Startup Grind

2024 Founders Wishlist

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2024 Founders Wishlist

This year’s wishlist from our community, founders and team. Including products from founders who pitched this year!

Experiences

Great Lakes Gaming Lounges

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Love esports AND want to play with your friends, colleagues or teams in real life.

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Book here⁠

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Unwine’d

At Unwine’d, we offer more than just a drink. It’s a focus on YOUR experience – our goal is to help you kick back, relax, and make memories with family and friends while enjoying wines differently than ever before. Unwine’d is Rochester’s first interactive wine experience nestled in the heart of the historic midtown district in downtown Rochester, NY.

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Unwine'd⁠

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Apparel

Santa’s Upgrade for Singles: The BOLD Wristband

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Be the hero your single friend didn’t know they needed. With the BOLD wristband, they can skip the swiping and meet people in the wild—like it’s 1995, but better. Ideal for anyone who deserves more than awkward app banter and “u up?” texts. Make their season merry at

boldwristband.com⁠

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BOLD wristband⁠

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Upstate Mind Rochester Snowflake Sweatshirt

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Share your Rochester pride and holiday cheer with this winter warmer. The snowflake design is based the Flower City Logo.

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buy now⁠

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Apps

CoPivot

Each year 1M+ businesses are started in the United States, and by their second year 20% fail. We want to change that statistic. CoPivot was specifically developed for curious, driven, and motivated - often overlooked - founders to guide their business-building journey. We have been through their experience and can empathize with their challenges.

Request early access

here⁠

MARCIE

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The US book industry made almost $30B in 2022. Print dominates, while ebooks (9%) and audio (10%) are on the rise. Yet, writers incomes have shrunk. MARCIE is a platform designed to help writers save time and money, so they can do more of what they love. Write!

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MARCIE helps writers save time and money⁠

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NextGig

NextGig is an organic lead-generation platform. I'll be discussing how it works and how you can leverage it to find your next opportunity faster.

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NextGig⁠

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Locke

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Locke is a password manager designed from the ground up for families. Unlike streaming services, we want you to share passwords (that’s a thing our app does!). Locke's unique social recovery feature allows you to assign family members to be recoverers. When you need to reset your master password, each recoverer receives a 6 digit code and when a chosen threshold (between 2 and 10) of those codes are inputted, your account will be fully recovered. Your master password will even be visible so that you don't need to change it!

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try now⁠

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Coda

We are currently using

coda.io⁠

for our Startup Starter Kit page and a few operational tasks on our team. It’s like Google documents and Microsoft Excel had a baby. It’s an alternative to

Notion⁠

as well.

Get Coda

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Coda: Your all-in-one collaborative workspace.⁠

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We also wanted to offer a template we created for aspiring founders and small teams to share a kanban board style backlog. It helps visualize your work, set priorities and align your team (or your own thoughts). As a part-time founder myself this helps me keep focused when I have to take longer breaks from work when life gets in the way between opportunities for deep work. Check it out and send feedback!

Startup Grind Backlog Template

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Backlog Template⁠

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MYRetreat

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Try a Chocolate Mindfulness workshop and learn:

Intention Setting - To increase clarity

Guided Imagery - Visualize your most innovative self

Chocolate Mindfulness - Notice the aroma, texture, and taste of craft chocolate

Gratitude Journaling - Identify what you're grateful for using a one-word prompt.

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MYRetreat⁠

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Kit (formerly ConvertKit)

We use Kit at events to help engage with new community members via email. We love their simple landing page and QR code creator. It’s easy to print a QR code and have a short URL at events that we attend or where have a booth or physical display like a poster. We like being able to provide value to the community via providing links to popular resources without spamming new members with emails.

Check out our landing page

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Startup Grind Rochester⁠

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30% off through Cyber Monday here

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Kit Black Friday Deal: 30% Off Creator Annual Plan⁠

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Eleven Labs

Ok, we needed at last one AI app. Eleven Labs lets you create your own voice agent. We are excited about this startup because they just acquired or acqui-hire our favorite open source newsletter/read-it-later app, Ominivore. We are excited for the Eleven Labs Reader -

ElevenLabs - Download ElevenReader for iOS & Android | ElevenLabs⁠

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Get started cloning your own voice now

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Free Text to Speech & AI Voice Generator | ElevenLabs⁠

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ShipFast

This is more of a boilerplate on steriod for indie hackers wanted to get SaaS apps up and running and deployed super quick...hence the name ShipFast!

This is on my personal Christmas list. I want to see if I can deploy an app in the last two weeks of the year and start 2025 sprinting out of the gates. Message us if you want to have a virtual challenge!

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Launch Your Startup in Days, Not Weeks | ShipFast⁠

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Home

Counrty Luxe Co.

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Country Luxe Co. is a premium hand poured coconut soy candle company based in Newark, NY. Uniquely custom blend and hand pour products, such as candles, wax melts, and deodorizing room sprays. Brining you the simplicity scents of the country with a luxurious feel. In hopes that when our customers receive their products, it’s reflected in every way.

“Country Living Never Smelled So Good”

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Country Luxe Co.⁠

Rock Paper Straws

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Together we can help keep our environment clean. One straw at a time.

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Rock Paper Straws⁠

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Baby

Baby Logbook

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Many new parents just need a simple way to track their newborns bottles, diapers & sleeping. Try this simple paperback notebook with a table to track your stats.

Apps are great but if you’re sick of trying to share a password with your spouse and caretakers or constant ads then try this super simple journal. If grandma is watching the baby for the day, she doesn’t need to download or login into an app. This logbook fits easily in any diaper bag. No training or tech support required. My partner and I used this with our babies and loved it. We even used to for some lite journaling about our kids milestones and life little love notes to each other. They have become keepsakes.

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Baby Logbook - Formula and Diaper Tracker⁠

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Consumer Goods

Sadie’s Relish

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Sadie's Relish is a cabbage based relish that is sold in over 135 grocery stores including Tops Friendly Markets, Wegmans, Price Chopper/Market32 and more.

This cabbage based relish goes great IN or ON dishes, so whether you are adding flavor to your favorite entertainment board, your pot roasts, or your families summer grilling experience, we have you covered!

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Sadies Relish⁠

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Guglielmo’s Sauce

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Paul recently shared is his Grow-NY Pitch for the Craft Cannery. He got his start with his and his grandfathers Guglielmo’s Sauce. Check out his sauce and all of his brands.

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Our Brands — Craft Cannery⁠

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Books

FREE Alamnack of Naval Ravikant

Naval is founder, mentor, advisor. angel investor and modern day philosopher. He's a silicon valley icon most people never heard of. Eric Jorgenson has shared some of Naval's wisdom in this field guide of Naval's wisdom.

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download now⁠

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Videos

Man in the Arena

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Startup Grind 2020 - Man in the Arena⁠

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*NOTE: We used some affiliate links in this message. Any commissions earned will support Startup Grind events this year. Help support us and we can buy better food and beer at our events. Thanks. Enjoy your holiday.*

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