Water and electronics don’t work well together, but the Nashville Mini Maker Faire is a rain-or-shine event, and it took place a few Saturdays ago. Despite rain falling periodically since the beginning of the event, almost all the booths were unperturbed. It does help when one of your exhibitions is a submarine.

But even that handmade, custom-built submarine from two makers in Kentucky was only one of many incredible exhibits. From the $15,000 second place Battlebots team, Bombshell, to the drone racing, to the 3D printed prosthetics, the Nashville Mini Maker Faire has pulled both a large crowd and innovative makers.

What is pulling them? The attendees didn’t solely consist of middle-aged techies already embedded in the community. There was a massive amount of people completely new to the Maker community.

Firstly, there were celebrities like Bombshell, who, along with BB-8 and R2-D2 bots, provide an entry point to being a Maker.

Secondly, there were tons of booths centered on teaching essential Maker skills, like soldering and construction, as well design and  prototyping.

It was a cornucopia of showing not only the products of amazing Makers, but the process of creating the complex projects. Check out this video for more coverage:

The post Thoughts From the Nashville Mini Maker Faire appeared first on Startup Southerner.

The second annual Girls to the Moon campference is coming up on Saturday, September 24, at Nossi College of Art, and we’re excited to be one of the community partners of this event. In the spirit of Girls to the Moon’s encouragement to try new things, we decided to do something we’ve never done before: a preview flipbook about the upcoming event.

As of Tuesday, limited number of tickets are still available.  We hope to see you there!

The post A Visual Guide to Girls to the Moon’s 2nd Annual Campference appeared first on Startup Southerner.

Jeremy Lekich, Founder of Nashville Foodscapes

Jeremy Lekich, founder of Nashville Foodscapes, has been working with residents of Nashville, Tennessee, to create edible landscapes since 2011. What started as a college requirement quickly turned into a passion—and ultimately a business—for this Nashville native.

Lekich’s belief in educating others about food and his talent for designing beautiful, functional landscapes has resulted in features from NPR and The Daily Meal, to name a few. He sat down with us to answer a few questions about how he fell into foodscaping, his experience as a small business owner and about the importance of finding the right people when growing.

Q: Has growing and gardening always been a passion of yours?

A: Not really. I grew up in suburban Nashville. My parents would take me to Radnor Lake—and maybe they had a small garden—but it was never an active part of my life growing up. It was in college that I discovered a love and passion for gardening and growing food. It just totally consumed me, and I haven’t turned back.

Q: What exactly sparked your interest in gardening, and how did that lead to the foundation of Nashville Foodscapes?

A: I went to a small work college near Asheville, NC called Warren Wilson College. It’s a work college, meaning every student has to work 15 hours a week as part of their education… You can do everything from washing dishes to working on the farm there, to building instruments and renovating buildings.

I was on the landscaping crew, and we took care of the entire landscape grounds, as well as an edible foodscape in front of the eco-dorm. The landscaping supervisor there was very different from most of your conventional landscapers; he really loved using native plants and creating landscapes that looked pretty wild. Between that and working on the landscape, I really grew to love learning about these plants. And being down in the foodscape, I was learning to grow all these foods. I would give tours to visitors of the college—parents of new students and existing students and all kinds of people. And after hearing 20 times, “Oh my god, it’s so beautiful! I want this in my front yard or my backyard!” I was like, maybe I should consider starting a business doing this!

Originally my major was biochemistry, and I spent a lot of time in the laboratory, and I pretty quickly realized I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life doing that. I really wanted to spend the rest of my life outside and working with plants. That kind of laid the foundation for Nashville Foodscapes. My last year of college I took some business classes and started formulating a business plan and coming up with names and doing market research.

Q: So is your overarching mission, then, to promote urban farming?

A: I’m hesitant to use that phrase because when people think of farming, they think of rows of vegetables, and this is somewhat different. I would say we’re spreading a culture of food can be grown in our everyday landscapes. It doesn’t have to be regulated to a little garden or to a farm somewhere; it can be integrated into our everyday landscapes. So that’s my main goal and mission is to show that growing food can be very beautiful.

Q: Let’s talk about funding. Did you have to raise a lot of capital to get Nashville Foodscapes off the ground?

A: I had to purchase a truck and a trailer and tools, but I would say the overhead was low compared to other businesses… But there was definitely an investment of time and money and energy in starting it. For about a year and a half—or maybe two years, even—I was waiting tables part-time, and I was using that money not only to pay my bills, but also to build up our tools and using some of that money for marketing. And so I was definitely investing money into getting the company going.

“This has very much been a bootstrapped, slow-going process. I’ve actually started another business since then with two other partners called Compost Nashville, and we offer a composting service for people who don’t want to do it at home. And it’s been the same way. We talked about going the investor route, and we were like, ‘You know what, let’s do the bootstrap way,’ because then you’re only accountable to yourself and your clients… I really am proud and happy with the way that we started.

Q: What are some of the challenges you’ve faced—or continue to face—as a small business owner?

A: The challenges of starting a new business are many. For being in what we consider an entrepreneurial country … they sure do make it difficult for people to start businesses. Part of it was being able to pay for all that insurance and worker’s comp—all the protections you need as a new business. That’s expensive.

The other is that balance of knowing when your business becomes your livelihood, and when do you still need to maintain that second job. For me it was waiting tables; there was definitely that transition of, “OK, I’m almost making enough money to quit this job, but not quite yet.” And it was definitely a leap of faith when I did quit that job and make this my main livelihood.

Another challenge is growing a business. They say that one of the biggest failures of new business is growing too big too fast. We’ve run into that a couple times—we got all this demand, and I tried to meet it, and then our quality would go down because we were trying to do too many projects. It was learning that and finally saying, ‘Hey, sorry, we’re maxed for this Spring. We can put you on the list for this fall.’ And also, hiring someone full-time. I was at a point where I needed someone full time, but I couldn’t necessarily afford them. What I ended up doing was hiring someone full-time, and it really hurt. There were times when I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to pay myself anything that next month, but I had to go through that to get to the point where we were a bigger company. So there’s the challenge of not growing too big too fast but also growing and having to make some sacrifices to make that happen.

Q: Speaking of growth, where do you see Nashville Foodscapes in the next five years?

A: I’m not trying to be a millionaire, but it’s a funny balance—until I find the right people, I don’t really want to grow, though I do want to help more and more people grow food. But at the same time, I’m almost at capacity. I can’t do any more work without just not getting enough sleep or not feeling like I’m not spending time with my partner… It’s really a hard balance to strike, and it really took a lot of deep thought for me and coming to terms with what my priorities are.

Q: Any words of wisdom for new or growing startups?

A: Learn a bookkeeping software and get your bookkeeping together in the beginning. That was something I learned later and I’m still trying to get on top of, and I wish it was something that I had just integrated into my life from the beginning because it would make things a lot easier if I had all my bookkeeping stuff together… And get a good accountant, someone you trust who can help you learn that stuff because there’s so much that you can determine for your business if you have a good understanding of your finances.

I would say also don’t hesitate to reach out to people who are in your field to collaborate with them. I have a number of landscapers that I work with, and we especially in the United States have such a competitive mentality. And I don’t think that’s all bad, I think there’s some good things to that, but I think it goes to too much of an extreme. And I have found that everyone wins in the end when you can collaborate with people. There have been a number of jobs I have collaborated with other landscapers on… We brought them on, it was awesome, we had fun, and then they brought us up on a project, and we ended up being able to make more money in the end and have more fun and produce a better product. Reach out and make a community and create collaborative relationships with other people in whatever field you’re in. And I am confident that it will be better off than trying to be an isolated, competitive, bullheaded business person.

The post Q&A With Jeremy Lekich, Founder of Nashville Foodscapes appeared first on Startup Southerner.

Jeff Estes, Owner of 5 String Furniture [photo cred: Caleb Chandler Photography]

Estes occupied a desk next to Nate Akey, founder of 5 String Furniture. A welder by trade, Akey had a tendency to cover surrounding workspaces with metal dust after a day’s work. Estes would retaliate by piling loads of lumber onto Akey’s workbench, and a friendly back-and-forth would ensue. It wasn’t long before the two became good friends and started taking on projects together.

The two partnered for builds in some of Nashville’s more well-known establishments, like Frothy Monkey’s downtown location and Black Abbey Brewing Company’s Fellowship Hall. In 2014, Estes and Akey moved into a 4,000 square foot workshop and dissolved their own companies, forming one partnership under the 5 String name.

Now, just two years later, Estes has assumed full ownership of the company and is working hard to build a team, a brand and a larger client base for 5 String Furniture.

According to Estes, the business was left to him when Akey realized he needed a change. “We were taking cash from our jobs and putting it right back into the company,” Estes says. “We barely paid ourselves.” Because of that reinvestment plan, however, the two were able to buy the majority of their tools in the first year without a bank loan. Things were beginning to look good for the business. “And then,” Estes say, “we kind of hit a hard spot.”

Rien Long [photo cred: Caleb Chandler Photography]

Estes admits that he had no idea what to do at first. “I literally turned wooden bowls for 30 straight days,” he says. He was frustrated and didn’t know how to get the business back on track. But then he realized: to keep the business alive, he had to do whatever he could to generate income. So he started flipping lumber.

Together with Fort Houstoner and former Tennessee Titan, Rien Long, Estes flipped enough lumber to get 5 String back on its feet. And soon enough, three big jobs came in at once.

Estes remembers this as his defining moment. “That was my choice,” he says, “I could get rid of the company and liquidate all my assets or say yes and see what happens. I said yes.”

Cooper Collins [photo cred: Caleb Chandler Photography]

A few weeks later, Cody Bonnette—a musician and pipeline welder from Baton Rouge, Louisiana—got in touch. “We happened to have two big jobs that I needed a welder for,” Estes says. “He happened to be the best welder I’ve ever seen.”

Some more jobs came in, and Estes got yet another inquiry for work, this time from an experienced woodworker named Joey Mullen. “He brought in a level of execution that we were missing,” Estes explains, “If I wasn’t there, Joey was bridging that gap.”

Cody Bonnette [photo cred: Caleb Chandler Photography]

Estes isn’t taking his team for granted; he makes sure each member is fairly compensated and will continue to be fairly compensated as the 5 String grows. “I don’t want them to feel like a year from now they’re not getting gains when the company does,” he says, “It’s a team effort. These guys, they care.”

Likewise, Estes wants his team to know when things are going well and when they’re not. “My number one thing is transparency in business,” he says. “If something’s going wrong with the company, my employees are the first to know it… I think it shows a level of trust… And it’s not comfortable to tell them those things. It’s sometimes embarrassing. If you run a small business, you have to let that pride and ego go. You can’t hold on to that. It’s damaging to your reputation and to your productivity.”

Joey Mullen [photo cred: Caleb Chandler Photography]

5 String is planning a big move to a new workshop soon, where they plan to open a retail store and begin production on a new line of customizable bar stools, desks and dining tables. In the meantime, Estes is focusing on building new relationships and growing the business quickly and sustainably.

The post Jeff Estes of 5 String Furniture Talks Change and Growing Pains appeared first on Startup Southerner.

Public libraries aren’t exactly seen as bastions of the latest trends and technology. In Nashville, Tennessee, at least, the public library system is working on changing that with the opening of a new makerspace as part of its Studio NPL initiative. But before all you makers rush over to the Downtown Library, where the new center is installed, know this: Its two 3-D printers, CNC mill, soldering stations, dozen or so computers, set of Kaoss Pads, other pieces of equipment and the mentors who are on hand to help you use that equipment? It’s all free, but it’s for teens only.

The Studio NPL initiative started as a way to help prepare teens for educational, economic and life skills opportunities, outside of what a typical school curriculum might be able to offer. The teens who go there have made everything from chessboards and jewelry to VR headsets, armor plates and even pinball machines.

Between the advanced (and expensive) equipment, free access to development software, and friendly professionals happy to teach you, it is by far the easiest maker space to use, perfect for the teens who are just getting started in the world of making technology. Not only this, but it also allows for meeting people—people who are already in the maker community—giving the space a feeling of connectivity.

But there’s just one problem: The space is woefully underutilized. On any given day, there might be only a couple of teens there.

One could blame the utilization problem on its teens-only rule. But there’s probably more to it than that. With the decline in the popularity of libraries—the Pew Research Center estimates only 44% of Americans visit a public library at least once a year—people probably don’t think that the Nashville Public Library has such advanced and modern tools, and everything you’d need to use them. In other words, no one really knows that the makerspace is there.

The post Nashville Public Library Joins Maker Movement appeared first on Startup Southerner.

I am an optimist to a fault. Every personality test I take finds some way to describe me as risk-averse. I avoid bad vibes about as much as I avoid Lower Broadway during CMA Fest. So when Laura Weidman Powers came to the Nashville Entrepreneur Center speak to us about her journey as CEO and co-founder of Code2040, I so wanted her to tell us that it’s been the most comfortable four years of her life; that every conversation she has ends with a new resolute advocate and that every person she encounters now stands alongside her in the fight.

Instead she tells us this: “You will need to learn to sit in the discomfort.”

That was not what I wanted to hear. I don’t like being uncomfortable. Stepping purposefully into tough conversations is not easy, but I have now learned it is necessary. Especially on the topic of inclusion.

When we talk about things like inequality, people don’t think about it abstractly or hypothetically. We immediately connect it with a time in our life when we were treated unfairly, without dignity, or with disregard, whether consciously or not. As a result, these topics always cause strong emotion. And as hard as it is for this idealist to have to look cynicism in the face, I learned to grit my teeth and do it.

In one situation specifically, the work that LeShane Greenhill and I are leading for the EC’s Diversity initiative was being questioned. The individual came to the conversation with emotional baggage from past experiences they had with us. A meeting that was intended to be fruitful—a way to learn more about our respective initiatives—became a meeting of assumption and accusation. I felt attacked and judged. They had it all wrong. I wanted them to know our intentions were pure. In all honestly, I just wanted to say a bold, direct response then leave.

But I stayed. I sat and listened and explained. I chose to be fully present in a conversation that was far from comfortable. And this is what I learned:

• Don’t go it alone: Sitting in the discomfort is easier said than done, but when you’re doing it, having a partner beside you to share the weight is essential. LeShane, the EC’s Code2040 Entrepreneur in Residence, embodies the definition of a partner.
• After discomfort comes growth: Every time you experience the fullness of a tense conversation and see it to the end, you grow. Little by little, with every hard conversation you become a stronger, braver, more empathetic person. One who sees the potential in every foreboding situation. One who knows that running from talking about the issue allows the issue to live on.
• Speak the truth: At the end of the day, you know your truth. Nobody else. Respond to assumptions and accusations with your truth. And grace.
• The importance of listening: We all just want to be heard. So listen. Affirm the importance of their voice and experiences by listening.

The post Inclusion Is About Sitting in the Discomfort appeared first on Startup Southerner.

Ask Jon Newman when he first became passionate about food, and he’ll tell you it’s been since day one. “I came out of the womb with a wooden spoon,” he insists. “I have pictures of me just a couple years old… my mom would sit me down with flour and water, and I would mix it up and stamp it out like cookies.”

Newman, butcher and charcuterie chef for The Southern Steak and Oyster and Southernaire Market in Nashville, Tennessee, has worked in kitchens for most of his life. He got his first job when he was just fifteen years old at a pizzeria in Jenison, Michigan.

“I remember I would ride my bike there,” he recalls. “I’d get done with school, do some homework, head straight to work and start learning how to toss dough, use the table grinder and mix sausages and whatnot.”

By his senior year of high school, Newman could practically run the shop on his own. It was his aptitude in the kitchen and growing passion for food that inspired him to pursue an education in the culinary arts.

Newman attended culinary school at Grand Rapids Community College for two and a half years, meanwhile working full-time at a local restaurant and even participating in an externship in Sun River, Oregon. When the externship was over, Newman returned to Grand Rapids where he met his wife, Rumalda. The two were married soon after and decided to start a new life together in a new city.

Newman and his wife rolled the dice and moved to Charleston, South Carolina with no jobs, no house and only $2,000 to their name. At first, Newman struggled to find work. But after doing some research, he made an interesting discovery. “I found out that [Charleston] was a food Mecca,” he says.

Newman got a job at a restaurant called Cypress, where he was introduced to the world of charcuterie by Executive Chef Craig Deihl. “Craig Deihl had some of the best charcuterie I’ve ever seen in my entire life,” he recalls. “He had a 15’x15’ cooler, and every single square foot was full of hangings, prosciuttos and all these other things.”

He worked at Cypress for a year and a half, all the while staging an extra twenty hours a week at McCrady’s, a fine dining establishment owned in part by James Beard Award-Winning Chef, Sean Brock.

“I worked for free all the time,” Newman says. “I wanted them to see my face and how eager I was. I would be in the back shucking garbanzo beans and hulling green peanuts and just watching.”

Thankfully, all that shucking paid off. One evening, after Newman had finished his shift at Cypress, Brock approached him with an opportunity. The chef was opening a new restaurant in Charleston called Husk, and he wanted Newman as one of his sous chefs.

Newman joined Husk in 2010, were he learned what cooking could truly be. “I [was] working with some of the finest chefs in the world,” he says, “local dudes, true southern boys who just knew how to throw a pig on a pit and have it come out like butter…You knew where that bean came from, you knew that it came from that farmer. You knew that he’s had that bean in an heirloom varietal for generations. You could trace the lineage of a greasy bean back to when his father was a child… It gives me goosebumps.”

While at Husk, Newman cultivated his interest in charcuterie under the care of Chef de Cuisine Justin Cherry. “I was riding on his coattails,” he says, “tasting his flavors, understanding his percentages and doing my own percentages on salt and flavor profiles.” Newman even learned how to break down whole pigs. Eventually, his opportunity to work as a sous chef at McCrady’s finally came, and of course he took the job.

But a few years ago, he and Rumalda relocated to Nashville, Tennessee. Newman earned a position at a restaurant called Flyte, where he was able to work exclusively on fermentation, butchering and charcuterie, sharpening the skills he would ultimately use to begin his own charcuterie program at The Southern Steak and Oyster in 2015.

Watching Newman work is mesmerizing to say the least; he takes great care in making each cut, brine and cure, and the end result is nothing short of amazing. But when I ask him where he sees himself in five years, he says, “I’m going to be doing my own thing.” While he’s happy starting the charcuterie program for The Southern, it isn’t where he wants to stay.

“I’d like to start my own little restaurant,” he admits. And while he’s still ironing out the details of that dream, he continues to hone his craft.

The post #StartupPerson: Jon Newman Shares His Passion for Food appeared first on Startup Southerner.

Karen-Lee Ryan, Founder of Walk Eat Nashville

Karen-Lee Ryan, founder of Walk Eat Nashville, welcomed us on the steps of the Schermerhorn Symphony Center. Over the next three hours, she explained, our group of 12 would visit six restaurants and walk a mile and a half to discover what the SoBro (South Broadway) neighborhood of Nashville, Tennessee, has to offer in history and cuisine.

Ryan gave us an opportunity to introduce ourselves, and then she began the tour with a story—the story of the collaborative and creative spirit of Nashville, its musicians and its chefs.

Before Walk Eat Nashville, Karen-Lee Ryan was an editor. For several years, she managed content for tennessean.com, and for 18 months she worked as a newspaper executive in San Antonio, Texas.

“I just decided that wasn’t really something that was feeding my heart,” she says, “and I really wanted to do something that brought joy to my day every day. And what I found about Walk Eat Nashville was… for me, it’s a different way to tell stories.”

The first stop on our tour was just inside the symphony center: Cherry Street Eatery & Sweetery. There, we sampled a deliciously gooey pimento cheese panini while Ryan unloaded an arsenal of knowledge about owner and chef Meg Giuffrida, traditional southern cuisine and the Schermerhorn itself.

As founder of Walk Eat Nashville, Ryan fills many roles: researcher, marketer, administrator, guide. But as she puts it, “Part of what I love about the job is that I’m somebody who gets bored very easily, so the variety is really great for me.”

Of all her duties, Ryan says being on tour is her favorite. “I absolutely love being out on tour,” she says, “and I love doing the research for new tours. I’m a huge sponge for information, so I’m always trying to learn new things.”

Margaritas at Bakersfield Nashville

Ryan guided us down Broadway, around the Bridgestone Arena and through Music City Walk of Fame Park, telling us stories about architecture, country music history and Captain Thomas Green Ryman. Our next stop was the Encore building, where we enjoyed margaritas and tacos at Bakersfield Nashville, followed by a tasting with founder and executive chef of The Farm House, Trey Cioccia.

Ryan became interested in walking tours when she lived in Washington, D.C. “When I lived there, I was doing a lot of ‘things to do and places to go’ kind of writing as a freelancer,” she explains, “but there was a point during my time in Washington D.C. when I wanted to do a walking company.”

Unfortunately for Ryan, another entrepreneur had had a similar idea the year before and was already conducting tours in the D.C. area. “I just kind of tucked the idea in the back of my head because I’ve always loved to walk and be outside,” Ryan says.

After living in Nashville for seven years, moving to San Antonio and then moving back, she realized it was time to turn her idea into a reality. “We were getting so much attention for our food that I started thinking, I wonder if I could combine walking and eating.”

In 2014, Ryan enrolled in an entrepreneurship class at The Skillery, a co-working space in Nashville. After nine weeks, she says, “I launched Walk Eat Nashville, and I’ve been busy ever since. It has been an incredible experience.”

The Farm House’s sampling of heirloom tomatoes with ricotta and lardo

From the The Farm House, we set out toward the Ascend Amphitheater, and then Husk—one of Nashville’s most critically acclaimed restaurants—for prohibition-style cocktails, deviled eggs and a tour of their vegetable garden. Along the way, Ryan told us the tale of the Nashville Trolley Barns and showed us the former site of Thomas Ryman’s home.

Walk Eat Nashville has grown quite a bit since 2014. To meet increasing demand, Ryan has hired on three more tour guides, all of whom are natural storytellers with backgrounds in research and journalism. But Ryan says she’s not planning on growing the business too quickly.

“I have a lot more demand for tours than I can meet,” she says, “but my goal is to make sure that every guest experience is a really authentic Nashville experience… I spent most of the last 15 years before this business in front of the computer, and I knew I wanted to spend the bulk of my time not in front of the computer. If I hired a bunch of tour guides and grew the business, I would end up being the person behind the computer managing all the tour guides, and that is not my goal.”

Ryan preparing us for an unusual treat: coffee soda at Steadfast Commons

What keeps Ryan inspired is the relationships and interactions she has with her guests and the restaurant owners she partners with. “Because to see their passions every day,” she says, “that’s what fuels me all the time. Everyone that I work with has an incredible passion and pride for what they do, and I love sharing that with other people.”

Our tour ended with a sweet treat—coffee soda at Steadfast Commons and Goo Goo Clusters at The Goo Goo Shop. Afterward, Ryan took some time to chat with one of the guests, a fellow tour guide who was looking for ways to improve his own business.

According to Ryan, the most important thing an entrepreneur can do is build relationships. “Obviously relationship are important in everything,” she says, “but I think for an entrepreneur they can be more important than anything. I think a lot of entrepreneurs feel like they have to do everything themselves, and the reality is working with others and partnering with others is part of what will help a business flourish.”

The post Touring SoBro with Karen-Lee Ryan, Founder of Walk Eat Nashville appeared first on Startup Southerner.

Kipkosgei Magut, founder of Tribendurance, grew up in an agrarian village in Western Kenya. But in 2006, upon receiving a full running scholarship to Belmont University, he relocated to Nashville, Tennessee.

Magut, an athlete raised on a nutrient-dense diet, quickly realized that most of the energy products available in the United States contain just as much sugar as a candy bar. “I was frustrated,” he says. So in 2011, he put his degrees in accounting and information systems management to good use and created Tribendurance and its flagship product, the Moringa bar—a nutrient dense, gluten-free, soy-free, dairy-free, non-GMO nutrition product with less than half the sugar of leading protein bars.

Brandi Bruns, Marketing and Communications for Tribendurance

I sat down with Magut and his marketing talent, Brandi Bruns, to ask a few questions about Tribendurance, moringa and Magut’s entrepreneurial journey.

Q: So, why moringa?

A: If you compare a gram of moringa to a gram of a banana, it has about 4 times the potassium as a banana and 3 times the vitamin A as in carrots. So it’s a very, very high-nutrition ingredient.

There’s also a lot of things that moringa can do, and a lot of farmers now are starting to tap into it—extracting oils, using it as a vegetable and using [the powder] for fortification purposes.

Q: How is using moringa in your products helping to promote sustainable farming methods?

A: Where I come from, there are two cash crops that farmers grow just like the US: corn and wheat. For corn and wheat, every year you have to plow the land, buy the seeds, buy the fertilizer, buy the herbicides. Then you have to rent a tractor to use to plow your land. At the end of the day, when you do the calculations… it ends up being an unprofitable venture.

But if you grow moringa, it’s a one-time crop. You till the land, plant the tree and it starts growing. And you can eat from the plant for up to 10 years before you have to grow it again. I’m not for mono-cropping. We’re trying to diversify the crops and bring something that is more nutritious and something that could give them more income so they don’t have to till the land every time. And moringa doesn’t use a lot of water, so that’s also a benefit.

Q: How did you come up with the recipes for your moringa bars?

A: I basically went to my kitchen and created the recipes myself. My wife came home one day and was like, “What are you doing?” And I’m like, “Making nutrition bars.” It’s not what I would recommend entrepreneurs to do. But I got a product out, and I got people to try it and give feedback from it. Now I have somebody who helps me with development of the bars.

Q: What resources have you used in the process of starting your own business?

A: I love being at the Nashville Entrepreneur Center and I participated in a business accelerator they had. It really helped me to get my messaging right. I’m still learning that even now, and I think it’s very, very important. There’s a tendency for entrepreneurs to have it all in their head, but it’s important to be able to put it in a sentence and capture it. What differentiates you? Why should I engage with your company, and why should I buy your product? I think being a part of that accelerator helped me a lot in my messaging and being able to deliver that.

Q: What are some of the challenges you have faced as a founder?

A: First, finding a co-packer. But one of the challenges that I had initially when I formulated my product was that it was oiling out. The first product we launched was peanut butter, and the way the peanut butter was gelling with all the other ingredients meant the oils were not binding in the bar. This was, apparently, a challenge that a lot of other huge companies have faced. The formulator I found had worked on a similar issue with a big corporation, so she knew exactly how the oils were mixing and what was making the peanut oil leak out of the product.

Some of the challenges I still face today—and this is to every startup company—is being able to raise capital. The seed money you have, you have to make it last as an entrepreneur with the assumption that nobody else is going to give you money.

There’s some good and bad in us not having a lot of investment at this point; the bad is that we’re always thinking about how we’re going to get through the next day. But the good is that we’ve been able to use the little money that we have and think in terms of product and really form a great product.

Moringa Bars, in Cashew Cinnamon Raisin, Peanut Butter, and Almond Coconut Chocolate Fudge

Q: Where can people currently find Tribendurance Moringa Bars?

A: We are, in total, in 60 locations. Whole Foods is one of them, but Kroger is our biggest retailer right now. And we are selling at a number of other independent stores like the Juice Bar, so we’re hoping we can grow with them. We sell on Amazon as well.

Q: Where do you see Tribendurance in 5 years?

A: Everywhere. I would love to be across the world, but our goal is to have distribution across the U.S. in the next 3 years. Hopefully that leads to distributing it in Canada, Europe and even Africa.

Q: Anything new in the works?

A: (Bruns): We have three new bars that we’d like to produce later this summer. The two new ones will retire out two of the older ones, and then we’ve improved the peanut butter.

(Magut): The two new flavors are peanut butter chocolate chip and bittersweet chocolate.

Q: Any words of wisdom for other entrepreneurs?

A: Business is not about money, it’s about solving a problem… If you’re solving a problem, a problem where people will pay for whatever you’re doing to fix it, then money’s going to follow. If you’re solving a problem, everything is going to be easier. It’s not going to be easy, but it’ll be easier.

The post #MyStartupStory: Kipkosgei Magut, Founder of Tribendurance appeared first on Startup Southerner.

It is just days away from the inaugural Bunker Builds Nashville Muster, a day packed with veteran entrepreneurs pitching their businesses, an Idea Lab and a marketplace to buy products from veteran-owned small businesses. A stop on the 12-city Bunker Builds America Tour, this Nashville event on Tuesday, June 28, has garnered support, including a $100,000 grant from JP Morgan Chase.

“Veterans are uniquely poised to be successful in the entrepreneurial world because of their training, discipline and ability to execute under pressure,” said Blake Hogan, Marine veteran and executive director of Bunker Labs Nashville. “This tour is a deliberate step in creating the next Greatest Generation, men and women who are leaving military careers to become job creators and community leaders.”

While Bunker Labs Nashville launched just four months ago, Hogan’s statement alludes to a commitment to service by these entrepreneurs that began well before Bunker Labs started. One such entrepreneur that will be part of the Muster is Mike Tacke, owner of Veterans Heavy Haul and an Army veteran of 14 years.

Tacke felt the calling to serve the country when 9/11 happened, during his senior year in high school. “As soon as I graduated, I enlisted as an infantryman and deployed with the 101st Airborne Division to Iraq from 2003-2004 and then again in 2005-2006,” recounted Tacke. In 2007, he attended Special Forces training and became a Green Beret. Upon completion of his Special Ops training, he was then deployed to Iraq again and then to Afghanistan.

To Tacke, the most important entrepreneurial skills that he acquired during his military service are his ability to plan and execute large projects. “I learned to define goals, identify key tasks, prioritize those tasks and then leverage the tools required to complete the project in a timely manner.” Also, one trait that military veterans tend to have, especially those in the Special Ops community, is a high tolerance for stress, notes Tacke.  “Entrepreneurs regularly juggle several tasks simultaneously in an uncertain environment. Not everyone can succeed in that environment, but military veterans tend to thrive in it.”

Tacke found out about Bunker Labs through a business networking event at the Nashville Entrepreneur Center. Tacke’s new business, Veterans Heavy Haul, is a part of the inaugural accelerator program in Nashville, and aims to employ military veteran truck drivers and freight brokers to move over dimensional freight throughout the U.S. “We just opened in February of this year, and our goal is to one day earn a reputation in the heavy haul trucking industry as an outstanding provider of freight transportation services,” says Tacke.

The Bunker Labs business accelerator program has been a great resource for Tacke’s growing business. “The advisors at the EC have freely given their time to listen to challenges my business is working through and have offered great insights,” said Tacke.”Bunker Labs allows me to connect with other military veterans/ business owners. I leave the EC each week refreshed and ready to tackle the challenges ahead.”

Tacke is excited to attend the Muster on Tuesday and connect with more business owners in the Nashville community. “Through those connections, I hope to gain some insights on ways to improve my business plans and strategy.”

The Nashville Muster event is free, but registration is required.

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