Thinking of starting a business? Experience can help you avoid all sorts of potentially fatal/business-killing mistakes.
Mentors can make a difference! Entrepreneurs in northern Nevada can tap into a robust network of mentors and mentor programs to find the one that fits their business. Follow this link for the full story published in the Reno Gazette-Journal.
Incorporated on Sept. 17, 2011, VizKinect’s cutting-edge biometric eye-tracking system is set to
VizKinect founder Norm Smith (right) and COO Ron Nichols flank the development team of Mbinya Ndonye, Bailey Hein and Ellin Nesbitt at their offices at C4Cube in Reno.
revolutionize the way advertisements, movies and other media get our attention.
The VizKinect system takes eye-tracking, which has been around for 30 years in various forms, and simultaneously expands and simplify the entire process. The value to advertisers is immense, said Norm Smith, VizKinect chairman and president.
VizKinect will test focus groups of up to 20 people at once, analyze the results quickly to produce nearly instantaneous feedback.
“This will be a game changer (in several industries),” Smith said.
Advertisers and product-placement specialists will be able to tell if consumers see their message before spending millions on actually airing the ad on television or paying for a product to be in a movie.
Up until now, eye-tracking was done one person at a time in a lab with elaborate equipment. Almost every research institution has a version, but it becomes obsolete, is expensive to buy and to train people to use, plus eye color and skin pigmentation can throw off the results, explained Ron Nichols, VizKinect chief operating officer.
Not so with the VizKinect system.
VizKinect uses no invasive equipment. Test subjects either wear special glasses, or have a special scanner follow their eye movements. They just sit and watch the screen. The system records (tracks) where individuals look at a video screen. Do they look at what an advertiser or movie director wants? The data will tell.
Smith, a successful serial entrepreneur, said $354,000 has been invested in developing and refining the VizKinect system so far. It has two patents pending and numerous trademarks on the unique programs and equipment. The company is seeking $3 million from investors to expand.
“Part of the beauty of VizKinect is that it will adapt and change over time and we can use (any type
of) tracking technology,” said Nichols. The uniqueness is in the system, the code and the analysis process, which the team, including Ellen Nesbitt, Bailey Hein and Mbinya Ndonye, has spent months refining and streamlining to work out the kinks.
Focus groups can be run in VizKinect’s offices in Reno or at a client’s location – with results delivered in time to reshoot for more effectiveness. Basic focus group and analysis work starts at $5,000. For an agency spending millions on producing and placing an ad, it is money well spent, Smith said.
Data can be broken down by age, gender, race and other metrics, Nesbitt said.
VizKinect is being developed at the C4Cube offices inReno. C4Cube is a non-profit business incubator started in 2006 to help entrepreneurs start companies and to bring jobs to this area, said Ky Good, managing director of “The Cube.”
It’s working. Several types of companies have offices within C4Cube, including Eye-Com, another business working with biometrics in a very different way from VizKinect.
“Reno is a great place to start a business,” Smith said.
VizKinect is ramping up its staff. This summer it will have 10 employees and interns on board, by the end of 2013, Smith expects to have at least 72 working for the company. Most will be inReno, though the company expects to go global.
Founded in April by childhood friends who are now local business owners, Reno Rebuild Project captures a portion of every dollar spent at certain local restaurants and puts it into a fund that will eventually help others open a business.
RenoRebuild Guys – photo by Reno Gazette-Journal
Michael Connolly, Chris Kahl and Zachary Cage run the Legends Grill, Sierra Tap House and the soon-to-open Brewer’s Cabinet started Reno Rebuild. The group pledged 5 cents of every sale at these establishments to the fund.
They made their fist deposit into the account on May 1.
“We have a current cash balance collected of $5,485.55! It is definitely a great start with our goal being $20k for 2013, so we are on a great pace,” said Michael Connolly.
After a year of deposits, the fund will be used to award one loan to non-franchised, small, local businesses. The Community Foundation of Western Nevada, which is helping make the Reno Rebuild Project a non-profit organization, will administer the fund and help establish eligibility guidelines. One guideline already set: Each application must include a detailed business plan.
As the fund grows, the trio hopes to award more than one low-interest loan per year.
Reno Rebuild grew out of the trio’s struggle to get funding to start their own venture. Banks and other traditional sources simply wouldn’t lend, so they tapped into family and friends for financing. Realizing that not everyone has family and friends who can provide such support, they developed Reno Rebuild to extend a hand to other entrepreneurs.
“Someone just needs to give them the opportunity to meet their goal if they want to open their own business,” Kahl said. “It’s a cool opportunity for them.”
Other businesses have already expressed interest in participating in the program.
“We also structured it to where other business owners and individuals in general can put money in,” Connolly said.
Find out more at www.renorebuild.com
Everyone has a role to play in bringing Nevada out of the economic doldrums — whether as a consumer, a business owner, an entrepreneur or an investor. Changing the perception from doom and gloom to optimism — in real terms, not just wishful thinking — plays a role.
Being part of that conversation — having a seat at the table of Entrepreneurship Nevada — means helping celebrate that goal by creating and writing a newsletter called ENevadaNow. Entrepreneurship Nevada is a nonprofit umbrella coalition of the many groups trying to get northern Nevadans back to work. The groups do this by 
supporting, promoting and educating neophyte entrepreneurs and would-be entrepreneurs. Some members such s NSBDC, SCORE and others also serve some of the 6,000 businesses in Washoe County with 1 to 4 employees.
My role: Senior editor of eNevadaNow.org, the newsletter/PR arm of the coalition. This month’s newsletter celebrates:
The voice I bring to the table celebrates each member organization and their successes. Businesses can — and do — grow and thrive in Reno, Sparks and the surrounding communities. These trailblazers deserve credit and notice. That’s what the newsletter does — praise these companies, and the various groups that helped get them there.
I believe in the project and the community and salute the people leading the effort to grow jobs in the Reno area.
Take a look at our latest ENevadaNow issue here, and give us your feed back on anything that can move us forward!
Holly O'Driscoll 