Do you run a local businesses that is doing well, despite the economic downturn? As the Cavalier Daily reports, the The Tayloe Murphy Center at the Darden School wants to hear from you. Starting April 1st, they will be accepting applications for the Tayloe Murphy Resilience Awards Competition with the aim of promoting “innovative and thought-leading entrepreneurs who know how to utilize unique strengths of the community even in a challenging economy.” Awards include a week-long executive education course at Darden and promotional opportunities.
Props to Darden for wanting to engage with the local startup scene. Of course, if you run a startup that is currently struggling, you are still out of luck. Cavalier Daily article here.
Search Mojo is a B2B-focused search engine marketing company. Like any good marketing firm, they handle the entire funnel process for lead generation – from pay-per-click marketing and search engine optimization to landing page creation, conversion tracking and analytics. Founded in 2005 by Janet Miller, a online marketing veteran, Search Mojo’s eight staff work out of their new office off the Downtown Mall behind the Lexis Nexis building (what is the name of that building?). Of course, per the rules of online marketing, their staff is very active in social media and can be found on Twitter here, here, here, here, here, here and here.
Ars Technica has a story up entitled Virginia puts schools on high-fiber diet with broadband funds. Tom Perriello announced in a press conference that Virginia K-12 schools will be getting more than twenty million dollars in federal funding in order to lay over 500 miles of new fiber optic internet cable. The new high speed connections with be coming to schools in the “southern part of the state” as well as several Appalachian counties surround Virginia Tech.
orderTopia is new on the scene – launched at the end of last year by Dan Epstein and Brian Williford. You may have already met Dan while eating Downtown – he’s also the owner of Eppies. They have a pretty ambitious goal – the re-think the whole point-of-sale systems and ordering processes of restaurants and retail stores.
Currently, new businesses have to invest in expensive touch-screen computers or complicated software (think QuickBooks) as well as purchase bar code scanners, computers etc. These systems are expensive to install, difficult to maintain and rarely integrate with a store’s other operations (like online ordering). orderTopia hopes to change all that by offering a cloud-based point-of-sale system that easily integrates with a merchants website as well as connects to customer’s social profiles. The cloud POS runs on cheap hardware (i.e. a laptop or iPhone) and maintenance and upgrades are handled automatically behind-the-scenes (picture the difference between purchasing Microsoft Outlook and using Gmail). And because the software already lives on the Internet, its an easy step to connect with customers where they hang out – Facebook, Twitter etc.
orderTopia is already up and running with several local merchants including Revolutionary Soup, Mellow Mushroom, O’Suzanna and more.
Hotelicopter began as VibeAgent, a Darden Incubator company started by MBA grads Adam Healey and Charles Seilheimer. The plan was to create a social hotel search engine based on user-generated hotel reviews and “vibe ratings” (i.e. romantic, adventurous, classy etc.). They raised 3 million dollars in funding at the end of 2008 and promptly moved in to some of the best office space on the Downtown Mall. In April 2009 they changed their name to “Hotelicopter” and launched a new website with an april fools marketing campaign that went viral and brought them national attention. The new focus of the website is to provide the largest selection of hotel search information by aggregating all the other travel search engines (orbitz, travelocity etc.).
The Central VA AMA (marketing association) is hosting a screening of Art & Copy this Friday night at the Paramount with a QA session with executive producer Kirk Souder afterwards. The film profiles some of the giants of advertising and copyright and has won several film festive awards – including Sundance and Toronto.
From the film’s official description:
ART & COPY is a powerful new film about advertising and inspiration. Directed by Doug Pray (SURFWISE, SCRATCH, HYPE!), it reveals the work and wisdom of some of the most influential advertising creatives of our time — people who’ve profoundly impacted our culture, yet are virtually unknown outside their industry. Exploding forth from advertising’s “creative revolution” of the 1960s, these artists and writers all brought a surprisingly rebellious spirit to their work in a business more often associated with mediocrity or manipulation: George Lois, Mary Wells, Dan Wieden, Lee Clow, Hal Riney and others featured in ART & COPY were responsible for “Just Do It,” “I Love NY,” “Where’s the Beef?,” “Got Milk,” “Think Different,” and brilliant campaigns for everything from cars to presidents. They managed to grab the attention of millions and truly move them. Visually interwoven with their stories, TV satellites are launched, billboards are erected, and the social and cultural impact of their ads are brought to light in this dynamic exploration of art, commerce, and human emotion.
Event details here.
Rowdy.com is a social networking and content site for Nascar fans. Yes, outside of the University and downtown Charlottesville, Nascar is really really big. In additional to providing blogs, forums, news and other social networking tools, they also produce a lot of their own original content – including videos and podcasts. Rowdy is run by Rusty Speidel for the Street and Smith Company with offices downtown on Water St. From the website:
Rowdy.com is the place NASCAR fans can express themselves, meet others and can stay current on the sport’s hot issues and talk about racing…or anything else. We aspire to be a next-generation social networking site where we make it easy for fans to express themselves on what they love most–racing, and most importantly, be themselves. Fans can blog, show off their favorite photos and videos, and of course, listen to Rowdy’s take on the sport, either via podcast or streamed on the site.
If you are part of an internet company, design / development firm or startup project in Charlottesville, we’d love to hear from you. The goal of First Wednesdays is to grow the internet / startup community in town by highlighting companies and hosting networking events. Help us find you! Email me at daniel [at] cloudbrain.com or just leave a comment here.
Cloudbrain is a digital media software company. Their flagship product, TidySongs, uses an online database to automatically organize and clean up your iTunes songs. Cloudbrain has seven employees working out of their office above Christian’s on the Downtown Mall and does all development, sales and marketing in house. They are also responsible for several local projects including CurbPlaces and FirstWednesdays (is it ok that I’m talking in third person) and the social media projects CollegeRuled and SaveTheSongs.org.
Follow Cloudbrain on Twitter here.
I’m upgrading the Wordpress theme. Almost done…
Hi, I'm Daniel Strickland. I run