Founders Live Minneapolis (Nov 28th)

in #startup5 years ago

Founders Live is a startup community that's a combination of a message board and local networking/"pitch contest" events. I attended the Minneapolis one this evening, where five startups presented. They each get a 90-second presentation (many fail at this) and then 5 minutes of Q&A.

North Star Crickets is a cricket farm. The founder hopes to build connections with other farmers and supply chains, thereby becoming the ConAgra of cricket production for food. (At least, that's what I took away.)

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He says there aren't FDA regulations about raising or selling crickets for consumption, only requirements about how many insect parts may be in other food. I'm not sure I believe this is correct.

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Soundpruf is a web site that monitors what you listen to on a streaming service and give you insights like "you listened to more Finnish Death Metal than anyone else in Palo Alto, CA." Also it rewards both listeners and up-and-coming artists. I asked where the money came from and he said both "it's fremium, you have to pay to start getting rewards" and "affliate marketing revenue." I was very unclear what this actually meant, it sounds like "ads" to me.

The third pitch came from a company called Logistik Courier; this presenter I knew by name, it's Jacob Beasley who I'd met at the previous event. He's built far and away the best product of the bunch, because he has an actual customer driving the development. It's a SaaS platform four courier companies. Jacob touted his product's great visual accessibility (drivers can actually read the app, handles 4K displays for operations center.) He also talked about how the courier business is "medium-skill" and has *dis*economies of scale due to the need for personal training and management of couriers.

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The winner of the popular vote was Tavolo, an app that lets you select your order at the same time as you make a restaurant reservation. Your food isn't made ahead of time, but you can show it when you arrive at the restaurant to start the kitchen on it right away. This startup came out of Startup Weekend.

The theory here is "busy people" who do want to sit down rather than get delivery. I think this swimming against the tide; busy people will continue to get delivery, but people on dates won't use it.

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Oh, and you can rate your waiter who is now just delivering the food to your table, which I'm sure the waiters will love. The founders compared the app favorably against Uber Eats (they're not delivery) but ignored both OpenTable (who could actually do this if they wanted) and those restaurants who have a tablet for you to order from as competitors.

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The final presenter of the night was Fountane, which unapologetically says it leverages the cheap cost of Indian developers. But, they assure me, they have a secret sauce for only finding the best ones, which seems to consist of programming contests. (I think this identifies are particular type of programmer, certainly.)

They're also "investing" in their client base. They evaluate how good they feel the idea is and will take equity instead of cash for promising ideas or founders. Fountane was a winner in the Minnesota Super Bowl Host Committee's startup showcase.

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