BancVue Takes Aim at Financial Literacy With Acquisition of Skill-Life, Inc.

Online Financial Education Provider to Enhance Solution-Based Lineup of Services for Community Banks and Credit Unions

AUSTIN, TX–(Marketwire – February 9, 2010) – BancVue (www.BancVue.com), a consumer research-driven product development and marketing company for community banks and credit unions around the country, today announced it has acquired Skill-Life, Inc., a provider of interactive, game-based resources focused on developing financial literacy.

Skill-Life’s youth-oriented platform adds to BancVue’s innovative lineup of solutions designed to help community financial institutions win the war against megabanks.

“An important mission of any community financial institution is providing financial education for its customers,” said Gabe Krajicek, Chief Executive Officer of BancVue, “and Skill-Life has developed just the sort of Web-based applications that can teach children the fundamentals of managing their money. The combination is a compelling value proposition for our community bank and credit union partners and their account holders.”

MoneyIsland™ formerly called CentsCity, Skill-Life’s flagship product, is essentially an online world where ‘tweens’ — children in the so-called middle years between 8 and 12 — learn financial skills and earn rewards from their financial institution. Parents are able to follow their children’s progress through a dynamic administrative interface. The firm expects to develop additional products applying Skill-Life’s platform, which incorporates casual games, interactive videos and quizzes, administrative tools for adults, and a customizable rewards system.

“With 81% of ‘tweens’ playing online games, and 87% of adults interested in teaching their children financial responsibility, we’re at the nexus of an emerging opportunity,” said Felix Brandon Lloyd, President of Skill-Life. “Through the extensive network of branches of BancVue’s clients, hundreds of thousands, eventually millions, of children around the country will gain access to much-needed financial education.”

The Skill-Life transaction is BancVue’s first corporate acquisition. The Texas-based firm has recently announced a number of strategic partnerships, including Deluxe and CSI. BancVue and its marketing partner FIRST ROI provide REALChecking®, a system of innovative products, superior marketing, and data-driven consulting, INMO™, the online account opening system with the highest funding rate, and FIRSTBranch®, a dynamic online marketing system designed exclusively for community financial institutions.

“In Skill-Life, we’re recognizing that industry leaders like Mr. Lloyd and his company can benefit from our network of clients,” says Krajicek. “At the same time, we gain from their creativity and enhance our own ability to serve BancVue’s partners.”

BancVue was recognized last year as the second fastest growing financial services firm in Inc. Magazine’s 28th Annual List of America’s Fastest-Growing Private Companies — the Inc. 500. The Austin-based firm expects to continue its growth trajectory with the nationwide launch of Kasasa™, a national brand of superior products designed to unite community financial institutions with the marketing scale they need to compete and win.

About BancVue

BancVue is the leading provider of innovative products, marketing, and consulting solutions to community financial institutions nationwide. Serving over 650 community banks and credit unions around the country, BancVue’s solutions allow these institutions to compete and win in the war against the megabanks and direct banks. Community financial institutions benefit from the development and implementation of BancVue’s innovative products, including Kasasa™, a national brand of superior products that gives community financial institutions the marketing scale they need to compete with the megabanks, and REALChecking®, a system of innovative products, superior marketing, and data-driven consulting. For more information on BancVue, visit www.bancvue.com.

About Skill-Life

Skill-Life, Inc. began as CentsCity, LLC in January 2007 with the mission of building financially healthy families and communities. With seed funding from the social venture fund Echoing Green, Skill-Life has since gained support from the Alpha Lab, Idea Foundry, Technology Collaborative, Grable Foundation, Skandalaris Center for Entrepreneurial Studies, and several private investors. The Beta version of Skill-Life’s flagship product, formerly called CentsCity, launched in August 2009, employing online games and real-world incentives to teach tweens financial skills.

The program highlights new companies and products poised to change the market.  All applicants are reviewed by SIIA’s Innovation Working Group,  the Forum’s Steering Committee,  and SIIA’s Education Board, then selected to participate in the Ed Tech Business Forum.

“The Software & Information Industry Association is the principal trade association for the software and digital content industry.  SIIA provides global services in government relations, business development, corporate education and intellectual property protection to the leading companies that are setting the pace for the digital age.”

Day 3

We demoed.  We showed the crowd CentsCity!

The full day was Finovate.  From 8:30 am until 6 pm, 32 companies gave 7-minute demos of their financial and banking innovations.  It was one after another — some of our favorites being the folks from SmartyPig, TILE Financial, SimpliFi, and BrightScope.  Also really digging Credit.com and Home Account.

Skill-Life wasn’t scheduled until the bottom half of the final group, so we took stage at around 3:15 pm.  This was a new setting for us and CentsCity, so we spent a good portion of the day taking it in and making connections where we could.  The morning and afternoon sessions of demos were followed by 2 hour networking sessions.  Since we had not yet demoed, we spent the morning networking session meeting folks including contacts at FastCompany and Fidelity Investments.

The demo itself went wonderfully well.  By the time we got on stage, we had rehearsed it a number of times.  Both the pitching (Felix Lloyd) and the driving (Todd Waits) went as planned.  We finished with 40 seconds to spare and even gave a moment for the CentsCity soundbed to groove for the audience.

And how did the audience respond?  All signs were up!  The product is so different in look and function than anything that’s out there.  You could tell it caught everyone’s attention.

During the afternoon networking session, we had a table set up and got a constant flow of traffic.  Without getting into great detail here, we had significant conversations with a few venture capitalist, two very likely pilot customers, and a number of potential strategic partners.  Hopefully, more detail to come in future postings as these things take shape.

The “Best in Show” award somehow slipped us by, though the event organizers told us we lost out by hundredths of a point.  Hats off to the guys from BancVue and FirstROI — they guaranteed victory and they delivered.  Helluva demo from those guys with their Kasasa product.

And where did Wednesday leave us off?  Well, the night ended at a bar by the hotel with a few of the other demoing company execs and the good folks from Atomic PR.  More than that, it left us with lots to do in the days ahead and some important conversations to continue.

Day 4

Our final day in NYC was all about making the most of the time we still had in the city.  We met with a few people from the William J. Clinton Foundation, having originally come into contact with them at a meeting on Financial Education & Games at the Casey Foundation in Baltimore.  They had the opportunity to see CentsCity up close as we dug deep into the demo and our expected road ahead.  We’re now working to partner with the Clinton Foundation to have youth in Harlem learn financial skills through CentsCity during the next Financial Literacy Month (April 2010).

Otherwise, I had a great lunch with a potential investor and advisor at the Core Club, before we rushed off to the airport.

From what we’ve been able to track, CentsCity has attracted some coverage from the Wall Street Journal , Spend on Life, PaymentsViews, Student Lending Analytics, and Keeping Nickels.  We also had a recent interview with the Baltimore Sun, which has been looking closely at Financial Education and Video Games.

More to come.

The highlight of the afternoon was actually getting to check out the venue and take the stage for a rehearsal.  It’s a phenomenal looking space with big screens and all the work s everywhere.  A lot of time and effort has clearly been put into the planning of this event.  The list of companies with which we’ll be presenting includes some heavy hitters including Mint, which was recently acquired by Intuit.  And the audience is comprised of execs from Citibank, ING Direct, Wells Fargo, and other banks as well as a number of venture capitalists and influential press.  This will certainly be our biggest stage to date — an opportunity that we’ve worked hard to gain and intend to make the most of.

The rehearsal went off without a hitch, which we can only suppose is a good thing (we’re actually assuming that the rehearsal was a minor disaster so as to keep us honest for tomorrow).  We’re well prepared on this end and, more importantly, our innovation stands out on its own.  CentsCity has a look and feel that’s distinct and our potential value to financial service institutions is tremendous.

After rehearsal, we had the opportunity to have crepes with Heather Marold Thomason of Bad Feather and Andy Hieb of Dtek Digital Media.  These two companies have played major roles in the design and execution of the Skill-Life.com and CentsCity.com sites.  It was a rare opportunity to sit down with them face to face.  We got to talk shop (we’ve just put to print another round of 2,000 CentsCity Passports and are initiating another phase of development on the CentsCity beta that will include the introduction of our first in-world mini-game — the Ducket Dash!).  And, as it turns out, all of us have dogs that we love immensely.  Go Wendell!

For much of the evening, we met up with folks at a Finovate happy hour.  Among the most notables were John Waupsh and Gabriel Krajicek of BancVue and FirstRoi.  These guys were full of energy and personality.  They had some very interesting and insightful perspectives on the industry and CentsCity’s value to financial service institutions.  They also insisted that they would be hands-down the best demo tomorrow (turns out they lobbied to bring a lion on stage with them and/or a choir to hum the “Battle Hymn of the Republic”).  Of course, we then let them know that they were up against a giant in CentsCity and the Skill-Life team this year — they’d have to settle on being a great opening act!

Otherwise, it was a southern-cooking dinner for the Skill-Life team.  No need for details there aside from saying we tried to keep it light as much as is possible when choosing from a menu on which mac & cheese is a vegetable.

Now, it’s getting in game mode.  More to come.

Tomorrow kicks it all off as we head to a demo rehearsal at the Metropolitan Pavillion and later to a happy hour event in Manhattan.  At this point, we’ve got the demo all planned.  I’ll be doing the pitching while Todd Waits, Skill-Life’s VP of Product Development, does the driving.

It’s 7-minutes on stage and not a second more, so we’re going straight to the essence of CentsCity — a dynamic platform that uses online games and rewards to teach tweens financial skills — and the essence is good. The folks over at Netbanker who are organizing the event have already told us that we’re one-of-a-kind when it comes to financial innovations that will be demoing this yeaar or that have demoed in the past. They believe — and we wholeheartedly agree — that CentsCity exists at the nexus of an emerging opportunity as the need for financial education becomes increasingly clear and online games become increasingly central to how consumers experience everything.

Our value proposition is clear (and here you’ll get a snippet of the pitch we’ll be giving at Finovate) — CentsCity is a unique innovation that will help financial service institutions build deeper relationships with present and future customers at a time when faith in our banking system is especially low. It will be a forward-thinking marketing tool that makes an impact while making great business sense.

We’re hoping that this trip will lead to significant strategic partnerships as we continue to pilot and build upon our CentsCity beta version. On Tuesday, we’ll be on stage at around 3:15 pm as one of 32 companies chosen out of hundreds. Our demo will be followed by a two-hour networking session during which we’ll have the opportunity to speak futher with senior banking executives, venture capitalists, and influential press.

Check us out online at Finovate’s live feed.  More to come. Always — more to come.

These companies will be showcased to an audience of senior financial/banking/credit union executives, influential press, industry analysts, venture capitalists, bloggers, tech companies and entrepreneurs.  A few of the organizations already committed to attend include: Bank of America, Citibank, WSJ, Microsoft, HSBC, Wells Fargo, American Express, Dow Jones, the Financial Times, E*Trade Financial, SunTrust, ANZ, Capitol One, Financial Insights, Discover, Sybase, Cardinal Venture Capital, Intuit, Consumer Reports, DataMonitor, Canaan Partners, The Economist, BusinessWeek, and Aite Group.

Skill-Life will demo our CentsCity product and will introduce an expanded set of features to our current beta while on stage at Finovate this September 29th.  More info appears on the Netbanker blog, the text of which is also included below.

- BLACK ENTERPRISE – http://www.blackenterprise.com -

Spend Less Money on Your Startup Budget

Posted By Marcia Wade Talbert On July 29, 2009

Felix Lloyd received consulting services and startup capital from Echoing Green, a social venture fund, to help launch his company Skill-Life Inc.

Finding capital to launch your business might be the hardest part of entrepreneurship. An examination of census data ^[2] shows that black-owned businesses have very low levels of startup capital relative to white-owned businesses and these differences persist across all major industries.But don’t let that dissuade you. There are a plethora of organizations, universities, and companies that provide pro bono or professional services at a reduced fee, ranging from accounting to information technology and from human resource management to marketing. When such services are free, this practice is often referred to as skills-based volunteering.

“When you are capacity constrained thinking outside of the box in terms of pro bono services and volunteer support is a really smart and effective way to add capacity to your organization without adding to your expense line,” says Cheryl Dorsey, president of Echoing Green ^[3], a New York-based social venture fund that provides capital to support social entrepreneurs.

When Felix Lloyd was looking for backing for his startup, he turned to Echoing Green, which had provided financial support for a former employer. Lloyd, a former educator, needed funding for an online game that would help high school students develop financial literacy and math skills. As an Echoing Green fellow he received consulting services and startup capital to help launch Skill-Life Inc ^[4].

Echoing Green also reimbursed Lloyd for healthcare expenses, paid him $60,000 over a two year period, and matched him up with free and reduced cost legal services.

“Echoing Green provided my company with critical legal support, branding expertise, and an extensive professional network while challenging me to think and act strategically in building my business,”  Lloyd says.

At AlphaLab, a small business accelerator, Felix Lloyd received $25,000, free office space, and an opportunity to network with other tech entrepreneurs.

Another entrepreneur introduced Lloyd to AlphaLab ^[6], a Pittsburgh-based small business accelerator. An accelerator generally includes a group of investors who help expedite the start-up or expansion of a company. In exchange for 3% equity in his company, AlphaLab provided Lloyd with six months of free office space in Pittsburgh, access to software consultants, and $25,000 from AlphaLab’s parent company Innovation Works ^[7].So far, an estimated $400,000 in money and services has been invested into Skill-Life. Of that only $10,000 came from Lloyd’s personal funds. Although he has never had to take out a bank loan, 27% of Skill-Life equity will be distributed among investors and employees. He owns 43% of the equity and his wife owns 30%.

His first client, a Pittsburgh public radio station, paid Lloyd $3,000 to give 600 students access to CentsCity ^[8], his online game that launched this month. Lloyd’s accomplishment can be duplicated. If your business budget won’t stretch far enough, use these three steps as a road map to finding and efficiently utilizing pro bono and skills-based volunteer services.

Do your homework. Not every pro bono provider is going to be the right fit for your start up. “The single most important thing that we are looking for are people that have a clear picture of what they need and how our skills will fit with their needs to develop,” says Gaute Ellingsen, an MBA student and vice president of clients at the Small Business Consulting Program ^[9] at Columbia Business School.

Doing research on what kind of services each kind of pro bono organizations offers will pay off because it will enable you to tailor your requests to what is most beneficial to you and also to the priorities that the pro bono organizations have.

Network, network, network. Existing relationships (with investors, supporters, or friends) can open doors to different pro bono services.

Through an acquaintance, Lloyd learned that Pittsburgh had a strong technology community. At AlphaLab Lloyd shared ideas with his peers and he gained exposure to the breadth of Pittsburgh’s entrepreneurial, investment, and software expertise.

It was through these interactions that he was recommended to advisors and more free office space at Idea Foundry ^[10], another non profit in the city that specializes in launching information technology and engineering related enterprises.

Check with your local university’s business school for resources and possible skill-based volunteer organizations. Lloyd used the Technology Collaborative ^[11] at the Tepper School of Business ^[12] at Carnegie Mellon University and sought free services at the Small Business Development Center ^[13], a Small Business Administration program housed at Duquesne  University ^[14].  Students at the universities did market research for him without charge and helped him create cash flow projections.

Demonstrate an ability to produce results. Organizations and individuals that offer skills-based volunteering want to be certain that they are not wasting their time and resources.  Demonstrate your talent by building a strong Website and public face, says Echoing Green’s Dorsey.

“We have to have some sense that the entrepreneur can execute an idea because essentially ideas are a dime a dozen,” she says.

However, she also emphasizes that a charismatic personality is just as important as a strong business plan.

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Article printed from BLACK ENTERPRISE: http://www.blackenterprise.com

URL to article: http://www.blackenterprise.com/entrepreneurs/2009/07/29/spend-less-money-on-your-start-up-budget

Copyright © 2009 BLACK ENTERPRISE. All rights reserved.

Consider this the start of a new year. I actually can’t believe this is ourfirst post since late December. It hasn’t been for lack of a lot going on. January was a whirlwind month and February is already off to a hot (though Pittsburgh has been cold as yesterday’s steel) start! We have had big decisions to make about a move to Chicago (staying in Pittsburgh) and choosing a developer (continuing to work with 360KID on game art and design). Most importantly, we recently closed an investment with a seasoned entrepreneur/angel investor who has already proven to be a key stakeholder.

More on that and other news over the next few days. Our goal is to get the home page of the Skill-Life site cleared of yesterday’s posts. It’s 2009 or bust, indeed! And Skill-Life is more set than ever to introduce CentsCity to the world and make money make sense!

This is not the first time for us. It actually started with an elevator pitch for the Skandalaris Center for Social Entrepreneurship in Saint Louis back in February 2007. For that one, I think we had two-minutes to work with. Back then, it was harder getting the message across, largely because the message was not as clear — our company and product had not yet undergone the growth that we have since. As it goes, we actually ended up getting our first bit of funding ($5,000) from Skandalaris. From there, it was off to Echoing Green where we gave a 90-second pitch supported by a prop (we used a lego building set). That one, we nailed — at least, we hit all of our marks and stayed under time though I’m not so sure we made the best case.

At the Enterprise Forum, I felt like an old pro — partly because we have been in competitions like this before but more because I’m making these pitches in one-form or another every day. There’s always someone asking “What is Skill-Life?” or “Why does it matter?” or “How are you going to do it?”. And they’re asking with little time to spare — so 60-seconds felt like a luxury. All in all, it was a great experience. My hope, as always, is that something tangible comes out of it, but any opportunity to tell the world about what we’re doing is certainly worth a minute or two.

The demo portion went well and the problem of financial literacy is obvious — an easy sale.  I’m not certain that I spent enough time on the central question “how we make money.”  The challenge is having a company with a social mission and the intention of seeking foundation funding early on.  That inevitably comes across as something not terribly attractive to VC’s, and potentially, to angel investors as well.

The key, I think, is for us to embrace the mission-driven nature of Skill-Life while also making clear our plan for eventually reaching a consumer market.  As of today, we’ve got a good demo, a solid pitch, and a workable plan for getting to the next level.