Three Colorado founders and their small (or, in some cases, not yet existent) team are just starting to gain traction on the projects they've launched this year. Here is what they had to say about taking their concept through the initial startup process and about where they're headed:
Scrubber
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Founder Ryan Angilly's side project, Scrubber, has been on the shelf waiting to see the light since 2012. A series of events, including the rise of his pre-order funding platform Ramen, left the project in limbo. Over the past few weeks, he's polished up the social media monitoring platform. Think of it as a janitorial service for your digital history, he said. After scouring your connected feeds, Srubber presents you with a handy report card for action. Here's how Angilly took his Scrubber from an idea to launch:
Eventblimp
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Although it was founded in 2012, Eventblimp officially launched on June 10 this year. The four-person team is “breaking the routine and doing something different” in the social event discovery industry via five silos: finding, sharing, creating, publishing and promoting events. Founder, Chris Good, gave us the scoop:
The gap they fill: “Eventblimp fills gaps for both consumers and businesses. For event venues and promoters, they put a lot of effort into putting together events, but are not getting the information into the hands of interested consumers who are unaware. We want to bridge that gap. Additionally, we've found through talking with PR, social media and event management companies who create lots of events online for their clients that there's not a great online platform to manage all of the various tools available. We're going to bridge that gap for them as we're starting to demo a prototype with those potential customers as we speak.”
What they learned from the launch phase: “The biggest thing I've learned is build what customers ask for and iterate with them involved every step of the way. Through those conversations, we've been able to feel confident about where we're going and what we're trying to accomplish. We were able to learn about a tangential product through those conversations that we didn't realize was an opportunity until recently.”
What’s in store for them the rest of the year: “For 'Find', you're going to see better event categorization to make sure users are able to quickly find what they're interested in and clear out the noise. For 'Share', we're building in increased functionality to share events with friends and also implementing deep linking into the iOS app so users can jump between our web and mobile platforms seamlessly. For 'Create', we'll have an event creation tool that enables users to schedule and create events quickly and efficiently. For 'Publish', once an event is created, it will take only a few clicks to publish it to various social media and event management platforms. For 'Promote', if anyone wants to promote their event, they will be able to pay for advertising to get their event noticed on the map, a common request from customers.”
Zellebook
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After years of helping his wife run multiple salons and spas, founder Justin Roszelle spotted "a void for an easy-to-use software that could handle the things we needed to not only run her business, but to help increase revenue and promote growth."