Category: Austin (Page 109 of 317)

By HOJUN CHOI
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

Industry analysts have argued that the mainstream use of self-driving cars is inevitable, suggesting that the technology will be a norm within the next 30 years.

At this year’s “Innovation Policy Day” at South by Southwest, the Consumer Technology Association hosted a panel in which experts from academia, advocacy and the automobile industry shared their views on how government regulations can better facilitate the assimilation of this new technology.

A significant portion of the discussion, titled “The Rise of Self-Driving and Connected Cars,” revolved around regulations related to the safety standards of self-driving motor vehicles.

Hilary Cain, a representative of Toyota Motor North America, Inc., said her company’s invested interest in driverless car technology was largely driven by the fact that tens of thousands of drivers die in traffic incidents every year in the U.S. alone.

“Figuring out a way to dramatically reduce that number has led us to this self-driving technology revolution,” Cain said.

Cain, who serves as the company’s director of technology and innovation policy, said it is important to educate the public on the responsibilities that drivers will retain as the use of these vehicles becomes more widespread.

“Education of consumers could not be more essential than it is right now, especially if we’re dealing a variety of things that fall into the category of self-driving, driver-less or autonomous,” Cain said.

Despite what may be implied, she said these labels should not serve to diminish the role of the driver, as their attention and action may be pivotal in emergency situations.

In November 2015, Toyota announced that it would invest $1 billion into a new subsidiary, Toyota Research Institute, Inc., to research and develop artificial intelligence technology for autonomous vehicles.

Ram Vasudevan, an engineering professor at the University of Michigan, said the technology will take some time to be integrated into society, and said experts need to learn how to inform and educate consumers in an engaging way.

Though safety standards are currently being studied through road tests by companies like Google Inc., Vasudevan said the research is largely focused in California and Arizona.

“What everyone has realized is that this can only get us so far, we need to think about the ways to really find out how safe the system is,” Vasudevan said.

He said researchers will be playing a critical role in the simulation process, as automated systems cannot yet detect the wide variety of hazards that exist on and off the road. He also said not all companies that are leading the industry are depending on academics for help in research and development.

“Tesla, for example, is different from Ford and Toyota in that they have decided to keep their research completely in-house. I don’t know which strategy is going to pay off, but I would guess that it is going to take a combination of both,” Vasudevan said.

Cathy Chase, who spoke on behalf of the Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, said researchers into safety standards should take care to communicate their finding and knowledge with consumers as frequently as possible.

“Consumers need to be involved, and transparency is key. The more that the public knows and understands what is happening here, the better,” Chase said.

Chase serves as the vice president for government affairs for the auto safety advocacy group, which has lobbied for a variety of consumer-related safety policies. She said state and city governments will need the federal government’s lead on how to deal with the disruptive impact of self-driving cars.

“I argue that the better way to go is for the federal government to have a more proactive role,” Chase said. “Guidelines on how to go about testing the technology would be a good first step, but there needs to be more.”

The all-day event was attended by five hundred people and also featured panel discussions on augmented and virtual reality, music licensing as well as tech policy under President Donald Trump. This was the fourth year that the Consumer Technology Association has hosted the free event.

Jamie Boone, who moderated the panel, said that policy makers and consumers need to come together to develop regulations that will shape how autonomous vehicles impact society.

“I think combining the viewpoints of the auto industry, safety industry and academia is a great exhibition of the need to work together to address some very complex questions that we all have in moving this technology forward,” Boone said.

By HOJUN CHOI
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

As 3D printing technology continues to change the way companies approach product design and manufacturing, the industry is also reaching for new limits on its usability.

Samantha Snabes, founder of startup re:3D, told South by Southwest festival goers that as the technology reaches new limits, more research will be needed to make the hardware and design process more widely available.

“As opportunists, sometimes we get so fixated on what goes into designing and making product,” Snabes said. “We might need to go a step further when thinking about accessibility.”

Snabes’ panel titled, “Toilets and Trash: Will 3D Printers Save the World?” highlighted ways in which the industry could expand its reach.

Snabes highlighted recent efforts that aim to teach locals of impoverished areas how to make their own printers using electronic waste that would otherwise lay in a heap of trash. Snabes said these communities can take advantage of new manufacturing methods to improve the local economy.

“I personally think one of the biggest opportunities for us when thinking of 3D printing’s impact on society is its economic gains,” Snabes said.

Snabes also discussed how 3D printing continues to impact a wide variety of industries across construction, healthcare and education.

In addition to introducing new learning practices in the classroom setting, she said that the technology is also helping develop ways to protect the environment, such as less damaging methods to extract honey from beehives.

One part of the presentation showcased a project that uses 3D printing technology and drones to train landmine extractors to better recognize hazards.

Because 3D printing expedites the prototyping of products, Snabes said the technology empowers individuals to test out their imaginations in the real world.

“I think many people, including myself, see real opportunity in creating things more quickly and getting to scale faster,” Snabes said.

Snabes said leaders in the field should also focus on teaching the process of 3D printing in addition to working to improve the capabilities of 3D printing.

Though risk takers in the space are prone to jump into production, Snabes said more needs to be done to figuring out how to make the process more practical.

She said research into material selection and geometric design -among other things, can help innovators avoid making the same mistakes.

“If these repositories are not cultivated, we are constantly going to be reinventing the wheel,” Snabes said

The panel took place Tuesday at the J.W. Marriott hotel, and was attended by a crowd of about a hundred festival goers.

Alexander Crease, an applications engineer for Massachusetts-based Markforged, spoke to Silicon Hills News after the panel and said the event was an opportunity for those involved in the industry to explore and build new perspectives.

“The big step we have to take as a 3D printing community is to figure out how we educate and showcase the best practices of the technology,” Crease said.

“Even with internet and social media, networking at events like this is really important because we get to interact one-on-one with leaders in the field.”

Snabes’ startup, with offices in Austin and Houston, successfully raised $250,000 through a Kickstarter campaign it announced at SXSW 2013, which helped the company’s development of the “Gigabot” 3D printer.

According to its website, the company has sold more than 200 units. The University of Texas at Austin, Nokia Inc. and NASA are among the startup’s clientele. Prices of the 3D printers currently range from $8,500 to $16,995.

Last year, Forbes reported that the 3D printing, or “additive manufacturing” industry’s estimated value was more than $5 billion in 2015, citing a study published by Wohlers Associates.

Correction: This article has been updated to correct the amount of money raised by re:3D in its Kickstarter campaign.

By LAURA LOREK
Publisher and reporter with Silicon Hills News

Social media has caused an explosion in the amount of data generated by people and businesses in the last five years.

Yet, data without analysis is worthless.

That has led to the rise of artificial intelligence and machine learning coupled with the input of humans to make sense of streams of data, according to experts on Argo Digital’s panel Sunday at South by Southwest on “How Data and Machine Learning/AI Affect Risk Transfer in the 21st Century.”

Jason Abbruzzese, business reporter with Mashable, moderated the panel for Argo Digital, an emerging insure tech practice within property and casualty carrier Argo Group, based in San Antonio.

By analyzing the data, all businesses are trying to make themselves smarter, said Andy Breen, senior vice president for Argo Digital and adjunct professor at NYU Stern School of Business and one of the panelists.

Until recently, the tools did not exist to sift through all the data and extract insights that make a business operate better, he said. Every day, people and companies generate all kinds of streams of new data on Google, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and more.

“There was definitely a time when it was very uncomfortable, but now we have the tools to deal with it,” he said.

The fact that we have all this data out there is not very interesting, said Andrew Bocskocsky, co-founder and CEO of Grata Data and another panelist. Companies have been using data as long as data has been available, he said.

“When we start having buy in from industry it starts getting interesting,” he said. “We can generate value and get results everyone is happy with.”

Sambit Sahu, adjunct professor of computer science at Columbia University, and another panelist, said to get great analysis, companies need great data. He is also a data/telco analytics research scientist who was involved with the IBM Watson program.

“Garbage in, garbage out,” Sahu said. “The data collection is only as good as the data quality.”

That’s why businesses like Argo are looking for new ways to collect data.
For example, with a restaurant, Argo is learning new ways to assess risk, Breen said. It is now deploying sensors, drones and other internet of things devices to create new data streams continually, he said.

“Getting data constantly through the stream changes the conversation,” he said. “We can then talk to them about risk management.”

And data collection works hand in hand with humans, Breen said. A lot of data is unstructured and requires humans to figure it out, he said.

“It is the combination of algorithms helping people be better assessors of risks or people be better decision makers,” Breen said. “Let’s let algorithms do what algorithms are good at which is complex math and working with really large data sets. Things like that. And have people do the things they are good at like sales and negotiations and other types of things like that. When we reach the singularity, if we ever reach the singularity, we’re not going to have machines that are going to be at that level.”

Six month ago, Breen looked at the underwriting process, collecting data from ten different data sources to assess risk, and built a tool that can collect all that data and digest that, he said. That focuses Argo’s employees on what they are good at which is risk assessment, he said.

The cost has come down on data analysis computing power which has led to more data analysis and insights, Sahu said. That has accelerated the artificial intelligence part of the analysis, he said.

The data still cannot eliminate risk in the insurance industry, Breen said.

“No matter how much better the data is and no matter how much we underwrite there is still going to be hurricanes, tornados and floods and other things to deal with,” he said. “I would even be an advocate of leveraging the playing field for the data. Everyone should have equal access to equal amounts and open data. That would actually be better generally for the industry as a whole. They can decide how much risk to take on.”

The next five years is going to be a period of “choppiness” and transition with a trend toward artificial intelligence as a platform that creates its own neural networks to solve problems, Breen said.

“Maybe five, maybe ten years, someone can go in and say here’s my problem and the neural network will actually build itself,” he said. “That’s starting today. We’re not there yet, but it’s happening.”

Another trend is insurance companies are partnering with startups to leverage their technology and get into this space, Bocskocsky said.

“You’re giving data and expertise and they are giving you their knowledge and technology,” he said.

When it comes to privacy, all the data is out there, Breen said.

“Personally, I disengaged with Facebook three or four years ago,” he said. “I felt like it was wrong.”

Content on Facebook is developed to target behaviors and emotions, he said.

“You’re giving up tons of valuable data every time you’re on Facebook and you like something,” he said.

Editor’s note: Argo is an advertiser with Silicon Hills News

By SUSAN LAHEY
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

It’s 2017 and the rules for women in the dating world haven’t changed much.

That’s what Whitney Wolfe, founder of Austin’s Bumble dating service, is trying to change. Bumble is the internet dating service that lets the woman make the first move. Men and women can express an interest in each other but the woman is the only one—in a hetero match—who can start the conversation. She has 24 hours to do so unless, under special circumstances, either party chooses to extend the option for an additional 24 hours.

In a featured speaker session at South By Southwest, Wolfe was interviewed Monday by CNBC journalist Julia Boorstin.

Wolfe, who formerly worked for Tinder, had initially wanted to start a social app that let women leave compliments for each other. The whole focus was to change the tone of discourse in social apps to something civil, nonsexist, and supportive. She came up with Bumble because she saw how women—even in this day and age—feel they have to play a passive role in the dating world. If she could say one thing to women it would be “Don’t play to men.”

“Don’t do that,” Wolfe said. “Don’t play a role with any man in the room.”

In the two years since its release Bumble has garnered 12.5 million users internationally in cities from Los Angeles to New York and countries including France, Australia, and the United Kingdom. There’s always a cultural difference, Wolfe said, in different countries. In France, for example, the motto “It’s Your Move” didn’t work. Women wanted to be chased. “It’s Your Choice” was more effective.

Users spend an average of 100 minutes a day on the app, Wolfe said. About a tenth of Bumble users use premium services that let them keep a match longer than 24 hours or even retrieve a deleted match. Bumble has also added a friends’ search function and a Business Bumble for networking. The point, Wolfe said, is to change the perception of meeting “online” to simply “connecting.”

The company is getting ready to open Bumble Hives where Bumble users can meet. These might be co-working spaces, coffee shops and other places where people can safely have a first date or a first meeting. The company also recently bought a gay dating service called Chappy, though Wolfe said the regular site was “fully optimized for LGBTQ dating.”

Wolfe’s business approach seems focused on civility. The app also rewards users who are particularly loyal, thoughtful and considerate of others in the Bumble community. Employees treat each other with respect. She rarely recruits, but when she does it’s on Instagram. Often she’ll just offer someone who isn’t technically qualified a job because they strike her as having the right attitude and the right potential.

She doesn’t think of herself as operating in a crowded space because no one else is doing exactly the same thing she is. She’s had plenty of naysayers but she has a rule about that. Take everything to mind, don’t take everything to heart. Everything is information and some of the harshest comments are the most useful. The important thing is: “Take away the noise.”

By SUSAN LAHEY
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

In his heart, Mark Cuban says, he’s a libertarian.

Cuban supports the Trump administration’s efforts to get rid of excessive regulation. But there’s a difference between regulations designed to protect interests with money and regulations designed to protect people.

Cuban spoke at a keynote discussion on Sunday with Adam Lyons, co-founder of Austin’s The Zebra, a car insurance aggregation site. Cuban was an early investor in The Zebra. Michelle Skelding, an Austin-based global technology consultant, moderated the panel on the topic “Is Government Disrupting Disruption?” A lined formed around the block an hour before the discussion began and the ballroom quickly reached capacity.

As an example of government disruption, Cuban noted how he invested in Austin’s BeatBox Beverages, which manufactures party drinks, and also invested in a bar before learning that people aren’t allowed to own a part of a manufacturer of alcohol and also own part of a bar. He now has to disentangle his interests.

“There’s a difference between a regulation that protects somebody and regulations that protect all of us in some way because someone in the past was short sighted,” Cuban said. “In my mind those are good regulations…. Getting rid of regulations for short term thinking in an effort to try to create jobs when it won’t, that is the biggest myth.”

Cuban’s position on regulation has evolved, he said.

“As a country we have a balance sheet. We’ve taken on a responsibility for citizens and those create a liability…Reagan said you can’t fall over dead in the streets. We have to take you in and stabilize you,” Cuban said. “Those regulations are good. When we think the citizenry deserves something and that is a right you amend the Constitution to that. Healthcare for chronic illnesses and serious illnesses is a right…we all play the genetic lottery every day. Some disease is going to come out and we’re fucked. A toilet comes out of space labs and hits you on the head, you’re fucked. There should be healthcare for that.”

Next Up for Disruption: Tech

Lyons’ company has been called the Kayak of car insurance. He said they had to work within all the regulations of the insurance industry, using publicly available documents, to guide how they created the company. His company has more than 100 insurance certifications. A graduate of Temple University in Philadelphia, which has a top ranked program in risk management and insurance, Lyons said he was intrigued by the fact that Lloyd’s of London, a shipping company, created insurance to protect its investments if the ships sank.

When Cuban got an initial email from Lyons, he said, he believed the car insurance agency was ripe for disruption. That’s what caught his interest. But, he also said, everything can be disrupted. He made a mistake not investing in Uber because of all the regulatory hurdles. Everything, Cuban said, can be disrupted. The rule should still be “Ready, fire, aim.”

One of the prime targets for disruption may be the tech industry itself, Cuban said. While everyone is pushing STEM degrees, much of the work now done by mathematicians will be done in the future using machine learning and artificial intelligence. It would be better to have a philosophy degree and a knowledge of foreign languages than a math degree because deep learning, neural networks, and critical thinking will be the tasks left to humans. That’s the kind of thing that people—or the government—need to take to small towns that have lost manufacturing jobs, Cuban said.

Calling Donald Trump the “Zoolander President,” Cuban is toying with the idea of running in 2020 because “it would be nice to have a president who knows how to use a search engine.” Trump’s idea of efficiency, he said, is that Cuban sends him an email, Trump’s secretary prints it out, Trump writes a reply by hand, then the secretary scans it and sends it back as an attachment.

“He has never written an email in his life,” Cuban said. What’s worse, though, is that he believes Trump hasn’t read a book in 30 years.

“I like my presidents to read.”

By LAURA LOREK
Publisher and Reporter with Silicon Hills News

For the first time, the European Union is showcasing its technology and innovation at South by Southwest.

The EU has 28 member states and various ones like the United Kingdom and Ireland have been at SXSW for years in different capacities, said James Barbour, spokesman with the European Union.

But 2017 is the first time for “EU@SXSW,” which is based at the Palm Door on 6th Street and features ten startup companies from throughout Europe. The EU is also promoting its film and music industries at the conference. And EU Ambassador David O’Sullivan is at SXSW promoting trade and cooperation between the European Union and the U.S.

SXSW has become the “go to place” for people who see themselves as leaders in the fields of technology, film and music globally, Barbour said.

“It’s about an exchange of innovative ideas, people working together,” Barbour said. “Also, the trade side is extremely important. The EU, as a whole, is the world’s largest single market for the U.S. to invest in and trade with.”

The EU is hosting panels on cybersecurity, innovation, cinema, creative cities and culture throughout SXSW.

“At that end of the day, it’s all about jobs, and growth and innovation,” Barbour said.

SXSW is also an opportunity for the European Union to show off some of its best and brightest startups, Barbour said. More than 200 companies applied to be part of the EU’s SXSW Startup Showcase and ten companies made the cut.

GirlCrew, a startup based in Dublin, is one of the ten demonstrating its technology at SXSW. This year, the company is expanding to the U.S. with an office in San Francisco, said Aine Mulloy, spokeswoman.

“GirlCrew is the easiest way for girls to make new friends,” she said.

It’s a social network for career women, targeted at those between the ages of 25 and 40, to meet other women in the cities they live for networking, friendship and fun and to share advice and support.

In Austin, 400 women belong to GirlCrew. And Globally, Girl Crew has more than 85,000 members in 46 cities. It has a waiting list of 200 cities earmarked for further expansion, Mulloy said.

“We find that actual true connections happen offline,” she said. “Twenty women flying off to Morocco together and others getting together to go a walk and to have a coffee.”

Thingthing, a smartphone keyboard platform, based in the London, is getting a lot of attention at SXSW, said Olivier Plante, its CEO.

“We disrupt what a mobile keyboard should be,” Plante said.

“Switching between apps on a mobile phone is a nightmare,” he said. “We’ve created the keyboard as a platform to solve that problem.”

Thingthing has created mobile keyboard technology that lets users insert photos, send calendar appointments, share links or search for documents with their keyboard without switching to other apps on their phone, he said. The company raised $350,000 Euro seed round and is in the U.S. meeting with investors for further expansion and to open a U.S. office, Plante said.

Thingthing, founded in 2015, is also in talks with smart phone manufacturers about licensing its software, he said.

The EU showcase not only helps the EU Startups but Austin-based startups looking for further expansion internationally can benefit too.

On Sunday, Joah Spearman, founder and CEO of Localeur, met with the startups from the EU and talked about how they can work together.

Localeur, a travel site for locals by locals, is now in 45 cities including Toronto and London and plans to expand to more international cities this year, Spearman said. Localeur launched at SXSW four years with just Austin and now it’s going global, Spearman said.

“There are a lot of Millennial travelers out there that want travel recommendations from locals,” Spearman said.

In 2017, Localeur plans to launch in more English speaking foreign cities: Hong Kong, Sydney, Melbourne and Dublin, he said. And then expand into Spanish speaking countries like Barcelona and Madrid, he said.

SXSW is a great place for networking and making connection, Spearman said.

“During SXSW, Austin becomes the center of the world, in technology especially,” he said. “If you are a founder or an investor, you have to be here.”

Next week, Localeur is launching a print publication featuring content on 38 cities. And in April, its launching a video product, Spearman said.

“You have to reach people where they are,” he said. “You can’t wait for them to come to you.”

A lot of companies are trying to go international and building those network relationships early on is extremely important, said David Altounian, professor of entrepreneurship at St. Edward’s University and founder and CEO of Motion Computing.

“The overseas markets are critical to a businesses’ growth,” he said. “You’ve got to have an international pres

By HOJUN CHOI
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

University of Texas president Greg Fenves and Bob Metcalfe, inventor of Ethernet, explored ways that universities can have a bigger impact on the world at the “Research Universities Should be Better at Startups” session at South by Southwest.

Metcalfe, professor of innovation at the Cockrell School of Engineering at UT, said that research universities are not doing enough to change the world, and said institutions of higher education should do more to foster startups on campuses.

“You know our motto here is ‘What starts here changes the world.’ The problem is, we’re not changing the world enough, and my hypothesis is that we can do a better job,” Metcalfe said.

Kerry Rupp, partner at True Wealth Ventures, who moderated the panel, asked what universities could do to improve the startup ecosystem.

“When a professor launches a startup, the impulse of the university is that that’s a conflict of interest, so all of the ‘antibodies’ of the university descend on this poor professor to make sure there are no conflicts of interest,” Metcalfe said.

He also said that licensing offices of universities should focus less on the monetary value of an innovation, but more on its potential impact on the world.

“One thing you notice in this field is that the licensing offices of all universities are generally hated,” Metcalfe said.

Metcalfe said startups at universities are also forced to leave the campus setting too early in their development.

“[We can] delegate the management of that decision to the deans of the departments, not to lawyers that are running around with state laws saying ‘you need throw this person out’,” Metcalfe said.

Fenves, who served as the vice provost of research before taking on his current position, said that he, too, thinks that research universities should value the impact of an innovation, rather than its monetary return.

“Universities should be flexible as possible in issues pertaining to ownership, and be flexible as possible in licensing or equity interest,” Fenves said.

Fenves said he believes the first step in encouraging entrepreneurship, however, is talent acquisition.

“The best basic researchers are deciding what they want to work on by what they’re seeing in the market,” Fenves said.

According to a 2015 study published by the National Academy of Inventors and the Intellectual Property Owners Association, The University of Texas at Austin was fourth in the number of granted U.S. patents.

“Research universities like the University of Texas at Austin have two major roles that are interconnected: education and discovery,” Fenves said.

One role that universities should not play, Fenves said, is that of the investor.

“The issues around conflict of interest are certainly there, but they can doubly amplify when the university is also doing the funding,” Fenves said.

Metcalfe, who serves on the advisory council of the University of Texas System’s “Horizon Fund,” said that a major weakness of the fund is that it is not allowed to lead investments.

The $50 million fund was created in 2011 by the board of regents to aid companies that are connected to the UT System.

“I would hope that the Horizon Fund would be used to fund startups that are having difficulty getting funding or might not be funding at all, because that’s where we should be stepping in,” Metcalfe said. “We can’t do that if we can’t lead.”

The panel took place Sunday evening at the Austin Convention Center, and was attended by a crowd of about 50 festival goers.

“I think the most valuable resource we can get from the [startup] community is knowledge and experience,” Fenves said.

By LAURA LOREK
Publisher and Reporter with Silicon Hills News

This model of throwing lots of money at “Bros” to startup tech companies without any focus on diversity and inclusiveness is not working, said Dan Lyons.

Lyons spoke to a half-empty ballroom Friday afternoon at South by Southwest Interactive on the need for reform in the tech industry to include more women, people of color and older workers. Ultimately, it benefits the bottom lines of businesses, Lyons said.

Lyons, a former technology editor with Newsweek, wrote the book, Disrupted, last year. In it, he chronicled his time spent at HubSpot, a software marketing startup based in Cambridge, Mass. which had raised $100 million before going public.

HubSpot’s culture seemed like a mash up of a fraternity house, Montessori school and Scientology cult, he said.

HubSpot lacked diversity, a chronic problem throughout the technology industry, Lyons said. And Lyons, who was 52 at the time, twice the average age of HubSpot employees and one of only two people over the age of 40 at the company, experienced ageism in the tech industry.

His talk at SXSW focused on the rise of “Bro Culture” which he defines as a company led by a good looking white male CEO with no work experience, running a startup and hiring bros like him with no focus on diversity or promoting women.

“The Internet industry is 25 years old and we’ve had two generations of companies so far and I think we’ve made some mistakes and gone off the rails,” Lyons said.

To illustrate how Bro Culture isn’t working, Lyons pointed to the recent case of Susan Fowler, a Silicon Valley software engineer who formerly worked for Uber. She wrote a personal blog post “Reflecting on one very, very strange year at Uber.” In the post, she recounts being hit on by her boss, reporting it to Human Resources and being told to either endure it or find another assignment.

With that post, the floodgates opened against Uber, Lyons said. All kinds of other stories began to come out and other women reported the same problems with sexual harassment and HR ignoring their complaints. The New York Times did a story and found the company faces three lawsuits from former employees alleging sexual harassment and verbal abuse.

Then Newsweek wrote a story a week ago about “How Uber Could end up as Silicon Valley’s Most Spectacular Crash,” Lyons said.

“Uber has raised more than $11 billion and it is valued at more than $60 billion.” Lyons said. “Now Uber is scrambling. It has to put out the fire.”

Travis Kalanick, Uber’s CEO and founder, who is 40, is now going to hire an adult to run the company, Lyons said.

In Silicon Valley, Venture Capitalists required founders to have what they called “adult supervision” or an experienced executive to help develop and steer the company. For example, Google brought in Eric Schmidt. But in the last ten years that’s changed, Lyons said. And the VCs think the founders are better off when left to their own devices, he said.

But “it might be too late to save Uber,” Lyons said. “That is the cost of Bro Culture.”

“It isn’t just about changing it so women feel more comfortable at work, although that is reason enough,” Lyons said. “This is a really, really big story and it just started with one blog post.”

In the past, employees who endured abuse often just put up with it and shut up about it. Companies scared people and made people sign papers saying they couldn’t write or speak ill of the company after they left, he said.

“This may be the beginning of the end of Bro Culture,” he said.

While he was at HubSpot, Lyons also worked as a writer for the HBO Show Silicon Valley for two seasons. It was a show about masculinity and Bro Culture, Lyons said.

Bro Culture CEOS share common characteristics such as they are glib, they can’t be over the age of 40, they are over confident, obnoxious, and amoral, Lyons said. There is a certain amount of amorality that is required to be a Unicorn startup bro, he said.

They create what’s called the Bro Code: labor laws are irrelevant, it doesn’t matter if you’re a woman and if you’re pregnant you get fired, Lyons said.

“There are no protected classes,” he said. “They lie about their numbers to go get money from VCs. That behavior is not only tolerated but it’s encouraged.”

Lyons journey into Bro Culture started in 2012 after he got laid off from Newsweek. He needed to find a job. He landed one at HubSpot.

HubSpot had every kind of tech perk for employees including dogs at work, open offices, bright colors, bean bag chairs, nap rooms, candy wall and more.

“Every stupid thing you could possibly think of for a startup they had to have,” he said.

Training was an indoctrination to the company culture, Lyons said. They talked about having a superpower.

“I have never been at a place where people talked about having superpowers,” he said. “Here everybody had superpowers. We were all rock stars. They told us in training it is harder to get a job here than it is to get into Harvard. We had to go around and talk about what makes you special, what makes you unique. What is something about you that makes you different from everyone else. And I’m like I’m the only here who has had a colonoscopy.”

HubSpot had a culture czar who enforced the culture code. The only key to success was team spirit, Lyons said.

“You just had to be super cheery,” Lyons said. “One women got fired after 12 weeks – she was doing a fine job – they told her she just wasn’t excited enough.”

HubSpot went to great lengths to try to make people happy, but so many people were unhappy, Lyons said. There were actually two cultures at the company. The surface culture and the one below that.

HubSpot’s executives used the term “graduated” when someone got fired. And they would send out a really cheery email to the whole department announcing the graduation, Lyons said.

“I never saw so many people get fired in my life,” Lyons said. “I never been in a place where people were so miserable.”

“The culture code was we’re a team, we’re not your family,” he said. “We owe you nothing. You’re just a widget. You are totally disposable.”

And women got the worst of it. Women over the age of 35 or women who were mothers were pushed out of the company and mistreated, according to Lyons.

“There were no black people,” Lyons said.

“These biases go hand in hand,” he said. “When you see one, you see all of them. Age bias, gender bias, racism.”

It’s very high stress, Lyon said. There is a focus on growth above everything else to the expense of profit, he said.

In the last 20 years, the Venture Capital business has become enormous. There are twice as many funds in the last 20 years. Four times as many active investors in 2015. Four times as much capital under management, Lyons said. In 2015, venture capitalists made $60 billion in investments, up from $8 billion 20 years ago, he said.

“The main product of Silicon Valley now is not technology, it’s money,” Lyons said. “It’s become like mini-Wall Street.”

In the past, only profitable companies went public. But that changed in the 1990s when Netscape went public and a lot of Venture Capitalists got rich, but then the company tanked and a lot of the public got stuck with worthless stock.

Since 2011, of 60 independent tech companies that went public only 10 have ever made a profit, Lyons said.

Since its IPO, Twitter has lost $2.5 billion, he said. The company has never made money.

“That is a recent phenomenon and a dangerous one,” Lyons said.

In the end, the Bro Culture is not working because they are missing out on talent that is superior, Lyons said. Statistics from Broadway Angels, a group that invests in women, shows that women led startups outperform the industry.

To change the Bro Culture, tech startups need to create good jobs, treat people well, pay taxes, hire with diversity, Lyons said.

South by Southwest can be a great place to launch a tech company and get traction.

Honest Dollar launced at SXSW in 2015 and a year later, at SXSW, William Hurley, known as Whurley, the company’s cofounder, announced Goldman Sachs had acquired the company.

This year, a different Hurley is in the spotlight.

It’s Brooks Hurley, the 20-year-old son of Whurley. About seven months ago, he cofounded a financial technology startup with Mark Lesney. It’s called Chilligence, a platform bringing investors and startups together to assist with due diligence.

“A very little talked about part of startups and investing is the diligence that takes place at various phases, seed funding, series A, B etc. and acquisition,” Hurley wrote in an email. “Investors, venture capitalists and companies require certain information (diligence) from startups/founders. Often times these startups are not focused on compiling or retaining this information, instead focused on the pitching or day to day operations of their companies. This leaves them in a stressful situation often times scrambling and hiring attorneys at great expense to compile this information. In some cases the lack of proper and complete diligence cause missed opportunities for both investors and startups.”

Chilligence is a platform that solves that problem, he said.

“I have witnessed this first hand and thought why don’t I make a platform saving time, stress and unnecessary expense,” he said. “During my transition to the Chilligence team I spent two days doing research and was shocked that no one was addressing this critical business need. Chilligence allows BOTH investors and startups to make a profile, picking a custom or standard set of diligence questions, uploading documents and even create a link that can be sent to potential investment opportunities or to multiple investors.”

The company with five employees is based at WeWork, in the original offices of Honest Dollar. The company bootstrapped its operations initially but has recently raised $500,000 in seed stage funding from angel investors, Hurley said.

The motivation behind the company is to make sure that every startup has the opportunity to become a unicorn (a startup with a $1 billion valuation), Hurley said.

“We also want to see investors have all of the tools in their toolbox to make a educated and sound investment, and frankly because we have a awesome team,” he said. “Our grand ambitions are to become the standard for diligence, for every startup and investor/VC to have their profile with us. We also have some exciting top secret ideas on where else the platform could take us and the industry.”

Chilligence held a launch party Saturday night at TenOak: Bourbon House. It featured performances by Los Coast, Peelander-Z!, a Japanese Action Comic Punk, and Thievery Corporation’s Rob Garza.

By HOJUN CHOI
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

Despite its growing reputation as a major economic powerhouse, U.S. investors and entrepreneurs have yet to embrace China as a viable market -namely due to its political restrictions and lack of transparency.

The “China Gathering” conference and trade show at this year’s SXSW festival, however, plans to challenge some of these doubts and fears by showcasing Chinese companies that are striving to instill a culture that resembles attitudes in Silicon Valley.

Vivian Forrest, the spouse of SXSW Interactive director Hugh Forrest, was responsible for organizing Saturday’s conference, which included three guest speaker panels.

Due to local censorship policies, Forrest said the Chinese startup community faces difficulties when trying to obtain information about festivals like SXSW. She said the conference serves to encourage more of these companies to make a presence at the festival.

“The language barrier is also probably one of the big reasons why not many Chinese companies come to SXSW,” Forrest said.

Entrepreneur Peng Zhang kicked off Saturday’s conference with a panel titled, “How Geek Culture Makes Social Impact in China.” He said the word “geek” has become a celebrated label among those who are tech-savvy in his home country.

“It really has nothing to do with being socially awkward; it’s about believing in technology and trying to use it in a meaningful way,”

Zhang helped spark this cultural change through his company GeekPark, which supports technology through providing resources and organizing community events for Chinese entrepreneurs.

As more entrepreneurs in China begin to seek more self-fulfillment and personal wealth through their ventures, Zhang said companies will vie for greater visibility and participation in the global market.

“Step by step, technology and ‘geek’ culture will bring about a different culture,” Zhang said. “It has already started, and I don’t think there is any way to turn around.”

Zhang, who told Silicon Hills News that Luke Skywalker is his favorite Star Wars character, said the popularity of American entertainment in China evidences compatibility between the two cultures.

“Entertainment is an interesting sector because it shows how similar American and Chinese values can be,” Zhang said. “However, technology is what sets the foundation for that understanding.”

In February, PricewaterhouseCoopers reported that China could be moving away from its export-heavy model into a more consumer and service-based economy.

Yuan Zhou said his company, Zhihu, provides a platform in which individuals can host live question-and-answer sessions, and offers monetary incentives for those who are willing to contribute information.

Zhou, who was also a guest speaker on the panel, said that his company is among a new wave of services that have begun to focus on providing more advanced solutions to larger, more complex problems.

“One of our visions is to break down the barriers of communication, where people all around the world would be able to answer your questions. This is a very cool thing, and worth pursuing,” Zhou said.

The conference also held a reception at Austin City Hall in the evening, where attendees had another chance to talk with panelists.

Tomorrow will mark the first day of the trade show, which will be open to badge holders between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. The exhibit will also be available on Wednesday, but is scheduled to close early at 2 p.m.