SXSW Archives - Page 6 of 6 - Serious Startups

Don’t Launch At SXSW, Accelerate!

In the video above, Nashville Technology Council’s CTO of the Year Marcus Whitney candidly discusses the dumbest thing he’s ever done as an entrepreneur. What was it? Launching at SXSW.

His company MoonToast, has bounced back since that tragic sxsw launch and brought on huge clients for their social media and engagement platform, like Universal Music Group.

MoonToast actually has a great product but it’s not one for the masses of hipster startup junkees that are headed to Austin Texas in less than two weeks. It’s more of a B2C play with huge potential upside.

Moontoast lost over $100,000 dollars launching at SXSW. The real problem was the fact that prior to SXSW it appeared that they had all of their ducks in a row. They were ready to make a huge splash. Once they pulled the trigger though, they signed up three new users.

There are countless stories of startups that launch at SXSW simply because it’s the trendy thing to do. But even RackSpace’s celebrity statup guru Robert Scoble says not to launch at SXSW. In a piece on Quora that he originally published two years ago, and his since updated, he says don’t launch at SXSW, use it as an accelerant.

You want to launch ahead of sxsw and create an ear piercing buzz by reaching out to key influencers like Scoble, Leo Laporte, MG Siegler, Mike Arrington, or any of the other high profile journalists you can find on Scoble’s Twitter list or his Facebook list .

Scoble offers a great list of tips too for accelerating at SXSW and you can find that here on Quora (account required)

I’ve personally been to SXSW 16 different times. The first 12 years I attended the music festival during my radio career. The last four years have been as a tech journalist. I know how bad most startups want to launch at sxsw but unless you’ve got buckets and buckets of money that you’re willing to lose you may want to reconsider. Whitney humbly told us that going into their first investor meeting after sxsw was an experience he wouldn’t’ wish on anyone.

These gigantic balloons were part of Trover’s presence at SXSW12 (photo: NMI)

We saw some great startups in 2011 and 2012. At least year’s SXSW we saw Trover, while they’re still in existence they dumped over $50,000 into street team promoters, gigantic orange balloons, real estate at the foodtruck village and Tequilla infused walking tours of Austin. Rain basically ruined most of their promotions. Today, most people I talk to have no idea what Trover is.

Make people talk about your product and talk about you. Do something to stand out but don’t be obnoxious. Don’t forget to put your big boy pants or your big girl pants on and realize that there’s thousands of people just like you competing for the exact same thing.

Read Scoble’s tips here.

Nibletz & The Everywhereelse.co Team Are Looking For A Few Good Sponsors

As many of you know prior to putting on everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference 2013, we are on the nibletz, sneaker-strapped startup road trip. We stopped in over 60 different cities across the country, went to startup meetups, startup weekends, startup weeks, incubators, accelerators and anything with a startup pulse. We made some awesome friends and met some great startups, many of whom came to Memphis for everywhereelse.co.

Well right after the conference we had to get right back on the road in order to finish our book in time for a December ’13 publishing (that seemed like so long ago when we first struck the book deal). We’re no officially on the road for the next 100 days. Our immediate next stops are Cincinnati, Columbus, St. Louis, Austin (sxsw), an outreach trip in San Francisco, Kansas City, Portland, Baltimore and more.

We can’t do this alone. Last year in 4 campaigns we raised around $5,000 on indiegogo. For this leg of the trip we’ve got some interesting things we can offer our sponsors and we’re doing it directly below. Thank you so much for your continued support and let us know what city and state you’re in so we can connect on the road trip.

Sponsorship levels

Attaboys (The Extra Value Meal) $6.00 (face it $5.00 doesn’t get you an extra value meal anymore)

This is our “attaboy” sponsorship feel free to get us as many extra value meals as you’d like. We’ll gladly thank you with a link in a thank you weekly wrap up on nibletz.com and give you a shot out on our twitter accounts.

A Taco, from Moe’s Or Chipotle $10.00

This sponsorship will help get us a taco from Moe’s or Chipotle, food is fuel, fuel is good . Feel free to get us as many taco’s from Moe’s and Chipotle as you’d like we will be extremely grateful.

For this sponsorship we will give you a paragraph shout out with your link, description and Twitter handle in a per stop thanks for the Taco’s post. We’ll also give you a shot out on Twitter (info captured in the butto below).

Bus Ticket $25.00

We take the Bolt Bus, Megabus and other regional cheap bus services everywhere we can because we boot strap to the point we call it sneaker-strapping. Your $25 donation can get us a lot more places than you would ever imagine on Megabus and Bolt Bus.

For this sponsorship you’ll receive a new “nibz” short form story about your startup (identified as a sponsored nibz) along with a linkback in the logo and at the bottom of the story you’ll also get 2 shout outs on Twitter.

A Tank Of Gas and A Tank You! $50.00

For the stops on the trip that we can’t make by bus we have to drive and your $50.00 sponsorship for gas comes in quite handy.

With your $50.00 sponsorship you’ll get a nibz featured post on nibletz.com as well as a thank you mention in our weekly thank you post with linkbacks. You’ll also get 4 tweets with your Twitter handle and link.

Hotel Money $120

You’ll breathe easier knowing that the nibletz crew will get most likely 2 nights out of this hotel money. We may not sleep, but rather stay up and work all night, but that’s ok with you because we’re all startup founders.

With your hotel money sponsorship you and your startup will receive a “sponsored” nibz feature story about what you do. We’ll tweet the story out on our regular tweet schedule to nearly 150,000 followers and share across all of our social networks.

Sneaker Strapped Patron Sponsor $550.00

The nibletz sneaker strapped patron sponsorship includes one “startup village” booth package for everywhereelse.co 2013, February 17-19th, 2014 in Memphis Tennessee. The Startup Village booth includes booth space, wifi, a chance to pitch for over $10,000 in cash and several other contest opportunities, name in program, description in virtual village and 3 attendee tickets.

As part of the road trip patron sponsors your website will be mentioned in a rotation with other sponsors on our youtube videos from the road trip (not including SXSW).

You’ll also get a sponsored feature story. Which will run in our social streams.

Also, if you choose, you can send two t-shirts one XL and one M and we will wear them in videos from the trip.

Sneaker Strapped Saint $1000

With the sneaker strapped saint sponsor package you will get everything in the Patron package including the startup village booth for next years conference. You will also get your logo prominently featured on the 2014 everywhereelse.co conference SWAG bag.

Provided it fits in the tour schedule we will also stop by your startup for an event or meetup.

If you choose we will wear your t-shirt in our videos as well.

SXSW 2013 Nibletz/Everywhere Else Saint Sponsor $1800

This sponsorship includes everything in the Saint sponsorship however the perks will be included during the SXSW 2013 coverage. This is an excellent opportunity for startups that can’t be at sxsw but still want added exposure.

At $1800 Nick or Kyle will wear your startup t-shirt for an entire day and an entire day’s worth of on camera videos. Your startup will also be featured in all of our AOL Radio coverage as demonstrated here.

Finally, we will write two stories about your startup and tweet them out over the course of SXSWi 2013. We will also give you 20 additional Tweets during the course of SXSWi.

SXSW 2013 Platinum nibletz & everywhere else sponsor (3 Available) $2700

This sponsorship includes everything in the SXSW Saint sponsorship however the perks and more.This is an excellent opportunity for startups that can’t be at sxsw but still want added exposure.

Your startup will be featured in every video that we do during the “outro” see this link for an example.

Your startup will be featured all day long on AOL radio, listen to this for an example.

At $2400 Nick or Kyle will wear your startup t-shirt for one entire day and an entire day’s worth of on camera videos. Your startup will also be featured in all of our AOL Radio coverage as demonstrated here.

Finally, we will write two stories about your startup and tweet them out over the course of SXSWi 2013. We will also give you 40 additional Tweets during the course of SXSWi.

Thank you so much for your continued support!

Powerhouse Team Behind Gui.de Raises $1 Million For Max Headroom Like News Startup

A new startup based in Miami, called Guide, promises to bring technology that will turn online news, social streams and blogs into videos guided by 20 different anchors or avatars. Included in the 20 anchors are a dog, a robot, and anime characters.

These characters will read articles, and present photos and videos like your personal guide to the content you’re looking at. The animated characters are the driving force behind the technology. If you’re thinking this sounds rather silly, well think again, as Guide has already raised $1 million dollars in funding from some credible heavy hitters in the video and entertainment industries.

The Knight Foundation, Sapient Corp, Bob Pittman (MTV founder), and Google’s employee 13, Steve Schimmel.

The Gui.de team is headed by Freddie Laker a former executive at Sapient with who’s been dabbling in startups for some time. Leslie Bradshaw, the company’s Chief Operating Officer, has a rock solid resume including being named one of the top five female executives in the technology industry by Fast Company magazine. Bradshaw was listed alongside Cher Wang of HTC, Marissa Mayer of Google and Mary Meeker of KPCB.

The demo on the gui.de website looks like they paired Siri up with some video animation and use her to read the news. The technology may not quite be there yet, but with the team they have in place they should be able to put something spectacular together.

Gui.de is headed to SXSW to debut their product and strike up some buzz at the conference that’s known as the launch pad for Twitter, FourSquare, Zaarly, Ban.jo and more.

Find out more here.

SXSW Bringing Startup Event To Vegas Baby: SXSWV2V

The SXSWi or South By Southwest Interactive show, as part of the annual South By Southwest festival held in March every year, continues to grow. This year all hotel rooms in the immediate vicinity are already sold out. Last year, despite torrential downpours for three days SXSWi had it’s biggest year ever.

SXSWi has been the birth place to many great startups that we use today. Twitter, FourSquare, and Zaarly are just a few of the startups that successfully launched out of SXSW. Glancee (acquired by Facbeook), Highlight and Banjo were the talk of the town last year during the festival.

Thousands and thousands of entrepreneurs flock to Austin Texas to see and take part in the latest startups brewing across the country. In fact, there are even buses that head down to SXSW where startups are building “startup weekend style” along the way. There are many startups that set aside a great chunk of their marketing budget to participate in the SXSW festivities. Other startups use it as both a customer acquisition point and a launch pad.

SXSWi Director Hugh Forrest has seen how SXSWi has grown and taken off and now he wants to expand the property and brand outside the realm of downtown Austin. Forrest has announced V2V August 11-14 2013 at the Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas.

While the strip is still a short distance away from Zappos founder Tony Hsieh’s Downtown Project, the 4 day SXSW conference is a welcome event among all of Las Vegas’ tech community.

Forrest hasn’t decided what “V2V” means just yet but told the Austin Chronicle “Well, the idea there is that it is somewhat of a meaningless term, but if you really want to think of a meaning there, it could be visionary to visionary, or voice to voice, or voice to visionary, or visionaries to Vegas. We like that it’s an open palette and will afford us some room to grow and develop into whatever this event becomes.”

While the Downtown Project continues to grow and the Vegas tech scene is on fire we’re pretty confident that V2V will catch on just as quickly. If it doesn’t though, Forrest isn’t worried. He’s used to building things slowly and organically.

” I think that we can bring a lot of skill and expertise to the Las Vegas venture. On the other hand, one of the reasons SXSW is where it’s at now is it that it was allowed to grow somewhat slowly and organically. We were afforded the luxury of making mistakes on a fairly small stage and then learning from those mistakes and growing after it, growing better. It’d be great if the Las Vegas thing draws a big crowd the first year but at the same time, I don’t want to grow that too fast. I’m very much a believer of the slow, organic growth idea as a way to figure out exactly what you’re doing” Forrest said in the Austin Chronicle interview.

“With the growth and popularity of the startup-related programming across the SXSW family of events, it is clear that there is enough momentum to create a wholly unique and independent event focused on entrepreneurs,” said SXSW V2V Producer Christine Auten said in a statement. “SXSW V2V will follow the same general strategy we have followed with other SXSW experiences. It is about turning creative ideas into reality — bringing visionaries to Vegas.”

SXSW V2V will take place at The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas — a deluxe urban resort in the heart of the Vegas Strip — from Sunday, August 11 through Wednesday, August 14. SXSW V2V registration will include three days of programming, an opening reception, welcome dinner and an eclectic mix of evening and networking events. Register now at the discounted rate of $695 through December 14, 2012

Linkage:

Looking to participate,speak or volunteer at V2V click here

Want to pitch at V2V click here

Maybe you should warm up your pitch at “everywhereelse.co” click here

Hotel Tonight Sticks To Their Core For SXSW Promotion Too

Hotel Tonight Founder: Sam Shank (r) with Hotel Tonight Team in front of their first Austin Room. (photo: Sam Shank)

Yesterday we brought you a story about SideTour and how instead of a huge alcohol induced binge party at South by Southwest, they hosted intimate “Side Tour” style gatherings with some successful start up companies like Tumblr and Etsy.

Another great start up, Hotel Tonight, stuck to their core of finding last minute rooms for their South By Southwest promotion. Hotel Tonight Founder Sam Shank, rented an Airstream trailer for the companies on-site headquarters by day. By night, since rooms were scarce Shank and the Hotel Tonight team rented out the Airstream.

While it’s just an Airstream trailer, it was quite cozy. There was a couch when you walk in with a nice breakfast/dinner table, running water, a shower, bathroom, cooking area, king sized bed and a flat screen tv. Just what a South By Southwest go-er would need for the night.

More after the break
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Side Tour Extends Intimate One Of A Kind Experiences To Their SXSW Events

The founders of Side Tour just posted their re-cap of the company’s South By Southwest experience in Austin Texas this year. Before we dive into that we need to tell you about Side Tour so you understand why their events at SXSW were a great reflection on exactly what they do.

By now many people in the United States are familiar with Richard Petty’s Nascar Experience. Petty’s Nascar Experience lets everyday race fans take a stroll around a Nascar track at nearly 200 mph. It’s a one of a kind experience that has now seen hundreds of thousands of customers. While the Petty Nascar Experience isn’t part of Side Tour, it’s that type of experience that makes this start up so unique.

More after the break
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Start Up Interview: Patrick Ambron CEO Of The SXSW Award Winning Brandyourself.com

Have you ever looked yourself up on Google to find something less desirable? Maybe Google has you confused with someone else with a similar name? Maybe there was that incident at that frat party 10 years ago that just won’t go away?

Typically with these types of scenarios there are reputation clean up companies out there that are more than happy to take thousands of dollars from you to help clean up your Google results. Now there’s a new game in town and it’s free. Brandyourself.com is a do it yourself utility that allows you to take control of your Google results.

More after the break
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Xoogler Spotlight: MyGola Locals Puts A New Spin In Travel Apps For Android

If you’re not familiar with the term Xoogler it’s a relatively new term that ex-Google employees have come up for themselves, as in Ex-Googler. In 2012 Mashable featured 15 start ups that were founded by Xooglers. Many of the start ups were re-hashments of 20% projects. Google was known for allowing employees to work on projects that weren’t part of their daily work for 20% of their work week.

While Google had first dibs at 20% projects some of the ideas that came out were either not picked up by Google, or just developed totally outside of Google.

Such is the case for Anshuman Bapna. Bapna worked in Google’s advertising department and handled major accounts with a focus on travel. He had travel industry experience before working at Google and left the search giant to develop mygola.com. The website mygola.com takes a different spin on travel by having hired travel advisers recommend travel destinations and give advice on places to go, one on one but in an open forum. Instead of a corporate structure that puts dollars before travel, mygola offers the end user information first. It’s fueled by industry partnerships and of course advertising vs bookings.

Bapna wanted to get into the mobile space but didn’t want to offer just another hotel booking app or flight booking app. Bapna wanted to offer a resource for people once they got into a strange city or destination. That’s where Mygola Locals came up.

MyGola Locals has sourced ordinary English speaking people in international destinations and even here in the U.S. These people have signed up to be “locals”. As a local their profile and phone number go into the apps data base and when someone gets to a new destination they can actually call someone, free of charge, to get advice on anything from restaurants, to the best way to get from the airport to the hotel.

Bapna wanted to use an actual phone conversation vs texting or messaging because it opens up a whole new form of interaction. Also, in areas where people aren’t familiar, a friendly voice can be relaxing to someone, especially in a foreign country.

MyGola Locals uses an anonymizing call switcher/dialer that calls all the locals in a queue until someone picks up. When they do pick up the end user talks to them on the phone and sees their photo along with key profile information.

The MyGola locals system also allows the “locals” to set times, dates, and hours that they are available. Some locals may be more comfortable recommending night life from say 10pm-2am while others may be available in the morning. This insures that the end user doesn’t wake someone up or interrupt them while they are working.

Bapna set up his first U.S. market in Austin Texas for South By Southwest the past two weeks. He told us in an interview that plenty of people were using the service, in fact more than he originally thought. I had the opportunity to try it out. In a town full of food trucks and barbecue I was looking for the best burger around and found a few good recommendations of sit-down restaurants that were pleasing. The local even took my phone number and texted me later in the day to make sure I had found his first recommendation.

Bapna was hoping to build scale from out of town users to become locals in their own town, which also worked out better than planned.

If you’re ready to try it, here’s a link to MyGola Locals in the Google Play Store.

British Start Up “Culture Label” Offering Swank Sophistication In One Stop Shop

South By Southwest Interactive prominently features start ups from other countries at this years SXSW Interactive Trade Show. One of those start ups, led by Peter Tullin, is Culture Label.

Culture Label is a one stop shopping point, similar in vein to Amazon.com, however with the ante upped in terms of quality of products. As Tullin explained in an interview with nibletz.com, they’ve curated items from around the world, up-scale shops, galleries, boutiques and museum shops to come up with a collection of purchasable wares fit for a king, or queen, at a reasonable rate. Tullin also fancied culturelabel.com to an upscale version of “etsy” as well.

When asked how he came up with the idea, he said that he and his business partner were into art and many people asked them where they could get art without going to Ikea. Tullin explained that Ikea is the single largest vendor of art in the world.

Tullin quickly realized that shopping museum gift shops, artists galleries, trunk shows and even high end craft markets, could take someone months, years and even a lifetime. So they curated some of the best of those categories under one umbrella.

Culturelabel.com has partnered with over 500 of the world’s leading creative brands. Some of the brands you’ll find at culturelabel.com include Tate, Saatchi Gallery, Andy Warhol Foundation and the Chateau de Versailles. They even have work from Abbey Road Studios.

The company is based in London’s budding start up district and was part of the UKTI Interactive Mission to SXSWi 2012.

Breaking: CNN To Buy Mashables Says A Reuters Blogger

While SXSW hasn’t had any break out hits like in the past with Twitter, Foursquare or the now defunct Gowalla, that doesn’t mean there hasn’t been major News coming from it. Reuters Blogger Felix Salmon is reporting that he has been told from a close source that CNN which is at SXSW for the first time, will be buying Mashables for upwards of $200 on Tuesday.

In the past major companies buying a Tech site hasn’t worked out so well, AOL, however, if CNN lets Mashable’s be them selves, this should great help both sides. So while SXSW for new Start-Ups may have been a bust, at lest we got one major News coming out of Austin this year. Its also unclear as of now if the management will stay the same, or movement will have to happen.

Here’s looking at Tuesday kids…

Source: Reuters

RIP Gowalla, Its Been Nice Knowing You

Three months after being acquired by Facebook and almost three years to the day of launching at SXSW GoWalla has finally closed up shop. Fitting that it finally did during SXSW in which it was launched at.

More after the break… Read More…

Naveen Selvadurai Checks Out!

It was three years ago at South By Southwest in Austin Texas when the world started hearing about this neat little app that allowed you to check-in to places. That app of course was FourSquare. In both 2010 and 2011 and again as we go into SXSW 2012, app developers from around the world have flocked to Austin to see if they could become the next FourSquare.

Now, FourSquare co-founder Naveen Selvadurai has announced he is leaving the company. Selvadurai has said he doesn’t know what he is doing next. We are very curious as to why he’d want to leave such a succesful start up.

Last year at SXSW 2011, both co-founders, Naveen Selvadurai and Dennis Crowley gave a key note at SXSW Interactive that was standing room only.

Crowley has often received most of the credit for starting Foursquare. His brother once said in an interview with the Silicon Alley Insider, that life was always a game for the elder Crowley and that FourSquare was an expansion of that.

Perhaps we will see Sevadurai behind another successful start up, but for now, he’s checked out.