Author: flashstarts

As graduation neared, I had no clear idea of what I wanted to do— and an endless list of what I didn’t want. I didn’t want to just work in an office from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. I didn’t really want to work for anyone. And I definitely didn’t want to mindlessly continue my ride on the high school-college-work train. So, I applied to Flashstarts. At the time, I felt that the extra three months at Flashstarts in Cleveland would give me ample time to figure out what I wanted to do. After a few weeks, I found I…

Being Intern(ational) Hello, world! My name is Ingrid Ecker and I am Flashstarts’ first international intern. I am a passionate stop motion artist and game designer. I am a Masters student for Entertainment Technology in a dual degree program of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and Madeira Interactive Technologies Institute in Portugal. I was told I wouldn’t be able to do an internship in the U.S. since I haven’t spent two consecutive semesters at a university in America. Well, here I am – legally of course – sitting in “my” animation studio in Flashstarts’ office, looking over the rooftops of Cleveland, Ohio. Being an…

I’m not going to lie to you: interning at Flashstarts is not what I wanted to be doing this summer. What I really, viscerally wanted was to be at my home away from home, teaching crafts and playing beach volleyball with kids and their parents at family camp in Santa Barbara. I’d worked there two years running and it was hard to envision a summer anywhere else. And even once I acknowledged that it was time for a more career-minded summer, Cleveland and Flashstarts weren’t even on my radar. Having headed straight from southern California to the northeast for school…

Purposeful Endeavors The typical developer intern isn’t trusted to work on anything important, for fear that they may break it. They are instead assigned to a task that is not aligned with the overall goal of the company, in hopes that the intern will learn enough to be able to work on the real software. Oftentimes, companies create entire projects just for the interns to do, which ensures that the interns have little to no impact on the company. Smaller companies usually won’t go to this extent, but they still may not trust the interns to do valuable work. Interns…

#tbt to Flashstarts Demo Day 2013! 25 days until this year’s Demo Day!

Class6ix came into existence when two brothers, Phil and Ted Cannelongo, recognized a disparity between how content providers were delivering news, and how users wanted to access it. With their app and website, Class6ix aims to bring high quality, customized news to users who seek a personalized newscast. What attracted you to the Flashstarts accelerator? For our company, one of the key factors that set Flashstarts apart from other accelerators was the specific experience that Jennifer Neundorfer brought to the table. As our service depends on quality content from a number of different providers, her background in establishing relationships with…

The Importance of Selling Before You Build Too often, I see or read about startups that spend months and thousands of dollars developing a product without first speaking to customers— only to find out that no one wants to buy it. It is tempting to avoid speaking to actual customers because having your idea crushed by a stranger feels terrible. However, it’s better to hear criticism about an unbuilt product than a product that you’ve spent hundreds of hours building. Flashstarts has made me realize the importance of selling before you build, and it’s my job to help the teams…

It started with a photo depicting the turmoil of the Israel-Palestine conflict, and a subsequent question: what if the people of each side could talk this out? Could a peaceful solution be found if these two groups could have a conversation, each acting as a single unit? And what if this could be applied elsewhere-- a university president having a conversation with the student body, or a Fortune 500 CEO having a conversation with all of his or her employees? These questions fueled Andrew Konya and Aaron Slodov to create reMesh, the first real-time large group “crowdversation” platform. reMesh offers a…

Bagpipes and web design go well together. My day usually starts with a can of Coke and a track from “The Queen’s Own Highlanders” blaring into my ears. I’m not a morning person, but I’ve found that the correct decibel of bagpipes and an appropriate amount of caffeine are the perfect combination to jumpstart my creativity. I am a web designer and over the course of this internship, I’m helping three to four groups build their websites from the ground up. So, from the bagpipes onward, it’s all an inundation of web-design-related articles, content, and work. Iterations, tweaks, and feedback…

Hi, I am Makenzie and I’m a social media and marketing intern at Flashstarts working primarily for STEMpowerkids, TravelLater, and Mango. I’m from McKean, Pennsylvania, and though I loved growing up in the country it left me unsure of what living in Cleveland would be like. I have traveled solo to Kenya, Peru, and Europe, so why was I nervous to live in a new city for the summer? Fortunately, shortly after moving into my apartment I found that there was no reason to be nervous. I was still able to do all of the things that I love to do! Cleveland has countless opportunities for fun…