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REPP Offering Free Profiles for Brandery Community!

REPP Offering Free Profiles for Brandery Community!

Have you ever wondered if your online date really was being truthful or if that person coming over to your house from Craigslist is a convicted felon? Well a Brandery graduate can help ease your worries, and for a limited time, it’s completely free!

REPP was founded in June 2012 and is located in Cincinnati, Ohio. It is the first and only company to allow users to create verified online profiles that are easily embedded and shareable, using a patent pending process.

Using your full name, date of birth and address, REPP develops personalized quizzes only you would know, searches national records to retrieve your criminal record, allows you to confirm and add your social media sites to your profile, and soon, will verify your profile photo. Once your profile is set, share it with others and ask to see their REPP.

REPP recently launched a beta version of their platform and is offering free
profiles to the Brandery community!

For more information, please visit www.myrepp.com or email [email protected]

Company Update: Pingage

COMPANY UPDATE: PINGAGE

As much as we enjoy interacting with our companies during the summer sessions, we especially love watching them succeed post-launch. One of our 2012 graduates, Pingage, has experienced tremendous success since Demo Day and is this week’s featured company!

Here is a blog post written by Pingage President and Co-Founder, Bob Gilbreath:

Celebrating our Launch with Stories and Client Success

We recently announced the official marketing launch of Pingage, our new Pinterest marketing optimization platform. After months of quietly toiling away, we are finally proclaiming to the world that we exist. For some companies this would be a cause for a major celebration and spawn a lavish party. Not at our office. We cracked a few Wohlschlaeger home-brewed Belgians, of course, but what we really celebrate is driving amazing results for our clients. Now we get to start celebrating those results more publicly—and attract companies that are ready for a completely new model of social media marketing.

Michael went back to the basics of how people use Pinterest. He started with great content, adapted it specifically for Pinterest, developed algorithms to time when pins are placed, tweaked landing pages to drive conversion, and created new analytics software that he used to gauge results from daily experiments and make improvements for the next day of pinning.

I joined Michael as co-founder, and we prepared to approach large brand marketers with our new product. We wanted to disrupt the current marketplace and unlock the vast potential of social media marketing by bringing two new benefits: First, we chose to develop a system that reduced the work of brand marketers. Second, we decided to only charge for results—just like a media buy. This combination leads to a powerful win-win loop: The more work we do for clients, the better the results, and the better the results, the more we grow together. Pingage is great service, powered by software, and paid as media. No one in the marketing space offers this combination.

In the past six months we have been quietly working with a handful of companies—ranging from e-commerce startups to billion-dollar CPG brands. Several brands and agencies have reached out to learn more. They are waking up to the possibilities of Pinterest, yet searching for a new model.

We find it incredibly exciting to sell something that solves this challenge, and scale up the technology that Michael developed in his basement to bring great content to millions of consumers’ lives each day. It’s also a blast to be able to add awesome members to our team and brilliant investors to our roster as we prove success.

On we go!

Bob Gilbreath, Pingage

We are extremely proud of the company’s success and look forward to its continued growth.

For more information on Pingage, please visit their website.

We're Hiring!

Several of our Brandery graduates have experienced tremendous success and are hoping to expand their teams! See below for a list of available positions:

ROADTRIPPERS

Designer

Roadtrippers is seeking a motivated and creative graphic/interactive design intern with strong skills in layout and typography, and UI.

You will be:
• Producing layout for promotional materials.
• Sharing your eye — and talent for — typography, layout, and color.
• Creating design standards and style guides
• Improving uniformity across our products and the web.

You must have:
• A strong portfolio (if it’s not online or if it’s ‘coming soon’ it doesn’t exist)
• Adobe superpowers
• The ability to work fast (process only matters at school, here it’s about product)
• A laid back vibe, and a sense of humor (but still know what hard work looks like)

Extra points for:
• Front-end dev experience: HTML, CSS, jQuery

Interested? Email Chelsea Koglmeier ([email protected]) with your resume and a link to your portfolio.

Software Engineer / Web Developer

Roadtrippers is looking for a talented and passionate Software Engineer to help us build solutions to fragmentation problems in road travel planning. You will be developing key features of our web application.

You must have:
• Software development experience. And be very, very good at it.
• Have experience with Rails, JavaScript, Python, Java, PHP, Node or other scripting languages.
• Versatile in development skills across client, server and database admin
• A good sense of humor
• Not have a ‘stick up your arse’

We use:
Ruby on Rails; Backbone.js; jQuery; CoffeeScript/JavaScript; MongoDB; PostgreSQL; CSS (SASS/SCSS); Google Maps; Cloud Computing (Engine Yard, S3 etc); Mac OS X and Linux; Cucumber, RSpec and Jasmine testing frameworks; Agile, scrum methodology

Bonus points for knowing:
Test driven development, MapReduce and in depth MongoDB/NoSQL, Geo / mapping development and APIs, Ruby on Rails hosting setup and management, iOS / Mobile, Single page web app development, Being a challenging foosball player

Interested? Email Chelsea Koglmeier ([email protected]) with your resume and why you’d be a good fit with this position.

REPP

Junior Web Developer

OVERVIEW
REPP (www.myREPP.com) is an online identity verification company located in Cincinnati, Ohio. REPP is a 2012 Brandery graduate and was named one of CNBC’s World’s Most Promising Companies and has been featured in The Huffington Post and Cincinnati Enquirer.

OPPORTUNITY
REPP is looking for a Junior Web Developer to help in the development and testing of our Identity Management and Background Check service platform.

Primary responsibilities would include:
• Troubleshooting bugs
• End user support
• Application testing
• HTML & CSS development
• JavaScript development on both the client and server side (Node.js)

Required Skills:
• At least 1-2 years experience using HTML & CSS
• At least 1-2 years experience using JavaScript
• Ability to work on a team
• Excellent interpersonal skills for end user support
• The desire and flexibility needed to work at a small startup
• Dependable, Organized, and Resourceful
• Eager to learn, quick to do, and self-directed

CONTACT [email protected] for more information!

OFFF Returns to Cincinnati

OFFF Logo

World-famous creative conference, OFFF, will return to Cincinnati on March 6 at the Aronoff Center for the Arts. The event, first held in Cincinnati in 2011, was founded in Barcelona and is recognized as being an innovative, informative, and inspiring design conference.

OFFF garnered such a positive response from attendees in 2011 that the organizers have, once again, named Cincinnati as the conference’s exclusive U.S. location. The event will include presentations from James Paterson, Onur Senturk, James Victore, Sara Blake, Jon Burgerman, Brendan Dawes, Ramon Escolá and Multitouch Barcelona. James Victore is best known for his animation visual effects work on movies, such as Dark Knight Rises and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

OFFF is a mecca for creative professionals, including designers, innovators, creative thinkers, and entrepreneurs. The conference exposes them, not only to high-quality curated content, but also to a network of peers, mentors, and potential business partners.

OFFF Cincy


The conference was held at the Contemporary Arts Center in 2011, but is being moved to the Aronoff Center to allow for more participants. This year’s conference will be available to approximately 400 attendees.

Don’t miss out on this awesome opportunity! Get your tickets now at cincinnatiarts.org!

2012 Grads In The News!

Brandery grads have been making waves in the startup world. Some videos were released by news stations this past week to highlight their achievements.

Impulcity is makes finding events in your area simple. The Impulcity team relocated to Cincy from Louisville to build and release their app. They have raised a strong seed round led by local firm Cincy Tech. Last week, Impulcity released their app to the apple store. You should go download it. Now.

“We take everything going on around town and we give you the best things to do. You can open the app and instantly find your favorite concerts, sporting events, nightlife, things to do with the family. The really cool thing is we let you see what’s going on everywhere… We want people to spend less time looking and more time doing the things they enjoy.”

- Hunter Hammdonds, CEO and Co-founder Impulcity



**********


FlightCar is reducing inefficiency in the airport car market by allowing people parking at an airport to rent their vehicles out to other travelers. FlightCar opened it’s first market in San Francisco on February 5th. In one week, they had over 100 rentals. The team didn’t put effort into marketing before their release. They knew the product would market itself- validated with some great press in a video piece by an ABC San Francisco affiliate.

“I think it’s a great idea. I talked to some people about it and they all said, ‘Yeah. Why didn’t somebody think of it earlier?’”


- Derek Broker, FlightCar customer

 

 

 

FlightCar, SocStock, and Impulcity Updates

More updates from our 2012 graduates! Below are some post-demo-day-developments from FlightCar, SocStock and Impulcity.


FlightCar (Co-founders Kevin Petrovic, Rujul Zaparde and Shri Ganeshram) relocated to San Francisco after Demo Day. Their site will be live on February 1st and their first site will be located at San Francisco International Airport (SFO). Later this week, they team will begin allowing people to list/rent cars on their platform. If you’re traveling to/from San Francisco soon, check out this awesome opportunity to save yourself some money.

SocStock (Founder Jay Finch) launched their online platform to a solid crowd at the Know Theater in Cincinnati. They generated a significant amount of excitement on both the small business and consumer ends. Over $50,000 in Socstock has been offered to the community to date.

Impulcity (co-founders Hunter Hammonds and Austin Cameron) are gearing up for their public launch. After raising a seed round shortly after demo day and completing a successful beta run, the team rebuilt their app to be faster and simpler. Impulcity will launch their own local event series, starting in Cincinnati, to promote their app and create awesome events. Check in for updates on their event series developments!

Some Accelerator History

Accelerators are now a staple in the tech startup scene. Want to know where it all started and what the ecosystem looks like now? Below outlines some key dates and statistics from the big accelerator programs. stats pulled from ">http://www.seed-db.com/accelerators

2005: Y Combinator was founded in Silicon Valley by Paul Graham. They have graduated over 466 companies and the average raise is $2,072,978 per company. Some of Y Combinators notable graduate companies include Airbnb, Dropbox, OMGPOP, and Reddit.

2006: Modeled off Y Combinator, Techstars was founded in Boulder, CO by David Cohen, Brad Feld, David Brown, and Jared Polis. Over the next 8 years, Techstars expands it’s programming to include accelerators in Boston, Seattle, NYC and San Antonio. Techstars Boulder (the first TechStars) has graduated 65 companies with an average raise of $1,715,846 per company.

2007: To kickstart the entrepreneurial scene in Europre, Seedcamp founded in London. In total seedcamp has graudated 72 companies with an average raise of $634,156 per company. Seedcamp has stepped forward as the “international accelerator” program and mentored companies from over 35 countries.

2010: As one of the first thematically based accelerators, Brandery founded in Cincinnati, OH with an emphasis on utilizing the marketing and branding talent of the region to accelerate startups. The co-founders included JB Kropp, Rob McDonald, Dave Knox and Brian Radke. The Brandery has graduated 26 companies with an average raise of $442,307 per company.

January 2011: As a way to bring together the accelerator programs across the country, Tech Stars launched the Global Accelerator Network in conjunction with Obama’s Startup America Partnership, linking 22 accelerator programs internationally. The GAN network has expanded to over 50 accelerators

May 2011/August 2012: DFJ Mercury, Tech Cocktail, The Kauffman Fellows and the Kellog School of Business ranked accelerators based off a variety of quantiative and qualitative program results. In their two studies, the aforementioned programs ranked in the Top 15, as well as i/o ventures, Kicklabs, Excelerate, AngelPad San Fran, AngelPad LA, 500 startups, DreamIt Ventures, NYC Seedstart, and Accelerator. Out of the 15 programs, only Excelerate Labs (Chicago) and The Brandery are midwest based programs.

Consumer marketing execs launch nonprofit startup accelerator

PRESS RELEASE

The Brandery will build businesses:


Consumer marketing execs launch nonprofit startup accelerator

CINCINNATI (July 19, 2010) – Cincinnati digital marketing executive David Knox and serial entrepreneur J.B. Kropp have teamed up to launch the region’s first startup company accelerator, a nonprofit organization called The Brandery that will package funding, mentoring and partnerships around local entrepreneurs to help grow consumer marketing businesses here.
Knox, brand manager of global branded entertainment at Procter & Gamble, and Kropp, vice president of channel development at Vitrue who also has been integral in launching six startup companies, joined with Taft Stettinius & Hollister attorney Rob McDonald to create The Brandery. The name, coined by Brandery mentor and P&G brand manager Bryan Radtke, was designed to convey both the consumer marketing/branding focus as well as the idea of generating new companies.
“The power of The Brandery is the collaboration between people and companies in our community,” says Knox. “Entrepreneurs will benefit from a wide range of talented people in consumer marketing here as well as globally.”
The Brandery is looking for consumer-facing businesses such as consumer Internet, media and entertainment companies, based on technology platforms.
The 12-week program will include a structured curriculum that includes seed investment, industry leader mentors and access to top talent in the industry.
About 30 mentors will participate, ranging from local experts such as Bob Gilbreath, Bridge Worldwide’s chief marketing strategist and Pete Blackshaw, executive vice-president of Nielsen Online Digital Strategic Services to high-profile entrepreneurs such as Wendy Lea, CEO of Silicon Valley startup Get Satisfaction. (Click here for a full list: http://brandery.org/mentors/)
Each company that is selected through a review process will receive a $20,000 grant in exchange for equity in the company. As part of their participation, each company also will receive brand identity guidance from leading agencies including LPK, Resource Interactive, Barefoot Proximity, Empower MediaMarketing and Ample.
Companies can begin applying immediately at Brandery.org. Deadline for submissions for this first session is Aug. 11, 2010. Five companies will be selected for the first session, which will begin in late August.
The $20,000 company grants will come from CincyTech, a public-private venture development group that invests in high-tech startup companies. CincyTech is using its Imagining Grant funds, which are aimed at growing companies to the point where they are investable. “Our hope is to create a whole new pipeline of startup companies that focus on consumer marketing, to complement our portfolio of companies in information technology, bioscience and advanced manufacturing,” said CincyTech President Bob Coy. “Our mission is to grow jobs in thriving industries.”
In addition to CincyTech and the five creative agencies, support is coming from the Haile/U.S. Bank Foundation, the Greater Cincinnati Foundation, and Xavier University’s Williams College of Business, which donated money for operating capital for The Brandery, a 501c3. The Brandery also is endorsed and supported by the Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber, Queen City Angels, Hamilton County Development Corp., and other local entrepreneurial organizations.
The Brandery was modeled after TechStars in Boulder, CO.; Y: Combinator in Silicon Valley; and Capital Factory in Austin, Texas; among others. However, while most of the others focus on scalable technology and Web-service startups, The Brandery is the first to focus exclusively on consumer marketing, Kropp said.
The strategy fits well with Cincinnati’s positioning as a national Consumer Marketing Hub through the Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber’s Agenda 360 regional action plan.
The Brandery will serve as the region’s incubator for consumer marketing companies as promised in the Agenda 360 Consumer Marketing Center and Ohio Hub of Innovation plans, said Rich Kiley, who is serving as head of the Consumer Marketing Center for the Chamber. “The Brandery is an innovative way to leverage the competencies uniquely available in this region,” said Jerry Kathman, CEO of LPK. “This will burnish our region’s reputation for brand-building excellence.”