By LAURA LOREK
Reporter with Silicon Hills News
Austrian Entrepreneurs visiting Austin include Alex Pinter of Trayn, Thomas Schranz of Blossom, Florian Dorfbauer of Usersnap, Waldemar Hummer of Riox, Hannes Leo of cbased and Johannes Matiasch of Sweazer.
They had meetings with entrepreneurs, government officials and others at Capital Factory, City Hall, TechRanch and other locations around town.
Alexa Wesner, the U.S. Ambassador to Austria, chose the group. She used to live in Austin and previously worked for Trilogy. Global Austin coordinated the visit locally.
On Monday afternoon, the group met with Silicon Hills News at WeWork, a coworking site in downtown Austin, to learn about the city’s booming technology scene and to share information about the companies they founded. Sarah with WeWork gave the group a tour of its coworking space, which is completely full with more than 500 members. WeWork opened in Austin in February and is already exploring local expansion opportunities.
Following the tour, everyone met in a conference room and each visitor gave a brief overview of their company.
Johannes Matiasch, the CEO and co-founder of Sweazer, launched his company several weeks ago in Vienna. It “makes shopping sweet and easy,” by combining online and offline shops in one platform. It has created an e-commerce site with an interface like Tinder, the dating app. The site allows people to save likes and dislikes of different fashion items.
“When you think about fashion shopping there are so many stores out there,” Matiasch said. “It’s nearly impossible to see everything. We integrate a lot of products and provide one search interface of all the online shops and brick and mortar stores in one place.”
Hannes Leo, CEO and co-founder of cbased, has created a community based innovation and collaboration platform.
The startup is providing services for both the public and private sector. Its platform allows people to discuss a proposal online and it allows companies and government officials to arrive at better, consensual decisions, Leo said. A lot of school systems in the U.S. are also using the platform to foster classroom discussions, he said.
Thomas Schranz, CEO and co-founder of Blossom, created a project management tool for software development teams to track and develop software together. The software allows companies to track features and the development of their software quickly and easily. Its customers include Twitter, Netflix, Facebook and Apple. The company went through a European accelerator, Seedcamp, but it landed its customers by posting articles on Medium and Quora, Schranz said. The majority of its customers are in California, he said.
Florian Dorfbauer, CEO of Usersnap, has created a visual communications tool that allows a person to annotate a page with sticky notes and to send it to a developer to make corrections.
“It’s a bridge between non-technical people and technical people,” he said. “The core of the technology is done on a screen shot.”
Usersnap is a software as a service company that is seed funded and runs on cash flow, Dorfbauer said. Its customers include Microsoft and Hawaiian Airlines.
Waldemar Hummer serves in business development for Riox.io, a startup that runs a cloud-based platform for the Internet of Things. It turns data into valuable insights for companies.
And lastly, Alex Pinter, is the CEO and Co-Founder of Trayn.com, which makes customized workout plans for professional athletes. It’s working with the National Basketball Association, the National Hockey League and other sports organizations. It eventually plans to branch out to provide training plans for everyday athletes and semi-professional athletes.
Many of the startups plan to return to Austin next year for South by Southwest Interactive in March.
The group in one of WeWork’s conference rooms.
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