Startup Weekend 2018 was a stellar success, with over 40 people participating on nine teams that presented on Sunday night after the grueling 54-hour process of choosing a product, forming a team and testing the ideas. The event took place April 20-22, 2018 at the CoalesceJXN co-working space in downtown…
Startup Weekend 2018 in Jackson was a huge success, with nine teams making it through the grueling 54-hour process. Startup Weekend participants begin with initial ideas and team formation on Friday evening, and then go two full days through the process of business planning, customer validation, mentor sessions, prototyping, market…
C Spire is planning for a very busy spring in 2018, as the company continues to roll out fiber throughout the state of Mississippi, expand wireless services, plan a technology conference and encourage kids to learn coding. Entergy, C Spire and PSC Team Up to Take On the Digital Divide…
J.J. Townsend's non-profit business got its start at an Innovate Mississippi-sponsored Startup Weekend in 2016, although Townsend says he initially went in with a somewhat different idea. "The original [pitch] was still CitizenJXN, but the idea was a convoluted 'everything store,'" Townsend said. "It was sort of like 'all things civics.'…
In a "Made in Mississippi" feature article, "Myra Mirrors More Than a Gadget," Callie Daniels Bryant of the Mississippi Business Journal tells the story of Myra Mirrors, a startup founded in Oxford, Mississippi, by Ole Miss students Pontus Andersson and Sam Bertolet. Myra Mirrors makes "smart mirrors," designed to use…
We've got more great coverage to share, this time from WAPT in Jackson, which ran stories all evening this past Tuesday, the same day as our open house and tour of the new Jackson-based Mississippi Coding Academy classroom for legislators and others. In Mississippi Coding Academy Funded with Grants, WAPT's…
The STEM Advancement / Mississippi Robotics 2018 "STEM/SUMO" Annual Statewide Competition will be held on Saturday, April 28, 2018 at Nissan – Canton, MS. The time will be 8am – 5pm. Seven individual events and three team events will be included in the competition. Mississippi Robotics is a non-profit organization involved in training youth and…
WLBT's Roslyn Anderson produced two news stories this week on Innovate Mississippi and the Mississippi Coding Academies—we thank her for communicating our entrepreneurial initiatives and needs so well! In the first story, Coding Academy In Need of Take-Home Laptops, Anderson talks about the Mississippi Coding Academies' inaugural Jackson class of…
One way to increase state budgets and overcome revenue challenges, according to Dr. Glenn Boyce, commissioner of higher education in Mississippi, is to grow Mississippi's economy by encouraging entrepreneurship. With a shout-out to Innovate Mississippi and the work we do to encourage (and find funding for) startup businesses, Dr. Boyce…
Glo Cubes began as a student project of Mississippi State University design student Kaylie Mitchell. The assignment was to create a conceptional company that “drew the eye” of potential customers—Mitchell figured something that lit up would definitely draw people's eyes. One of her teachers thought the idea was good enough…