Brad shares what SproutBox is all about and his role within the company.

  |    |    |  

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:

  |    |    |  

I’m Clay, or Craig to some at SproutBox.  My real name is Clayton, though I prefer Clay as not to sound like a villain from Disney’s Tarzan.  Digital media is my game, and SproutBox is my first internship.  I’m a video intern, so I make videos for SproutBox and its various sprouts.  I love this job as much as I love making videos.  A friend of mine started making videos in middle school, so I jumped aboard and kept it as a hobby throughout high school making videos for YouTube and mainly for fun.

After trying to find my place in college, I realized you should pursue the things you really like doing… not the things you kind of like doing.  Now I’m heading into my senior year at Indiana University, and making videos is what I’m looking to do for a long time.

This summer I’m also interning at the Madison Scouts Drum and Bugle Corps as their video guy.  I just returned from touring the Midwest with them for a week.  One hundred fifty dudes performing a twelve minute epic marching spectacular every night in competition.  It’s an awesome activity.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to all the SproutBox projects coming in the near future. Keep an eye out for some video posts.
A couple last minute reminders to other video guys trying to enter the field like me:
*never use comic sans
*never put a slow country song over a bunch of photos
*never use comic sans… ever

  |    |    |