Seven teams pitch to 350+ people at NMotion’s demo day

Rain poured on the metal roof, thunder crashed and a microphone went on the fritz — a distraction that temporarily threw off Ryan Cooper’s five-minute pitch for Adolade. But after NMotion managing director Brian Ardinger handed him a new handheld mic, Cooper picked up right where he left off, spitting facts about sales and market…

NMotionlogo-300x99LINCOLN—Rain poured on the metal roof, thunder crashed and a microphone went on the fritz—a distraction that temporarily threw off Ryan Cooper’s five-minute pitch for Adolade.

But after NMotion managing director Brian Ardinger handed him a new mic, Cooper picked up right where he left off, spitting facts about sales and market size.

The minor hiccup and seamless transition back into the pitch could serve as a larger metaphor for the seven NMotion accelerator startups that pitched during Tuesday’s Demo Day.

Almost every team had a hiccup along the way: a pivot, discovering a customer that wasn’t really there, a name change, a team change.

It appears each overcame those obstacles before the end of the 100-day accelerator. But Tuesday, the audience of 360 at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s new Innovation Campus largely approved of the teams’ efforts.

Panelist Bart Dillashaw, an attorney who works with startups, refused to pick a winner.

“Each articulated what they did well. They showed the problems. I’ve watched these companies from the beginning and all have made crazy progress in 100 days.”

Ardinger said from year one to year two, teams had a lot more early traction, got more done and the community had a lot more excitement about the program. It was evident Tuesday: attendance doubled from last year. The accelerator got 80 percent more applications the second round.

“Word is getting around the greater Lincoln community that startups matter,” Ardinger told SPN after the event.

Each had individual milestones, too. Overall, five of the teams got prototype grants from the Nebraska Dept. of Economic Development. None disclosed any potential funding, however.

The three out-of-state teams, Commissioner from Toronto, MowDo from Chicago and Seattle and Fanstreamm from Cedar Rapids, praised Lincoln. Ardinger said Commissioner’s co-founders are trying to secure visas to stay. MowDo will head south for the winter to capture more warm-weather markets, but hope to have a presence in Nebraska. Fanstreamm may go back to Cedar Rapids, but Ardinger hopes they’ll stay.

Here’s a few notes from each team’s presentation Tuesday:

 Screen Shot 2014-09-09 at 5.14.23 PM

MusicSpoke 

Team: Husband and wife team: Kurt Knecht and Jennifer Rosenblatt

Hometown: Lincoln

Twitter@hearMusicSpoke

Quick pitch: Helping composers keep more revenue from their work through an online marketplace.

Traction: 8,000 page views, sales increased 245 percent, keeping 30 percent of every sale—without paying for advertising yet.

Notes: The book industry has changed. The music industry has changed. Sheet music has not changed. The traditional sales model involves long ship times, hard to find items and suppliers keep 92 percent of the profits. MusicSpoke is the world’s largest marketplace for sheet music distribution and allows composers to keep more. Kurt Knecht is a composer.

 Screen Shot 2014-09-09 at 5.15.01 PM Quantified Ag

Team
Vishal Singh
Hometown: Lincoln

Twitter: None

Quick pitch: Fitbit for cattle. Sensors and data platform for the cattle industry.

Traction: Letter of intent from feedlots representing 32,000 head of cattle. Got a prototype grant to create the data tracking device.

Notes: Uses Fitbit-like tech to take the guesswork out of identifying sick cattle. Also tracks weather data, temperatures, the movement of a cow and more. There are more than 4.5 million sick cattle every year, with 2 percent dying from it. The $2,200 value of each cow adds up to $3.2 billion in annual loss from just the feedlots, not counting dairy or rangeland cows. Revenue comes from subscription service and the purchase of sensors.

The company pivoted from using drones to Fitbit-like tags to get the same data. Same problem, different solution. “It made sense to piggyback onto a process that feedlots already do (tagging cows). We just add a chip into the tags.” Used to be called PixoBot.

 Screen Shot 2014-09-09 at 5.14.20 PM MowDo
Team: Mike Fingado and Brian Dzingai (both former Florida State athletes)
Hometowns: Seattle, Chicago
Twitter: @Mowdo

Quick pitch:  Mobile platform providing on-demand lawn care. The Uber of lawn care.

Traction: With a $20.5 billion-dollar lawn care market, the potential is big. They’ve signed up and arranged mowings for customer lawns in nine different states with signups in 20 other states. On average, the cost is $45 per lawn, twice a month. That’s only part of it. They’re exploring more services, like leaf removal, fertilization, aeration and more. Adding those markets makes it a $74 billion industry. They’ve got paying customers.

Notes: Mowdo pivoted from Athletepreneur, a program that aimed to help former college athletes and train them to become entrepreneurs through mentorship, events and more. Dzingai is a former Olympic runner. The pair from Seattle and Chicago are heading south for the winter to gain new markets that need lawn care year-round. More on Mowdo from SPN.

 Screen Shot 2014-09-09 at 5.14.30 PM Fanstreamm
Team: Jason Kristufek
Hometown: Cedar Rapids, Iowa
Twitter: @Fanstreamm

Quick pitch: Group ticketing for sports and entertainment venues made easy.

Traction: Fanstreamm created a mobile app for the Lincoln Saltdogs baseball team and is working with the Lincoln Stars hockey team. They’ve been able to sell tickets through the app. They’ve talked with more than 150 teams during their research phase. With more than 15,000 minor league venues, Fanstreamm has a lot of potential teams and a $5 billion market to work with.

Notes: Fanstreamm hopes to take the headache of organizing, buying and getting paid back out of group ticketing. “It shouldn’t take 33 text messages, 12 emails and five phone calls to organize only to have four people not show up and you’re out $45.” More than 43 percent of tickets go unsold at an average minor league game. Fanstreamm aims to fix that through deals and easy organization. They plan on white labeling the platform for teams. Read more about Fanstreamm on SPN.

Fanstreamm pivoted from Turnstile Cards, which was created during a startup weekend and aimed to create digital baseball cards. Kristufek’s co-founder decided to part ways during NMotion.

 Screen Shot 2014-09-09 at 5.14.54 PM OneCanvas
Team: Stacy Carlson
Hometown: Lincoln

Twitter: @oneCanvasApp

Quick pitch: Graphics engine for digital scrapbooking and photo books. “All-in-one graphic design software.”

Traction: With monthly subscriptions as the main revenue driver, oneCanvas has already validated the idea before going into development. Potential customers include photographers, real estate agents and web design firms. Carlson said there isn’t a good mobile solution for digital scrapbooking—Photoshop is too complicated for most. There are more than 22 million digital scrapbookers in the U.S. and they spend $2.4 billion a year.

Notes: oneCanvas started out as DigiWidgets, a web customization program that won Jumpstart Lincoln. However, the DigiWidget teams, Carl Steffen and Stacy Carlson, split. Carlson, who has already had traction in the digital scrapbook space before, created oneCanvas. Steffen continues to run DigiWidgets and is involved in NMotion but did not present Tuesday.

Gottapixel, Carlson’s first business, started out as a hobby before becoming profitable with 50,000 users.

Asked about the trend of digital scrapbooking, she pointed to the leading brick and mortar scrapbook franchise going bankrupt this year. Why? The CEO said it was because of the shift to the web.

 Screen Shot 2014-09-09 at 5.14.26 PM Commissioner
Team: Kunwar Gill and Richard Bansel
Hometown: Toronto, Canada

Twitter: @CommissionerApp

Quick pitch: Analytics and player evaluation software for coaches and athletes.

Traction: Signed up 6,000 beta users in a week. Subscriptions run $10 a month. Obtained a Nebraska prototype grant to build the product.

Notes: Kids from 8 to 16 years old have the best chance at developing skills as a player, but club sport coaches are often too busy to give real feedback. Commissioner is a mobile app for coaches, parents, clubs and players to track progress on certain skills. Right now, Commissioner is focusing on youth soccer, since it’s the largest youth sport with an average of $5,000 spent per year, per player. Coaches can quickly evaluate players in real time, clubs can know who to call up to the next level and who needs work, parents can get feedback immediately and players can track their progress.

 Screen Shot 2014-09-09 at 5.14.33 PM Adolade
Team: Ryan Cooper
Hometown: Lincoln

Twitter: @Adolade

Quick pitch: Mobile rewards platform enabling brands and mobile developers to monetize in-app experiences.

Traction: Signed up his first customer, former Husker quarterback Taylor Martinez, who is using the ad/rewards platform on his new mobile game, Stupid Fast. The mobile ad market will be a $42 billion industry by 2017.

Notes: About 99 percent of developers find apps unsuccessful because they don’t retain users or can’t monetize. Within a month, only 40 percent of people still use it. After a year, only 4 percent still use it. Adolade hopes to move mobile ads forward by making them more effective through a moment-based approach that captures users in their most engaged times, like when they get a high score in a game. Advertisers can then offer a deal or sample product like sunglasses. More than 85 percent of people in a survey said they like that type of interaction more than a banner ad.

This is Cooper’s second startup. His first was a similar rewards program for golfers called Golf Status. Read more about Adolade on SPN.

 

Read more about the teams at NMotion’s blog.

This story is part of the AIM Archive

This story is part of the AIM Institute Archive on Silicon Prairie News. AIM gifted SPN to the Nebraska Journalism Trust in January 2023. Learn more about SPN’s origin »

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2 responses to “Seven teams pitch to 350+ people at NMotion’s demo day”

  1. […] Speaking of Startup Weekend: Fanstreamm, formerly Turnstile Cards, formerly Major Trading Cards, which won Startup Weekend Cedar Rapids, pitched to more than 350 people at NMotion Demo Day this week. Find coverage via Silicon Prairie News. […]