Stories of Technology, Innovation, & Entrepreneurship in the Southeast

Less than 72 hours after pitching their start-ups at the Knoxville Entrepreneur Center’s “What’s the Big Idea?” Competition on Sunday night, two of the six presenters at that event were back on stage, so to speak, when the Knoxville Chamber hosted its monthly “Morning Momentum” event. This time the venue was a little different – not Scruffy City Hall, but 121 Tech Hub in the Old City.

The two presentations came from:

1. Kimberly O’Neal, Founder of Modern Day Stay At Home Mom (SAHM), a company as its name suggests on employment opportunities for moms who for whatever reason need to work either full-time or part-time from home; and
2. Gustavo Alvarez-Suchini, Founder of DataRook, a company that he founded to revolutionize how young people engage with data science by making it relevant, exciting, and directly applicable to their interests. In his case, it is through soccer.

“This is an opportunity for founders to present some of their real challenges,” said Brandon Bruce, the moderator who is also one of the owners of the 121 Tech Hub.

Katelyn Biefeldt, teknovation.biz Assistant Editor, captured their respective companies in this article that appeared in Tuesday’s edition (click here). So, instead of repeating what she wrote, we will focus on their asks and the feedback that O’Neal and Alvarez-Suchini received.

O’Neal said her greatest challenge was introductions to potential clients which prompted one person to ask her about the geographic footprint. She said 70 percent of her stay at home moms are in the Knoxville area, although she has people in other states including as far away as California.

When another person suggested that one approach would be to secure contracts from businesses first, then source that work among her population of moms, Keaton Ross of Holecene said that’s exactly what his start-up is doing and having a local resource would be ideal.

Later, Jonathan Halley of Big Slate Media said he had hired a part-time SAHM with some reservations. “It took a couple of weeks, but it’s has been such a relief,” he said.

Midway through the Q&A with Alvarez-Suchini, someone suggested that stay at home moms might be good candidates for him to consider hiring. We did not hear the term soccer moms, but considering his focus on soccer, who knows. He did say that you don’t need to be a data scientist to do what he does.

He told us before the presentations started that he has bootstrapped the venture, and one of his key questions was how to avoid getting spread too thin. “We are very small,” Alvarez-Suchini said, adding, “Is it (expansion) a franchise model?”

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