Technology news about Austin and San Antonio
By LAURA LOREK Founder of Silicon Hills News At the Austin Chamber Office Sunday morning, a standing room only crowd turned out at 9:30 a.m. to hear the ten finalists of the Austin Fast Pitch competition at South by Southwest Interactive. That’s pretty amazing considering the parties at SXSW stretched into the wee hours of […]
By SUSAN LAHEY Reporter with Silicon Hills News Everywhere Energy won the UT Longhorn pitch competition Saturday morning at SXSW. The company uses “a commercially available material” to collect kinetic energy through a shoe insert that can later be used to charge a cell phone. CEO Darla Hollander said the technology was originally devised by […]
Every night, you can find copies of the first print edition of Silicon Hills News at Fogo de Chao starting at 5 p.m. for Entrepreneur’s Lounge. This is an invitation-only party so if you’re not on the list, you might want to check one of the other spots. This afternoon, I’m dropping some more copies […]
ROIKOI is a new hiring application recently launched in Beta and the company is making a big splash at South by Southwest Interactive. Austin-based ROIKOI is the signature sponsor of Entrepreneurs Lounge, an invitation-only party aimed at entrepreneurs, investors and insiders, held on the rooftop of Fogo de Chao every night through Tuesday. ROIKOI’s giant […]
Austin-based Banter just launched at South by Southwest Interactive. Yes, some people say not to launch at SXSW because the signal to noise ratio is just too high. So much stuff going on SXSW that a new company might just lost in the shuffle. But Banter’s app seeks to solve that problem. Banter is the […]
By SUSAN LAHEY Reporter with Silicon Hills News With more than 500 people in attendance there was a line out the door for Capital Factory’s event: The 10 Best Startups in Austin. Several of the companies were high-tech takes on low tech problems. For example, Weeva was created when founder Kim Gorsuch thought her father […]
By SUSAN LAHEY Reporter with Silicon Hills News There were startups from Guatemala and Germany, Malaga, Spain, France, Australia, Russia, Denmark, Sweden and more at the invitation-only SXSW Global Startup Forum at City Hall. In addition to local dignitaries like Austin Mayor Lee Leffingwell and SXSW Interactive Director Hugh Forrest, was a panel of venture […]
By LAURA LOREK Founder of Silicon Hills News In 1984, Michael Dell dropped out of the University of Texas to found Dell Computers. “At the time, it didn’t seem like that big of a risk,” Dell said. “I didn’t have anything to lose.” He saw a really compelling opportunity to launch a company focused on […]
By SUSAN LAHEY Reporter with Silicon Hills News The British Airways direct flight that just started its inaugural journeys back and forth from London to Austin isn’t your average plane ride. It has been calibrated to reduce jetlag. For example, the lighting is different from other planes. The air pressure was set for 6,000 feet […]
By LAURA LOREK Founder of Silicon Hills News “Sweat equity is the best startup capital” – Mark Cuban A banner bearing Mark Cuban’s quote hung on the wall at Rackspace’s event center Thursday as it hosted its third annual StartupBus event featuring teams from all over the country and Mexico. All of the StartupBus participants […]
By Stacy Alexander Evans Reporter with Silicon Hills News A recruiting event that features a cover band playing ’80’s era glam, staff avatars swiped from the Street Fighter video game, leadership who are not shy about proclaiming their love of beer: clearly the Bigcommerce team knows how to have a good time, yet their revelry […]
The University of Texas at Austin has become a hotbed of entrepreneurial activity. And UTEWeek, the third annual celebration of entrepreneurship featuring more than 15 events at UT, kicked off last Friday and runs through this Friday. The events showcase student entrepreneurial ingenuity. On Wednesday night at the McCombs School of Business at UT, the […]
By TIM GREEN Reporter with Silicon Hills News As advertising becomes more pervasive (is that even possible?), it’s harder for companies to find ways to make their brands stand out. One way is to associate the brand with authoritative and objective content that makes the reader more knowledgeable about what the company sells. But getting […]
By LAURA LOREK Founder of Silicon Hills News At Alamo Heights Junior School, Estrella Hernandez, 13, came up with an idea to get students moving. She learned in sixth grade health class about the obesity epidemic in San Antonio and the city’s growing population of people afflicted with diabetes, a chronic disease associated with being […]
By TIM GREEN Reporter with Silicon HIlls News It’s Ticketpalooza Day at WP Engine, the Austin-based company that offers managed hosting services for WordPress-based websites. About 30 members of the company’s support staff are gathered around two long tables fielding calls from customers having problems with their websites. The support reps tap on their laptops, […]
By SUSAN LAHEY Reporter with Silicon Hills News Congressman Lloyd Doggett said some immigration reform bill must be passed this year, because if Congress waits until January, the hurdles will be even greater. Rep. Doggett spoke Monday morning at Capital Factory on a panel about immigration reform sponsored by FWD.US. Other panelists included Bill Hammond, […]
By LAURA LOREK Founder of Silicon Hills News It’s that crazy time of year in Austin when locals leave for Spring Break and rent out their houses and apartments for gobs of money to the estimated 30,000 people expected to attend this year’s South by Southwest Interactive. That’s right, it’s the biggest, wildest and wackiest […]
By LAURA LOREK Founder Silicon Hills News Three new startups in San Antonio have received $25,000 cash investments each from the Geekdom Fund. The two-year-old fund aims to jumpstart the city’s startup community by providing seed-stage funding to tech startups. In February, the Geekdom Fund made investments in Nebula Technologies and Lightphile. Last November, the […]
By LAURA LOREK Founder of Silicon Hills News Want to see some of the best and brightest young minds in our country in action? Go to the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center Saturday for the finals of the FIRST Robotics Super Regional Championship, a three-day robotics competition with more than 3,500 students and more than […]
Websense, a data security company, announced Friday plans to move its corporate headquarters to Austin and create 470 new jobs. The city of Austin approved an incentive package estimated at $438,000 during the next ten years. The company also received a $4.5 million Texas Enterprise Fund grant. The Austin Chamber of Commerce, through its Opportunity […]
By Amy McCullough Reporter with Silicon Hills News With online commerce ever increasing, retailers with big investments in physical storefronts are trying to drive good, old-fashioned customer foot traffic to those locations. Austin-based Digby is helping businesses do that by gathering mobile data about which customers are shopping when and where. Digby’s location-based marketing and […]
AT&T announced plans Wednesday to open a new center for technology innovation and collaboration in Austin. The Dallas-based company did not provide details on how many people the center will employ or its cost. It did report its making a multi-million dollar investment. Currently, AT&T employs about 2,600 people in the Austin area. In addition, […]
Dropbox plans to expand its office office by 170 employees adding to its existing Austin workforce of 30. Dropbox, based in San Francisco, provides an online storage box that allows people and businesses to exchange files including documents, photos and videos from anywhere. More than 200 million people and 4 million businesses including BCBG, Kayak, […]
The fun loving startup, SpareFoot that has created the nation’s largest online storage marketplace, has just raised $10 million in venture capital from Insight Venture Partners. Austin-based SpareFoot has raised $26 million since its founding in 2008. New York-based Insight Venture Partners provided $22 million of those funds. Its other major investors include Capital Factory, […]
By LAURA LOREK Founder of Silicon Hills News Think of this group as super heroes for the city of San Antonio. They’re a brigade of citizens seeking to solve the city’s problems through technology with an empathetic twist. Together, they seek to tackle issues around transparency, information about school closures, creating customer service portals, discovering […]
Old real estate and oil money in town invested in San Antonio’s Rackspace early on, said Stephanie Chandler, partner with Jackson-Walker. It was one of the first cases of old San Antonio money backing a startup technology venture here, she said. Now with Geekdom, a technology incubator and accelerator in downtown San Antonio, the goal […]
New York-based Sprinklr announced Wednesday its acquisition of Austin-based Dachis Group, which specializes in social and brand analytics. The combination creates a formidable company. Together, they “have raised more than $95 million in venture capital, acquired 11 companies, including three of the original 13 Facebook Preferred Marketing Developers and served over 50 percent of the […]
By LAURA LOREK Founder of Silicon Hills News What’s in a brand? Billions of dollars, said Bill Schley, branding expert and co-founder of BrandTeamSix. Rackspace’s brand “Fanatical Support” is worth one billion dollars per word, Schley said. “They said we will answer the phone in one ring at midnight on Christmas Eve,” Schley said. And […]
By LAURA LOREK Founder of Silicon Hills News San Antonio is on a short list of cities that may get Google fiber high-speed Internet access to the home. “San Antonians deserve Internet speed that is faster than the third world and now we’ll have it,” Mayor Julian Castro said at a press conference at City […]
By LAURA LOREK Founder of Silicon Hills News Right now is the best time to be in the venture capital business in Austin. In 2000, during the Dot Com boom, an enormous amount of money flowed into companies even though they did not have viable ideas and were also not disciplined with spending money, said […]
The first U.S. ATMs to let users buy and sell bitcoins will be installed later this month in Austin and Seattle by Robocoin, according to a Reuters story. The Canadian-based Robocoin installed the first kiosk in Vancouver last fall to allow people to complete transactions with bitcoins, a cryptocurrency that has gained a lot of […]
Hackney House, a venue that showcases the talents of East London’s creative, tech and design community, will return to South by Southwest Interactive 2014. Last year’s event garnered millions in business leads with 1,500 people visiting. This year, more than 30 Hackney-based businesses plans to use the space to show off their companies and to […]
By JULIA BUNCH Reporter with Silicon Hills News The website of Austin startup Spokefly lists a variety of bicycles its members may borrow. For example, Lee has posted a picture of his large commuter bike, Brittany has a medium road bike and Shawn has a medium cruiser listed. Nate McGuire and Dan DeFelippi founded and […]
By LAURA LOREK Founder of Silicon Hills News The Capital Factory in downtown Austin smelled like roses and perfume on Thursday night. Red heart balloons, roses and heart-shaped doilies decorated the tables, walls and windows of the main presentation room. The tech accelerator and incubator hosted more than 100 women for the inaugural Women@Austin event, […]
By SUSAN LAHEY Reporter with Silicon Hills News Silicon Hills News, Austin Technology Incubator and Central Texas Angel Network have picked the ten semi-finalists for a South by Southwest pitch competition to be held March 9 at the Austin Chamber Offices. They are: Pristine.io Embrace Customers Spot On Sciences Filament Labs Mahana EyeQ Insights SegUrWay […]
Carbon Black, a San Antonio-based cyber security startup, has merged with Waltham, MA-based Bit9. Carbon Black makes software to deal with detection of hackers on a computer system and response to hackers once an incidence has occurred. Bit9 makes software to prevent those attacks from occurring. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Bit9 […]
At Startup Grind 2014 in Mountain View, Calif. last week, a few people said Atlassian would be opening an office in Austin. And the folks at the booth for Hipchat, the company’s group chat and IM tool, confirmed that, but they would not provide any more information. It seems Lori Hawkins at the Austin American-Statesman […]
By Leslie Anne Jones Reporter with Silicon Hills News When there’s a gold rush on, it’s sometimes the shovel sellers who get rich fastest. On January 27, CoinTerra started shipping the world’s most efficient shovel for mining Bitcoin: the TerraMiner IV, a networked ASIC Bitcoin miner which, at $5,999, is presently the lowest price-for-performance model […]
Austin-based Spredfast, the social media marketing firm, keeps on making news. The company announced on Thursday plans to open its first European office in London. The company has customers in more than 20 different countries. It has 150 employees nationwide with 110 of those in Austin. It expects to hire 120 people this year. The […]
Makexyz, a startup in the 3-D printing industry founded by ex-indeed.com employees, landed an investment this week from Intel Capital. The company can’t disclose the details of the funding or the amount, Nathan Tone, one of the co-founder, said in an email. Chad Masso is the other co-founder. “Our goal is to help people make […]
By LAURA LOREK Founder Silicon Hills News Founding a high tech startup and raising venture capital is tough for everyone. But it’s even tougher for women, according to the Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University. In a recent study, the institute reported “women founded only three percent of technology firms and one percent […]
Op3nvoice, which recently moved to Austin from London, has been named among the FinTech50. The award, founded by FinTechCity in London, recognizes companies that disrupt the financial services industry with their technology. Op3nvoice, which is a finalist for SXSW Accelerator, has a platform that makes recorded data searchable. Among other this helps companies—including those in […]
By SUSAN LAHEY Reporter with Silicon Hills News The data machine that helped President Barack Obama win his second term was like a 21st century Trojan horse, crashing in on the Republicans. Way behind in technology, the GOP was completely unprepared for the strategic advantage the Democrats gleaned from collecting, sorting, and analyzing copious amounts […]
Since April of 2000, Lanham Napier has worked at Rackspace Hosting. At first, Napier served as Rackspace’s Chief Financial Officer and later President and then Chief Executive Officer. He oversaw the company grow from a startup to a publicly traded company with $1.5 billion in revenue and 200,000 customers. On Monday, Napier announced his retirement […]
By LAURA LOREK Founder of Silicon Hills News Coaches in wizard’s hats, kids in bunny ears, others donning purple and yellow vests made out of duct tape. A student riding a bike to recharge all of the electronics from his high school team to compete in the FIRST Tech Challenge Robotics Alamo Regional Championship. A […]
By LAURA LOREK Founder Silicon Hills News Running a startup is like running a marathon, entrepreneurs need to know they are in for a long race and they’ve got to give it everything they’ve got. “Startups are walking dead,” said Reid Hoffman, co-founder of SocialNet, PayPal and LinkedIn and partner with Greylock Partners. “The classic […]
By LAURA LOREK Founder of Silicon Hills News At the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif. an exhibit contains artifacts and information about the invention of Ethernet. The invention turned 40 years old last year. Its inventor, Bob Metcalfe, now professor of innovation at the University of Texas at Austin, is focused on creating […]
By LAURA LOREK Founder of Silicon Hills News When the Facebooks and Twitters of the world are soaring everyone thinks of Silicon Valley as a glorious place, said Bill Gurley, general partner of Benchmark Capital. “But when that changes people go away very, very fast,” Gurley said. “They scatter like the lights coming on in […]
By LAURA LOREK Reporter with Silicon Hills News Known as an entertainer, entrepreneur and humanitarian, M.C. Hammer also adopted social media tools early on. Hammer tweeted before most celebrities knew Twitter even existed. During meetings with Twitter’s founders Evan Williams, Biz Stone and Jack Dorsey, Hammer explored the emerging world of micro-blogging with his fans. […]
By SUSAN LAHEY Reporter with Silicon Hills News There are a lot of problems with the existing privacy laws when it comes to electronic communication in the cloud. Not the least of which, from the perspective of a company like Rackspace, is the fact that federal investigators want information from emails and cloud storage services, […]
By LAURA LOREK Founder of Silicon Hills News In 2003, Jessica Herrin started Stella & Dot, making jewelry kits out of her home in Austin, Texas. This year, the company will do $220 million in revenue, Herrin said at Startup Grind 2014 in Mountain View, Calif. Stella & Dot sells boutique-style jewelry and accessories through […]
By LAURA LOREK Founder of Silicon Hills News Ben Horowitz joked that he is like Kelly Rowland and Marc Andreessen is like the Beyoncé of their venture capital firm. Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape, is a much more visible and famous partner, Horowitz said. Rowland was one of the original members of Destiny’s Child, which disbanded […]
By AMY MCCULLOUGH Reporter with Silicon hills News In 2005, four IT industry friends met at an Austin Starbucks to brainstorm a way for them to work together, have fun, and find a solution for common needs of system administrators. Scott Abel, Jay Hallberg, Greg Kattawar, and Francis Sullivan envisioned the social way to do […]
By SUSAN LAHEY Reporter with Silicon Hills News Silverton Partners and Floodgate’s new partnership with Capital Factory is offering the incubator’s startups a chance to take their companies to the next level, according to Mike Maples Jr., Floodgate’s managing partner. “When I moved to California, one of the things I noticed was that the cost […]
Capital Factory, Silverton Partners and Floodgate announced Monday morning they are teaming up to provide matching investments for all Capital Factory incubator companies. Josh Baer, co-founder of Capital Factory, made the announcement via a blog post and on Twitter. TechCrunch also posted this story on it. In total, each startup will get up to $150,000 […]
Smith & Nephew announced Monday a deal to buy ArthroCare Corp. of Austin for $1.7 billion. The London-based company plans to pay $48.25 per share in cash for the the medical device company. “This is a compelling opportunity to add ArthroCare’s technology and highly complementary products to further strengthen our sports medicine business,” Olivier Bohuon, […]
NewTek is one of the hidden gems of a technology company in San Antonio. Tim Jenison co-founded NewTek, a desktop video graphics software company, in a storefront in downtown Topeka, Kansas in 1985. The company made the Video Toaster. Jenison later relocated the company to San Antonio. NewTek continued to make innovative products like Lightwave […]
By LAURA LOREK Founder of Silicon Hills News Every great business starts on the back of a napkin, said Evan Loomis, co-founder of TreeHouse, a sustainable home improvement store. He sketched out his plans for TreeHouse during a ski trip with some friends in Boulder, Colorado. A few years later he left his investment banking […]
By LAURA LOREK Founder of Silicon Hills News At 4:30 a.m., George Kozmetsky began his 18-hour days taking meetings in his office at the University of Texas at Austin. Entrepreneurs like Michael Dell, who was just starting a PC company, or James Truchard, co-founder of National Instruments, might drop by for a breakfast of orange […]
Athenahealth announced plans to put a research and development center in Austin with plans to create 600 new jobs. The company, founded in 1997, provides cloud-based health information services for electronic medical records and other medical documents. It plans to occupy 110,000 square feet of the Seaholm Power Plant redevelopment project in downtown Austin and […]
The Austin Technology Incubator started off as a lab at the University of Texas at Austin 25 years ago. No one knew what an incubator was in 1989 but they understood labs so George Kozmetsky, dean of the business school and ATI’s founder, called it a lab for students to learn about entrepreneurship and technology […]
The Austin Technology Incubator celebrates its 25 anniversary and plans to graduate its latest crop of 25 companies during an event Wednesday night at the AT&T Executive Education and Conference Center. The ATI, part of IC2 Institute at the University of Texas, will also announce the winners of the Laura J. Kilcrease Civic Entrepreneurship Award […]
Next week, the Silicon Hills will meet the Silicon Valley. A group from the University of Texas at Austin’s Cockrell School of Engineering will showcase some of its best and brightest startups to Silicon Valley investors, entrepreneurs and press at an event dubbed UTinSV. “Silicon Valley holds the highest concentration of UT engineering graduates outside […]
In recent years, a number of tech companies have expanded to Austin. Among them, Tableau Software Inc. set up shop in September of 2012 and expanded its offices to Congress Avenue six months ago. The company has grown rapidly in Austin, said Elissa Fink, its chief marketing officer. She was in town recently for an […]
Codero Hosting, a provider of web-based hosting services, announced Tuesday it has received $8 million in financing from Silicon Valley Bank and Farnam Street Financial. The company plans to use the money to set up data centers throughout the U.S. and Europe to serve more customers from multiple locations. “We have outpaced our industry’s growth, […]
By SUSAN LAHEY Reporter with Silicon Hills News “Eye of the Tiger” throbbed in the background, interrupted only by periodic swells of cheering as various teams won beer pong, foosball, darts and myriad other games at the third annual Startup Olympics in Austin Music Hall Saturday. Sixteen startup teams competed but SpareFoot triumphed, winning more […]
By LAURA LOREK Founder of Silicon Hills News The XPRIZE Foundation organized a four-day adventure trip to visit tech companies in California last February. XPRIZE Founder Dr. Peter Diamandis wanted to showcase space and ocean innovation to a select group of entrepreneurs. Part of the event involved a Zero G flight in which the passengers […]
By LAURA LOREK Founder of Silicon Hills News Geekdom, the collaborative co-working space in downtown San Antonio, kicked off a new speakers event Thursday called The Master’s Series. “Our goal is to pummel you with amazing information,” said Lorenzo Gomez, director of Geekdom. The first speaker, Christie St. Martin talked about social media tips and […]
By KEITH CASEY Special Contributor to Silicon Hills News Before I go any further, let me state that I loved working for Twilio. It’s cool technology but more importantly the passion, intelligence, and the ability of the senior leadership and just about everyone else is amazing. I walked in and felt like everything we did […]
BY CHELSEA McCULLOUGH Special contributor to Silicon Hills News Welcome to buzzword bingo. These are the terms and phrases that are prolific in headlines, tweets, panel discussions and conversations. Topping Forbes’ list in 2014 is the word “disrupt.” The Wall Street Journal recently penned a piece “Disruption Is the New Normal,” where they describe the […]
By SUSAN LAHEY Reporter with Silicon Hills News It will be a SXSW pitch competition with a media twist. ATI/Silicon Hills Startup Pitch, sponsored by Silicon Hills News, Austin Technology Incubator and Central Texas Angel Network, will give 10 Austin companies a chance to pitch in front of investors and the media to determine two […]
By LESLIE ANNE JONES Reporter with Silicon Hills News If you want a hamburger, there are thousands of reviews available online for Austin joints. But until recently, if you wanted a business software package – which might cost a thousand times more than a gruyere-smothered Angus patty – it was much harder to find aggregated […]
