Turnstile Cards accepted to Lincoln's NMotion accelerator

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Turnstile Cards, a sports marketing app which took the top prize at Startup Weekend Cedar Rapids as Major Trading cards, will travel to Lincoln, Ne. for the NMotion Accelerator.

NMotion practices a similar format to TechStars or the Iowa Startup Accelerator, with an intense, mentor-driven 14-week program, an initial investment of $15,000 in exchange for six percent equity, and a demo day to additional investors at the end. The program begins June 2.

This is NMotion's second cohort, and will focus on sports-themed startups. Three of the seven accepted teams directly deal with sports, and one has a serial entrepreneur with a prior sports startup. The fledgling teams will join several sports companies around Lincoln, including Hudl, opendorse, Lockr, EliteForm, Hail Varsity, Bulu Box, Powderhook and others.

"There are collaboration opportunities, since most of these startups are not directly competitive in nature," said Brian Ardinger, managing director of NMotion.

The Turnstile Cards team has been covertly preparing for the accelerator for a few weeks, as co-founder Zach Sanderson resigned from his day job at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, and the team announced a name change Wednesday morning at 1 Million Cups Iowa City/Cedar Rapids.

"It was tough when I was quitting my job, and people didn't know what it was based on,"  Sanderson said.

Turnstile Cards is a mobile marketing platform for sports fans, with the nostalgic twist of a digital baseball card.

Of the five team members who launched the company at Startup Weekend Cedar Rapids, only Sanderson and Jason Kristufek, a product manager at Fusionfarm (our colleagues at The Gazette Company), are taking the leap. The duo are actively seeking a mobile developer to begin building out the app.

"That's our main focus - developers are always in demand, and we're looking at all of our options," Sanderson said.

The team hopes to establish a developer relationship and have a product demo before they depart in late May. Less than two weeks after the program starts, the College World Series will kick off in nearby Omaha, and Sanderson hopes to begin conversations with teams then.

By late July, Sanderson hopes to have a working prototype of the Turnstile Cards app and a team signed on to use it for the remainder of the baseball season. The team can provide valuable feedback before the accelerator's concluding demo day on Sept. 4.

"We want to have a developed product in use," Sanderson said. "We don't want to go blindly."

Ardinger said he was impressed with the co-founders.

"They were hustlers - not only did they do a good job at Startup Weekend, but they continued on, which doesn't always happen," Ardinger said.

He also noted that the team's young age - Startup Weekend Cedar Rapids was just seven weeks ago - was not a concern, and that he expects the business model to develop over the summer.

"That's part of what accelerators are designed to do - that earlier stage," he said. "We're not putting a ton of money into them, but we're putting a ton of effort in to compress two to three years of learning into about 100 days."

NMotion's first class contained five startups, all from the Lincoln area. Ardinger said he is excited to expand the program's reach and form connections across the Silicon Prairie.

"We want entrepreneurs to have that network of other entrepreneurs within a days' drive," he said.

Earlier: Major Trading Cards moves forward after Startup Weekend Cedar Rapids