Jump Off
by tim savage
Launching a brand is just like taking a leap of faith. No matter how much time you spend talking about how great it is going to be and the benefits for every one in the world, the brand still has to launch. I attend a church locally where my lead pastor has said “we are in the year of the jump”, meaning our church is going to grow fast with a new building addition. So a friend of mine (NateFX) and I followed that lead and coined the term “jump off” for launching a brand with a tag line of “might as well jump” (set to the Van Hallen song of the same name).
Nate and I came up with that on a phone call at about 10 pm in the middle of March and are now launching our first brand together. Through launching this brand we are actually launching a new business idea. This means there is beta testing and all the rest. It is a real fun time and a great time of anticipation for the success of this brand and business.
Take a look at this video page and see what a brand is doing with nothing but volunteers on the team and a paid person leading the charge. Anything can be done if you take a leap of faith…. might as well jump. 
http://www.vimeo.com/qpza
http://www.vimeo.com/qcc
TechStars 2009 Recap - Part 1
As fate would have it, I’ve found myself without quality air conditioning on a day when such an amenity is quite necessary. Gazing around the coffee house currently sheltering me from heat-induced migraines and an endless battle with perspiration, I’ve become quite fascinated with each of the faces illuminated by laptop screens and smart phones. Essentially the entire customer base is bridged to the outside world by a technological medium, and each of us is vigorously using our respective bridge for some unique (or not so unique) purpose. While some may consider this accessibility a plague to humanity, those of us that cradle our electronic devices like newborn children have learned to appreciate the possibilities presented by the rapid advancements in technology seen throughout recent years. In order to keep the innovation flowing, it’s imperative that brilliant, new ideas be nurtured and given the opportunity to flourish. Last week, the Awesome Inc. team traveled to Boulder, Colorado to learn more about an organization that is doing just that.
From the TechStars website:
TechStars is a mentorship-driven seed stage investment fund. Each year we run a summer-long program in Boulder, Colorado and Cambridge, Massachusetts. We’re very selective - each year hundreds of companies apply to the program and we only take about ten per city. These companies get up to $18,000 in seed funding, a summer of intensive top-notch mentorship, and the chance to pitch to angel investors and venture capitalists at the end of the summer.
In summary, TechStars accepts twenty companies out of roughly five-hundred applicants and provides those companies with seed funding and mentorship during a three-month summer bootcamp. After an intensive preparation, each company pitches its idea to investors and venture capitalists in an attempt to raise the funding necessary to make its aspirations a reality. In past years, the organization has aided projects like IntenseDebate, Socialthing!, Brightkite, and Gyminee obtain the knowledge and resources necessary to take their projects to the level that they are at today. We had the pleasure of sitting through this year’s pitch day to see some of the up-and-coming projects designed to take the world by storm. Here is the list of companies that presented.
ReTel Technologies helps stores and restaurants optimize their operations and customer experiece. ReTel’s system analyzes in-store security camera feeds to uncover, analyze, and report on metrics and trends that directly impact the bottom line.
Everlater makes it simple to document and remember travel experiences in a beautiful format. We enable easy sharing with family and friends by connecting to all major social networks and printing scrapbooks, postcards, and photo albums. Finally, we connect people with better travel ideas and information through exploring friends travel experiences.
TimZon is the easiest way to share visual feedback. By combining audio, video, whiteboard and screen capture it enables companies to establish high quality engagement with their customers while lowering support costs.
Take Comics is an end to end solution aiming to bring comics into the digital age just like iTunes has done for music and video. Take Comics creates pixel perfect content on a range of devices with focus on profitability for the publishers and readability for the users.
Next Big Sound measures the growth and popularity of bands across the major web properties and sells actionable insights around tat data to band managers and industry professionals.
Vanilla is open source forum software that is used to power discussions on more than 300,000 sites across the web today. With the releases of the new and improved Vanilla 2, we will now be offering a hosted solution as well.
Send Grid is an email service that solves the problems faced by companies sending transactonal outbound email. Simply by using Send Grid instead of their current outbound email servers, companies experience greatly improved deliverability and scaliability while cutting costs and saving time.
Spry is insight into software projects. By monitoring all the tools and services used to develop software and analyzing the data in real-time, Spry enables clear and consistent communication throughout the team. This helps managers and developers make better decisions throughout the process thereby reducing the likelihood of failure and delay.
Mailana brings your real social network to life - the people you communicate with on a regular basis. By understanding your strong relationships across multiple communication channels, Mailana lets you share what realy matters with the people who really matter.
Rezora is the only Software-as-a-Service email marketing platform specifically designed for the real estate industry. We enable brokerages and their agents to focus their expertise on what they do best: helping their consumers buy and sell real estate.
Out of those ideas presented, my favorites were Next Big Sound, Take Comics, Spry, and ReTel, but I find each of the ten to be highly useful to its targeted audience. I hope to see each of these projects thrive within the next few years and pave the way for future innovations. Keep doing what you’re doing, TechStars! The world needs more organizations like you!
Stay tuned for the second part of the recap detailing everything that I learned from this experience and Boulder, in general!
Awesome Inc iPhone App released
The Awesome Inc iPhone app released to the app store on August 19th. Search keyword “awesomeinc” and download it for free. The app features:
- news/blog feed
- calendar of events
- Awesomecast
- Registration for the Awesome Community - sign up now to get details on what this will be in the future.
*** updates coming soon! ***
Awesome Inc visits Techstars
by Brian Raney
Last week several members of Team Awesome traveled to Boulder, Co to visit Techstars. For the unfamiliar, Techstars is a mentor-ship driven summer-long program in Boulder and Boston for entrepreneurs to accelerate their business. They select about 20 companies from all over the nation to participate in the program. About 500 apply. At the end of the program Techstars holds demo day. This is an opportunity for the companies to pitch to potential investors to raise their first round of funding…most of them succeed.
Luke and I attended demo day last year. This year seven entrepreneurs from Lexington attended. We watched the 10 teams pitch their ideas to hundreds of investors. All of the pitches were solid, but our top picks were Next Big Sound, Spry, Retel, & Take Comics.
Awesome Inc plans to do something similar to Techstars called the Awesome Inc Experience next summer.
While in Boulder we also attended a few social media gatherings, visited the Techstars facilities, climbed a mountain, and did “the thing” in downtown Denver (just ask if you need to know).
It was a great trip and I’m proud to be a part of Team Awesome. The seven of us that went on the trip and all the team members and supporters that we have in Lexington are a part of something big - something big that is changing the dynamics of the region and positively affecting the community and individuals. Thanks to everyone for their support. And thanks to Techstars for showing us what we have to shoot for.
Techstars demo day |
Team Awesome - atop the mountain |
Team Awesome - doing the thing |
Team Awesome at Techstars - David Cohen, Brian Raney, Andrew Hyde, Luke Murray, Ryan Bright, Ryan Copple, Rachel Cunningham, Nathan Fort, Nick Such |
Awesome Inc Mobile miniConference - Video
Prosper Media Group created a wrap-up video for the Mobile Conference from July 18. It’s a great video, so check it out!
