OPINION
How Ryan White went about hiring the first employees at Huntforce
Omaha April 18, 2014 by Guest Contributor Only 20 days until Big Omaha. Get your tickets before they sell out! Founder Friday is a weekly guest post written by a founder who is based in or hails from the Silicon Prairie. Each month, a topic relevant to startups is presented and founders share lessons learned or best practices utilized on that topic. April's topic is early hires. About the authors:  Ryan White is co-founder of HuntForce , a web app that helps organize trail camera photos, track deer and predict where they'll be. Just about a year ago, my dad and I found out we were accepted into the  Straight Shot accelerator. Things got real for HuntForce, real fast. We debuted our trail camera photo software in front of hundreds last October. And then the real work began. While we still had the support and help of Straight Shot, Aviture, GoodTwin, Dundee Venture Capital and Treetop Ventures, we were calling the shots and making the tough decisions about what to do next. We just added four people to our small, tightly knit team, and I am grateful to say those people are now helping us significantly grow HuntForce. We took our time to make these hires. Lots of time. Some of that is because both my father and I are cautious founders. Some of that was just not wanting to mess up the first time around. We have tough timelines and strict milestones to meet. We needed a team that could go through all of that with us. Here’s an intro to our team and some of what we learned hiring our first employees:
Scott Pawloski: Social media Jedi Knight with an alter-ego and it’s rumored there's an airport in Russia named after him. Took the HuntForce Facebook page from 100 likes to more than 15K likes in six months. Ryan Kinworthy : Commanding officer of the ship named Technology and, if bothered to do so, could crack the DaVinci code in 43 seconds. Titan on the keyboard and in real life; the dude is 6'9. "
Travis Martensen : Some say if you tune into 109.9 FM you can hear his thoughts and that his face appears on high-value stamps in Sweden. All we know is he’s one helluva engineer. Eric Nipp: Our in-house global operations badass. He is one of few people who can stake claim to being a CPA and top 10 percent attorney who also was raised by wolves. Seriously, you don’t want to screw with this guy. Here's what I can tell you about those early hires:
Timing is everything. This is always a delicate balance between time and money, features and scope. For us, the strategy was to move to an internal team post MVP. Like the first version of anything, it’s going to be wrong, at least in the eyes of the founder. When the time comes to evolve the product to its full potential, you will need a team that will do whatever it takes for as long as it takes, day in and day out. You don’t want contractors pulling all-nighters. Plan on this transition months in advance and get a head start. Culture matters. Results matter more. Since we're a hunting company, we weren’t going to be hiring any PETA members. The culture of HuntForce started truly forming with the founders, but the first couple hires are incredibly important for continuing that culture. We speak our mind around here; no holds barred, we hold each other accountable to our positions, actions and words. We love this company and are passionate about being not just the best, but the only solution. This is a "get shit done excellently" environment and that’s that. It’s important that whoever is brought into the inner circle upholds those values. That’s the kind of person we found in Ryan Kinworthy and to boot he’s also an avid bowhunter. Above all, Ryan is a world-class JavaScript developer with a proven track record of leadership and innovation who was ready to take the reigns with an understanding of the risks, and rewards, that come with the territory. Check references. Check them again. People tend to present themselves perfectly; don’t take their word for it. Demand they prove themselves and if they are the real deal, it wont be a big deal. Talk to people who have worked with, for and above them. Give those conversations the right amount of time. Don’t just make that quick phone call and move on. These people will help you build your company—get the hiring right! There will be no greater asset than a great team, so give it your all and get it right. Set the bar with your own options grant vesting schedule. If you’re fully vested and have never had a vesting schedule in place, congratulations, but don’t let your first employees get away with the same deal. Luckily, there are some standards set that you can use as a baseline. Typically you will see a four-year schedule with a one-year cliff, meaning that 25 percent of their option grants vest after 12 months and the remaining 75 percent vest at 1/36th the next three years. Paired with the right milestones you can use this schedule as an effective incentive lever as your team performs at exceptional levels. About the authors: Ryan White and his family moved from Kentucky to join Straight Shot in 2013. Ryan is an avid hunter, hence the passion behind his startup, Huntforce. Share

How Ryan White went about hiring the first employees at Huntforce

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Speaking from a convention center in Nashville filled with thousands of bow hunters, archers, hunting celebrities and vendors, Ryan White and his father are in a unique position. “I think we’re the only software company here,” White told Silicon Prairie News from the Archery Trade Association trade show , where their booth is near the main entrance, right smack dab next to the bow string wax vendor. His new software, HuntForce , launched Monday. And by Wednesday afternoon, plenty have signed up for the program that will help bow hunters save time while better strategizing their hunts. Using trail cameras and the HuntForce software, the program catalogs and analyzes where and when that prized dozen-point buck shows up. The software tells hunters what time of day a certain animal frequents the area near the cameras to help plan hunts. The trail camera industry has blossomed in the last five to 10 years with the rise of digital cameras. Trail cameras are motion-activated and take a picture regardless if that motion is a deer or pile of leaves that were dusted up because of the wind. Hunters strategically place them around their hunting grounds and pull the SD card occasionally and upload the photos to see what the camera has captured. With a little user input, the software takes the photos and orders them by location, time and date to help track patterns of specific animals. But it can be a bit of a mess after that, White said. Dozens, hundreds or thousands of photos can be taken and sifting through them was a time-consuming headache for White and his dad, Jim , who are avid hunters originally from Kentucky. Four years ago, the father-son pair—who had no coding or software experience—set out to create a better hunting strategy. They tried—and failed—twice, before they were accepted to Omaha accelerator  Straight Shot  last spring. The Whites moved their whole family to Omaha for the accelerator and have decided to remain in Nebraska. Though their vision had originally been more broad, the pair decided to focus their idea down to camera management. “We walked in with an idea,” Ryan said. “I can’t code. Neither can my dad, but we were plugged into a network that knew how to make an actual product. “We had the resources like GoodTwin , which made our front end, Aviture , that made our back end and a marketer, Rendezvous Marketing Group, that specializes in the outdoor industry that connected us with big-name sponsors.”
With $20,000 from the accelerator and $400,000  seed funding from Treetop Ventures , Dundee Venture Capital and Aviture, Ryan (right) says HuntForce had a surrounding community ready to help them be successful. That’s not to say it wasn’t scary. Ryan owned a car detailing business for the past seven years. His dad, Jim (below right), worked as a director in a pneumatic switch factory for 35 years. The leap was a risk. And toward the end they thought they were going to run out of money. They didn’t. After six weeks of beta testing, they now have paying customers— plans range in five increments from $9 to $99 a month , depending on how many animals you want to track and how many photos you want to manage. Ryan says he sees a mix of tech-savvy and more traditional hunters that might poo-poo tech-related items in the hunt. He evangelizes them with the benefits of managing their trail cameras and ease of use with HuntForce, which has won converts—more than 750 hunters have used the private beta. A majority of bow hunters, who need to be about 20 yards away to hit a buck, use the cameras to plan hunts, Ryan said. Gun hunters don’t usually need trail cameras since their range is much larger. “Checking out the cameras is the best thing besides shooting,” he said. “It’s fun to see what you get and when.”
They hope to get thousands to use HuntForce by the time trail camera season rolls around in late spring to late summer. Deer hunting season is early fall to mid winter. “We want to build momentum and raise enough awareness that when hunters start to think about checking cameras, they think, ‘Hey, we need this software,'” Ryan said. The market is large, Ryan says, with $14 billion worth in hunting equipment sales each year. “It’s a niche that’s striving,” he said. “This is a program that helps them save time and better strategize their hunts and get through big uploads quickly so they know where and when deers tend to be.”
In the future, they hope they can make the software even more sophisticated, using little nuances, like temperature, wind direction and moon phases to help track bucks even more accurately. HuntForce may even be able to send you a text or email when it’s predicting the best conditions to hunt that prized buck. HuntForce is the latest hunting-related app among many nationwide. There are other trail camera management software apps like WISE, Trail Assistant and DeerLab. It follows Powderhook , a Lincoln-based startup that helps hunters and fishers find private land to hunt and fish.

Father-son team turn hunting hobby into trail camera software startup

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Trail camera application, HuntForce, makes Omaha home following strong show of support from Straight Shot tech accelerator and investment community
HuntForce sorts and stores trail camera photos in a matter of seconds. The web-based application allows hunters to track trophy deer and better understand their habits for a more victorious hunt. HuntForce allows hunters to be better at what they love doing. Now, a hunter can easily find and track the deer to make each hunting trip even more victorious. Omaha, Neb. (PRWEB)September 30, 2013
HuntForce , a new player in the deer hunting trail camera industry is generating significant attention from Midwest investors leading up to the startup’s first Demo Day on October 3. This morning, HuntForce signed deals for $400,000 from three Omaha-based investors. Dundee Venture Capital , who invested $100,000, led this early stage funding. The bulk of funding ($250,000) comes from Treetop Ventures , an investment firm that focuses on Omaha-area technology startups. A final $50,000 comes from Omaha’s Mark Griffis, the president of Aviture, a technology firm focused on solutions through software. “We look to make investments that create solutions within their industries.” Treetop’s founder and partner William Fisher shared. “HuntForce does just that for the hunting industry, and we are eager to help them realize that mission.”
HuntForce is a web-based application that allows deer hunters to easily sort through the photos gathered from their trail cameras. A process that is historically burdensome and can take a hunter hours sorting through hundreds of photos taken from a trail camera is simplified and shortened to seconds with HuntForce. A partnership with computer scientists at the Peter Kiewitt Institute at the University of Nebraska helped create HuntForce’s proprietary antler-recognition software that expedites the photo sorting and fuels the strategic insights within the application. Currently, there are more than 12 million big-game hunters in the United States that spend $14 billion on hunting equipment annually. Of that, the trail camera segment alone grew 20x over the past four years. Yet, according to co-founder Jim White, no one has figured out how to make downloading, searching and sorting photos taking with trail cameras easier – until HuntForce. “HuntForce allows hunters to be better at what they love doing,” said co-founder and lifelong deer hunter Jim White. “Now, a hunter can easily find and track the deer to make each hunting trip even more victorious.”
Building a Strong Support System
The father-son co-founders recently relocated to Omaha, Neb., from Louisville, KY, to join Straight Shot , a software-as-a-service and e-commerce technology accelerator. As part of Straight Shot, HuntForce will debut its trail camera software on Demo Day next week. Jim’s son and co-founder, Ryan White shared that “Straight Shot has given us the network, business guidance and launch pad to make HuntForce a reality.”
Additionally, GoodTwin, a relationship-focused web design firm, has partnered with HuntForce for branding work and website development. A full advertising and marketing campaign will be deployed following the beta test and will be led by Lake Strategic Marketing out of St. Paul, Minn.
Ryan White went onto say “We are going into beta with a product that is sure to delight avid hunters.”
To join HuntForce’s beta test, please visit HuntForce.com . About HuntForce
HuntForce is a web-based application that solves a fundamental problem all hunters experience with their trail cameras – too much time wasted downloading and sorting photos instead of time spent hunting. HuntForce allows deer hunters to quickly sort and store their trail camera photos. Ultimately allowing hunters to be more strategic in their sport by identifying trophy deer and their habits. About Straight Shot
Omaha’s first software-as-a-service technology and e-commerce accelerator launched in July and has attracted more than 300 mentors and seven startups. Founders have come to Omaha from San Francisco, Minneapolis, Louisville, North Carolina, and more. Straight Shot sponsors include McCarthy Capital, the AIM Institute, Scott Technology Center, the SilverStone Group, First National Bank, Dundee Venture Capital and PayPal Developer in addition to several others. To learn more about Straight Shot, its startups, or its mentors and sponsors, visit straightshot.co . About Treetop Ventures
Treetop Ventures is an Omaha based angel investment firm that has led investments totaling $19.8 million in Omaha-based start-ups. Its portfolio features Sojern, FTNI, Lodo Software, USMPS, Prism Technologies, Ballyhoo Software, Simple Insurance and Prairie Cloudware. Learn more at treetopventures.com . About Dundee Venture Capital
HuntForce joins the 25 companies that Omaha-based Dundee Venture Capital has invested in since its start in 2010. Dundee invests in e-commerce and software-as-a-service companies with a strong founding team and a scalable solution to a unique problem. The venture capital firm’s investments are between $50,000 and $500,000. To learn more about Dundee Venture Capital, visit dundeevc.com . Share article on socal media or email:
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Deer Hunting Tech Startup, HuntForce, Attracts $400k from Investors...

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HuntForce Bags Venture Capital Investment

Deer hunting tech startup HuntForce racks up $400K
September 30, 2013
HuntForce has closed $400,000 in funding. Based in Omaha, Nebraska, HuntForce is a deer hunting photo app. (PRWEB) September 30, 2013
HuntForce, a new player in the deer hunting trail camera industry is generating significant attention from Midwest investors leading up to the startup’s first Demo Day on October 3. This morning, HuntForce signed deals for $400,000 from three Omaha-based investors. Dundee Venture Capital, who invested $100,000, led this early stage funding. The bulk of funding ($250,000) comes from Treetop Ventures, an investment firm that focuses on Omaha-area technology startups. A final $50,000 comes from Omaha’s Mark Griffis, the president of Aviture, a technology firm focused on solutions through software. “We look to make investments that create solutions within their industries.” Treetop’s founder and partner William Fisher shared. “HuntForce does just that for the hunting industry, and we are eager to help them realize that mission.”
HuntForce is a web-based application that allows deer hunters to easily sort through the photos gathered from their trail cameras. A process that is historically burdensome and can take a hunter hours sorting through hundreds of photos taken from a trail camera is simplified and shortened to seconds with HuntForce. A partnership with computer scientists at the Peter Kiewitt Institute at the University of Nebraska helped create HuntForce’s proprietary antler-recognition software that expedites the photo sorting and fuels the strategic insights within the application. Currently, there are more than 12 million big-game hunters in the United States that spend $14 billion on hunting equipment annually. Of that, the trail camera segment alone grew 20x over the past four years. Yet, according to co-founder Jim White, no one has figured out how to make downloading, searching and sorting photos taking with trail cameras easier – until HuntForce. “HuntForce allows hunters to be better at what they love doing,” said co-founder and lifelong deer hunter Jim White. “Now, a hunter can easily find and track the deer to make each hunting trip even more victorious.”
Building a Strong Support System
The father-son co-founders recently relocated to Omaha, Neb., from Louisville, KY, to join Straight Shot, a software-as-a-service and e-commerce technology accelerator. As part of Straight Shot, HuntForce will debut its trail camera software on Demo Day next week. Jim’s son and co-founder, Ryan White shared that “Straight Shot has given us the network, business guidance and launch pad to make HuntForce a reality.”
Additionally, GoodTwin, a relationship-focused web design firm, has partnered with HuntForce for branding work and website development. A full advertising and marketing campaign will be deployed following the beta test and will be led by Lake Strategic Marketing out of St. Paul, Minn.
Ryan White went onto say “We are going into beta with a product that is sure to delight avid hunters.”
To join HuntForce’s beta test, please visit HuntForce.com. About HuntForce
HuntForce is a web-based application that solves a fundamental problem all hunters experience with their trail cameras – too much time wasted downloading and sorting photos instead of time spent hunting. HuntForce allows deer hunters to quickly sort and store their trail camera photos. Ultimately allowing hunters to be more strategic in their sport by identifying trophy deer and their habits. About Straight Shot
Omaha’s first software-as-a-service technology and e-commerce accelerator launched in July and has attracted more than 300 mentors and seven startups. Founders have come to Omaha from San Francisco, Minneapolis, Louisville, North Carolina, and more. Straight Shot sponsors include McCarthy Capital, the AIM Institute, Scott Technology Center, the SilverStone Group, First National Bank, Dundee Venture Capital and PayPal Developer in addition to several others. To learn more about Straight Shot, its startups, or its mentors and sponsors, visit straightshot.co. About Treetop Ventures
Treetop Ventures is an Omaha based angel investment firm that has led investments totaling $19.8 million in Omaha-based start-ups. Its portfolio features Sojern, FTNI, Lodo Software, USMPS, Prism Technologies, Ballyhoo Software, Simple Insurance and Prairie Cloudware. Learn more at treetopventures.com. About Dundee Venture Capital
HuntForce joins the 25 companies that Omaha-based Dundee Venture Capital has invested in since its start in 2010. Dundee invests in e-commerce and software-as-a-service companies with a strong founding team and a scalable solution to a unique problem. The venture capital firm’s investments are between $50,000 and $500,000. To learn more about Dundee Venture Capital, visit dundeevc.com. © 2015 Buyouts Insider / Argosy Group LLC

Deer hunting tech startup HuntForce racks up $400K

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Sierra Interactive

CarMax

Seed VC

HuntForce is a web-based application that solves a fundamental problem all hunters experience with their trail cameras – too much time wasted downloading and sorting photos instead of time spent hunting. HuntForce allows deer hunters to quickly sort and store their trail camera photos. Ultimately allowing hunters to be more strategic in their sport by identifying trophy deer and their habits.

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Name	Work History	Title	Status
Jim White	Grindmaster	Founder	Current
Ryan White	Sierra Interactive, and CarMax	Founder	Current

Name	Jim White	Ryan White
Work History	Grindmaster	Sierra Interactive, and CarMax
Title	Founder	Founder
Status	Current	Current