Techstars Startup Week Louisville

Marketing a new startup can be one of the most challenging roles in a startup—especially when you are defining a new market or trying to displace a commonly-held practice. You are fighting an uphill battle against large incumbents or a major adversity to change — all with a tiny marketing budget. Working in venture capital and building marketing programs for many high-growth startups, Drew will share a handful of lessons around messaging & positioning, marketing, and “punching above your weight class” as you look to launch and grow your early-stage startup

From inception to exit, Venture First (VF), provides the financial leadership clients need to execute their ideas and move to the next stage, is pleased to announce Daniela Yoder, Vice President of CFO Services, will present at HCDC. Yoder will address valuation basics and insights. 
Yoder is a regular speaker at accelerators and investing conferences around the country. Daniela is very active in the Greater Cincinnati startup scene as an investor, an investment committee member in Connetic Ventures, a local VC group, and a GP in a teaching fund, Cherub Fund. 
Nationally, she is an active LP in Next Wave Impact Fund which invests in high growth, positive impact companies with diverse founding teams. Yoder also specializes in financial valuation and CFO leadership activities AND presently holds the CFO title for venture backed companies or companies looking to raise debt or equity capital. Daniela has considerable experience valuing companies in a variety of industries, including companies that have been newly backed by venture capital and private equity investments for mergers and acquisitions and employee stock option plans.
Ms. Yoder holds the designation of accredited senior appraiser (ASA) from the American Society of Appraisers. Before joining VF, Daniela was Sr. VP at Valuation Research, managing valuation projects for transaction advisory services and valuations for 409A purposes. She earned a Master of Business Administration degree from Xavier University in Cincinnati, and a bachelor’s degree in finance from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.

Matthew Helt is the Sr. Implementation Consultant on the Ecosystem Development team at Techstars. In addition to his startup community building work, Matthew is an advocate for mental health awareness and volunteers as an advisor for Open Labs, an organization seeking to end the stigma of mental illness. Having struggled with a lifetime of mental illness himself, he now speaks about the importance of founders seeking help right away to avoid the problems he encountered.

Keynote Talk from Isaac Saldana, Co-Founder of SendGrid.

Isaac Saldana, Co-founder of SendGrid—which was acquired by Twilio for $3 billion in an all-stock deal in October 2018—isn’t lounging on a beach. He’s helping other entrepreneurs create companies, using everything he learned by building SendGrid. And he’s returned to Techstars, the company that taught him how to build SendGrid, to do it.
Just months after SendGrid’s headline-grabbing exit, Isaac has a new job, as Chief Technology Officer for Techstars Studio, a new Techstars offering that will empower members of the Techstars worldwide network to rapidly envision, validate, and launch disruptive startups.

Believe it or not, everybody can learn something from David Bowie about entrepreneurship.  He was the consummate entrepreneur throughout his career, and like Buddy Holly the end of his career came way too early.
 
You’ll learn what actions and attitudes drove David to super-stardom and how you can mimic these to drive your own startup toward success. Let one of David Bowie’s biggest fans take you on a journey through the successful traits of David Bowie.

Must register for this event:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/exploring-the-sbirsttr-program-fueled-by-elevate-ventures-at-the-root-registration-76139767093

Known as "America's Seed Fund," the SBIR (Small Business Innovation Research) and STTR (Small Business Technology Transfer) programs provide competitive access to R&D funds to stimulate technological innovation by small businesses in the US. The program can help startups and existing small businesses, interested in or performing research, by providing access to grant funds to support proof of concept and prototype development in Phase I. If successfully proven, with full development support in Phase II, successful technologies could move into the commercial market.

This event will introduce you to the resources Indiana has to offer, give you tips on what agencies look for in successful proposals and supply you with the basics of the program's structure and how to determine if it's a good fit for you.

Lunch will be provided to those who register. Limited space available, please register early!

SPEAKERS:
Heidi Platt
Heidi C. Platt, a Chemical Engineer (Purdue University, 1988), is the Founder and President of Platinum Grants & Proposals, LLC, a company formed in 2007 that provides consulting services to businesses seeking SBIR/STTR grant funding. In the past 12 years, Platinum has helped clients develop approximately $66 million in grant applications.

Dr. Lisa Hoverman, PhD
Dr. Lisa Hoverman is a former academic researcher-turned small business owner in the federal funding niche. Dr. Hoverman is an excellent STEM writer, editor, & proposal/grant manager – all experiences honed as an academic. Dr. Hoverman’s clients include Fortune 50 Companies, International Societies, Medium and Small Businesses, and Startups. She supports these clients primarily in B2B, local, state, and federal grants and proposals. She has obtained over $2.5 B in funding for clients. Her success spans many highly-ranked scientific publications, B2B proposals, federal agency proposals, and importantly for today, SBIR/STTR proposals.

AGENDA:
12:00 - 12:10 pm – Arrival / Networking / Lunch
12:10 – Opening Remarks and Agenda Review – Kyle Keeney
12:10 - 12:45 pm – Heidi Platt
12:45 - 1:15 pm – Dr. Lisa Hoverman, PhD
1:15 - 1:20 pm – PTAC Overview
1:20 - 1:30 pm – Closing remarks/Final Q&A

Ceiling fans. Surface cleaners. It’s okay. We’ll pause to allow for that yawn. Those billions in annual sales come even as few consumers can name the brands they own. Alex will detail his comprehensive approach to marketing that infused each of these product lines with personality. Consider Big Ass Fans. Their embrace of brash branding through both paid and earned media cemented customer loyalty to the point that repeat business accounted for half of all orders in 2017, and that’s on top of new customers increasing nearly 40 percent annually over the prior five years. You’ll learn how to capture people’s attention and teach them why your product excels. Not convinced? Just check the Facebook stats. Big Ass Fans is followed by more than three times as many people as industry giant Hunter. 

After helping guide Big Ass Fans to a $500 million sale in late 2017, Alex co-founded Truman's to bring much-needed disruption to the cleaning products industry. Big household cleaning companies each offer dozens of products ... for just your bathroom. With endless scents and warning labels that read like prescription drug ads, cleaning products needed to change. That’s why Truman’s offers just four non-toxic cleaners and patented refill cartridges that eliminate single-use plastic bottles. With a clearly differentiated (and dramatically simplified) product. Alex has focused on contrasting the self-importance of the best known cleaning brands with an identity that’s fun and approachable. From quirky product names to unexpected customer touchpoints, Alex's brand strategy drew the interest of more than 10,000 consumers who signed up on Truman’s website months before the company started shipping in late February 2019. Along with an abundance of cleaning puns, Alex will share his technique for breathing life into product categories that need a fresh start.

There is a great deal of information out there about "customer discovery", but how can you gather the information you really need to move ahead (or not) with an idea.

This talk is about how to define true customer discovery, what the goals of it might be (how they radically differ by company type - B2B is very different from B2C), and what tools come in handy.

Believe it or not, you don’t need to be rich to start a company - You need to know how to keep your costs to a bare minimum until you have enough accomplished to get some friends and family or pre-seed money from an angel investor.  This is called bootstrapping.

During this session you will learn a handful of ideas on how to do just that. This presentation is for those thinking of starting a business, newbie’s who have recently started and don’t sleep at night wondering how they are going to make their passion come alive with little or no money in the bank, and for those further along seeing the cash they have raised disappearing faster than they had anticipated.  This event will also include time for the attendees to chime in with additional ideas on how to bootstrap and share with one another.

Stacey Wade is the CEO of Nimbus, a Louisville based creative agency who has worked with clients, such as, Toyota, Brown-Forman, and Papa John’s just to name a few.  Stacey leads by example and believes in cultivating an inclusive workplace.  Join this event to learn more about his entrepreneurial journey and the captivating work he is doing in Louisville, KY.

Scott Koloms is the President of FMS pbc, the first janitorial service in the world to earn B Corp certification, and the first company in Kentucky to register as a Public Benefit Corporation. He recently founded Canopy, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting and growing businesses that work to improve the lives of people, our planet, and the future while making a profit. Join this event to learn more about how FMS’ path to becoming a B-Corp and a Public Benefit Corporation led to the work to create the Canopy Certified Program here in Kentucky. You’ll learn the basics around B-Corps, PBCs and the Canopy Certified Program.