Wakeup & Startup
“More often than not those who work in restaurants make excellent salesman (and women), but when the tables are turned do they also make excellent customers?”
Momentum Blog
Jan122012
Nov232011
Wakeup & Startup
Pomegranate Studios hosted the second Wakeup & Startup Wednesday morning at GRid70.
Wakeup & Startup is a morning networking event that occurs bi-monthly and is completely free. The goal is to create an open network targeting startup conversation. The event looks a little something like this:
Nov092011
Wakeup & Startup
Pomegranate Studios hosted West Michigan’s first Wakeup & Startup at the GRid70 Café Wednesday. The group of 25 met from 7:30 to 9am and was led by Amanda Chocko, Program Director of Pomegranate Studios and Momentum, and Laura Pecherski, the Sales and Marketing Director of Zipments.
Nov022011
Momentum 2012
Planning is in full swing for Momentum 2012. Applications will be open in the Spring. In the meantime, stay connected by checking out other startup focused events…
Jul262011
A chat with Jason Pliml, founder of Mock Draft Central
Rounding out the 2011 Momentum Speaker Dinner series was Jason Pliml, founder and former owner of Mock Draft Central.
Jason has seen it all – turning his passion (fantasy sports) into an idea, raising money, selling his product and eventually his company. While he could have told us about any of those events, he didn’t. Instead, he talked about processes and finances. I know…boring, right?
Wrong. Managing finances and creating processes around startup chaos is the dirty work. It’s not sexy – but necessary to growth and success. Here are a few pointers from Jason:
Finances, Finances, Finances
Constantly keep track of your finances. In fact, as a founder you should be keeping track of your money – not someone else in your organization. Hire an accountant/bookkeeper but always be the one in charge of your expenses. This way, you can see what’s going in and out. Frequently compare your budget numbers and your actuals.
Jul112011
Sage Advice-Lessons from a Serial Entrepreneur
Can anyone believe that Demo Day approaching? I know – me either. The event is on July 28th at GVSU’s Loosemore Auditorium and from what I hear, the guest list will include local entrepreneurs, investors and of course, the Momentum teams. I just registered last week so if you haven’t done that yet, you should.
Last Wednesday, Momentum had Brad MacLean, CEO of Creative Byline (founded in 2008) in to share his experiences in fundraising, finding product-market fit and lessons learned over the years.
Creative Byline is a site that connects book publishers with writers. This Grand Angels-backed company is Brad’s seventh venture that started like most great ideas – from experience. Brad’s wife wrote a children’s book and went through the process of finding a publisher for her book. Brad saw an opportunity for a better and easier way to do this.
Jun282011
Startups: Always changing, but so much stays the same
Wednesday night, Momentum teams and guests were audience to an interview between Rick DeVos, ArtPrize founder and his grandfather, Rich DeVos.
You probably know Rich as co-founder of Amway, a company with massive global success. You probably also know him as the owner of the Orlando Magic or for his family’s generous contributions throughout West Michigan.
What you may not know is that Rich and his friend Jay Van Andel (Amway’s other co-founder) had many ventures before Amway. Throughout the course of his interview at Wednesday night’s speaker dinner, we heard about startups around health food, toys, broadcasting and even ping pong tables. Clearly, they were born to innovate.
Rich shared stories from each venture and what he & Jay learned in the process. This was a huge contribution to Momentum. Why? Because founders never hear this part of the story in the startup world – the part that involves struggle or even (gasp) failure. It reminds me of Eric Ries’ description of tech companies in the movies (like The Social Network): Act One is a brilliant idea on a napkin and some coding, Act Two is a photo montage of activity (usually not more than 5 minutes of actual work) and Act Three shows the now massively successful company worth billions fighting over who owns what. Notice how all the hard work, daily questioning and emotional roller coaster is omitted. Rich shared Act 2 of his startups with us.
Jun252011
Converati-Getting Going
By cofounder, Seth Samuels
Propping up a startup is no easy task. All too often it seems folks talk about going from idea to IPO, skipping over the trials and tribulations that make up a majority of the journey. Well I’m experience them first hand has I progress Converati- my love for the last year and a half that started as research and matured into a product that kept me up at night.
Since being accepted into the Momentum seed accelerator program, I’ve learned and experienced so much on multiple fronts, from networking to biz dev to pitching+selling to team management to trust, and even the constant need for balance (probably the toughest to achieve of them all!). There have undoubtedly been a fair share of times where things seem just too difficult and too much adds up into what becomes a frustrating mass of insurmountable challenge, and yet one just keeps going, working (smarter) towards that light, that vision, that belief.
Jun252011
Chexting Along
By cofounder, Jeff Bell
The Chext team is really proud and excited to be a part of the Momentum 2011 class of companies. Chext is a financial awareness platform for the text generation. With the popularity of debit cards and online banking, most of us have stopped tracking our spending and opted instead to just log in to our bank and check our balance. The problem is that since we aren’t proactively tracking our spending, we lose track of over $2300.00 a year from our accounts! With our busy lifestyles, checkbook registers just don’t cut it, are inconvenient, and they don’t give us the awareness that’s necessary today.
Jun202011
Momentum/Aimwest Meetup recap
by Laura Percherski
One constant in Momentum over the past three years is the AimWest Night where each of the teams give their first pitch to a large audience since the program’s kickoff. This night serves as a near halfway point before Demo Day to show what they have learned about their business and perhaps more importantly, their customers.
AimWest hosted these presentations at WMU’s downtown location last Wednesday.
I wanted to give those who couldn’t attend a summary of each team’s presentation. If you haven’t had a chance to talk with the Momentum teams yet, you should check out their video introductions from Startup Stories.