy came into town to visit him, only to find out their favorite kegs at their favorite spots were tapped dry. That got Hershberger’s entrepreneurial wheels turning. What he found out from bar owners and bartenders was that it’s very hard to monitor how much is left in a keg.
“He flies into town, and we go to Mass Ave,” Hershberger told the Indianapolis Business Journal. “We went to four bars, and they were all out. So we finally went back to the hotel and ordered one of the beers the bar had. It was just a beer he wasn’t really looking forward to having. His parting shot was, ‘Gee, Steve, you really let me down on this.’”
Sure if you’ve got one guy sitting by your keg all night and keeping track of the filled Red Solo Cups you may get a rough estimate but other than that it’s a shot in the dark. So what’s an entrepreneur to do? Put sensors and an app in the keg of course.
The heart of SteadyServ is a sensor laden device that monitors how much is left of the keg. When the keg is getting low it can alert customers, bartenders and bar management that the keg is running low. Sure we can all tell when last call is upon us, but imagine hanging out with buddies, drinking your favorite brew on tap and then getting a notification that the well is drying up. This will insure that you can get that one last glass before you have to switch brews.
So is this for real? Absolutely. Not only that but Hershberger reports that he’s already secured $1.5 million from investors to develop what’s being called the iKeg prototype.
In addition to the convenience the iKeg will provide to bars and their patrons, Hershberger has developed a data protocol within the iKeg that will provide valuable information on real time beer inventory control for bar owners on how customers are consuming beer. With the current keg inventory process so flawed, bar owners will quickly learn how fast their kegs are running out and they’ll be able to stop selling the beer that doesn’t sell and order more of the beer that does.
The data will also be valuable to distributors that SteadyServ will sell it too. As new bars and restaurants open up they ask the distributors what’s hot and what’s not. Now rather than base this information on what bars are really ordering they can base it on what customers are really drinking.
Hershberger already has some heavy hitters on his board of advisers including David Coors of Coors Brewing Company, the namesake family. Jeff Ready; CEO of Indianapolis-based Scale Computing Inc.; and Pat Canavan, former senior vice president of global governance for Motorola are also board members.
Most of their $1.5 million dollars came from angel investors however Indiana’s Elevate Ventures has committed $125, 000 to SteadyServ.
“The iKeg solution is breaking into a $21 billion draft beer industry where there’s incredible potential,” Elevate CEO Steve Hourigan said in a prepared statement. “It’s exciting and gratifying to see a company like SteadyServ make its home in Indiana, and we’re proud to say that we support their team and the business they’re building.”
One of the more interesting (but less sexy) startups that we saw in New York at TechCrunch Disrupt last month was Docurated. This New York company has launched a new platform that puts all of your content and all of your files at your fingertips with the easiest form of search possible.
Just about everyone in every profession is creating some kind of content all of the time. Chances are that you’re going to write one proposal or do one pitch deck some day that you need information from a previous pitch deck or other file. Cataloging all of your files, both locally and in the cloud, lets the Docurated system get to work.
Once all of your files are cataloged, and as you create new ones, updated automatically, they are now available whenever you need them.
What happens next just adds to the experience. When you call up a search of your files Docurated serves up the files and the specific piece of content, putting it next to all the other pieces of content that match the same criteria.
Now all of your documents are useable materials for anything from content dashboards to presentations, fliers, meetings, reports and more.
Docurated was created out of a real world need from a Fortune 100 company. Alex Grobansky along with cofounder Irene Tserkovny created Docurated after Tserkovny found herself and her colleagues at American Express’ “disruptive innovation” team were constantly searching for content they had previously created to add to new presentations rather than working on the next disruption.
There are several search options available but Docurated seems to address the needs of people working on real projects, and presentations who don’t have time to fumble with broken search tactics.
Watch the video interview below and for more information visit docurated.com
We’re not about to tell you the story of the latest spin on the All American Cookie Company, the Great Cookie or even Mrs. Fields. PresenceOrb is a startup based in London and they’ve developed a “virtual cookie” for the real world.
I’m hoping that it’s not too far reaching to expect readers of nibletz.com, the voice of startups everywhere else, to know what cookies are, at least in the internet sense of the word. Taking it back to internet 101 for those of you not in the know, cookies are the little tidbits of information transmitted from you, across the internet to other websites that help determine what you need to know.
It’s how the adservers on nibletz.com know to offer you an ad for kayak.com when the last website you visited was US Airways, that kind of thing.
Unarguably, having some kind of offline version of this very important tool would be amazing. Imagine if everyone that shopped at Old Navy went through some magic door that left some kind of radioactive film on you so that when you went to Abercrombie & Fitch, you could get some kind of message that says, “Come Back To Old Navy we’ll give you a discount right now”.
OK so it’s not that freaky, nor futuristic. However, PresenceOrb is that useful. The only thing you need to bring in the store with you to make this magic work is your smartphone.
Using the PresenceOrb app and your smartphone, if you walk into a business in the program your phone is “marked” or “noted” now that business can market to you in the best way possible. Using a profile you’ve completed and information locally at said business establishment, you’ll get relative, passive advertisements that may seem a little cray cray but actually it’s kind of fascinating.
For the sake of understanding, on the company’s video they show a customer with PresenceOrb activated on their phone. The customer walks into two different car dealerships, a Volkswagen dealer not using PresenceOrb and a Porsche dealer that is.
After taking a test drive at both dealerships the user ends up taking some time to think about it. Low and behold, he drives past a digital billboard also equipped with PresenceOrb and the billboard offers him a special price on that particular Porsche. Voila, it’s an offer the user can’t refuse and bam he’s driving a brand new Porsche.
When you dissect this form of targeted advertising it’s actually pretty amazing. The potential for real world advertising to be affected this way could lead to billions of dollars in sales.
We got a chance to talk with Thomas Sheppard the brilliant man behind this startup, check out the interview below.
What is Presenceorb?
PresenceOrb is the cookie for the real world. POB allows retailers to cookie consumers as they visit brick and mortar stores. Retails gain analytics previously only seen in the online realm, Footfall, Bounce rate, return customers, new customers, linger time …. the list goes on. With this information and via our expanding advertising partner network retailers can then action these analytics by targeting consumers on the street through such outlets as digital out of home billboards.
Who are the founders and what are their backgrounds?
Thomas is the founder of Presence aware tech. He has worked as an engineer in banking producing financial markets software as well as for a number of technology companies producing consumer software for desktop and mobile for the past 11 years. Presence aware tech additionally has a North American partner company who provide development resource and are additionally POB’s largest customer.
Where are you based?
Presence aware tech is based within the Cisco office in North Greenwich, London. Having recently been awarded the Raptor SME grant for which Cisco is a key backer.
What’s the startup scene/culture like where you’re based?
The culture is fantastic. We are surrounded by like minded companies (Oprillo, AMBX, Lamppost, Prod designs, Crowd Vision) the majority of whom are also current or previous Raptor grant winners. We collaborate, disagree, challenge and encourage one another.It’s the sort of environment where you can lift your head and hear conversations covering twenty different industries.
How did you come up with the idea for Presenceorb?
Presence Orb was originally intended as a security device. After a startled wake-up at two am one night our founder thought someone was in his home. Thankfully it was just a bad dream which had forced him awake however it got him thinking. How could a home owner detect if someone was in the home, not just movement but be able to “cookie” someone and see if they where supposed to be present or not. From there he began to research how that could be done and then things got interesting. Thomas then went on to form Presence aware tech, we produced a prototype and pivoted our focus from security to analytics. We are now 8 months further on and the path from then to now has been astounding.
Why now?
The market is ready, hardware is now cheaper to make. People are familiar with the concept of cookies and the adjoining technology is available. In short the market has come to meet our vision.
What problem does Presenceorb solve?
Presence Orb levels the playing field between physical and online retailers. For years online retailers have had analytics software and marketing which has allowed them to analyse consumer wants, needs and actions. Online retailers can then adjust to these findings very quickly. Physical retailers have been hampered by an inability to gain such rapid feedback. Typical collection methods such as surveys, in store spotters and analysis took months if not more to conduct and collate. With Presence Orb retailers can gain these analytics instantly similar to Google analytics but for the brick and mortar stores.
Who are your competition?
There are others in this space doing similar things and we are aware of them however we don’t overly concern ourselves with competition. We have a vision and direction as to how we believe our product should function what features it should include and how we are going to do that. We can only concentrate on our own game, we leave everyone else to concentrate on there’s and the results will come out in the end.
And what’s your secret sauce?
It’s no secret that good people make great products. We make sure that our people have the drive to produce something truly amazing. It’s no secret it’s just what makes us produce a quality product is a desire to do exactly that.
Are you bootstrapped or funded?
Bootstrapped and proud. We would take funding when it’s needed but at the moment we can survive on our own resources and steam. We don’t charge for the hardware which can meet initial ourlay is high but our SAAS business model then takes over and will allow us to grow as we bring on more customers.
What are some milestones you’ve achieved?
We’ve recently been announced as Digital innovation finalists in the advertising space at Digital shoreditch London. We are one of 21 companies presenting in the final for 7 awards. This was a hugely proud moment for us.
To be accepted onto the Raptor SME program run in part by Cisco was another huge milestone for us. This fueled a number of conversations that without which we might never have begun or had the good fortune to be part of.
Our first enterprise level trial was another amazing milestone. We have deployed within a household recognizable location and it blows our mind every time we walk into the location to think …. we’re deployed here.
Our second enterprise level trial with a global chain…. i’ll say no more.
Honestly there are loads of milestones that as a team we are exceptionally proud of but our main focus is our product and perhaps the biggest milestone was our first customer feedback from a small Cafe in North Yorkshire telling us there takings are heading north in no small part because of Presence Orb they knew where to focus there marketing spend. That’s when we knew our product was making a difference.
What’s your next milestone?
Taking on the Digital Innovations final on May 20th. We want to wow the crowd with whats possible. And we will.
Who are some of your mentors and business role models?
We are in an incredibly privileged position to have not only people as mentors but also companies. Cisco provide us with one to one mentors and also business units will email from time to time giving advice. We are really thankful for that. We have advisers in the advertising space and even companies who have installed our product who we view as mentors. They provide feedback on what they like and don’t like so much about POB and ultimately that’s the best feedback and direction we can ask for.
Where can people find out more and what is your Twitter username?
We talk about women entrepreneurs and startup founders a lot here at nibletz.com The Voice Of Startups Everywhere Else. Last month at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013, Sequoia’s Aaref Hilaly said that the number one reason for such a big gender gap is that their aren’t enough women engineers.
Dave Tisch on the other hand said that women aren’t treated seriously in VC meetings, saying that this was the biggest bullshit.
Pemo Theodore the founder of Ezebis prepared the infographic below highlighting where women stand in the startup space.. Some of it is still very disturbing.
For instance, their infographic below says that 41.1% of women founders relied on outsider debt to start a business. The data also says that 21% of women entrepreneurs sought angel capital in 2009 and of those only 9.4% were successful. Also in 2009 only 11% of companies that received venture backing, had a female CEO or founder. Perhaps one of the most disturbing thing AlleyWatch found was that only 3% of all people accepted (total) in all of the Y Combinator classes, have been women.
The good news is that since he 1997 census women owned businesses have gone up 50%. In 2011 8.1 million businesses led by women have generated nearly $13 trillion dollars in revenue.
Lightning Lab, the only New Zealand based startup accelerator that is part of the Global Accelerator Network, held their demo day early this month in Wellington. Now in it’s third year, Lightning Lab is a partnership between a group of private professional investors, the science and innovation arm of New Zealand’s Ministry of Business and Creative HQ a coworking and incubation hub in New Zealand.
The nine startups that participated in the 12 week program were:
Publons: a platform for crowd-sourced peer-review of academic articles, where academics build reputation for their contributions. It provides an alternative to the extremely slow, expensive, and closed status quo that hasn’t changed in 300 years.
WIP: a beautifully simple video workflow platform that lets you watch, share and comment on your work-in-progress videos, so you get better feedback faster.
KidsGoMobile: a startup developing a software service to help parents teach their children to become responsible users of their first smartphone. This tool will notify parents if their child engages in potentially risky activity on their phone and gives them tips on how to resolve it.
Teamisto: a startup changing the way sports clubs raise money by generating new streams of sponsorship revenue.
Expander: A cloud-based tracking and analytics platform that gives manufacturers a weapon to fight back against counterfeits, while connecting them to consumers and procuring valuable data in emerging markets.
Adeez: a startup that provides a specialist mobile marketing solution which enables brands and marketing agencies to improve their ROI with mobile campaigns.
LearnKO delivers online learning programs to English language organisations in Asia. We do this by harnessing the talent of Australasian tutors and delivering this via an online classroom to English language organisations.
Promoki a social media gaming platform for photo and video contests
Questo: a startup using game mechanics in real world activities to increase family engagement for organizations.
Their demo day drew 140 investors from across the country and while they haven’t said which of the nine startups received follow on funding stuff.co.nz reports that $3 million dollars in follow on funding has been committed and details will be released shortly.
“Watching Lightning Lab in action was incredible. These results are what makes it worthwhile for the companies which grow out of weeks of hard work, for the investors and mentors who support them, and for the other entrepreneurs who see it and are inspired into action, turning their own ideas into great startup companies going global from downunder.” Tui Te Hau the CEO of Creative HQ said.
Everyone’s familiar with how artists and designers have portfolio’s for their work. An artist or designer’s best work is kept in one place, now online of course, so that it’s easy for fans, clients and even buyers to see.
Well Buffalo NY startup Gradfly is doing the same exact thing for high school students with a concentration in science and technology students who are “building the most awesome things”, Oscar Pedroso, Gradfly’s CEO and co-founder said in an interview.
Students who enjoy STEM-oriented activities such as building robots, writing code, or solving complex math equations, can build an online portfolio and share their technical creations and achievements in picture, video, or Pinterest-like format with friends, colleges and companies. GradFly’s vision is to bridge the gap between a STEM education, technical training and employability.
GradFly is committed to help open doors in STEM and STEM only. It’s not just going after any high school or college student, GradFly is going after students who want to succeed in this new information-based and highly technological society; the company even welcomes curious students. GradFly understands students need to develop their capabilities in STEM to levels much beyond what was considered in the past. At GradFly, talented students are taking their first step by creating an online portfolio and then connecting to technical colleges and companies that are looking for tomorrow’s scientists, technologists, engineers and mathematicians. GradFly is empowering these students (and their parents) to make the best and most affordable decisions about their education and career in STEM. For college and companies, GradFly will standout by offering modern tools focused on sourcing, talent analytics, assessment, interview management and search.
The startup’s team, which also includes Anna Hadnagy (CIO), Elliott Regan (Front End Programmer) and Herb Susmann (Chief Architect) were selected last fall for the Z80 Labs Technology Incubator.
The work they’ve done over the last 9 months really paid off as they were one of the startups selected to pitch on the TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013 Battlefield stage.
During that appearance, the judges questioned why high school STEM students couldn’t just use GitHub. To that Pedroso says that Gradfly is more visual, helping students tell a story with their work. They also have a focused community of high school aged students, where of course there is no age requirement for GitHub.
Check out our video interview with Pedroso below and for more information visit gradfly.com
Prodigi Arts is an animation startup that works out of the same incubator that we work out of. While an animation studio may not be your typical high growth potential startup, as a technology company based in Memphis founder Chris O’Conner and all around jack of all trades and Public Relations Coordinator for the company Joshua Colfer, are running the company with the vigor of any startup.
They rely on the resources that other startups in Memphis rely on and they face many of the same issues tech startups face in a medium sized revitalizing market. As Colfer tells us below, O’Conner started Prodigi Arts as a side business or side startup and then made the decision to take the plunge and take the company full time.
Now both O’Conner and Colfer will contribute to the Nibletz community providing content based on their experiences as entrepreneurs, experience in technology and experience in technology. Prodigi Arts will contribute on a wide range of themes, from best practices for startups resorting to animation videos for telling their startup stories, to taking the plunge and pushing an idea forward.
Both O’Conner and Colfer are committed to the world of startups and animation. After just moving into the incubator they made it appoint to attend the first everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference and then sought out the nibletz team to share their thoughts. Colfer and O’Conner are joining an evergrowing stable of great people contributing to the nibletz community like Sarah Ware (co-founder and CEO of Markerly), Mike Muhney the godfather of CRM, and several members of the Young Entrepreneurs Council.
Below Colfer tells us a lot more about Prodigi Arts and just why they’re part of the nibletz, “everywhere else” community. If you want to take your animation project to the next level you can find out more about Prodigi Arts here at prodigiarts.com and you can email Josh directly at jcolfer@prodigiarts.com
Prodigi Arts is an animation studio that produces memorable and poignant multimedia productions used in advertising, commercials, product development, training videos.
Prodigi was founded in 2005 by Memphis native Chris O’ Conner. Steeped heavily in the arts world, Chris grew up sketching, singing, composing music and performing for audiences everywhere. After graduating from Middle Tennessee State University in 2006, Chris had the opportunity to continue his education in animation in Southern California, or return to Memphis to grow and cultivate Prodigi Arts. He chose to return to his hometown to work as a Marketing Representative for the Germantown Performing Arts Center from 2007 to 2010, and served as a Creative Consultant for the performing arts Group, Watoto De Africa as well. During this time, he also began fine tuning the business plan for Prodigi Arts and making connections in the area.
We are based in Memphis, TN.
The startup culture in Memphis can be likened to the AV kids in high school who find support and belonging in the dark confines of the technology room, who one day hope to join the society of filmmakers or special effects artists. Fortunately, startups in the Bluff City have the support of organizations like Launch Memphis, Emerge Memphis and the University of Memphis Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. Since Memphis is a city that is not as quick to embrace innovation and technological advances, startups face some difficulty securing capital from investors willing to take risks on fresh ideas.
Prodigi Arts creates memorable, engaging and entertaining productions through the art of animation. Capturing the attention of audiences is a difficult endeavor for any company, small and big alike. We solve this problem by incorporating 2D & 3D animation, motion graphics, live action and video production into every project. We solve the problem of communicating complex ideas in a simple and concise manner for companies and organizations to tell their stories in the most understandable way possible.
A difficulty that we have faced is entering into the entrepreneurial process without investors or startup capital. Thus far, we have been able to subside entirely on revenue generated from client projects, with the intentions of holding private ownership over the company.
A recent stride that we have made as a company has been our Corporate Sponsorship of Leadership Memphis, which is shared by large entities like United Way and FedEx. In addition, we have signed a three year contract to create the animated and video productions for the CFO of the Year and Small Business Awards with Memphis Business Journal. In addition, Prodigi’s founder, Chris O’ Conner has spoken at numerous events about being a minority business owner, and was honored with the Innovator of the Year Award in Decemeber of 2012 at the “Agents of Change” Gala.
Within the next year, we hope to take on projects that will stretch our creative abilities as an animation studio and grow a more diverse portfolio that highlight different animation techniques. We also aim to become a staple animation company in the Memphis and Mid-South region within the next year that companies will go to when they seek animated commercials, instead of larger firms in the New York or Los Angeles area.
One of Chris’ mentors is a marketing professor at Middle Tennessee State University, who has helped him organize his business plan and strategize about how to market animation services to businesses in the area. Another is Dale Carnegie, author of the book “How to Win Friends and Influence People”. While no longer alive, Carnegie’s ideas about forming business relationships and working within the framework of others’ objectives is an imperative lesson for Prodigi as we seek to make connections with companies and grow our clientele base.
One of our advantages to being located in Memphis is that we are the only animation studio to occupy a niche that has previously gone unoccupied in the past. Being the only animation company, we can provide a creative service at a lower cost than the larger studios in New York or Los Angeles. However, the associations with animation have at times dissuaded businesses from using our services. More often than not, companies assume that we provide animation for children’s shows and cartoons, rather than for companies looking to tell their stories in creative ways. In Metropolitan areas, animation is used regularly in advertisements and commercials, and provides a memorable alternative to video production. Many businesses in Memphis have yet to think of these kinds of applications for animation, and still hold on to their assumptions of animation for children’s shows and cartoons. In essence, we are creating a market for animation.
At the moment we have just finished a live action animation project with Hnedak Bobo Group, and will be starting on the Small Business of the Year Awards with the Memphis Business Journal within a week. After that we have potential clients in mind that we will focus on reaching out to in hopes of partnering with them to bring their brands to life.
Denver Hutt (center) surrounded by entrepreneurs. (photo: Facebook)
Back in March, Executive Director of the Speak Easy co-working and startup event space in Indianapolis, Denver Hutt, was our Bad Ass Startup Chick here at Nibletz. We chose Hutt because she’s an Indy lover by choice, deciding to stick around Indianapolis after college. She’s a native of Santa Monica, and who gives up the gorgeous weather, sandy beaches and west coast lifestyle for the middle of the country?
A woman who is uber passionate about startups, entrepreneurs and community, that’s who.
Well like many of us Hutt lives the entrepreneur lifestyle. We originally met her last year on the sneaker strapped road trip when we stopped at a Verge Indy event held at the SpeakEasy. She then came and visited us in Memphis in February for everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference, and a month later we spent most of the week with her at SXSW.
Hutt’s been shoulder deep in running Indy’s awesome coworking space, finding mentors to help the Indy startup scene and working on the next big thing for Indianapolis startups. With a plate that full she lives the round the clock pace that we’re all accustomed to. She’s the kind of person you can ping at 3am on a random Tuesday to fact check a story or 8am on a Saturday morning to confirm details of events. She, like many entrepreneurs, goes round the clock.
That’s why when she came down with a cough over a month and a half ago, she just kept going. The cough became pneumonia. The pneumonia became double pneumonia and she ended up with two fractured ribs from coughing so much.
“I have had a cough for quite some time. More than simply being annoying, after weeks of coughing I developed pneumonia, and because I don’t like to give things just 50%, my pneumonia turned into double pneumonia. And two fractured ribs. (How’s that for commitment?!) As my cough continued despite multiple antibiotics, my doctor and I decided to begin more serious testing to determine the underlying cause.” Hutt said in an email to her community members at the Speak Easy which she shared with Nibletz today.
It was determined that the 26 year old bad ass startup chick was staring down the barrel of cancer.
On May 17th Denver began treatment at the IU Simon Cancer Center. She says she’s in good hands at her alma mater. She seemed in very good spirits when we talked with her today, and she is determined to continue to grow the Speak Easy while undergoing treatment.
There’s no exact prognosis just yet. Treatment has just started and her doctors are still determining exactly what kind of cancer it is. Denver is obviously a fighter and she will attack this cancer with the same vigor she’s been leading the Indianapolis startup community with.
When we spoke with her this morning we didn’t want to tell the, “oh my god Denver Hutt has cancer story,” instead her and I decided the story that should be told is that no matter how fast you’re moving, what you’re working on or how close you are to closing that round, you need to take care of your health and your body. That $1 million dollar series A round isn’t going to do you a bit of good if you’re not around to enjoy the fruits of your labor.
Denver had previously committed to being on the “Bad Ass Startup Chicks” panel at the next everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference. She assured me today that she will still make that appearance next February.
Finding yourself in between jobs can be one of the scariest things on earth. Some people are lucky, and they know when they might have to start looking for work. Most people, on the other hand, have no idea that they are about to get laid off or that a company is shutting down. For anyone out of work though, uncertainty can be a very scary thing.
Not knowing where the next paycheck is coming from is typically the biggest threat in between jobs, but other things like health insurance, other employee benefits, taxes and resources can become overwhelming.
Big companies usually help out displaced workers through third party companies. These companies, chronicled in the George Clooney movie Up In The Air, connect people to job placement services, resume companies, skill builders and other resources. For the rest of us though, navigating in between jobs can be the hardest job of all.
InBetweenJobs is a New York startup that sets out to simplify and enrich the process of being in between jobs. The company offers access to resources for things like polishing your cover letter, updating your resume, improving your skills, researching trends and companies in your field and of course hunting for jobs. They’re also hoping to offer interviewing tips, information about COBRA insurance and anything that anyone in between jobs could need.
InBetweenJobs incentivizes the time between jobs by offering points for real life rewards. When a user participates in an activity like taking a quick online course in cover letters they earn points. Points can then be redeemed for things like metrocards and free coffee, which when you’re saving every dime you have, can come in quite handy.
Not only do the points come in handy because they provide value to the job seeker, they can also serve as even the smallest little morale booster which people often times need when they are out of work.
Check out our video interview below with CEO and founder Diego Orofino and to sign up to be notified when InBetweenJobs opens, head over to inbetweenjobs.com.
On Thursday in a swank movie theater in Memphis’ revitalized midtown district, six startups presented their companies to a theater that was literally, standing room only by the beginning of the pitches.
BetterFed (farm to consumer), MentorMe (e-harmony for mentors), Soundstache (a fan engagement platform for bands), Boosterville (a huge disruption in fundraising), Musistic (Github for musicians) and ScrewPulp (a better way to self publish), took the stage for 12 minute investor pitches after concluding the three month Seed Hatchery accelerator program.
Investors and spectators from Mississippi, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee and as far away as Singapore and Silicon Valley were in attendance to take in the pitches.
Mara Lewis, a San Francisco based entrepreneur and founder of stopped.at, was in attendance for the Seed Hatchery festivities which included an after party at the world famous Memphis BBQ competition. Lewis, who’s pitched in front of plenty of crowds said that this group at Seed Hatchery was one of the best groups she’s seen. Lewis is currently working with Start Co’s co-President’s Andre Fowlkes and Eric Mathews on their upcoming Upstart women’s startup accelerator.
After playing host to a group of Memphis entrepreneurs (including myself) in Silicon Valley in March, Kuji Chahal of Fisher Investments made the cross country trek to hear the pitches from the Seed Hatchery cohort. Chahal stuck around throughout the festivities to talk with all of the new entrepreneurs.
Andre Mouton, an investor from Singapore has been ecstatic about Memphis’ entrepreneurship. He made a trip to Memphis in February which included visits to Launch Memphis, Bioworks and everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference. Mouton took meetings with entrepreneurs all weekend long at the BBQ Festival and over at the Peabody Hotel. Mouton told us that he was impressed at how hard everyone was working in Memphis, that my friend is the Grit N Grind.
Vic Gatto, a Managing Partner at Solidus, the investment firm that seeds the Seed Hatchery class along with Jump Start Foundry in Nashville, made it a point to call out investors in the room with a call to action to talk with the entrepreneurs, and see that all six businesses have a good chance of survival. Gatto’s partner Townes Duncan, along with his son Walker Duncan, co-founder and Editor in Chief at southernalpha also made it down from Nashville. The younger Duncan was returning from an event in Atlanta. Obviously the Grit N Grind of Memphis is expanding state wide.
Both Fowlkes and Mathews were quick to point out that Investor Day isn’t the conclusion of the Seed Hatchery program but rather the beginning. They recently added Rhodes graduate, Hillary Quirk, to the Start Co team as Community Manager. In her new role Quirk is forming an alumni association for Memphis’ accelerators which include the two cohorts at ZeroTo510.
Boston Startup Skit is a mobile app that lets you take your photos, and drawings and easily turn them into an animated story. The user doesn’t need to know a thing about animation. The app itself is all gesture based and easy for anyone with a little bit of mobile experience.
Skit is a lot more than an animated gif creator you can take your photos and drawings, turn them into a story, whatever story you want. Then you can share them with the Skit community and all of your friends through your social channels. Once you’ve shared your animation, anyone can “remix” it and make it their own.
You start with a blank canvas and Skit allows you to choose from art they provide for free or you can use your own photos and drawings from your iPad’s library. You can choose weather the photo or drawing is a character or a background, and the app provides you with tons of props as well.
Robin Johnson and Max Woon the cofounders of Skit both have animation backgrounds. Johnson has experience working on the Medal of Honor franchise, among others, while at Electronic Arts. Woon tells Silicon Hills founder Laura Lorek that he also have gaming and animation in his background but became obsessed with this animation idea after watching the making of South Park. In the video interview at SiliconHills website, he talks about how the creators of Southpark would sit in a studio and do the script first and then the animators would get to work.
Both Johnson and Woon wanted something easier and quicker to animate whatever the user wanted and to tell stories.
After the user finishes creating a skit they can save it locally or share it via Facebook and Youtube.
The team behind Skit launched it to the iTunes App store back in February and were chosen for the coveted last pitch position in the recent Techstars Cloud investor day pitches.
Check out our interview with Johnson below and for more information visit skitapp.com
The day of reckoning is upon us and it appears that Bad Ass Startup Chick Brittany Fitzpatrick’s nerves have calmed a bit. After working tirelessly on a startup she originally pitched at the women’s 48 hour launch in Decemeber, Fitzpatrick is ready to show the world her answer to many of mentoring’s problems.
Community service and helping people have been what Brittany Fitzpatrick’s life’s work have been about. But what makes this Memphian even more amazing is that she left a position with one of the most prestigious, well known brands in the non-profit space, Ronald McDonald House Charities, to start something of her own, again in community service.
As the communications coordinator for Ronald McDonald House Charities of Memphis, Brittany took the passion and drive she’s had since high school and through college at Howard University and Memphis University, and combined it with the tools available in recent day to double the groups social media reach. Ronald McDonald House Charities of Memphis works with the most well known children’s research facility in the world, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
Over the last six years, Brittany has been a mentor and helped other mentor’s in a variety of programs. Through her work with Ronald McDonald House Charities and other stops along the way, she found that mentorship was a great thing, but flawed in many ways.
When she first pitched the idea for her startup “Mentor Me” back in December at a women focused 48 Hour Launch, she revealed that most mentor orgranizations spend more money re-placing mentors and mentees than they do setting up original pairs. Brittanny quickly realized if someone could fix the initial matching proces than these programs could focus on their original goals and save a lot of money.
That’s where her startup Mentor Me comes in. Mentor Me is a mentor and mentee online matching service that uses a variety of information given from both parties and an algorithm to make more successful matches. While Brittany is hesitant about using the verbage “e-harmony for mentor”, at the core that’s what it is and that’s why it’s going to be so successful.
But the biggest factor in the success of Mentor Me is going to be a combination of the technology and the founder. Brittany is a dynamic young woman. Back in December, the prize for the 48 Hour Launch competition was a startup village booth at everywherelse.co. When Brittany came in second place she decided to crowdfund the people in the audience so that she too could have a booth for her startup. Within minutes her mission was successful.
After working for three months in the Seed Hatchery startup accelerator, Fitzpatrick unveiled MentorMe to the public at large Thursday in Memphis. Check out her pitch below:
But the biggest factor in the success of Mentor Me is going to be a combination of the technology and the founder. Brittany is a dynamic young woman. Back in December, the prize for the 48 Hour Launch competition was a startup village booth at everywherelse.co. When Brittany came in second place she decided to crowdfund the people in the audience so that she too could have a booth for her startup. Within minutes her mission was successful.
Guest
Miguel Ramirez is a serial entrepreneur who co-founded mediotiempo.com, the largest sports site in Mexico and one of the most relevant Internet success stories in Latin America. The company was acquired in 2010 by Time Warner. Today, Miguel is co-founder and CEO of soccerly.com, which was launched in January 2013 with the ambitious plan of becoming “the online destination for soccer fans in the U.S.” Miguel is also a partner at kiwilimon.com, a leading food/community site. Follow him @mrlombana.
Kyle
