Not Only Luck.
An essay by John Melonakos

Tonight’s Founder Institute Graduation in Atlanta

Tonight was the first ever Founder’s Institute graduation in Atlanta. I have enjoyed mentoring these teams the past several months. They have done a great job and it’s exciting to see all the progress they made. Here are the highlights of tonight’s graduation:

Keynote by Jeff Hilimire

  • Got to put in an absurd amount of work
  • Got to have self confidence
  • Got to be all in

At one point in his entrepreneurial journey, Jeff had $90k of credit card debt in his name. He did a great job and ended early which is always a sign of a great presentation!

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The graduating companies all presented. Here are notes from their presentations:

Parental Proxy

  • seeks to provide parents with the ability to better lock down social media for their children

LaraMed

  • important garments for burn victims
  • adds style to compression garments

BrandScanned

  • seeks to use technology to connect consumers to brands. Uses a mobile app to enable users to scan products they buy to get entered into giveaway competitions and contests with manufacturers.
  • sells consumer data acquired as a second revenue generation line

SustainDepot.com

  • create a global online marketplace to help connect non-profits with supplies and distribution of things like water filters

ReliRental

  • a cloud service to provide a reservation app to enable equipment utilization across companies, like Airbnb for equipment leasing

YellowBird

  • want to present a gamified experience for learning to invest in the stock market

EduSimplified.co

  • make every student a better learner by producing practical & simple tools so academic achievements reflect a student’s true ability

SpendSpark

  • partners with banks to drive more commercial credit card revenue

FanHarvest

  • Helps brands engage with their competitors most loyal fans

Exploractiv

  • a marketplace where adventure travelers can quickly and easily find off-the-beaten-path adventures and authentic experiences around the globe. (wants to be at $60 million in revenue in the next 5 years)

Squarematics

  • provides analytics to commercial real estate companies

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This is a great batch of companies. What impresses me most is that these founders are not students. They are first time founders leaving their lucrative day jobs to break out into their own thing. It’s scary. And they are fearless. I look forward to seeing how these companies grow!