!ExitEvent

Watch Mystery Brewing Tuesday Night on CNBC's Crowd Rules

Joe Procopio — Mon, 20 May 2013 12:00:00 +0000

I#039;m not gonna lie to you. As media-savvy as I like to believe I am, it still feels weird watching the promo video (below) and seeing my friend on a reality show. I#039;ve known Erik Myers, founder of Hillsborough#039;s Mystery Brewing, for a little over 12 years, since before he moved from Boston to Durham, long before he decided to ditch his job as a network admin and turn what was essentially a hobby into a full-fledged, real-as-hell, building, employees, T-shirts-and-taproom brewery.

When I met him, he was just a really smart and funny kid who could write well and dug all the same kinds of things I did. I hired him to write for Intrepid Media, and a few years later he married his girlfriend and moved to North Carolina so she could get her doctorate at UNC.

One night in 2011, just as Erik was finishing up his paperwork to make Mystery legal, I explained the idea for ExitEvent and the Startup Social over beers at City Beverage, and he went all in. ExitEvent has served phenomenally good Mystery Brewing beer, for free, at each of our 18 Startup Socials. To hundreds of influential entrepreneurs and investors from across the country. Because dude had vision.

I should say this too. Erik was one of the first people I told about ExitEvent. Before he said he#039;d pour the beer, he told me he thought it was a great idea. Had he said otherwise, I may not have done it.

This Tuesday night, Mystery Brewing is one of the featured contestants on the CNBC reality show Crowd Rules, which each week features three small businesses that compete for a $50,000 prize.

While beer is one of those things you think of when you think of startups (at least I do), very few people put brewery startup and tech startup in the same bucket. However, a former techie himself, Erik has ripped several pages out of the tech startup playbook to get Mystery off the ground and into reality.

His Kickstarter campaign, one of the very first big money raisers and, at the time, the largest-ever raise for a brewery, was executed perfectly, hitting the goal with days to spare. Along with that, he sought out an additional $250K in private seed money to get into the building and into bars across the state.

His web and social media presence are spot on, and he uses them to sell the beer and the brand like any tech company might use them to sell an app. And his marketing is nothing short of genius, from the ornately carved tap handles to his blogging and constant presence in the beer and startup ecosystems.

But the reason I#039;m behind him isn#039;t because he#039;s my friend. Believe me, I#039;ve got plenty of friends who have started shitty businesses. It#039;s because he#039;s very, very good at what he does, which is make beer.

And that#039;s not the only thing. I know a lot of entrepreneurs with a great product, a lot more who are marketing geniuses, plenty who can execute, a bunch who can sell, and even more who think nothing of taking big risks like quitting a job to go out on their own.

It#039;s when you put all of these together that you get a truly great entrepreneur, and that#039;s why I#039;ve always backed Erik.

Watch the show and you#039;ll see what I see.

Durham's Archive Social is a 2013 TiE50 Winner

Anil Chawla — Mon, 20 May 2013 12:00:00 +0000

Anil Chawla is the founder of Archive Social, an automated self-service solution available to any organization that needs to keep trustworthy records of social media. We#039;ve written about Anil and Archive Social several times, including their Triangle Startup Factory graduation and NC IDEA grant win in June 2012 and when they signed a deal with the North Carolina State Archives in December.

Adding to an impressive win list, Archive Social was selected to the 2013 TiE50 on Saturday, a Valley organization that touts itself as recognizing the world#039;s most enterprising technology startups. Previous winners include HubSpot, oDesk, and Cloudera, among others.

I#039;m without laptop but let me throw down the story here on my iPad. I#039;m still at the conference.

It all started when I received a flyer in the mail (yes, snail mail) inviting Archive Social to apply for the TiE50 about two months ago. I was somewhat familiar with TiE, but had to check out the website to see if the competition was legit.

Speakers listed on the site included LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner, Chris Anderson, Facebook#039;s CIO, and the founder of 5-hour Energy.

5-hour Energy, if nothing else, is clearly legit.

Plus, the nomination application was a breeze and took me 5 minutes to fill out online.

About two weeks later, I received an email invitation to fill out a full application. This was a bigger decision point because I knew it would take a few hours. And I have filled out way too many applications for this company already (although the conversion rate has been pretty good too). I decided to do it, and it took me about 4 or 5 hours.

Three weeks ago, I got the notification that we made the cut as a TiE50 finalist. Given that there are more than 1,000 worldwide applicants, this was pretty cool. Even bigger decision point. We would have to attend the TiEcon conference in Silicon Valley if we wanted to win.

The trip would not be cheap, and and I was already tired of traveling. Plus, I would miss my invaluable baby-weekend time. More importantly, it felt like we had already achieved the best cost-value ratio with the finalist selection.

Ultimately, I decided to go #045;#045; not just to win the competition #045;#045; but also because the CEO of a tiny startup in Durham, North Carolina needs to do every damn thing possible to pull the odds on our side.

The size of the conference (3,000 attendees) + the opportunity to create mind share in Silicon Valley + our involvement in the competition seemed to be enough justification.

Was it worth it?

Well, we won. But the jury is still out on the true value of me being here.

I was put on the spot yesterday to come up with an inspirational quote. Here#039;s what I came up with, and it speaks to our the decision to attend (I kinda surprised myself with this, and will probably start saying it randomly in conversation with strangers moving forward): They say knowledge is power. But if you never try, you#039;ll never know.

BoostSuite Introduces Headline Optimizer to Automatically Test Web Page Headlines

Jivan Achreja — Fri, 17 May 2013 12:00:00 +0000

For a lot of people, marketing is their bread and butter. For others, it#039;s still a giant mystery. Seeing new and exciting products come out of the Triangle startup ecosystem is always a big deal, especially in a field like marketing where so many do not know where to go.

When it comes to website marketing, BoostSuite is essentially what the Adobe Marketing Cloud wishes it was. I sat down with Aaron Houghton Co-Founder and CEO of BoostSuite to get an update on their latest feature and the status of BoostSuite.

At its core, the BoostSuite platform is an optimization system that analyzes marketing data and generates wins by allowing small business users to perform simple tasks that take one minute or less to complete.

In Aaron#039;s words: "At BoostSuite we will have fulfilled our vision when every small business marketer in the world can make a meaningful improvement in their web marketing results on their own, in just five minutes when they are waiting at a bus stop, sitting on a couch, or working out at a gym."

BoostSuite constantly monitors web market data #045;#045; who is coming in, where they came from, what they are doing, and how they navigate through your site. The platform collects all of this data from various sources and finds opportunities and patterns in the data using their proprietary rule engine/pattern recognition system.

The resulting patterns are opportunities that are the output of this analysis. They translate to suggestions for tasks or actions users can take, and then are put in their suggestion stream.

BoostSuite#039;s brilliance is in that it does everything automatically from a single interface. Users only need to learn how to use one system and one system only. Their suggestion stream uses self-healing content tests to serve statistically significant options.

This is where BoostSuite#039;s latest feature, Headline Opportunities comes in. The average website visitor spends less than eight seconds before they make a decision. They often make their decision based on what they see first: The headline.

Headline Opportunities gives users a simple exercise: Optimize your page#039;s headlines to drive higher conversions. Once users write different headlines to drive traffic, BoostSuite instantly goes live and begins serving these headlines at random and tracks the results.

Once a headline has been served, BoostSuite constantly monitors the test so that if trends or visitors change, or people start wanting something different, it automatically switches to randomly serving the test. Headline Optimizer lowers the bounce rate by capturing people that would normally skip through instant engagement to encourage more time spent on the page.

From a technical perspective, the platform looks for how people get to conversion points and looks backwards. By analyzing how people reach these points it finds what the drop off points are along the way.

Once the problem is found, it triggers a headline suggestion on the bottleneck page of the drop off point. This automated solution solves a lot of tedious thinking and configuring analytics systems. It does it for you simply, from one interface you know and use daily.

Since we last spoke with Aaron in February, the site has grown another 1000 users and climbing daily. Some of this growth is definitely attributed to this new feature.

The next few months will be just as busy for Aaron and his team. They are working to re-tool the entire suggestion stream to make it even easier to optimize your marketing, as well as rolling out new features and suggestions.

Called It! WedPics Raises an Oversubscribed $1.1 Million Round

Joe Procopio — Thu, 16 May 2013 12:00:00 +0000

It seems like ages ago when Justin Miller#039;s dejaMi was getting booted from his basement, thanks to an overzealous neighbor and a City of Raleigh ordinance that went to the letter of the law. The local startup community came together to help him land at HUB Raleigh overnight, and from there, he#039;s been on a tear.

But know this. Every time he calls me, I answer: "What did you get kicked out of now?"

That joke will never, ever get old.

It was even longer ago, July of 2011 to be exact, when Miller threw the impressive dejaFest to launch the original dejaMi app. Not a task taken lightly, it turned into a full-on 2-day music festival, taking up several venues in downtown Raleigh.

Not long after he relocated to the HUB, he and I were both at Startup Summit, where I was moderating a panel and he was pitching WedPics, the company he spun out of dejaMi and into the early but suddenly very frothy social-wedding-sharing space.

Watching his presentation, I knew at that point that WedPics was going to be successful, because Miller was going to beat everyone at the game. WedPics was going to be designed better, work better, and if he had to throw a WedFest to get it onto the public#039;s radar, that was going to happen.

Turns out he didn#039;t need a WedFest. Which honestly would have been the punk/metal version of a bridal show. Which honestly I would have paid good money to attend.

Some several ExitEvent Socials and Innovate Raleighs later, over which we would catch up briefly, we got a chance to talk about his fundraising efforts to date at March#039;s Southeast Venture Conference, where he was pitching again and I was stapling the first Charlotte Startup Social to the conference. The end of that conversation went something like this:

"How much are you looking for?"

"A million."

"Yeah, you#039;ll get that."

And at that point I put my money where my big mouth was, listing him as one of the Series A Elite Eight in the Triangle, the "brightest hope for the Triangle Series A players."

A bit of that article:

"dejaMi showed off the adoption numbers on WedPics, their app that integrates planning and media for and from a wedding. CEO Justin Miller has also been able to maximize revenue in a competitive space."

And while they didn#039;t land an investor at SEVC, they landed an introduction from a connection there that led to an investor. In the end, they turned investors away once they reached $1.1 million. The round was led by the Brenden Family Growth Fund LLC out of Oregon, and includes Bob Young, Jed Carlson, Chandler Rose, Alex Osadzinski, and Triangle Angel Partners.

One thing I like about Miller#039;s strategy is that he#039;s not just doing MVP with WedPics, he#039;s doing kind of a minimum viable viability model (MVV, I just coined it) like I#039;m doing with ExitEvent. He#039;s A/B testing everything from features to price to the business model itself, proving something works, then moving on to something else.

For example, with ExitEvent, I wanted to know how much ad revenue could be achieved. So I took a month to throw everything I could at generating ad revenue. It worked magnificently and we made a bunch of money that month. I took notes, jotted down the numbers, then went to focus on something else the next month, and ad revenue came back down to normal.

I did it this way because I could either continue to run my ad strategy on half-cylinders and watch it hobble along, or I could fire the giant laser once and blow a hole through the wall.

Miller is a laser guy. Prove it. Record the results. Move on.

What this means is that now that he#039;s got $1.1 million in the bank, he can execute on SEVERAL plans he#039;s already experimented with and knows will work and work big. Too many startups use capital to just conduct bigger experiments.

Wedding season is, well, pretty much here, so the infusion couldn#039;t have come at a better time. I also know that Miller executes fast. I see him building traction no later than the end of May, hopefully blowing up in June, sustaining through October, and then figuring out cash-flow-break-even not long after.

Finally, as WedPics finds success, dejaMi will be sunsetted shortly. That too is OK by me. For one thing, even though it#039;s hard to kill off a product, it removes a distraction, which is necessary at this point.

For another, my sweet black dejaMi T-shirt is now vintage.

Why Startups Need Ping Pong

Joe Procopio — Wed, 15 May 2013 12:00:00 +0000

People constantly ask me how I manage to fit a full-time life at a VC-backed startup pioneering the new science of extracting personalized human-sounding narrative from big data, a 1000+ strong network of entrepreneurs and investors complete with daily content and monthly events, and #045;#045; oh yeah #045;#045; a family of five, which includes twin girls and full-on little league schedule for the boy, who is a left-handed switch hitter.

Lottery ticket!

I have a list of stock brush-off answers:

Cloning.

The 25th Hour.

Freemasons.

The startup or the network or the family are a complete fabrication.

The truth is, I#039;ve learned how to maximize my time.

This isn#039;t about brushing my teeth while helping a daughter with her homework while texting with Robbie while writing this article. I mean, I did that, but when I say time management, I#039;m talking about using time in the most efficient manner possible.

It#039;s not multi-tasking, it#039;s brain-shifting.

For example, I write most of my columns and articles in about 15 minutes. I sit down in front of my laptop and I pretend I#039;m writing an email just to you. Yes you. I#039;m stalking you. I#039;m lucky that this is the style that has found me. I could give a shit about making my stuff sound like all the other stuff.

When that#039;s done, I go over it to take out most of the self-aggrandizing bullshit (most), anything that doesn#039;t belong, anything that doesn#039;t make sense, the really angry stuff that I don#039;t have the balls to put in print, and 99% of the swears (I left two this time).

This takes another 5 minutes.

Then I walk away. And I do something completely different. I brush my teeth, I help my daughter with her homework, I text Robbie.

Then I come back and take another five minutes and somehow, this works every time, I turn a steaming pile of prose into a less steaming pile of prose, something I#039;m not totally ashamed to put my name on.

For the record, like any good writer or entrepreneur, I totally hate everything I produce one week to six weeks (if I#039;m lucky) after I finish it.

I used to, especially when faced with my first medium-to-big bylines years and years ago, sweat and groan and freak out over writing a column #045;#045; my opinion (I#039;m nothing like a journalist) for the world to see, no footnotes from more reputable sources to back me up. It would take hours.

Now, I don#039;t. I throw my passion at the keyboard (and I use the bloated and misguided term "passion" just because I can#039;t think of any other reason why a techie entrepreneur would take so much time writing about startups that aren#039;t his or her own) and then I put my brain on something else for a while.

I come back and, like magic, I can fix all the holes I left, and no one knows the difference.

The same thing is true for the entrepreneurial grind. We like to wear a lot of hats anyway, so in any given day we spend a little time designing, coding, marketing, strategizing, dealing with administrative crap, selling, and (the lucky among us) support.

I recently helmed the quarterly meeting at Automated Insights (the startup), and the line everyone told me they took away was: "Not every day at AI is going to be your favorite day. Do something about it."

Some days, I quickly get to a point where the data isn#039;t structuring, the robots have gone all stupid, and the narratives sound like they were written by six-year-olds. So I get up and I play ping-pong. I never played ping-pong before I started working at startups. Now I play 2-3 times a day most days.

Because every time I sit back down, I may not see the solution that had escaped me ten minutes earlier but, at the very least, I suddenly have options. Something clicks.

And that#039;s what I learned at the May Startup Social on Monday. For the third time, we held a Startup Standoff ping pong tournament, and sometime during the Final Four (AutoMicroFarm, Smashing Boxes, MintMarket, and eventual winner NeuConcepts), it dawned on me.

The Social, on a macro level, is the quick ping pong game for everyone who shows up. It#039;s a couple hours out of the month, and it#039;s not too far from the desk, and even though more "work" actually gets done there than I#039;m willing to admit, it#039;s mostly just a quick brain shift.

Sometimes I hate startups. I hate talking about them, I hate thinking about them, I hate the buzzwords and the faux and the wantre, but every single time we wrap up the Social and I help load the empty kegs back into the Mystery Machine (I just made that up), I see options.

How to Pitch Your Pre-Seed Startup

Elliott Hauser — Mon, 13 May 2013 12:00:00 +0000

Elliott Hauser is the founder of Coursefork, a group of university and online educators building open teaching tools. Coursefork were winners of Triangle Startup Weekend - EDU in March 2013 at HUB Raleigh.

Coursefork is in the midst of pitching to angel investors and we#039;ve learned a ton, so I thought I#039;d take the time write a post that can hopefully save you time and/or effort. There was a distinct shift for us a few months ago when investors started taking meetings instead of giving us the "keep me updated." Here#039;s how we got there:

Be Targeted

Keeping track of who you#039;re talking with is a big pain in the butt. What#039;s worked for us has been a shared Trello board where we move funding prospects from columns titled Cold to Warm to Hot to Invested as they get there. That way each team member can add and update prospects and we can see who#039;s contacted who in the comments.

In the beginning it#039;s easy to lump everyone in the entrepreneurial scene together. Really, though, the people you need and want meetings with evolve over time, and your targets should evolve as well. In the beginning you might want casual meetings with other entrepreneurs.

As you get a sense of who might be interested in helping you, get meetings with them. Angels and VCs should be secondary or tertiary targets. Wait to try for meetings with them until you#039;re getting consistent interest and positive feedback or you#039;ll blow your first impressions.

The Ask is as important when you#039;re first meeting people as it is when you#039;re pitching, and it should change based on the stage you#039;re in. If you#039;re pre-idea, you should be meeting entrepreneurs and asking them about their idea (or startup).

After you have an idea, asking for advice and contacts is the best way to begin building rapport with an investor. To a certain extent they#039;ll use their network#039;s reaction to you and willingness to work with you as input to the decision whether to work with you themselves.

Evolve Your Idea

My original idea was something related to data analytics that instantly bored everyone- including me. By following traction (excitement), initially from me and then from those I talked with, I was led to focus full time on the idea that became Coursefork. There#039;s less of a workflow to this step than the others#059; the main thing is to keep at it and stay receptive to the feedback you#039;re getting.

Like organisms, the best way to evolve your idea quickly is to expose it to death #045;#045; talk about it with everyone you know. My idea was called Syllahub for about six months while I shielded it from attention. But only a month after saying that ugly word over and over again and trying to explain the thing to person after person, I was tired of it.

I sat down to try to dig into the essence of what the platform did, which was allowing collaboration through Github-style 'forking#039;, something that hasn#039;t yet made it far outside of programming. In the midst of this deep dive, the name Coursefork hit me like a bolt of lightning.

The principle here is to follow traction. This should sound familiar because it#039;s also the best way to build a high-growth startup. Traction in this case means a strong reaction. The strength of the reaction is important, not its valence.

Start with yourself: What is your strongest reaction to your idea? To me it was the open source model of collaboration fixing education. Then focus on that, build your idea around it, and test it on others. Turns out it tested pretty well. From there, the recurring questions you get will help you hone your story (and eventual pitch), and may even give you new ideas about your idea.

Plug into the Community

I#039;d started early (over a year ago) getting to know our community and letting them get to know me. This meant that I had more people to talk with, and it paved the way for the social proof that has helped us get meetings.

The wonderful thing about our startup community is that you can get to know amazing people right away- just show up to an ExitEvent Startup Social, smile, and introduce yourself to people. It#039;s a learned skill for introverts like me, but the instinct to stick out your hand and smile instead of looking away awkwardly is essential to entrepreneurs. You#039;ll get experience controlling the tempo and tone of a conversation and shockingly awesome contacts. All because you stuck out your hand.

When you#039;re not in person you can still plug in. Know who the VCs and major startups are. Pay attention to the local news, who#039;s getting funded, who#039;s getting fired (it happens). Join groups on LinkedIn and connect with people there. Have a presence on AngelList. Identify key people you want to meet and find out who you know knows them (LinkedIn is perfect for this).

Keep a Deck

Keep a presentation titled "Current Pitch Deck" updated at all times. When you show the deck to someone, save a copy. This is your record of who saw what and your progress. It also lets the person you#039;re pitching know that you prepared this material specially for them#059; put their name on the title slide as an extra touch. Revise, and don#039;t be afraid to start over or cut out large parts of your deck every week, especially early on.

Decks are constraints on you. I didn#039;t have a finished pitch deck the first time I met with a VC. That didn#039;t go well, but I managed to get a second meeting, brought a deck, and have been able to build a great relationship with that investor. I#039;ve come to realize that making decks is an excellent way to force yourself to refine the story of what your business is. Like your idea, they should follow traction#059; revise them after every meeting.

If you#039;re doing it right, the process of updating your deck will teach you new things about your business. For instance, you#039;ll realize that to really make your point you need a key fact or estimate to allay specific concerns. In our case I realized that the collaboration aspect of what we were doing and a heavy focus on Github was counterproductive. Revising the deck helped me get past the idea of collaboration (because it wasn#039;t really getting traction) and into a bigger story: the future of open education and our company#039;s central role in it. That#039;s the exciting story we#039;re telling now, and it#039;s working.

Follow up

The people we#039;re meeting with now I first met a median of 8 months ago. The initial "keep me updated" turned into "sure, let#039;s meet next week" because I kept pinging these contacts with succinct, well organized emails. Turn every milestone into an update to these key people. Whatever you do, follow up effectively and follow traction.

So how do you write an effective email? Most emails are WAAAAAY too long, so make yours super short. At the same time, you need to get the reader the key info that will make them interested in you. How to do this? Here#039;s my big secret: a blurb below the signature. Here#039;s an example email:

Dear person I really want to talk to,

Here#039;s a sentence describing who I am and how I came to be emailing you. Here#039;s a sentence about what I#039;m up to. Here#039;s a sentence about what I want from you.

A blurb about my venture is below if you#039;d like more information. I hope we can connect!

Elliott

[blurb goes here]

There#039;s not much info here, but that#039;s what the blurb is for, and it comes BELOW the email. The blurb should be distilled answers to the most common questions you get about your idea. The sections in mine are phrased like a FAQ:

What is Coursefork?

What#039;s your vision?

How will you make money?

Why is this exciting?

Who is Coursefork?

Each of these is followed by 1-2 sentences intended to spark interest. The questions are put in bold to help the eye find them.

The trick here is that the apparent length of an email is the distance from salutation to signature, in the case above, about five sentences. All the extra info in the blurb doesn#039;t count, because you#039;ve put it below and told them it#039;s extra. When I started writing emails like this my response rate went way up.

What Next?

So now you#039;re getting meetings- ack! What next? Well, schedule them for 3 weeks out because Part 2 of this series, how to pitch and pick investors, drops in 2 weeks. See you then!

Four Reasons Why Monday Might Be the Last ExitEvent Startup Social

Joe Procopio — Fri, 10 May 2013 12:00:00 +0000

If you#039;re an entrepreneur or an investor, I gently implore you to go here and RSVP for Monday#039;s ExitEvent Startup Social. And please show up, drink the free, locally-brewed craft beer, talk to your peers, and play or watch people play ping-pong for the glory of your or their startup.

That#039;s really all you have to do. And it#039;s all free. And it could be the last time.

Not really. But you never know. We are taking June off, there#039;s just too much going on next month in startup-land. So this will be the last one for a little while. And that got me thinking: When is this going to end?

1) The Mission is Accomplished.

The mission is to help create a stronger environment (not ecosystem, not community) for startups. I want to do that by giving you news, opinion, viewpoint, resources, and connections in a real-world and digital environment that you can#039;t find anywhere else.

(Motivation? No. If you don#039;t have motivation, you probably shouldn#039;t be an entrepreneur until you find the idea that motivates you.)

So there#039;s still plenty of mission left. If you want to be a part of that mission, RSVP and show up on Monday.

2) People Stop Showing Up

I#039;ve said this a couple times, but I#039;m not interested in breaking attendance records. I think we may have even peaked last fall with the ridiculous 200+ Socials in Durham and in Raleigh. Those were madhouses, and actually started working against the philosophy, when it got harder and harder to talk to people, let alone get to talk to most of the people who showed up.

Yeah, there#039;s a blow-off-steam factor to the Social that sort of goes hand-in-hand with the help factor. But I#039;d rather a few people get a lot out of it than turn it into a fraternity party.

Social is the perfect term for it. It#039;s not a networking event, but I don#039;t want it to become a throwdown either. I don#039;t need to reach everyone all the time, but I and a whole lot of other people want to see you, so please RSVP and show up.

3) The Space Gets Too Crowded

I don#039;t consider ExitEvent to be a startup support organization, at least not in the traditional sense. But my thinking is this: If an entrepreneurial support organization is concerned about the competition, that organization needs to get out of the helping entrepreneurs business.

That#039;s just not what it#039;s for. So I#039;m not worried, not one iota, about competition. In fact, I don#039;t think there can be enough support for entrepreneurs. I think the best (and probably cheapest) way to help entrepreneurs is to put them in a room with other entrepreneurs. Which means you. So RSVP and show up on Monday.

4. I Don#039;t Have Enough Time

This is the only item in the list that might actually have some for-real quotient, but not for the reasons you might think. When I first started doing ExitEvent, even before I came on board to Automated Insights, I told myself (and promised my wife) that I would spend three hours a week on it, no more than five.

ExitEvent has been, as far as I#039;m concerned, extremely successful in its own way of helping create a stronger startup environment here in Durham, and in Raleigh, and Charlotte, and in North Carolina, and to a lesser extent in other areas.

ExitEvent also makes money. And it could make serious money, with just what#039;s in place today and a little extra effort, all without charging the entrepreneurs (see item #3 above).

This is viable.

Imagine if someone actually spent more than three hours a week on it. I#039;ve been thinking about that and I continue to think about that.

So here#039;s the deal. This isn#039;t the last ExitEvent, but it might be the best ExitEvent. I think each one has been better than the last. When that stops, when I find that I don#039;t have the time to keep ExitEvent effective and viable. If it#039;s no longer solving the problem, then ExitEvent stops.

Until then, RSVP and show up on Monday.

Startup Sweeps Takes Community Literally With New Open HQ

Joe Procopio — Wed, 08 May 2013 12:00:00 +0000

This just isn#039;t what a startup is supposed to do.

Morris Gelblum has probably heard that more than he#039;d care to admit. He started Sweeps as a company to connect college students to odd jobs #045;#045; good dependable labor, up-front flat rate, platform to connect jobs with workers. Everyone wins.

Ever since I#039;ve known him, Gelblum has run Sweeps as more of an ideal than a startup, albeit an ideal with employees, customers, revenue, and now a really nice HQ just outside of Chapel Hill. That HQ, starting with a meetup tonight, will be housing co-working, classes, events, and, you know, cookouts.

But that#039;s Sweeps. Sweeps isn#039;t really a tech startup, but technology makes it possible, in terms of finding and connecting jobs and job-seekers. Sort of like Angie#039;s List, a public company that#039;s basically just message boards, Sweeps is a startup based on optimal use of existing technology in a niche scenario.

So startups aren#039;t supposed to find odd jobs for college kids, but they#039;re also not supposed to get you a ride, bring you dinner, or tell you what your dog is thinking.

Startups also aren#039;t supposed to be headquartered in country houses with huge decks and porches on six acres of land. Sweeps is now that too, under the guise of Sweeps Campus.

And since they moved themselves into such a situation, they#039;ve decided to open their doors for co-working, events, meetups, or just hanging out and enjoying the summer evenings with a cookout and a beer.

Yeah, American Underground does that, HUB Raleigh does it, Mercury Studio and Bull City Coworking do it, but that#039;s their primary line of business. Sweeps is doing it because (they hope), fostering a community is good for their primary line of business.

"We wanted a place where our many college students, customers, friends, and advisors could get together to work, have fun, and generally meet each other," Gelblum says. "We#039;ll see based on this and future events whether these ideas are sustainable. But my hope is it#039;s not too much trouble and the community powers the meetups and campus in general #045;#045; much like ExitEvent#039;s model."

Well, he#039;s definitely got me there.

Yes, much like the ExitEvent model, I think this is a great idea. Sweeps is a community-based initiative, and much like Uber and AirBnB have had headaches bringing an offline model online, Sweeps, now spread all over the Triangle, will have to figure out how to jump to Greensboro, or Charlotte, or DC.

But again using ExitEvent and our recent foray into Charlotte, it can be done. It just took us 18 months of building and learning from the local community to figure out what could be replicated online (the network, the content, the Social) and what could not (well, nothing so far).

Hopefully, what Gelblum learns in the next few months will help him figure out how to expand. At the same time, there#039;s some extra revenue coming in and tons of opportunity to network and make new, potentially valuable connections.

To me, that sounds exactly like what a startup is supposed to do.

Durham-Based Sqord Scores with TechStars

Andrea Fjeld — Tue, 07 May 2013 12:00:00 +0000

Coleman Greene is a really nice guy. He#039;s the kind of guy who phones you back immediately when your call is dropped.

I spoke with him over the weekend earlier than I usually use my professional voice on Saturdays. I was in my bedroom still wearing my pajamas and silently pleading with ATT#039;s unreliable service to not cut out again, please, damn it. My phone rang, and he brushed off my apologies with an understanding laugh. Maybe he has ATT, too.

Coleman Greene is also a really smart guy. A Vanderbilt graduate who got his MBA at UNC, he cofounded Sqord, which celebrates its two-year anniversary in June. Haven#039;t heard of Sqord yet? You will: The company recently was accepted by Chicago#039;s TechStars, a highly competitive three-month mentorship program that nurtures and funds companies in the early stages of development.

Self-described as a "one part game platform, one part social media, and one part fitness tracker," Sqord encourages kids to lead healthy lives through active playtime.

Using its hardware and software platforms, kids can track their movement and upload activities to their social media accounts. Whether they#039;re running, skateboarding, riding bikes, or even taking out the trash, when they swipe their PowerBands over a Sqord SyncStation (located at home and in schools), they score points, get medals, win competitions, and can, basically, brag online to their friends about all the cool, active stuff they#039;re doing. High five, kids. I should probably hit the gym.

Sqord#039;s inclusion in TechStars gives the company access to an impressive network of mentors and investors that can really push it from the "early seed stages" into the next, more mature phase.

"We#039;re using this as an opportunity to polish the rough edges," Coleman says in a subtly southern accent, his own children clamoring in the background. "We want to build a platform and a brand that is a leader in health and fitness."

Located in American Tobacco, Sqord is in good company, as that downtown destination has become pretty popular among hip Durham start-ups. But a program in Chicago, Coleman explains, makes a lot of sense for them, because they do a lot of work with BlueCross BlueShield and the YMCA, both of which are headquartered in the Windy City. (Plus, his wife grew up there.)

Colman originally reached out to TechStars in 2011 but was turned down. However, he got some good feedback. They encouraged him to keep in contact, so, throughout the year, he#039;d send the investors updates on the company#039;s progress.

With four full-time employees and one heavily involved contractor on board, he reapplied and, this time, luck was on his side. TechStars has accelerated companies like Distil and Ubooly, putting them into the big leagues by helping them raise millions of dollars. What start-up wouldn#039;t want that?

Keep your eye on Sqord and the interesting things they#039;re doing in the digital arena. And, if you haven#039;t already, tell your kids to sign up.

Launch Chapel Hill Opens Its Doors to Startups

Ann Johnston — Fri, 03 May 2013 12:00:00 +0000

People assume I live in Durham or Raleigh because that#039;s where they usually see me. I don#039;t. I live in Chapel Hill.

I was a UNC-Chapel Hill student when my company was conceptualized. University instructors supported me in the ideation stage of Local-Ventures, our first $8,500 was awarded through a UNC venture competition, and I found our Technical Lead through UNC contacts. But then I needed to leave campus and develop the company.

So I headed to Durham and Raleigh. It was there that I built my network and found mentors. If we were seeking funding, I would go to Durham or Raleigh to find it.

I#039;m one of many UNC spinout startup founders who could drive from Chapel Hill to American Underground with their eyes closed. Several have been highly successful (think iContact, Quintiles). While UNC does a great job of encouraging and supporting entrepreneurship (Chancellor Thorp himself co-taught an Introduction to Entrepreneurship course), when a startup founder leaves the confines of campus, unless she also leaves Chapel Hill, she#039;s going to be left with few peers and little support. So we head to Durham and Raleigh.

Launch Chapel Hill, the new venture lab on Rosemary Street in downtown Chapel Hill, aims to change this pattern. A ribbon cutting and Open House on Wednesday represented the official welcoming of Launch and the first 16 startups that will call it home to the Chapel Hill community.

As a Chapel Hill resident and entrepreneur, I#039;ve been following the pre-opening Launch chatter and asking questions for almost a year. All this talk sparked hope for a Chapel Hill that included a startup community. But I had healthy skepticism. One venture lab isn#039;t going to magically transform Chapel Hill. Unless it does.

After attending Launch#039;s Open House and talking with Jim Kitchen #045;#045; a key player in the incubator#039;s development along with Ted Zoller, Chris Mumford, Taylor Smith, and Judith Cone #045;#045; I#039;m excited.

Cloudy skies and light rain on Wednesday at Launch#039;s Open House didn#039;t deter the crowd. People spilled out of the building into the surrounding parking lot, many of them UNC affiliates, local government representatives, and reporters. It was a sea of damp suits.

Academic administrators, government officials, and lots of coats and ties aren#039;t necessarily what you#039;d expect at a venue that houses startups. (At least I didn#039;t I showed up in jeans.) But it reflects the investment of those needed to make this work.

Chapel Hill#039;s greatest existing asset in developing a startup ecosystem is UNC. Perhaps its greatest weakness is the reputation of the town as being anti-business. Since Launch was formed through a partnership among the university, town and county, those with influence in Chapel Hill#039;s startup future, and with the resources to make it viable, are at the table.

Of course the most critical players are the entrepreneurs. But they#039;ve been here. They need a reason to stay here.

Over the past several months, I#039;ve watched HUB Raleigh successfully live up to it#039;s name as a "hub" for startups in Raleigh and not just for those that have space there. HUB Raleigh#039;s approach is evidence that an incubator that#039;s active in the community can connect dispersed entrepreneurial dots and generate reverberations throughout a city.

Chapel Hill isn#039;t Raleigh, and it doesn#039;t want to be, but the convergence point concept still applies. Launch could be that lacking convergence point, and my impression is that this is the plan.

What I know is that that those behind Launch intend to go beyond opening what they have dubbed a "venture lab." They recognize that in addition to supporting its first 16 startups for up to a year with mentors, training, Kenan Flagler "SWAT teams," and rent on a sliding scale, Launch should serve as a "beachhead," as Jim Kitchen says.

On May 15, another incubator called 1789, complete with open and private workspaces and two conference rooms, will open in downtown Chapel Hill. Located on Franklin Street above Four Corners, 1789 is for earlier stage companies founded by UNC students or recent graduates. It#039;s a "feeder" for Launch.

My favorite part about 1789, and why you probably haven#039;t heard of it, is that the 3,500 square-foot space will have completed its transformation from bar to incubator in a matter of a few months. There#039;s more than vision here there#039;s the drive to make it happen.

My second favorite part is that rent at 1789 is free.

What about when the Launch ventures grow up? Down the road (yes, this is a horrible pun that I refused to let Joe edit out) new office space will be opening at University Square on West Franklin Street, giving more mature startups a place to grow.

Launch, 1789, and new office space options all within a few blocks of each other in the heart of downtown Chapel Hill. I see the physical structure of an ecosystem forming.

The vision and the ongoing execution make me excited. There#039;s still the question of whether the real estate, funding, and programs will produce the startup retention and culture. But so far, I#039;m impressed with it all and intend to spend more of my summer closer to home.