Mobile App Development Companies Are $262 Million Dollars Hot!

CB Insights has released a new report on mobile app development companies. According to the industry publication, mobile app development companies have taken in $262 million dollars in venture funding since 2012.

The magnitude of that number is all relative to how you view the overall startup world, because many startups are mobile first. In this case CB Insights is reporting on “startups that provide tools and platforms to build mobile applications.” This encompasses startups that are building apps for other companies and clients, internal apps, and web tools and do-it-yourself platforms. 59% of total funding for these startups has come since 2012.

The $262 million dollars is across 36 deals. That 59% is of the $446 million to the mobile app development space overall, reports CB Insights.

Huge acquisition deals like Facebook’s acquisition of Parse in for $85M and IBM’s $70M acquisition of Worklight in January 2012 contributed to the steady growth.

There are also mobile app development companies like Florida’s Appsbar which provides a DIY platform for small businesses and individuals looking to create apps that haven’t taken any venture capital and have already started generating healthy revenues.

Check out CB Insights chart below.

New Orleans Offering Big Tax Incentives To Attract Startups

We already know the New Orleans‘ startup community is growing. Ever since Hurricane Katrina, the people of New Orleans have turned to starting their own businesses, launching tech companies, medical device companies, and other types of startups. They’ve adopted a “fend for yourself” mentality while sewing the fabric of the city back together.

For decades, New Orleans has been known for its music and culture. Mix in the growing startup community, and it’s a great place to relocate to launch that new startup. Sure many people want to flock to Silicon Valley or New York, but New Orleans has a flavor all its own.

If that’s not enough for you, New Orleans is now offering huge tax incentives to startups. Tourism and hospitality are huge industries in New Orleans, but technology, on the other hand, is not. According to The Atlantic, New Orleans still lags behind most of the country in tech workers. According to The Examiner, 1.4% of workers in the Big Easy are in the “computer and mathematical” fields; that number is 2.7% across the nation.

To correct that New Orleans is offering an incentive called the “Digital Interactive Media and Software Incentive.” This incentive offers startups with at least one employee a 35% tax credit on payroll for instate employees. The program also offers a 25% tax credit for development expenses.

“This means that 35% of your payroll for your in-state project managers, developers, testers, designers, and engineering management and 25% of your servers, developer and tester workstations, and development-related software, supplies, and rent are credited back to you at tax time. All of this, with no minimums required and no cap on the amount that you can credit,” The Examiner reported.

Could we see a rise in the Silicon Bayou?

Check out this video interview with New Orleans startup Red Ticket Games.

10 Tips For Launching Your Startup At An Industry Event

It’s pretty popular to launch startups at big events. Think Foursquare at SXSW. We even had a couple of launches at this year’s Everywhere Else: The Startup Conference.

But, it can be tricky to launch at a big event. It’s easy to get lost in the noise, and when you choose to launch that publicly, you better have your act together. Here are some more tips from the veteran entrepreneurs at the Young Entrepreneurs Council:

Give a Keynote Speech

“If you want to launch a new company at an industry event or conference, try to secure an opportunity to be a keynote speaker. If you can’t organically secure it ,consider sponsoring and purchasing the opportunity to be a keynote. As a speaker, you’ll have your target audience listening to you and buying into your brand for 30-40 minutes. There is no better way to secure a flurry of leads.”
– Raoul Davis | CEO, Ascendant Group

Learn from Disrupt

“It’s very helpful to check out the winners of TechCrunch Disrupt. Lot to learn from their presentations and products which can you help launch most effectively.”

– Ben Lang | Founder, Mapped In Israel

Don’t Do It!

“Ignore awards, getting press, and all related “recognition” that will just be distractions when launching your company. Focus on your customers and your product!”

– Todd Garland | Founder, BuySellAds

Influence the Influencers

“Find out who will be the influencers at this conference and get them on board with your new company. Try giving away your product or service to them for free to experience if you have to, so they begin talking about it. There is nothing better than word of mouth, especially when from the mouths that influence more people.”

– Louis Lautman | Founder, Supreme Outsourcing

Try Out Sponsorship

“If you really want to launch right, sponsor the event. Get your brand on everything!”

– Roger Bryan | Managing Partner, ROI Marketing Department

Integrate Your Company In

“Most people that try and launch at an event fail because all they do is display a logo, hand out flyers or take an exhibitor booth. Find a unique way your company can be a part of the event and integrate your product into it, so that more people use it and get to experience it.”

– Aron Schoenfeld | Founder & CEO, Do It In Person LLC

Start Before the Conference

“Once the conference is in full swing, it can be hard to meet with the right people. A small amount of time invested in reaching out to key personalities before the event can yield tremendous results. Review speakers, conference organizers, sponsors and other key attendees, and introduce yourself and your product. You’ll have pre-launch momentum to leverage when going into the conference.”

– Christopher Kelly | Co-Founder, Principal, Convene

Get Outside the Board Room

“Business is done after the day’s events, so throw a crazy party! Get your face and handshake in front of everyone, and then create a forum where you can continue interacting after the formal events are over. They’ll remember your name.”

– Jordan Guernsey | CEO, Molding Box

Make Your Presence Known

“Don’t half-ass the event. Get there early and network to build buzz. Do something creative with your booth or product so everyone knows you’re there. Don’t leave until the end, when you’re sure you’ve done everything to let people know about your product or service.”

– John Hall | CEO, Influence & Co.

Get Mentioned Onstage

“Do your research in advance and know who the speakers are. Before the event, find ways to introduce your company and product via social, introductions, etc. Once there, have your team talking to presenters and panelist so what you’re working on is top of mind. Seeding the conversation prior to them hitting the stage improves your chances of getting mentioned by influencers, and peeking the audience’s interest.”

– Lauren Perkins | Founder and CEO, Perks Consulting

Voices Heard Media Helps Brands (Including Startups) Engage Their Customers

These days, customers expect more from brands. Gone are the days when we make a purchase and walk away. Now, we often spend time and effort researching major purchases, and we care about the companies where we choose to spend our money. With the advent of social media, we have come to expect a high level of engagement with the companies we love.

Tony Runyan puts it this way: Two-way communication is no longer a luxury; it’s a necessity.

But, that engagement can be expensive and difficult for companies to maintain on their own, which is where Voices Heard Media comes in.

Voices Heard Media provides a suite of plugins that increase customer engagement. Their products include apps that handle contests/sweepstakes, trivia/quizzes, social media streams, live Q&A sessions, video polls, and conversation around a brand. They work with big names like Disney, Food Network, and Fox Sports.

Will Overstreet founded Voices Heard Media in 2007. In his former gig as an Atlanta Falcon and sports broadcaster, Overstreet noticed that a simple conversation with a fan increased the likelihood that the fan would buy a jersey, listen to a show, or tell friends and family about Overstreet’s brand. He realized that there had to be a scalable way to take that kind of interaction into the digital world.

Tony Runyan joined the company in 2008 and made the initial big sales they needed. Now the VP of Product, Runyan develops new products, among other things.

So, what can the Voices Heard Media products do?

When I ran into them at the Southland Summit last month, I recognized the Food Network site on their display computer. The company wanted to increase engagement on their site, so they had Voices Heard Media create a Q&A session with the most recent The Next Food Network Star winner. The idea was simple enough: visitors sent in questions over one week, then Aarti Sequeria answered them. But the magic happened when, after the event closed, it still continued to drive traffic and interactions on the site.

All products from Voices Heard Media work on a company’s website, mobile site, and Facebook tab. The company sees this flexibility as absolutely necessary in today’s digital world.

They may work with some of the biggest names in the country, but they also handle smaller, local-focused companies like news outlets, political campaigns, and creative agencies.

Their prices are pretty startup-friendly, too, starting at only $50 for a basic package. And they can bring the same expertise they’ve built with big brands to your new company.

Check out Voices Heard Media and see how they can help your startup engage your audience.

First Round Capital Shares Their Expertise With First Round Review.

Josh Kopelman, the founder of Half.com and the founding partner at Philly and New York-based First Round Capital, has been a big supporter and encourager of startups. In addition to First Round Capital, he’s been very active in the Philadelphia and New York startup scenes.

Kopelman is active on the Philly Startup Leader’s list, and he’s also the founder of the Dorm Room fund. He’s particularly active in startup events that cater to young entrepreneurs, like nvigor’s student startup summit.

First Round Capital has participated in over 100 funding rounds from seed to series D. They also recently expanded their dorm room fund by $500,000 to spread that fund to Silicon Valley.

Kopelman and the team at First Round Capital have been quietly working over the past four months to take their vast knowledge to the Internet and share it with entrepreneurs and founders everywhere. Their newest product is called “First Round Review,” and it’s dubbed “Actionable Insights for Technology Entreprenerus”

“There is no shortage of media available on startups – every day there are dozens of stories talking about what startups are doing – the funding rounds, product launches and latest tech rumors and trends. Yet there are so few stories talking about how they are doing it, ” Kopelman said in an email to the Philly Startup Leaders listserv.

Startup tips and startup advice are very popular. Some of our best stories here at Nibletz fall into that category. Kopelman takes that notion a few steps further by offering insight that only an angel investor or venture capitalist with over 100 investments could offer.

They’ve already published 30+ articles in a wide range of topics.

Kopelman explained in this First Round Review post how they differ from other startup blogs:

“We know we’re a venture fund — not a publishing company. But many venture capitalists have published amazing content in their personal blogs before. The difference is that while other VCs have done a great job sharing their personal observations of the market and their personal thoughts on how to build and finance companies, we’re going to be primarily focused on sharing actionable knowledge from the best practitioners – those actually in the trenches building. So one day it might be a piece on how to interview product managers and the next featuring how to build high performance teams with the Chief Talent Officer of Netflix.”

The very first article they published was: “How Estsy Grew Their Number of Female Engineers by Almost 500% in One Year”

Check out First Round Review here.

Now sign up for the biggest startup conference in the US dedicated to startups “everywhere else”

Earning Your Leadership Stars and Stripes

For many of us, the Fourth of July conjures up images of fireworks, hotdogs, and the unofficial start of the summer season. But when we celebrate Independence Day, it’s also important to reflect on what our founding fathers gave our nation as well as the lessons they can teach us about great leadership.

Fifty-six men signed the Declaration of Independence. They were lawyers and merchants, farmers and large plantation owners. They were educated, wealthy men. They signed and pledged their lives, fortunes, and honor to ensure that the 13 colonies could establish a sovereign nation, truly leading others by their example.

In today’s workplace, most people equate leadership with a specific position or job title. But you need more then a title on the door to have followers. True leadership is the ability to influence people to achieve a better result for an entire organization or group.

The most effective leaders have a very strong sense of self; they understand the qualities that make other people want to follow them and they know how to adjust those qualities when circumstances require them to do so. The most effective leaders are those who:

Know their own strengths and limitations;
Create and effectively communicate a positive, realistic vision;
Motivate and inspire followers to reach their potential;
Look beyond their own self-interest and encourage others to do the same;
Anticipate and manage conflicts fairly and objectively;
Exhibit self-confidence;
Respect and maintain personal and organizational values;
Are fair, reasonable and compassionate;
Instill trust; and
Behave consistently.

These leaders develop and articulate reasonable goals and hold people (including themselves) accountable. They are prepared to make difficult decisions and balance the sensitivity of individual needs with organizational needs. Employees not only recognize their power and authority but they accept it and follow these trusted leaders willingly.

There are two ways to get people to do what you want: compel them by using your “position” power or persuade them by using your “personal-relational” power. In certain situations, compelling your team to do something based solely on your position power may work best to meet production needs. But a consistent approach of, “Do this because I said so” will not serve you well in the long term because it will limit your ability to develop “personal-relational” power.

Persuasion requires developing relationships based an understanding of what makes people tick and what motivates them. The trick is to figure out how to influence and motivate your staff through the effective use of both the proverbial carrot AND stick.

An honest assessment of your leadership qualities will enable you to capitalize on your natural strengths and work to improve those you find more challenging. Ask yourself, “What kind of leader do I want to be?” and “How do I want to be perceived by those reporting to me?”

Then, create a written credo summarizing your values, beliefs, and management philosophy to help you focus not only on what you want to accomplish but how you want to do it. These are important considerations not only because it will enable you to develop effective relationships but also because it will enable you to complete the tasks at hand more effectively, making YOU more valuable to your organization.

To be a good leader, it is critical to develop management skills relating to delegation and feedback. Differences in employee abilities, skills, and style are inevitable and must be managed in order to meet workplace demands. Leaders who learn to recognize these differences and flex their leadership style to meet those needs will be more successful at managing and motivating their employees to achieve organizational objectives.

To delegate effectively, always operate under the principal that you can never be too clear. Here are some tips:

Take the time to explain the goals and objectives. If everybody from administrative support to senior staff understands the overall objective (which typically can be explained in 3 sentences in less than 30 seconds) or how their segment of the project ties into the overall goal, they will be more invested in the project and better serve the needs of the organization.
Let people know how you want information to be shared (via e-mail, voicemail, meetings, etc.), who else is working with them, and any other peculiarities specific to this project. Most importantly, let them know how best to approach you throughout the project if they need clarification or further instruction. Do not allow yourself to become a choke point or source of frustration for your team.
Set specific deadlines – “ASAP” is meaningless. So is “In a few days.” Try, “I need it in an hour,” or “I need it Wednesday afternoon.” Leave no room for ambiguity. Setting specific deadlines and allowing your team to manage their own workload will ameliorate your constant need to hover and inquire, “Is it done yet?” to the relief of both you and your team members. It is equally important that YOU adhere to team deadlines. Lead by example. Again, if you become a choke point, you will frustrate members of your team and ultimately sabotage your own career.
Provide on-going feedback to allow for corrections to be made as the project progresses. Capture those “teachable moments” along the way to strengthen your team. When delivered properly, feedback not only creates trust and cooperation; it focuses on improvements, both possible and those actually achieved. It increases skills, improves employees’ confidence and enhances your personal-relational power.

On-going, informal feedback enhances the formal appraisal process because staff members receive messages throughout the year offering immediate corrective action for very specific behaviors. The formal review can than be used to reinforce those message and focus on systematic goal setting to ensure the professional development of each person for the benefit of the individual as well as the organization.

Keep in mind, not all managers are leaders, but every leader is a manager. Your goal is not simply to make everyone happy (or miserable), but to understand how to capture individual talents and get the best out of each contributor. In his address to officers of the Virginia Regiment, George Washington once said, “Remember that it is the actions, and not the commission, that makes the officer, and that there is more expected from him than the title.” These words are still pertinent today. When you focus not only on the “what” of what it takes to be a successful leader but also on the “how,” you will see your sphere of influence grow and your career soar.

Kathleen Brady, CPC is an iPEC-certified career management coach with more than 25 years of experience helping people identify and realize their professional career goals. In GET A JOB! 10 Steps to Career Success (Inkwater Press, 2013) Brady shares her secrets for navigating the job search process from start to finish as well as practical exercises for job seekers at every level. GET A JOB! is available at www.amazon.com, www.barnesandnoble.com, and other online retailers. For more information, visit www.careerplanners.net.

Forbes called this startup conference a Must Attend.

Atlanta Startups Transforming The Business Of Healthcare

Health care billing in the United States is a notoriously convoluted process routinely leaving doctors – the backbone of the health care system and entrepreneurs in their own right – to worry about their practice’s cash flow and their own bottom line. Two Atlanta startups are giving doctors affordable new tools to increase revenue, eliminate lost charges and manage their offices more efficiently, allowing doctors to focus on what they do best, providing their patients with excellent health care.

Transforming the Waiting Room Experience

With their iPad-based PatientPad, Digital Assent is transforming the patient experience from the moment they arrive at their doctor’s office.

“PatientPad is designed to improve the quality of the entire patient visit, from start to finish,” Digital Assent’s CEO, Andrew Ibbotson, said. “And nearly everything about the PatientPad is easily customized for each practice.”

The company’s recently shipped second-generation device is a specially configured iPad optimized for use in a doctor’s office. Housed in a proprietary enclosure protecting the iPad from drops and water damage (and making it easy to disinfect), the PatientPad 2 runs a custom iPad app that wraps a full-screen web browser.

Aimed primarily at the “cash-pay” segment of the health care industry that includes cosmetic dermatologists, plastic surgeons and high-end medical spas, the tablet is designed to give patients a great first impression. To accomplish this, each PatientPad “includes a customized welcome screen with the practice’s name and welcome message, custom-configured patient check-in questionnaires, and content that is hand-picked by each practice to educate and entertain their patients while they wait,” Ibbotson said. Additional options include the ability to display before and after pictures, notify patients of upcoming events and promotions, apply for healthcare financing and enroll in loyalty programs – all before the patient leaves the office.

“As you can imagine, practices that specialize in aesthetic medicine are very image-conscious,” Ibbotson said. “Many of our customers cite the importance of appearing modern, current, and cutting-edge in every facet of their practice. PatientPad sets the tone that an office is modern and technologically advanced.”

continue reading at ventureatlanta.org

Image source.

College Students Are Being Robbed Of Millions Of Dollars, Startup PackBack Will Help

If you read the headline and think this is another boring story about college loans and tuition costs, you’re dead wrong. College students are being robbed of millions of dollars in a way that’s much more prevalent today then when many of us were college age. The culprit? Textbooks.

We met Mike Shannon and Kasey Gandham at Chicago TechWeek where they were showing off their startup PackBack. After spending a few minutes with them, I realized this whole “college students are being robbed, and PackBack can help” thing is no B.S. Shannon and Gandham both had textbooks that they would purchase at the beginning of the year for hundreds of dollars. Those books then stayed in the orange shipping boxes on move out day. Never even touched.

Shannon explained “Even in education technology and news is moving so fast that textbooks can be outdated on the first day of classes.” Professors have resorted to more up-to-date curriculum aids like the Internet, news articles, PowerPoint presentations, and speakers. Through his four years of college, Shannon said he may have up to 10 books that he purchased that were never even opened.

That can add up. It’s another cost factored into those mounting student loans.

So what does PackBack do? They are a short-term rental company for student textbooks. In most cases you rent the book by the day. This way if a professor surprises his or her students by actually having them do a textbook assignment, students can get access to the textbook relatively quickly.

Gandham and Shannon are testing out a model in the neighborhood of $5 per day for the text book rental. As they explain it, even if the professor resorts to the book 10 times over the course of a year, the student is saving anywhere from $50 to $100 off the cheapest used version of most books.

This startup simply makes ~~sense~~ cents.

Check out our interview with Shannon and Gandham below and check out PackBackbooks.com

Here are more amazing startups from Chicago TechWeek

Steve Case Re-Affirms Faith In Startups, Raising Another $150 Million Dollar Fund

Washington, DC-based Steve Case, founder of AOL, Revolution, and the founding Chairman of Startup America, has made some bold moves over the past few years when it comes to startups. He’s also been a strong advocate for startups everywhere across the nation and on Capitol Hill.

Monday, Case put his money where his mouth is again by announcing through TechCrunch. The AOL-owned website reports that through his venture capital arm, Revolution Ventures, Case and partners are raising another $150 million dollar fund to support early stage startup ventures.

Revolution is calling the fund “Revolution Ventures II,” and like the previous fund, it will back early stage tech companies. Some of their previous portfolio companies include ZipCar, Living Social, and HomeSnap.

TechCrunch also reported that they’ve heard $125 million was already committed.

Two and a half years ago Case launched Startup America, a three-year initiative to spur startups, innovation, and job creation. Two months ago Case, along with several others, announced that Statup America was joining forces with Startup Weekend to take the initiatives global. Now we know that Case wants to continue to do his part directly by launching more companies.

A Must Attend Conference For Startups Everywhere Else, Early Bird Discounts Going Away

The inaugural “everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference” was heralded by forbes.com as a “Must attend” This one of a kind conference caters to the collective trials, problems and victories unique to startups “everywhere else”, giving founders from anywhere USA access to the kind of conference that typically costs thousands of dollars to attend.

The first conference, held February 10-12th in Memphis Tennessee was attended by over 1200 attendees from 43 states, 7 countries and 3 continents with over 75 startups in the startup village from an equally large footprint across the country, and around the world. Attendees were treated to keynotes, workshops, networking, pitch contests and three great after party events.

On day one all of the attendees went together to the Memphis Grizzlies vs Minnesota Timberwolves game. The other, overflowing parties included one at the world famous Ernestine and Hazels (a brothel over 30 years ago) and Raiford’s a one of a kind discotech djed by an old man with a cape that brought the house down. Far and wide people are still talking about that party.

We’ve got some amazing things lined up for our next Memphis conference February 17-19 2014 and an even bigger announcement at the end of July (stay tuned).

We have longer sessions, even better content, catered breakfast and lunch sessions, learning sessions on marketing, branding, startup accounting and legal issues and much more. Mike Muhney the godfater of CRM and founder of ACT, Gary Swart, CEO of oDesk, Jonathon Perrelli, Danny Boice, several 500 Startups founders, YCombinator Founders and Techstars founders and many more have already committed to the next conference and we’ll have a bunch more announcements in the coming weeks.

With that in mind you want to act now and get your attendee tickets or startup village booth during the early bird discount period where you can get tickets to the next conference (and startup village booths) at the same rate as last year. Attendee discounted tickets are $59 and Startup Village booths (including 3 tickets) just $395. These discounts absolutely end July 6.

Startup Village booths get:

3 conference passes for your team. Exhibitors will have the same access as paid attendees to everything found here
Tickets to all of our after conference events
pitch contests
8×10 exhibit booth space
6 foot table
Description in our professionally printed program
Description on the everywhereelse.co website (startups will be posted starting October 15)
Early access on to set up and late access to take down
Yes you can purchase extra tickets for team members beyond the initial three tickets. Those “exhibitor guest” tickets are only $50
Can we sell stuff at our booth YES
Can we demo our app at our booth YES
Just so we’re clear if your team is 3 people or less, you DO NOT need to buy additional attendee tickets.
We do ask that your booth is manned by at least one human being from your team during all exhibition hours but feel free to rotate that human and enjoy the rest of the event.

Steve Case: Passing Immigration Legislation Victory For Startups

While Nibletz isn’t going to pontificate on the southern border issue in the United States, the recently passed Senate Immigration Bill is solving a huge problem for startups. One that the likes of Steve Case, Scott Case, Marc Nager, Brad Feld, and others have been championing.

In the most basic of laymen’s terms, it’s somewhat easy for a foreigner to come to America, attend an accelerator, get funding for their company, and go home. It gets rocky when they want to stay and build their company in America, one of the reasons Startup America and other organizations are even around.

It’s also somewhat easy for a sharp foreigner to come and work for Google, Microsoft, or Facebook, but when they have that great idea and want to build their startup in the U.S. things get a lot more dicey.

The new immigration legislation includes “startup visas” that according to The Washington Post, will “allow entrepreneurs from around the world to start firms and create jobs.”

Earlier this year at SXSW Steve Case and Scott Case (no relation) spent a lot of time celebrating startups across the country. However at Startup America’s huge SXSW party, Steve Case took to the stage to talk about immigration and how we needed this reform in order to help spur innovation from great minds who, in most cases, have come over to the United States and seen what they can do here.

Steve Case told The Washington Post: “This important step demonstrates the capacity of our elected leaders in Washington to come together across party lines to advance what is clearly in our nation’s best interest – an immigration system that meets the needs of our 21st century economy. The Senate’s bill will attract the world’s best entrepreneurs and innovators and be a key ingredient to sustaining America’s long-term competitive edge.”

Steve Case, the founder of AOL and Revolution has done some major lobbying on Capitol Hill over the past 4 years to help spur entrepreneurship and innovation across the country. He is the founding chairman of Startup America, which recently merged resources to go global with Startup Weekend as UpGlobal.

Steve Case is also trying to save social local commerce

Know Who’s Around You At Events With 1871 Startup WeaveThePeople

Here are Nibletz we get out into the community and go to a lot (and we mean A LOT) of startup conferences and events. Sure, after spending the last 7 or so years in tech media there are a lot of faces I remember, but there are also a lot that I don’t know. Yes, I would love to know who’s around me at an event that I am at.

This is a problem that several big named startups have been trying to solve. At SXSW 2012 people discovery was the “big thing”: Banjo, Highlight, and several others wanted to help people know who was at SXSW. The problem was they were all GPS, location, and proximity based. The problem manifested itself when people would look for other people they knew who were right on top of them according to the app but could still be in the next building. When you’re in a building or an event with 1000s if not 10s of thousands of people, this is still a daunting task.

WeaveThePeople, a startup incubating at 1871 in Chicago, is solving the problem with a beautifully rich and graphical platform. Using pictures and profiles, you can easily see who’s at the event. It doesn’t drill down to who’s standing next to you, but with the big and bold visual aspect of WeaveThePeople, dusting off your glasses should make it easier to connect.

Paul Caswell, the founder of Weave The People, is from East Chicago where he’s lived for 15 years. (He’s a native of Manchester though; that’s where he gets the cool accent). He grew up coding, developing his first games at age 13. In 2000 Application Development Trends honored him with an Innovator Award. Most of his career he was developing for other people.

WeaveThePeople combines his love of coding and technology with solving a problem that he found first hand in the corporate world, the exact same problem I described above.

Check out our video interview with Caswell below and for more information visit weavethepeople.com

We’ve got a lot more startup coverage from Chicago TechWeek here at nibletz.com

Chicago TechWeek Kicks Off With Screening Of Downloaded

Some consider Napster to be all about stealing music and pirating. Others consider Napster to be the pioneer for music services that are household names today like iTunes and Spotify.

Alex Winter calls it the story of one of Silicon Valley’s biggest failures and what it created. His new movie Downloaded chronicles the rise and fall of the first peer-to-peer file sharing service.

Last night 100 VIP’s, media, presenters, and entrepreneurs kicked off the Chicago Tech Week conference with networking, drinks, hor d’ouvres, and a viewing of Winter’s movie at the AMC theater in Downtown Chicago.

Originally, Winter wanted to do a dramatic movie, but he eventually decided a documentary would be more accurate. The film starts the Napster story when founders Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker were still teenagers. Winters went back several years and re-interviewed everyone that was involved.

Before the movie the audience got a look at the preview for Jobs, the new movie based on the legendary Steve Jobs, with Ashton Kutcher playing the main role. That too got big laughs from the audience of techies.

As for Downloaded, Winter has been showing the film at festivals and events. It was also shown during TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013 back in May.

Napster paved the way for music consumption the way we have it today. Throughout the Q&A session Winter reminded the audience that what the record companies didn’t get was that Napster wasn’t about free, or stealing, as much as it was about convenience. That’s why Winter is an admitted Spotify user and never really caught onto iTunes or the more radio-style streaming services.

During the Q&A Winter talked about Lars Ulrich and his part of the Napster story. Metallica was very upset when one of their newest songs made its way to K-Rock before it was even finished. After some digging they found out that the track had been leaked via Napster. Metallica went through the trouble of identifying over 200,000 Napster users illegally sharing their songs and decided to print out the list and deliver it to Napster. It was an epic part of the movie.

Winter was asked if it was hard to get Ulrich to agree to the movie. He talked about how Ulrich was so upset about Napster, but for some reason praises Spotify.

Then the discussion turned to the very recent stories about Pandora and the lack of royalties artists are receiving. Earlier this week Pink Floyd and the band Cracker took to blogging about how they were seeing next to nothing in royalties from Pandora. Cracker’s front man David Lowry said publicly that for over 1,000,000 streams of their music, he received a whopping $17.

I asked Winter what he thought the perfect model would be.

“Well if I knew the answer I wouldn’t be here, I’d be on my yacht.”

He went on to explain his real answer. To him the perfect model would be for the labels to get back to cultivating artists like they did nearly 2 decades ago and embracing a model of technology that was convenient, easy, and instant. People would pay for that.

Check out the official Downloaded trailer here.

Chicago Tech Week started on Monday with events for the local tech community. The “TechWeek” conference kicks off this morning at 8am and has plenty of great speakers, startups, pitches, and parties. Stay tuned to Nibletz for up-to-the-minute coverage of all the best happenings.

Find more of our Chicago TechWeek coverage here.

Ann Arbor Venture Firm Raises First $11 Million Dollar Fund

Huron River Ventures, an Ann Arbor and Grand Rapids, Michigan-based venture capital firm, announced late last week that they have raised their first venture capital fund.

“We started working on this fund in 2010 and we had our first close at $7.5 million in March 2011,” managing director Tim Streit told AnnArbor.com.

Huron River Ventures is a ten year fund and to date they’ve deployed about 30% across seven different companies. They plan to invest in another 7 or 8 companies within the next two to three years and round out the fund at 15.

The fund was started by Streit and college friend Ryan Waddington, who met at the University of Michigan. The goal of the fund was to invest in Michigan companies and with that mission they were able to raise an initial $6 million dollars from the State of Michigan as part of their Accelerator Fund Program.

“We’re here, we want Michigan deals, and that’s what we focus on… we invest in Michigan-based companies or companies that have a strong presence in the state. Almost all of our capital is from the state or investors who are from Michigan or still live here.” Streit said.

Announcing a fund’s closing is basically a formality; however it sends a signal to Michigan entrepreneurs that Huron River is funded and ready to invest.

Find out more about Huron River Ventures here.

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