Author: LauraLorek@gmail.com (Page 301 of 352)

Earlier this year, Stacy Yamaoka created the prototype for the Joby GorillaPod Tripod to hold iPads.
Since then, her company, Deohako.com has created an entire line of iPad display cases and accessories.
And next week, Deohako’s iPad products will be on display at the International CES Show in Las Vegas.
Deohako is one of more than 230 technology companies from Texas and other Southern States that will debut their technology innovations at CES, the world’s largest consumer technology products show. The show features more than 3,000 exhibitors. It runs from Tuesday, Jan. 8 to Friday, Jan. 11 at the Las Vegas Convention Center.
Deohako’s products will be on display at the Eureka Park featuring 140 entrepreneurs, startups and small companies.

Nick Spiller, director of Longhorn Entrepreneur Agency, first posted a link to an article in Young Entrepreneurs on “The Rise of Entrepreneurship on College Campuses” in the Facebook Austin Startups group.
The University of Texas at Austin is famous for its students who go on to become entrepreneurs like Michael Dell, founder of Dell and James Truchard, co-founder of National Instruments.
Now Josh Baer and Bob Metcalfe at Longhorn Startup Lab, previously known as One Semester Startup at UT, are helping a new generation of student entrepreneurs launch ventures ranging from solar car charging stations to 3-D cameras. The program is about to begin its fourth semester. It has already helped dozens of entrepreneurs launch their ventures.

via: Give It The Old College Try [Infographic]

If I had a buck for every time an entrepreneur asked me how to get media attention, I’d be as wealthy as a venture capitalist.
Ok, that may be a bit of stretch. I’d probably have enough money to run my own bar, which I’d call “The Story Distillery.”
But I’ve got to say the startup entrepreneurs who ask me that question are smart. Because what they really want to know is how do they tell a story good enough to reach the widest audience possible. The key is to have a good story to tell. One that resonates with people. One that they want to share with their friends and family.

Here’s my five tips on story telling for entrepreneurs:

1. WAIT: Have a great story to tell. Sometimes this means waiting until you’ve landed a great big contract or found a major investor willing to back your idea or hit $1 million in revenue or sold the company or any significant material event in the company’s life. A bad story is “Hey, we’re launching a new version of our product” will you write about us so that we can attract new customers? Reporters are not PR agents.

2. BE UNIQUE: Make sure that your story is unique and interesting. Try it out on friends. Get feedback. Pretend like you’re writing a novel and when you publish it you want it to be the best possible version. It’s Ok to tell a bad story. I’ve told plenty. Just learn from the experience and refine the story until it flows like a real-life fairy tale with a beginning, middle and end and some exciting climaxes throughout to keep the reader engaged. Also, you can think like a reporter and include the 5 Ws and H: Who, What, When, Where, Why and How.

3. BE HUMAN: Make sure your story has plenty of characters in it. People like to read about people and their lives and their experiences. People who create the products are the innovators. Think about Steve Jobs. If people just talked about his products and not the person behind the ideas, then Apple wouldn’t have nearly as great a cult-like following.

4. BE AWARE OF YOUR AUDIENCE: Whole Foods’ social media director says Pinterest drives more traffic to its website than Twitter. That’s because Whole Foods crafts stories with compelling visuals especially for Pinterest. It doesn’t tell the same stories on Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest. The company understands the different audiences. Just because your company created a special story doesn’t mean you should blast the same story on different social media channels.

5. BE HELPFUL: Help tell other people’s stories. Dell is really good at this. The computer company tells its story through its customers and partners. This creates new narratives that keeps the stories fresh and interesting.

And if a reporter tells your story and it’s a good one, be sure to thank that person. Reporters remember people who say thank you. I’ve been a reporter for two decades and I keep a collection of all of the letters, e-mails and cards I’ve received throughout the years from people who were kind of enough to say thanks. They mean a lot to me.

And for more on story telling, I would recommend reading this post on Lyn Graft of Austin. He did this presentation last year at SXSW Interactive on Story telling for Entrepreneurs.
Alan Weinkrantz, a public relations professional in San Antonio, who I have known for a long time, recently gave this Slideshare presentation on the importance of story telling to some startups in Israel. He originally posted this on his blog.

President Barack Obama named 12 researchers as recipients of the National Medal of Science on Friday including two University of Texas professors.
Allen Bard, a professor of chemistry, and John Goodenough, professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Texas received the nation’s highest honor for scientists. Professor Goodenough developed materials that led to the first lithium-ion batteries. He’s also worked extensively on fuel cells. Professor Bard invented the scanning electrochemical microscope, “now used worldwide in investigations of electro-catalytic mechanism, in identification of cancerous cells, in mapping transport paths in the paths in the skin for trans-dermal drug delivery, and for lithographic patterning of surfaces” according to the Wolf Prize in Chemistry, which Bard won in 2008.
In addition, President Obama gave 11 inventors the National Medal of Technology and Innovation. They will receive their awards at a White House ceremony in early 2013.
“I am proud to honor these inspiring American innovators,” President Obama said in a statement. “They represent the ingenuity and imagination that has long made this Nation great—and they remind us of the enormous impact a few good ideas can have when these creative qualities are unleashed in an entrepreneurial environment.”
The full list of winners is available here.

The largest railroad network in the United States, Union Pacific Railroad has picked Austin for its new technology innovation center.
Union Pacific has opened an Information Technology Center at 807 Las Cimas Parkway in northwest Austin. The railroad plans to develop software and do engineering research and development at the site. The office can support up to 40 programmers and engineers.
A few months ago, General Motors and Visa have both announced plans to put innovation centers in Austin. And earlier this year, Apple announced plans to hire up to 3,600 employees at its Americas Operation Center in Austin during the next 10 years.
Union Pacific, one of the oldest companies in the U.S. founded 150 years ago, operates 6,300 miles of railroad tracks in Texas, more than any other state. It also has more employees here than any state except Nebraska, where it is based in Omaha, according to a news release.
“We continue to pursue aggressive recruiting efforts within the Texas university systems and found many of the candidates prefer to live and work in Austin,” Lynden Tennison, Union Pacific senior vice president and chief information officer, said in a news release. “Having an office in the heart of Austin will help us bring exciting new opportunities to the exceptional talent being developed in Texas.”
Union Pacific coordinates recruiting and outreach programs with the University of Texas at Austin, Texas A&M University, and the University of Texas at San Antonio, among others.
Union Pacific has its own telecommunications networks, which supports the company’s 10,000 customers and 32,000-mile rail network across 23 states.

Dell announced plans to acquire Credant Technologies, a data security firm.
Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.
Founded in 2001, Credant Technologies, based in Addison, adds strength to Dell’s computing solutions products. During the last three years, Dell has expanded its security products to offer clients.
“In today’s work environment data is always in-flight – from work being done on a local PC, being sent via email, stored on a USB drive and saved in the cloud. Each one of those experiences represents a potential security risk. As a result, businesses need a data protection strategy that is comprehensive, flexible and easy to deploy,” Jeff Clarke, president, End User Computing Solutions at Dell, said in a news release. “The Credant assets will complement and extend current Dell device security features to make Dell Latitude, OptiPlex and Precision PCs some of the world’s most secure. And when combined with the change in compute behaviors and data in-flight, Dell can now offer a differentiated security proposition based on its own Intellectual Property.”
Credant protects and encrypts information whether stored on a mobile device or in the cloud. The technology also supports a variety of mobile operating systems.
“Protecting critical information has only become more important as organizations globally struggle to protect their data in an ever more complex world,” Bob Heard, chief executive officer and founder of Credant, said in a news release. “This combination allows Credant to bring its deep capabilities in data security to Dell’s robust solution set and customer base. Together we will continue to focus on innovation and building value that results in beneficial outcomes for our customers.”

IBM announced plans to acquire StoredIQ Inc., a privately-held data analysis and management firm in Austin.
The companies did not disclose the financial terms of the deal.
StoredIQ will help IBM’s clients manage their data to know what to keep and what to throw away and how to use that data in its operations.
In addition to StoredIQ, IBM offers a solution called Information Lifecycle Governance to deal with data. StoredIQ will further enhance IBM’s ability to help clients manage data effectively.
IBM’s focus in helping clients manage data is to help them run their businesses more efficiently and to lower costs for storing data and to adhere to regulations on how long to keep information such as email.
“When StoredIQ was founded in 2001, the size of the digital universe was 6,500 petabytes. Back then, our mission was to help companies understand their digital content, and help them turn data into information they could use and act on,” according to this posting on the company’s site. “This year, the digital universe is expected to reach 1.2 million petabytes, and it’s growing by tenfold every year. Every year! To give you some perspective, thats 7.6 million Libraries of Congress.”

This Slideshare presentation shows how IBM is using big data to help its clients understand their businesses better.

uShip.com has closed on a $18 million Series C financing round with Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

The Austin-based startup plans to use the money for development, sales and marketing and to expand globally, according to a news release. Since its founding in 2004, uShip has raised $28 million including this round. Other investors include Benchmark Capital and DAG Ventures.

As part of the deal, Maritza Liaw, partner at KPCB, will join uShip’s board.

“Kleiner Perkins funding and resources will propel uShip’s next phase of growth. Commercial freight is trending toward complete automation and greater efficiency, meaning uShip’s PRO platform has the opportunity to impact the entire industry, from enterprise shippers to freight brokers to carriers,” Matt Chasen, CEO and founder of uShip, said in a news release. “We’ve already built an online shipping marketplace of over 1.6 million shipping customers and 325,000 registered carriers, a key distinction between our efforts and those of our competitors. KPCB’s funding and support will allow us to continue our global expansions plans and further develop our innovative shipping platform.”

uShip is a disruptive player in the transportation industry and KPCB sees a “huge opportunity for growth in the commercial sector,” Liaw with KPCB said in a news release.

uShip targets both business shippers and freight brokers as well as consumers. Its platform helps connect truckers and other people with extra space to transport products with people who need to move goods.

uShip is available in 18 countries and plans to expand further in Latin America and Europe.

In addition, the third season of Shipping Wars, an A&E real-life series that features uShip, premiered on Dec. 12.

“The show follows six independent truck drivers who use uShip to competitively bid to transport oversized loads found on the marketplace. Seasons 1 and 2 attracted 2-3 million viewers per episode, placing it among cable’s top 10 shows (Nielsen).”

Austin-based startup BlackLocus, a software data mining firm, announced Monday that the company has been acquired by The Home Depot.
The terms of the deal were not disclosed.
In a blog post, the company’s co-founders Rodrigo Carvalho and Lukas Bouvrie said that BlackLocus will become the innovation lab for The Home Depot.
“Our passion for data-driven decision making led us to start BlackLocus a few years ago,” they wrote. “We wanted to create the next version of business intelligence software for retailers. We wanted to mix internal data with public data. We wanted to turn large and complex data sets into simple and intuitive interfaces. We wanted to make it all actionable! Our vision has always been to allow retailers to extract value out of the vast, and ever growing, amount of information that exists today.”
But the co-founders reported that they had trouble bringing their vision to a product and that its engineering team faced a “multitude of very difficult technical challenges, and over the last year we created some disruptive innovations that enabled our business to soar. Solving those problems through technical and research innovation was part of the fun.”
The merger with Home Depot lets the company continue to pursue its vision with the backing of one of the world’s largest retailers.
“The company, which arrived in Austin in July 2011, has been named one of Inc.’s “Startups to Watch in 2012” as well as one of CNET’s Best Startup Ideas from 2011. The founders were classmates at Carnegie Mellon University and started their business at Pittsburgh’s AlphaLab Accelerator,” according to this profile Susan Lahey wrote on BlackLocus earlier this year.
BlackLocus had raised a $2.5 million first round of venture capital from DFJ Mercury and Silverton Partners.