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NewsWise

WeekWise: Five and Six
Halfway point: #bayoustartupsummer is in full swing. Founders have continued to work hard on their businesses and we are gearing up for the big day in just one short month! Mark your calendars: August 1 is the sixth annual Bayou Startup Showcase. In preparation for this, founders took a deep dive into several topics over the past two weeks:
  • Building a face for a brand: translating the key elements of a brand into a visual identity;
  • The importance of pretotyping before prototyping, plus methods for testing and validating an idea leveraging minimal resources;
  • Exploring strategies and tools for marketing;
  • Legal considerations surrounding trademarks; and
  • Storytelling and best-practices for writing a pitch.
It takes a village to raise a startup—and at OwlSpark, it is no different. Our gratitude and kudos to our village, our speakers and subject matter experts who shared their valuable time and insights over the past two weeks:
Melanie Bell
Marketing Interface

Sean Belding
Vinson & Elkins LLP

Trey Hebert
Vinson & Elkins LLP

Sean Hill
Vinson & Elkins LLP

Deborah Mansfield
Deborah Mansfield Business Services

Vaughn Miller
Vinson & Elkins LLP
Andrew Parks
AP Growth Strategies

Blake Petty
Texas A&M University

Tim Shen
South Texas College of Law

Andrew Swick
CheckedTwice
OwlSpark Class 1

Rob Tucci
Texas Halo Fund


 

TeamWise: KickedOC

Many college students today face housing struggles. They want or need to live off campus, but housing is very limited and often, schools do not provide adequate resources to find off-campus housing. This process is stressful, time consuming and can be difficult. Jonathan Bunt and co-founder Peter Rizzi, created KickedOC, a website that makes rental interactions between property managers and tenants easier, by matching tenants and property managers based on similar criteria.
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PeopleWise: Jacques Zaneveld

Jacques Zaneveld is the founder of Lazarus 3D, a company that 3D prints silicone body parts. The common misconception is that all organs look the same, but in reality, they all look different. Everyone’s tumors look different as well. The problem arises when physicians have to prepare for a new surgery with generic alternatives for that operation and they go into the surgery only to find out their practice was useless because of the variation in body parts. Lazarus 3D is on a journey to solve this issue.
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WordWise: Overhead at OwlSpark
“We have some other career paths.”
“Good.”

“It's not you. It's me. I've decided I don't want to settle.”

“I left my mustache at home. It's a glue-on.”

“Do you salt your cantaloupe?”

“I don’t wanna flex and bust the sleeves on this thing!”

“I can’t afford love right now.”

“Statistically, most of you will fail.”
“Sick days are just wasted vacation days.”

“Do you think for this week's potluck lunch, I could bring in a blow-torch? I've been looking for an excuse to buy one.”

“I’ve always wondered how I would fight or flight… I think I’m like 99% flight.”

“At what point is it immoral to take peoples' money?”

“Sometimes my botox makes it really hard for me to have big facial expressions.”

PhotoWise
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