Emerging Tech Corner
– Kimberly Perkins, co-founder of memosnag
I went from doing business in places like Dubai to doing business at 19th & Harney – and it was a choice I am grateful for.
My husband, Lorenzo, and I moved our family to Omaha from the bay area at the end of 2015. A shorter commute (versus the old five-hour roundtrip) meant more time with our three kids (two teenagers and a toddler) and more time to ideate and build upon our startup venture, memosnag.
memosnag is an application for web and mobile that lets you quickly save and organize things you like online. It falls into the category of social bookmarking, but we really do find users primarily use it as a research and information organizational tool.
Lorenzo, memosnag’s founder and a former Omaha resident, hatched the idea while he was working on his MBA and struggling to keep track of content he found online. His classmates seemed to have the same problem so he developed the concept, recruited a technical co-founder from his soccer team, and started building it.
memosnag attracts all types of users from all around the world so knowing where to focus our efforts from a marketing perspective is a little difficult. In my previous positions with Yahoo! and Class One Exchange, Inc., I was more experienced on corporate users of large enterprise software products or business partners on the B2B side. I am new to business to consumer so it’s been helpful working with The Startup Collaborative.
TSC has helped guide us through LEAN processes to nail down our customer segments and provide techniques to better understand our users.
Also, given the experience and historical success, there are collaborative member founders and cofounders that are willing to give advice and help us think through decisions. They may not be in the same space, but business is business and sometimes a small variation to a solution in another field could work to solve our challenges.
The choice to come to Omaha was not primarily driven by memosnag – but memosnag was a benefactor. When we decided it was time to focus my time more on family and on our own venture, being here in Omaha – with its low cost of living – made it easier to do so. I haven’t looked back.
I believe as with most things in life, whether the Silicon Prairie is “the right place” for your startup is dependent on timing and fit. I think, depending on the product and the vision for the company, Omaha has good soil: 1) numerous colleges and universities (for employment candidates), 2) low cost of living, and 3) infrastructure and programs to support and grow small businesses.
In the Silicon Valley, we couldn’t afford to go down to one income to pursue building our own company. We can do it here – and that’s made all the difference.
