Comments Off on Cincinnati Startup Repp Pitches At Startup America Live At SXSW [sxsw]0LikeLike 5,879
Cincinnati startup Repp was one of the great startups we saw at the Brandery 2012 demo day back in October. Repp is a service that allows people to validate their repp or reputation.
Repp waited from October until now for their first big marketing push. We bumped into Michael Bergman, Repp’s co-founder in the lobby at the Hilton where he was wearing a hot pink Repp t-shirt and handing out breakfast tacos. Startup founders will do anything they can to get much needed exposure at SXSW.
They were also one of the startups invited to pitch at the Startup America Live pitch sessions, which included feedback from top members of the startup community.
Have you ever met a girl that you tried to date, but a year to make love she wanted you to wait… oh wait that’s a song lyric. Have you ever met a girl that you tried to date and after she stood you up you found out she “pre date stalked you”? Well that’s exactly what happen to REPP founder Michael Bergman, when he actually met his now wife. Luckily for Bergman he’s got a pretty popular name. In fact, [Chris Bergman], the founder of Chore Monster (which is a previous graduate of The Brandery) isn’t even related to Michael.
So sure we internet stalk everyone now. The first thing I do when I get a new business card or meet someone at a conference I find intriguing is go right to good ole Google. The problem with that in the dating world is that there is a lot of stuff out there that may be better suitable after a few dates.
Now take a situation at the complete other end of the spectrum. It’s time to sell your iPhone 4s on Craigslist. Now this is a hot item and you may want to know a little bit more about the man who just pulled up to a panel van and appears to be packing a pistol in his sweatshirt.
In both of these cases you want more information about someone. If you were the someone in question, with REPP at myrepp.com, you can control that flow of information.
REPP aggregates your social graph and can even integrate a background check into a profile that you can give people access to. You can also control how much information is given out in that profile.
You may want the ladies to know a little more information than the guy you’re buying the stolen Xbox from. Nonetheless both the Craigslist seller and the nice young lady would be more comfortable with more information about you.
The service is free at the moment but moving to a freemium model with added features. Check out Bergman’s pitch from the Startup America Live stage below:
Comments Off on This Pitch From DC Startup Speek Results In A Monkey Tattoo On John Bracken’s Ass [video][sxsw]0LikeLike 7,845
We’ve been following Washington DC conference calling startup Speek since they were little more than a pitch deck last year at a DC tech event.
The company was founded by John Bracken, one of the cofounders of E-Vite (the precursor to Facebook events lol) and Danny Boice, a startup renaissance man, who even spoke at our huge “everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference”.
Anyone who knows the Speek team knows that John and Danny compliment each other greatly. John is the yin to Dany’s yang. Danny is a constant cutup bringing fun into every situation and John plays a playful straight man to Danny’s antics. Well if John had been at Danny’s pitch during the TechCocktail Pitch Jam on Saturday at SXSW 2013, this great stunt, that made the Wall Street Journal, may not have happened.
Danny knows they have something great going on with Speek. It’s by far the easiest way to hold a conference call and it does away with the need for long phone numbers and longer “pin” numbers. You simply go to someone’s speek page, like speek.com/kyle (my page) and click the call button. Voila. But after partaking in SXSW libations all day long and being couped up because of the rain, Danny had something cool in mind to win the Pitch Jam contest.
After going through is normal 60 second pitch, he added a twist. Call it humor, or a little jealousy, but John had to bail on the event to go have dinner with DC Mayor Vince Gray, and left Danny alone, to pitch, and to say whatever he wanted. And he did.
Danny told the audience at the end of the pitch that John would get a tattoo of Speek’s mascot monkey on his ass if they won. Since there was a lot of spill over from the DC Tech Meetup earlier in the day, there were plenty of people who knew John, and wanted to see him get a monkey tattoed on his ass.
Well low and behold, Danny won. The next day, John got this:
Comments Off on Birmingham Startup NotIt Labs Shows Off iPhone App At SXSW [video][sxsw]0LikeLike 6,705
Birmingham Alabama’s startup ecosystem continues to grow. Joshua Gilmer knows that first hand. He’s a serial entrepreneur that already has a successful web agency and is now putting the finishing touches on his mobile startup NotIt Labs.
NotIt is a mobile app that will debut on the iPhone in the next couple of months. The app makes delegating tasks fun, and a bit more fair.
Say you’re at the office and someone needs to go on a coffee run. Well, using NotIt everyone in the office can basically call “not it” and the last person to respond of course gets stuck with the task of running to the coffee shop.
It’s just as effective with house hold chores, mowing the lawn, picking up the kids, or even an old fashioned game of tag.
“We all know how to play Not It: give out some task arbitrarily to an open forum and all the kids would say ‘not it.’ We are taking that social contract to social media,” Joshua Gilmer,told Mashable in an interview as SXSW.
While the idea behind the mobile app is simple enough, it hasn’t been done before and the UI looks fantastic for an idea so simple.
In the interview below Gilmer talks about how he came up with the idea after reading the book “Reality is Broken”. He wanted to create something that blended the online world with real life.
The iPhone app should release in the coming months. The team plans to resort to KickStarter to raise money to build an Android version as well.
Check out the video below and for more info visit notitlabs.co
Comments Off on Planning On Crowdfunding Your Startup? DC Startup CrowdCheck Has You Covered [video][sxsw]0LikeLike 4,809
Crowdfunding is about to take the world by storm. With the passage of the JOBSact last year, companies will soon be able to crowdfund early stage investment rounds up to $1 million dollars, from anyone with a pulse and an internet connection.
This will make it really easy for early stage investors to get into some great startups, as well as the person down the street who wants to try out investing in startups.
Crowdfunding will also create a huge market for fraud . Last month we reported on Baltimore startup Asurvest, which will provide insurance to those looking to crowdfund startups.
At SXSW we discovered Washington DC startup CrowdCheck. This company plans to do the due diligence for startups that want to be transparent and offer as much information as possible to potential investors. Startups that utilize CrowdCheck’s services will look more appealing to investors because all of the leg work will have been done already.
CrowdCheck will offer a “badge” or “seal” for startups that use their service. This seal will show that the startup has been through the CrowdCheck process and then link to their CrowdCheck portfolio which will have the information that investors want to know, and that most angel investors look for in traditional angel and seed rounds.
Crowdfunding investors will have a better piece of mind about the startups that use CrowdCheck and they will know they aren’t taking part in a fraudulent transaction.
The team behind CrowdCheck has both legal, and securities backgrounds that make them well versed in all kinds of investment deals. Startups that use CrowdCheck will not only have an advantage while crowdfunding, but should they decide to go for a more traditional angel or seed round, most of the paperwork will have already been done.
Check out our interview video below and for more information visit crowdcheck.com
Comments Off on AustinPreneur and Angel Investor Jason Cohen On Deal Flow [video][sxsw]0LikeLike 4,610
On Friday at SXSW Jason Cohen the founder of WPengine, AustinPreneur and Angel investor sat on a panel with other local Texas angels to talk about angel investing. The standing room only crowd was made up of people who want to be angel investor and of course startup founders who want the inside track on what angel investors look for.
Cohen has invested in several companies and prefers a hands on approach. In the video below he says you can treat angel investing like a numbers game. The more deals you get into, you could sit back and relax and probably see some results. But what Cohen, and good angels do, is help cultivate the companies and the founders.
Angel investing can be a heavy gamble, but with the right angel investors, who are actually interested in helping the startup become successful, there’s a better chance of survival. When an angel investor invests their time and mentoring, even if the first deal is a bust, that founder or that team may have another idea that ends up being “the big one”
Cohen also warns that good angel investors need to have an investment thesis. They need to create a plan for their investment strategy that aligns with the things they know and where the investor can understand the deal, the idea, the team and the potential. Investors should then target deals that fit directly into that thesis.
Angel investors shouldn’t be looking for the get rich quick ticket. “The really hot ones go fast and they’re invisible” Cohen told the audience. He likens that to real estate in Austin and San Francisco. If you want prime real estate you’re buying it from someone already in it.
Comments Off on DC Startup Homesnap Was Back At SXSW After Nailing Investment At SXSW 12 [video][sxsw]0LikeLike 4,648
Washington DC startup HomeSnap has got to be the best tool for those shopping for a new home.
The company’s proprietary technology allows anyone to snap a picture of any home and get all the pertinent information about that home. You can see the MLS data, how much the home sold for, what the neighborhood schools are, what other homes in the neighborhood sold for and more.
Their technology allows users to pre-shop for homes without the need of a realtor. However when the user is ready to actually purchase, HomeSnap can easily connect them to a realtor to finish out a deal.
Back in August the company closed a $3.5 million dollar round of funding led by Revolution Ventures. Steve Barnes, Homesnap’s President and co-founder told us that they met Steve Case, head of Revolution, at TechCocktail’s 2012 startup event at South By Southwest.
This year they were back at TechCocktail’s event to show off the newest version of HomeSnap, talk to other entrepreneurs and investors and pitch during TechCocktail’s Pitch Jam event, for which I was a judge. HomeSnap was declared the “Most Disruptive Startup” at the event.
In addition to the app that allows users to snap a photo and get home data, they also have a robust iPad app. The iPad experience allows users to browse entire neighborhoods virtually with an aerial map. Users can then drill down by looking at homes by address.
HomeSnap now also offers HomeSnap for agents. This part of the app allows agents to connect to their customers with a mini profile. Users can then flag properties for their agents to review with them, and use a one click method to ask an agent a question.
Guy Wolcott, co-founder and CEO of HomeSnap told TechCrunch that they have over 300 agents around the country registered for the app and have driven over 10,000 qualified leads.
“However, what we are launching here is a bit different,” Wolcott explains. “The idea is that agents can sign up to have their existing clients use HomeSnap. When the agent signs up, we put them (and only them) in the app for their clients – they won’t see any of our other partner agents, just their own agent,” he told TechCrunch.
We got a chance to talk with Barnes and VP of Product Development Lou Mintzer at this year’s TechCocktail event. The video interview is below:
Comments Off on Want To Get Into Investing? Start With $1 And KC Startup TreeSwing [video][sxsw]0LikeLike 4,399
If you’ve always wanted to start an investment portfolio, but getting thousands of dollars together was out of reach, than you’re in luck. A new Kansas City startup, TreeSwing, is releasing a mobile app that will allow investors to start investing in mutual funds with as little as $1.
If the company takes off, TreeSwing will open up a new world of investing to people across the country, with no brokerage fees, no minimum balances, and no required monthly investment, investors can contribute any amount they’re comfortable with.
TreeSwing will allow investors to select from a marketplace of professionally managed mutual funds offered by some of the top names in the industry. By keeping the marketplace purposefully small, using plain language, and providing independent data from Morningstar, TreeSwing aims to give investors an easy way to make informed choices.
According to Brian Smith , Design and Product Manager for the TreeSwing application, the app was created specifically to serve the millions of Americans who aren’t currently investing.
“I believe we’ve built something that will lower the financial, behavioral, and emotional barriers to the investment process,” said Smith.
We ran into TreeSwing a bunch of times while in Austin for South By Southwest. Their entire team was at the TechCocktail celebration of startups event at The Stage on Sixth, talking to people about their new way of investing.
We finally caught up with Smith at the SXSW trade show who took a little time to explain TreeSwing in the video below.
While crowfunding is gaining world wide popularity, TreeSwing offers an option for people who want to get their feet with with investing, at a much lower risk and barrier to entry.
Check out the video below and for more info visit TreeSwing.com
Comments Off on KillSwitch, The Ultimate Broken Heart App With A Touch Of Slacktivism [video][sxsw]0LikeLike 5,258
We bumped into Clara DeSoto and Erica Mannherz, of Clearhart digital, in the Startup America Live lounge at SXSW 2013. Clearhart digital is a digital agency and app creation studio out of New York, that just happens to be founded by women.
They told us all about their first app, KillSwitch. This app is for the broken hearted, and does exactly what the name suggests.
After you break up with someone you use KillSwitch in conjunction with your Facebook account. It quickly purges your entire Facebook and gets rid of any references, photos, status updates, etc, of your X. Useful, huh?
Now both ladies are well aware that there are different degrees of breaking up, and KillSwitch allows for those degrees. If it’s a soft break up, you can easily get your photos and statuses back. If it’s a hard break up, and it’s totally over, you can neturalize your account from any reference of your X.
The idea for KillSwitch came about when Mannherz and DeSoto were talking to a third mutual friend. The girlfriend of theirs had just gone through a break up and was doing what most people do when they break up with someone, she was deactivating her Facebook account.
That can really suck for all your other friends though, they can’t tag you in photos, invite you to events or send words of wisdom over the break up on your Facebook wall.
KillSwitch makes it seamless. Now the broken hearted can just move on. And, of course it makes playing the field the next time around, much easier.
As for the slacktivism piece, a portion of the proceeds from the KillSwitch app are going to the American Heart Association so you can help fix broken hearts when you’re broken hearted, pretty neat huh?
Check out the video below. Geeks are going to love DeSoto and Mannherz, who’s agency Clearhart Digital, they liken to a double edged light sabre, you can find out more about that here. For those looking to make break ups suck less, check out KillSwitch here at killswitchapp.com
Comments Off on Steve Case & Ted Leonsis, Can These Two AOL Men, Save Social Local Commerce?0LikeLike 5,120
Steve Case (file photo: NMI)
Two of Washington DC’s powerhouse investors, Founder of AOL Steve Case, and owner of the Washington Capitals and Washington Wizards, Ted Leonsis, work side by side on many deals. Both are heavily involved in Case’s investment company Revolution.
Leonsis has been involved with Revolution Growth since it’s founding, however he has no financial stake in Revolution Growth I investments. Leonsis and Case have worked together since the AOL days, where Leonsis was a member of active management for 13 years, retiring in 2006.
They continue to work together today, although both are invested as individuals and separately in daily deal competitors Groupon and LivingSocial.
While many know that Groupon’s typical strategy, at least pre-ipo, was to quickly buy up competitors across the country, Living Social has always been on it’s own and will most likely stay that way.
We’ve seen the turmoil that both companies have been going through as of late. Groupon fired it’s founding CEO poster boy, Andrew Mason and quickly installed Leonsis and Groupon co-founder Eric Lefkosky as Co-CEO’s until a new CEO can be named.
Back in the DC area Living Social has been going through some problems of their own.A little over week ago, the investors in Living Social basically took back the company with an emergency $100 million dollar investment, which according to many sources, including privco.com, rendered all previous stock, even employee stock, worthless.
(PrivCo EXCLUSIVE): LIVINGSOCIAL Receives Emergency $110M Debt (“Equity” In Name Only) Infusion From Existing Investors With Oppressive Terms, JUST DAYS FROM BANKRUPTCY, Effectively Handing Over Distressed Co. to Today’s Financing Participants…Implied Valuation Incl All Req’d Payments: JUST $330M, DOWN 94% FROM $5.7 BILLION In Dec. 2011 V.C. Round…Pure Equity Was NOT Issued Today (As Has Been Widely Misreported)…Instead, A Desperate LIVINGSOCIAL Accepted A COMPLEX Series of Secured-Convertible-Debt-Like Securities With Onerous Terms (PrivCo Has Confirmed Exclusively) Including: (1) Liquidation Preferences of SEVERAL TIMES the $110M In Debt (2) Mandatory Cash Dividends Due (3) “Super-Warrants” And/Or Large Lump-Sum Cash “Elimination” Payment, (4) Secured Against Co. Assets and Stock, (5) Repayment of the $110M “Loan” in 4 Yrs w Add’l Payments, and (6) Re-Pricing of Participating Investors Earlier Rounds…Employees’ and Founders’ Common Stock Now Worthless. (industry trade publication privco said on their site)
A former LivingSocial employee, on condition of anonymity, told nibletz.com that friends of hers in the sales department hadn’t seen a paycheck in nearly two months, before the most recent cash infusion. A current LivingSocial employee, also speaking on the condition of anonymity, told us that the company was right on the cusp of some big ideas with both technology and sales and that no one wanted to see the company shut down.
Case was rater bullish on LivingSocial when speaking at the TechCocktail event at SXSW on Saturday afternoon. He said that despite what’s going on with the company, LivingSocial does have the potential to become the next AOL.
Many may recall how Case was instrumental in the biggest media merger of all time beween Time Warner and AOL. Although he is held highly responsible for the merger, he agreed to step down as CEO after that merger closed. While the outcome was far from the results they were expecting, AOL is still a big player in online media and is again seeing forward momentum.
Groupon has already pivoted since their value began declining shortly after going public. They now offer Groupon Goods, an almost Amazon competitor, that is the backbone to where the company is headed.
While LivingSocial hasn’t done anything that drastic just yet, they do have some new technologies in the works.
Case has never been one to turn down the long hall. At 54 he has plenty of time to see some of his investments pay off ten fold. ZipCar, a big investment for Revolution, was just recently sold to Hertz with a huge return to investors. The company was in a position where they didn’t necessarily need to take that deal, but it was right.
While four years may seem like an eternity to a startup, from reading all of the language in various stories about the recent LivingSocial bail out, the investors are giving the team four years to turn things around. Which, may be just enough time.
Meanwhile across the hall at Revolution, Leonsis has taken on much more responsibilities for day to day operations at Groupon. “There is a ton of negative sentiment in the press about this company, and I think people don’t separate the signal from the noise,” Leonsis told The Verge, “We have $1.2 billion in the bank. We have basically zero debt. And this last quarter, we had an operating profit. Yes, with one-time write downs, there was a loss. But the fundamentals of this business are sound.”
With Leonsis balancing Lefkosky’s Yang, and Case and company giving Living Social four years more breathing room, two men from AOL may have just saved daily deals.
Watch this video with Case’s remarks, this past Saturday at SXSW, on Living Social:
Comments Off on Where Do You Go With An Idea? Startup Weekend Of Course! [video][sxsw]0LikeLike 6,253
Startup Weekend is a great event. To date they’ve done over 560 Startup Weekend’s in 107 countries and that keeps on growing. While they hold events in Silicon Valley, Startup Weekend is a huge, community catalyst “everywhere else”.
Many cities like New York, Columbus, Cincinnati, Dallas and Los Angeles have had multiple Startup Weekend events, Startup Weekend CMO Joey Pomerenke told nibletz.com they still get excited when newbies organize their first event.
So what role does Startup Weekend play in the grand scheme of startup communities and startup ecosystems?
Well at a panel at SXSW, Startup Weekend CEO Marc Nager, talked about that role specifically. “Where do you go with an idea” he asked the audience. Do you go to an investor, no that’s not going to work out. Do you go spend thousands of dollars on a lawyer, and team just to start AB testing?
Startup Weekend provides a great platform to see if ideas have what it takes to move to the next level. During the 54 hour experience your peers will vote on whether they like the idea, then you’ll create something, do market research, and present it again. Doing this on your own, could take weeks, or months, with Startup Weekend you have 54 hours, and you’ll know whether to move on or not.
Does it work? Absolutely, companies like Zaarly, Rumgr, and Fundable are all Startup Weekend graduates.
Startup Weekend’s roots in the community go much further than a testing platform though. Nager said on the panel that they are working on getting different components of their own ecosystem to function in unison across the country and around the world. Startup Weekend is looking for their Startup Weekend, Startup Weekend NEXT and Startup Weekend EDU facilitators to work together in their communities. They are also looking to the Startup Digest curators to do that as well.
When all of the components work in harmony the entire Startup Weekend ecosystem, and the hundreds of communities it touches, benefit.
On the panel, moderator Lesa Mitchell, of the Kauffman Foundation, a major supporter of Startup Weekend, kept prying with Nager to find out what doesn’t work. He was hard pressed to find something that doesn’t work. Obviously at the entrepreneur level there can be issues. Egos can get in the way and even underhanded moves, like this, can get in the way.
Overall though, Startup Weekend continues to do a great job of driving communities worldwide.
Comments Off on New Hampshire Startup: Rock Lobby Shows Off At SXSW 2013 [sxsw]0LikeLike 4,465
New Hampshire startup RockLobby is like Yelp for live shows, which is a great reason for demoing at the SXSW trade show which bridges the interactive with the music festival.
RockLobby allows the user to find live shows and venues and write reviews on the shows themselves. If the live show isn’t already there, the user can create it. From there other users can read the feedback and the sliding rating scale to make informed decisions on which shows to attend.
We got a chance to interview Peter Kruger, founder and CEO of RockLobby who also took us on a tour of the app.
The mobile app has a global review feed that allows users to see a list of current live show reviews. The user can then click on the reviews they want to see more in depth. They’ll be able to see the live show’s star rating, comments, photos and even share it on their own RockLobby feed.
When a user wants to review a liveshow the realtime app allows them to click “I’m at a show”, “I saw a show”, or “I’m going to a show” where they can then add their narrative review photos and a star based review. The review is then published to the global review feed where others can read it, share it and comment on it.
Check out our video interview below. For more info visit RockLobby.com
Comments Off on Cookbook Create Brings The Family Cookbook Into The Digital Age [pitch video][sxsw]0LikeLike 5,485
Anna Curran, pitched her startup, Cookbook Create, to the panel of dolphins in the Startup America Dolphin Tank. The Dolphin Tank was designed to offer startup founders feedback rather than criticism, on the Startup America Live stage at SXSW.
Curran’s company is taking the old family cookbook and bringing it into the digital age. Many families have a cookbook (or two or three or more) that have been passed down from generation to generation. These cookbooks often times have a lot more than just recipes in them. Some have family notes, or reasons why the recipe in the book. These family cookbooks tell stories through food.
Cookbook Create, is a collaborative platform that allows users to create a cookbook, that tells stories through food. The cookbook’s are then manufactured and delivered to the users home as an actual book.
Back in February Curran announced that they are taking the Cookbook Create platform and creating an official SXSW cookbook that will tell the stories of the evolution of SXSW through food.
“When I attended the SXSW Festival for the first time, I was struck by the vibrant, interesting community,” said Curran. “These were the people who are making the culture we live in, and I wanted to share that spirit with the world. Cookbook Create helps people share their story through food — and we wanted to help SXSW tell their story with this cookbook.”
“SXSW Interactive celebrates massive creativity,” says SXSW Interactive Festival Director Hugh Forrest . “Cooking is one of the many areas where this innovation manifests itself. So compiling a cookbook featuring recipes from some of our most interesting speakers is a great way to show what SXSW is all about.
The published volume will be available for sale at the 2014 Festival in the SX Bookstore. It will include 100-200 recipes selected from SXSW Interactive’s 8000+ past speakers telling their fascinating stories of how the SXSW community has evolved.
Cookbook Create combines the best of Web 2.0 and Print-On-Demand technology to deliver a fun, easy-to-use tool to make personalized, custom cookbooks featuring recipes, pictures, commentary and more. Families, aspiring cookbook writers, or even at-home chefs can use CookbookCreate.com to make a collection of their favorite or most cherished recipes.
In the video below you can learn more about Curran’s company,by watching the pitch she made in “The Dolphin Tank”
Comments Off on Tony Hsieh, Founder Of Zappos And Downtown Project On Startup Communities [video][sxsw]0LikeLike 4,900
Tony Hsieh proudly points out that he is wearing a Zappos t-shirt. (photo NMI 2013)
Tony Hsieh isn’t just a guy who created a household brand, made money and then decided to give some to charity. Although his Downtown project, an effort to revitalize downtown Las Vegas, is funded largely by him, he is quick to point out that it takes a village to raise a startup community.
At South By Southwest over 200 people who identified as being part of the Vegas Tech community made the trek (on their own dime) from Las Vegas to Austin to be part of SXSW. More than double that number are participating in rebuilding the downtown area of Las Vegas that “tourists don’t really see” according to Hsieh.
Hsieh and other investors have pulled together $350 million dollars to build up the community around the old city hall building, which in six months will be the new world headquarters for Zappos. Hsieh originally thought that Zappos would build it’s own campus around the block city hall is on, but than decided that doing so would be too inward focused. While Google has a lot of real estate in Mountain View and Apple has a lot of real estate in Cupertino, both company’s campuses, for the most part, keep to themselves.
“Those campuses are really insular and don’t really integrate or contribute to the community around them” Hsieh said of Nike, Google and Apple.
Hsieh is hoping that, by recruiting statup companies, small businesses and others to the downtown area, an ecosystem will flourish and surround his own company with creative, forward thinking people.
The Downtown Project has committed $50 million to invest in small businesses, $50 million to tech startup companies, $50 million to arts, education and music and $200 million to real estate. They are trying to deal with the statistic that when a cities size doubles productivity goes up 15%, but when companies get there productivity generally goes down.
Hsieh and company have already recruited 20 startups to downtown Las Vegas. They’ve also been able to get commitments from folks that love what they are doing in Las Vegas but for some reason can’t move there. Many people have committed to speaking to the Vegas Tech Community, holding office hours or doing other community minded things.
This entire plan was demonstrated in high gear through many events at SXSW where people were packed wall to wall. It wasn’t just the 200 Las Vegas people either, people from startup communities across the country and around the world were clamoring for the opportunity to hang out with the positivity bubble that surrounds Vegas Tech.
The Vegas Tech community was also on hand throughout SXSW Interactive to show off what the community is like in hopes that the SXSW Las Vegas event this summer will be a huge success.
Check out the video below of Hsieh speaking on the Startup Communities panel at SXSW 2013.
Comments Off on Bad Ass Startup Chicks: Denver Hutt, Executive Director Speak Easy Indy.0LikeLike 5,034
We first met Denver Hutt in person when the first leg of the nibletz nationwide startup roadtrip went through Indiana. We were at Verge Indy that particular night and the co-working space for startups was packed. That’s because Executive Director Denver Hutt plays an integral role in the Indianapolis startup community.
Hutt oversees the SpeakEasy coworking space, plans events and mentors startup. She is also working on developing the first ever nationwide network for coworking spaces.
Hutt is in tune with the startup community in Indianapolis and wears many hats. She also loves to check out what works and doesn’t work for co-working spaces and like any true founder, she knows that iteration gets to perfection.
One of the main reasons she’s a bad ass startup chick is because she doesn’t just stay in Indianapolis, she likes to go to where the action is and help startups wherever she can. She was one of over 1200 attendees at Everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference, 2013.
Check out our video interview with Hutt below and for more info on SpeakEasy, visit speakeasyindy.com
Kyle
Cincinnati startup Repp was one of the great startups we saw at the Brandery 2012 demo day back in October. Repp is a service that allows people to validate their repp or reputation.
