Groundwork Labs http://groundworklabs.com Official site of Groundwork Labs Fri, 17 May 2013 18:23:04 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v= New Groundwork Teams http://groundworklabs.com/welcome-new-groundworkers-2/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=welcome-new-groundworkers-2 http://groundworklabs.com/welcome-new-groundworkers-2/#comments Tue, 07 May 2013 17:55:16 +0000 John http://groundworklabs.com/?p=1103 We’ve had five new teams start at Groundwork in the last few weeks: Dibs Rewards Dibs helps small businesses build their customer list, publish revenue-generating promotions and keep the cash. Merchants receive payment from their promotions immediately and directly, so they never have to run another daily deal. FokusLabs FokusLabs is developing a small device to help [...]

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]]> We’ve had five new teams start at Groundwork in the last few weeks:

Dibs Rewards

Dibs helps small businesses build their customer list, publish revenue-generating promotions and keep the cash. Merchants receive payment from their promotions immediately and directly, so they never have to run another daily deal.

FokusLabs

FokusLabs is developing a small device to help increase the focus and attention of children and adults with Autism and ADHD.

groundfloor.us

 

SnapYeti

SnapYeti is a fun, free place to win cash, prizes and awesome discounts on the things you love by participating in weekly photo contests.

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]]> http://groundworklabs.com/welcome-new-groundworkers-2/feed/ 0 NCCU’s team selected for Underground Summer http://groundworklabs.com/nccus-team-selected-for-underground-summer/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=nccus-team-selected-for-underground-summer http://groundworklabs.com/nccus-team-selected-for-underground-summer/#comments Mon, 06 May 2013 17:28:07 +0000 John http://groundworklabs.com/?p=1152 The latest team to join our Underground Summer program is Ideal Serendipity Devices (Dawda Jennah) from North Carolina Central’s Eagles Venture Challenge.   Dawda has patent pending technology that dramatically improves the efficiency of inventory management at retail stores. Underground Summer begins May 20 and will bring winning teams from Duke, North Carolina Central, North Carolina State, and UNC-Chapel Hill into the Groundwork Labs program alongside [...]

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]]> The latest team to join our Underground Summer program is Ideal Serendipity Devices (Dawda Jennah) from North Carolina Central’s Eagles Venture Challenge.   Dawda has patent pending technology that dramatically improves the efficiency of inventory management at retail stores.

Underground Summer begins May 20 and will bring winning teams from Duke, North Carolina Central, North Carolina State, and UNC-Chapel Hill into the Groundwork Labs program alongside our current teams.

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]]> http://groundworklabs.com/nccus-team-selected-for-underground-summer/feed/ 0 NCSU eGames Summer Underground Winners http://groundworklabs.com/ncsu-egames-summer-underground-winners/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=ncsu-egames-summer-underground-winners http://groundworklabs.com/ncsu-egames-summer-underground-winners/#comments Tue, 30 Apr 2013 12:59:51 +0000 John http://groundworklabs.com/?p=1142 Yesterday at North Carolina State’s eGames competition we announced the two latest teams who will be joining our Summer Underground Program – Wolf Reflex (John Baker, Evan Connell, and Kyle Lunsford) and Soutenu Dancewear (Suzanne Matthews).  Wolf Reflex is building an ultrasonic proximity system that will make motorcycling safer.  Soutenu is creating a new line of [...]

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]]> IMG_20130429_162408_244Yesterday at North Carolina State’s eGames competition we announced the two latest teams who will be joining our Summer Underground Program – Wolf Reflex (John Baker, Evan Connell, and Kyle Lunsford) and Soutenu Dancewear (Suzanne Matthews).  Wolf Reflex is building an ultrasonic proximity system that will make motorcycling safer.  Soutenu is creating a new line of dancewear that incorporates ankle support into the fabric.

Summer Underground begins May 20 and will bring winning teams from Duke, North Carolina Central, North Carolina State, and UNC-Chapel Hill into the Groundwork Labs program alongside of our current teams.

 

S.

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]]> http://groundworklabs.com/ncsu-egames-summer-underground-winners/feed/ 0 Three Winners at Carolina Challenge http://groundworklabs.com/three-winners-at-carolina-challenge/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=three-winners-at-carolina-challenge http://groundworklabs.com/three-winners-at-carolina-challenge/#comments Fri, 05 Apr 2013 13:58:23 +0000 John http://groundworklabs.com/?p=1119 Instead of selecting just one team from the Carolina Challenge for Summer Underground, we wound up picking two.  You can say I’m indecisivve or you can say it was just because I’m a UNC guy, but there were some great teams in the competition and if we wind up being a little crowded this summer, [...]

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]]> OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAInstead of selecting just one team from the Carolina Challenge for Summer Underground, we wound up picking two.  You can say I’m indecisivve or you can say it was just because I’m a UNC guy, but there were some great teams in the competition and if we wind up being a little crowded this summer, well, the more the merrier.  The two winning teams are GoPhish (Winston Howes, Ian Howes, Jackson Reeves, Jordan Reeves, and Ben Clark) and Cellbreaker (Jon Colgan, Christy Colgan, and Mike Burroughs).

We’ll be picking teams from Duke, NCCU, and NCSU in the coming weeks.

photo 1

And, to top it off, one of our current Groundwork Labs teams, Jobbertunity (Amy Vaduthalakuzh, Ameya Kulkarni, and Michael Schmidt ) took home the third prize of $1,000 in the Faculty/Staff/Alumni category.
Congratulations to all!

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]]> http://groundworklabs.com/three-winners-at-carolina-challenge/feed/ 0 Underground Summer 2013 – First Pick Tonight http://groundworklabs.com/underground-summer-2013-first-pick-tonight/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=underground-summer-2013-first-pick-tonight http://groundworklabs.com/underground-summer-2013-first-pick-tonight/#comments Thu, 04 Apr 2013 14:05:29 +0000 John http://groundworklabs.com/?p=1112 Underground Summer is an opportunity for student-led entrepreneurial teams to get the full Groundwork Labs experience this summer.  We are selecting teams from the business plan competitions at Duke, UNC, NCCU, and NCSU. We will be making our first selection tonight at UNC’s Carolina Challenge.

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]]> cc gl ticketUnderground Summer is an opportunity for student-led entrepreneurial teams to get the full Groundwork Labs experience this summer.  We are selecting teams from the business plan competitions at Duke, UNC, NCCU, and NCSU.

We will be making our first selection tonight at UNC’s Carolina Challenge.

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]]> http://groundworklabs.com/underground-summer-2013-first-pick-tonight/feed/ 0 Spinouts from Groundwork Labs http://groundworklabs.com/spinouts-from-groundwork-labs/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=spinouts-from-groundwork-labs http://groundworklabs.com/spinouts-from-groundwork-labs/#comments Wed, 13 Mar 2013 13:10:20 +0000 John http://groundworklabs.com/?p=1096 Not every idea and team that come through Groundwork Labs is successful, but sometimes even those outcomes wind up with happy endings that add to the Triangle’s startup ecosystem. I had a conversation yesterday with Mark Kelly, co-founder of Taggs, one of the new Triangle Startup Factory companies, and I asked him to share his [...]

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]]> Not every idea and team that come through Groundwork Labs is successful, but sometimes even those outcomes wind up with happy endings that add to the Triangle’s startup ecosystem.

I had a conversation yesterday with Mark Kelly, co-founder of Taggs, one of the new Triangle Startup Factory companies, and I asked him to share his story…

A Story of Startups Spinning out of Groundwork Labs

Mark Kelley
Taggs

 

In April 2012, the Wanderful mobile app team found its way to Groundwork Labs after a successful finish at Triangle Startup Weekend. The Wanderful mobile app project ultimately fizzled when we couldn’t identify a clear path to revenue, but Groundwork Labs gave us the opportunity to build, test, and validate. Though we eventually abandoned the project, Groundwork Labs was the catalyst that brought five local entrepreneurs together and created lasting relationships that led to successful startup spinoffs.

The Back Story

Wanderful built a mobile application and website that aggregates historical data from local sources like OpenDurham and TriangleWiki. The app presents the data to mobile users who can freely explore the Durham history and architecture around them.

Working with the Durham Arts Council, OpenDurham, and the Museum of Durham History, the team officially launched the mobile application as a sponsor of Durham’s 38th Centerfest Arts Festival. The launch was successful in that the technology was solid. A couple hundred people at Centerfest downloaded and used the application for the weekend event. But the team realized there wasn’t a clear path to revenue. We couldn’t engineer a compelling pivot, so we decided to move on.

New Startups Formed

Through our experience working together in Groundwork Labs, the teammates of Wanderful went on to form or accelerate other startups with greater economic potential than Wanderful.

  • Mark Kelley and Norm Santos teamed up to accelerate Taggs Social Image Analytics (http://taggs.co), which is currently in Triangle Startup Factory.
  • Todd Mosier and Aaron Averill joined forces to grow ZoneFiveSoftware.com, which successfully serves tens of thousands of fitness buffs worldwide with Sporttracks.
  • Carl Licata left his full-time job to become a freelance developer under his own entity the Friendly Pixel Co.

The former Wanderful team continues to keep close contact. It was Groundwork Labs that gave us the space, time, and ability to come together and form relationships that led us to build or grow companies in the Triangle.

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]]> http://groundworklabs.com/spinouts-from-groundwork-labs/feed/ 0 Just your average day in the Labs http://groundworklabs.com/just-your-average-day-in-the-labs/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=just-your-average-day-in-the-labs http://groundworklabs.com/just-your-average-day-in-the-labs/#comments Fri, 01 Mar 2013 20:46:47 +0000 John http://groundworklabs.com/?p=1083 After starting the day with some hard work, we enjoyed a couple diversions around lunchtime… First, we take a little BP over at the DBAP Then, a little poker – we are testing Splitmo’s new Poker Night app for Rob and Phil… And after lunch, we get back to being serious – Idea Fund Partners’ [...]

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]]> After starting the day with some hard work, we enjoyed a couple diversions around lunchtime…

First, we take a little BP over at the DBAP

BP at DBAP

John leads off…

2013-03-01_11-07-02_432

Rob up next

2013-03-01_11-08-29_386

Kristian bats third

Then, a little poker – we are testing Splitmo’s new Poker Night app for Rob and Phil…

2013-03-01_12-33-53_582

And after lunch, we get back to being serious – Idea Fund Partners’ Lister Delgado talks about lessons learned while fund raising…

2013-03-01_13-17-19_605

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]]> http://groundworklabs.com/just-your-average-day-in-the-labs/feed/ 0 New Groundwork Teams http://groundworklabs.com/new-groundwork-teams/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=new-groundwork-teams http://groundworklabs.com/new-groundwork-teams/#comments Fri, 22 Feb 2013 17:32:59 +0000 John http://groundworklabs.com/?p=1068 Once again, we have been tardy updating the blog and welcoming the new teams who have joined in the last couple months… Dancing E The goal of Dancing E is to create a knowledge sharing culture within an organization, and to make it stick. We are building a technology-agnostic platform around a set of knowledge [...]

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]]> Once again, we have been tardy updating the blog and welcoming the new teams who have joined in the last couple months…

Dancing E

The goal of Dancing E is to create a knowledge sharing culture within an organization, and to make it stick.

We are building a technology-agnostic platform around a set of knowledge sharing best practices used by 1,000 high-tech service companies. Our goal is to simplify this, open source the content, and make it available and accessible to other organizations.

Kiynetic

Kiynetic is a cloud-based service management, collaboration, messaging and e-commerce platform for the watch industry. It allows the customer, jewelry store, manufacturers and Watchmaker/technician to collaborate in real time.

Jobbertunity

Jobbertunity is a complete job search management toolkit – think of it as your own personal assistant for all things related to job–search. From prioritizing target companies, to tracking contacts and jobs, to reminding you about follow–ups, Jobbertunity helps you get organized, and land that dream job.

Context Clarity

ContextClarity is a software platform targeted at increasing the fundraising efficiency of university development offices. We provide these offices with a mechanism to monetize both previously unsolicited wealthy individuals and a broader portion of the school’s alumni donor base.

Synstreams

Synstreamms builds applications based on powerful “pattern-of-life” technologies.  These technologies learn targeted behaviors and detect changes in those behaviors indicative of specific events.  The first application is for a mobile app that can be used to prevent texting while driving.

TimeGrab

TimeGrab is the Nike+ for productivity. We help individuals and teams achieve more, faster.

 

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]]> http://groundworklabs.com/new-groundwork-teams/feed/ 0 Catching up With Gema Touch http://groundworklabs.com/gema-touch/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=gema-touch http://groundworklabs.com/gema-touch/#comments Tue, 19 Feb 2013 20:57:09 +0000 John http://groundworklabs.com/?p=1001 Gema Touch was one of the very early Groundwork Labs teams back in March of 2012.  Gema Touch enables mobile communication capabilities with any printed surface via a proprietary touch sensitive RFID tag.  Gema Touch revolutionizes mobile connectivity with nearly any surface in an easy to use and affordable format.Shortly after joining Groundwork they won [...]

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]]> Gema Touch was one of the very early Groundwork Labs teams back in March of 2012.  Gema Touch enables mobile communication capabilities with any printed surface via a proprietary touch sensitive RFID tag.  Gema Touch revolutionizes mobile connectivity with nearly any surface in an easy to use and affordable format.Shortly after joining Groundwork they won an NC IDEA grant which enabled them to produce their first prototypes and are now gaining momentum as they demonstrate their product to brands. In the second of a series of posts about Groundwork Labs alumni, co-founders Joanna Rogerson and Brent Fagg talked about where Gema Touch is today.

GL: Tell us something about your background before you co-founded Gema Touch.

We met in graduate school at NCSU and after graduation both went to work at RTI in the area of technology commercialization.   Our third team member, Jon Guida joined us after meeting Joanna while playing competitive beach volleyball

GL: How did you come up with the idea for Gema Touch?

All through grad school we were bouncing one idea after another off of each other. The idea around Gema Touch was poised to impact fields that we had been working in for the past few years together, so it was something we were very interested in and more importantly, at the time, could afford to build ourselves.

GL: What’s your ambition for NewCo?  Where do you see yourselves in 5 years?

In 5 years, we want to extend digital communication to everything we touch. It’s a big goal, but we think the mobile internet is bigger than the devices that fit in our pockets. Brands talk so much about cross-platform activity – from web, to mobile – well we want to extend that even further to physical in point of sale and point of service to really make an impact.

GL: What keeps you up at night?

Thinking about our answers for blog posts :)

GL: Tell us about your Groundwork Labs experience.  What has had the biggest impact on Gema Touch?

Groundworks Labs was the first big win for the company. No, there was no money changing hands but it was such an important validation point and it gave us a cohort to have some accountability to. I remember going to tell John Austin about the idea, after we had vetted it a bit, and he telling us we could join the lab. As he walked out to get a couple of keys for us, we literally hi-fived behind his back. (Yes, John, we did that). Now that we are ex-pats we can say that the biggest impact for us were two things: The first was John Austin – and no we are not just saying that because he asked us to respond to these questions. This is a people game and he was an awesome first connector. The second was the location, at a certain point entrepreneurs need to get out of their “garage” and be around other entrepreneurs. There was no better place than Groundworks and the Underground at ATC.

GL: What’s next for Gema Touch?

We have successfully built a beta version of the product, so now we can begin testing with customers. And of course fundraising!

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]]> http://groundworklabs.com/gema-touch/feed/ 0 Welcome New Groundworkers… http://groundworklabs.com/welcome-new-groundworkers/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=welcome-new-groundworkers http://groundworklabs.com/welcome-new-groundworkers/#comments Thu, 20 Dec 2012 20:06:13 +0000 John http://groundworklabs.com/?p=996 We have had a tremendous amount of help from members of the Triangle startup community  - mentors, speakers, advisors, and interns – and we are delighted to welcome a couple folks who are hanging around the Labs and providing more-than-the-average-share-of-advice to our companies… Brian Dally is contemplating his next big idea and while doing that [...]

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]]> We have had a tremendous amount of help from members of the Triangle startup community  - mentors, speakers, advisors, and interns – and we are delighted to welcome a couple folks who are hanging around the Labs and providing more-than-the-average-share-of-advice to our companies…

Brian Dally is contemplating his next big idea and while doing that is helping startups in the Triangle.  He was most recently a GM at bandwidth.com, where he created Republic Wireless, launching the brand onto a trajectory to become a $100+ million business.

Scott Moody recently re-located to the Triangle.  He founded AuthenTec in Melbourne, FL in 1998, took the company public, and then was acquired by Apple.  He has now founded First Talent Ventures and is advising startups throughout the Southeast and Rwanda.

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