What lesson would you teach your younger self about entrepreneurship, given what you know now?

1. Embrace Change
When I started out, I thought success meant everything working out the way you planned. But that’s not really how entrepreneurship works. Some things work out far better than you imagined, some things don’t happen and other things seem like epic failures, but it’s really all just a learning process. Rolling with the punches, embracing change and enjoying the adventure is a big part of the fun.
- Elizabeth Saunders, Real Life E®

2. Understand There’s More Than One Way

I entered the world of entrepreneurship timidly, even feeling uncomfortable to call myself a “real” entrepreneur for years. What I didn’t understand when I started out was that entrepreneurship is less about your number of investors, your job title or how many companies you’ve sold. What entrepreneurship is about is freedom and using your power of choice to do business and serve others in ways that empower you, liberate you and do good in the world. There’s not just one way to go about it; the journey is what you make of it.
- Dave Ursillo, The Literati Writers

3. Don’t Get Distracted

As an entrepreneur, many new ideas and shiny new ventures will catch your eye on a day-to-day basis, but more often than not, focusing on one mission at a time will mean the difference between success and failure. As the saying goes, if you chase two rabbits, both will escape. Sometimes, focus and a relentless attitude can even trump the greatness of the idea itself.
- Richard Lorenzen, Fifth Avenue Brands

4. Surround Yourself with the Right People

There are many important principles of good business: best practices, success strategies, etc. But none of them are universal. You can march to your own beat. You can do things your own way…and you can make it work. But the people you choose to surround yourself with will make or break you. When I have ambitious, hard-working, like-minded people around me – motivating peers and mentors I can learn from, collaborate with, test/validate ideas with and get pushed by – I make fast progress and thrive. When I don’t have those people around me, I stagnate. You need a strong support network.
- Cody McKibben, ThrillingHeroics.com

5. Don’t Get Stuck on the Hamster Wheel

A huge lesson I learned well after starting a business was that there’s a difference between owning a company and running one. Both are great, but the latter means that you can never stop running, or the company will slow down. Over time, it’s key to learn how to build a trustworthy team and to train others in your knowledge. At first, my goal was just to have a business that worked, but now my goal is to one day have a business that could survive even if I stopped running. I want to be able to catch my breath and enjoy it!
- Lexa Hillyer, Paper Lantern Lit

6. Master the Tension Between Focus & Flexibility

Entrepreneurs are generally good with either being focused or being flexible, but the trick is mastering the tension between the two. It is important to be focused — on your goals, on your business plan, and on your customers. However, you also have to stay flexible to the needs of the market.
- Suzanne Smith, Social Impact Architects

7. Accept That Mistakes Are Okay

Accept that 80 percent is an A+. Being a perfectionist and an entrepreneur can often yield several problems, including micromanaging, which drives you — and those around you — crazy. Accept that mistakes will happen, and that they are, in fact, part of building a great business and team.
- Ilya Pozin, Ciplex

8. Collaborate With Others, Compete With Yourself

Entrepreneurship isn’t a zero-sum game. You and your competitors can all be winners and, for the most part, competing with anyone other than yourself (unless you’re a professional athlete, of course!) is counterproductive. Share ideas, help each other out and rise together. And keep your competitive edge turned inward. Not only will your sanity benefit, but so will your business.
- Alexis Wolfer, The Beauty Bean

9. Ask the Questions

A friend of mine, Shervin Pishevar, made a statement that has stuck with me and served as a reminder for quite some time.

He said, “The answer is always no unless you ask.”

A simple, yet powerful, truth. Unless you ask the questions, there’s no way of knowing what the outcome will be. And without asking the question, the answer is always no.

This is something I continually try to remind myself of when stuck in a spot of uncertanity and fear.

Ask the questions that need to be asked.

- Jeff Slobotski, Silicon Prairie News

10. Avoid Analysis Paralysis

Decision and action are always better than indecision. This is particularly important for early business success. Execution moves things forward, and you don’t have time to ponder small decisions. Sometimes, even a lot of analysis will not give you the answer, and you have to go with what you believe will work best.
- Jesse Pujji, Ampush

11. Manage Yourself Well

For first-time entrepreneurs, managing yourself can be a real challenge. We don’t realize how much we sometimes need structure. Being accountable to someone (a boss) is a huge motivating factor. I’d develop better habits around managing my time in a sustainable way. With my first company, I’d work 24 hours straight (literally). Some days, I’d just take off completely. Balance is everything, and it’s the key to sustainably being an entrepreneur for the long run.
- Mitch Gordon, Go Overseas

12. Test Before You Invest

We entrepreneurs have ideas every day. The sooner you test these ideas against reality to see if they’re viable, the quicker you’ll get to the idea that works.

For example, I once had an idea to build an iPhone app. I made the wireframes. I got with a developer. I paid the developer about 20 percent of my savings account. And I lost all my money because I had an app no one wanted.

If I had tested the app idea with my potential customers without any investment, I would have quickly found out my idea wasn’t needed. Get out of the building and test before you invest.

- Brett Farmiloe, Markitors

13. Start With Your Strengths

Research shows pretty conclusively that the best leaders do one primary thing differently: They know their strengths and work in them almost all the time. This sounds simple, but what I didn’t realize was that our society isn’t set up like this. From our earliest school days, we are taught to focus on making our deficiencies better; this never leads to greatness. Instead, first discover those things that make you unique: your gifts/talents/strengths. Second, find a big, hairy problem in the world that makes you righteously indignant. Third, use your strengths to solve that problem!
- Josh Allan Dykstra, Strengths Doctors

14. Talk to Customers

As a younger entrepreneur, I always wanted to build or start something that I wanted. Part of what makes entrepreneurs great is that they are often so passionate about a solution to a problem because they have that problem. But the reality is this: a problem doesn’t constitute a company. So talk to your customers… a lot. After realizing how much we learn from customers, we now have built that feedback loop so tightly into the company — from weekly in-office usability testing to all-hands customer support to monthly feedback from our employees.
- Eric Koester, Zaarly

15. Generate Sustainable Revenue

Focus on generating sustainable revenue. Entrepreneurs thrive on ideas and opportunity. Some ideas take longer to materialize into a profitable business, and in some cases, opportunity takes longer to materialize. Regardless of the idea or the opportunity, I would focus on smaller increments that can start delivering revenue sooner than later. This is a critical success factor for technology startups given that I can easily manage to become a thinker than a revenue generator. This also helps in seeing what works and expanding on that versus going with the big bang theory.
- Raheel Retiwalla, Fuzed

16. Get Out of Your Rut

Business plan? No problem. Road trip to raise capital? Got it. Two hours of sleep? Push through it. These are all things we did early on without blinking. We loved our small team and our mission, and we fell in love with our business. Then, our business got older and, although it aged well, it lost some of the excitement. Our passion became a job first, instead of the other way around.

It took time, but we got out of the rut by changing things up: new roles, scenery, experiences, projects and team activities. It’s not about building new fires, but feeding the one you started.

- Ben Wagner, LifeKraze

Todd Henry is the author of The Accidental Creative, a book that unveils how you can create your best ideas when you need them most. I was lucky enough to talk candidly with Todd about how we get ourselves in these various states of “fried” and (more importantly) what, exactly, we can do to be prolific, brilliant, and healthy.

As people leading and building high-growth companies, we can often lose ourselves in the work. But we’re in control. We can structure our lives and approach our work in a way that gives us more capacity to find our “why” and bring out the best in ourselves. With that kind of focus and energy, we live with passion and die empty.

In this 15-minute interview, you’ll get an overview of Todd’s approach to ramping your creative output as well as some hard-hitting tactics that you can put to use now:

Todd Henry: Die Empty.

How to Be Prolific, Brilliant, and Healthy

How does creativity fuel your business? What things do you do to keep your creative spirit?  

Join Todd Henry, Verge, KA+A, and the Ball Project at the Speak Easy this Thursday April 25 for a special event. The format for the evening will be really simple… and really fun, including a keynote presentation by Todd Henry, a fireside chat with Todd and Thad (touching on “Startups as a Band” and “The Band as a Startup”), and then we’ll wrap up with a concert by Leagues. REGISTER NOW >>

For starters, there has been no lack of Startup Weekend events. The first Crane event launched on October 5^th, 2012. Bloomington on November 9^th, 2012. Terre Haute‘s first ever event on February 8^th, and right on it’s heels Startup Weekend Evansville 2.0 kicked off on February 22^nd. Not to be left out, a little outside the triangle Louisville, Kentucky fired off an event the following weekend!

As we prepared for Startup Weekend Terre Haute, Demi Wetzel was kind enough to Skype in and give our ‘How To Prep‘ meetup a great Q & A session. Demi hails from Evansville and after attending her first Startup Weekend, she found her calling. Demi now works for Startup Weekend HQ in Seattle Washington!

As I watched the Sunday night pitches in Evansville this year, Andrew Moad and his team walked away with 1^st place honors. Andrews startup is a physical product called Fence Chips. Andrew had joined my team at Startup Weekend Crane in 2012 and was a huge help pushing through those 54 hours.

Another very active team in the Indiana startup scene is Matt Burris and Jessica Falkenthal. I had the pleasure of meeting both at Startup Weekend Bloomington back in May 2012. Jessica graciously agreed to lead my team at that event. Both are at every Bloomtech and Verge Bloomington meetup I’ve ever attended! Plus they have been the facilitators at Startup Weekend events in Bloomington, Crane, Terre Haute and Evansville. Wow!

Bloomtech meetup

Of course I can’t leave out Bloomington’s own Nick Tippman. Nick has helped organize Startup Weekend events and was recently invited to speak at Evansville’s event in February. Nick is no stranger to the startup life and is now CEO of a relatively new – and very cool startup based out of Memphis, TN called Nibletz - ‘The voice of startups everywhere else’.

Another tie to both Bloomington and Evansville is Andrew Heil. Andrew mentored at the first Startup Weekend I attended held in Bloomington and organized Evansville’s events. These days he works his 9-5 in Evansville then jets off to Bloomington each evening to work on his new startup – Tourize. I talked to Andrew recently about this cool new app. Here is what he said:

“Tourize (www.tourize.com) is a new way to travel. We are creating a mobile platform to consume tours from professional guides. We believe that often times knowledge is missing as each tourist experiences a new attraction or is planning a new trip. I will be able to take you on a demo soon..

Currently, we are working through RunUp Labs. Runup labs is a travel startup accelerator which is a 10 week program and helping 7 companies launch. It’s been great. My team and I have been working around the clock and of course learning a whole lot.

The interesting part of the story: As you may know it is March Madness season and I decided that it was time to incorporate the signup process with the time of the year to peek interest in our travel startup… This was no longer a sign up form, but a bracket of people interested in travel fighting for the number 1 seed.

This turned into a road to the early access of tourize and not just a launch rock page. This is a big dance tournament where each person that signs up is given information and a link to share. The more each link is shared – the more you score and the more you win.

When I set out to launch this, I thought if “Hipster” could get 10k signups with just a launch page and mailbox app could make a que of 600k signups, certainly I could make madness in march happen!

And it’s starting to – we launched on Sunday 3/24 and have already passed 1,000 page views rather quickly in the first 5 hours. We’ve continued to that rate and are at 2,500 page views in the first 36 hours. After reaching out to people who have signed up, people are interested in the hype of a new way to travel and of course, being part of the tournament!

We can’t wait to see where the next 6 days goes and all the way down to the final four early adopters of Tourize!

The link is www.tourize.com - please sign up and play! “

You can find Andrew at most Evansville Tech on Tap meetups each month.

Tech on Tap Meetup

One of southern Indiana’s startup scene champions is Drew Peyronnin. Drew hosts the Tech on Tap meetups in Evansville and has become a Startup Weekend regular like most of us! Tech on Tap is a great networking event and has grown by leaps and bounds over the last year. Drew has been involved in many of the ‘startup triangle’ events and was the keynote speaker at our Terre Haute event. A huge applause is standard fair after his insightful talks.

It’s amazing how the Indiana startup communities are tied together and support each other. Maybe that’s Hoosier hospitality showing itself.

Over the last few weeks Bryan Jackson and I have been discussing the next step in the evolution of the Wabash Valley startup, tech and innovation community.  We both want to see the startup and tech community grow to foster a living, breathing culture that benefits everyone. Bryan started the Tech Haute meetups with similar goals as Terre Haute Tech and has hosted great seminars on popular social media tools and how to use them in business.

After discussing the benefits and future possibilities we have decided to join forces and merge both groups, combining memberships.  This will foster even more great connections in our startup community. Bryan has been working on the new Tech Haute site as the next step in this exciting merger.  We are planning some awesome things for our members and the Terre Haute startup scene.

It’s been very exciting to see the startup culture grow and to be a part of it. There are many others not mentioned here that make this community thrive, but that’s for another day. If your not involved in your startup community and events, now is the time! The connections, learning and business opportunities that happen at each event are hard to put a price on. So join a startup meetup and get plugged in to this amazing southwest Indiana startup triangle!

During the weekend of Feb. 8th, 2013 over 85 energetic startup enthusiasts, business coaches and local leaders came together in a friendly competition to pitch ideas, form teams, build prototypes and push for a 1st place finish in the very first Startup Weekend Terre Haute. Startup Weekend is a global grassroots movement of active and empowered entrepreneurs who are learning the basics of founding startups and launching successful ventures.

Friday afternoon as I work with the other organizers to have things ready I see the first participants start filtering through the doors of the Scott College of Business (old Federal Hall) around 5:30pm.

By 7pm the old courtroom is nearly full and buzzing with excitement. In a few minutes one of the facilitators will call for those who will be pitching their idea for the next ‘big thing’ to line up behind the microphone. For most, this will be the first time in their lives they have ever shared their big idea in front of a crowd. You can feel the tension in the air and hear the nervousness in their voices. Eighteen idea champions of the 36 attending line up to pitch their idea. After all the pitches were done, no two were the same. The call is given for everyone to vote on their two favorite ideas. After thirty minutes or so the top seven are selected to form teams of four to seven members from everyone in attendance. Some of those whose idea wasn’t in the top seven decided to call it a night and head for home. The rest of us settled in for a long, fun, crazy weekend of startup building and making new friends.

Friday night and Saturday morning, teams went back and forth vetting out the ideas, researching the competition, creating customer surveys and working on product design.

At noon on Saturday we had a special panel of experts including local business owner Shelley Klingerman, Scott McCullough of Terre Haute Savings Bank and Dr. David Robinson of the Scott College of Business to share their knowledge and experiences in starting and building a business.

Each team then continued to work until 10:00pm that evening doing in-person interviews with people on the street, creating a website, garnering Facebook likes and Twitter followers, building working prototypes, creating presentation slides and more.

By Sunday afternoon the teams were practicing their final presentations to pitch to the judges. The mentors and coaches were working with each team to refine and perfect each part, cutting out the fat and making it all fit within the five minutes each team had been given.

After an early buffet style dinner (which was fantastic) twenty-one year old Gagan Dhillon and his co-founder Andrew Blejde spoke about their new angel funded startup called ‘Cause.it’ and the trials and tribulations involved.

Finally, it was time for what everyone had come to see. It was time to see what each team had accomplished over 54 hours of blood, sweat and tears (and caffeine). The final presentations were at hand. Teams were furiously reviewing their notes in preparation to show off what had been accomplished and impress the four judges with their hard work and life changing new product. Four teams had stuck it out and made it to this moment: BeachEZ360, UnderGround Recruits, Cool Student Gigs and Sammy’s List.

The judges were Lakshmi Reddy (Reddy Law Firm), Elizabeth Hagerman (Vice President, Rose Hulman Ventures), Brien Smith (Dean, Scott College of Business) and Ken Eitel (Director of BES, Ivy Tech Greencastle).

Immediately after the presentations dozens of cool door prizes provided by some great sponsors were awarded to a few lucky winners from those in attendance.

While the judges stepped out to deliberate and decide on the winning team, the keynote speaker Drew Peyronnin, an angel investor, business owner, veterinarian and startup enthusiast hailing from Evansville inspired and captivated the audience drawing a huge applause.

Now, the moment of truth. The judges are back, the audience is quite and all attention is on the facilitator, Jessica Falkenthal as she announces the winning teams. 2nd place goes to UnderGround Recruits – “An online social media site for recruits or recruiters to be known. It is a site for the recruits that tend to be overlooked because of the stand out stars.” First place and winner of several valuable prizes from local sponsors goes to BeachEZ360!

BeachEZ360 “is a collapsible, portable, lightweight, sand and water repellant beach mat that is affordable with design elements to support additional accessories such as a docking station with solar power, USB charging and integrated speakers.” The winning team is ecstatic! Cheers and applause fill the room.

The BeachEZ360 team with Dean Brien Smith

As everyone begins to leave and the room empties we realize what a huge success this event has been, high fives all around! Now let’s go home and get some much needed rest.

Teams, coaches and guests had a great time learning, competing, stepping outside of their comfort zone and meeting new faces. Terre Haute can now join the Startup Weekend veterans like Indianapolis, Lafayette, South Bend, Bloomington, Crane and Evansville!

The great sponsors to take a risk on this first time event were Frontier Communications, Baeslers Market, Papa Johns, Jimmy Johns, Ivy Tech BES of West Central Indiana, West Central ISBDC, ISU, WAWV/WTWO, Hilton Garden Inn, Gibson Teldata, Joink, Wabash Valley Ivy Tech, Lieberman Technologies and Terre Haute Tech.

Startup Weekend pro facilitators Matt Burris and Jessica Falkenthal came over from Bloomington Indiana to spend their weekend keeping us all on track and making sure everyone had a great time.

Local organizers of the event were Heather Strohm, Richard Pittelkow, Jennifer Eastridge, Jodi Link, Lance Gahimer, Theresa Ortega and yours truly.

You can see all the details at http://terrehaute.startupweekend.org or check out the twitter feed as it happened on #swterrehaute.

I hope to see you at the next Startup Weekend!

- David Dubree  @DavidDubree

They’ve given away hundreds of airline tickets to entrepreneurs. They’ve granted millions of dollars worth of software. And they’re looking for a handful of founders who want ramp up their business in 2013.

Come on, you know who I’m talking about…

Startup America has been known to leverage their partnerships with companies like American Airlines, Intuit, Microsoft, and the New York Stock Exchange to pull in massive favors for growing companies. Just take a glance at their board, which includes a LinkedIn co-founder, Netflix CEO, the CEO at FedEx, and Magic Johnson (as in the former-NBA-superstar Magic Johnson).  These “Wonkas” of the business world are connected and have offered to plug up to 10 fast-growing Indiana companies into their network and resources to ramp up that business in 2013.

Looking for that next national brand to sign on to your product as a customer? Or in need of some high-powered promotion to spread your brand success story?

Startup America is going to help through it’s local Startup Indiana chapter. But you have to take the first step, and it’s down to the wire.

Here’s how to apply…

This golden-ticket opportunity for companies with proven traction and momentum. Startup America will assist you by pouring gas on the fire. This is what we’re looking for our Startup Indiana ramp-up company:

• $100k/month in revenue
• 5 or more employees
• Make sure you’re a registered member of Startup America (it’s free)
• Updated KPIs (revenue and employee counts) on your Startup America profile
• Fill out the short form HERE >>

That’s it. But you MUST apply by noon on Friday, January 4 if you want a chance to win this golden ticket. I know that’s a quick turnaround time, but that hasn’t stopped you in the past from taking advantage of big opportunities, has it?

Don’t put this off.  Even if you don’t win the golden ticket, our team at Startup Indiana will help you out in any way we can.

I can still put myself in that moment…

I hit send on an email response #247 of the evening as I glimpse the hour on the clock tick past 3:00 AM. I swear I distinctly heard that “tick.” Less than two weeks out from the first day of the Powder Keg; conference for startups I had announced just 2 months earlier.

Our team had built impressive momentum including early Powder Keg press coverage, hundreds of new email subscribers, and six figures in new sponsorships. Yet there are months of work to complete (in a two-week period) before the first day of our three-day event that was to fill more than six venues.

In moments like these, doubt can start to creep in.

Lucky for me, I had something bigger than myself as the driving force. That’s why I have something important to say to the people who helped us build this first year of the Powder Keg:

Thank you.

You showed me we could do it. Then you helped find a way for us to create it together.

You helped build the vision.

Thousands of Verge members raised their hands and said we should build something like the Powder Keg in Indianapolis. The emails, tweets, and comments built the scaffolding of Indiana’s first national startup conference.

Other regional startup conferences like The Combine, Chicago Tech Week, and Big Omaha inspired the Powder Keg experience. They showed us how we could develop our own voice and plant our own flag. Industry thought leaders, like best-selling author and Powder Keg presenter Julien Smith, helped us refine our vision into something with a platform that could be articulated.

You lay the foundation.

Exact Target is one of Indy’s most successful software companies and they are the leader in the email marketing space. They are also fire starters who still flex their entrepreneurial muscle by supporting grass-roots efforts like the Powder Keg.

With the help of Exact Target CMO Tim Kopp and Vice President Mike Fitzgerald, we were able to bridge the gap between an established enterprise company and the startup community growing nationwide. Exact Target Marketing Director Amanda Leet and Senior Director Scott Roth collaborated with the Powder Keg to integrate our entrepreneurial energy into their global user conference, Connections.

Support came all the way from the top, with Exact Target founders Scott Dorsey and Chris Baggott, who candidly shared their entrepreneurial insight on the final day of the Powder Keg. They helped engage the regional software community to rally around our startup movement in a way that was nothing short of magical.

You showed that you care.

I was blown away. We had a legion of people who stepped forward to enroll in the Powder Keg experience as volunteers. These teammates built the Powder Keg brick by brick and their fingerprints are all over the best parts of the event.

Early support from sponsors like Ice Miller, Compendium, and Barnes and Thornburg poured fuel on the fire. Meeting requests and phone calls to discuss Powder Keg with these organizations were met with, “How can I help?”

Dozens of other local organizations, who consistently breathe life into the startup community, came out to support the Powder Keg. People supported through sponsorship, PR, media production, venue location, event management, and event experiences like Wi-Fi, food and beverage, and photo booths. That’s how people knew that the Powder Keg was going to be exceptional.

Within 24 hours of announcing the event, we had more than 500 people sign up for updates through the email list. The social networks exploded with conversation from Verge members and friends of our group. This momentum built into incredible movement.

You brought it to life.

We found our name and defined the Powder Keg look thanks to KA+A, one of the best brand design agencies in the world. I put KA+A president Kristian Andersen on speed dial for brand discussions and event input. This must have driven Kristian nuts, but the hundreds of founders, builders, and investors who attended the Powder Keg experienced the impact of those conversations.

Local web design and marketing agency, SmallBox, helped build and maintain the Powder Keg website and get the word out about the event. Founder Jeb Banner went out of his way to support the event through shared resources, personal invitations, and dozens of other moments of assistance.

Without this strong local support, Powder Keg would have never made the connections to our national partners like Startup America, the YEC, Microsoft, Tech Cocktail, Fortify VC, Tech Zulu, and App Developers Alliance. They erected the platform from which Powder Keg participants could work their magic.

You shared the experience.

We had 12 startups bring their A-game to the Startup Bowl pitch competition at Lucas Oil Stadium. Their skill and ambition engaged our judges from Navidar, Microsoft, Elevate Ventures, and Fortify VC. Investors and other attendees in the audience gave their time and attention to get a taste of what is growing out of the Midwest startup scene.

By showing up with energy, ideas, and questions, attendees and participants set the tone for the Powder Keg. Even now, you still share the follow up articles and news. You fanned the flame as the stories came out in Forbes, the Indy Star, IBJ, Tech Cocktail, Tech Zulu and other blogs.

I hope that you enjoyed Powder Keg as much as I did. And if you couldn’t make it this year, I hope that you’ll be able to join us for some of the magic in the future.

Without you we couldn’t have done it. So, I’d love to know what you liked and, even more, what you’d like to see if we do another Powder Keg event next year.

Thanks!

So how’s a wide-eyed, enterprising kid supposed to get a new Game Boy? (yes, I’m dating myself here)

Seems as though there wasn’t a business model I didn’t try:

• Holiday wreaths (every winter)
• Car wash (every summer)
• Magic store (failed weekend project)
• Paper route (every morning for 6 years)

The one I always wish I’d figured out: lemonade stand.

My cul-de-sac didn’t exactly have a parade of foot traffic. Picture me at my lemonade stand whilst a tumble weed breezes by. But don’t feel sorry for me.

I should have realized that, for my business, I hadn’t picked the right place (one of the four P’s: Price, Product, Place, Profit). That’s a lesson I didn’t learn until business school. What a shame. Did I really have to wait so long to understand the concept of “location, location, location?”

Hell no.

There’s all kinds of ways to help out a first-time entrepreneur, even if they’re just nine years old. With all the tech and startup blog advice out on the web, I sometimes forget that grade-schoolers need business mentors too. That’s why one amazing organization is helping thousands of young lemonade stand entrepreneurs startup and run profitable businesses with this nation-wide movement.

It’s called Lemonade Day, and there’s probably one in or near the city where you live.

Lemonade Day has two components:

1. A month-long learning experience when each kid is paired with an adult mentor and coached through a step-by-step business-building process.
2. The actual day of Lemonade Day, when each participant opens shop to sell lemonade at stands across the country. Over 65,000 kids in over 30 U.S. cities participated last year.

For those of you in the Midwest, near Indianapolis, you can come see what it’s all about next week. There’s a Seed Fund event being held at the Speak Easy on November 12 where all proceeds will be given to help kids start and grow their lemonade stand businesses. Local food and beer sponsors are making the event tasty, and Pete the Planner is hosting, so you know it’s going to be a blast.

Even if you can’t attend, there’s an option to donate to the cause on the event info page. Life may not give you lemons, but why not give a young, enterprising kid 20 bucks to start their lemonade stand?

Yeah, me too. We all need something at one time or another and it isn’t always simple to pull the pieces together. But with new tools and resources, connecting and navigating those waters is getting easier.

Indy Made is a new startup community platform that makes it simple for founders, investors, venture funds, and support organizations to register themselves and create a personal and organizational profile. Designed specifically for the Indianapolis and central Indiana startup community, Indy Made measures and maps the hoosier startup ecosystem.

Other cities have created their own solutions to this problem and many of them look very similar. Represent LA launched on “Silicon Beach” and then made the code free and available for other communities to replicate. Innovate SF sought to do something similar in the startup-laden San Francisco Bay area.

Tools like these become more valuable to it attracts more users. So, only time will tell how quickly Indy Made can gain mass adoption. At the time of this writing, there are already over 75 startups registered and over 150 individual user profiles on Indy Made. Will you sign up and spread the word?

What else do you think startup community tools like these should do?

The judges (Ting Gootee of Elevate Ventures, Carla Valdes of Fortify, Sonal Mane of Microsoft, and Christopher Day of Navidar) scored the startups on four categories: Market Potential, Value Proposition, Presentation Quality, and the Team. Live voting during Friday’s panel also factored into the overall score for each of the startups.

Thank you to Bonfyre, FoundOps, Squarejive, Lisnr, Team Mash, CoatChex, Diagnotes, Modulus, Pet Bookings, Adproval, Lesson.ly, and Visit Apps for sharing your story and your startups with us!

First Place: Found Ops

Best Team, Most Votes

Oren Shatken did a fantastic job of pitching FoundOps, a company that provides “Logistics for everyone!” Not only did FoundOps tie for the most in-person votes, but the judges believed that they had the best team, according to the scores. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, since everyone that attended the Startup Bowl knows that they have a “Fucking Amazing Team!” Oren reiterated this sentiment, stating ”We feel honored to have won given the incredible field of startups. Ultimately, I have to give all credit to our fucking awesome team.”

FoundOps Team (Left to Right): Andrew Pohl (Developer), Oren Shatken (Cofounder and President), Jonathan Perl (Cofounder and President, Tech)

Second Place: VisitApps

Best Presentation, Most Votes

Santiago Jaramillo’s energy lit up the stage, which led to the judges giving VisitApps the highest scores for Presentation Quality. This platform that help Convention and Visitors Bureaus create their own apps tied FoundOps for most votes during the exhibition on Friday. This victory helped cement the trend that the “non-sexy” apps were the ones that fared the best during the PowderKeg Startup Bowl. “The PowderKeg startup bowl was a great way for us to launch our startup and make it public to the midwest startup community. Coming in at 2nd place and hearing positive feedback all week also encouraged us and validated the direction we’re headed in. We were honored to even be chosen to compete among such talented founders and brilliant startup concepts, it was a truly memorable and valuable experience.” -Santiago Jaramillo

VisitApps Team: Adam Weber (left) and Santiago Jaramillo (right)

Third Place: CoatChex

Best Value Proposition

Derek Pacque wasn’t fazed after being introduced as the man that gave Mark Cuban a $200,000 Heisman. His startup, a new high-tech way to easily check coats, presented the best value proposition to the judges, giving them the highest cumulative score in any category. “It’s great to have an event like PowderKeg here in Indy – it brings more attention to what the entrepreneurs in our city are doing and, I would think, encourages others to get involved as well. I’m excited to see how it grows over the next few years!” -Derek Pacque

The CoatChex Team

You welcomed our speakers with enthusiasm and our Midwest hospitality. From national superstars like David Blaine and Julien Smith, to our local heroes like Chris Baggott and Scott Dorsey, your energy filled each venue with enthusiastic curiosity and passion.

You connected in person and online. Hundreds downloaded the Powder Keg iphone app and chatted in our private Bonfyre network. The questions and comments were just as good in person as they were in our thousands of #PowderKeg hashtag uses.

You supported through sponsorship and by showing up. We had over 350 attendees and more than 30 organizations sign on to support this inaugural year. Just take a look at everyone who turned out:

Headline Sponsor

ExactTarget collaborated with us through a tight partnership with Connections, allowing our whole Powder Keg crew to bring our passion to the JW Marriott for the first half day of our conference. We caught presentations from leaders at LinkedIn, Foursquare and reddit, and David Blaine come into our section to perform magic for our Powder Keg crew.

ExactTarget CEO Scott Dorsey and Startup America CEO Scott Case lit the Powder Keg fuse in front of all 4,ooo Connections attendees during the Entrepreneurs Unleashed panel. Our section at Connections erupted when they called us out and invited the rest of Connections to join us at Lucas Oil Stadium for our Startup Bowl.

Premier Sponsors

• Ice Miller threw an awesome welcome party that filled the first floor of Sensu Nightclub. Sensu owner Jeffrey Mark welcomed our Powder Keg group with Ice Miller partner, Dustin Dubois.
• Barnes and Thornburg hosted our second party at the Crane Bay. It was an intimate evening in the perfect venue with an inspiring performance by Kishi Bashi, introduced by Barnes and Thornburg partner David Wong.
• SmallBox built and designed our killer fully-responsive Powder Keg website. Their whole team supported the Powder Keg initiative through promotion, volunteer efforts, and strategic leadership on our Powder Keg core team.
• KA+A designed our brand and sponsorship information while providing strategic input on the conference throughout the entire planning process. These long-time friends helped us hone our vision and find our voice as a Midwest movement.
• Compendium closed down the Powder Keg right with an awesome celebration at the Speak Easy and DeveloperTown. Action Jackson spun awesome tunes while Powder Keg attendees grabbed fresh brew from Upland, hot coney dogs from Dog ‘n’ Suds, and awesome West Coast Tacos.

This doesn’t even scratch the surface of our sponsorship support and we’ll tell you more about our other sponsors in future Powder Keg posts. You can see many of them here.

Our volunteer team was massive and deserves all the credit for making this two-and-a-half day conference possible. With the support from our sponsors, they were able to create our magical Powder Keg experience. It was an experience and feeling that’s hard to describe.

But keynote speaker Scott Dorsey put it best in his #powderkeg tweet following his time on stage. Powder Keg was an “Inspirational group of entrepreneurs.” And we’re looking forward to channeling that inspiration into what comes next with Verge.

What were your favorite Powder Keg moments? Which videos and photos are you most excited to see?