3 Day Startup at Geekdom Nurtures New Entrepreneurs

By LAURA LOREK
Founder of Silicon Hills News

Stephanie King attended a 3 Day Startup program at Geekdom in San Antonio last weekend with an idea for a company.

“I quickly realized I needed more focus,” she said.

Instead of pitching her idea, King joined Spotduct, a startup focused on creating short videos for brands tied to a prize for consumers who watch them.

Spotduct, a four-person team led by Will Shipley, produced a 30 second video promoting Hint water. At the end, viewers were asked how many bottles of Hint appeared in the video. Those who got the correct answer, 11, won a prize. The Spotduct team plans to build an online interactive video platform by earning revenue from pay per click video quizzes tied to the videos they create.

“It was a good experience because it taught me what it takes to pitch our idea to investors,” King said. “We also worked on an idea under pressure and we had to create a viable product in a weekend. That’s a skill set you can’t get anywhere else.”

Spotduct was one of seven startups that spun out of 3 Day Startup on Film, Music and Fashion last weekend. The 80/20 Foundation funded the program. It’s one in a series of thematic 3DS programs held at Geekdom, the coworking and technology incubator downtown.

More than 40 people participated in the weekend bootcamp to create a company. The other teams included Jukebox, a subscription music box, Dreamland, family friendly events focused on the arts, Syndicated Video Network Television, branded Internet-based TV channels, Noiiz, a marketplace for musicians to sell their creations, Puro Pinche, a mobile events calendar focused on San Antonio, and Campfire, a video storytelling site.

On Sunday, the teams pitched before a panel of judges who asked questions and provided feedback on their ventures.

The Jukebox team wants to provide a monthly subscription based box that gives people a novel way to experience music. The box would contain a promotional CD from an independent musician along with band swag such as T-shirts, guitar picks and more.

The idea is similar to Barkbox and Birchbox and other subscription-based models. The team included Tim Slusher, Candyce Slusher, Cynthia Marshall, Hannah Zhoa and Sean Mcleod. The box is aimed at the 16 to 30 year old age group. Each box is estimated to cost $15.

Jukebox expects to send out its first boxes by August, said Candyce Slusher.

The Puro Pinche team built an entertainment events calendar site optimized for mobile viewing.

Stephanie Guerra launched the blog Puro Pinche in June of 2010 and now she’s looking to expand the site and monetize it.

Nic Jones, Greg Vallejo and Miles Terracina worked with Guerra to create the mobile events site.

“I’m a Geekdom member,” Guerra said. “I’ve seen startups come and go out of Geekdom. I wanted to be a part of it and see how my company could grow.”
Vallejo is a student at CodeUp at Geekdom.

“I came to this wanting to plug into the entrepreneurial community in San Antonio,” he said.

The team behind Syndicated Video Network Television wants to tap into the city’s rich broadcasting history to create streaming online TV channels, said Luke Horgan, its founder. He created an example of a San Antonio channel at Purosa.snvtv.com.

“The next generation of TV could be created here,” Horgan said.