ARK Challenge sets faster pace

This summer’s entrepreneur boot camp to feature 10 startups

Ashley Miller (from left), general manager of Savoir-Fair, Sara Beck, co-founder and chief executive officer of Btiques, and Will Carter, co-founder and chief operations officer of Btiques, meet last week at Savoir-Fair in Fayetteville. Customers of Savoir-Fair will soon be able to use the Btiques application to buy merchandise from the store.
Ashley Miller (from left), general manager of Savoir-Fair, Sara Beck, co-founder and chief executive officer of Btiques, and Will Carter, co-founder and chief operations officer of Btiques, meet last week at Savoir-Fair in Fayetteville. Customers of Savoir-Fair will soon be able to use the Btiques application to buy merchandise from the store.

FAYETTEVILLE - Participants in the ARK Challenge business accelerator for tech start-ups should be ready for a faster pace in the second year of the competition.

The ARK Challenge is looking for the next wave of participants ready to hone their business plans, establish key connections and seek investment capital. Investors for the second year of the challenge are Winrock International Investment Committee and Gravity Ventures.

So far, nearly 30 businesses have applied for this year’s competition. Last year, 15 participants were selected from more than 83 applications from 14 countries and 14 states.

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NWA Media

Customers of Savoir-Fair will soon be able to use the Btiques application to buy merchandise from the store after the app is launched about May 1.

The 10 companies chosen for the three-month program, called a boot camp, will receive $20,000 in seed capital in exchange for a 6 percent equity stake to be held by an affiliate of the ARK Challenge. At the end of the program, companies have the opportunity during Demo Day in September to present their plans to a roomful of investors, and two companies will have the chance to snag an additional $150,000 each in investments.

The deadline for applications is April 14, and eventually the field will be whittled to 10 businesses. The boot camp will begin in June.

Jeanette Balleza, the program’s director, said the decision was made to reduce the number of participant start-ups so that each would get more individual attention and so there would be time for better networking with area companies.

Since Northwest Arkansas is home to Fortune 500 giants Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Tyson Foods Inc., as well as J.B. Hunt Transportation Services Inc .,the ARK Challenge focuses solely on technology for retail, food-processing and logistics.

Balleza said this year the accelerator will work to get participants to the prototype stage faster. She said the plan is for the start-ups to already have established customers when they pitch their products on Demo Day at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville.

As part of the boot camp, start-ups are given work space at The Iceberg in downtown Fayetteville. The Iceberg is a communal work area founded by the Northwest Arkansas Entrepreneurship Alliance. Bootcamp participants will receive advice from mentors and other experts.

Last September, Gov. Mike Beebe made the surprising announcement that three companies from the first boot campwere selected for $150,000 each. Since then, three other start-ups from the boot camp received follow-up funding, and another was accepted to an accelerator program that provided $40,000 in seed investment.

The winners of the ARK Challenge were MineWhat, a company that helps e-commerce sites nab customers and keep them engaged and returning; Btiques, which helps independent boutiques sell products over mobile devices and through social media; and StackSearch, which optimizes product searches on websites.

StackSearch’s basement offices, just a few steps off Dickson Street, look and feel like the home of a tech startup. Cofounders Mark Brandon and Sloan Ahrens work alongside the company’s two employees, Ben Hundley and and Sam Friday. A giant box of Ramen noodles sits on a nearby shelf.

Friday and Hundley worked with different companies in the ARK Challenge. StackSearch was eager to snatch them up after seeing their passion and their talents.

Brandon said the company is still looking for additional investors, primarily in Arkansas, and hopes to have them secured by summer. The company plans to add more employees soon.

Since Demo Day, Stack-Search has added clients, mostly small retailers that can benefit from the company’s ability to speed up and improve the shoppers’ online search experience.

The ARK Challenge experience was intense and allowed for a lot of vital business connections to be made, Brandon said, among them getting to know Friday and Hundley.

“These two guys are a major take-away,” he said.

Asked if StackSearch may leave Fayetteville one day, Brandon was emphatic: “We’re not moving !”

Pavan Kumar of Bangalore, India, moved to Northwest Arkansas with his business partner Ram Ganesan to develop MineWhat. Kumar said Ganesan is moving to Fayetteville from India and will become the company’s point man in the region. Then Kumar will go back home to help grow the business, but he hopes to eventually return to the state.

The company has been in negotiations with additional investors and hopes to add some interns this summer, Kumar said. In the past few months, MineWhat has been busy proving that its technology can support billions of transactions.

“We have been making sure our technology is perfect and scalable,” Kumar said.

Learning to communicate his business concept in a simple way was a key lesson that he learned at the boot camp. Kumar said the time with mentors who had real business experience was a huge plus.Books and Internet articles are filled with what successful start-ups did right but not much about what to should be avoided, he said.

“The mentors can tell you what not to do - what won’t work,” he said. “That’s much more valuable.”

Dive right in and make new friends, was Kumar’s advice to the new ARK Challenge participants.

“Your fellow entrepreneurs can give you a spark,” he said.

Sara Beck, co-founder and CEO of Btiques, said the company will launch its product in May in cooperation with boutiques around the state, including key partner Savoir-Fair in Fayetteville. Beck said Savoir-Fair embraces social media, like Facebook and Instagram, to reach its customer base, making it a good fit for Btiques’ shopping experience.

She said Btiques is setting up shop in Fayetteville, running lean and looking for a partner with technology skills.

Business, Pages 61 on 03/24/2013

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