Nibletz celebrated their first birthday as “The Voice Of Startups Everywhere Else” at South By Southwest 2013. The idea was born last year after the now infamous Startup Bus standoff. That’s when founder, and content director, Kyle Sandler (that’s me and I hate writing in third person), found that there were so many more startups outside Silicon Valley, than inside. 94% to be exact.
With that an idea was born and we immediately went to bootstrapping. Well our two man team, and our photographer put the words sneaker-strapped to entirely new levels. First off we would not have been able to perform like we did if it wasn’t for the “free food for founders” GroupMe group at SXSW. That list kept us informed for 5 days as to where all the great food was.
We also could not have done it without the help of Kelly Krause at the SXSW press office. You see in the previous four years we had press credentials through my previous site thedroidguy. This year, in planning everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference, we totally forgot the press deadline. A little groveling and some sponsor help allowed us to strike a deal with Krause and the SXSW press team where we came in early, covered the crap out of SXSWedu (which was a great show) and they would let our little oversight get swept under the rug. (that will never happen again).
So now here are some of the milestones, remember one writer (Kyle), One biz dev guy (Nick) and one photographer (Allie) and less than $300 when we got on the ground did all this:
– We were ranked 3rd on Twitter for SXSWi coverage (@nibletztweets) on Sunday and finished top 5
– We’ve already published 40 stories and have another 30 that are still being prepped
– We shot 100 videos
– Made friends with over 200 startups
– Sold a bunch of tickets to everywhereelse.co 2014
– and didn’t get into serious trouble
We stayed 20 miles out and took a combination of buses to get to and from the hotel. We caught up on a lot of rest in the Hilton lobby. And we truly brought out the voice of startups everywhere else.
Now as we get back on the road to again continue our roadtrip we need some major community support. We’re sneaker strapping it and we’re reader supported. We are charged with being on the road for the balance of 2013 as we wrap up our book that will be released Q4 2013. We’ve already been to 65 cities now and plan on visiting another 40 more.
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.
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.
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 a week. We will also give you 20 additional Tweets
Platinum nibletz & everywhere else sponsor (3 Available) $2700
This sponsorship includes everything in the Saint sponsorship however the perks and more
Your startup will be featured in every video that we do during the “outro” see this link for an example.
At $2700 Nick or Kyle will wear your startup t-shirt for three entire days and an entire day’s worth of on camera videos
Finally, we will write two stories about your startup and tweet them out over the course of a week. We will also give you 40 additional Tweets.