MONEY

Entrepreneurs head for Nashville on StartupBuses

Jamie McGee jmcgee@tennessean.com

In five North American cities, groups of software developers, designers and those with business backgrounds will be loading into buses Thursday, each bound for Nashville.

The San Francisco-born StartupBus event moved its final destination to Nashville this year, in light of Launch Tennessee's upcoming 36|86 conference for Southeastern entrepreneurs. In past years, the trips have ended with a pitch competition in San Antonio ahead of Austin's SXSW tech event.

With hack events and startup weekends proliferating nationally, the StartupBus offers a twist to the concept. On board the buses, two dozen individuals travel together for three days, with teams building products and business models along the way. Once in Nashville, they will present their concepts to a team of judges on Sunday and Monday.

"It's like a crazy startup weekend on steroids, on a bus," said local entrepreneur and investor Steve Repetti. He has invested in the StartupBus and has led buses from Florida and from Nashville to Texas.

The StartupBus kicks off a two-week spree of entrepreneur events in Nashville. 36|86, a new version of LaunchTN's Southland event, runs Monday-Wednesday, bringing investors and business leaders to Nashville to interact with Southeastern entrepreneurs. After Bonnaroo, PandoDaily, the San Francisco-based tech publication that also organized Southland last year, will host Pandoland, its national tech and startup event that runs June 15-17. Both events will take place at Marathon Music Works, and the StartupBus teams will pitch at the venue as well.

The StartupBus organizers decided to change the buses' destination after the SXSW experience became less cost-effective for the groups of aspiring entrepreneurs. They considered Las Vegas and Nashville as more feasible options.

"Nashville and this whole Southeastern area in general (are) doing some phenomenal things in the world of startups," Repetti said. "Rather than going and getting lost in the blur in Vegas, they could come here to Nashville and be special."

Buses will depart Thursday from San Francisco, New York, Tampa, Chicago and Mexico City. Nashville-area participants have flown to these other cities and will be driving back with these other groups. Chicago's StartupBus will have a "makers" focus and will be working on physical products not just software-oriented concepts.

Along their routes, buses will stop at entrepreneur centers, co-working spaces and business accelerators to connect with other startup communities. The groups will arrive in Nashville on Saturday and stay throughout the 36|86 event.

More important than the products made on the StartupBus are the connections, Repetti said. The strongest example of that is the formation of Instacart, a company valued at $2 billion whose founders met on the StartupBus.

Mitch Neff, StartupBus' Tampa-based global director, will be on the StartupBus driving from Florida and will be live streaming en route to Nashville. His StartupBus experience began in 2011, when he rode from Miami to Texas and built a storytelling video app.

"It was completely eye-opening," he said. "You know at the end of three days you are supposed to build a working app or product. It just seems completely insane and impossible, but somehow, through that experience, it actually occurs and you have something at the end of the road that you built with a team of strangers in three days. You just learn your limits are so far beyond what you actually think they are."

Neff, who lived in the Nashville area for eight years and attended Middle Tennessee State University, said he is eager to return to Nashville for this event.

"It makes great sense for us," Neff said, referencing 36|86 and Nashville's central location. "It's exciting to be part of a burgeoning tech economy there in Nashville."

Reach Jamie McGee at 615-259-8071 and on Twitter @JamieMcGee_.