Five minutes to share an idea, product, or business plan, followed by five minutes of audience questions and critique – that’s SunDown RunDown.
Mansfield’s first SunDown RunDown was held Wednesday evening at The Old Bag of Nails Pub on Lexington Avenue. Five entrepreneurs were selected prior to the event to present their products and ideas, and a packed room offered many opportunities for questions, input, advice, and most importantly, connections.
SunDown RunDown is a community event organized to bring together entrepreneurs, investors, and mentors, as well as other interested community members to make connections and encourage business growth and development.
SunDown RunDown events have been held in Akron, Columbus, New Albany, and now Mansfield. Each independent event is organized locally. Bob Cohen, CEO of Braintree Business Development Center, founded the Mansfield chapter of SunDown RunDown in 2013.
Of the evening’s five presenters, one is familiar to Richland Source readers: Tim Joyce. Joyce is the entrepreneur behind SimplyLaunch and was recently featured in Richland Source’s Entrepreneur Series “Eye on Entrepreneurs.”
Joyce presented SimplyLaunch, an easy to use web design tool that can be white labeled and rebranded for partner companies to sell as their own, to the SunDown RunDown crowd with much success.
Amanda Greenberg, Co-Founder and CEO of Baloonr, a social sharing site that is anonymous, explained the Baloonr concept to the crowd, “We provide a daily prompt called a launcher.”
“Users then create content based on that launcher, we’re starting with photos and short text. If you submit it, it becomes an official balloon,” continued Greenburg. “It’s randomly and anonymously shown to other users for review. They pump it up if they like it, pop it if they don’t. There are no comments, no opportunities for hateful, hurtful words, bullying, trolling.”
“If it gets pumped up enough times, it takes off and shows up on our homepage. You can then remove the anonymity feature and get credit for your balloon if you want. All visitors and users can share those through other social networks,” said Greenberg.
Greenberg partnered with Noah Bornstein, co-founder and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) on this venture. The pair expect Baloonr to launch publicly in June 2014, and are looking for beta testers and companies interested in testing their native advertising platform.
Brian Boyer, Managing Partner of Web Pyro, presented his firm’s intention of becoming a Google Glass Developer, which would mean development of Google Glass apps.
“Right now we are working very closely with Ohio State University,” said Boyer, stating that BioOhio has provided funding to purchase Google Glasses as well as access to researchers. Boyer went on to say that many researchers are interested in the development off Google Glass apps as a data collection tool.
“What I’m interested to find here tonight is someone interested in developing for commercial application,” said Boyer.
Steven Sims and Alex Lillo, Co-CEOs of Think Twice Studios, an independent video game design company, presented their video game concept Paper Nova. Paper Nova is a multi-platform, two-dimensional, side scrolling game.
“Currently we are at a midway juncture between full-time and part-time development of the game. We need the funds in order to go into full development; that’s what we are actually here today for,” said Sims.
Paper Nova will be available for Xbox One, Xbox 360, and PC use and is expected to be publicly released in the first quarter of 2015.
Paul Hugenberg III Co-Founder, President, and CEO of InfoGPS explained the InfoGPS concept.
“Our goal, our objective, is to tell you where your data’s at,” said Hugenberg.
Hugenberg explained that most companies focus on passwords, firewalls, and antivirus software to protect around data, but not the data itself because no one seems to know where exactly it is.
InfoGPS, according to Hugenberg, will tag and track data, in much the same way the Food and Drug Administration tracks and locates tainted beef or medication.
“If I’ve got a tainted bottle of Tylenol, I know exactly what batch it came out of and exactly how many people I sent that batch to,” said Hugenberg. “But if you go to your bank, or your hospital, or your doctor tomorrow and ask them the question, ‘Where is my name and social security number on your network?’…they don’t know.”
“InfoGPS wants to change that. We want to take a look at actually looking at data, interrogating your network, tagging your data, compartmentalizing and segmenting it based on whatever your desires are, so you can provide those controls in an appropriate fashion,” continued Hugenberg. “Put passwords where they need to be, target antivirus where it needs to be. Don’t spend all this money on a broad swipe of control; put it where it needs to go.”
The event attracted not only entrepreneurs and investors, but many locally recognized names: Marilyn John, Shelby Mayor and candidate for Richland County Commissioner; State Rep. candidate Don Bryant; Katie Mang, founder of the Akron Chapter of SunDown RunDown; and Keith Markley, candidate for Richland County Commissioner, among others.
Ontario High School students Donovan Ruckman, James Sheldon, and Nazar Tkachenko attended SunDown RunDown with hopes of becoming entrepreneurs themselves. Sheldon and Tkachenko are considering a line of camping gear, and Ruckman is interested in something more technologically oriented, although none of the students were inclined to divulge too many trade secrets just yet.
Door prizes were donated by LapKeyBoard and Figg’s Liquid Innovations. Figg’s Liquid Innovations also created the signature drinks for the event – SunDown RumDown and Figg’s on Fire. Be sure to watch RichlandSource.com for more information on these up and coming companies.
So we need to describe what we do. Well, we’re facilitators… maybe not… maybe mojo catalysts… no that’s too pretentious sounding. How about this? We are a community based group that organizes events to bring entrepreneurs, investors, mentors, and talent to talk, bounce ideas off of each other and maybe, just maybe, team up and make something happen in the business community.
Here’s what we are and what we do: We’re 100 percent independent. We promise to give you a fair shot at presenting and pitching your idea at our events. You just need to send them in and get scheduled. We want to continue to build a strong business community here in Central Ohio and getting more people together will help make that happen.
