In a blog post, Rackspace announced that it has remade its app for Android mobile phones.
The app lets users manage their cloud servers hosted at Rackspace from Android-powered smartphones.
Other features include the ability to manage multiple accounts; reboot, rename, resize and rebuild servers; change root passwords; check system status; ping servers from multiple data centers; and call Rackspace support directly from the app.
“And now we’re being more Fanatical in how we approach the app and support – it’s been built to provide an easy-to-use experience backed by the support and performance that you’ve come to expect from us,” according to the blog post.
The Android app is available now via Google Play.
Category: Austin (Page 241 of 318)
By SUSAN LAHEY
Reporter with Silicon Hills News
Erick Schonfeld, executive producer of DEMO. photos by Susan Lahey
DEMO Executive Producer Erick Shonfeld has traveled the world looking for companies to pitch at DEMO’s event October 15-17 in Silicon Valley. During the day, the DEMO team, along with Capital Factory mentors, heard pitches from applicants and gave them feedback. Thursday night they threw a party at Bourbon Girl and some of the companies from earlier in the day, as well as some volunteers from the audience, made 90 second pitches.
“I Tweeted out today that when I look at Austin startups, I see real tech focused on real business models,” Shonfeld said. “I didn’t see a lot of frivolous consumer apps. I saw products that are really well thought out, they’re going after a specific market, they know what that market is and they know how they’re going to make money. That’s unusual these days.”
What I like about Austin startups: real tech with real business models #DEMOTour @ Capital Factory http://t.co/GrmK6DTz6E
— Erick Schonfeld (@erickschonfeld) July 11, 2013
Companies that wanted to pitch had to apply and had to meet several criteria, one of which was that the company was pre-launch.
“For the most part, nobody can know about it, it has to launch on stage. DEMO has to be its public debut. It has to be a technology business, consumer or enterprise, that’s pushing the boundaries of technology or markets in a new way or tagging new markets.”
Attorney Chris Murphy pitched Lawful.ly, photo by Susan Lahey
“In our case it validated a lot of what we thought…a lot of it was you’ve got to prove that you’re the team that knows how to do this,” Murphy said. Then they encouraged him to keep in touch as his startup evolves and attracts customers.
Some of the companies that pitched at Capital Factory didn’t attend the DEMO party so other local companies had a chance to pitch, including Beyonic, which helps African nations transition into mobile payments.
Even that had value, said Ronald Miller, VP of marketing and PR for Beyonic.
After his brief pitch they met several people who could prove useful for the company, including a VC who works in the same area they do.
Previous Austin alumni of DEMO include Ube, which won a People’s Choice award in fall 2012, Toopher, Itography, Gelato Dating and Infochimps.
Appconomy, founded in 2010 with operations in Austin and Shanghai, China, filed papers with the Securities and Exchange Commission revealing it has raised $2.9 million.
The Austin Business Journal first reported on the funding.
The Austin American-Statesman’s story says the company has completed $4 million in financing.
The company says it plans to raise a total of $6 million in its latest filing with federal regulators.
In December of 2011, Appconomy landed $10 million in Series A funding.
Then a year later, Appconomy announced it had raised an additional $6 million to complete its Series A round of $16 million total.
Appconomy offers a merchant payment system called AppWallet and offers an app for smartphones, tablets and feature phones.
The University of Texas’ Health Affairs has a new leader.
Dr. Raymond Greenberg of the Medical University of South Carolina announced today that he is leaving his post there to move to Austin to become executive vice chancellor for Health Affairs in the University of Texas System.
Greenberg, who will leave in late August, will oversee six health sciences institutions at UT including four medical schools, according to a story in the Charleston Post and Courier.
In Texas, Greenberg will succeed Dr. Kenneth Shine who retired last year and had served in that role since 2003.
Greenberg was selected after a comprehensive national search and will begin his duties in September, University of Texas Chancellor Francisco Cigarroa said in a news release.
“After receiving his undergraduate training from the University of North Carolina, Greenberg earned a medical degree from Duke University, a master of public health degree from Harvard University, and a doctorate in epidemiology from the University of North Carolina. Greenberg also holds honorary degrees from the College of Charleston, Simpson College and The Citadel,” according to the news release.
“There has never been a more important time for the UT System to make major advancements in academic health. With two medical schools on the horizon in Austin and South Texas and the opportunity to expand our global leadership role in the clinical, research and educational areas, Dr. Greenberg is the right person at the right time,” Cigarroa said in a news statement. “Dr. Greenberg substantively advanced excellence across education, healthcare and biomedical research at the Medical University of South Carolina during his tenure both as Provost and President.”
Greenberg will oversee the new Dell Medical School.
Since April, a committee has been searching for the first dean of the Dell Medical School in Austin. It is expected to accept its first class in 2016.
The economy must be approving because now it seems like everyone is flush with cash to outsource all the annoying tasks of life like cleaning.
And HomeJoy, a Y-Combinator tech cleaning startup from San Francisco, just launched its services in Austin. It launched last month in San Antonio.
And the company got $1.7 million in seed funding (for a cleaning service people!!!!), according to this TechCrunch post.
Never mind that there are a gazillion cleaning service companies already in the market and competition online exists from TaskRabbit, which allows people to post tasks to pay others to complete like house cleaning.
HomeJoy, which bills itself as maid service for the masses, allows anyone in the markets they serve to go online and book a cleaner, who has been vetted with a background check, for $20 an hour. Customers can also check out the profile of the cleaner assigned to their house for references.
Aaron and Adora Cheung, brother and sister founders, launched the company in 2012 and have since expanded nationwide to more than a dozen markets.
Houston-based Idera has bought CopperEgg, an Austin-based startup that specialized in software to manage cloud-based applications.
The terms of the deal were not disclosed.
To date, CopperEgg has raised $4.1 million and it makes software that can monitor public, private and hybrid cloud configurations online. It’s available as a software as a service model to companies.
“The acquisition of CopperEgg expands our value proposition by combining Idera’s robust database monitoring and CopperEgg’s server and application performance management,” Randy Jacops, CEO of Idera, said in a news release. “With the recent acquisition of Precise Software, I’m confident that the combination of Idera, CopperEgg, and Precise will give our customers unprecedented visibility and control over their IT infrastructure.”
CopperEgg has more than 500 customers and thousands of users, said Bob Quillin, its CEO.
Idera makes application and server management software and has more than 12,000 customers.
By SUSAN LAHEY
Reporter with Silicon Hills News
Refresh Austin presented two wildly different, compelling and entertaining perspectives on the process of designing and bringing a product to market Tuesday night at Capital Factory.
The first talk, Creative Extinction, was about a robotic dinosaur. Pleo was the brainchild of Caleb Chung, co-creator of Furby, which sold more than 40 million toys when it was released in 1998. The secret to Furby, Chung believed and market testing confirmed, was it evoked an emotional response in kids who played with it. They bonded with it. Chung wanted to create another toy with a soul that people would connect with.
So a group of people, working out of a Boise, Idaho garage—including Refresh Austin’s speaker Casey Hunt—created Pleo. Pleo was an adorable baby dinosaur. It wandered, sniffed, explored. If you lifted it by the tail it screamed and clawed the air with its little baby dinosaur legs. One day, in fact, Hunt was holding the dinosaur by the tail in a coffee shop and a woman rushed over, grabbed Pleo protectively into her arms and said “Stop! You’re hurting him!” Pleo would curl up on your shoulder and go to sleep.
Pleo had software, a battery pack so as not to create battery waste, and skin that was pliable and whose design was informed by a dinosaur skin expert.
“Basically we were designing by exploiting human emotion,” Hunt said. “People naturally want to project emotion and intention on everything. If you walk in a room and hit your foot on the table you say ‘That table’s a dick! It hit me in the foot!’ We do that with all kinds of stuff.”
So the Pleo designers worked on several toys, seeing how they could convey emotion. One was simply an eyeball on a stem. Could they convey emotion if the lid closed and the stem drooped? Would people register the sadness? With his animated tail and head and face Pleo was beguiling. So, what went wrong?
What Went Wrong
First of all, Pleo cost about $175 to make and had a sticker price of $350…in 2009.
It did sell, all over the world, but least successfully in the U.S. where. Essentially Hunt said, the team forgot what it was designing.
“The thing that really burns is where it went wrong was with the people who were there first…they forgot the magic. The CEO, he said, was obsessed with doing an IPO. The marketing department had Pleo tethered in a plastic bubble where none of his charms could be experienced. In Italy, they had done Pleo adoption days.
“Our marketing department had no idea what we were selling: An animal that was alive with desires unto its own.” (Hunt was educated as a playwright). Hunt’s direct supervisor allowed Pleo into a battlebot arena where a wedge-shaped black car destroyed the baby dinosaur, evoking screams from the children watching.
Plus, the team that actually built Pleo was operating happily out of a garage—Hunt had a desk made of a board on milk crates—while the parent company, Ugobe, had swanky offices in Emeryville, California. Many of the people at the headquarters had impressive resumes from Apple, Pixar, Lucasarts.
“Their contribution to that company was nothing, but they all thought each other were awesome. I don’t mean to sound bitter but that was really hard for someone sitting at a door desk in Boise.”
People from the headquarters were flying all around the world setting up distribution agreements that actually had them losing money.
“We were operating like a cash positive company when in fact we were cash negative for all but one month. At one point were losing money per unit. How do you do that?”
By the time it became clear to the board of directors what was happening and they dismissed the CEO, it was too late. The CFO who stepped in was unequipped to save the business…if it could be saved. Pleo was sold to the Chinese company who had been manufacturing him.
“They promised they would keep the spirit of Pleo alive,” Hunt said, showing a picture of Pleo as they designed him. “Look, he’s happy. He could be dancing. The emotion is there. His color seems normal, in nature, you could believe maybe there was a dinosaur somewhere that looked like that.”
Then he switched to a shot of a droopy, blue Pleo.
“What the f… is that? It’s cotton candy with legs. Look at his eyes; they’re dead inside.”
At least, he said, Pleo still exists. So many startups flame out with no evidence they were ever there.
Building a Tool for Eric Cole
The second speaker was Adrian Taylor, founder of Pushstart Creative, who explained how the company used the same design process it employs with clients to create its own product Desk Rail.
The problem, Taylor said, is that “the workspace of a modern designer lives at the intersection of analog and digital creative tools. Like any product it started with ‘Wait, this could be better. Is there something better out there? Our desk areas often become cluttered and inefficient. Artists require flexibility in their creative process and layout of workspace.”
He stopped himself and quipped “I know I sound like I’m oppressed by bad desk accessories.”
So Pushstart started in on its process which begins with four questions:
- Does this product satisfy a real end-user need or desire
- Does it enable an experience or outcome greater than the required input? In other words, does it really make people’s lives easier?
- Does it have the potential to generate profit?
- Does it support the broader company goals and brand promise
In the initial phases of answering these questions, the company looks to see if there’s already a solution out there. It also explores 20 other ways to solve the problem besides the one the client suggests—which can leave a client, in love with its idea, disgruntled.
“But there might be an even cooler way to solve the problem,” Taylor points out.
Once it’s settled on a solution it thinks is best, it does initial validation with friends or Google search. If that turns up positively, it does deep dive research.
It creates a persona and looks at every website and product that might lure that persona. In Pushstart’s case, it was Eric Cole, a good-looking, 30ish designer with rectangular glasses and a scruffle.
“We were looking at sites Eric would visit,” Taylor said. “We’d see how he’s being talked to by other brands, read reviews on Amazon about other desk holders….What does Eric aspire to have on his desk? Not what does he have but what does he aspire to have? Eric would lust after moleskin, Ray Ban frames….”
Plus they looked at analogous products, people working on similar products who weren’t their competitors: People who make cool storage solutions for tools or cooking utensils.
They created a rough prototype that they used for a year, changing the angle, of V that gripped the supplies, getting just the right springback, finding the finish that would go with Eric’s iPhone. They showed it to many designers, even put a picture of the not-yet finished product online to see how the market would respond. Some people wanted to buy it immediately. Others said “This is just all the stuff that’s laying flat on my desk now, standing up.”
“A lot of people are so scared of showing their work,” Taylor said. They go into the laboratory and build something in secret and come out with “Look what I have created! And it’s wrong, wrong, wrong.”
They used an overseas prototype which cost a third of what a U.S. company would have.
“If you care deeply about your I.P., it’s something that can be stolen, this is not a good idea,” Taylor said. “But I don’t even think they knew what this was.”
He wanted to go with an American company, he said. But the hitch wasn’t price, it was service. It was tough to get an American company to even respond to calls and emails.
Eventually, they did a Kickstarter campaign and raised more than $24,000 which Taylor saw as another positive piece of market validation.
The important thing, Taylor said, is to get over being in love with your own ideas and hiding your product until you think it’s perfect. It’s also important not to make too big a deal about the fact that the prototype you show people isn’t the finished product because they tend to treat feedback with less gravity. “Oh, it’s just the prototype. Okay, it’s fine.”
More than 125 people stayed for the two presentations Tuesday night
at Capital Factory.
On Monday night, The Tech Map and PR Over Coffee hosted a technology and media meetup at Molotov Lounge in Austin.
Ricardo Sanchez and David Manzer organized the event and dozens of startup entrepreneurs and others turned out.
The Austin Business Journal, Community Impact News and Silicon Hills News all turned out to meet and mingle. Here’s a few snapshots I took at the event with my iPhone.
HomeAway, the online marketplace for vacation rentals, has signed an 11-year lease to expand to a fourth office in Austin.
The five-story, 114,665 square-foot office at 11800 Domain Blvd. in the Domain shopping complex can accommodate up to 750 employees. HomeAway expects to move in after July of 2014.
The office will be designed for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification and will have “fun, family vacation-themed design elements that reflect the company’s culture and mission,” according to the company.
“Our employees voiced their desire to have an office in North Austin,” Brian Sharples, co-founder and CEO, said in a news release. “With easy access to a new Whole Foods, shopping and other tech companies, The Domain provided the best answer for our growing and geographically disperse HomeAway family.”
Endeavor Real Estate Group, Kent Consulting Engineers, Lauck Group, Shorenstein Properties and Southwest Strategies Group assisted HomeAway in finding the space.
HomeAway’s 200 employees working at a temporary office at 12301 Research Blvd. will move to the new office when it opens.
HomeAway, founded in 2005 in Austin with six employees, now has more than 1,300 employees worldwide.
By SUSAN LAHEY
Reporter with Silicon Hills News
Shawn Collins, photo by David Vogelpohl, of AUSOME – Austin Online Marketing for Entrepreneurs
Shawn Collins became a successful entrepreneur. The end.
The audience, many of whom are already entrepreneurs, responded off the record with WTF? One participant, Cheryl Borrenpohl, commented: “Great story, but it left me hanging! Kind of like when your VCR just dies in the middle of a gripping movie and you never know the end.”
Escape from New York
The point of the presentation was that two intense events drove Collins, an affiliate marketer, into the world of entrepreneurship. One was 9/11 when he was working at a startup two miles from Ground Zero. He and his wife, who was home with a two-month-old and pregnant with a second child, decided he needed to come home. But his boss “forbade” him. Management had decided it was safer for everyone to stay at the company.
Collins took a moment to decide the best way to respond and chose, “Yeah, okay, bye.”
He ran outside, just in time to see the second tower fall. He made it to the train where everyone aboard cheered when it started moving, then froze when it stopped seconds later. After ten minutes the announcement came that there might be bombs in the train tunnels and everyone should evacuate. Collins followed the rest of his trip home which included boats and buses and hitching a ride. And when he finally returned to his car at the local train station he realized some of the owners of these cars might not return. In fact eight people from his town died that day. And yet his boss had insisted he stay.
“I don’t ever want to be in that situation again,” he thought.
You Die on a Today
His second story was about his father, who never chose the job that would have made him happy because he went for money and security. When a Madison Avenue job opened up that paid poorly but would have suited his creative skills, Collins’ grandfather admonished him “You’re not supposed to like your job. Go for the money.”
Their lives held a series of promised vacations to Ireland and a fantasy Cadillac in the future but the reality was motel vacations in nearby towns and a series of “beater” cars. All his dad looked forward to was retirement. Then he died at 61, months before it happened.
“A lot of people live for tomorrow. But you die on a today,” Collins said. To give his father one more “tomorrow,” he and his brother took his father’s ashes to Yankee Stadium in baggies in their socks and scattered them.
Then he went to a convention on a cruise and both he and another woman offered suggestions for changing the convention and were pooh poohed by the guy running the convention. So they decided to create their own convention and five months later put the other guy out of business.
The end.
Had he been speaking to a room full of lifelong IBM employees, it might have been more impactful, but in a room full of people already struggling to build their businesses, find customers and investors and wear a dozen hats, there was a dearth of practical advice.
Plus there was only light beer.