NW Indiana Startup Just Food Brings Real Food To Feeding Tubes

It’s hard enough for someone that has to be fed via feeding tube. Typically they get corn syrup based mixtures packed with artificial ingredients mixed with vitamins and nutrients they need to survive. While the food used in feeding tubes is doing the job it’s not necessarily “good” for the patient.

Now, a North West Indiana startup called Just Food is hoping to bring better food to the feeding tube. They resorted to indiegogo for a crowdfunding campaign for $10,000 to help get the project off the ground. With 22 days to go as of the writing of this story, Just Food has already past their goal.

While some people already blend foods for their feeding tubes it can be a long process and if the foods aren’t blended right they don’t have the same effects. Just Food blends the food mixtures for the patients at a cost of roughly $4 per meal. Several researchers and doctors have praised using real food over formula for feeding tubes.

“The patients I see with feeding tubes who follow a blended diet tend to be healthier than those who are fed 100% formula” -Dr. Beth Madonna, a pediatric surgeon and advisor to Just Food said.

The Just Food mixtures contain whole grains, lean protein, fruit, vegetables, healthy fats, spice and liquid. Each Just Food meal is a complete meal of just 7 ingredients.

Just Food isn’t looking to replace people’s personally blended foods, but their packages are better than resorting to formula when the patient and their caretakers get too busy to blend up some food. Just Food is ready to go when it’s shipped and is ready to use. “Many in the medical community believe that a blended diet is (1) too hard on the families, (2) puts the patient at risk for contamination, (3) formula is just fine, (4) will clog the tube. Just Food addresses (and negates!) all these beliefs. ” Just Food said on their indiegogo page.

So how did Just Food come about?

“I started Just Food when my son, AJ, couldn’t tolerate any of the commercially available tube-feeding formulas, despite the fact that he had no allergies,” said Julie Bombacino, Founder, Just Food said in a statement. “When I started blending AJ’s meals from 100-percent real food, he started to thrive; he stopped vomiting daily, began to gain weight and the color came back to his skin – he was just a happier and healthier kid. My ultimate goal with Just Food is that people with feeding tubes know that real food is not only possible, but easier to obtain than ever before.”

You can check out Just Food on Indeigogo here and on their website here.

This startup could be world changing, but what about all the other “world changing” startups.

Arkansas Catches Teenpreneur Bug With Sparkible Startup Summer Camps

Last week we sat in on a pretty intense startup community meeting in Tennessee. During the meeting some of the community stakeholders reminded us that successful startup communities are drilling down even further with education.

Entrepreneurs are getting younger and younger. Stories about 22 year old entrepreneurs are regular occurrences. The new wave of entrepreneurs are teenagers, and we’re not talking the 18-19 year old variety. Earlier this month we reported that a team led by a 14-year-old won Tampa Bay’s most recent Startup Weekend.

Startup communities across the country are starting to recognize this trend of innovation and entrepreneurism hitting a younger demographic. Also in the beginning of the month, the Kauffman Foundation and Kansas City entrepreneur William Robinson announced Teen Idea Labs, a conference style event for teenagers.

Now Arkansas has announced an initiative aimed at teenagers and innovation. Sparkible is a 4 day mini-accelerator summer camp for teenagers, complete with a demo day for potential investors, educators, stakeholders, and of course parents.

Sparkible is the brain child of Arkansas serial entrepreneur Mike Steely with help from Northwest Arkansas serial entrepreneur and Ark Challenge mentor David Moody, Innovate Arkansas reports.

Steely posted on his LinkedIn:

I am pleased to announce the creation of Sparkible, a non-profit education company focused on sparking innovation and startup learning. Sparkible is kicking off a series of summer camps in Arkansas structured to immerse teenagers in idea creation, innovation and building a business. This series is also our initial fundraising effort, proceeds from the camps will be used to build out our technologies and curriculum for this fall.
If you would like to learn more, know of a potential camper who would be interested in attending, would be interested in sponsoring a camp or camp participant, please contact me and also go check out our startup website at www.sparkible.org.
– See more at: http://innovation.arkansasbusiness.com/blog/2013/06/18/sparkible-launches-offers-startup-education-for-teenagers/#sthash.IO8Sxbmp.dpuf

Sparkible will allow participants between the ages of 14-18 to:

Learn ways to spot innovative ideas
Experience the lean startup process for turning an idea to a plan in less than a day
Understand what it takes to build a startup company and define your role.
Learn how to build a team, plan, and develop your idea.
Understand how Social Media interacts with your company.
Understand how mobile technologies, including Apps, will impact businesses of the future.
How to craft your message via an elevator pitch for funding and growth.
Where to find startup capital to grow your idea into a business.

Find out more here at Innovate Arkansas.

Check out with these two kidpreneurs did with cardboard.

Image source.

Startup Weekend Hosting “Makers” Event Next Week In Seattle

Startup Weekend, the non profit in Seattle that recently joined forces with Startup America, is hosting a new kind of 54 hour hackathon startup weekend event in their hometown next weekend. This time, instead of assembling entrepreneurs, designers, and developers to create businesses, they’ll be working on making things.

Startup Weekends are typically about creating software and other tech startups. This time around at the MakerHaus, the hackers will have the resources to “bring innovation to a whole new level.” The teams at the Seattle event will be able to design and prototype actual physical products using micro-controllers, laser cutting, 3D printing, metal working, and wood working.

People with ideas for products will get to pitch those ideas on Friday evening. From there the group will vote on the products that they want to build and several will be built out over the following 52 hours.

Normally there are three kinds of tickets sold to a startup weekend event; developer, designer, and non-technical. These teams have produced countless startups that are still going today. Some have even gone on to get funding like Zaarly, or win bigger startup contests like Aspiredu.

For this Maker’s edition, Startup Weekend is throwing in one more ticket, a “unicorn” ticket. These are people who agree to be taught how to run the machinery at MakerHaus.

There will be some great coaches on hand for the weekend:

Alex Diener, Creative Director Pensar Development
Marc Barros, co-founder and former CEO of Contour
Ayemerik Renard, Vice President Accelerator, PCH International
H.B. Siegel, CTO IMDb.com
Jim Young, President and Creative Director, Nice Inc
Adam Benzion, Portfolio Manager, 10AK Technologies
Beth Kolko, co-founder and CEO Shift Labs
Terence Tam, Principal Engineer, OpenBeam USA

To register or for more info click here.

Check out this great event for startups everywhere else.

Startup Tips: 5 Simple Ways To Collect Customer Feedback

Steve Jobs is famous for downplaying the importance of customer input, claiming customers don’t know what they want until they’ve seen it. While that philosophy has so far worked phenomenally well for Apple, most products can’t be developed in a bubble.

Even before we built our first product prototype, we spent countless hours speaking to would-be customers to gather suggestions, feedback and input. While most founders see the value in conducting market research in one way or another at the start of the development process, all too often they fail to continue this interaction. Companies should make a point of gathering feedback from customers throughout the entire development cycle — basically as long as you’re in business.

Here are five easy ways to get feedback on your product:

1. Customer Surveys

The most efficient way to garner feedback from customers is through surveys. To ensure the highest response rate possible (usually a typical rate of response is around 5 percent, and 10 percent or higher is exceptional), we recommend keeping the survey to a maximum of 15 questions. Include questions that relate to the overall industry your product fits into and whether or not customers would like to participate in any future product testing or marketing events. We use Google Forms for short questionnaires and SurveyMonkey for more in-depth surveys.

We used information from our latest survey to not only improve our product, but to ask for product reviews, case studies, more in depth feedback calls and of course to gain a larger picture of the space we play in — Google Apps.

2. Support Forums

Support forums aren’t a revolutionary idea, but the most successful forums are highly interactive. Customers should be able to give their input, comment on others’ ideas and see that you and your support team are taking active roles by responding to every single request. We use Zendesk for our forum, as well as ticketing and overall product support.

We’ve already added 15 of the most popular customer suggestions left in the forum to our product and have another 15 slated for development in the coming months. Could we have thought of those 30 ideas on our own? Probably. But ideas are generated a lot faster when you can ask a customer base of 12,000 companies what they’d like to see. Plus, you never have to worry if you’re adding features people will actually use.

3. Let Customers Provide Feedback Inside the Product

To make sure you’re gathering input from customers on an ongoing basis, include an easy way to leave feedback directly within your product. While some companies choose to pop up a review or feedback form on the third or fourth login, we chose to add a feedback window users can view or hide as they please. The widget is set up to track the exact page users leave feedback for, giving us an even better understanding of issues, suggestions and engagement on different facets of the product.

4. Wireframe Reviews

In the earliest stages of product development, we showed wireframes — the bare bones of the product UI — to “trusted testers” using Protoshare and GoToMeeting. Our user experience designer actually gave control of his mouse and keyboard to the tester, giving them a task to accomplish within the application and closely watching how they went about accomplishing said task. Feedback from these initial reviews surfaced several early problems with the product layout, including a very unpopular “edit” icon.

Today, we continue to create wireframes and set up UX and creative reviews for every new feature we develop. Everything from colors, layout and copy are up for criticism.

No matter what your product is, if you’re solving a real problem, there are people out there who want to see it solved too. Comb through user groups and forums to find your first trusted testers. These people should be experts on the area your product addresses and have real experience working with competitive products or their own self-made workarounds. Keep in mind that if you can’t find at least a handful of people willing to help with wireframe reviews, it may be time to take your idea back to the drawing board.

After you’ve released your product and have actual customers walking through wireframes, find a few unhappy customers who aren’t afraid to voice their concerns. Don’t take criticism personally — it only helps to move your product further along.

5. Feature Contests

Feedback has been so abundant that we decided to launch a feature contest. During the month of the contest, 59 feature requests, 155 votes, 87 comments and over 2,500 views were counted. We incentivized our customers to participate by ensuring the winning feature would actually be built into our product before the end of the year.

Participation was so high that we decided to choose not one, but two winners and shared the results with our entire customer base via the company blog, social media outlets, an email newsletter and even through a Google Hangout On Air.

If you make an ongoing effort to gather customer feedback throughout the product development process, at the end of the day, you’re left with better ideas, a more robust product — and a loyal customer base who knows you actually care about their opinions.

David Politis is the founder and CEO of BetterCloud, the maker of FlashPanel, the number one cloud management tool for Google Apps, and the Google Apps resource site, AsktheGooru.com. Follow him @DavePolitis.

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.

Where do you go offline to connect with other entrepreneurs and startups?

What College Graduates Know That Small Business Owners Don’t

By Margaret Lyons, Customer Success Manager for InfoStreet, makers of SkyDesktop, a free Cloud-based desktop.

On May 22, 2013, I earned my Bachelor’s Degree.

Yet, I’m not your average college graduate. I spent a good ten years immersed in many facets of the business world before coming to the realization that my future had to include higher education if I was to attain all of my life goals. During the last four years, I’ve attended school full-time at community college and later a university all while working full-time as Customer Success Manager at InfoStreet, Inc. During this time, I’ve had the unique opportunity to engage with undergraduate students as well as CEOs on a daily basis, and the time that I have spent in this unorthodox situation has clearly demonstrated to me that there is one very important thing that most college graduates know that many small business owners do not: college graduates know the cloud.

Now, my statement may shock you. Or, perhaps you’re not surprised – after all, today’s graduates are learning about the latest and greatest in business, technology, and communications in their coursework. But this is the plain truth: college graduates have experience with the cloud in a way that many small business owners do not. And this experience gives college graduates an edge that small business owners may miss out on.

Today’s college students interact with the cloud on a daily basis. As an example from my personal experience, both the community college that I attended as well as the state university that I am graduating from use a cloud program called Moodle as a staple of the learning experience. Moodle is a system that allows professors to calculate and report grades, administer and score tests, and collect and track assignments, among other uses. Just ten years ago, when I began dabbling in community college courses, all of this happened on paper, or on personal computers. Communication was slow and inefficient. Today, Moodle lets me contact any of my classmates and my professor with one click. I can begin an online discussion relevant to the course on a message board that reaches the entire class, and I can check my grades and get a clear snapshot of my standing at any time of the day. Beyond Moodle, students at my university also have access to a cloud system that is used to register for courses, pay fees, track degree progress, print unofficial transcripts, and even purchase textbooks. This inherent cloud proficiency means that many of today’s college graduates are entering the workforce with a skill that many small business owners do not have. Like those of our generation who grew up with computers in our classrooms, today’s college graduates have an ability that no generation before has had the opportunity to learn.

The cloud offers small business owners this same variety of functions and flexibility, which increases company productivity. In my professional life, I interact with CEOs of small businesses every day. I keep track of my contacts in a basic cloud CRM system called InfoStreet CRM, one of many cloud CRM options available. I schedule my meetings via the InfoStreet Calendar. I compose, proofread, and share documents using Google Drive. I host online webinars via MeetingBurner. Nearly 90% of my day is spent working in the cloud and using the cloud to my benefit and the benefit of my company. I am able to communicate with clients and partners, track information that is pertinent to my position, and save time while using the cloud. The same is true for my company’s CEO, as well as our employees. The cloud is not only our product, the cloud is what gets us through every day.

Why aren’t more small business owners taking advantage of the benefits that the cloud offers? Although I certainly can’t speak on behalf of all small business owners, I can tell you that the ones that I speak with often come to one conclusion: they aren’t familiar with the cloud and are therefore reluctant to make the move. This is certainly a valid concern. Luckily, companies such as InfoStreet exist (shameless plug – I happen to think we’re pretty fantastic). At InfoStreet, not only do we offer small business owners a multitude of cloud apps to choose from to get them started, but we also invest in our customers’ and partners’ time. We offer full support, if you need it, and plenty of written online support if you don’t.

Cloud apps exist for any business need you could imagine: accounting, employee scheduling, customer appointment setting, file sharing, calendaring, email, project management, customer relationship management, e-signatures, online meetings, and the list goes on. The first step a small business owner needs to take is to get out there and research, either on their own or with a partner. With any reputable cloud service provider, a small business owner can explore the cloud at no financial risk to their company. Learning about the cloud and then putting the cloud to work will allow small business owners to keep up with recent college graduates – and the business world – and will help companies increase their growth while saving time.

With so many options available to simplify your life and increase your company’s productivity, why would you wait any longer to explore the cloud? If you’d like to see what InfoStreet has to offer, visit www.infostreet.com.

15 interview questions to ask your next startup hire.

Montana Tops Nationwide Startup Index

When Big Bang Theory‘s Sheldon Cooper ran off to Bozeman Montana in an episode where his apartment had been broken into, he may have been onto something. Cooper very quickly abandoned the idea of staying in Bozeman, but according to the latest Kaufman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity, Montana is a hub of technology startup activity.

CNN Money reported on Monday that Montana topped the latest Kaufman report highlighting startup activity nationwide.

In the previous year Montana had ranked 17, but in 2012 they moved up to the number one spot with 530 startups per 100,000 adults. According to the report many startups are sprouting up near Bakken fields in support of it’s oil industry.

Montana State University is a driving technology hub of activity in Bozeman, Montana, where startups have found funding opportunities and incubators.

With a little help from startup guru Brad Feld, Montana held their first Startup Weekend event back in December in Missoula, Montana. We also got to meet Sri Vellanki, a Montana woman who abandoned her career to launch a startup called TechTips, which was featured in the Eureka Park section of the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) back in January.

Entrepreneurs are attracted to Montana because it has no local sales tax and a low cost of living.

Check out this Florida startup which can tell you how high you jumped.

A Programmer’s Guide To Getting Hired By A Startup

Programmers are in high demand by startups across the country and around the world.

In the world of “everywhere else”, next to access to capital, access to talent is one of the biggest factors holding startups back from success. This puts the ball into the programmers court. Good programmers are in high demand and can often choose where they want to go. But how will they know where that is?

Monetate, a large marketing company that leverages big data to create more personalized and engaging online experiences, released this infographic two years ago, that’s even more relevant today than it was then.

For programmers that aren’t sure where to go the infographic below helps identify the questions and the answers programmers have including:

Which type of startup is best for you

Where can you find the best openings

How do you stand out above the crowd.

Check out the infographic below.

Meet the man behind NY dress startup, BlueGala

The Failure Of Startups In An Infographic By Staff.com

We all know that startups are up against a stacked deck. Depending on your source, startups fail at rate of anywhere form 70% – 90%. Startup founders are often big risk takers and know that to get their idea to the masses, it’s going to take hard work.

The folks at staff.com have released the infographic below that, while bright and colorful, paints a dark picture for people who consider themselves entrepreneurial and venture out on their own.

The timing of the infographic is a bit convenient as well. Just Saturday we published an infographic from our friends at oDesk highlighting that 72% of people with “real jobs” want to quit and be entirely independent. Further, 61% say they’re likely to quit within 2 years.

oDesk is a platform connecting free-lancers with any background to those needing workers. oDesk is enabling startups across the globe to stay in their hometowns by offering remote workers from developers and designers to administrative professionals. Naturally, the lifeline of oDesk’s business is people working for themselves. oDesk is a huge resource for startups and entrepreneurs. They are also a good friend to startups “everywhere else”

Staff.com on the other hand, is a much more traditional firm. They help match employers with employees, so the lifeblood of their business is to keep people in traditional positions. No fault there; people have to work.

We all know “stats” can be skewed. Which infographic do you resonate with more?

Check out this advice for startups everywhere else from oDesk CEO Gary Swart

Chattanooga Startup Skuid, The Easiest Way To Build Salesforce Pages

Salesforce, the cloud-based customer relationship management platform, is feature packed and quite possibly the best way to retain customer data. There are literally thousands of features, and customizations built into the platform. For a lot of companies, the easiest way to get their employees on the platform is to scale it down or build custom Salesforce pages, apps, and UI’s based on the information relevant to that company.

Normally, building interface components can be a long, drawn-out process. Salesforce has attempted to make it easier by providing shortcuts and one click access to certain features, but there’s still quite the learning curve.

Now a Chattanooga startup called Skuid has built a drag and drop platform that allows just about anyone to quickly build customized Salesforce pages. You can take one data field and move it to wherever you need it on the interface.

The company launched four months ago and has already bulked up to a staff of 12 and moved to the Southern Saddlery building, home to some other “ramp up” companies. Nooga.com reported that the company was able to go cash flow positive without taking a venture capital investment.

“We thought when we started out that we would need investment to get launched, and we don’t need it at this point,” Ken McElrath, co-founder and president, said. “We started with in-pocket capital, and we’re already cash flow-positive. We had numbers we were trying to hit in our first quarter, and we blew those out of the water. I think we were too conservative in our growth plans.”

Skuid isn’t the only Salesforce startup to go straight to revenue in Tennessee. Memphis based Cloud For Good, a company that does SalesForce development for non-profits and religious institutions, went straight to revenue.

Check out our video interview with Skuid from The Southland Conference below. For more information visit squidify.com

Here’s more Southland coverage at nibletz.com

Founder Spotlight: Brittany Hodak CoFounder ‘ZinePak

Brittany Hodak, alongside Kim Kaupe, is co-founder of ‘ZinePak, a company that creates custom publications for entertainers, brands, and celebrities. The ‘ZinePak configuration combines a small-format magazine with one or more CDs and exclusive merchandise items together into one engaging, exclusive package. Follow her @zinepak.

Who is your hero?

My heroes are all the men and women who enlist in the Armed Forces. People tell me all the time that it takes courage to start a business; while that is probably true on some level, it doesn’t even begin to compare to the courage it takes to fight for one’s country.

What’s the single best piece of business advice that helped shape who you are as an entrepreneur today?

“It’s easier to get forgiveness than permission.” This is something my dad said to me for the first time when I was about 13. I remember thinking how profound it was, and how it could work as a “free pass” for just about anything. More than 15 years later, I still live by this mantra every day.

When you’re an entrepreneur, it often means writing your own rules and getting creative in the ways you go about getting things done. Sometimes this means ignoring a chain of command, moving forward on a project without formal sign-off, or any number of other “violations” of the training of otherwise well-meaning soldiers of Corporate America. When given the choice between trying to get something approved the “right” way (e.g. submitting a formal proposal and spending six weeks pitching the same idea to successively senior team members) or the “wrong” way (e.g. happening to bump into the CEO at Starbucks and pitching her the idea over a latte), we always choose the latter.

There is very little that can’t be smoothed over with a heartfelt “oops” email or a nice Edible Arrangement when someone’s corporate feathers have been ruffled!

What’s the biggest mistake you ever made in your business? What did you learn from it that others can learn from too?

One of the biggest mistakes Kim and I made with ‘ZinePak was not hiring enough staff quickly enough to support the company’s growth. In a startup where there isn’t a huge amount of funding, founders are often faced with “the chicken or the egg” scenario of when to expand the full-time employee count. Is it better to hire help in anticipation of new work materializing, or secure the business first and then worry about the man (or woman!) power?

For our first big experience with growth, we chose the latter. The decision led us to experience several weeks in a row where everyone was working 18-hour days just to keep our heads above the water.

Luckily, we were able to learn from the experience. We made the strategic decision to take about eight weeks off from actively working on projects and hire two more full-time team members. This break gave us plenty of time to find amazing support staff and get them totally up to speed before the next wave of projects began.

What do you do during the first hour of your business day?

As an entrepreneur, every day is different and often unpredictable. I try to spend the first hour of each day catching up on entertainment trades and news and sending quick notes to anyone whose names come up during that reading. For example, I’ve found that early mornings are a great time to send someone a quick note congratulating them on a recent promotion or campaign that’s been covered in the press. I also try to drink at least 16 ounces of water in the first hour of the day, because if I don’t set the pace early I won’t stay hydrated throughout the day.

What’s your best financial/cash-flow related tip for entrepreneurs just getting started?

Hire an accountant right away! We tried to manage our own books online when we started ‘ZinePak, and we quickly got in over our heads. There are so many things to worry about when starting a business, from product development to lead generation to sales to marking to contracts, etc. — the list goes on and on. Time is a very precious commodity, and it is wise to spend your time on things can’t be easily outsourced to someone else.

Even if you have an accounting background, take the time to find a great CPA or bookkeeper to help you keep tabs on your business. He or she can offer strategic advice about cash flow, growth, and spending, and, most importantly, free up your time to work on closing deals instead of itemizing credit card statements.

Quick: What’s ONE thing you recommend ALL aspiring or current entrepreneurs do right now to take their biz to the next level?

Email three interesting people from your past who you haven’t seen in at least two years and ask them to get together for lunch or coffee dates. Some of the best business connections can come from the sources you least expect. Plus, reconnecting with old acquaintances is almost always a good time.

What’s your definition of success? How will you know when you’ve finally “succeeded” in your business?

My definition of success is being happy, confident, and secure in my own venture. When Kim and I started ‘ZinePak, our paramount goal was to not have to report in to bosses who treated us poorly. We set a definition of success as, “let’s quit our jobs, start a company, and try not to make significantly less money this year than we would if we kept our jobs.”

Two years later, we’ve passed the $3 million revenue mark and sold almost $15 million of product in the United States and 17 other countries. The feeling of success comes from knowing that we’ve built an awesome company and no longer have to answer to anyone other than ourselves.

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.

Bad ass startup chick Denver Hutt reminds us we’re entrepreneurs not super heroes.

Tennessee Is Great For Startups, Bill Hagerty Tells Us Why

Tennessee Economic Development Commissioner Bill Hagerty took the stage at the Southland Conference in Nashville on Wednesday morning to introduce the conference and highlight why Tennessee is great for startups.

Since the current administration took over two and a half years ago, Tennessee has become number one in the southeast and number four in the nation for manufacturing job growth. Tennessee is also number one in the southeast for personal income growth.

But one thing that we found interesting is that Tennessee has the best balance sheet in the country.

“I think everybody knows that the nation has experienced a serious fiscal crisis and if you start looking across the states you’ll see a very wide divergence in terms of the fiscal situation that each state faces. What that does is present a different risk profile for the companies that choose to locate in those states. Tennessee has the lowest debt per capita in America.”

This is important because Tennessee hasn’t put itself in a position where they haven’t raised the debt ceiling to a point where it can’t be manageable.

All of this means that Tennessee is a great place to grow jobs, personal wealth and families. Hagerty went on to discuss the regions history of entrepreneurship including companies like FedEx that call Tennessee home.

Finally, Hagerty pointed out one of the biggest claims to fame for Tennessee in regards to startups. Since the Haslam administration took over Tennessee has become home to nine startup accelerator regions all administered by Launch Tennessee. Each startup accelerator region has an incubator or accelerator program.

While many don’t think of Tennessee in terms of entrepreneurship these highlights along with the infrastructure in place already for business owners, job creators, startups and entrepreneurs, it’ s no wonder that Tennessee is first for startups in the South East.

Check out this video of Hagerty’s speech at Southland.

Check out more of our Southland coverage here.

Creative Marketing in the Ubiquitous World of Advertising For Startups

Sometimes companies get ideas; good ideas. They discover ideas about who they are, what they want to accomplish in the world, and how they can solve some problem that no one has found the answer to just yet. The issue is, they aren’t the only ones. That’s where advertising comes in.

Advertising takes on many forms and uses many media. But, it always has the simple objective to communicate, capture, compel, and move audiences to action. In the past, this translated to the purchase of a product/service. Today, marketing specialists extend that definition to an ongoing engagement with their brand through social media, subscriptions, or online sharing.

Each of us knows the plethora of advertisements that plague our home pages, browsers and selected blogs, and how agencies spend insurmountable funds to market to users everywhere. With this onslaught of advertisements, companies must carefully decide how they are going to meet audiences in memorable and lasting ways that make them stand apart from their competitors. Retention and engagement have always been the major goals of advertising; but with the persistence of ads into every level of the lives of consumers via television, social media, and innumerable web pages, companies now find themselves in a world in which they must consistently re-evaluate how to accomplish those objectives. One way that organizations solve this problem is through the incorporation of creative and non-traditional mediums into their marketing, like animation.

Jon Collins of the VFX studio Framestore recently said in an interview: “If you can keep a viewer in a world and stimulate those senses, they will not only engage more deeply with your brand, but their recollection of that positive experience will sustain for far longer.”

However, there is a danger in creating a world that is overly stimulating to the viewer, because they end up rejecting that vibrancy in an effort to maintain a kind of visual homeostasis. Advertisements must also be tempered with a strong and carefully crafted design that appeals to people’s sense of balance, color schemes, character associations, etc, without turning them off to your brand.

While there is no scientific formula for accomplishing this task, creative specialists use techniques like focusing on one subject while blurring out the background, using particular color patterns, or utilizing symmetry to balance out an environment. The reason for this meticulous approach to curating content for viewers is the same reason that athletes train for months on end for a brief moment in the spotlight. Sometimes a brand has only one opportunity to interact with an audience member and communicate what it is and why it is worthy of their attention. And audiences are a fickle sort. With the accessibility to perhaps hundreds of alternative products or services, brands must make that one interaction a meaningful one that the viewer will remember long after the video has ended.

Part of why we gravitate towards animation as a medium is because you have the ability to communicate something as complex as sustainable business practices or a commitment to ethical animal treatment (as FedEx and Chipotle both did this past year) through imagined worlds and characters that take the viewer into a beautifully crafted narrative. While you can control things like lighting, environment, and subjects while shooting in video to a certain degree, animation can create worlds and characters beyond what is only in front of us. This allows us to control things like lighting, texture, movement, and time that we would not have as much control over if we filmed subjects through a camera. All in all, video and animation are not in competition with one another, for both are tools to be utilized for the creative dissemination of messages.

At the core of who we are as human beings is the desire for meaning and significance. Advertisers try to cultivate that kind of experience in a brief interaction that connects audiences with a brand that will last long after the meeting has ended. While the time and effort that companies spend towards this endeavor is great, the hard sought after relationship with the customer is truly the golden egg.

Check out Prodigi Arts at prodigiarts.com

If you’re serious about email ditch Mailbox for this Austin startup today.

Southland Kicks Off With Emmy Lou Harris, Rodney Crowell And A Party With SouthernAlpha

Southland, Southern Alpha, startups, Tennessee, Launch Tennessee

The Southland conference officially kicks off Thursday morning at 9am but the pre-festivities started Wednesday night in historic downtown Nashville.

Investors and VIP’s from as far away as Vancouver were treated to a swank VIP party at the legendary Ryman Auditorium to kick off the two day conference celebrating startups, culture and technology. Baker Donelson’s Emerging Technologies Practice Lead, Chris Sloan said it was “the most amazing investor party I’ve ever been to” Why? Because Launch Tennessee, the producers of the conference, were able to get local national country stars Emmy Lou Harris and Rodney Crowell to dazzle the crowd with an intimate performance.

Launch Tennessee CEO Charlie Brock getting into an exciting discussion with one of the hundreds of entrepreneurs at Southland

While that party was going on, event attendees who arrived Wednesday evening were treated to a roof top party at the Rock Bottom Brewery hosted by our cousins at SouthernAlpha. Southern Alpha’s Walker Duncan, Kelly Boothe and Dave Ledgerwood were meeting and greeting startup founders, entrepreneurs, startup support organizations and investors from up and down the east coast. Even 500 Startups partner and founder of dashboard.io Paul Singh, was on hand, with his lovely wife Suki mingling with the crowd, talking up startups and what dashboard.io can do for founders and investors.

We bumped into Kim Munzo, founder of Florida based Aspiredu and the winner of $25,000 best in village award at Everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference. Munzo made the trek from Tampa Florida to see what the Southland buzz was about and to update us about the progress their educational analytic startup has made since winning the crown at our conference.

Steve Buhrman the CEO and founder of am>venture backed (we are also backed by am>ventures) WannaDo gave us a sneak back of a bad ass upgrade to their event discovery app and assured us that they will be adding new metropolitan areas rapidly.

Our Memphis startup community was in full force. On the hot and muggy night people kept saying Memphis brought the heat, and that we did. Pam Cooper (Boosterville), Brittany Fitzpatrick (MentorMe), Richard and Richard (ScrewPulp), Charleson Bell (Bionanovations) and Allan Daisley (Memphis Bioworks), shut the party down (as usual).

If Tuesday evening was any indication of what to expect from Southland this is going to be one epic conference. Stay tuned for more Southland coverage here at nibletz.com the voice of startups everywhere else.

CentUp Comes to Nibletz, See What It Does

Have you ever read a great blog post and wished there was some way to show your support? Sure, you could leave a comment or tweet a link. That stuff’s great. But you know what content creators really need?

Cash. Just like the rest of us.

There’s been a slowly growing trend of micropayment companies in the last few years. The deal is that you, the reader, give a very small amount–even a few pennies–to your favorite bloggers or content companies when they create something you like. It’s another way of showing your gratitude and helping them stay in business. Win-win.

Now, though, Chicago company CentUp is upping the ante even more. Instead of transactions straight from consumer to content company, there’s a third party benefiting from your pennies: charities.

CentUp will take 10% of all donations, and the other 90% will be split evenly between 1 of 6 charities and the content provider. The charities include national nonprofits such as Love146 and The Fender Music Foundation. As the company grows, they plan to add more charities.

Nibletz is proud to be a CentUp publisher. Our button is right there at the top of each post. All you have to do is sign up with CentUp, then start clicking. Besides designating how much you want to give, you can also use the button to Tweet about your donation. It’s similar to a Facebook “like” button, but benefits a couple of great organizations.

For our part, we will use our portion to continue our Sneaker-Strapped Road Trip. This enables us to travel the country, get in the trenches with great startups, and talk to amazing investors. It’s also when we cover awesome events like SXSW and Southland, which starts tomorrow. In fact, the majority of our content (which we know you love!) comes from our Sneaker-Strapped Road Trip. Love Nibletz? Every little bit helps us continue to be the voice of startups everywhere else.