Mark Mader of Bellevue's Smartsheet Among Award Recipients for the EY Entrepreneur Of The Year 2015 Pacific Northwest

Entrepreneur of the Year 2015 PNW Awarded to Mark Mader, President and CEO of Bellevue-based Smartsheet, 6 Others

Entrepreneur of the Year 2015 PNW bestowed on Bellevue-based Online Project Management SAAS company Smartsheet CEO Mark Mader.  Congratulations Mark!  Great job on bringing the award to Bellevue!

EY (formerly known as Ernst & Young) have announced the winners of the EY Entrepreneur Of The Year 2015 Award in the Pacific Northwest. These leading entrepreneurs were selected by an independent judging panel made up of previous winners of the award, leading CEOs, private capital investors and other regional business leaders.

The winners were revealed at a special gala on June 5, 2015 at Sheraton Seattle Hotel. “EY has honored outstanding entrepreneurs for the past 29 years,” said Greg Beams EY Entrepreneur Of The Year Program Director for the Pacific Northwest. “These winners are accomplished leaders who have contributed a tremendous amount to their communities.”

The other EY Entrepreneur Of The Year 2015 Pacific Northwest Region winners are: Scott Allan, President and CEO, Hydro Flask, Bend, Oregon Chris Barrow, President and CEO, EagleView Technologies, Bothell, Washington Mark Britton, Founder and CEO, Avvo, Seattle, Washington Ryan Carson, Co-Founder and CEO, Treehouse, Portland, Oregon, Darryl Rawlings, CEO, Trupanion, Seattle, Washington Dave Sanders, M.D., Co-Founder and CEO, Zoom+, Hillsboro, Oregon.

Now in its 29th year, the program has expanded to recognize business leaders in over 145 cities in 60 countries throughout the world.

Smartsheet's Mader and other regional award winners are eligible for consideration for the EY Entrepreneur Of The Year national program. Award winners in several national categories, as well as the EY Entrepreneur Of The Year Overall National Award winner, will be announced at the annual awards gala in Palm Springs, California on November 14, 2015.

The US Entrepreneur Of The Year Overall Award winner then moves on to compete for the World Entrepreneur Of The Year Award in Monaco, June 2016. Additionally, venture-backed companies that win an Entrepreneur Of The Year Award regionally are also eligible for the Venture Capital Award of Excellence at the national level.

The awards are the culminating event of the EY Strategic Growth Forum, the nation’s most prestigious gathering of high-growth, market-leading companies. Sponsors Founded and produced by EY, the Entrepreneur Of The Year 2015 Awards are nationally sponsored by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and SAP America. In the Pacific Northwest, sponsors also include Merrill Datasite, Union Bank and Scherzer International.

About EY Entrepreneur Of The Year 2015:  Entrepreneur Of The Year 2015 is one of the world’s most prestigious business award for entrepreneurs. The unique award makes a difference through the way it encourages entrepreneurial activity among those with potential and recognizes the contribution of people who inspire others with their vision, leadership and achievement. Entrepreneur Of The Year celebrates those who are building and leading successful, growing and dynamic businesses, recognizing them through regional, national and global awards programs in more than 145 cities in more than 60 countries.

PicsArt Mobile Creative Image Community Raises $15M Led By Insight Venture Partners and Sequoia Capital

PicsArt Mobile Creative Image Community Scores $15 Million in New Funding

PicsArt mobile creative image community today announced $15M in new funding from Insight Venture Partners and Sequoia Capital. The new round follows a previous investment of $10M from Sequoia earlier this year. The new funding will enable the company to expand globally and develop new tools for users.

PicsArt mobile creative image community is for amateur and professional photographers, designers, artists and anyone who wants to use PicsArt’s extensive image creation and editing tools to beautify their world. PicsArt’s further enabled community collaboration with its latest feature update. Now #freetoedit images from PicsArt mobile creative image community can be shared on Facebook, inviting a new community to use PicsArt’s desktop-grade tools to edit their images.

Users can also share their creative process with others through automatically generated timelapse videos. Hit a button when you start working on an image and when you are done, share a video showcasing your technique so other users can learn from you. These are just the latest tools empowering PicsArt’s community of more than 65 million monthly active users that co-creates more than 250 million images per month.

“We want to continuously provide artists with the means to connect and collaborate,” said PicsArt CEO and founder, Hovhannes Avoyan. “With this round of funding, we can continue to do so with app updates that boost collaboration settings, such as video generation, increased sharing and the latest photo-enhancing tricks.”

“PicsArt’s rapid growth is a true testament to its unique creative platform,” said Jeff Horing, managing director at Insight Venture Partners. “We are pleased to partner with the PicsArt team as they continue to set themselves apart by solidifying a community of collaboration.”

Anyone with a smartphone can download the PicsArt Mobile Creative Image Community app from the App Store, Google Play, Amazon or Windows. To learn more, go to www.PicsArt.com.

About PicsArt
PicsArt Mobile Creative Image Community is the largest mobile community of creatives and creative images. The company’s U.S. office is based in San Francisco, California with a focus on enabling anyone to be creative, share, socialize, discover, learn and be inspired. The app has been installed over 230 million times and continues to expand and improve, so anyone can unleash their creativity and discover their inner artist.

About Insight Venture Partners
Insight Venture Partners is a global private equity and venture capital firm founded in 1995. They also invested heavily in Bellevue-based SmartSheet. They have raised more than $10 billion and invested in more than 200+ growth-stage software, internet, and data-services companies. Our Investment Team meets with thousands of companies each year, selecting a handful to invest in, supporting them with market insights and exposure to potential acquisitions and acquirers. Our Insight Onsite team provides hands-on resources and collaborative expertise to help companies scale.

About Sequoia Capital
The Sequoia team helps a small number of daring founders build legendary companies. We spur them to push the boundaries of what’s possible. In partnering with Sequoia, companies benefit from our unmatched community and the lessons we’ve learned over 40 years working with Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, John Morgridge, Jerry Yang, Elon Musk, Larry Page, Jan Koum, Brian Chesky, Drew Houston, Adi Tatarko and Jack Dorsey, among many others. In aggregate, Sequoia-backed companies account for more than 20% of NASDAQ’s total value. We’re proud that their success also fuels great causes: since 2000 alone we have returned more than $10 billion to non-profits like the Ford Foundation, Mayo Clinic and MIT.

5 Ways to Protect Your Startup From Copycats

Whoever said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery clearly did not have a startup.  The fact is, when you have a good idea the copycats will come out of the woodwork to steal it.  To keep competitors on their toes and your startup from becoming one of too many, Danielle Tate, entrepreneur, and the founder and CEO of MissNowMrs.com, the leading online name change service for brides, offers advice on several ways that you can protect your startup from pirates and avoid costly legal battles:

     1)  Build Your Brand…Fast.  With great ideas, it is a race to bring the product to market.  In your planning, I suggest prioritizing how you are going to grab market share.  Whether you use PR, advertisements or social media, it is important for your new business to make a memorable splash in your market.  Once your company is established as the industry leader, copycats are less likely to take your idea and if they do, they should make less of a negative impact on your business.

     2)  Put a Face With Your Company Name.  Consumers love to know the entrepreneur and back story behind a company and become much more connected to your brand when they feel like they know you.  In any copycat situation, your best customers are also your best defenders.  If a customer is emotionally engaged with your brand they are much more likely to stay loyal to your brand when copycats appear, and may also defend you via social media and word of mouth.

     3)  Protect What is Valuable.  Determine what the most valuable assets of your company are and then find ways to protect them.  This can be as simple as adding a copycat scanning software like CopyScape to your website or as complicated as writing code to detect suspicious use of your product.  Whatever you choose to do to protect your startup, being proactive instead of reactive will save you stress, money and possible litigation.

     4)  Form Strategic Partnerships.  If there are key companies in the industry your company is entering, consider partnering with them.  The partnership will help boost awareness of your brand and also locks any copycat companies out of relationships with these partners.  Strategic partnerships are also beneficial if you are afraid that a large company will take your idea.  A partnership or private label will allow the larger company to benefit from your startup without stealing from you.

     5)  Patent It.  If your idea or product is unique, money spent on filing a patent is a wise investment.  While the process is lengthy and expensive, the protection a patent offers your start up is unparalleled.  Even before your patent is approved, the words “patent pending” will deter potential copycats.

These five tips should help your startup stay safe and allow you to focus on building your business instead of fighting off copycats.  Creating a company from an idea is an amazing feat. Good luck.

ABOUT DANIELLE TATE

As a successful entrepreneur, Danielle is a name change expert, on-camera personality, writer, author of a top rated Google newlywed blog and a bridal magazine contributor.  It was a 13-hour struggle to change her name after getting married in 2005 that prompted Danielle to leave her medical sales career to develop and launch MissNowMrs.com. Wanting to save other brides countless hours of hassle, Danielle researched name-changing laws and rules in all 50 states to streamline and implemented her unique three-step, 30-minute online service.

Since 2006, Danielle has served as CEO of MissNowMrs.com and revolutionized the online name change market. Since launching, MissNowMrs.com has assisted more than 225,000 brides in their transition from Miss to Mrs and recently launched MissNowMrs.com/Canada for Canadian brides. She is also the founder of MarriedNameGame.com, the original proprietary name change algorithm to determine your ideal married name, and GetYourNameBack.com, an online service dedicated to helping women get their name back after divorce.  Danielle is also the co-founder of Sculpt Studio, a Megaformer studio in Bethesda, Maryland and partner in a non-profit organization that helps charities file tax exemption paperwork in multiple states.

Danielle has numerous television appearances. She has been interviewed on FOX National News, NBC DC News, KTLA-TV Morning News, Better TV, WBFF-TV Fox News, WBKO-TV ABC News, WJXT-TV News, and KTVK-TV “Good Morning Arizona.”

ABOUT MISSNOWMRS.COM

MissNowMrs.com is the premier online name-change service created to simplify the name-change process for brides and newlyweds nationwide. Our unique service guides brides through a series of questions, uses their answers to auto-populate all of their state and U.S. government name-change forms, as well as notification letters for all of their creditors, and then supplies detailed filing instructions for each form/letter. Our service accommodates every legal name-change option based on marriage, so brides can decide which name-change option works best for them.