Startup St. Louis Draws Standing-Room Only Crowd

Moving into a new territory can be an uphill battle, but the Tech.li team seemed to have no trouble bringing the Tech.li name to St. Louis this week. The event quickly became a standing-room only affair, brimming with excitement for our speakers. We kicked off the event with Judy Sindecuse from Capital Innovators who, along with Hal Gentry, heads up Startup St. Louis, an accelerator program which announced it’s five finalists for the Class of 2011:

Action Online, Inc., the largest group of action-figure sites online led by president Jim Dolan, principal in Dolan Media Arts, a marketing communications agency. He was named “Best Local Impresario” in 2009 by the Riverfront Times. Dining Circle, an innovative, software-as-a-service solution, allowing restaurants to take real-time, capacity controlled reservations directly on their website led by Anthony Favazza, a member of a long line of Favazza restaurateurs in St. Louis. Gremln, a suite of social media tools to help businesses get organized and take control of its brand message in sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn led by president Ryan Bell, a 15-year veteran of software development and the IT industry. JBara Software, a customer satisfaction, customer retention and revenue performance improvement solution that delivers powerful analytics, dashboards, alerts, and management reports led by CEO Jim Eberlin, the founder and chief customer officer at Host Analytics, Inc. Norse Corporation, an emerging provider of innovative Internet security intelligence for all industry verticals, led by CEO Sam Glines, a technology veteran who worked for Accenture (then Andersen Consulting) for 13 years.

The event continued with candid remarks on behalf of area entrepreneurs: Jean Roberson of Appistry– With a broad customer list that includes FedEx, GeoEye, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, Appistry’s platform supports mission-critical, data-intensive applications for some of the world’s leading organizations. Jean is CFO of Appistry and holds down 17 years of industry experience. Gabe Lozano of LockerDome– LockerDome developed the first universal identification system for tracking youth sports content. Gabe  is the Co-Founder and CEO of LockerDome, and combined his 17 years of sports experience with business savvy to bring together athletes and teams from across the country. Matthew Kulig of Aisle411– Aisle411 is an app that helps you find the items you’re looking for, create and manage shopping lists, plan your shopping route, find product reviews, and earn rewards and dollars off for simply finding whatever it is you need. Matt is the COO of Aisle411 and is a Serial Entrepreneur, MBA, and Executive Manager, bringing experience in company formation, market research, financial creation and analysis, competitive strategy, and business planning to the company. Each of the speakers talked about real life as an entrepreneur, offering insights to the industry and connecting with the audience on a nuts-and-bolts level, leaving everyone feeling a bit more intertwined with the community-at-large. The excitement for the St. Louis Startup scene is palpable and people were excited to see the start of the accelerator and connect with some of the bigger players in the city. Tech.li will continue its coverage & events in St. Louis. Kyle Wellborn writes for the St. Louis community on behalf of Tech.li and we are looking for additional writers in St. Louis. Entrepreneurs and PR reps can contact Kyle at [email protected] with information on startups in the St. Louis area. These are just a few of our photos! You can see them all on the Tech.li Facebook page.