Startup Competitors

In this episode, I talk with Carrie Griffith, Founder and CEO of Little Nugget, a baby photo app that helps moms personalize, organize, and treasure their favorite family moments. It allows parents to turn the mess of the photos they have of their kids on their camera roll into something meaningful that they can save longterm. The idea for Little Nugget came to Carrie when she tried to create a baby book for her daughter and how overwhelmed she was with the number of photos she had taken.

Carrie details the current status of the business, including the process she went through to meet Apple app store editors at the World Wide developer conference, and that it was an instrumental step in being featured as Apple’s “App of the Day” in the US. She also shares how that has impacted her business, both at the time of being featured and since. She is currently learning about fundraising and finding strategic angel investors which would accelerate the product roadmap to some milestones she would like to hit by the end of the year.

Topics in the Episode

Being featured on Apple’s “Meet the Developer”

Networking effect of marketing to moms

Benefits of joining an accelerator

Building a strategy to differentiate from direct competitors

How to obtain customer feedback

Most impactful groups she has been involved with

Transitioning from side hustle to full time

Where to find the app

Apple app store, search “Little Nugget”

For early Android access: littlenuggetco.com

Contact Information

@littlenuggetco

@Carriegriffith

Email: [email protected]

In this episode I talk with Christine McDonnell, Codelicious co-founder and CEO. Codelicious works to build confidence in educators and students in the classroom by providing instant access to full semester foundational skills-building computer science curriculum. The curriculum is focused on grades 3-8 that any educator can teach.

Many of them have not had experience in the subject of computer science, and may lack the skill set to instruct computer science. As a result, most curricula in this area is based on free options. Codelicious fills a void by delivering full semester, comprehensive skills-building curriculum and foundationally takes students through the journey of preparing them for a technology pathway.

Topics in this episode

Current status of computer science education in schools

The importance of understanding coding and computer science in preparation for jobs in technology

Common methodologies of teaching computer science. Static vs engaging models

Other options for accelerating computer science into the classroom

The rapid growth of new technology affects the classroom and curriculum

Codelicious is structured to engage students and develop problem-solving skills

Pivoting from a brick and mortar after-school model to a SaaS curriculum licensing model

Contact Info

Website: Codelicious.com

Email: [email protected]

In this episode, I talk with Josh Driver, the founder and CEO of Selfessl.ly, a web platform designed to become a virtual foundation for companies of all sizes to drip their toe in or level up their giving to the community or causes or charities they care about. Selfless.ly works to manage volunteer time off, employee and workplace giving, or any other type of interaction a company can provide, via grants, sponsorships, or donations. Selfless.ly records all of that and report to tell a good brand story.

Josh shares how Selfless.ly was the first company in Indiana to be both a B Corporation and a Domestic Benefit Corporation, and the strategy behind filing as such. Selfless.ly has an interface for companies and their employees, as well as about 150 nonprofit organizations who are able to self-onboard to the platform. And they are also currently in rapid development to finish their SaaS platform to make it easier for companies to self-onboard as well.

Topics In The Episode

Current status as a company

Company and employee experience on the platform

Creating a custom experience for big customers

Importance of bringing on a COO

Areas of focus as a B-Corp

Creating a pitch deck based on your market differentiation

Get in Touch

selfless.ly

Twitter

Instagram

LinkedIn

Facebook

In this episode, I talk with Dan Johnson of App Tool Werks, a shop to innovate, build, and market software services. They currently have three products in the app store, Flatzap, JobMe, and Call Deck, and two more products in development right now. App Tool Werks is a self-funded endeavor with 15 employees.

FlatZap is the flagship product of App Tool Werks, as it was the first commercially available product of the company. It is a photo management system, allowing you to capture, organize, and save images by location. Many customers of this product work in construction, and use it to take pictures of job sites to send back to their offices. In the future, they are looking to partner with other forums for other avenues of product integration. To learn more about FlatZap and their other products, visit their website here.

Topics In This Episode

Cultivating Product Ideas Internally versus Externally

Understanding product use based on the customers that use the product

Selling a product when a company may already have the technology in place

Learning who to sell to within a company

The importance of geolocation in niche products

Overcoming a leadership deficit once the company reaches the point of scalable growth

To Learn More

Flatzap.com

Apptoolwerks.com

In this episode, I talk with Ben Pidgeon, Executive Director of Vision Tech Partners, the largest angel investor network in Central Indiana. In the last year, (At the time of recording) they’ve deployed $2.6 million accross 8 transactions, with check sizes getting bigger. The network consists of approximately 110 investors that get to decide if they would like to invest in an opportunity, typically focused on life science and technology, with 11-30 angels participating per round.

Ben explains the investment process starting with a screening of about 300 companies per year. At any given time, there are about 20-30 companies on his agenda. The top six companies are then invited to a screening committee meeting, where they give a 20-minute pitch. At the end of that meeting, the investors rank the best opportunity, and that company gets an invitation to go on a roadshow across the state. From there, Vision Tech Partners are able to get a soft level interest amount, and the company enters the diligence phase where research and interviews are conducted. That information is then provided to investors and they then invest in the company.

Topics In This Episode

Information that is necessary for a pitch meeting

Difference between a top-down and bottom-up approach for valuation

How to show a competitive advantage and market differentiation

Most awkward moment in a pitch

Most impressive moment in a pitch

Success rate of companies as they move through the different steps of the investment process from screening to investment

Red flags of valuation versus revenue amounts

The Three H’s of building a team

To learn more

Visiontech-partners.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/VisionTechPartners/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/visiontechangel

Email: [email protected]

Subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, Stitcher, or Podchaser.

In this episode, I talk with David Feineman, co-founder of Flixation; an on-demand video editing platform. Users upload video footage, and Flixation then takes that footage and turns it into a completed video for the company, with the help of editors and a creative director on staff.

Flixation was really created as a side product out of their full standard production company. David’s mentor advised him and his co-founder to think of the product beat, meaning, the various different evolutions of the product and service over time, which lead to the start of Flixation. Now, with social media, video content is such an integral part of every part of any business. A company isn’t just doing 1-2 videos a year, they might be doing 100-200 videos per year, but their budgets aren’t increasing. So Flixation is able to streamline the process of creating more video.

Topics In This Episode

Creating a product to solve a need in the market

How they are different from their competitors

Importance of following the product beat

How social media has changed the industry

Having customer service be a pillar of a company

Future trends in video consumption and capture medium

Looking ahead to figure out how to incorporate automation in the product

Contact Info

Flixation.co