Author Archive

Michael Hartman was asked to be one of the judges on the final panel for Lexington Startup Weekend. The panel also included Drew Curtis of Fark.com, Rick Miller from the Bluegrass Angels Managing Board, and Dr. Bruce Walcott from the UK School of Engineering.

Lexington Startup Weekend is part a global grassroots movement of active and empowered entrepreneurs who are learning the basics of founding startups and launching successful ventures. It is the largest community of passionate entrepreneurs with over 400 past events in 100 countries around the world in 2011.

By the final round, 9 companies remained and they had 5 minutes to give their final pitch while also showing off the latest version of their company or product. The judges deliberately extensively before selecting GiftPool as the Lexington winner. GiftPool will represent Lexington in  the 2012 Global Startup Battle.

Frogdice will be exhibiting at next year’s PAX East convention in Boston, MA on March 22-24, 2013.

Frogdice will be attending with other game developers from Lexington, KY who are part of the RunJumpDev game developer group. The trip is being sponsored by the Bluegrass Business Development Partnership.

In addition to showing off Frogdice’s games, including Threshold RPG, Coin ‘n Carry, Tower of Elements, and 1 or 2 new games that are yet to be released, we hope to promote Kentucky to other game developers.

Our President & CEO, Michael Hartman, was a guest on the webshow Gamer Hangout last night, hosted by Massively.com’s Beau Hindman.

Topic: Online Piracy: what is it, should we stop it?

If you find the topic even remotely interesting, please check out the video and make a comment or two.

On April 25, 2012, Michael Hartman served on a panel of three to judge a competition of 5 pitches, 5 minutes each, starting at 5 o’clock.

The 5 Across pitch competition is sponsored by the Lexington Venture Club and Awesome, Inc. and features presentations from local entrepreneurs starting or expanding new business ventures.

• Eric Gaines presented Party Tutor: a smartphone app/website.
• Grant Weherley and his team pitched SmartLit – a bluetooth controllable outlet.
• Cameron Lippert pitched Last Call Beverages, a hangover pre-treatment.
• David Nelson presented EHW, LLC which is developing an improved walker for the elderly.
• Tom Dugan pitched Bluestone Geologic which provides Geologic Mapping Services.

Michael Hartman was asked to be the keynote speaker kicking off 2012’s Idea State U business plan and pitch competition. What is Idea State U?

Kentucky’s new statewide business concept and business plan competition is designed to encourage innovation and entrepreneurship by rewarding participating student teams from the commonwealth’s eight four-year state universities. Winning teams will be those judged as having the best new business concepts and business plans for proposed new ventures…

…The competition places emphasis on business concepts and plans that are scored by independent judges as most likely to result in successful, high-growth ventures. This “ready for the real world” emphasis ensures that winning teams will have the best chance of providing a return on the state’s investment by creating high-paying jobs in Kentucky. 

Mr. Hartman spoke about his own experiences as an entrepreneur and gave advice to the 100+ participants in the competition on how to pursue their dream of founding and growing a startup.