Category: Austin (Page 192 of 318)

Good Technology, based in Sunnyvale, Calif., bought Austin-based Macheen, a mobile cloud applications service provider.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Macheen, founded in 2010, has raised $34.4 million in five rounds of investment, according to its Crunchbase profile. The company provides broadband connectivity to mobile devices. The company provides a software as a service platform that brings mobile broadband and connected services to all devices.

As Bring Your Own Device deployments continue to become mainstream, Good Technology’s “customers want to alleviate the risk and cost associated with rapidly increasing mobile regulations, tax liabilities and complexities around mobile reimbursement and corporate stipend programs, while at the same time carriers are looking to better serve their enterprise customers,” Christy Wyatt, chairman and chief executive officer, Good Technology, said in a statement. “By acquiring Macheen and its cloud-based offering, and coupling that with expanded carrier relationships, we will be securely and cost-effectively taking more friction out of deploying secure mobile apps and workflows – further positioning Good ahead of the industry in the race to democratize mobility.”

Gartner predicts devices connected to the Internet, excluding PCs, tablets and smart phones, will grow to 26 billion units in 2020.

“To this point, BYOD programs were generally defined by configuration, policy control and device management for smart phones and tablets,” Richard Schwartz, president and chief executive officer, Macheen said in a news statement. “Together, our joint technology will offer controlled corporate usage of a broader set of enterprise devices and beyond as the era of Internet of Things (IoT) becomes a reality.”

By LAURA LOREK
Founder of Silicon Hills News

Technology has dramatically changed the way people live their lives from transacting business to communications.

But what happened to all the innovations in healthcare that allowed technology to be embraced, Dr. S. Claiborne “Clay” Johnston, Dean of the Dell Medical School, asked during a keynote lunch address at InnoTech Austin.

“Healthcare is really Moore’s Law in reverse,” Johnston said.

Moore’s Law states computer processing power doubles nearly every two years. That makes innovations easier and cheaper and leads to dramatic advances in computing.

But that hasn’t happened in the healthcare industry, Johnston said.

“Healthcare, it’s really a broken system,” he said. “It’s really a broken innovation system.”

Johnston presented a list of ten reasons why the healthcare system is broken including the costs of care are out of control, no one pays for prevention and it’s tough to find a doctor.

When Johnston moved to Austin it took him several months to find a good pediatrician.

“If I wanted to find a great Italian restaurant that has a table for four tonight and I can see reviews and they make a great tiramisu, right now I can make that appointment,” Johnston said. “I can’t find any information about a doctor who is taking new patients. Are they any good? Do people like them? Which is more important? “

The system is also broken because no one reminds patients to take their medicine, office visits are shorter and shorter and flu management requires a doctor’s visit even though the doctor can’t prescribe any antibiotics to make the patient better, Johnston said. It would be much easier to diagnose the patient through email or through a phone call, he said.

“We force this really, really inefficient process on everyone that no one benefits from,” Johnston said.

The system is broken because vending machines have all kinds of bad junk food and sugary drinks, Johnston said. People can’t find apples in vending machines, he said.

Doctors are spending more time documenting patients than spending time with them, Johnston said. All of those documents don’t benefit the patient or the doctor, he said. And patients can’t email their doctors, he said. Instead, the system forces an office visit on patients, he said.

Also, Johnston mentioned those pesky hospital gowns that expose a patient’s rear end to everyone as the number one reason the healthcare system is broken.

“This is in jest, but it’s actually real,” Johnston said.

Doctors and nurses don’t have to access a patient from behind, but from the front, he said. Where they came from, no one knows, he said.

One of the big divides in healthcare right now is the difference between what is research and what is care, Johnston said.

The goal is to create a better ecosystem for healthcare and increase value for society with better health outcomes for less money, Johnston said. The system must encourage innovation, he said.

At his former job at the University of California at San Francisco, Johnston created an online platform to crowdsource suggestions on how to improve the healthcare system in the hospital. They got 144 ideas. They narrowed it down to 20 proposals. Then they created teams to implement three selected proposals on switching drugs from intravenous to oral administration, from expensive respiratory treatments to inhalers and to prevent the overuse of blood products. They spent $35,000 gathering data on blood transfusions and analyzing it. They were able to use the data to educate the physicians and others in the department on over use of blood products. Overall, they spent $220,000 on three projects and got a return of $11 million in savings in two years, Johnston said.

“That’s a pretty good return on some projects,” he said. “And the program continues and grows….the system has worked so successfully it has been implemented in other places in San Francisco.”

Johnston plans to launch the same program with the Seton Hospital System in Austin.

“The key with it, it created a way to get a funding stream to start to do the right thing within this broken ecosystem,” Johnston said.

The bigger priority is to look at the city’s health and improve the community overall, Johnston said.

Very few cities have taken a snapshot of the health of its citizens, Johnston said. San Francisco analyzed the data. And it provides a framework for prevention and intervention, he said. Johnston hopes to do the same thing in Austin to provide a snapshot of the health of its citizens.

To change the system, value has to be embraced by the medical institutions, doctors and patients. Doctors shouldn’t given unnecessary tests and MRIs.

And participants in the system need to be able to be innovators, Johnston said.

Austin needs better data, Johnston said. And all of the stakeholders need to be brought together to work on improving the system, he said. And doctors need better training, he said.

The ultimate goal is to push Austin as a model of a healthy city, he said.

By LAURA LOREK
Founder of Silicon Hills News

Six startups showed off their ventures during six-minute presentations at the InnoTech Austin Beta Summit Wednesday morning at the Austin Convention Center.

The demos provided the companies an opportunity to show, not tell, the audience what their companies did, said Bryan Menell, managing editor of AustinStartup.com and the panel’s moderator.

First up, Burpy, an online grocery delivery service available in Austin, San Antonio and Houston, showed how easily customers could place orders and have them delivered to their doorsteps. Burpy charges $6.99 for orders under $50.

“Burpy is your shoppelganger, we’re you inside the store,” said Sharez Prasla, Burpy cofounder.

Burpy spun out of Longhorn Startup, a semester long class geared at nurturing undergraduate entrepreneurs at the University of Texas at Austin. The founders also recently completed the Techstars Austin program.

Next up, Paul Murphy, CEO of Clarify.io, formerly known as Op3nVoice, an application that makes audio and video files searchable. Murphy showed off Clarify’s self-service API that allows developers to make apps to search audio and video files easily using keyword and topics.

It’s perfect for searching all kinds of media files, Murphy said. For example, CallTrunk, a service that allows people to record and archive phone calls, uses the technology to allow its customers to search past calls by keywords. Mobento, a site that aggregates educational videos online, uses the Clarify technology to search its videos for exact keywords and then it marks where in the video those words appear.

Right now, Clarify’s technology only works with the English language, but it’s expanding into other languages, Murphy said.

The third startup, PatientIO, a product of Filament Labs, provides a patient delivery care platform. The platform allows healthcare providers to deliver treatment information and reminders to patients.

“We provide a real time window into what’s going on outside of the clinic,” said Jason Bornhorst, its cofounder and CEO.

Filament Labs graduated from the Techstars Austin program in 2013. The company, which has five employees, has raised $1.2 million in seed stage funding. The company’s app is available on the iOS and Android platform and via the Web. It also has plans for SMS delivery in the future.

Bill Boebel showed off Pingboard, an online office management tool. Boebel, managing director of Capital Factory, previously co-founded Webmail.us and later sold the company to Rackspace Hosting.

Pingboard, founded in 2013, officially launched its beta test this summer. The company has raised $1.25 million in seed stage funding. What Pingboard seeks to do is replace paper management tools in the office by providing an office directory, vacation calendar and employee database. The service lets employees set status alerts when they are out of the office or on a business trip or home sick. It also lets them schedule vacation and makes that information available to others in the office.

Lander Coronado-Garcia, CEO of Thread, a new dating app only available to University of Texas at Austin students, showed how it works.

“Our mission is to make connecting around campus, fun and safe and especially classy,” he said.

The app also has a method to report on people who are acting improperly on the site, he said.

Thread, which launched at UT this month, already has 1,000 users, Coronado-Garcia said. The app asks students to rate their favorite restaurants, activities, classes and other interests and then offers up 25 matches with photos and profile information per day to each user. Only confirmed students, who’s identities are verified through their UT email addresses, can connect with each other.

“Once a connection is made, chatting with someone is really simple,” Coronado-Garcia said.

Thread, founded by Zachary Dell, son of Michael Dell, is starting off at UT and plans to rollout to other colleges once it reaches critical mass at UT. Thread also plans to integrate geo-location features in the future too, Coronado-Garcia said. So that someone who goes home for the holidays can find other students to date in his or her hometown.

Lastly, Kevin Warden of Wingup.com demonstrated his mobile app that allows people to network with others in cities they visit.

“This is going to help you essentially take a break from that solo trip,” Warden said.

The app integrates with Trip.it, a trip itinerary organizer, and enhances business trips by providing information on how to connect with other Wingup travellers visiting a city.

The app isn’t live yet. Warden plans to launch Android and iOS apps soon.

By LAURA LOREK
Founder of Silicon Hills News

It’s no secret women in technology jobs are underrepresented.

Women hold more than half of all professional jobs in the U.S., but make up less than 24 percent of all computer-related jobs, “representing a huge pool of untapped talent,” according to a study by the Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford.

“The numbers are not moving in favor of increasing women’s participating in technology; in 2008 women earned only 18 percent of all computer science degrees. Back in 1985, women earned 37 percent of CS degrees,” the Clayman Institute reports.

The 2014 Women in Tech Summit at InnoTech Austin on Wednesday featured straight talk about the challenges women in technology face and ways they come overcome barriers and excel.

During the opening keynote address, Angela Yochem, chief information officer of BDP International, talked about being ignored in meetings at a previous job. She would offer her ideas and her colleagues would politely listen and move on. So she teamed up with a male coworker. She offered up an idea. He copied down exactly what she said. He waited about five minutes and then offered up the same idea.

“All of a sudden he was the most brilliant guy in the company. He was on fire,” Yochem said.

The group embraced his idea. They did this for three month and it always worked the same. They ignored her but they embraced the exact same ideas when it came from him. One night over drinks, they told the group of what they had been doing. The group laughed uncomfortably but they were horrified, Yochem said. They had been tuning her out.

“They said they didn’t realize they were doing this,” Yochem said. One guy floated the notion that maybe they were tuning her out like they tune their wives out at home, she said.

This happens to women in conference rooms all over the U.S., said Janelle Monney, founder and managing partner of The Monney Group.

In fact, National Public Radio just did a story on how women’s voices are not perceived as authoritative in the workforce. It reported on studies showing that feminine voices are perceived as less trustworthy, less competent and insecure.

Yochem and Monney also discussed work and life balance. They both agreed working made their children more independent and self-reliant, which are the traits they need to succeed in life.

Women also need to focus on what makes them happy, Yochem said.

“Ever single one of us needs to take time for ourselves,” Yochem said.

A member of the audience asked about policies companies should have in place to attract and retain female workers. Yochem said the company has to have a culture of flexibility and good managers with bosses that have the employees’ backs and makes sure their voices get heard.

Cratejoy, which provides one-stop service to begin a box subscription, just landed $4 million in Series A funding from Charles River Ventures.

The one-year-old Austin startup also launched the public beta of its service. It provides web hosting, page templates with mobile integration, subscription billing management systems and business analytics to e-commerce companies selling to customers via box subscriptions. Its customers, in a private beta test included A Little Bundle, curated monthly bundles for expecting mothers; Austin BatBox, all things about Austin; Root Bizzle, a tie of the month club and The Fox Society, custom-planned dates for Austin couples.

The latest round of funding brings Cratejoy’s total funding to date to $6.2 million. The company raised $2.2 million in seed funding from SV ANgel, Y Combinator, Capital Factory, Andreessen Horowitz, Maverick Capital, Start Fund and ACE Venture Fund.

Cratejoy plans to use the funds to hire engineers and to continue to build out its platform.

“We’re also honored to announce Devdutt Yellurkar of CRV will join our board. Devdutt has pioneered CRV’s investments in next-generation commerce and SaaS companies, and we love what he has to say about us,” Amir Elaguizy, co-founder of Cratejoy wrote in a blog post announcing the funding.

“Everything points to subscription being the future of commerce and consumption, bringing exceptional goods and services to consumers before they even know they need them,” Devdutt Yellurkar, general partner at CRV, said in a statement. “Amir and Alex are going to make that future possible with Cratejoy. They’re founders with a very real, fantastic vision and a true passion for subscription commerce.”

This profile of Cratejoy appears in Silicon Hills News’ latest print magazine.

This weekend, the Austin Technology Council featured a guest post from Austin Mayoral Candidate Mike Martinez in its meet the candidates for Mayor series. Silicon Hills News is asking each of the candidates a series of follow up questions. Their responses will all be posted here following their guest blog posts with ATC. First up, is a Q&A with Mayoral Candidate Mike Martinez.

WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT

Q. Technology in Austin, as in all major hubs of innovation in the country, has a pipeline problem when it comes to filling jobs. There are more jobs in the Science, Technology Engineering and Math fields open than there are qualified applicants. What steps can you take, as Mayor, to ensure that the Austin workforce can meet the needs of the growing technology industry?

A. We need to ensure the specific needs of tech and life sciences job creators, educators, and workers are aligned. The recently announced Austin Tech Partnership between the City and the Austin Tech Council will benchmark efforts to better understand and support our unique talent landscape.

Those benchmarks will help us establish priorities in the near term like supporting industry outreach and recruiting, in the mid-term including education workforce training programs with ACC and alternative providers like Maker Square, and long term including increased industry participation in the many regional STEM programs and efforts to prepare all Austinites to participate in the digital economy.

We have recently added to the city’s economic development policy that require companies moving to Austin to integrate STEM programs within their companies and partner with our local schools. This along with the above mentioned suggestion could drastically improve our pipeline of workforce members and I am committed to doing all I can as Mayor to foster even stronger goals and initiatives.

DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION

Q. Studies have shown that diversity is a key to success in the technology industry and business in general. How, as Mayor, would you specifically work to nurture diversity in the tech sector to ensure more opportunities for minorities and women?

A. This has been and will remain a priority. As Mayor, I’ll continue existing City Digital Inclusion efforts to ensure all members of the Austin community can access and participate in the digital economy. In addition, Austin tech needs digital creatives to fill the 9000 tech jobs we see coming by 2017. Integration of the tech community into City efforts and the programs offered by longtime regional stakeholders like Skillpoint Alliance and Girlstart are key to ensuring all Austinites have the opportunity to participate in a 21st Century economy.

Entrepreneur support groups like Women@Austin and the mentor structures leveraged by local startup incubators and accelerators are becoming real forces in our community. I’d like to see those models expanded to raise awareness of the entrepreneurial potential of all Austinites. We must also engage further with our local minority chambers such as the Greater Austin Hispanic Chamber, Austin Black Chamber and others to build stronger partnerships and foster further opportunities.

LIFE SCIENCES

Q. Austin is getting the Dell Medical School, which will act as a catalyst in helping to develop the area’s life sciences industry. What do you think the City of Austin needs to do to support and nurture this emerging industry?

A. There’s no doubt that the Dell Medical School is going to impact our life sciences sector along with the rest of our community. UT, the State, the City, and the tech industry must work together to ensure that we’re able to compete with efforts in Houston, San Antonio, and Dallas to sustain healthy life sciences ecosystems.

The medical school is a unique opportunity to integrate tech and the larger community and I look forward to being an integral part of this amazing transformation within our community. As Mayor, I will ensure that our city is intimately involved and all stakeholders have ample opportunity to participate and help us develop best practices and sustainable policies.

INCENTIVES

Q. What is your view on providing incentives to tech companies to locate or expand in Austin?

A. Incentives are important to growing Austin’s business climate. In the past, we’ve seen incentives provided to bring in large brands from out of state. I think this is a great idea but it has to be balanced with the impact of those arrivals on regional talent, housing, and traffic infrastructures.

I have proposed a reemphasis on incentivizing local mid-size and small businesses to ensure all Austin entrepreneurs are able to add critical support to – and participate in the success of – Austin’s tech economy. We have the talent, entrepreneurship, education and vision right here in our own community to take Austin to the highest level possible in creating good paying, long term, sustainable jobs.