Software product development company RevUnit may be happily based in the South, but recently it’s been seeking its fortune out west.

In late April, the Bentonville, Ark.-based company acquired Teamvvork (pronounced “teamwork”), a Las Vegas-based digital marketing agency that served big-name clients like Steve Madden and Allegiant Air.

The deal came as something of a surprise to those who remember RevUnit CEO Joe Saumweber telling Arkansas Business back in 2013 that his company was targeting Dallas and St. Louis as high-growth markets. But Saumweber can explain: In 2014, after RevUnit acquired the Las Vegas-based firm SmashMetrics, one of the principals there, Seth Waite, took on the role of chief growth officer for RevUnit. Hence, when your chief growth officer lives and works in Las Vegas, opportunities for growth tend to present themselves there.

Joe Saumweber

“We still have strong commitments in St. Louis and Dallas, but Vegas has become a big potential market for us,” says Saumweber. “We love its proximity to the west coast—as people get priced out of those markets, they tend to move in. Zappos, for instance, has their headquarters there. That’s just the kind of company we look to serve.”

Founded in September 2012, the brainchild of Saumweber and Michael Paladino, RevUnit specializes in “workplace transformation,” that is, creating custom software for front-line employees of national and multinational companies, many of which are headquartered in the South or not far outside: Virgin Hotels (Miami), AutoZone (Memphis), Mary Kay Cosmetics (Addison, Texas), Purina (St. Louis), and its Bentonville neighbor, Walmart.

The great opportunity in his line of work, Saumweber posits, is that so many employees’ digital experiences lag behind customers’ digital experience.

“People have access to the best consumer digital experiences available when they search, shop or consider travel options,” he says. “But when they’re on the clock, this same population encounters tech that is easily eight to ten years behind the curve of their experiences as consumers. Interfaces are clunky, devices are low-performance, and the overall user experience is frustrating.”

The reason for the clunkiness is that, too often in the past, companies approached their software needs from an architectural standpoint: defining the structured solution that meets all the technical and operational requirements while optimizing performance and security. Getting everything to work, in other words. What set RevUnit apart is that they start from the point of usability.

“The first thing we do is gain empathy for those front-line employees who experience the software on a day-to-day basis,” Saumweber says. “It requires a lot of observation, talking with associates, shadowing. And we have to do that in multiple locations because it’s different market to market. Then it’s a few short days building a prototype of a solution so we can take it back to those same users to see how to make it better. Every organization is different, so solutions need to be customized. There’s no ‘off-the-shelf’ product.”

RevUnit also practices what it preaches, providing a positive culture for its 50-plus employees with twice yearly weeklong retreats and emotional intelligence training sessions, as well as an open feedback environment.

What’s especially exciting for Saumweber and Paladino—as well as RevUnit overall—is that this need for user-friendly software solutions cuts across so many industries.

“The fact is, the pace of technology is not going to slow down, so it’s incumbent upon us to build tech that is easier to adopt,” Saumweber says. “Transportation, healthcare, retail—every single industry is being touched by this right now. We operate across industries for that reason.

“We like to solve big, hairy problems for some of the world’s largest companies. And we’re good at what we do.”

The post Bentonville, Ark.-Based RevUnit Takes Chance With Las Vegas Acquisition appeared first on Startup Southerner.

Corey Boelkens has been boating since he was old enough to operate a boat—and diving for even longer. His first job was at a marina on Bull Shoals Lake in Arkansas. In other words, he knows a thing or two or 20 about boating.

“Ask anyone who has gone out on a boat and they have a story to tell about getting stranded,” he says. “Better yet, ask anyone who has gone boating socially and ask about how much time was wasted waiting around for people to show up or give updates on location.”

Those problems were the genesis for Little Rock, Arkansas-based RaftUp, a social app for the boating community that connects boaters to likeminded adventure seekers, local help and emergency assistance, and nearby businesses. (The name is actually a nautical term for those not in the know.) He founded the company in June 2015 with his wife, Erin, after they won second place at a Northwest Arkansas StartUp Weekend competition.

A boating app is probably best developed by someone with both boating and tech experience, and luckily, Boelkens has both. In the 90s, he was introduced to robotics while in high school and went on to earn a business information systems degree from the University of Arkansas. Before becoming an entrepreneur, he cut his teeth with tech jobs at large corporations.

“I believe that everything that I have been involved with since starting my first job at the age of 14 has shaped me into the entrepreneur I am today,” Boelkens says.

RaftUp is still in the early stage of starting up but is beginning to make consistent monthly revenue. Boelkens says the biggest opportunity is with RaftUp’s new 911 and Public Safety solution, which can help boaters in distress.

Boelkens credits the startup support in Arkansas for helping them get their business off the ground.

“We have received some really great new startup consulting, advisory, and training support from various Arkansas organizations like the Arkansas Small Business and Technology Development Center, The Venture Center, StartUp Junkies and Innovate Arkansas since our founding,” he says.

But, he adds, “There has been little to no interest or support from any Arkansas angel or investment group in funding an early stage company like ours.”

That hasn’t stopped Boelkens from planning for the future.

“I would like to see our company grow to and comfortably support 3-5 full-time resources within the next year and have one entire state piloting our 911 platform. We are on track to meet our current year revenue forecast with a strong demand for our solution.”

For Boelkens, the biggest sacrifice to starting and growing business has been to his healthy lifestyle.

“I have gained forty pounds in the last year and I sleep four to five hours a night and travel at least two to three days a week,” he says. “I am consistently challenged to find the right amount of time to focus effectively on work, self, and family while maintaining some level of mental health that at least borders on semi-crazy with a mild tolerance for being patient.”

For would-be entrepreneurs who are ready to start their own business, Boelkens has some easy advice:

“Buy the top five startup books on Amazon, read those books, mark them up, and start your business,” he says. “Find a mentor without ever expecting that person to invest a dime in your company. Lastly, build a business and not a pitch deck. Arkansas or most anywhere these days is like a dessert and funding is the water. Don’t go looking for a glass of water in a dessert without preparation or experience.”

The post #MyStartupStory: RaftUp Gives Boating Safety a High-Tech Edge appeared first on Startup Southerner.

This month in Arkansas is all about tech. Gov. Asa Hutchinson proclaimed it Techtober, and there’s a range of events on the calendar to help celebrate the state’s tech heritage as well as showcase the latest and greatest innovations developed in Arkansas. Founded last year, Techtober is a collaboration among Arkansas startups, schools and entrepreneurial supporters, including Innovate Arkansas, The Venture Center, even the Boy Scouts of America. We got in touch with John Chamberlin, the “head pumpkin-bot” behind Techtober, to find out more about what’s in store this month.

Who’s benefitting from Techtober? The entrepreneurs involved in Arkansas tech? The support organizations that support them? The general public? Investors interested in what’s going on in the state?

We think all of the above. First of all, it’s a fun way to look at, and link, all that is going on. It helps us feel that we are part of something larger and that others are filling holes in the ecosystem. It brings together the supporters and social connections of each organization into a larger collective effort. The result should be encouraging to entrepreneurs and investors and help advance the supporting organizations.

The greatest long-term result will be increased consciousness of the role of technology and entrepreneurship in Arkansas: past, present and future.

How interested is the general public in tech in Arkansas? And what purpose does it serve to better educate them? 

Arkansas has many people who are passionate about entrepreneurship, technology and research commercialization, but not enough. Without better and broader understanding we will miss opportunities, we will lack appropriate policies. With broader awareness of the options, our children will have greater choice in career and better economic prospects.

One example of success through understanding and forceful action is the Governor’s Computer Science Initiative and Computer Science Task Force. The private side of this began over a decade ago with the Arkansas STEM Coalition and others. Previous policy changes helped fill gaps in STEM teachers and institutions supporting project-based learning (UTeach, the East Initiative and Project Lead the Way, for examples). Gov. Hutchinson added strong political leadership and Arkansas became the first in the nation to have computer science classes in all high schools.

Are there a few events you could point to that are unique to Arkansas’ tech sector?

There are so many unique events: This is the third year of the Computer Science Leadership Summit and that is strongly linked to both the Arkansas STEM Coalition and the Governor’s computer science efforts. There is the Life Sciences Summit, building on research at the universities, particularly UAMS, and the startups associated with that research. Arkansas is not a huge name in Life Sciences, but we are the home of both NCTR, the only FDA lab outside the DC area, and MCBIOS, the third largest bioinformatics association. I like the fun events of the Arkansas Science Festival and the EAST Night Out events around the state where students show off projects that use technology to serve their communities. I also admire the effort and great results of Made by Few and Little Rock Tech Fest. Then there are the many events sponsored by the Venture Center, the Innovation Hub and Startup Junkie.

How would you describe Arkansas’ tech sector?

I think the overall theme of technology in Arkansas is solving real problems. This has been true since the 1950s and 1960s, for example in computing and biological science. The poultry industry grew through use of technologies such as optimal feed formulation and university research in nutrition and genetics. Trucking is big and one of the largest players, J.B. Hunt, got a boost from Hunt’s invention of the rice hull bailer to solve problems with chicken litter.

If you think of Financial Technology, Systematics (later Alltel and now FIS) began in Central Arkansas in 1968. Arkansas Systems (later ArkSys and now Euronet Software Services) began in 1975. Those companies have financial technology clients in over 70 countries. Acxiom also has many financial clients.

What about drawbacks of tech in Arkansas? What still needs work in order to make it a robust industry for the state? 

There is a growing ecosystem, with gaps. Various people are working to fill some of those. You can see the pathway from elementary school to university computer science and project-based learning from groups like EAST and the computer science initiative. We start to see research commercialization as one path to startups with companies like VIC Technology Venture Development, which began in Fayetteville on the university campus and now has branches on both coasts.

But perhaps the largest gap is communication. Communities, parents, students and businesses all could better understand how their futures are linked to the success of technology and entrepreneurship in the state.

The post Techtober Shining Spotlight on Arkansas’ Entrepreneurs and Innovators appeared first on Startup Southerner.

These past few weeks have been challenging for me, to say the least. My family and I experienced a house fire a few weeks ago. When it first happened, I tried to act as if I could still go on as usual because as a good friend of mine once said, “We don’t work from home, we work from Wi-Fi.” This means my work is wherever I am. Another reason I felt I could go on as normal is because my family is healthy and safe; and my home is not completely destroyed and is in the process of being restored. But you know what? About a week after the fire, it set in. That was a serious event and my life has been somewhat altered.

I was in the middle of setting up orders with vendors in preparation for a new product offering from My Color of Beauty. I was also busy with another side project: Mommying and More. These two were taking all of my energy and time. So, the house fire obviously threw a wrench in my whole game. The week after the fire as my family and I were settling into our temporary normal, I had to asses what was priority and how to move forward with it. I knew after assessing the situation, I had to press forward. Here are three ways I’m pushing past adversity.

1. Be honest with yourself and everyone else.

My workspace is at home on my kitchen table and sometimes at my desk in another room. Occasionally when I need a change in environment, I go to my nearest coffee shop. These are my comfort zones. At the moment, two of them are out of commission. Therefore, my “work” vibe has been thrown off. Yes, I work from Wi-Fi but I kick butt from home Wi-Fi. Right now it is hard to get acclimated to kicking butt from anywhere. I had to let my family know that I need space within our small hotel suite to do my thing. I had to let my partner/sister-in-law with Mommying and More know that I am off my game. I had to contact all of the My Color of Beauty vendors I had been speaking with a week prior to the fire that I needed to asses my situation and get back with them later. This seems simple but to me it just seemed like a failure to launch. I have been hard on myself and have had to often remind myself that this “thing” that happened to my family and me is not my fault.

2. Set up new expectations.

Upon getting real with myself and everyone else, I sat down with pen and paper to draw out a new plan to move forward with all of my new projects, which now includes restoring my home. While I had plans to have the new product for My Color of Beauty ready for sale in October and ship in November, my home is priority and I need it back in order to get this new product ready to launch. So, I pushed my launch back by a month to be realistic with what is now my circumstances. I also had to pull back on Mommying and More. I want to place more energy there but I physically and mentally cannot right now.

3. Keep working against the pressure – push forward.

While my family and I may be displaced for a short period of time and my startup is taking a hit to a new product launch’s timeline, I have to keep working. There is pressure and frankly it’s what motivates me to keep moving forward. If I had no pressure, my projects would probably never see the light of day. I believe every startup needs to face some adversity and pressure to have something to fight for and motivate everyone involved to want to win. Pressure can be healthy and challenging as well as help build character.

I am working to push past this minor setback and keep my head on my shoulders at the same time. By being honest with myself and others about what has happened to me and my family, setting new expectations and allowing the pressure to push me in a healthy way, I plan to come out on top. For anyone else facing any type of adversity, take it easy on yourself. Sometimes things happens that are out of your control. All you can do is adjust and push forward.

The post 3 Ways to Push Past Adversity appeared first on Startup Southerner.

I was exposed to racial and gender discrimination as a child growing up in Arkansas, but it wasn’t until I returned home after a decade in New York and Boston pursuing my post-secondary education that I realized that nothing has really changed in the South, regarding equality.

We, for the most part, live in segregated neighborhoods, go to segregated schools, attend segregated churches, shop at segregated grocery stores and work in segregated businesses. Race is not a “thing of the past;” it permeates every aspect of our society, and unfortunately, not as a beautiful celebration of diversity, but often as a catalyst for bias, whether conscious or unconscious.

Women, too, despite social advancements over the years, are still treated differently. That’s what leads to professional women hiding the fact that they have children when they’re working mothers, dressing “like men” to detract attention from themselves or staying silent when discrimination at work takes place.

All of the bias and discrimination, though, has got to stop. We need to make a change, and I believe it could start with entrepreneurship.

Entrepreneurship Could Be the Change We Need

When women and people of color are in roles of leadership, gender and racial inequities are not as persistent in those companies as in companies where white men dominate the leadership ranks. Making it to the top in a large corporate structure has mostly failed for minority candidates, including women, though—the percentage of female CEOs in the Fortune 500 dropped to 4% this year, down from a paltry 4.2% last year. A mere 5 of the Fortune 500 CEOs are African-American—yes, just a dismal 1%.

Entrepreneurship, then, is another option. If women and people of color can muster up the strength and creativity to found companies, drudging away in a cubicle to climb the corporate ladder will not be seen as the only option.

We have a representation problem, though. Women and minorities do not get funded! And if they don’t get funded, there’s very little chance of survival.

Only 7% of all venture capital-backed startups are women-led, and a whopping 87% of venture capital funding goes to Caucasian entrepreneurs — of all the firms that hold venture capital equity, 87% have Caucasian founders, 12% are Asian-owned firms, and a tiny 1% of firms are led by African-American founders. Latino-owned businesses are so rare they don’t make a blip on the charts. What’s it like to be a black female founder, though? I can’t even imagine, when only 0.2% of black female founders have ever raised money, and when they do raise, it’s at numbers far off-balanced from white males, the most funded group. On average, black female founders raise $36,000 in venture capital, while white males raise $1.3 million. No wonder we don’t see women or minorities at the top — they can’t even make it up the first rung.

Let’s Connect the Underrepresented to their Local Entrepreneurial Ecosystems

Entrepreneurs present at the Start Here Little Rock event for women and minority inclusion.

In Little Rock, we’re trying to build a model for entrepreneurship diversity and inclusion, and we call it the Start Here Initiative. I was pulled in a few months ago as a steering committee member by founder Steve Rice, who works with entrepreneurs every day in his role at the Venture Center, a technology innovation center in downtown Little Rock. Our vision is to improve the success of women and minority entrepreneurs in raising capital. We seek to fulfill that vision by engaging women and minority entrepreneurs and increasing their access to information, resources and training.

In short, you don’t see many women or people of color in the central entrepreneurial hubs in Little Rock. These spaces are mostly utilized by men, typically Caucasian men. If you do see women, they’re often white as well, like myself. We have a representation problem in the entrepreneurial ecosystem.

This past Saturday, though, at Start Here Little Rock’s first event we engaged more than 100 aspiring and current entrepreneurs, women and minorities looking to start or grow their businesses. The event was a show-and-tell-inspired gathering, in which successful minority and women entrepreneurs shared their advice and stories, and representatives from entrepreneurial support organizations in the community shared their programming information and networked with attendees for further information on how to take advantage of the resources available to them.

It was exceptional to see the morning entrepreneurs panel, in which we heard founding stories from eight successful founders who looked like people in the audience! A colleague of mine leaned over to me at the start of the panel and said, “For a second, I was confused, because I forgot this was a diversity-focused event. I was thinking, ‘Wait! Who’s representing the ‘white male perspective’?!’” We both chuckled, because it’s true — we’re used to tokenism when it comes to diversity. A panel that’s missing a woman or lacking non-white representation seems normal; but a panel missing a white male just seems unfathomable, to the point of confusion!

A Call to Action

Our communities cannot continue to operate on segregation, division and exclusivity of spaces and resources. The South has continually reinvented itself, from slavery to agriculture to manufacturing, to where we are now: Moving into the information age. But we also need to reinvent how we treat each other.

If we want to see diversity and inclusion, we need to change the face of entrepreneurship. Underrepresented groups need to start seeing themselves in local leadership, which means we need to support women and people of color in their ambitions. There are resources available that most aspiring minority and women entrepreneurs do not know exist.

This newly found information is the start of something important and necessary. On Twitter, one attendee, Quinyatta Mumford, conference chair for the Arkansas Public Health Association and president-elect of the Arkansas Board of Health Representatives, tweeted when she arrived at Start Here Little Rock that she was “here and ready to take in the information” for the “next step in this journey: entrepreneurship.” When she left, she signed out in great motivation:

If you are an entrepreneur who is looking to reignite your passion for your vision #STARTHERELR. I walked away today with a renewed hope.

— Q. Mumford (@IamSheandSheIs) August 27, 2016

That is the energy and drive we want to see in our community. I can’t wait to see what Ms. Mumford and other attendees do next from this first step.

The onus, though, is not only on underrepresented entrepreneurs to step up. I challenge every entrepreneur support organization out there to step up and proactively communicate with underrepresented communities. We had more than 300 registrants for our event, with very little promotion over a two-week period. The interest is there, but we need to educate and support each other, or else, we all stay disconnected and nothing changes.

Furthermore, it doesn’t end with organized support. If you’re an entrepreneur or startup advisor, make an effort to mentor young leaders with potential.

Whatever action you feel you can take, I implore you to take it. With every action, we take a step towards greater equality for all.

Feature image courtesy of Sakib Iqbal

The post How Entrepreneurship Could Change the Conversation on Inclusion appeared first on Startup Southerner.

While money may not be the root of all evil as one might suggest, the concept of currency and exchange of goods have roots in practically any society around the world.  Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that an accelerator program focused on disrupting such industry with global implications would attract an international cohort of companies, even in its inaugural run.

On August 3, the Clinton Presidential Center will host the VC FinTech Accelerator’s inaugural Global Investor Demo Day that will feature ten teams representing the depth and breath of the need for FinTech disruption, both in location and proposed solution. Powered by FIS, the 12-week program comes to a close as the companies present their businesses with an investor pitch to highlight traction to date for investors and the community.

“We are excited to showcase the significant traction these disruptive FinTech companies have made in our program,” said Lee Watson, president and CEO of The Venture Center. “The past 12 weeks have been intense, and these CEOs have made tremendous steps forward with going to market in the short time they’ve been at The Venture Center.”

The registration to the event has now closed, but the Venture Center has partnered with Arvest to bring a livestream of the event:

The featured teams are:

• Akouba: an online, end-to-end commercial loan platform that enables regulated financial institutions to lend money to small businesses simply, efficiently and profitably through an omni-channel experience.
• Bleu: a point-of-transaction network and universal payment gateway, powered by Bluetooth beacons, that enables all forms of payment and a mobile platform for customer loyalty and engagement.
• Dream Forward: a low-cost 401(k) retirement plan that uses new technology to boost the savings rate among middle- and low-income employees.
• Flutterwave: technology and infrastructure for seamlessly and securely processing payments, remittances and digital services across Africa.
• Fundseeder: a data and performance analytics platform for traders, designed to democratize and globalize the capital allocation process.
• Hexanika: an end-to-end solution for financial institutions to address data sourcing and reporting challenges for regulatory compliance.
• LumoXchange: a remittance marketplace to compare exchange rates in countries across the world and enable individuals to send online money using local FX rates at lower costs versus current providers.
• Mortgage Peer Network: a platform that enables analysis of a bank’s mortgage lending process by providing peer-based scoring and real-time customer feedback to improve processes and increase customer retention.
• Monotto: a personal finance solution that automates the process of saving and is built to increase the savings of millennials and grow with them as their needs change.
• PFITR: a BPVTM tool that provides bond market transparency and internal controls for the Bond Buyer, helping them to get better bond pricing and risk information. Koetting.

Demo Day in itself is a momentous occasion for any startup community, but the Venture Center and Little Rock have made a point to see a larger picture of what an entrepreneurial ecosystem could be for the ecosystem of the local economy and beyond.  Gov. Asa Hutchinson will be the keynote speaker for the afternoon, and in addition to investor pitches, the event will include economic development announcements, which will be revealed for the first time at the demo day. 

With their choice of venue and level of community involvement for this demo day, it’s encouraging to see Little Rock making a strategic move in making sure that FinTech as well as the entire entrepreneurial community has a positive relationship with the community-at-large moving forward.

Photo provided by the Venture Center

The post Why We Are Excited For VC FinTech Global Investor Demo Day appeared first on Startup Southerner.

Carol Reeves heads up the entrepreneurship program at the University of Arkansas’ Sam Walton School of Business in Fayetteville, Arkansas. When Fortune named her one of the 10 most influential women in entrepreneurship in 2011, the write-up compared her to a winning football coach (in the South, that should really resonate with people). So it’s no wonder, then, that the University of Arkansas is a great place to launch a startup.

The program, which boasts both graduate and MBA tracks, has launched many successful student-led startups, including BiologicsMD, which is developing a drug to fight osteoporosis, and Cyclewood Solutions, which markets sustainable alternatives to plastic products to consumer and business customers. In fact, since 2009, Arkansas students have launched 18 high-growth startups—in class. In the last decade, students have raised $45 million in funding and grants, and they have won more than $2.3 million in cash prizes during business plan competitions. Nationally, the school has won 20 national business plan competitions, two times more than the closest competitor. Its latest success story is VivImmune, a biotech company that is developing immunotherapy for bladder cancer. In April, the company, along with two other University of Arkansas startups, swept the 2016 Donald W. Reynolds Governor’s Cup Collegiate Business Plan Competition. Altogether, the three company walked away with $57,000.

So what’s the secret? Many say it’s the coach herself. Reeves,associate vice provost for entrepreneurship, is said to have an uncanny ability to match students with different skill sets to create so-called entrepreneurial dream teams. That was the case with BiologicsMD, whose founders met in one of Reeves’ class.

The school also helps plant the startup bug into non-business-minded students with the graduate certificate in entrepreneurship, which is open to all graduate students from any discipline. The MBA with Entrepreneurship Concentration, meanwhile, is designed to teach students about opportunity identification and analysis, and the startup funding process. The program is open to both full-time and executive MBA students.

The post University of Arkansas: A Hotbed of Startup Success appeared first on Startup Southerner.

When I started My Color of Beauty, I knew I needed help and an outside resource besides myself. And I was lucky, because the people at Innovate Arkansas believed in me and wanted to see me succeed. But they had not dealt with an entrepreneur like me. I am a minority, wife and mother—all rolled into one. I knew I needed them in order to help my business succeed and to this day I will recommend anyone to them. Because of my connection with them, I was able to apply to an accelerator in Arkansas called The ARK Challenge. It was great. I received a little seed money to get my business started, which was a big boost, I had a place to work every day and I had many mentors. I consider myself a startup junkie. I love hearing stories about startups’ successes and failures. I breathe startup. Although, you wouldn’t know it by my actions.

There are times where I feel like I don’t fit in. This happens when there are startup functions that happen after hours or on the weekend. It happens when my friends are asking me to go to lunch or talk on the phone in the evening. This startup life is a hard monster to manage and it’s even harder when you have a husband and kids. I have no middle ground with the world except in my head. I often skip out on after-hours events because of my commitment to my family. I really don’t have time to “lunch” with my friends or have long meaningful phone conversations. The road of an entrepreneur is lonely and it can be even lonelier when there is no one like you around to understand your circumstances.

The road of an entrepreneur is lonely and it can be even lonelier when there is no one like you around to understand your circumstances.

I know I need to be more active in our entrepreneur ecosystem, but my current setup in life will only allow so much. I have a family to nurture. I know my friends don’t understand when I turn them down for lunch for the umpteenth time that it’s really not personal. I have a business to grow. I have learned to have a laser focus over the past two years. It consists of three things: Focus on my faith, focus on my family and focus on my business. Anything else that gets attention outside of my focus is a bonus to me and anyone else involved. In Arkansas, it’s a hard to explain to people who are not a part of the startup world why my business hasn’t completed ABC or started on XYZ, yet. It’s also hard to explain to the startup realm why I am not out to dinner, or flying across the country attending conferences or participating in Hackathons and Startup Weekend events.

I stay active on social media and operate my online business from the sidelines of my kids’ basketball games. I love my family. I love startups. I am working hard to nurture the two loves of my life. Unfortunately, everything else has to take a backseat. The innovation of the internet has allowed me to balance the two.

The post Achieving Work-Life Balance as a Founder, Wife and Mother appeared first on Startup Southerner.

K. Clarence Lawrence, a Little Rock, Arkansas-based entrepreneur, launched ecommerce product video provider Prodeo360 nearly two years ago. His four-person executive team brings a combined 30 years of experience in both tech and video production. The company’s first year was marked with incredible growth—it worked with brands like Casio, OverBack.com and MadeInMars.com—which has prompted Lawrence to move the business out of a garage and into a large space in Bentonville, Arkansas. Oh, and they’re hiring more than a dozen full-time workers to wear various hats. He’s proud of the growth that his startup has experienced, but along the way, he dealt with some roadblocks. We talked to Lawrence about the challenges of securing funding for minority-owned startups.

Q: First of all, let’s talk about Prodeo360. How does Prodeo360 work? Who are your target customers? What makes Prodeo360 unique and competitive?

A: Our mission at Prodeo360 is to make the process of getting premium, professionally made, custom 360-degree videos simple and affordable—specifically for eCommerce stores selling physical products online. Currently, it’s a three-step process. Our customers go to our site and select the quantity of product videos as well as the style. Next, they decide whether they want the products picked up or if they’d like to drop it off to any local FedEx, USPS or UPS. Lastly, once we receive the products, we produce the videos in our studios and then send the completed, custom digital files to them for them to use on their website, social media, email marketing and more.

As you can imagine, dealing with thousands of large video files, customizing them all and delivering a high-quality product within days is not something that normal production houses face. Prodeo is about high-volume, low-priced video services. So to pull this off, it takes a lot of proprietary technology to make this happen. Our internal technology is just as important as our video production skills to be competitive. It’d be impossible to do what we do without our technology.

Q: Before we talk about funding, do you face unique challenges as a black founder that a white founder might not face? If so, what are they?

A: I think all founders face an uphill battle due to the risky nature of startups in general, regardless of their background and skin color. But also, by being African-American, I think it’s a little tougher to be taken seriously and trusted because there aren’t a lot of proven African-American companies out there. I think it’s the same for women-run companies, too. It deals a lot with the terms of how the due diligence process works and giving founders the benefit of the doubt. One of my mentors from college taught me long ago, “Investors don’t invest in ideas; they invest in people.”

For instance, I know some peers who were able to secure large amounts of funding with literally no revenue coming in. Which means that the investor trusted their vision enough to back them without any real evidence of demand. In my experience, we had to present everything from income statements, pro formas and more to show that there was not only a demand, but also that we could also sell our value to customers. This in itself isn’t a bad thing, but again, most founders I know were not required to do all of these things to get investors behind them.

Investors by nature are very pragmatic, which in some ways they should be—but it does bother you a bit when you have a clever idea that you’ve proven through bootstrapping before fundraising and hearing about others who have zero revenue securing twice the amount you need in half the time.

Q: When did you start trying to find funding, where did you ultimately get funding, and at what point did you realize it was going to be more challenging because you’re black?

A: It goes back to the nature of investors and investments and being taken seriously. Also, with investors being pragmatic. I can’t say that being African-American was the exclusive reason why it was tough to get funding because I know a lot of caucasian founders who are having trouble raising funding as well, but I can say that we were turned down by all of the major funds in my state. Some would say “You’re too early” or “You need more revenue”—the same funds that were investing in firms with equal revenue and sometimes no revenue at all.

We were never turned down based on the idea being bad or inconceivable in terms of potential growth. It was always along the lines of “Come back later when you have more proof” when in reality that’s not how startups work. Startups are about seeing an idea at seed or early-growth stage and believing in the team to grow it into maturity. So to say the least, it was very frustrating to hear how good the idea was but not have anyone write a check at the end of the day.

Q: How did it make you feel to know that you were facing additional roadblocks based on the color of your skin? How did you respond?

A: I won’t act like it didn’t bother me, but I’m blessed to have had a father who, before he passed, taught me a lot about being focused and having conviction in what you believe to be true. I also have a few mentors, like Jeff Amerine, CJ Duvall, Jeff Stinson, Ted Dickey and Mike Smith, who saw potential in me and Prodeo and were always open to talking and advising. Lastly, I had the feedback from our actual customers, and while raising funding seems like the only way to grow, paying customers who value you and your service or product is always enough motivation to keep on going after you get a no. After each no, I would try to understand why they said it, learn as much as possible and keep it moving.

Q: As part of our #entrepreneuriALL initiative, we’re trying to understand the difference between diversity and inclusion. Do you think there’s a difference, and what is it?

A: Both inherently mean having a range of different skill sets, but I think inclusion implies actual effort in trying to have a range of skill sets and backgrounds. Diversity is more so the consequence of that effort. I think diversity is too passive because there’s no real implication that you have to try, whereas Inclusion is measured by the effort you put into having a range of skills, races, genders, etc.

Q: Is the entrepreneurial ecosystem that you’re a part of diverse and/or inclusive enough? Why or why not?

A: It’s actually both Little Rock as well as Fayetteville-Bentonville for me, which interestingly enough just got ranked as the second best place for minority founders by Fast Company. I think they are getting there for sure and it’s understood by the important people in this ecosystem like Jeff Amerine, Jeff Stinson and the guys over at Innovate Arkansas. I don’t think it’s a standard just yet, but it goes both ways. Just as there needs to be more efforts from the investor and supporter side to find diverse companies for both female and ethnic minorities, diverse companies also have to put themselves out there to be seen so that they can be included. And more importantly, create valuable ideas that people can get behind.

The post Funding for Minority-Owned Startups a Challenge, Says Arkansas Founder appeared first on Startup Southerner.

The hardest part of owning a startup is always the beginning: the process of turning your idea into a company with a working business model and appropriate funding. Luckily, there is a multitude of accelerator programs in the South available to entrepreneurs who want to launch their startups quickly.

Fidelity National Information Systems (FIS), is a Fortune 500 financial technology company with global reach. It employs more than 55,000 people and is headquartered in Florida, but its roots go back nearly half a century to Systematics, a company founded in Arkansas by Walter Smiley, a University of Arkansas alumnus.

Smiley was already trying to disrupt the FinTech software market then, and this tradition has stayed alive in the area, with companies like Bank Labs, Smiley Technologies and Precision Risk Management Systems all calling Little Rock home. And others are finding a place in this sector, as well. Just in the last five years, this sector saw nearly $50 billion in direct investments with nearly $32 billion (64 percent) to companies in the U.S. alone.

The Venture Center is now helping others further this proud lineage by accepting applications to its new VC FinTech accelerator program, backed by FIS, which boasts more than 1,000 employees in its Little Rock location alone. Up to 10 teams will be accepted into the program and will receive $50,000 in seed funding, with teams eligible for up to $300,000 in additional investment at the end of the program The 15-week program kicks off on May 13, with a demo day on August 25.

Lee Watson, president and CEO of the Venture Center, believes this program is especially critical in guiding a next generation of FinTech disruptors since the participants will be interacting with the senior executives from FIS. “I think it’s great for this type of innovation,” he says. “FIS recognizes that the next big thing in mobile payments, trading and others might come from the startup ecosystem.”

Startups in core banking, payments, mobile, fraud and cybersecurity are encouraged to apply. There will be a FinTech Google Hangout hosted on March 16 for any interested parties to ask questions directly to the organizers and FIS executives. Application deadline is March 31.

The post Accelerator Spotlight: VC FinTech Accelerator at the Venture Center appeared first on Startup Southerner.