The month of August has been a whirlwind that comes to an end on Monday with the launch of The Brandery.  The response was pretty amazing for our inaugural class with applications coming from 15 different states and40 percent of the total applications coming from outside of the Cincinnati area.

On Monday we will welcome 6 companies to the program, 3 of which will be relocating for The Brandery.  Those accepted include:

• Brainrack: Founded by Senay Semere, Pepjin de Visscher and Matthew Veryser of Dayton, OH, Brainrack is a crowd-sourcing tool for organizations and for students to use while engaging in open innovation
• DCreations: Founded by Darcy Crociata of Mason, OH, the company has created an application called Facebook EasyBook that creates photo/journal/scrapbooks taken from your Facebook statuses, mobile uploads, photo albums, etc., to help capture important memories that could otherwise be fleeting.
• Giftiki: Founded by Justin Stanislaw and Bryan Jowers of Houston, TX, Giftiki allows users to conveniently give small gifts digitally to friends and family.
• turboBOTZ: Founded by Vincent Chou and Pratap Sherquill of Chicago, IL,  turboBOTZ is a service that allows video gamers to manage their game libraries as well as to buy, sell and trade video games, all within a single online site.
• VenturePax: Founded by Danny Stull of West Chester, OH, VenturePax is a Web-based source of information-sharing on outdoor adventures, travel and vacation planning with strong interactivity and family oriented locations.
• VenueAgent: Founded by Jocelyn and Joe Cates, VenueAgent is the first Brandery Fellow of the program.   VenueAgent.com is a researching tool for planning any special event, connecting venues with qualified leads, and helping brides find love at first site.

The next 12 weeks are going to be pretty exciting and I personally cant wait to see the progress the companies have made by Demo Day on November 19th.  If you want to follow the progress, be sure to check out The Brandery on Twitter and Facebook.   We’ll also be updating throughout the program on The Brandery blog.