Yourco, a Broad Ripple-based software startup founded by brothers Brodie and Benjamin Meyer, is one of 40 companies from around the world to participate in a pitch contest at the massive SXSW festival in Austin, Texas. was selected as march.
Held March 10-19 this year, SXSW is a tech/arts/cultural gathering that includes concerts, conferences, film and comedy extravaganzas, and public exhibitions. The organizers of the event estimated that last year’s event attracted 278,681 attendees, both in person and virtually.
Called the SXSW Pitch, the pitch competition will take place March 11-12, where interactive technology companies pitch themselves to a panel of industry experts, media professionals and investors. SXSW says it selected its participants from among 740 applicants.
Yourco will go head-to-head with four other companies in Chicago, Austin, Germany and Brazil to enter the “Future of Work” category of the competition.
Yourco offers a messaging-based platform designed for what the company calls “non-desk” employees. These employees may not work in an office environment and may not have a job-related job in areas such as manufacturing, warehousing, transportation, or construction. e-mail address.
The company was founded in March 2021 and currently has over 100 customers based in the US and Canada, including paint and coating manufacturer Sherwin-Williams.
The Meyer brothers originally developed the software for their family-owned Chicago commercial printing company, M&G Graphics. Brodie Meyer says the company’s management “had always had problems communicating with the workers on the factory floor.”
So the brothers devised a communications platform that M&G could use to share company announcements, emergency alerts, and other written information via text messaging.
According to Brodie Meyer, the platform is SMS-based, so communications don’t count against a user’s data usage. This is an important feature for users who may have limited smartphone data plans. It’s also a two-way communication platform, so employees who need to get in touch with HR or their superiors can also use Yourco for that.
Based on M&G’s success with the platform, the brothers had a hunch that their idea might be compelling.
Brodie Meyer says:
The company currently has five full-time employees and several contract employees. Brodie and Benjamin Meyer both lived in Indianapolis and had business relationships there when they launched Yourco (Brodie graduated from Butler University in 2018). So when he decided to move back to the Chicago suburb of Lagrange, Illinois in late 2021, the two decided to keep Yourco’s headquarters in Broad his Ripple. According to Brodie Meyer, both brothers return to Indianapolis regularly.
According to Brodie Meyer, the SXSW Pitch Contest doesn’t award any prizes, but we see it as a great opportunity to network and raise Yourco’s profile, especially with people outside the Midwest.
Geng Wang, CEO of Bloomington-based Civic Champs, testifies that attending high-profile events like SXSW is beneficial for startups. Founded in 2019, Civic Champs provides a software platform that helps nonprofits manage their volunteer bases.
The Civic Champs has been chosen to represent the 2020 SXSW pitch. His SXSW that year was canceled at the last minute due to the pandemic, so the Civic Champs never got a chance to attend. But the company has also participated in other pitch competitions, including TechCrunch’s famous 2019 Startup Battlefield event.
Civic Champs didn’t win the event, Wang said, but with TechCrunch’s reputation, participation is considered a badge of honor in itself. Civic Champs has used that fact in conversations with potential investors, and Wang believes it “definitely helped.”
Wang also said that the opportunity to interact with the jury is beneficial. That’s because the founders give the company short interactions with people they wouldn’t otherwise meet.”Just making that quick connection helps.”
At SXSW, Brodie Meyer will actually pitch and Benjamin Meyer will control the slide deck offstage.
“I think we’re ready,” Brody Mayer said. “We believe in our business, and our customers believe in our business, so we’re not too worried about this.”
