Blog
The Uncalm lifestyle
Shortly after Eric Ivankevich and Caitlin Driscoll graduated from the University of Delaware, Caitlin said to Eric, “Let’s start a surf/skate company that we can one day build into a sponsored team for extreme-sport athletes.” That day Uncalm was born. It has evolved into a company that focuses on creativity and passion influenced by art, music, and earth. Since starting in June 2012, Uncalm has been about being true to what you love.Tell us about Uncalm.Eric: Uncalm embodies a feel-good lifestyle. We create original designs for shirts, board shorts, and every other piece in our line. Our inspiration comes from our love of art, the outdoors, and the extreme sport community. While the company’s output is primarily...
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Barkloudly: from idea to reality
Sometimes the best idea isn’t the one you first envisioned.By Anupam KunduRani has changed my life. Her presence energizes my mornings, puts a smile on my face, and motivates me daily to achieve the business I’ve always wanted. My personal and professional life wouldn’t be the same without her.If you haven’t guessed yet, Rani is the black Labrador puppy my wife and I brought home three years ago. She is the inspiration for my new venture Barkloudly.I moved to the US with a consulting job back in winter 2003. For the whole of last decade, I have been working with smart product managers in Fortune 500 companies and emergent new ventures building innovative products and consulting on effective teams. To me it was a...
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Crowdfunding idea: Aggressive Thanks via CentUp
You’ve made the decision to launch a crowdfunding campaign. Filled with enthusiasm and a big idea, you go to your favorite site and fill in the details. You spread the word to every associate, neighbor, and old lady in the grocery store line (what – just us?) and watch the pennies trickle in.Now what?CentUp, a startup that helps sites with good content get equally good funding, is using what it calls “aggressive thanks.” Basically, the company spins “The Wheel of Thank You” to choose a creative way to appreciate a random handful of IndieGoGo campaign backers, on top of its existing rewards. It’s the perfect way to maintain a relationship with investors, who (as VC Christine Herron pointed out in a...
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Tech Innovators Day at Dell
By Ingrid VanderveldtToday is a truly unique day at Dell, and I couldn’t be prouder. As part of our first-ever Tech Innovators Day, we’ve invited 15 high-potential entrepreneurs to our Round Rock headquarters for a unique opportunity to meet with Steve Felice, Dell’s President and Chief Commercial Officer and other senior-level Dell executives to gather valuable feedback and advice as they grow their companies. In addition to a “pitch slam”, this day-long event will also include a panel discussion with companies that have been acquired by Dell, a tour of the Social Media Command Center, a tour of the Enterprise Solutions Center, networking and more.Hosting this event at our headquarters is...
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TinderBox brings sanity to the business proposal process
There comes a time when everyone must accept the fact that proposals are part of doing business. Le sigh. What is different today than say, those dark years before 2009, is that proposals don’t have to be arduous.Indianapolis-based TinderBox helps you get to yes faster with a smart, simple, and more efficient proposal and marketing communications process—one that builds lasting business partnerships. Founded in 2009, it has already taken on clients including Angie's List and Accenture Life Sciences.We chatted with co-founder Dustin Sapp to learn more about TinderBox, and why even sophisticated companies are living in the proposal process Stone Ages.Tell us about TinderBox.TinderBox allows you to create compelling proposals...
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uBiome most successful IndieGoGo campaign
uBiome may be in the home stretch of its IndieGoGo campaign, but the startup has already surpassed its original goals. With over $150k and 1,200 contributers, it is the most successful Startup America member on the site. We grabbed a minute with co-founder Jessica Richman to talk about citizen science and what made her campaign take off. First off, what is the microbiome?The microbiome is the bacteria that live on and within us. It sounds kind of funny, but all of us are actually covered in bacteria. Like the rainforest, the healthy human microbiome is a balanced ecosystem. Our immune system needs a correct balance of microbes. Microbes also help us digest food and vitamins, and some research suggests it they play a role in our mood....
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Founder reaction: Is CES worth it?
We hope you followed along with us at CES, getting the inside details on Eureka Park from our blog and Twitter feed. But what Startup America does at shows like CES is so much more than just programming – we are there to help our startups. Here’s a reaction from ZBoard co-founder Ben Forman:ZBoard had big goals for CES: meeting face-to-face with distributors we'd been emailing all year, make new contacts in the investment world, and find media members to tell our story. It was a huge success.We received some of the best media mentions we've ever had as a result of winning the Showstoppers Pitch Contest (our friends at Startup America suggested we apply). We were awestruck to see the ZBoard on the pages of the...
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Raidious offers broadcast-style marketing
What do Walmart, the Super Bowl, and Bass Pro Shops have in common? They’ve trusted their brands to Indiana startup Raidious.With brand being one of the few sustainable competitive advantages a business can have (read about the value of branding from NYU business professor Aswath Damodaran), it’s essential to have a great company. We chatted with Raidious CEO Taulbee Jackson to see what makes his branding firm so successful.Tell us about Raidious.Raidious is a real-time embedded news team, built to service large, enterprise brands. We literally work like CNN, except we report on the brand. We create content and manage dialog for brands in real time, including social, mobile, local, web, blog, email, and more - and we...
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BlueBridge Digital gives YOUR company an app for that
Find a parking space. Make dinner reservations. Track company expenses. Yes, there’s an app for that. In just a few years smartphones have gone from being a thing of the future to something fully integrated in our daily lives. Yet for many companies, the app market is out of reach due to modest budgets and organizational hierarchy.Insert BlueBridge Digital. The Indiana startup helps businesses of any size integrate products into this essential, high-demand market. We talked to BlueBridge founder Santiago Jaramillo about his startups and its newest product, VisitApps.What is VisitApps?VisitApps.com is a mobile-apps-as-a-service platform that allows Convention & Visitors Bureaus ("CVBs": our customer) to have their own...
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Want more entrepreneurs in your city? Ask the hard questions
Quick, what’s the biggest challenge facing entrepreneurs starting their businesses outside of San Francisco and New York?Most entrepreneurs outside of these cities will say “MONEY! We need investors!” But that’s a huge cop-out. I don’t care where you’re living — if you have a good idea with traction, you’ll get funding. In fact, I am more convinced than ever that the biggest challenge is the lack of good feedback — i.e., people to challenge your idea and eventually make you better.I’ve started companies in Madison, WI and Santiago, Chile, two aspiring startup hubs that have experienced massive growth in their entrepreneurial ecosystems. They’re both on their way...
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CES Day 2 Recap: media, capital, and the role of writing in entrepreneurship
Crowds picked up massively on Wednesday in Eureka Park, the area of CES reserved for startups. We showed our media, capital, and author panelists a few members (shout-out Gecko Cap and Troop ID) before heading to the stage.Media Short Clip 1 Short Clip 2 FULL VIDEOOverwhelmingly, our media panel (Huffington Post’s Jason Gilbert, WSJ’s Kelli Grant, and Engadget’s Tim Stevens hosted by TechCrunch’s Frank Gruber) wants to see a product. Bring it to shows or send it to journalists, and make sure whoever is pitching is as passionate about the product as the founder. And if you don’t have a physical product? It’s a tough sell, and many journalists won’t cover you. Your best bet is to...
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CES Day 1 recap: corporate culture and what attracts VC
We started the day off walking Eureka Park with Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh. He took a ride on a ZBoard (we’ve caught the boys zipping around the whole floor), before checking out Invoice ASAP and Styku.During his fireside chat with Startup America CEO Scott Case, Hsieh focused on corporate culture, the future of Las Vegas, and doing what you love. While he made money selling his company Link Exchange to Microsoft, Hsieh said the real reason he sold it was because the culture went south. Since then, he’s made corporate culture a top priority. “It’s not just a feel-good thing, it’s a long-term business strategy.”VIDEO of the fireside chatMaybe that’s why Zappos does two rounds of employee interviews...
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Our Startup America Regions are all over the news!
Have you been recently featured in the media? Let us know.
Recent News:
10/19/12 - Startup Communities Across the Country, Huffington Post (Startup America Partnership)
10/19/12 - Bonfyre partners with Powder Keg Conference 2012, St. Louis Business Journal (Startup MO & Startup IA)
10/17/12 - Food Waste In, Renewable Energy Out: Startup Re-Nuble Is Crowdfunding the Local Green Economy, Huffington Post (Startup DC)
10/17/12 - Powder Keg aims to blast Indy startups onto national scene, Indianapolis Business Journal (Startup IN & Startup MO)
10/17/12 - Featured Startup Pitch: Founded by a group of teachers with tech backgrounds, ActiveGrade seeks to fundamentally change the way grading is done in schools, Startup Beat (Startup IA)
10/03/12 - How Tory Burch Created A $2 Billion Empire In Less Than A Decade, Business Insider (Startup America Partnership)
10/01/12 - Voices of the Tech Community: What do Ecosystem Need? The Miami Herald (Startup FL)
9/20/12 - Entrepreneurs make pitches as Startup Maryland and its studio bus rolls into UMBC, The Republic (Startup MD)
9/20/12 - USF-led partnership awarded $1 million to launch new companies, Tampa Bay Business Journal (Startup FL)
9/19/12 - Startup Bus tours Maryland, stops in Baltimore area to promote entrepreneurship, Baltimore Sun (Startup MD)
Startup America at DEMO Fall 2012:
10/11/12 - Startup Connection: Nourishment for mind, body and soul, St. Louis Business Journal (Startup MO)
10/05/12 - The 14 Most Interesting Startups To Emerge From DEMO, TechCrunch (Startup CA & OR)
10/04/12 - St. Louis startups look to cash in on DEMO showing, St. Louis Business Journal (Startup MO)
10/04/12 - St. Louis’ Click With Me Now, Evtron Pitch At DEMO 2012, Techli (Startup MO)
10/03/12 - DEMO Gods: Birds, brains, and the best products of the season, VentureBeat (Startup CA)
10/03/12 - BRIEF: Stamford's eBrevia Wins Scholarship for Tech Conference in Silicon Valley [The Hartford Courant], Bloomberg Businessweek (Startup CT)
10/03/12 - LifeStyleFeed brings the Seventh Art to restaurant selection, VentureBeat (Startup DC)
10/03/12 - Playing recruiter: This startup pays you to find your friends jobs, VentureBeat (Startup DC)
10/03/12 - Don’t like checking your mail? MailGapp may have your solution, VentureBeat (Startup HI)
10/03/12 - Itography hopes to lure advertisers to location-based virtual collection game, VentureBeat (Startup TX)
10/03/12 - Weekend warriors: Track your fitness with Novusport’s social mobile sports game, VentureBeat (Startup TX)
10/03/12 - Today, birdwatching. Tomorrow, saving the entire planet!, VentureBeat (Startup CA)
10/03/12 - Demo Fall 2012: Creating More Focused Social Networks, PC Mag (Startup OR, DC, IA, VA)
10/03/12 - Demo Fall 2012: Business and Commerce Applications, PC Mag (Startup MO & Startup CT)
10/03/12 - Stamford's eBrevia Wins Scholarship for Tech Conference in Silicon Valley, The Hartford Courant (Startup CT)
10/03/12 - RecBob takes the work out of after-work sports, VentureBeat (Startup IA)
10/03/12 - Watch RecBob’s DEMO presentation at noon (Live stream), Silicon Prairie News (Startup IA)
10/02/12 - Meet The 8 Startup Winners From Startup America’s DEMO Contest, Nibletz (Startup TN, OR, IL, DC, CA, IA, CT, MO)
10/02/12 - Cut through the legal fog with computer-generated summaries, Global Reporter (Startup CT)
10/02/12 - Cut through the legal fog with computer-generated summaries, VentureBeat (Startup CT)
10/02/12 - Birdeez app flies toward birdwatchers' iPhones, TechHive (Startup CA)
10/02/12 - Bonfyre Takes on Private Mobile Sharing with New App Focused on Real Life, Not Newsfeeds, Herald Online (Startup MO)
10/02/12 - Three St. Louis startups launch products at California conference, St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Startup MO)
10/02/12 - This Barrel Is Ready to Roll! Launching Our Tech Startup, HuffingtonPost (Startup DC)
10/02/12 - For big-ticket items, social shopping needs more screen-sharing, VentureBeat (Startup MO)
10/02/12 - Flite’s new Touch Ad Studio lets top publishers actually make money on mobile, VentureBeat (Startup CA)
10/02/12 - Bonfyre launches mobile app to combine private with social sharing, St. Louis Business Journal (Startup MO)
10/01/12 - CoPatient Launches Online Platform to Audit & Appeal Medical Bills on Behalf of Patients, Sacramento Bee (Startup OR)
10/01/12 - D.C. job-search start-up launching at DEMO in Silicon Valley, The Washington Post (Startup DC)
10/01/12 - D.C. at Demo: High School CEO debuts Hallway, The Washington Post (Startup DC)
09/30/12 - Hills Bank and Trust promotes four, The Gazette (Startup IA)
09/29/12 - RecBob wins Startup America contest, will pitch next week at DEMO, Silicon Prairie News (Startup IA)
09/13/12 - Click With Me Now wins a trip to DEMO, St. Louis Business Journal (Startup MO)
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