The weather around here tends to balance itself out over the course of a few years. This year, winter just continues to hang on. I should have expected this, since spring started in mid-February last year. We got about eight inches of wet, slushy snow the weekend before Easter. The snowflakes flew again this past weekend, giving us another 2 or 3 inches on the grass and a dusting on the concrete. I’ve run my snowblower more this winter than I have any of the previous five winters, but luckily I didn’t have to pull it back into service for this most recent round of snow.
Sure, I’d love to open the windows and let some fresh air into the house. My wife would love to have the windows open, mostly to let the stale air out of the house. Then there’s that part of me that hates mowing the lawn, and that part of me absolutely loves this weather. I was mowing the lawn around this time last year. Not so much this year, as half of the grass is still brown and dormant, and none of the trees have started to bud yet. I hope that the forecast is correct, and we’ll be near normal temperatures by the end of the week. I certainly hope that spring finally makes it to the Midwest before I travel to Des Moines in a couple of weeks.
I know that it’s rare for me to post in between posts on events and trips, but there have been some awesome things happening right here at home that I wanted to discuss. A good chunk of the things that have happened since the pair of trips to Des Moines in March had been in the works for at least a couple of months, and as usually happens, things tend to occur in clusters.
David M-K and I had been interviewed back in January for a segment in the Cedar Rapids Gazette on up-and-coming startups in eastern Iowa. We weren’t terribly sure when the piece would run, but we were happy to talk about what we are doing to bring couples together. The two of us were told that a photographer would contact us about taking pictures for the article, but we weren’t sure when that was going to happen, either.
Near the end of March, we were contacted by the business section editor about having the pictures taken, so the article could run as soon as possible. David and I met the photographer at MERGE on the 29th. On the 30th, the article ran in both the print and online versions of the paper!
I’m so happy that we’re finally starting to get a bit of media coverage for BondingBox. It’s a bit harder to get noticed when you don’t have a large physical presence like a lot of other companies in the area. It has taken a bit of networking with business reporters and bloggers to get on their radar, and hopefully those connections will benefit other projects I’m working on, like Startup Weekend Iowa City and Iowa City Open Coffee.
Speaking of Iowa City Open Coffee, our attendance has been well into the double digits again, to the levels the event had a couple of years ago. I haven’t really spent much time doing any advertising personally, but the word is finally getting around about the event from the small core of people who have been steadily attending over the last few months, since we moved to MERGE. Today, I made the announcement that Open Coffee is moving to a weekly schedule, to follow the splitting of the Iowa City/Cedar Rapids 1 Million Cups chapter into two separate entities.
Having our own 1 Million Cups chapter here in Iowa City is going to be an incredible benefit for the work we’re doing for the entrepreneurial ecosystem here in Johnson County. It allows us a bit more control over our own destiny and allows teams building a business to have another opportunity to present locally. I’m excited to officially be on the 1MC Iowa City organizing team. I got to meet several of the other organizers today, and I think that we’ve put together a pretty solid organizing team.
Startup Weekend Iowa City is also getting some attention from across the state. I was contacted by someone associated with the Ag Tech Accelerator in Des Moines who is interested in helping as a mentor during the event. One of my overarching goals for SWIC is to create the kind of statewide Startup Weekend that we’ve not really had since 2015. This contact is an excellent first step in moving toward that goal. Also, inviting mentors from across the state allows our core group of usual mentors to perhaps participate in the full event for a change.
Next week, I’ll be on the road again to Des Moines to attend the Young Entrepreneur Convention. It’s my third year attending, and my second year participating in the elevator pitch competition. I’ll be pitching Cider Finder this time, in an effort to begin refining that pitch before possibly talking to investors. I haven’t pitched Cider Finder since Startup Weekend Decatur in February 2016, so I need to update some of the facts and figures that I used then, along with distilling everything down to 60-90 seconds.
I definitely have a lot to do in the next few days. Maybe it’s not a bad thing that snow is in the forecast again this weekend…
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