ARK Challenge: Teams prepare for showdown

FAYETTEVILLE – There are 15 entrepreneurial teams putting the final touches on their start-up ventures as part of the 14-week “ARK Challenge.” The five teams profiled here hailed from far away as Singapore to sling their best efforts against a few local tech-savvy duos, a Floridian and a New Yorker who was stranded in the Big Apple this week from Hurricane Sandy.

“Demo Day," which is the final set for the 15 teams, is Nov. 8 . Each team will have a few minutes pitch their venture to a panel of investors and two will walk away with $150,000 to get their business off the ground .

Program director Jeannette Balleza said there will be other angel investors in attendance who could help support other teams, outside of the top two.

The challenge focuses on three fields (retail, transportation and logistics and food processing) and includes two boot-camp challenges with the goals to introduce 15 viable ventures that are primed for funding, pilot-ready and adequately positioned for new job creation in Northwest Arkansas.

EpicPledge (Singapore)
This start-up company takes a different approach to business. Co-founders Weiting Tan and Anthony Chew started EpicPledge with the mission of helping other people set and achieve their own goals.

The friendship between Tan and Chew dates back to childhood. They grew up together in Singapore, separated by only a year in age. The two have always challenged each other in regards to academics and business, and that model is the basic premise of Epic Pledge.

The company urges users to make personal goals and share them with the online world. The end thought being that we are all more capable of accomplishing our goals if we are held accountable to them.

"You can't get too caught up in just your idea when engaging in a start-up business, because if there are so many other areas of importance, the idea is merely a starting point," said Tan. "I think the biggest benefit we have had in competing in the ARK Challenge is the opportunity to focus on the details of the company every single day."

EpicPledge is a mobile application that leverages social forces to give people that extra push to accomplish their goals.

"I think coming to (Arkansas) has been a big step forward for our company because it took away a lot of the distractions we would have otherwise had to deal with," said Tan. "We feel confident about our product, though all of the teams in this competition are talented business people. We have learned a great deal about the details of running a business thanks to this program."

Farmeto (Fayetteville, Ark.)
Independent farmers are in a constant struggle to gain new business in the local and regional market especially in terms of online awareness. That’s where Farmeto comes into the picture.

The business, founded by Colin Shaw, David Tanner and Sam Friday, is a web-based tool for connecting small farm owners with retailers in an online marketplace. More specifically, Farmeto targets independent produce farms and provides the farmer with an avenue for selling its produce online.

"Our biggest task in starting this business was to conduct a great deal of research with independent farmers, the USDA and market vendors to identify some problems in the current online produce market," said Shaw. "Our research helped us figure out exactly what needs to be done in order to help get these struggling farmers a better way to create online business."

With the technology of Farmeto, buyers can post their produce needs and search for the local produce they want. Store and market owners can use the site to pool produce from several different independent farmers in order to meet supply.

"Farming is a tough business and it gets tougher every year in this country statistically," said Shaw. "Small farms are always going to have a tough time competing with the big commercial farms, but we believe our product can help bridge the gap for the little guys."

Mass Vector (Fayetteville, Ark.)
Co-founders Ben Hundley and Adam Vanderbush are the type of blue-collar business men that built this country – with hard work and silver tongues.

Unlike most people in the ARK Challenge, Hundley and Vanderbush are not business school graduates or software designers. They are a pair of successful and motivated young guys who have the potential to sweep in and take the big money with their start-up venture called Mass Vector.

After studying art and music in school, the duo cut their teeth in the business world while putting in long hours as employees for Acumen Brands. Vanderbush, who started in the warehouse, worked his way toward the top of the ladder before walking away from Acumen to pursue his dream of owning a business.

"Our team may not have the same background as most of the teams here, but we have as strong a work ethic as anybody you will find. … We don’t know how to be successful any other way," said Hundley. "This competition sort of came out of nowhere for us. I don't think we even submitted our application until the very last day. In fact it might have been the last hour of the last day."

Mass Vector is a web-based software-as-a-service that provides real-time analytics and progressive demand prediction based on individual UPC's. The data extracted by the software will help e-commerce companies to make critical decisions with ease.

"We had to play catch up when the challenge started three months ago and with the demo day fast coming up soon we are still finalizing the product, but we are hitting our targets and we feel good about where we are," said Vanderbush. "I can't even explain how far we've come in three months. … It has been unreal."

CayMay Education (Boca Raton, Fla.)
Let’s face it: Education in this country is a mess, but with the technology and innovation of CayMay Inc., education may look like a different animal in the very near future.

It is a fact that college tuition goes up every year in America and most college students are forced to take on massive student loans just to take a 12-hour coarse load. Furthermore, if a student is attending one university and wants to take a single online course at a separate school, they are forced to pay almost double the price of a normal class.

CayMay Education aims to turn that world on its head by offering students online lessons for only 99 cents per lesson. The same price as a single song purchase on I-Tunes. Students will also be afforded the chance to take lessons from any school for the same price.

"Online education is going to be critical for our future students, but the current model has problems in many areas," said CEO and Founder Xuan Linh Vu, who goes by Lincoln for short.

"One of the biggest problems is that when you take an online course it is usually more expensive than a standard course and you don't get any of the same connection and guidance from your professor,” he said.

There is already a YouTube video that features a short pitch of the company. The video starts out by asking the audience a senior level math question. Only one person raises their hand with the right answer, which is followed by the statement that 80% of high school graduates in this country are deficient in math.

But it doesn't take a math major to realize CayMay Education can offer the same quality of learning as most major universities for a micro fraction of the cost.

SavvySync (Manhattan, N.Y.)
SavvySync sifts through social networking sites like Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram and Foursquare to find early adopters that experience pain points that other start-ups face with their products.

The conversations, comments and profiles on social platforms contain valuable information for start-ups that SavvySync can use to help its subscriber base validate problems they are trying to solve and gain insights that could maximize a company’s chances for success.

Acquiring beta users and customers is a challenge every start-up goes through. SavvySync provides start-ups with targeted discovery of beta users and customers from the social web. In short, this start-up is likely the best friend of other small ventures including the 14 it’s competing against for top prize in the ARK Challenge.

Whether a start-up is bootstrapping out of the back bedroom, or lucky enough get a capital boost from friends or investors, establishing a user base is key to the success of any tech venture.

Founders Jonathan (Yoni )Trope and Pavan (Niel) Malhorta live in Manhattan and because of Hurricane Sandy were not able to complete the interview ahead of the story deadline. More details will be added as soon as the interview can be completed.