Tech Cocktail’s Kira Newman Wants Entrepreneurs To “Audit Your Soul” At SXSW

Kira Newman is a senior writer over at Tech Cocktail. She’s been covering startups and entrepreneurs for a while now and even took a trip across the world learning about how they do things in different cities. After covering hundreds and hundreds of entrepreneurs she has some great insight.

Newman has noticed that in the “just do it” and do it now, lives of entrepreneurs, they don’t take the time to “know thyself.” Many entrepreneurs know how important it is to know their customers, but they often overlook their team and themselves.

We are combing the pages and pages of the SXSW panel picker for 2014 to find some of the more interesting startup discussions vying for a spot in the SXSW lineup. Newman’s talk is definitely worth a vote.

Why is looking into your soul and knowing thyself important? This is Newman’s take from the panel picker page:

“Entrepreneurs who pinpointed their fear of failure would perform better than those plagued by unknown terror. Entrepreneurs who understood their personality quirks could build a more cohesive team. Entrepreneurs who consciously valued independence would make completely different decisions from those who valued money.”

During the two and a half hour workshop, Newman will go over ten important questions that every entrepreneur should ask themselves.

You can vote for Newman’s talk here!

Philly’s Novotorium Announces New Seed Funding Program

Philadelphia’s Novotorium continues to support health, wellness, and nutrition startups across the Philadelphia region. We’ve covered Novotorium quite a bit over the last 18 months and their progress has been fun to watch.

The team backing the startup support organization wants to get in with companies in their wheelhouse as early as possible, sometimes backing companies as early as a business plan stage or during the development of a companies minimum viable product (MVP). More often than not, companies at that early a stage are turned away and can’t develop without funding, especially in health and wellness sectors.

Novotorium has announced a week’s worth of programming geared towards the earliest stage companies. The program runs the week of September 16-20 and at the end of the week those that participated will be part of a business plan competition on September 23rd. The competition will have a $2500 prize, but Novotorium will consider all participants for possible future investments ranging from $5,000 to $250,000.

“Our goal with this program is to work with companies in the early stages of developing a business plan and creating the first iteration of their business. We are looking forward to helping them build out their plans and create their minimum viable products. We anticipate that we will be able to offer seed funding to several companies,” Novotorium Managing Director Stuart Segal said in a statement.

Novotorium’s Marketing and Business Director, Chuck Hall, summarized the program on their blog:

During each day of the week-long program — September 16 through 20 — Novotorium partners will be on hand at Novotorium in Langhorne to offer classes and hold office hours on key parts of creating and launching a business — finance, law, marketing, sales, operations, lean startup, agile development, technology, health care products and markets and more. This is a completely free week of sessions, with the goal of helping entrepreneurs accepted into this program move forward with their business plans and business implementation efforts.

On Friday, September 20, business plans and business development efforts will be vetted, with approved startups slotted into presentation times for Monday, September 23. Entrepreneurs will be asked to present to a Novotorium panel that will then determine the winner of the competition. The winner will receive the top prize of $2,500 in cash and $3,000 in services at Novotorium over a 30-day period.

Companies wishing to participate in the program must apply on the Novotorium website using the ordinary application form. Applicants should note “TBD” in any part of the application that is yet to be determined. Applicants should also note “Applying for September Program” in the “What Else?” section of the application.

Interested? Hit the application link above

4 Tech Investments Your Startup Should Splurge On Early

No matter how you slice it, launching a startup is a major expense. It can be tempting to cut corners by paying less for certain business necessities. But don’t go too crazy with the budget blade, especially when it comes to technology and your website’s infrastructure. Experience shows that companies that invest in good technology from the outset find a bigger payoff.

The challenge, then, becomes knowing exactly where to invest. Here are some basics:

A Great Website

Your website conveys who you are, what you do, and what makes your company different from the rest. It doesn’t need to be overly flashy — some of the most effective messaging is simple and streamlined.

Your website should have an attractive job application page that outlines your company’s mission. Great employees want to be part of something bigger — a company with a vision — so this page will be one of your greatest assets in attracting A-level talent.

A Reliable Hosting Provider

Choose a larger service provider early on when deciding on a site host. I recommend skipping a VPS (virtual private server) altogether and going straight to cloud hosting, like Amazon’s EC2 CloudStack. On a VPS, if one of the other sites on that server is experiencing a lot of traffic, your site becomes slow or unresponsive. Cloud server hosting is incredibly scalable and can save you headaches down the road.

Email Deliverability

Larger companies pay for email deliverability. An ordinary email system will often send relevant messages to the spam filter. It simply can’t distinguish what should and shouldn’t be tossed out. If you pay for a deliverability service, you are effectively paying a small amount per email (around a cent) to ensure you don’t miss out on important communication.

An Efficient, Scalable CRM

Finally, if you foresee your business having a large number of clients, then you need a powerful CRM (customer relationship manager) from the get-go. Staying on top of your business relationships quickly becomes a challenge with the addition of just a few clients. A basic CRM keeps track of your relationships with clients, prospects and anyone else with whom you do business.

Excel and QuickBooks are too simplistic, too quickly overwhelmed and they don’t scale easily. Google Drive might seem like another option, but it can soon become chaotic and time-consuming. Sometimes, the best option is a custom CRM tailored it to fit your needs, both present and future. If you decide to go with a commercially available CRM program, make sure it is designed to be scalable so it can accommodate your company’s needs as it grows.

The Benefits

Investing early on in great technology can improve your company’s growth in two ways:

It ensures that you can handle increases in demand. Investing in reliable technology, capable of handling spikes, means significant growth won’t stretch your organization.
It will allow you to entertain the idea of large partnerships that can grow your company by multiples. If you’ve got a reliable tech base, then you’ll be in good shape to handle considerable expansion.

Scout Out Technology

A commitment to investing in great technology is one step — then, you have to actually find the best technology for your needs. Here are a few ways to get started:

Do your research. An item’s cost does not guarantee its efficiency. Sometimes, market leaders really do have the best offerings at the lowest cost, but it’s also worthwhile to check out smaller tech companies. What the smaller outfits lack in bells and whistles, they often make up for with a higher level of service, which can prove invaluable.
Ask around. To find the right tech fit, talk to fast-growing tech companies to see what they use. These companies have higher standards than Fortune 500 companies, which tend to be out of touch and use highly complex programs supported by a huge, in-house technology workforce.
Compare offers. Before committing to a technology, obtain multiple bids and demos to ensure you’ve found the right fit at a reasonable price.

Invest in the proper technology infrastructure now to avoid wasting large amounts of time and money later on. You will be set for rapid future growth — and very few headaches.

Chuck Cohn is the Founder and CEO of Varsity Tutors, a leading national tutoring and test prep company with operations in 25 cities, 2,000 tutors and 80 employees. Prior to Varsity Tutors, Chuck was a venture capitalist with Ascension Health Ventures, a $550 million venture capital firm. Prior to that role, Chuck worked as an investment banker in the Energy & Power Investment Banking Group of Wachovia/Wells Fargo.

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.

JuiceTank — Innovation Lab, Accelerator and Coworking Space — Takes Shape in Somerset

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Tennessee’s Governor Bill Haslam Announces The TENN Top Startups In Statewide Program

Tuesday saw the final pitch off for Launch Tennessee’s TENN program. Launch Tennessee is a public/private partnership that helps organize, administer and provide resources to nine accelerator regions across the state of Tennessee.

With so many accelerators in one single state, Launch Tennessee teamed up with the Blackstone Foundation to hold a “super accelerator” of sorts simply called The TENN. Startups that went through one of the accelerator programs in Tennessee within the last 12 months were eligible to compete in a statewide competition to name the best of the best.

Earlier this month Launch Tennessee announced 20 finalists from across east, middle and western Tennessee. The 20 startups chosen as finalists represented a variety of technological and entrepreneurial fields including general tech, social, medical, medical device, life sciences and even publishing.

On Tuesday the startups in the top 20 pitched off in front of a panel of outside investors that included: Sabeer Bhatia, chairman and CEO of Sabse/Jaxtr and founder and former CEO of Hotmail; John McIlwraith, managing partner at Cincinnati, Ohio-based Allos Ventures; John Greathouse, general partner at Santa Barbara, Calif.-based Rincon Venture Partners; Sig Mosley, managing partner at Atlanta, Ga.-based Mosley Ventures; Bob Crutchfield, partner at Birmingham, Ala.-based Harbert Ventures; and Mike Tatum, serial entrepreneur and CEO of Workbus.

At the end of the day Governor Bill Haslam called up the top 10 startups who were named to the TENN;

eClinic (Nashville)
Got You In (Nashville)
Gun.io (Nashville)
Hatponics (Knoxville)
Health & Bliss (Memphis)
Mobilizer (Memphis)
Screwpulp (Memphis)
Survature (Knoxville)
Vendor Registry (East Tennessee”
View Medical (Memphis)

These 10 startups will participate in the TENN program which includes a statewide bus trip to meet some of the biggest companies, entrepreneurs and business leaders across the state, trips to New York and Silicon Valley and office space at their local accelerator or incubator. They will also have access to mentors and other resources to continue taking their post accelerator companies to the next level.

Congratulations to all the startups that made the list.

3 Ways Women Can and Should Have It All

A generation after many prominent feminists encouraged women to “have it all,” we continue to decry the absence of women in politics, business, and other positions of power. At the same time, even though there is more opportunity for women now than ever before in history, some professional women argue that we can’t or shouldn’t want to have it all.

But is it really too much to have a prominent career and a family? Must we make just one choice to tip the balance of power?

I don’t think so — women can have it all, and here is how:

1. Define what “having it all” means to you. Like many women, I didn’t want to work so hard for someone else that I wouldn’t have time for a family. Not only did I want to have a successful career and a family, I wanted the freedom to do the kind of work I pleased.

Yet working for a branding firm in Manhattan, I found myself staying late and coming in on weekends to represent products and companies I didn’t believe in. I was frustrated. I realized that what I wanted most was more control over my hours and over the people, companies and products I worked with.

2. Strike out on your own — gradually, if needed. If you want to avoid what Anne-Marie Slaughter calls the “time macho” of male-dominated corporate culture, why not start a business or a freelance career?

Like any major transition, owning your own business can be a gradual process. After several years of working for a company, I had enough confidence in my work as a graphic designer to strike out on my own and start freelancing. While freelancing, I developed relationships with businesses, potential clients, and other entrepreneurs who wanted to partner with me.

I developed an interest in branding and eventually in how alternative forms of cause marketing could alter the marketplace (and people’s lives). Slowly but surely, I found my way and gradually built a life of freelancing into a business.

3. Make your own rules. Maybe you can accomplish the same amount of work in 50 hours that others can in 90 hours. Maybe you work better from home; maybe you work better at night. Maybe you are more creative if you get enough sleep and spend time with your family. Maybe you want to measure success by results rather than how much time you have logged. Or maybe you think your employees will do better work if you treat them well.

In a world where you set the rules and the measure of success, it is possible to create an alternative culture. It is possible to stop asking to be part of the game (or trying to fit into the game) and start your own game instead.

Over time, I was able to choose clients and associates who shared my vision of a business in which success would be measured by more than revenue, a business that would help make the world a more humane place.

I still work hard, but I choose my own hours, and all my work fuels a vision I have for my new company Maiden Nation — a community devoted to the idea that women can live the lives they imagine for themselves.

You can live the life you imagine, too. The first step is knowing what that looks like.

With degrees in Anthropology from Columbia University and Design from Parsons, Elizabeth Schaeffer Brown represents a brand development vanguard uniting global, technological, and social concerns. She has introduced leading international brands, like Sony Ericsson, into the North American market. Additionally, Elizabeth has founded many sustainable branding initiatives including Choose Haiti and launched this Fall, Maiden Nation. She is the co-founder of Maiden Nation and studioe9.com.

archer>malmo Submits Two Great Startup Branding Panels For SXSW

This week we will preview some of the best startup panels that are up for consideration at SXSW Interactive in March. SXSW gets thousands of possible panel, speakers, book reading and other content submissions for their “panel picker”. If you’re a startup founder, entrepreneur or influencer with a startup related panel please email us with a link to the panel information at startups@nibletz.com.

archer>malmo is a Memphis based PR and marketing firm that’s been around for 60 years. They have huge clients like Pfizer, Verizon and RJ Reynolds. But they also work with startups. Not only do they do work for startups but they have a a venture firm called a>m ventures that invests creative capital into new startups, for equity (*disclosure Nibletz Media Inc is an a>m ventures portfolio company).

With their vast experience in startups and working with all kinds of new and young companies, they’ve seen and learned some great (and not so great) things that are definitely worth sharing with other startup founders.

Last year, they held a well attended panel called “When Bad Names Happen To Good Startups”. The panel discussed the importance of naming and how sometimes that name that goes with that cleve URL may not be the best decision ever. They also discussed the ins and out and why’s of choosing a name. For most companies you’re stuck on it, or some version of it for life.

This year they are hoping to expand on that theme with an equally as important topic, branding. “When Bad Brands Happen To Good Startups” ” Gary Backaus, Chief Creative Officer/Director and Justin Dobbs Creative Director at archer>malmo, were the speakers for last years panel and will also be speaking on this panel as well (if selected).

We get it. Whether it’s an investor intro, an online listing, or your elevator pitch, there are times when capturing your startup concept in a few words is critical.

But talking to customers? It ain’t one of those times.

Yet for some reason many startups continue to court customers with the same robotic sound bites used in their pitch.

And while a digestible “My Unique Feature” formula is fine for accelerator applications, in the real world, you aren’t pitching a business model or market niche. You’re pitching a product. And even the simplest, fastest, shiniest, funnest product needs more than a value prop and a clever name.

It needs a personality.

We’ll examine brand personality types, marvel at great ones, laugh at bad ones, and share some tips for uncovering your brand voice—one that’s genuine, true, and that offers your customers something no positioning statement can. (they said on their panel picker page)

am>ventures Director and Everywhere Else Cincinnati speaker, Patrick Woods, has also submitted a panel for this years SXSWi panelpicker. Woods just got back from being one of the “mentors” for the new SXSW V2V festival in Las Vegas earlier this month.

Woods has a long background in PR and marketing with the past few years spent exclusively with startups. As the director of am>ventures he’s tasked with finding the startups that the firm wants to invest it’s creative capital in.

Woods also mentors through local accelerators, does office hours via Skype and Google hangouts and both writes and speaks on startup branding and marketing.

“Branding From Day Zero: Startup Brand Strategy” is the discussion Woods has submitted.

Branding. All startups have to do it, but no one really knows how. Punch “startup branding” into google and you’ll find checklists and 10-step plans that’ll tell you to “have a logo” and “be consistent.”

Thanks.

Startups don’t need tips and tricks. They need an understanding of brand strategy—what it means and why it matters. And ultimately, how to do it from the beginning.

Name, logo, t-shirts, stickers—these are all parts of brand, but what undergirds the whole system? Brand strategy. Startups usually skip this crucial phase. And it shows. I’m a hybrid ad man/startup guy who’s built brands for everything from an event discovery app to an AI system. I’ve seen tons of branding tools, but none specifically those starting from scratch.

This talk will explore a way forward specifically for startups. We’ll move past the tips & tricks and focus on a few actually helpful questions for building a great brand that resonates with your audience and build long-term loyalty.” Woods wrote on his panelpicker page.

You can vote here for “When bad brands happen to good startups”

and here for “Branding from day zero: Startup Brand Strategy”

This WSJ Startup Of The Year Plays Jeopardy For Team Building: Who Is Speek?

DC’s Speek is the number 4 ranked WSJ Startup Of The Year. This program, put on by the digital arm of the Wall Street Journal, takes 24 startups through a program of mentorship from business, tech, and entertainment titans. While “accelerators” are nothing new, a video series designed around them is a new and exciting concept and as you can imagine WSJ has an amazing mentor pool to tap from.

We’ve followed the path of Speek since we first heard about it over 18 months ago at a pitch event in Washington, DC. E-vite co-founder John Bracken and Danny Boice are making conference calls suck less.

Now what we like even more than simple conference calls (just go to http://speek.com/kyle) is the fact that Bracken and Boice are true believers in remembering their roots and supporting where they came from. While they are themselves part of a “program” of sorts, both Bracken and Boice are passionate about mentoring other entrepreneurs, speaking at events and sharing their experiences.

They’re leaders in the Washington DC startup community, a fact that showed when nearly 500 people showed up for a Speek celebration party earlier this summer.

Speek’s videos talk about the things they know best, simplicity, functionality, team, and branding.

One of the videos they do “speeks” to many startups across the globe. Like other startups Speek has a distributed work force. According to Boice 60% of their work force is local to DC, but the other 40% is distributed across the globe.

As a team-building exercise the guys at Speek played Jeopardy. Each employee completed a questionnaire and put the game together. Check out the WSJ video below.

Follow Friday: 30 Angels And VC’s To Follow On Twitter

It’s Friday morning which means its time for another great list of startup related people to follow on Twitter. Last week we brought you this awesome list of startup rockstars.Earlier lists have included these 50 women in startups to follow and another great list we had was 100 Techstars mentors to follow.

One of the most important things to our readers is the money, so this week we’ve got 30 angel and vc’s to follow on Twitter. Here we go!

Blair Garrou, founder the Mercury Fund (and speaker at Everywhere Else Cincinnati)
Paul Graham, Y-Combinator
Real Ventures
Y-Combinator
RedPoint Ventures
Joe Medved, SoftBank Capital
Andreessen Horowitz
Amish Jani, First Mark Capital NY
Bessemer Venture
Founder Collective
Ron Conway, SV Angel
Benchmark
UpFront Ventures
Greylock Partners
Eric Paley (founder) Founder Collective
Steve Case, Revolution
Michael Arrington, CrunchFund
Accel Partners
Mercury Fund
Google Ventures
Sequoia Capital
Steve Blank
John Doerr
Ben Horowitz Andreesen Horowitz
Mark Cuban
First Round Capital
Aaref Hilaly, Sequoia
Max Levchin, Paypal Founder, now investor
David Cowan, partner Bessemer Venture Partners
Don Dodge, startup guy and investor

How A Movie Can Change The Way You Run Your Startup

The best advice you’ll ever get as an entrepreneur can come from anywhere. It may have come from your parents or a mentor, a book or a billboard — even a movie. You’re not always sure why, but something in what you hear changes the way you think.

For me, this happened while watching the movie “Jerry Maguire” (yes, that Jerry Maguire!). If you’ve seen the movie, you’ll remember Jerry’s mentor, the late, great Dicky Fox. Although Dicky Fox had limited screen time, his scenes have stuck with me. Before ShadesDaddy.com was founded, my friends and family always thought it was funny (but still admirable) how many businesses I had tried to start but failed. Failure ultimately has been my best teacher and continues to be.

Maybe that’s why, in both my personal and professional life, I find myself thinking back to “Jerry Maguire.” Admittedly, it’s a little embarrassing that some of my guiding principles come from the movie with the immortalized “You complete me” scene, but what can I say? Dicky Fox taught me a thing or two.

“The key to this business is personal relationships.” You’ve heard the saying, “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” I heard that a lot in my years, and it really resonated when I started seeing the value of one’s network in working with vendors. Building personal relationships has been an integral part of growing my business to date.
“Roll with the punches. Tomorrow is another day.” Anyone who ever started a business or runs one knows there are days when when it rains, and then there are days when it pours. There will always be dilemmas — but thankfully, there is always tomorrow to find the solution for them. I’ve had to overcome problems that could have easily taken me out of business time and time again, but I always knew I had another day to fight.
“If [the heart] is empty, [the head] doesn’t matter.” We all have personal problems, and those problems can easily interfere with our work. Some of my better, most thriving moments professionally came when I was very happy personally with my relationships and my family life. However, there were also periods when my personal life wasn’t going so well, and I was fueled to work harder professionally as a result. All in all, I’ve learned that when I’ve been happiest personally, I’ve been able to better focus on my business.

I’d like to end with one last piece of Dicky Fox advice: “I love getting up in the mornings, I clap my hands and say, ‘This is going to be a great day!’” Seriously, do this. CLAP your hands in the morning, and say that quote out loud. In the last few years, starting off my day with positivity is a routine I’ve diligently applied. Love what you do from the beginning of your day to the end. If you put good energy and hard work out there in the universe, it will happen.

As Dicky says at the film’s end, “I don’t have all the answers. In life, to be honest, I have failed as much as I have succeeded. But I love my wife. I love my life. And I wish you my kind of success.”

Pablo Palatnik is the founder and CEO of ShadesDaddy.com, one of the largest online retailers of sunglasses in the world.

This is the must attend startup conference of 2013.

TechStars Austin Unveils First Class

Back in May Techstars, announced the formation of their Austin Techstars program. The accelerator is being housed at the Capital Factory in downtown Austin. Jason Seats, who was the director of the Techstars Cloud program in Houston moved over to Austin to head up the program.

Techstars reported receiving 850 applications for this first cohort in Austin. The team at Techstars was tasked with cutting those applications down to ten.

Here are the ten startups announced last night at an event at the Capital Factory.

Filament Labs build patient tracking and compliance software around mobile health, behavior tracking, and behavior change. One of its consumer products, HealthSpark, was 1 of 30 hand-selected apps within Aetna’s CarePass initiative.
MarketVibe (founded by the Whoosh Traffic team at Capital Factory) uses customers web analytics and shopping cart data to teach companies how to get more traffic, leads and sales.
Fosbury is a cross-platform digital wallet solution for designing, managing and analyzing campaigns on Apple Passbook and Samsung Wallet. Fosbury ensures retailers and other that their customers always have loyalty cards and coupons with them and provides a new way to interact with customers.
Atlas Wristband takes a new approach to wearable technology in the fitness industry. Atlas combines top talent from Johns Hopkins University, Phillips Healthcare and Maxim Integrated Products.
AuManil helps Online Retailers identify, manage and grow their most valuable customers – and create more of them. It enables shopper-facing agents to engage high value customers based on behavioral profiles and predictive insights. These targeted, personalized engagements lead to increased revenues, high retention rates, and better customer satisfaction.
Ube: controls lights and appliances from a smart phone, inexpensively. The company’s Wi-Fi enabled Smart Dimmers, Smart Plugs and Smart Outlets are competitively priced, easy to install, and provide the convenience of controlling your lights from your smartphone from anywhere in the world.
ProductGram: allows online sellers to extend their store from one outlet to many. Currently in development for Etsy sellers, the mobile app will push an attractive listing, not just a third party link to drive more product views to increase sales via other channels, with checkouts happening wherever engagement happens.
Testlio: opens a network of mobile testers to developers needing every last bug uncovered. The company has created tools for software testing that use real time chat, integrate issue reports into their existing systems, and do daily/weekly testing based on the customers own release schedule.
Accountable: streamlines and simplifies HIPAA compliance by providing a suite of tools and resources for firms, from necessary agreements and policies to risk assessments and employee training. All required pieces are tracked for completeness and time-sensitive expiration, with monitoring and alerts maintaining compliance. Audits are as simple as printing out a report and all requested information.
ProtoExchange: is a cloud-based network of professional 3D printing services that allow businesses to source the production and material capabilities of the network in a scalable, cost-effective, and time-efficient manner.

Do You Look At Employees’ Social Media Accounts

Question: As CEO, be honest — do you look at potential employees’ social media accounts? If yes, what is it you expect to see from someone you WOULD hire (vs. wouldn’t)?

Positive and Professional

“Whenever we are vetting new team members, we tend to do a little Internet sleuthing to find out more about the person. Social media accounts are a huge part of that. We will look at Twitter and Facebook accounts to get a feel for their communication style and attitude. A positive attitude and professional communication give us confidence that their interaction with clients will be the same.”

– Erin Blaskie | CEO, Erin Blaskie, Digital Strategist

Part of the Application

“I ask for links to all social media accounts right on the job application, and always check them out before contacting the person for an interview. The reality these days is that all of your employees represent your company, and they need to be aware that what they do and say is public. If I see a Twitter account or public Facebook page filled with angry, negative rants, that person is out!”

– Laura Roeder | Founder, LKR Social Media

Don’t Actively Look

“I don’t actively browse people’s accounts because I don’t want to see what they do in their private life; that’s not what I am hiring them for. However, if candidates send me their profiles for me to learn more about them, I click. If nothing is hidden, it’s a downside because they come across as taking privacy lightly. I prefer to get a link to a well-maintained résumé site or a LinkedIn profile.”

– Christian Springub | CEO and co-founder, Jimdo

Both Potential Employees and Current Employees

“I regularly monitor social media accounts of my employees. Negative things that I watch out for are excessive profanity, inappropriate photos, and explicit and/or suggestive conversations. It gives you a window into who somebody really is as a person. Every single one of my employees represents my brand. Therefore, I want people who present themselves in a way consistent with our image.”

– Richard Lorenzen | CEO, Fifth Avenue Brands

Let Yourself Shine Online

“Definitely. I personally maintain a private Twitter list of potential hires and monitor them over time, for example. But I’m primarily looking for familiarity with social media, a sense of humor, and a true passion for what our company is doing. Consistent negative updates are usually a deal-breaker.”

– Derek Flanzraich | CEO and Founder, Greatist

A Quick Glance

“I will look at the social media account of anyone I’m considering adding to my team — because of my field, I need to hire people who are already web savvy. But I also expect to need to give them some training and guidelines on what I expect to see on their accounts in the future. These are new tools and people aren’t always aware of what’s appropriate initially.”

– Thursday Bram | Consultant, Hyper Modern Consulting

It’s Part of Your Brand

“Absolutely, I do. The first thing I look at is a potential hire’s LinkedIn account and who I know that’s connected to him or her. We work with our clients to make sure their LinkedIn profile displays their professional brand in a positive way, and I expect the same from a potential employee.”

– John Hall | CEO, Influence & Co.

Very Valuable Tool

“I want to know that they fit the job description. For some positions social media is not relavant, but for some, I want to know if they are who they say they are and if they would fit my company culture. Social media is a great way to connect with anyone and also find out information about anyone. It is a tool, so use it as such.”

– Louis Lautman | Founder, Supreme Outsourcing

In the Age of Transparency

“Sure, I check them out; I like to see leaders and influencers. I stay away from shy people. We are in the age of transparency, and I want the members of my team to feel comfortable sharing their details online.”

– Alexander Torrenegra | Co-founder, VoiceBunny

Absolutely Not!

“I see little to gain by snooping on prospective employees personal social media accounts. I would fully expect to find them engaging in completely unprofessional activities outside of work as they should be. I’m more concerned about what kind of game face they can put on when the suit up in the office and judge them on their professional performance alone.”

– Christopher Kelly | Co-Founder, Principal, Convene

Social Media Doesn’t Lie!

“People tend to always interview really well, and sometimes that means they choose to withhold certain information that prospective employers wouldn’t want to hear. Every employer should look at a potential employee’s social media to see how they truly behave as a person. as we’ve found this always does play into their work ethic and character in the workplace.”

– Warren Jolly | Co-founder, Affiliate Marketing

Time and Frequency

“Yes. During the interview process, we consider social media use in the context of time and frequency. If an applicant is consistently active during working hours, that is the only real red flag for our business — unless they are managing company social media accounts. For a social media specialist, online presence is a job requirement; otherwise, it’s a distraction.”

– Nick Reese | CEO, Elite Health Blends

Smile on Social Media

“In our business, we work with the public. Smiling and being friendly is important. I expect to see potential employee smiling in photos and socializing. If I see potential employees not smiling in any photos or posting photos of inappropriate behavior, I would not want that person serving my customers.”

– Nancy T. Nguyen | Founder/Sweet Sylist, Sweet T Salon

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.

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Meet Everywhere Else Cincinnati Speaker Blake Miller, Managing Director Think Big Accelerator

With Everywhere Else Cincinnati rapidly approaching, we’re going to spend some time introducing you to our great speakers. There are still a limited number of early bird discount attendee, investor, and Startup Village tickets still available at eecincinnati.com

As a partner at Think Big Partners, Blake Miller is the Managing Director of the Think Big Accelerator program, consults for both local and national startup companies, and manages the Think Big in-house dev team (also known as Think Big Labs). Blake’s strengths are in ideation, innovation, UI/UX, growth hacking, and connecting the dots. Blake has co-founded a number of tech startups, including BodeeFit, WeeJay, Inboun, and Pitchcaster. He sits on the board of Keyzio and is an adviser to SquareOffs and Kahootz.

What was your first experience with startups?

I’ve always kind of had my own “startup” in that I’ve been building websites for small businesses since I was 13. However my first true startup was not in tech. About 4 years ago, I got into a new Consumer Packaged Good called The Secret Sauce. The BBQ Sauce was outstanding, it won the American Royal BBQ Competition (out of 500+ sauces) 2 years in a row. We did well at first when we started bottling, but starting a CPG company is REALLY HARD and EXPENSIVE. We ended up failing after getting a large purchase order from Costco, but couldn’t get a bank to loan us the money to produce the order because of Costco’s terms.

What made you want to become an entrepreneur?

Doing the same thing the rest of my life terrifies me. I just can’t imagine having the same routine for the rest of my life. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But I get to work with some of the smartest people anywhere day in and day out solving real problems. It also probably stems from my parents, they’ve been entrepreneurs ever since I can remember.

What has been the most important thing you’ve learned running an accelerator?

Two things actually: no matter how experienced the entrepreneur… EVERYONE NEEDS help because building a company is hard. Two, there’s no such thing as “the traditional accelerator model.” We realized this early on. Although many problems that arise for entrepreneurs start to look the same, every company is a bit different and needs a slightly different approach. To add to that, not everyone is always in the same space and not every company can naturally progress at the same speed.

What has been your biggest failure and biggest success at Think Big Partners and what did you learn from them?

We’ve made A LOT of mistakes and I think depending on who you ask in our organization, you’ll probably get a million different answers. I’d say the biggest is our initial approach to the accelerator model. It was definitely a “me too” approach, which I think you are seeing a lot of across the country. We quickly realized that we needed to do a lot more then just hand an entrepreneur a check, tell them here’s our list of mentors, let us know if you want to be connected, and “oh yea we will have office hours once a week.” This model obviously works for some, but what we experienced was that entrepreneurs need more resources.

In my opinion one of our biggest success is a result of that failure. We quickly realized that many entrepreneurs need help actually building their product. Luckily we didn’t realize this too late. We built a team of devs and designers so that we could help the entrepreneurs build MVP’s and get to market faster. Our success in this instance is that out of 6 companies in our first cohort, 5 are in the market, gaining customers, and generating revenue.

What do you like most about working with startups?

Solving Problems. I could expand on that a million different ways, but it always comes back to the challenge of solving real problems. It sounds far reaching but there is something extremely sexy to me about waking up every morning and solving problems for potentially millions of people. It also doesn’t hurt that I get to wear Jeans and T-shirt every day.

How can people keep up to date with you online?

Follow me on Twitter @ImBmills

Connect on Linkedin

Find ThinkBig at thinkbigpartners.com

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Los Angeles Startup Treats Amateur Athletes Like Superstars

A brand new startup in West Los Angeles is hoping to make amateur sport players feel like superstars, giving them the tools that they need to organize and manage their sports leagues, pick up games, and teams. With Sportifik the founders want amateur athletes to have fun, meet new people, and keep up with sports that often fall to the wayside.

Still a little over two weeks away from launch, the team behind Sportifik is “throwing the pigskin around,” meaning they’re putting the finishing touches on their platform and making sure it’s ready for the after work league and the local pick up game.

In the meantime we got to talk with Marco Franzoni, Sportifik’s co-founder and CEO about this new twist on sports.

What is your startup called?

Our startup is called Sportifik. A mix between sports and fantasterrific, only with a k.

What does your company do?

We are creating a global community of athletes and changing the way people participate in sports. We are providing amateur athletes and avid sports fans with the best means to easily organize and manage their sporting activities through a user friendly one-stop-shop mobile and web solution. Our platform will enable users to seamlessly organize sports games in a fun and rewarding way while enabling them to meet members of their local communities who share a passion for the same sport.

Our goal is to push new boundaries, make any game feel like a national championship, and make every amateur player feel like a superstar.

Who are the founders, and what are their backgrounds

We are three co-founders and friends.

Marco, our CEO, is an all-around athlete hailing from Italy with a consulting background. He’s the soul of this operation. It’s his inspiration and drive that brought us together in a common belief that sports should be uniting people.

Josh, our CTO, is an avid golfer with various experiences in web development and startups. He’s the heart of the operation as he is the one keeping us going (as well as the most important person in our lives today).

Chris, our head of biz dev, is passionate about all sports and comes from investment banking and social enterprise backgrounds. He’s the brain at Sportifik – not in that he’s intelligent but he makes sure everything is running correctly and logically.

Where are you based?

We’re currently based in West LA where we think the outdoors environment is the best to start an active sports venture.

What’s the startup scene like where you are based?

Pretty amazing. For years the LA and Santa Monica startup scene have been growing. It’s a phenomenal environment of smart dedicated people who are always looking to help each other out. We’ve been really fortunate to kick things off on the shores of Silicon Beach.

What problem do you solve?

We solve the problem of having to spend copious amounts of times and several different platforms to organize sports games. We spent too much time every week trying to get people together at the same spot to play soccer or basketball for games that would inevitably get canceled anyway. We thought there’s a better solution out there.

Why now?

People are becoming more active and mobile and at the same time we’re busier than ever with a ton of different things to do. Finding the time for collective sports games has become harder but they’re no less important in our lives.

What are some of the milestones your startup has already reached?

We launched a beta product in April and collected a bunch of early adopters. We’re re-launching on the 31^st of August (join us for our launch party through our website!).

We’ve also created a promotional clip to feature the community and outreach aspects of what we do. This includes supporting our friends who have a wheelchair basketball team and are looking to raise money for their upcoming season. If you are interested in helping Alvin and his team, get in touch with him at alvin.malave@gmail.com.

Finally, we’ve established an informal sports hierarchy internally. Josh is our golf master, Chris rules the ping pong table and Marco does pretty much everything damn well.

What are your next milestones?

Launching (see above)! We’re looking to get as many users as possible starting in West LA and the UCLA community and expanding as soon as possible to the rest of LA. We’re going to be looking to partner with local sports leagues, stores and venues to offer a more comprehensive service to our users and drive local businesses.

Where can people find out more? Any social media links you want to share?

Follow us on Facebook (www.facebook.com/sportifik), Twitter (www.twitter.com/sportifik_), WordPress (www.blog.sportifik.com), and youtube (www.youtube.com/sportifik)