Vic Gatto spends a lot of time these days driving on I-40, traveling from his home base in Nashville to a converted warehouse-turned-business-accelerator in Downtown Memphis.
Gatto, a partner at the Solidus Company, makes regular treks to the EmergeMemphis building at 516 Tennessee to check on a half-dozen startups housed there that his investment company helps fund through the Seed Hatchery initiative.
Seed Hatchery is the result of a collaboration between LaunchMemphis co-founder Eric Mathews, former EmergeMemphis president Gwin Scott, and Solidus, one of the TNInvestco venture funds.
Crafted after similarly successful ventures in Nashville and other cities, Seed Hatchery awards $15,000 to each of six startups and offers mentor-driven programming to help fledgling entrepreneurs develop their business concepts during a 90-day period.
At the end of three months, the entrepreneurs pitch their business ideas before a panel of angel investors in the hopes of receiving additional funding.
Gatto believes that this year’s Seed Hatchery program, now in its second year, is solidly situated to launch successful startups in Memphis. He’ll be there today and Tuesday to meet with the program’s participants and mentors.
“We want to continue last year’s momentum and create stronger companies. We were encouraged by the number of quality applicants we had, not just from Memphis, but from across the country and around the world,” Gatto said. “We chose high-potential teams with growth potential. We’re not in this for base hits. We’re trying to change the industry.”
Mathews agreed.
“We’ve tweaked our programming to make it stronger and more efficient. We expanded on what worked well last year and revised some areas where we discovered that we could improve,” said Mathews, who recently was named interim executive director at Emerge. “Our participants this year are starting off at a quicker pace, and we expect them to accomplish a lot during the next three months.”
Gatto and Mathews expect the new group to perform as well as or better than the 2011 inaugural class, which saw three of its six startups continue operations — albeit in different iterations for some of them — after completing the program.
One participant, David Traxler of Friendsignia, moved from Los Angeles with his business partner, Cole Hawkins, after winning a slot in Seed Hatchery’s cohort. The motivation to apply for the Memphis program, Traxler said, was in part due to the opportunity to return to the Mid-South to be closer to his family.
“I went to Ole Miss and I used to visit Memphis a lot, and I liked the idea of getting back there. I love the South,” Traxler said. “I looked at incubators all over the country, but when I heard about the Seed Hatchery program I just attacked it. This is a great opportunity for us.”
In addition to Traxler, Seed Hatchery selected Josh Bell and Sridhar Sunkara of IntoOutdoors; Kenneth Gibbs, Elliot Boyette and James Youngblood of KnoCo; Mike Hoffmeyer of Paytopia; and Clifton Wilson and Daryll Coffman of Standardized Safety.
After their training, the startup leaders will participate in the Investors Day forum that is set for 2 p.m. on May 3 at Memphis Bioworks Foundation at 20 Dudley.
More information on the program, this year’s participants and their startups may be found at seedhatchery.com.
– James Dowd: (901) 529-2737
