Category: Austin (Page 123 of 318)

By LAURA LOREK
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

The University of Texas ranks as the fourth most innovative university in the country, according to a recent report by Reuters.

It’s in good company with Stanford taking the top spot, followed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University.

And Pitchbook, a venture capital research firm, recently crunched a bunch of data looking at founders of companies that received a first round of VC funding since 2006 and found the University of Texas ranks in the top 10 schools nationwide. UT ranked eighth with 561 founders creating 511 companies and raising $4.7 billion in venture capital.

And one of the drivers behind all of the innovation going on at UT Austin is the Innovation Center at the Cockrell School of Engineering. It is run by Bob Metcalfe, professor of innovation and inventor of Ethernet, Louise Epstein, executive director and serial entrepreneur, Ben Dyer, serial entrepreneur and Entrepreneur in Residence and Steve Nichols, professor and Advanced Manufacturing Center Director.

Every month during the school year, they put on the StARTup Studio to showcase innovation spinning out of classrooms and laboratories at UT Austin. The Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce, WeWork Austin and the Office of Technology Commercialization at UT sponsor the events.

Last week, three professors presented their early-stage startups to a few dozen invited guests in a conference room in the Ernest Cockrell Jr. Hall at UT.

First up, James Sulzer, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, presented ShrugNoMore, a physical therapy device that detects should hiking. The device solves a problem for therapists and improves treatment and shortens therapy time for patients, Sulzer said.

Spinal cord injuries and other injuries in which patients shrug their shoulders when they exercise leads to shoulder impingement and can result in further treatment, Sulzer said. The simple ShrugNoMore device can detect shoulder hiking and warn patients when they are elevating their shoulders, he said. The device, shaped like a barbell but as thin as a bandage, attaches to the back near the shoulder and clicks whenever the patient elevates their shoulder. Sulzer and his students created a prototype which they are evaluating right now.

They are also potentially marketing the device to people who have rotator cuff (a group of tendons and muscles which connect the shoulder joint to the arm) issues with five million doctor’s visits a year and 250,000 people getting surgery every year, Sulzer said. The ShrugNoMore device costs $30.

Next up, Lili Qiu, professor of Computer Science, developed a motion tracking technology called CAT, an alternative to a mouse device to track hand movement. Qiu’s technology can accurately track hand movement and gestures in the air using existing mobile devices based on echolocation or sound, much like how a bat detects objects.

The CAT technology sends inaudible sound signals to track in real time hand movement to communicate with the microphone of a smart phone or smart watch or another device, Qiu said.

The CAT technology provides a user interface alternative to the mouse that allows consumers to communicate with all kinds of smart devices in their home including TVs, laptops, watches, game consoles and more, she said.

Lastly, Simon Humphrey, assistant professor of chemistry, presented NanoAlloyCatalysts, a technology that uses microwave synthesis to create catalysts for petrochemical and other companies.

Ninety percent or more of all chemical processes require a catalyst at some stage, Humphrey said. A catalyst helps speed up a chemical reaction, but is not consumed by it.

“The opportunities in this market are very clear,” Humphrey said. “The petrochemical market in just the sales of catalysts annually is about $1.5 billion and it’s growing. And the sales for catalysts in cars is about $5.8 billion. And these types of catalysts are finding new applications in fuel cells.”

Oil refining companies are looking for better catalysts to make their operating systems more efficient and that’s where Humphrey sees a big opportunity.

Humphrey’s solution is to make very small “nano” size catalysts that allow companies to get a “lot of bang for their buck.”

NanoAlloyCatalysts is in the seed stage of development. Its intellectual property is licensed from UT and Humphrey is interested in partnerships and collaboration to do pilot scale testing.

By LAURA LOREK
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

Entrepreneurs are everywhere in Austin and Central Texas.

Investment dollars are not.

But Startup Angels, based in Washington, D.C., is trying to change that. And Leslie Jump, its founder, is coming to Austin next week to do a workshop to train high-net worth individuals how to be angel investors.

Startup Angels’ mission is to increase the number of startup investors and the amount of capital available in communities like Austin and across the country and world. The three-year-old organization will host a workshop at Capital Factory on Wednesday evening and Thursday morning to guide aspiring investors into becoming angel investors. The workshop is going to be a lot of fun, Jump said. It features original storytelling, in-depth research, tools and technology along with pitches from local startups and a roster of expert speakers.

More than 30 million people in the U.S. qualify to be angel investors, Jump said. Yet only about 325,000 individuals are angel investors. Startup Angels want to raise the number of investors by 2018 to more than one million.

“What we are trying to do is take a run at a major missed opportunity in most markets,” Jump said. “There are a relatively small number of angel investors vs. the number that could be angel investors. There are lots of smart people in Austin that have the capital and have the background but even though technology is prevalent across the city they might not know how to get plugged into it. That’s the role we are trying to play.”

Startup Angels is the place to come to learn how to be a smart investor and where to go to get started, Jump said.

Earlier this year, Startup Angels partnered with Google for Entrepreneurs to accelerate startup investing worldwide. This is the organization’s first time coming to Austin. It did a workshop in Dallas two years ago, Jump said.

The event’s speakers include Joshua Baer, founder of Capital Factory and angel investor, Tom Brown with Silicon Hills Wealth Management, Doreen Lorenzo with the University of Texas at Austin, Shawn Abboud, angel investor, Juliana Garaizar with the Houston Angel Network, Preston James with DivInc, Shari Wynne Ressler with SKU, Claire England, executive director of the Central Texas Angel Network, Evan Kastner and Paul Huggins with KHRG, Jump and Mack Kolarich with Startup Angels and Josh Kerr with Amazon.

Startup Angels recommend that angel investors invest in a minimum of 20 companies for a good return, Jump said. Today, those investments can range in size greatly, she said. Crowdfunding platforms allow angel investors to write smaller checks, she said.

Accredited investors have $1 million in assets not including their house or $250,000 in annual income. But equity-based crowdfunding platforms now allow anyone to invest in companies.

Startup Angels is doing conferences and workshops in ten markets domestically and internationally this year. There’s still time to sign up for next week’s workshop. Tickets costs $250.

By LAURA LOREK
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

Venture capitalists invested $120 million in 24 deals in Austin in the third quarter, according to the MoneyTree Report from PricewaterhouseCoopers, based on data provided by Thomas Reuters.

In Austin, venture capital deals and dollars are down 43 percent and eight percent respectively for the third quarter of 2016, compared to the same quarter a year ago, according to the MoneyTree Report.

“It’s not a particularly eventful quarter,” said Larry Westall, partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers in Austin.

Historically, the third quarter is one of the slowest and because this is an election year, it is even slower, Westall said.

Nationwide, venture capitalists invested $10.6 billion in 891 deals in the third quarter of 2016, down 36 percent and 25 percent respectively, compared to the same quarter a year ago, according to the MoneyTree Report. And down 32 percent in dollars and 11 percent in deals compared to the second quarter of this year.

Yet, VC investments are still historically high. It was the 11th consecutive quarter of more than $10 billion invested in a single quarter, according to the MoneyTree Report.

“The decline in venture capital activity this quarter is part of the normalization process that is expected after a quarter in which record-breaking investments dominated headlines,” Tom Ciccolella, US Venture Capital Market Leader at PWC. “Despite deal count being the lowest since Q3 2010, quality deals continue to receive funding. The broader ecosystem remains healthy, bolstered by a lift in biotechnology within the top deals and overall, strong fundraising, and a continuation of the trend towards investments in non-traditional industries.”

In Austin, companies in the software industry attracted the most investment dollars with $72 million going to 12 deals, up 162 percent in investment dollars and a 33 percent increase in the number of deals compared to the previous quarter. Cognitive Scale with $21.8 million in funding was the largest deal.

Other industries in Austin experiencing increases in investment dollars compared to the previous quarter included consumer products and services, electronics, healthcare services, medical devices and equipment and retailing and distribution.

Austin led the state in the number of investments in dollars and deals, outperforming both Dallas and Houston, which attracted $60 million for six deals and $28 million for four deals respectively.

TOP 10 Austin VC Deals in the Third Quarter

Company	Industry	Venture Capital
Cognitive Scale	Software	$21.8 million
Flosports	Media and Entertainment	$21.2 million
Dataworld	Software	$14 million
Ambiq Micro	Semiconductors	$9.4 million
Caringo	Software	$8.8 million
WP Engine	Software	$8 million
Mangstor	Semiconductors	$5 million
Owlchemy Labs	Software	$4.9 million
Freed Foods	Consumer Products and Services	$4.7 million
Aceable	Software	$4 million

By LAURA LOREK
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

Born in Tokyo, Japan in 1951, William McDonough remembers his mom singing to him at night in Japanese with her Alabama accent about the night soil and the workers with their honey wagons.

She was singing about the farmers who came into Tokyo at night to collect sewage to take back to their farms, McDonough said. And in the morning, they would bring back food, he said.

“I always thought the cities and the farms were one organism,” he said.

McDonough, eco architect, delivered the afternoon keynote address at South by Southwest Eco on Tuesday. His talk focused on Cradle to Cradle, the circular economy and the carbon positive city.

He envisions a bountiful world in which cities live in in harmony with industry and agriculture. An economy in which waste products are turned into new products such as phosphorus from sewage.

McDonough told the audience he is not that interested in sustainability. He is interested in growth and inter-generational value creation.

“We leave the world better than we found it,” McDonough said. “Because the world is actually designed for growth.”

The 1700s were the decade of civil rights followed by the economy century in the 1800s, McDonough said. And then the 1900s were the pollution century, he said. Then at the end of the century people decided they want to become efficient, he said.

“Let’s destroy things a little less quickly, what?” McDonough said. “Be more efficient doing what? The wrong thing.”

He’s not a fan of corporate sustainability goals that profess to be less bad with the ultimate goal to be nothing.

“The question is really how do we love all the children of all species for all time,” he said. That is our values that allow us to move to principals and behavior, he said.

“Then we have visions,” McDonough said. “And visions without execution are hallucinations.”

The process leads to goals, strategies, metrics and then value, he said. If goals are the benchmark, you don’t get your values, he said.

“We like to start with what is right. What is wrong. What is good. What is bad,” he said. “And less and more come later.”

McDonough’s premise is that businesses, meant to be profitable, produce pollution which is something that they can’t sell. Instead, the circular economy encourages them to harvest their waste and treat it as an asset instead of a liability.

The key is to use commerce to make the change we want to see, McDonough said.

“This century, our century, must and can be the ecological century and then we will have a civilization worth passing on,” McDonough said.

The first order of business is human and ecological health, he said.

The Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute has created a third party standard that certifies company’s products based on five criteria: material health, material reutilization, renewable energy and carbon management, water stewardship and social fairness.

McDonough said he first became interested in ecological design when he designed a daycare center in Frankfurt, Germany and he noticed the children were eating the building. So he decided to look into toxicology of materials.

In 1994, he designed new fabrics for Steelcase. He worked with a chemist to reduce the number of chemicals in fabric from 8,000 down to 38. He made a fabric so clean it could be eaten, he said.

He also designed carpet with Berkshire Hathaway and Shaw Industries to create Nylon 6, a carpet without the carcinogens and chemicals that can be reused and recycled. McDonough said the company is essentially storing its materials on the customer’s floor because it wants it back. There is 1.4 billion pounds of carpet waste in America every year, it would be good if it could be reused, McDonough said.

“This is turning into what we are calling the circular economy,” McDonough said.

McDonough wanted to design buildings like trees. He created a building that produced its own energy, purified its water and builds nutrient rich soil.

In 1999, McDonough designed the world’s largest green roof for Ford Motor Company’s River Rouge Truck Planet in Dearborn, Michigan. Saved Ford $35 million in capital expense by not using chemical treatment plants and pipes, he said.

NASA asked McDonough to work on the Mars Space Station. They created a mockup at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. It has the potential to produce 120 percent of the energy it needs and it can purify its own water, he said.

In Amsterdam, McDonough is designing buildings as continuous assets. They are designed to come apart and be put back together as needed or reconfigured for a different use.

In India, he designed a factory that has greenhouses on the roof that allow factory workers to grow food for their families.

In China, McDonough is working on a conceptual city that can feed itself and produce its own power.

“The idea of just saying we’re going to be less bad is not going to cut it with future generations,” McDonough said. “They are going to say what were you thinking or not. Let’s tell the kids we’re going to be less bad but we’re also going to be more good. We’re going to reduce the badness to zero. Fair enough. That’s a noble thing.”

“But we’re really looking for 100 percent fabulous that’s what we’re really here for not nothing – 100 percent fabulous,” McDonough said.

With the carbon positive city, McDonough looks at carbon as a positive in the soil and a negative in the atmosphere. A toxin is a material in the wrong place, he said.

Cities are connected to the landscape. First, cities must do an inventory, study opportunities, assess projects, optimize, execute and share.

“Our job right now is to change the question of commerce itself from a world of limits and greed from how much can I get for how little I give,” McDonough said. “We need to change that question to how much can I give for all that I get.”

By LAURA LOREK
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

“Humankind is using up our natural resources at an astonishing rate,” said Kate Brandt, lead of sustainability at Google.

“Each year our economy consumes far more than what our planet can provide,” she said.

Brandt, who previously served under President Obama as the Nation’s first Chief Sustainability Officer, delivered the Monday afternoon keynote address at South by Southwest Eco. The conference kicked off Monday and runs through Wednesday. Her talk focused on the circular economy.

This year, Earth overshoot day landed on August 8th.

“This marked the day that all of us, humankind, exhausted nature’s budget for the year,” Brandt said. “Since then we’ve essentially been operating in an ecological deficit drawing down our local resource stocks, accumulating carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, in other words society’s demand for resources is about what 1.5 earths could provide for us.”

Now that’s just in 2016, Brandt said. The World Economic Forum estimates that by 2030 we are going to have three billion new middle class consumers, she said. And by 2045 the World Bank predicts that the number of people living in cities will increase 1.5 times adding two billion more residents to our urban settings.

“So these sobering statistics I think really highlight the pressing need to revisit the system that we built during the industrial revolution in which we extract something from the ground, make a product or we burn it for fuel and then we ultimately throw it away,” Brandt said.

“At Google we believe that global business should lead the way to driving a new 21st century model in which people’s lives are improved while we can reduce our dependence on primary materials and fuel from fossils,” Brandt said. “And we believe that this can actually be done in a way that makes business sense providing economic return, a community benefit and restoring our natural environment.”

The new model is called the circular economy – “in which materials are unendingly recycled through both the biological and the technical progressions in ways that are restorative and regenerative for the environment,” Brandt said.

“At Google, we established a goal last year that what we want to do is to embed these principals into our infrastructure, our operations and our culture,” Brandt said.

The idea of a circular economy is getting traction now for two main reasons, Brandt said.

“I think there is a growing global recognition that the model we built from the 20th century is not going to serve us for prosperity in the 21st century,” she said.

Also, the circular economy represents this really great new opportunity to unlock new value, new business models that have the potential for a lot of new double bottom line businesses that can have both a positive impact and be profitable, she said.

Last year, a study from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation reported the value of a circular economy in Europe by 2030 could be worth $1.8 Trillion in Euros.

“Just imagine the impact for us in the U.S. economy,” Brandt said.

Google sees opportunities in the circular economy by using renewable energy in its operations, designing out waste from its operations, thinking in systems and thinking in cascades, Brandt said. It has been a carbon neutral business since 2007, she said.

In 2010, Google started the process of buying renewable energy at scale. And since then it has become the largest non-utility corporate buyer of renewable energy in the world.

“What that means is we’ve purchased 2.5 gigawatts of renewable energy and to put that in perspective that’s about the equivalent of taking 1 million cars off the road,” Brandt said.

Also Google committed to invest $2.5 billion in wind and solar projects worldwide, Brandt said.

“And beyond purchasing and investing we’re also looking at how do we use our tools to accelerate the adoption of renewable energy,” she said.

Last year, Google rolled out a tool called Project Sunroof that is available in 42 states in the U.S. that lets homeowners type in their zip code and then Google analyzes all the information it has on their home via Google maps to tell them how much they could save by installing solar on their roof, Brandt said.

“And if you’re interested we can connect you with a solar developer in your area to take the next step,” she said.

Eliminating waste is another area Google has focused on.

“Today across our global data center operations we’re already diverting 86 percent of our waste from landfills,” Brandt said.

A couple of weeks ago, Google made a pretty bold announcement to commit to zero landfill waste across its global data center operations, she said.

“That last 10 to 20 percent of diversion is where it really gets tough,” Brandt said. “But that’s where we are really going to find those opportunities to design waste out of our system all together or to enter into really interesting community partnerships.”

For example, Google has a data center in Douglas County, outside of Atlanta. It partnered with Douglas County on a water reuse system to cool its data center. Another example of waste reduction is a Google data center in Hamina, Finland created in a refurbished paper mill from the 1950s.

In Google’s offices in its hometown in Mountain View, California, the company has already achieved about 86 percent landfill diversion. It has a really big corporate composting program with the city. It also uses a system called Lean Path to track food and this year the technology enabled the company to avoid more than 392,000 pounds of food waste from going to landfills, Brandt said.

In one of the most striking examples, Google saves hundreds of millions of dollars every year by managing its servers effectively, Brandt said. It first focuses on maintenance and using the servers as long as possible. Next, it refurbishes old servers and re-manufactures them. Then it sells parts to secondary markets and what’s left it recycles.

“Since we started building our data centers back in 2007 when Gmail was just a kid we were really laser focused on energy efficiency,” Brandt said. “As a result, today our data centers are about 50 percent more efficient than the industry average.”

Also through machine learning applied to its data centers Google is able to reduce its energy costs by another 40 percent. It created an algorithm that learns how the data center servers and cooling system operates and then it can turn all of the dials in just the right way to optimize the system.

“This points to huge opportunity for any industrial setting,” Brandt said.

Lastly, Google worked with Healthy Building Network to create a tool called Portico to help people understand the toxins in building materials. Brandt said to truly enable a circular economy where materials can be cycled through the loop and unendingly utilized – you need to know what are in the materials.

In 2011, Google wanted to eliminate toxic materials from its buildings. It partnered with Healthy Building Network to create Portico, a web-based application designed to provide more information about building materials. Last week, Healthy Building Network and Google announced plans to make Portico available to everyone. They also announced Perkins + Will, The Durst Organization, Harvard University, and HomeFree Affordable Housing Cohort joined Portico as founding partners.

And Google is working with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation on solutions to create better concrete. It is using powdered recycled glass in concrete to substitute for more toxic additives like fly ash.

Lastly, Google plans to take an open sourcing approach to its efforts in the circular economy to enable wide adoption of its business models, Brandt said.

Google would like to become the global reference point for circular economy in the built environment, Brandt said. It will provide thought leadership, help policy makers and provide best practices.

“So in conclusion we believe that a global business should lead the way to improving people’s lives while reducing or even eliminating dependence on primary materials,” Brandt said. “And we believe this can be done in a way that makes business sense, providing economic returns, social benefit and critically positive environmental impact.”

Editor’s note: this article has been updated to clarify the relationship between Google and Healthy Building Network in creating Portico.

GE Aviation is in Austin.

The business, a division of General Electric based in Cincinnati, Ohio, officially opened up its Austin digital collaboration center last week. It is the first in the U.S. In the past year, GE opened similar centers in Dubai, Shanghai and Paris.

The company also announced it is working with customer Qantas Airways on a data and analytics project aimed at providing solutions for aviation fleet intelligence and operational insights.

GE Aviation Chief Digital Officer, Jim Daily, officially opened the center with Qantas Head of Fuel and Environment Alan Milne. Local officials participating in the event included State Representative Paul Workman, State Representative Celia Israel and Ahmed Tewfix, chairperson of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Texas at Austin.

“GE’s collaboration center in Austin is home to software developers, data scientists and domain experts with specific backgrounds in analytics, flight-planning and engines, depending on what we’re working on,” Daily said in a news release. “Opening the center with Qantas, marks the commitment from a customer who really understands the value of using data across their operation.”

The center occupies 27,000 square feet at 400 W 15th Street with 100 data scientists, engineers and designers. GE Aviation plans to hire many more within the next year.

“We’ve seen that even small gains in fuel efficiency add up to big benefits and lower emissions when you multiply them across the hundreds of aircraft in the Qantas fleet,” Milne said in a news release. “The work we’re doing with GE is giving us more insight than we’ve ever had before into the way our aircraft operate, helping us find ways of flying smarter – and this is the next step in the partnership.”

Today, nearly 100 airlines covering more than 10,000 aircraft are GE Aviation Digital Solutions’ customers for such services as flight and fuel analytics, navigation services, airline operations management and planning and recovery.

Four years ago, GE Aviation acquired Austin Digital, a 40 employee startup that specialized in flight operations data analysis.

Finding a great work of art to display in an apartment is apparently a big problem for a lot of people.

And now a new Austin startup, Twyla, has got the solution.

The company officially launched on Thursday. It provides a new way to discover and buy art by providing access to limited-edition artworks by leading contemporary artists.

Instead of a consumer going to a gallery to haggle with an artist, Twyla takes the pain out the art acquisition process. It negotiates with artists to create exclusive prints at a fraction of the price of their original pieces. The company also displays its artwork at select “showrooms” including boutique hotels and venues across the country such as South Congress Hotel in Austin and Soho House West Hollywood.

The company works with artists worldwide. It currently is collaborating with more than 80 artists including Miya Ando, Travis Boyer, Guy Dill and Kristen Schiele to create more than 300 pieces, which range in price from $1,000 to $5,000. The artwork is also framed. Twyla’s artists have displayed their works in some of the world’s most influential museums and galleries including Whitney Museum of American Art, The Guggenheim, LACMA, MoMA, Gagosian Gallery, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and Palais de Tokyo.

“We started Twyla after experiencing firsthand how frustrating it can be to buy art,” Matt Randall, co-founder and CEO of Twyla, said in a news release. “Artists are stifled by seller limitations, while consumers are expected to expertly navigate the complicated, opaque world of art buying. The artists are selected by the Twyla collective, which is composed of our experienced curators and creatives, that identifies what’s now, next and perfectly suited to Twyla’s clients’ tastes.”

Twyla also sends the artwork to a customers home in safe packaging and provides a kit with instructions on how to hang the art. In 12 U.S. cities, customers can opt to have their artwork installed by a professional art handler.

HomeAway co-founder and chairman Brian Sharples is one of the company’s co-founders. He recently stepped down as CEO of HomeAway and now serves as chairman of the board of Twyla. David Krane, CEO of GV (formerly Google Ventures) is board member; art community veteran and former president of Christie’s Doug Woodham and CEO of The Standard Hotels International Amar Lalvani. Twyla has raised over $19 million led by GV and joined by IVP and Redpoint Ventures.

“There’s a huge gap in the art buying market between posters and Picassos,” Krane, CEO of GV and Twyla board member said in a news release. “Twyla fills that void, finally speaking to a new generation of buyers who want to invest in art they love at a price they can afford.”

Firefly Space Systems, a private aerospace which was developing vehicles to launch small to medium sized satellites to orbit, laid off its staff of 159 employees and is exploring a possible sale of the company, according to a news report in Space News.
Last year, NASA selected Firefly, based in Cedar Park, for a $5.5 million contract to demonstrate a CubeSat launch by March of 2018, according to a news release.

Last week, the company let its workers go and posted a note on its Twitter feed about running into trouble closing on financing to keep the company operating.

Statement pic.twitter.com/aXX8wsJRX3

— Firefly Space (@Firefly_Space) September 29, 2016

This week, Firefly co-founder and chief executive Thomas Markusic told Space News that a major investor pulled out of its Series A funding round.

“The second large investor, which we had been working with for a year and had everything finalized, dropped out at really absolutely the last minute,” he said. “Suddenly we were left with half of our Series A funding unaccounted for.”

Markusic is working on raising funds but also told Space News that he is exploring a possible sale of the company.

The company filed papers last June with the Securities and Exchange Commission reporting it had raised $19 million of a $38.2 million offering.

Space News also reports that an arbitrator recently concluded that Markusic destroyed evidence at his former company Virgin Galactic that could have implicated him in a scheme to steal trade secrets for Firefly. Virgin Galactic has sued Markusic accusing him of taking technology he developed at Virgin Galactic with him to form Firefly. Firefly also sued Markusic to try to keep him from divulging trade secrets.

Factom, an Austin-based blockchain technology company that secures data, announced Wednesday it has closed on $4.2 million in funding.

Billionaire Investor Tim Draper of Draper Associates led the Series A round.

Blockchain is the underlying technology for Bitcoin, an alternative currency. A blockchain is a public ledger of all bitcoin transactions that have ever been executed.

Factom has taken that technology and applied it to data security for a wide range of industries and applications. The company has created Factom Apollo and Factom Iris, built on its open source core software, aimed at securing records and identity.

Factom previously raised a few million dollars in seed stage investment. The latest round of funding will let the company further develop its core technology and products.

This summer, the Department of Homeland Security issued a $199,000 grant to Factom aimed at developing digital identity security products for Internet of Things devices.

Earlier this year, the Austin Chamber of Commerce also named Factom to its A-List of Hottest Companies for 2016 in the emerging and early/seed stage category.

“We are delighted to have venture capitalists of such caliber help us build Factom,” Peter Kirby, CEO and Co-founder of Factom said in a news release. “This round of funding allows us to aggressively grow the company and the underlying technology. We started Factom to build a more honest and transparent world using a pretty simple approach: create software that makes it impossible to change the past and point that software at places where it solves valuable business problems. This funding accelerates our progress down that road.”

“Securing data is mission critical for governments, banks, car companies, credit card companies, retailers and any company concerned with hacking,” Draper said in a news release. “Centralized data is prone to critical failure by any individual mistake, whether by user error or malicious hacking. By decentralizing data through the blockchain, Factom avoids critical failures due to user error or hacker. Factom lets people sleep easy knowing that their bank account won’t be broken into, their car won’t errantly go off the road, and their identity won’t be stolen.”

“Consensus is extremely challenging,” Paul Snow, Chief Architect and Co-founder of Factom, said in a news release. “Blockchains first pushed the boundaries of computer science with the simple yet revolutionary ability to trade digital value openly. Now we are pushing the limits of computer science in a second revolution. The Factom protocol allows for the open coordination of processes against immutable ledgers of data. It will have the same kind of impact on data and systems as the first revolution had on value.”

By LAURA LOREK
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

Condé Nast is going to “go big” in Austin, said Robert Sauerberg, the company’s CEO.

“This is the right environment for us to get new people and new talent,” Sauerberg said. “We’re going to be a dominate player in Austin and that’s our goal. We’re the first media company here and we want to make a big impact.”

Asked if there might be an Austin branded media platform coming out of the city, Sauerberg said “It’s too early to tell, but why not?”

The New York-based media giant just established its newest Digital Innovation Center on Austin’s Eastside across from Liberty Bar and Tattoo Parlor and next to Zilker Brewing Company.

Sauerberg said virtual reality, augmented reality and artificial intelligence are going to play a big role in the future of the way media is delivered to consumers.

“Today it’s all about mobile and video but it’s going to be about AI and VR and we’ll continue to evolve with whatever technology is coming at us next,” Sauerberg said.

Twenty years from now, there will “absolutely be magazines,” Sauerberg said.

“Our brands will be on all of these different platforms and magazines will be part of that, the brands will be much bigger, very broad and very widely distributed and global,” he said.

People are reading magazines more voraciously than ever, Sauerberg said. Millennials love them, he said. They appeal to wide range of consumers, he said.

“Everybody loves magazines,” he said.

Sauerberg was in town to officially open Condé Nast’s Austin office along with Condé Nast Chief Digital Officer Fred Santarparia. Michele Skelding, senior vice president of Global Tech & Innovation at the Austin Chamber of Commerce, Barbary Brunner, CEO of the Austin Technology Council, Gerardo Interiano, Google’s head of external affairs for the Southwest and other dignitaries attended the event.

Dale Watson and the Lonestars played tunes like “Quick, Quick, Slow, Slow,” “I Lie When I Drink” and “Tonight the Bottle Let Me Down.”

Condé Nast’s offices are bright and open with lots of natural light. Its wide open workspace features a combination of sitting desks and standing desks with lots of conference rooms and lounge areas. Pictures from the covers of Condé Nast magazines decorate the walls. And magazines are on just about every table. The nearly 9,000 square feet of space in a new office building at 1645 E. Austin will have 30 employees by the end of the year. The employees include a range of engineers and product designers.

Condé Nast also has digital teams in New York, San Francisco, Chicago and London. Austin’s creative workforce is what attracted the company to the city.

“The brand of Condé Nast is not only a luxury brand, but it’s a brand that is going through digital transformation and for them to choose their digital innovation center for Austin is huge for us,” Skelding said.

Condé Nast reaches an audience of more than 100 million consumers across its print, digital and video brands. The company publishes some of the most iconic titles in media: Vogue, Vanity Fair, Glamour, Brides, Self, GQ, GQ Style, The New Yorker, Conde Nast Traveler, Architectural Digest, Bon Appetite, Epicurious, Wired and more.

The company’s newest division, Condé Nast Entertainment, was launched in 2011 to develop film, television and premium digital video programming.

On a wall of the new Condé Nast Austin office is the motto “Make Big Promises and Keep Them.” It seems like a harbinger of things to come.