Category: Austin (Page 238 of 318)

By CLARISA RAMIREZ
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

“We have a fundamental belief that the future of travel is local, and we’re going to beat everyone there,” says Joah Spearman, Co-Founder and CEO of Localeur, a travel and local guide website that launched in Austin in March.
Spearman, 30, sits in front of a slim MacBook at Jo’s Coffee in downtown Austin, wearing a light hoodie and a baseball hat, and talks energetically and authoritatively.
Localeur emerged after Spearman and Chase White, Localeur Co-Founder and President, noticed something missing in the travel industry.As a serial traveler who has spanned the globe from Spain to Brazil to as far as Japan, Spearman quickly realized the best way Millennials get to know a city is not by visiting several tourist attractions, but by having a friend guide them to the coolest spots in town.
“In the absence of that, people end up with Yelp and Trip Advisor,” Spearman says. “We want to be right in the middle.”
The problem with TripAdvisor, Spearman says, is it focuses on tourist attractions and not the hip locations locals know about. “When you go to New York for the first time, if you went to Ground Zero, Times Square and all this you’re not going to connect with anyone who lives in that city,” Spearman says.
Yelp, on the other hand, is flooded with too many reviews – many written by people you don’t know or trust. “On Yelp, Domino’s Pizza could have five stars. But is that the best pizza place in Austin? In our world, Domino’s doesn’t even exist.”
What Spearman learned while working at Bazaarvoice as Director of Market Planning is reviews are for confirmation; they are effective when it comes to selling products, but are not when it comes to helping the consumer decide what kind of experience he wants.
What Millennials want is a limited set of options that’s curated, Spearman says, and what the market needed was a resource travelers and locals could go to for concise recommendations written by trusted locals. The solution: Localeur, a website that helps people experience local by connecting them with people who know and love the city.
“We want to be a one-stop shop for recommendations, inspiration and local knowledge for all of the major cities people care about,” Spearman says. “I believe that from a behavioral standpoint, we’re closer to what a human being wants.”
Localeur cultivates influential, well-connected Millennials who have their own personal brands to be “Localeurs.” They are made up of DJs, marketers, event planners, and other experts in Food & Dining, Art & Culture and other categories listed on the site who are compensated to write two recommendations a month.
It is not a coincidence, Spearman says, that within just weeks after Localeur launched in Houston in June, three Localeurs were listed on The Top 100 Social Media Power Influencers in Houston for 2013.
Eighty percent of Localeurs have been selected by other Localeurs because the connoisseurs of local know each other. “Our Localeurs are your friends,” Spearman says. “So, it’s one big friend network.”
Danny Witte, Field Marketing Manager for KIND Snacks in Texas, was a natural fit for Localeur. He is frequently out and about town for business, so his friends and colleagues visiting from out of town frequently ask him for recommendations of what to do around Austin, a city he’s called home for eight years. His last two Localeur posts were “Top 4 Rainey Street Bar Crawl Stops” and “Avoid Heat Stroke: Go Here for Cheap, Cold Beer.” After publishing his recommendations, he shares them with his friends following him on social media (his Twitter account boasts 1,831 followers).
Witte thinks Localeur will change the way people visit Austin. “Austin’s a finicky city,” he says. “It moves at a quick pace. When it’s new, it’s new for two years and people are over it. It either becomes mainstream, or the cool people move on because it’s not new anymore.”
Localeur is beginning to recognize revenue from advertising and promotion for local businesses and build more lead generation partnerships through hotels and regional partners, and is initiating sponsorship awareness campaigns for brands touted by Localeurs during its events. In terms of usability, Spearman and White plan on making Localeur more social and sharable and are rolling out an app this year. Spearman’s goal is to have Localeur in 250 major cities around the world in the next five years. This fall, Localeur launches in San Francisco and New York, a Marketing Director will join the team as its first full-time hire, and Localeur will move into an office on South 1st Street in August.
Spearman and White met while working at Bazaarvoice. White came up with the idea for Localeur after taking a snowboarding trip in Park City, Utah in January 2012. During the trip, he wanted recommendations from the locals who knew the city best. He presented his idea to Spearmen, who was leading travel marketing at Bazaarvoice at the time, and the first time tech entrepreneurs ran with the idea. White’s role is understanding the product and the user experience and Spearman’s is knowing the Localeur and its audience.
To date, Localeur has raised $350,000 from the founders’ friends and a few angel investors and $125,000 of that was raised during the first three weeks in January.
In just five months, Localeur’s accumulated over 4,500 Facebook likes and over 1,500 Twitter followers – a significant feat considering competitor Gogobot only garnered 9,700 followers in the past three years. To boot, Localeur has spent under $2,000 on marketing.
Spearman would not reveal how much traffic the website receives, but its content did attract Google. Within two months of its launch, Google approached the founders about partnering with its Field Trip app , which alerts travelers of cool destinations that are nearby. The partnership would increase Localeur’s visibility of content, and include them among a list of other household name partners, including Zagat, Eater and Thrillist.
One of the largest investors in Localeur is Travis Devitt, an analyst at Ancient Art and a member of Central Texas Angel Network (CTAN). He was introduced to Spearman and White after they pitched Localeur to CTAN. Although their request did not get funded, Devitt reached out to Spearman because the idea piqued his interest.
“I think this could be a very, very large business – the size of Yelp and TripAdvisor, and that’s a pretty bold statement to make,” says Devitt, who owes his knowledge of the travel sector from investing in online travel businesses, such as Expedia, and participating in travel industry conferences. “Travel spending is a large industry. I see it as a very big opportunity if they can capture any meaningful market share in terms of helping people figure out what they want to do.”
Spearman wants Localeur to stay authentic, so he and White are holding out for venture capital financing until they find the right partner that gets what Localeur wants to be. He compares the startup’s market-driven approach to Airbnb. “It took them three years to prove out their business model,” he says. “It’s not going to take us three years. What we’re going to take to VCs is we’re playing the long-term benefit to users instead of getting in and poaching users of other sites.”
Matt Curtin, Vice President of Enterprise Brands at Bazaarvoice, made a significant investment in Localeur because he likes how it is bucking Austin’s business-to-consumer startup trend, and touts the founders’ strategic planning.
“They’re taking a very focused approach as opposed to going broad and trying to deploy in every city in the country,” Curtin says. “I love that they’re going to specific regions and driving excitement locally. Even its social presence is creating buzz that isn’t in the market today. I haven’t seen this anywhere else.”

By SUSAN LAHEY
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

Serial entrepreneur Fred Schmidt remembers sitting in his London hotel, getting ready to head to Heathrow and back to Austin with the entourage, including Austin Mayor Lee Leffingwell. They’d concluded an official visit to Tech City in the borough of Hackney, the European Union’s fastest-growing tech hub, and signed a friendship agreement between the two cities. But Schmidt wasn’t ready to leave. In the 30 years he’d spent coming to London, he’d never seen anything like what was happening in Hackney.
“I thought, ‘There’s still more I want to experience,’” he said.
“London is upscale, expensive, it’s like Silicon Valley and New York. Doing business there doesn’t happen organically unless you really know people. You’re not going to meet people in cafes…but in Hackney I found this raw energy….”
“I sent an email to all the cool people I’d met and said ‘I’m going to wander the streets of the community and if any of you have any time to get together and talk, here’s my email and here’s my phone number.’” By the time he’d finished breakfast, he had two full days of appointments.
That official visit was the beginning of relationship between Austin and Hackney that’s on its way to being Austin’s first tech-driven sister city relationship. But while Austin startups may not pay much attention to sister city agreements, Schmidt, co-founder of Portalarium, wants to make sure they pay attention to this one.

The Tech City Explosion

A few years ago, the Borough of Hackney in East London was known for a few things: crime, a large immigrant population, neglect, and a vibrant arts community in the portion known as Shoreditch that emerged—as many arts districts emerge—when artists converged where the real estate is cheap. But then startups also started moving into the area.
In 2008, according to a Tech Crunch article, it was just a small group of startups having barbecues on one another’s roofs. Then one day, at one of these barbecues, Dopplr’s co-founder, Matt Biddulph, decided to tweet:
“Silicon Roundabout”: the ever growing community of fun startups in London’s Old Street area.”
That was the first coinage of the term “Silicon Roundabout” ( a name that reflected a local traffic circle but which the government replaced with Tech City). And within days, local and tech media picked up the story heralding the new tech hub in East London.
Since then, Tech City has exploded. It claims more than 1,300 startups—Schmidt says it’s closer to 3,000 and a recent article in Tech City News puts it at closer to 16,000. The government got involved, of course, both the national government and the Borough of Hackney. Google has established a campus there that’s a co-working space. Cisco is there. Silicon Valley is starting to buy businesses there. So what does that have to do with Austin?

Austin and Hackney: A Growing Relationship

Possibly a lot. With the U.S. and EU entering into free trade talks, opportunities for U.S. entrepreneurs could mushroom. Already, the U.K. has the lowest barriers to entry for entrepreneurs of any country in Europe. With all the talk of globalization, Schmidt said, Austin is still “parochially focused.”
“We call ourselves the live music city of the world. But rarely do we set our sites beyond Travis County. We are happily frolicking in Austin…we lack international connectivity. Tech, as it applies to music and film and the rest of media has gone digital, global. There’s an instant market available to the whole world, whether (an entrepreneur) is aware of it or not. Whether they’ve prepared their product for other markets or not. Everyone in the world has access to it.”
The original trade mission was inspired by Andy Pryce Deputy Consul General at the British Consulate General in Houston, who brought Hackney’s explosive tech growth to the attention of Schmidt and the city. Other participants included Appconomy, Phunware and Spredfast.
Natalie Betts, Acting International Economic Development Program Manager for Austin’s Economic Growth and Redevelopment Services Office, called the relationship with Hackney a wonderful opportunity.
“We would never be partnered with London, it’s too big,” she pointed out. “But London is a city of immense global importance. We’re connected with the part that’s involved in tech and creative, like Austin.” Other advantages, she said, are that there are no language barriers, London is a common choice for companies looking to expand into Europe, and the association raises Austin’s profile internationally as a tech center. With overseas companies, she said, the natural inclination when trading or expanding into the U.S. tech market is to go to Silicon Valley. She hopes the relationship between Hackney and Austin will make Austin more visible.
Austin’s relationship with Hackney was the first for that borough. Andrew Sissons, Interim Head of Regeneration Delivery for Hackney said he’s long had a strategy to bring together 10 or so cities or clusters around the world and Austin was the first one that “landed in our laps.”

Keep Hackney Mental?

“It’s been absolutely brilliant between us and Austin,” Sissons said. “It’s been expanding beyond just a government agreement or business friendship agreement. We’re looking across multiple disciplines, things from education to research to export to arts, to collaborating on Hackney House at SXSW, to Austin doing an Austin House in Hackney. It’s been a broad relationship on many levels and we’ve been building real friendships. There are very many kindred spirits.”
“We love Austin,” he said, “because when we turned up everyone had these t-shirts ‘Keep Austin Weird.’ We want to come up with our own slogan, maybe: ‘Keep Hackney Mental’ or something,” he joked. “No, my managers would kill me. We love the attitude, we love the spirit. We don’t want to be a place that’s like a clone. In so many towns there are the same shops in the high street, same restaurants and hotels. There isn’t any energy. We want to make it interesting and independent with lots of festivals and events. We feel Austin very much operates that way as well.”
SXSW 2014 Hackney House, he promises, will be “epic.” Brandon Schmidt, Fred’s son, was responsible for the first Hackney House in 2013. He was working on his master’s in business administration in digital media at St. Edward’s University when his father went on the original trade mission.
“After that first trip my dad came back and was raving about how amazing the place was and it piqued my interest,” Brandon Schmidt said. He had to do an internship for his degree and had been working to get a position in New York. But then he learned about the Shoreditch Fringe Festival, a seven-week multi-disciplinary, multi-cultural festival that would be running in tandem with the Summer Olympics. And Hackney was one of four boroughs involved in hosting the Olympics.
“It was a once in a lifetime opportunity,” Schmidt said. He fell in love with the area. And a few months after he returned to Austin, his contacts hired him to create Hackney House at SXSW.
“We had a very minimal budget,” he said. “What Google and Spotify would spend on one single party, we had to stretch out to four day event. It was a tremendous success. The Guardian wrote about it. It was a place that the people who came over from the U.K. could come and feel at home, use the wifi during the madness that is SXSW.”

Digital Shoreditch

Meanwhile, Fred Schmidt and others are planning their presence at Digital Shoreditch, Hackney’s budding version of Interactive. Last year, Schmidt presented on the relationship between the two cities.
The sister city committee has other plans in mind. Agreements are in the works between Austin and Hackney Community Colleges and Schmidt is working to break down barriers to educational exchanges. More and more colleges and universities, he points out, are making global studies and cultural competency a key component of their programs. And his own son’s international experience, he said, made him that much more valuable as an employee. Schmidt, who also does some mentoring at Capital Factory, is helping local startups think more about global expansion. And when companies expand to the west, they generally start with the U.K.
Brandon Schmidt is partly focused on the creative synergies. “(Hackney) is known for its vibrant art all over the buildings. I want to bring a program to Austin that brings out that artistic vibrancy in the downtown area, have music exchanges…either sponsored by the government or private organizations so the artists could gain additional exposure. There’s a connection that already seems to link the creative energies of both places. We could build something great together.”

Steve Case, head of Startup America, co-founder of AOL, CEO of Revolution LLC, and chairman of the Case Foundation, visited Austin on Thursday.
During his visit, Case met with about 60 entrepreneurs, media and others during a session at Capital Factory, put on by Scott Robinson, head of Startup Austin, the local affiliate of Startup America along with Josh Baer, co-founder of Capital Factory.
Case’s fund, Revolution Growth, just invested $40 million into Austin-based Bigcommerce, a software company that allows anyone to open a retail site online for just $25. With the investment, Case joins the Bigcommerce board. He said he would be back in Austin for more meetings with entrepreneurs.
“We love what’s happening in Austin,” Case said during his opening remarks.
Case’s fund also has investments in Living Social, Portico and Zipcars in Austin. He said the focus of his visit was the Bigcommerce investment but he also wanted to visit with entrepreneurs in Austin to talk about the need for immigration reform and job creation through startups.
The visit by Case was something that Robinson organized on short notice.
“I got an email last Friday afternoon and I got on the phone with everybody and emailed everybody and within two days time, everything was arranged,” Robinson said. “That’s the spirit of our community coming together like that for a visitor like Steve. It’s important for him to see how cooperative and collaborative we are with one another. It’s one thing I hope to demonstrate in our role in the Startup America partnership with the rest of the country and other regions.”
Case spends a lot of time focusing on trying to make sure the United States can remain the world’s most entrepreneurial nation, he said. Entrepreneurs built the economy and that’s why we are the leaders of the free world, he said.
“If we can preserve that innovation/entrepreneurship ethic I think the future of the country will be bright,” Case said. “If we lose it, and I don’t think we will, but there is some risk of being complacent, the future will not be so bright.”
Just look at what’s happening in Detroit for what could go wrong, Case said. Sixty years ago, Detroit was Silicon Valley and the hotbed of innovation in the U.S. with the disruptive technology known as cars, Case said. Last week Detroit declared bankruptcy with $18 billion in debts.
“Detroit was the pride of America and the envy of the world,” he said. But they grew complacent and they lost their “entrepreneurial mo-jo,” Case said. Competitors moved in. And in the last 50 years, Detroit has lost 60 percent of its population, he said.
“This is a searing example of the rise on the back of entrepreneurship and innovation and then the fall,” Case said.
Now there’s lots of great entrepreneurial efforts underway in Detroit and hopefully it will come back, Case said.
According to the Kauffman Foundation, in the last three decades startups were responsible for 40 million new jobs – most of the net new jobs in the United States, Case said.
The rise of startup technology regions like Austin bodes well for the overall economy, Case said. While Silicon Valley continues to do well, Austin has made tremendous strides in the last 20 years, he said.
Following Case’s talk, Baer with Capital Factory, gave an overview of the Austin Technology startup scene. Capital Factory, a technology accelerator program and co-working space, also offers a $100,000 sidecar fund for startups.
Case also heard from Isaac Barchas with the Austin Technology Incubator, Shari Wynne with Incubation, Kerry Rupp with Dreamit Ventures Austin, Kevin Koym with Tech Ranch Austin and Jennifer Bullard with Texas Gaming Lab.
And a handful of entrepreneurs got to give a three minute pitch of their company to Case. Those companies include InsuranceZebra, Phunware, Subtle Data, MyCampus Tutors, Pictrition and Eye Q.

3 Day Startup San Antonio is taking applications for its next program, which will take place on August 9th and run through August 11th on the 10th floor of Geekdom at the Weston Centre in downtown San Antonio.
The deadline to apply is July 21st at midnight.
The 3 Day Startup program is a three day event in which participants work on building a company. The 40 participants are selected from a pool of applicants. They work all weekend at Geekdom on various ideas which they brainstorm and select the first night. At the end of the weekend, they pitch their companies before the public and local investors and entrepreneurs who provide feedback on their ideas.
Some of the companies formed during the weekend sessions have gone on to pursue their ideas, raise money, hire employees including Embarkly, Parlevel, Amazing Jellybean, Cabstr, Famigo, Hoot.me, Ordoro and PhotoWhoa.

By ANDREW MOORE
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

Joshua Singer and Abhinav Suri are the 16-year-old founders of educational nonprofit Apps for Aptitude. As they go into their junior year of high school in San Antonio, they are also meeting with mentors, applying for funding with the 80/20 Foundation, and looking for office space at Geekdom in San Antonio.
Both Singer and Suri have taught themselves several coding languages including HTML5, JQuery, Objective-C, PHP, and more. As they developed their skills, the students began looking for a way to create a series of educational apps as well as get more students involved in programming.
Their solution, Apps for Aptitude, is an educational nonprofit organization that can award up to 300 community service hours to students and developers for creating and uploading their own educational apps. Upon receiving a student’s submission, the nonprofit organization will grade the app on its educational benefits, entertainment value, and user interface design; and reward a number of service hours based on the final score. Apps for Aptitude will accept app submissions for iOS, Android, and Windows devices; and a full description of the coding formats they accept is available on their website.

Giving Back to the Community

Singer and Suri hope that offering a reward of community service hours will encourage young students to sharpen their programming skills and create quality applications. The hours can be used for fellowship applications, college admissions, and scholarships. Some high schools even require a student to gain community service hours to graduate.
“I personally want to encourage middle schoolers and high schoolers and just students in general to start developing applications from an early age,” Suri said. “It’s really nice to help a high schooler or middle schooler who is just starting out.”
Appsforaptitude.org links to several free resources and tutorials to help students along the way. In the future, the nonprofit organization plans to work with San Antonio schools and Geekdom’s SparkEd program to help students learn to code.
In addition to grading apps, Apps for Aptitude will also produce two of their own educational apps with the help of iOS developer, Canzhi Ye. Ye is going into his senior year at Ronald Reagan High School and is the co-founder of San Antonio startup Rectangle. Ye’s apps will have users answer educational questions in a trivia format and will provide another opportunity for students to submit content in exchange for service hours.
“What we plan on doing is making an app that will allow others to feed in content – kind of a trivia type app where there is questions and answers,” Ye said.

Encouraging literacy

But encouraging students to code is only part of the Apps for Aptitude mission. It plans to donate the majority of its revenue to organizations that promote child literacy in San Antonio. According to the SA2020 indicator report, released on June 4, 27 percent of San Antonio’s third grade students scored lower than satisfactory on the STAAR reading assessment in the 2011-2012 school year. This is up from the 12 percent that failed to pass the less challenging TAKS test in the 2010 – 2011 school year. Founder Singer chose to help promote child illiteracy because he wants all students to be literate enough to benefit from educational apps.
“We wanted to create kind of an educational curriculum of applications, but we realized you can’t teach people to read without having someone teach them,” Singer said. “We thought maybe we could help our individual community, and the global community, by donating our profits to fighting illiteracy.”
To generate funding for child literacy organizations, Apps for Aptitude will submit the best apps they receive from students to the Apple App Store or to Google Play. Apps for Aptitude will offer both paid and free versions of educational apps – using iAd and Playhaven to attach advertising to the free versions.
Of course, even a nonprofit organization needs some financial help to get the ball rolling. To that end, Apps for Aptitude has secured a pledge of $1,000 from the 80/20 Foundation – Rackspace Chairman Graham Weston’s personal philanthropy foundation focused on funding urbanization, entrepreneurship, and STEM education in San Antonio. The funding pledge will come into effect once the nonprofit organization achieves 501(c)(3) status, and will be beneficial in the IRS nonprofit application process.

A Catalyst to Inspire Young People

The 80/20 Foundation Executive Director Lorenzo Gomez sees Apps for Aptitude as a catalyst that will inspire even more young people to start careers in programming.
“When you are a young person, you are much more apt to listen and take the advice of someone who looks like you than some old person,” Gomez said. “What I really love about their model is they are in high school trying to teach something that other high schoolers or even middle school people would respond better to because they are their own age.”
In addition to helping with funding, 80/20 will play a mentoring role with Apps for Aptitude by offering personal guidance. They will also introduce the founders to additional organizations, such as the San Antonio Area Foundation, which can help them through the IRS application process.
To help Apps for Aptitude promote child literacy, 80/20 Foundation Deputy Director Scott Meltzer will create a list of potential organizations, such as SA Reads and San Antonio Youth Literacy, for the nonprofit organization to consider funding.
While it has a basic framework in place, Apps for Aptitude is still looking to build its team. It has recruited two more students from the International School of the Americas: Senior Cosmo Albrecht, who will be the organization’s head of marketing, and sophomore Brendan Rodriguez who will serve as the creative director. The team is still looking for students familiar with Java and C+ to help grade incoming student submissions.
For further guidance, Apps for Aptitude also has a board of directors which serves in a mentoring and advising role. The board currently includes Trinity University Associate Professor of Education Angela Breidenstein, International School of the Americas Principal Emily Bieser, and Chairman Emeritus of the UK Atomic Energy Authority Lady Barbara Judge. It is currently looking for additional board members and mentors with a technology background.

This week the Austin Technology Council announced plans to host the Battle of the Bands during Austin Startup Week.
The event, in partnership with Austin Music People, will take place at the Mohawk will feature musical acts from Austin’s technology sector.
“This is really a celebration of the two industries that drive our city: music and technology,” said James Moody, member of the AMP executive committee and co-founder of Transmission Entertainment. “Any opportunity we have to collaborate and showcase our city’s talent should be embraced.”
The event is open to the public. Bands must include a member of an Austin Technology Council member company. Bands can submit their video audition via Vine, YouTube, Twitter or Instagram along with the band’s name and the hashtag #ATCbattle by Oct. 1.
“The Battle of the Bands is where technology and music merge at a crossroads of cool,” Julie Huls, president of the Austin Technology Council, said in a news release. “This is an opportunity for Austin’s technology companies to promote their cool culture as well as spend an evening among peers and friends.”