How did you spend 54 hours of this past weekend? I bet you weren’t as productive as the 40 participants who competed in Startup Weekend Bloomington. About 20 business ideas were pitched Friday night at Ivy Tech. From those 20 ideas, nine progressed into complete business plans, prototypes or actual working products. These ideas ranged from geofencing coupon notifications, or a mobile app for loyalty cards, to a guide to becoming an expert planter, or even a platform enabling you and your friends to create scholarships.

After 54 hours of hard work, the nine companies presented their product to a panel of five judges. The judges deliberated and decided on the winner. Fundships, the winner of Startup Weekend Bloomington, enables people and their friends to create scholarships around causes they care about. You can choose the amount to donate and ask friends to pitch in and then decide who is the most deserving for the scholarship. Fundships makes building a scholarship easy and personal. It makes funding and finding a scholarship simple for both, the funders and scholars.

So what did they win? A million dollars? No, the winning team received development resources from local companies. They also won the chance to compete in Startup Weekend’s Global Battle. Global Startup Battle allows winners from any of the Startup Weekend events that were held in the past two weeks an opportunity to meet leading investors in Silicon Valley and participate in great events worldwide. How do these winners battle it out? Each winning team had 24 hours from the end of the event to upload a 90 second video about their product. From there, the world decides the winner.

How awesome would it be if Fundships, the Bloomington winner, which includes five Bloomington teammates and one teammate from Purdue (he was smart and joined Startup Weekend Bloomington), won the Global Battle?

Here’s what you can do to help:

• Vote for Fundships!
• Like Fundships via Facebook and follow them on Twitter.
• Spread the word about Fundships by signing up for their newsletter and sharing with friends.

A special thanks to Kevin Weaver and Blueline Style and Media Productions for all the hard work that went into making this amazing video:

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Our recent partnership with StartUp Weekend is underway, and as promised, we will be making our rounds across the country to help early stage software companies become sustainable businesses.

Here is where we’re headed the next few weeks:

Startup Weekend, Washington D.C- Aug. 13-15
StartUp Weekend, San Diego- Aug. 20-22

StartUp Weekend is a challenge for web developers, marketing experts, business managers and graphic designers to form teams and build companies in a 54-hour period. It’s a great opportunity for entrepreneurs to come together to network with experts and make their ideas a reality. Teams can develop a concept, a demo or launch their finished product.

I will be attending these events, serving as a business mentor and  judging teams. I will also be speaking about the challenge of fundraising for new companies.

SocialDevCamp, Chicago- Aug. 13-15

SocialDevCamp is a weekend conference focused on how to utilize the social web. Hundreds of developers and enthusiasts come for talks on social applications, platforms, mobile applications and new media from those such as Andrew Mason of Groupon and Chriss Messina of Google. Developers can also compete in the Hackathon to develop and launch a new social app.

SproutBox is a sponsor and Mike Trotzke will be there to answer questions about SproutBox, development and board games.

MidVenturesLAUNCH, Chicago- Sept. 27-28

LAUNCH brings together venture capitalists, entrepreneurs and social media reps from across the Midwest to introduce new ideas to an audience of professionals. Over 800 entrepreneurs, techies and capitalists will be at the event. Companies who are ready to launch are provided the space, the targeted audience and three minutes to showcase their products. Startups compete for a panel of experts to see if their product reigns supreme.

LAUNCH will be held at the UIC forum. will be there to answer questions about SproutBox and see what great ideas entrepreneurs are coming up with.

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Proposable.com is now live! We are so excited to unveil this game-changing sales platform to the world. The Proposable team has put in late nights, long days, and blood sweat and tears into this project (well.. not too much blood was spilt, actually) but now they’re open for business.

Proposable was released Thursday evening (2/11/10) and was immediately covered by the most well-read tech blogs, including TechCrunch and TheNextWeb.

Read the Techcrunch article here.

Click here to read TheNextWeb coverage.

Proposable offers revolutionary sales intelligence and a ridiculously simple platform for creating, delivering, and analyzing all your sales material online. Tell the salespeople in your life that they never again need to ask questions like, “Did they open my email?”, “What sections did they look at?”, and “How interested are they?”. Proposable has the answers.

Everyone gets a free 30 day trial – No credit card required.
Try it for yourself now at http://www.proposable.com.

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