The first TechStars Cloud program kicked off in San Antonio on Jan. 19 with 11 companies that all moved to the city from outside the state.
Jason Seats and Nicole Glaros, managing directors, run the TechStars Cloud program at the Geekdom, a collaborative workplace in downtown San Antonio on the 11th floor of the Weston Centre. The three-month incubator and mentoring program ends with a demo day in April. TechStars are’t revealing the names of the companies involved in the program until Demo Day.
Meanwhile, the folks at Rackspace Hosting did this hilarious video with Seats and Glaros recently.
The video starts off serious, but you have to hang with it until the end.
Glaros has some great comments.
“We do a lot of hazing here at TechStars cloud,” says Glaros. “You have to be top of mind and of body.”
“Somewhere between 90 and 100 percent of these companies are just elaborate money laundering schemes,” Glaros said.
She gives the companies “diapers and wipes” when they walk in the door because they are so young.
Meanwhile, Seats says the companies are like “little soft baby chicks” and that they just want to cuddle them.
Author: LauraLorek@gmail.com (Page 339 of 352)
LauraLorek@gmail.com
ChooseWhat guides entrepreneurs through the process of starting up a business.
And now the Austin Technology Incubator has announced a formal partnership with ChooseWhat.com.
The Austin-based company, founded in 2007 by Gaines Kilpatrick and Leo Welder, seeks to solve problems for small business owners such as how to get the best deal on a fax line or phone service provider or tax service. ChooseWhat.com has set up a special site tailored to the needs of ATI’s technology companies. My favorite piece of advice? How to choose a coffee maker.
This year’s graduating class at the Austin Technology Incubator really encompasses a couple of years of companies, said Isaac Barchas, its director.
He skipped a graduation year last year, he said.
But the group of 21 companies have “tremendous diversity of focus from social media management to drug delivery to robotics controls.”
“What most of them do is hard and valuable,” Barchas said. “It’s not flashy and sexy.”
ATI focuses more on companies that serve business to business markets than consumers, Barchas said. ATI is the nonprofit unit of the IC2 Institute at the University of Texas at Austin. Since its founding 23 years ago, ATI has assisted hundreds of companies and helped them raise more than $1 billion in funding.
“In general we work with technology companies rather than marketing companies that are enabled through technology,” Barchas said.
One such company is Calxeda, which Barry Evans founded at ATI. Calxeda makes high-performance low power semiconductors that power Hewlett Packard’s servers used in large data centers.
“Creating something out of nothing, that’s the audacious idea of the entrepreneur,” said Evans during his graduation keynote address.
In a little office by himself in 2008, Evans re-worked his business plan “a thousand times.” His favorite time of the day was when he ran out of coffee and he would venture into the hallway to meet with other entrepreneurs. And at night, he would cruise the incubator looking for a better chair, he said.
“ATI helped me create something that was special,” Evans said. “And something that I think will be big.”
Massachusetts Institute of Technology agrees. It named Calxeda one of the 50 most innovative companies in the world. (Google, IBM and Facebook also made the list.) Venture Capitalists also see the company’s value. They’ve invested $48 million in Calxeda.
“I thought Calxeda would be big, but I didn’t know what that would look like,” Evans said.
While dreaming up big ideas is nice, “there’s power in the doing,” Evans said. “Big, when you find it, is awesome.”
Calxeda has a lot of potential, Evans said. But the company tries not to wallow in its success. Its mantra is “TSBW – This Shit Better Work,” which it ends every meeting with, Evans said.
“When you are running a marathon and you finish two miles, you don’t say wow this is great, you think I’ve still got 24 miles to go,” Evans said. He says his company is in “corporate puberty.”
ATI contributed greatly to Calxeda’s success by plugging Evans into that startup vibe and introducing him to startup veterans, Evans said. He told the other graduates to make it their personal mission to give back and make Austin a great place to start a business.
ATI also showed a short video highlighting some of its alumni’s successes like Big Foot Network’s sale to Qualcomm.
Ed Taylor, founder and CEO of Collective Technologies, gave a short talk about his experience with ATI as its first company. In 1989, Taylor read an article in the San Jose Mercury News about Austin trying to lasso tech firms through the formation of ATI. The article said the whole city was behind the project.
“That was so different than San Jose where everyone is trying to cut your throat everyday,” Taylor said.
He called up Laura Kilcrease, the ATI director, and flew to Austin. She met him wearing a black and white dress and took him around town in a red porsche to meet everyone from the Mayor to George Kozmetsky, founder of ATI. Taylor moved his company to Austin.
The first offices were depressing and run down in an old warehouse building at Metric Blvd. and Kramer Lane, Taylor said. When Taylor was trying to land a Lotus software contract with IBM, the team wanted to do a site visit. The place was nearly vacant and a mess. But Kilcrease called a local office supply store, which agreed to lend a warehouse worth of Herman Miller office chairs, desks and other furnishings. Taylor convinced some of his contractors to sit in the chairs and act like they worked there. Pencom landed the contract. Taylor took the company public in 1997. He has since started two other companies in Austin.
“I still very much feel a sense of responsibility to pay back people along the way,” Taylor said. “Truly successful entrepreneurs always find the time to give something back.”
The Austin Technology Incubator, a non-profit organization affiliated with the IC2 Institute of the University of Texas, will host a graduation ceremony tonight for 21 of its member companies.
The event also celebrates the 23 years ATI has helped incubate central Texas companies. Founded by Dr. George Kozmetsky and first directed by Laura Kilcrease, ATI has worked with more than 200 status companies and helped them raise more than $1 billion in capital, according to this news release. Silicon Hills News will be there tonight to cover the event. So stay tuned for more information.
ATI graduates
View more presentations from Laura Lorek
By SUSAN LAHEY
Special Contributor to Silicon Hills News
William "Whurley" Hurley, founder of Chaotic Moon
For a moment, think only of Chaotic Moon Labs’ Board of Awesomeness: a battery-powered, all terrain skateboard that surges to 32 miles an hour. It’s not Chaotic Moon’s magnum opus, but it is a signature piece. The Board of Awesomeness is the kind of thing kids have fantasized about for decades, lying under big trees in the grass, drinking root beer, eating Starburst and thinking: “Wouldn’t it be cool if there was a motorized, all terrain skateboard that went as fast as a car?”
Take a bunch of people who still live that moment, give them ridiculous amounts of technological know-how, and you have Chaotic Moon.
The face of Chaotic Moon is its general manager, Whurley. Born William Hurley (and previously thoroughly insulted by the Whurley moniker because it wasn’t meant as a compliment,) Whurley started life as an Army brat. His dad gave him access to a computer when computers were still in their infancy. And his parents taught him to love ideas, inculcating him with shows like Connections, a television series in which British narrator James Burke– wearing the same pantsuit in every episode– shows how everything that happens in modern times can be traced back to inventions, decisions and cultures of 100 years ago, 500 years, a thousand. Watching that show religiously as a kid taught Whurley perspective.
His parents never explained that some things can’t be done. They were more inclined to say “Try it, see what happens.” So he did.
His first career choice was as a bassist in a successful funk band which toured regularly and achieved some success and whose name he refuses to reveal. But in 1991 his music career was interrupted by a serious car accident. He endured 13 hours of exploratory surgery and several weeks in the ICU, followed by nearly a year of recovery. The band went on without him. So Whurley—then known as Bill or Billy or William—started toying with sound synchronization on CDs. It stemmed from his interest in music but expanded to movies and games. He was able to make sound line up with action. It was a skill Apple computer needed and it was the start of Whurley’s tech career.
The career progressed from R&D for Apple to Master Inventor, Senior Manager of Targeted Internet Solutions for IBM, where he racked up many patents for the company. Then he voyaged through several other companies: Qlusters Inc., Symbiot Inc.—of which he was a cofounder–and BMC Software.
Whurley had no college degree, though he’s considering pursuing a degree in Awesomeness. But neither would he say he’s self taught.
“No one is really self taught,” he shrugged. “I’ve had dozens of amazing mentors who were nice enough to take the time to teach me.”
Among them were Steve Smith, Chaotic Moon’s Chief Technology Officer, Tom Bishop of BMC. Doug Lenat, founder of Cycorp Inc.
He’s always been fascinated by what was possible, and was among the founders of a camp for iPhone developers when another founder, Raven Zachary, invited him to go for a walk. It was 2007. Zachary announced: “I’m going to start a company building apps.” Almost without thinking about it, Whurley responded “Me too.”
At that moment, he said, he had a vision of Obi Wan Kenobi floating in front of him saying “Pioneers get all the arrows in the back.” Apps were new. Anyone who plunged in in 2007 was destined for some arrows in the back. So Whurley took his idea to his old friend Mike Erwin who suggested they wait three years. 2010. That would be the perfect moment to launch an app company.
“Waiting three years was hard for me,” Whurley said. “It’s always been so easy for me to see advanced technology and say ‘This could be a reality now. ‘ But the tech isn’t there or the people aren’t ready for it, they won’t buy it yet.”
In 2009 at SXSW, Whurley and Erwin met Ben Lamm and he instantly became “the third wheel of our tricycle.” They had three very different personalities and different skill sets but together they made a perfect team. For awhile, Whurley said, they postulated that if any one of them were to disappear, the cult/family that is Chaotic Moon would dissolve. But now they think it’s taken on a life of its own.
In the last months of 2009, they all took time off. Erwin to travel. Whurley to spend time with his teenage son. In January of 2010, he said, he started asking “Hey, remember that company we were going to start?” By mid February it was a matter of some urgency. They launched at SXSW in 2010.
The company’s structure is meant to fuel dreams. As Whurley said in an interview with Businessmakers: “Chaotic Moon…is kind of a dream engine if you will. Most people’s plan looks like a three-step plan, right? And step one is, you know, fantastic idea, and step three is profit, and step two is a big question mark.”Chaotic Moon does step two. The studios group does work for hire in very large apps such as The Daily. The games division is a publisher of original titles as well as titles people bring to the company. And the labs is the intellectual property development arm. “That’s where we respond to client needs when nothing exists to meet the client’s need,” he said.
The company runs on a two-out-of-three management system. If two of the three founders outvote the other, he stays outvoted. Whurley swore they’d never have a CEO. But one day, he was in a meeting with a client and Ben Lamm who was the Chief Creative Officer.
“The guy says, ‘This is an $8 million deal, I’m not going to negotiate with the chief creative officer.’ So I called Mike and said ‘This guy needs a CEO what do you think of making Ben CEO?’ and he said ‘Done.’ So I turned back to the guy and said, ‘Okay, he’s the CEO, let’s negotiate.’”
Currently Whurley’s working on a $20 million deal but most apps cost a couple million. Sometimes the company gets paid in cash, sometimes stock and royalties. It has a strong incentive and profit sharing program to encourage the wholehearted participation of stellar developers.
Chaotic Moon’s founders created its culture very deliberately, with a video-game, space-guy avatar that speaks to many generations, the tag line “All Your Mobile Apps Are Belong to Us” and the constant promise “We’re smarter than you.”
“You know you go to the website of most of these app developers and they’re so serious and then you go meet them and they’re all like ‘We’re so awesome.’” He said. “We wanted to do the opposite. So they go to the website and we’re like ‘We’re awesome, we’re smarter than you,’ and then they meet us and we’re just these regular guys. People who don’t have a sense of humor never call us. They don’t get it.”
“Austin has this very strong be yourself ethos,” said Bijoy Goswami, founder of The Bootstrap Network. “It’s about individualism and self expression. The question isn’t just ‘Did you build a big company?’ it’s ‘Did you build one that was unique and true to yourself?’ In a lot of ways, Chaotic Moon is the quintessential Austin company.”
Equally important, Goswami said, is how Chaotic Moon is exporting that unique culture outside of Austin “showing us where we ought to be going.”
Whurley, too, is part of the brand. Whurley intends to create a whole website, the domain of which someone acquired for him years ago. He avoided it because it originally referred to the fact that he’s high energy, all over the board. “Whirly.” But he was speaking on going for a bold brand once and an audience member challenged him about why he had failed to embrace the name. After that, he became Whurley everywhere.
“He’s part of what makes the startup community what it is,” said Eve Richter, the City of Austin’s Emerging Technologies Coordinator. “He’s one of a handful of people everyone knows, thought leaders, personalities. But I’ve never heard anyone say ‘Oh Whurley, yeah he’s full of himself or he’s posturing. I’ve never heard anyone say that. People like him and they like being around him.”
His business card, she pointed out, listed him as “Evil Genius.” Anybody with that on their business card is okay in my book.”
Keith Casey, developer evangelist of Twilio said Whurley showed him around town and heard someone refer to Whurley as Tony Stark.
“He just cracked up,” he said.
But Whurley gives entirely too much credit to his partners and the 30 or so brilliant people who work with their company to create extraordinary products to be Tony Stark.
He explains his group’s success succinctly.
“We have a healthy imagination and no respect for boundaries and limits.”
Estella Baytan, co-founder of Baytan Labs, makers of Guardian Trace
In a time before mobile phones, his mom would often leave him the address of where she was going and tell him to alert the authorities if she didn’t come back.
That weighed on Davis throughout his childhood.
That experience inspired Davis to create a mobile phone application, called Guardian Trace, that allows users to send text and e-mail messages to a loved one if they don’t return from a run, walk, appointment or other venture within a specified time.
Baytan Labs released the Guardian Trace app last November and already 1,500 people have downloaded it. Guardian Trace works on iPhones, iPods and iPads.
It’s based on a “freemium” model, said Estella Baytan, vice president and a co-founder. They also sell a subscription upgrade for text messages for $9.99 for six months and $19.99 for the year.
“I travel around the world and sometimes in places that aren’t safe,” Baytan said. “In a third world country, you’re taking a cab from the airport to the hotel. Sometimes it’s a little bit shady.”
Having an app like Guardian Trace gives people peace of mind, Baytan said. Just last week, Baytan Labs launched Guardian Trace 2.1. About 10 percent of the people who download the app also pay to subscribe, she said.
Recently Baytan travelled to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas to promote the app.
Guardian Trace is also working with Musicians for Equal Opportunities for Women to spread the word about the app, Baytan said. The need for a personal security app was recently brought home when on New Year’s Day, musician and Girls Rock Austin camp counselor Esme Barrera, 29, was killed in her house after returning from a party.Guardian Trace is working with Carla Black of Musicians for Equal Opportunities for Women to host a luncheon at South by Southwest.
Guardian Trace is also working with Fit and Fearless, a self defense course company, and local running and biking organizations to promote the app, Baytan said.
“Better everyday living is what we’re about,” Baytan said. “When you have an app like Guardian Trace it enables you to do what you want, when you want to do it without fear.”
“It enables people to be more adventurous,” she said.
Guardian Trace allows the users to pre-set a time that activates an alert through text message and e-mail to designated individuals. The messages also provide a hyperlink to a Google map showing the user’s last known location. The app prompts friends and family to contact the user directly to confirm that they are safe.“Whether someone is doing a routine activity like taking the dog for a walk at night, or doing something adventurous like camping or hiking, we don’t want them to worry about being alone,” said President and Cofounder Mike Davis.
WhaleShark Media is on a hunt for the best technology talent and that’s why it’s participating in Engage Digital’s Tech Career Expo @ SXSW.
“We’re really happy to be a title sponsor,” said Brian Hoyt, spokesman with WhaleShark Media. “Jobs, jobs, jobs, that is the focus for us.”
WhaleShark Media runs coupon and deal sites online through websites such as RetailMeNot.com. It’s hiring an additional 50 people this year to its workforce of 170.
The first official career expo at SXSW takes place March 9 and 10 at the Austin Music Hall.
In the past, recruiting at SXSW was done in the hallways, bars and hotel conference rooms around town.
This year, it’s an official SXSW event. Already, 24 companies have signed up to participate, and another 10 to 20 are expected to sign on in the coming months, said Christopher Sherman, Engage Digital’s CEO.
“We want to help Austin out by tapping into the 20,000 SXSW attendees,” Sherman said. “The primary focus is meet and greet.”
But the Career Expo will also feature speakers on a variety of topics from salaries to climbing the career ladder.
“It’s an official event. But it is free to attend,” Sherman said. “We wanted to be able to let the locals in throughout Texas and anywhere else.”
People can pre-register for the event or just show up, Sherman said. He expects up to 3,000 participants. The companies are recruiting for all types of jobs in the technology industry including engineering, programming and design to marketing, sales and management.
“Engage Digital’s Tech Career Expo @ SXSW is the perfect complement to SXSW Interactive,” Hugh Forrest, director of the SXSW Interactive Festival, said in a news statement.
In addition to WhaleShark Media, other companies participating in the Tech Career Expo included AdRevolution, All Web Leads, CompassLearning, COSENTIAL, MapMyFitness, NetSpend, Noesis Energy, PixyKids, SolarWinds, Spacetime Studios, Spredfast, uShip, Vast.com and Vertive LLC. For a full list, visit the Tech Career Expo website.
WhaleShark Media’s RetailMeNot.com, online coupon site, announced the launch of its new mobile site.
The new site provides coupons and other deals to Apple iPhone and Android mobile phone users worldwide. It also provides exclusive in-store mobile deals from retailers who want to reach customers on their mobile devices.
“In 2011, we experienced triple digit year-over-year growth of visits to RetailMeNot.com via a handheld device, which is why we made substantial investments in developing our mobile product capabilities over the past six months,” said Cotter Cunningham, Chief Executive Officer of WhaleShark Media, Inc., the operator of RetailMeNot.com, said in a news release.
The new site makes it easier to search for and redeem coupons using a mobile phone at a store.
In 2011, 13 companies moved to Austin with the assistance of the Austin Technology Incubator’s Landing Pad Program.
The companies included Amatra, BlackLocus, Convergence Wireless, Digital Harmony Games, Drivve, DXUp Close, SceneTap, Social Muse, Tactical Information Systems and V-Chain Solutions. Also, Ben Dyer, a serial entrepreneur, moved here from Atlanta with TechDrawl, and has since helped NightRaft and BeHome247 relocate here, according to this news release.
The Austin Technology Incubator’s Landing Pad Program helps companies relocate to Austin or establish headquarters here. It focuses on early-stage high technology companies in the biosciences, clean energy, wireless and IT industries. The nonprofit incubator is part of the IC2 Institute of the University of Texas at Austin.
“We are so proud of the business environment that exists in Austin, all the right ingredients for success, but via a supportive, community approach,” Robert Reeves, ATI’s director of IT and wireless, said in a news statement.
“ATI has always been focused on finding, welcoming, integrating and helping make successful new technology companies, whether from Austin or not,” Eve Richter, the city’s emerging technologies coordinator, said in a news statement. “Over the past few years, the Landing Pad concept has brought two dozen companies to town, and we are so thrilled ATI has really taken the program up a notch, formalizing it in 2011. The City of Austin is proud to support ATI in all efforts, including the Landing Pad Program.”
CEO and Founder of WhaleShark Media Cotter Cunningham
By Eoghan McCloskey
Special Contributor to Silicon Hills News
The popularity and success of daily deal sites such as Groupon and Living Social have created opportunities for others like WhaleShark Media.
The Austin-based startup connects consumers with multiple daily deal and coupon services like Deals.com and CouponShare.com as well as deal sites outside of the U.S. like Gutschein-Codes.de.
Founded in 2010, WhaleShark Media has received $300 million from several venture capital firms including Austin Ventures, Google Ventures, and Institutional Venture Partners. In less than two years, WhaleShark Media has evolved into a profitable and quickly growing company, generating 30 percent growth in site traffic and 50 percent revenue growth. WhaleShark Media’s rapid growth stems, in part, from a series of major acquisitions of other coupon vendors, most importantly RetailMeNot.com, the single largest online coupon site in the world, and VoucherCodes.co.uk, the UK’s top online deal site.
WhaleShark makes money from advertising on its sites from more than 300 million visits to its web properties, said Brian Hoyt, WhaleShark Media’s communications director. It also makes a small commission off thousands of retailers whose offers the company helps merchandise and facilitate sales for via the coupons and deals clicked on its site, he said.
“This relationship goes beyond big box retailers and includes thousands of other large and midsize merchants,” Hoyt said.
Last year, WhaleShark Media made more than $70 million in revenue as part of the $1.7 billion in sales generated for its merchant clients.
WhaleShark's workplace
“We originally invested in WhaleShark because of the enormous potential for growth we thought was there, as well as the ability to innovate within the online coupon and deals space,” said Austin Ventures Partner Thomas Ball. “We also had a relationship with Cotter, who we believe is a great executive.“
Jules Maltz, General Partner at Institutional Venture Partners (IVP), reflected Ball’s view.
“IVP looks to back premier late-stage companies and management teams,” said Maltz. “WhaleShark is the leading online coupon company with strong profitability and tremendous growth potential. We’re excited to back Cotter and help WhaleShark continue to expand.”
WhaleShark Media is also focused on hiring technology talent locally and worldwide to fuel its expansion, Hoyt said. The company has 170 employees worldwide, including 120 in the U.S., with most of them based in Austin. Last week, it announced that Matt Howitt would join the company as vice president of engineering.
“We recognize there is a limited talent pool in Austin and we want to keep them in Austin,” Hoyt said.
WhaleShark Media plans to hire another 50 people this year, he said. The company is also taking over another floor at its downtown headquarters. It currently occupies the seventh floor at 301 Congress and it’s expanding to the eighth floor.
Late last year, WhaleShark Media received $150 million in venture capital, which it plans to use to increase its market share in the retail deal industry. The company plans a series of product innovations and is concentrating on expanding its presence in the mobile coupon and deal market, Hoyt said.
“We’re looking at growth inside the U.S. and Europe,” Hoyt said. “We’re also looking at the Asia market.”
WhaleShark Media doesn’t have any short term plans to go public, Hoyt said.
“Right now we’re focused on building our business.”