J.J. Townsend's non-profit business got its start at an Innovate Mississippi-sponsored Startup Weekend in 2016, although Townsend says he initially went in with a somewhat different idea. "The original [pitch] was still CitizenJXN, but the idea was a convoluted 'everything store,'" Townsend said. "It was sort of like 'all things civics.'…
In a "Made in Mississippi" feature article, "Myra Mirrors More Than a Gadget," Callie Daniels Bryant of the Mississippi Business Journal tells the story of Myra Mirrors, a startup founded in Oxford, Mississippi, by Ole Miss students Pontus Andersson and Sam Bertolet. Myra Mirrors makes "smart mirrors," designed to use…
We've got more great coverage to share, this time from WAPT in Jackson, which ran stories all evening this past Tuesday, the same day as our open house and tour of the new Jackson-based Mississippi Coding Academy classroom for legislators and others. In Mississippi Coding Academy Funded with Grants, WAPT's…
The STEM Advancement / Mississippi Robotics 2018 "STEM/SUMO" Annual Statewide Competition will be held on Saturday, April 28, 2018 at Nissan – Canton, MS. The time will be 8am – 5pm. Seven individual events and three team events will be included in the competition. Mississippi Robotics is a non-profit organization involved in training youth and…
WLBT's Roslyn Anderson produced two news stories this week on Innovate Mississippi and the Mississippi Coding Academies—we thank her for communicating our entrepreneurial initiatives and needs so well! In the first story, Coding Academy In Need of Take-Home Laptops, Anderson talks about the Mississippi Coding Academies' inaugural Jackson class of…
One way to increase state budgets and overcome revenue challenges, according to Dr. Glenn Boyce, commissioner of higher education in Mississippi, is to grow Mississippi's economy by encouraging entrepreneurship. With a shout-out to Innovate Mississippi and the work we do to encourage (and find funding for) startup businesses, Dr. Boyce…
Glo Cubes began as a student project of Mississippi State University design student Kaylie Mitchell. The assignment was to create a conceptional company that “drew the eye” of potential customers—Mitchell figured something that lit up would definitely draw people's eyes. One of her teachers thought the idea was good enough…
At the 2017 Conference on Technology Innovation, Jon Maynard spoke on how economic developers should target "tropical fish" in their growth strategies instead of "big whales." The goal—make your city a better place to live, and the jobs will follow. "In Oxford, Mississippi we've been doing 'tropical fish' development for…
Oxford, Miss. (January 17, 2018) – Oxford-based Myra Mirrors was on display at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nev., last week, where they introduce their “Reflective Assistant” to attendees at the world’s largest consumer technology conference. Myra Mirrors’ unique “Reflective Assistant,” created by co-founders Pontus Anderson, Sam Bertolet,…
Matt Bolian, project manager at C Spire, is a millennial who has returned home to Mississippi to work. But, in this talk at the Conference on Technology Innovation, he warns that he's among the few millennials who stay or return to Mississippi, and that once educated young adults move from…