Via News Release
“MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. February, 2013 -‐ Rock Your Block, LLC, a Twin Cities-‐based tech start-‐up, aims to reduce teenage unemployment rates by connecting teens with opportunities to earn money within their community by performing neighborhood tasks, as well as securing part-‐time jobs and internships.
Rock Your Block was recently selected to demo at the LAUNCH FESTIVAL, held at the San Francisco Design Center Concourse in San Francisco, California on March 4 -‐ 6, 2013.”
Via News Release
“MINNEAPOLIS, Minn.– Rock Your Block, LLC, a Twin Cities-based tech start-up, aims to reduce teenage unemployment rates by connecting teens with opportunities to earn money performing neighborhood jobs and securing part-time jobs and internships in their community.
Rock Your Block was recently selected as one of 33 start-up companies to be showcased at the Tech Cocktail event as part of the South By Southwest (SXSW) Conference in Austin, Texas this March. SXSW is a two‐week conference centered on emerging technology, music, and film, drawing tens of thousands of participants from an estimated 50 countries. “
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Teen unemployment rates in the US are currently at an all-time high, upwards of 25-35%. Multiple research studies indicate that high levels of unemployment during the teen years increase the difficulty of transitioning to part-time and full-time employment in the late teens and early twenties, as well as reduce future wage and earnings potential.
Rock Your Block solves this problem by offering a safe and convenient way for teenagers to find jobs in their community. Teens are given the opportunity to develop skills necessary to become independent, self-sufficient adults: searching for work, building a resume, handling job interviews, and developing good time and money management. Rock Your Block is the first mobile and Facebook-integrated application that leverages teens’ existing networks by providing a platform to search and apply to job postings in their community.
By Dana Severson, Twin Cities Business
“Startup: Rock Your Block
Founded: 2010
Location: Minneapolis
Key players: Sarah Young, founder and CEO; John Hibscher, development director; Sean Canton, senior developer and designer; and Ben Hunt, software engineer
Funding: Self-funded; looking for first-round funding in January 2011
Web site: rockyourblock.com”
“Rock Your Block is the brainchild of Sarah Young, who took the idea to last month’s Startup Weekend event in Minneapolis. The web app will be a place where kids can search for work and advertise their services for things like raking, shoveling or babysitting.
“I wanted to provide a quick, easy, simple way for teens to find odd jobs within their neighborhoods” and avoid the hassle of putting up fliers or knocking on strangers’ doors, says Young, whose income as a kid included pay for things like babysitting and dog walking. There is no Monster.com for these kind of chores, and that’s what Rock Your Block wants to be.”
In alignment with Kauffman’s Global Entrepreneurship Week 2010, Minnesota will join the list of 30+ parallel Startup Weekend events happening around the world this fall. From Friday November 19 through Sunday the 21, teams of local developers, marketers, designers, and entrepreneurs will get together to pitch, vet, build and demo new products over a single weekend.
Hot off Minnesota’s first Startup Weekend, organizer and COO Shane Reiser said “…the energy, feedback and outcome was so positive that this place is ready for more.” By the numbers, 100 registered for the last weekends hackathon at CoCo MSP and between 80-90 people came out for the initial pitch night on Friday. In the end, around 60-70 startup enthusiasts spontaneously collaborated across 13 unique teams. A review of John Sheehan/Twilio’s interview library provides a great sense of what Startup Weekend was like for those who participated.
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