Two $20K Investments @ Update Night & Two Weekly $5K Investments
Start Garden Announces Two $20,000 Investments at
Monthly Update Night Event
Sitting In A Tree and Petsplore Each Earn Second-Stage Investments
Grand Rapids, Mich., November 30, 2012 – Visitors to Start Garden’s Monthly Update Night event had an opportunity to experience presentations from nine teams hoping to earn second stage investments from the $15,000,000 seed fund project launched by Rick DeVos earlier this year. At the end of the night, two ideas, Sitting in a Tree (strt.gd/x9Rp), which offers custom designed websites for wedding coordination, and Petsplore (strt.gd/x6rr), which offers starter kits for new pet owners, would immediately receive an additional $20,000 each in additional funding. Strong Man Coffee (strt.gd/x7iq), a cold brewed coffee packaged for mainstream customers, received a “Not now” and will continue to work towards additional funding. The remaining ideas will no longer be considered for additional Start Garden investment.
Sitting in a Tree offers brides-to-be a more dynamic, convenient method to communicate important wedding details to their guests. Their websites sync with the design of the wedding invites and save-the-dates to provide a seamless experience in wedding coordination.
According to the America Pet Products Manufacturers Association (APPMA) pet ownership is currently at its highest level with more than 72 million US households owning a pet and continues to grow each year. Petsplore taps into this market through non-profit shelters to offer starter kits for families adopting a new pet. Not only is this convenient for the family that is adopting, it also creates a new source of revenue for the participating shelter.
“Sitting in a Tree and Petsplore made a lot of progress in very short time to prove their is a market for their offering,” said Rick DeVos. “Both teams made some changes in the middle of their experiments and discovered opportunities in very big spaces, weddings and pet owners. That’s exactly what we designed the $5,000 investment to do.”
Start Garden announced earlier in the day two additional weekly $5,000 investments. The Start Garden team selected Marcuski (strt.gd/x7zv), a new wake board design that allows for improved handling. The idea selected by public endorsement was Cunable (strt.gd/x0Rr), a new way to allow individuals to transfer existing apps, music and ebooks among various devices.