startup - New Mexico Technology Council

Tech On Tap Thursday April 28th with Steve McKee on SaaS and Passare

About Passare
Passare is an innovative, Cloud-based Software as a Service (SaaS) platform that helps funeral service professionals connect and collaborate with families anytime, anywhere, from any connected device. The company was founded in 2012 to meet the changing needs and preferences of today’s funeral consumers. Passare offers funeral homes increased efficiency and accuracy while enhancing the customer’s buying experience. Through the cloud-based funeral arrangement platform, families are able to collaborate with one another and their funeral director. By mid-2015, Passare transitioned from a tech start-up into a fully operational company, growing its customer base by over 300% in six months. Passare is redefining and reinvigorating one of the last industries to be transformed by the digital revolution.

Steve McKee, Co-Founder of Passare
In addition to being the co-founder and member of the board of directors of Passare, Steve is president of McKee Wallwork + Company (MWC), Advertising Age’s2015 Southwest Small Agency of the Year and the firm out of which Passare emerged. He is the author of When Growth Stalls: How it Happens, Why You’re Stuck and What To Do About It, and Power Branding: Leveraging the Success of the World’s Best Brands. His firm specializes in revitalizing stalled, stuck and stale brands across the U.S. and made the Inc. 500 list of the fastest-growing private companies in America its first year of eligibility. A marketing strategist for nearly thirty years, Steve has held executive positions at several notable international agencies. He was a popular Businessweek.com columnist for more than a decade and currently writes a monthly column for SmartBrief on Leadership. He has been published or quoted in The New York Times, USA Today, Forbes.com, Investor’s Business Daily, the Los Angeles Times and is a frequent contributor to Albuquerque Business First. A popular speaker at corporate and association events, he has appeared on CNBC, ESPN2, CNNfn, Bloomberg, and network television affiliates across America.

Register here to attend and your first drink is on us!

Marie-Pier Frigon2016-04-25T15:34:09+00:00April 25th, 2016|

Startup Teen Entrepreneurs Program Seeks High School Students for July

Startup Teen organizers Taylor Chavez & Thomas Abeyta with NMTC Community Manager Eric Renz-Whitmore and Bosque Schools’ Marisa Gay

Keeping kids in school and learning (which helps them lead better, healthier, better compensated lives) is largely a matter of making learning more relevant. The lean startup approach has been doing a great job of that, getting many young people and proving some necessity for math, science and communications skills. And since we also want to encourage more entrepreneurial ‘culture’ teaching kids about entrepreneurial opportunities early on can make a big difference in all sorts of ways.

That’s why we’re so excited about the forthcoming Startup Teen Entrepreneurs program from the same dynamic folks who brought us the world’s first Startup Weekend by teens for teens. Here are the basics (http://www.startupteen.com):

The Startup Teen Entrepreneurs Summer Program for high school students in 9th-12th grades.

The program is July 14-18, 2014. This program will emulate Startup Weekend Teen Albuquerque. High school students will follow the global grassroots movement, Startup Weekend, of active and empowered community leaders and entrepreneurs, who are learning the basics of founding startups and launching successful business ventures. This week-long program will focus on economic development and business start ups all designed and created by teens. Beginning with overviews of the economic scenario in New Mexico, leading to open-mic pitches and business development, and finally presenting the business plans to a panel of judges, attendees will learn and create what millions of Americans only dream about doing. The students will learn about customer development, validating their ideas, marketing, programming, practicing LEAN Startup methodologies, and ultimately building a minimal viable product.

Cost for the week is $145, but scholarships and other ways to make attending easier are available. Find more info and registration at: http://startupteen.com/

See a video interview from uPublic’s “The Morning Brew with Larry Ahrens” featuring student organizer Thomas Abeyta and Bosque School Director of Communications, Marisa Gay HERE.

If you have kids of your own or in your extended family – or know of others who do, please consider passing this along!

Marie-Pier Frigon2014-06-16T02:08:43+00:00June 16th, 2014|

What is Startup Weekend?

Startup Weekend – and Startup Weekend Santa Fe, coming soon! – is essentially a weekend-long hackathon for transforming ideas into viable startups. However for people unfamiliar with hackathon-style events, this may be fairly opaque and confusing.

Luckily several of the sites that have already hosted Startup Weekend events have shared their thoughts and information about how they work. For a quick introduction, visit with #SWToronto here:

It’s not a seminar or a workshop. Participants with skills in business, programming, design and more arrive ready to share and pitch ideas, the ideas are culled by popular vote, and attendees either lead or find teams to work with in transforming those ideas into potential products, services or businesses. Architectures and prototypes are developed, then tested and changed based on customer response. Teams continue to pivot and adapt to feedback and new opportunities, as they create a presentation to demonstrate their project, how it’s used, and how it should earn income. Judges with experience in investment, startups and related fields question and make suggestions, determining the ‘winners’ of the weekend’s event.

Some startup projects find funding and/or continue to develop into real companies. Others are abandoned as failures to be discarded, but learned from. Participants will have met new friends and potential colleagues.

Our entrepreneurial ecosystem will have taken a small but healthy step forward.

We hope you’ll consider joining us for Startup Weekend Santa Fe (March 1-3 2013 at the Santa Fe Business Incubator) and for the Startup Weekends to come.

Find more information at: http://santafe.startupweekend.org

Register at: http://santafesw.eventbrite.com

And view the longer form video here:

Startup Weekend – Full from Eighteen Eighty on Vimeo.

Marie-Pier Frigon2013-02-08T01:43:53+00:00February 8th, 2013|