Toshiba Lighting & Technology Corp. has bought GreenStar Products, which makes energy-efficient, long-lasting LED lights for roads and other outdoor areas.
The terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Since February of 2012, Toshiba International Corp. has contracted with San Antonio-based GreenStar to make LED Lights.
GreenStar’s LED lights last longer and require less maintenance than traditional roadway lights. They also do not contain mercury or lead.
“We were attracted to GreenStar for its innovative product design and keen focus on developing luminaires that make the most of LED technology to address the market’s desire for more energy efficient and low maintenance products,” Ken Honeycutt, Toshiba’s LED Lighting Systems Division president, said in a statement. “This acquisition allows us to supply a variety of markets from commercial and industrial to governmental and institutional in North America and beyond, with innovative, reliable products that create real value.”
CPS Energy has contracted with GreenStar to replace 20,000 of the city’s lights with LED lights in a year long program that began last year.
In addition to GreenStar, Toshiba also bought Consert, a smart energy home meter company with 60 employees, in February of this year.
Category: Austin (Page 246 of 310)
MDI Group, an information technology staffing company based in Atlanta, has opened a new Austin office.
MDI recently opened an office Fort Worth and has another Texas office in Dallas and seven other locations nationwide.
The company decided to locate in Austin because Austin’s technology industry is booming and “Staffing Industry Analysts places Austin in the top 20 temporary IT staffing markets,” according to a news release.
MDI plans to have 20 employees in the Austin office by the end of the year. It already has its first client here.
Daryl Fox, a University of Texas graduate, will oversee the Austin office. She has nearly 25 years of IT business development experience.
“After 16 years, I’m excited to return to Austin and leverage my local IT experience and relationships on behalf of MDI,” Fox said. “We’ve hit the ground running and are pleased to have landed our first of many Austin clients – providing ‘best fit’ IT staffing services and contingent workforce solutions.”
The Austin Technology Incubator, known as ATI, in the IC2 Institute at the University of Texas at Austin, reported its companies raised $35 million during the first three months of 2013.
During the last five years, ATI companies have raised more than $250 million of investor capital.
The ATI companies reporting funding in the first part of this year are as follows:
- Spredfast, a social marketing software provider, raised $18 million in venture capital led by OpenView Venture Partners with InterWest Partners and Austin Ventures.
- Savara Pharmaceuticals received a $7.4 million second tranche of a its 416 million Series B financing and received a $4 million grant by the National Institutes of Health. Savara develops pulmonary drugs to treat Cystic Fibrosis.
- Xeris Pharmaceuticals raised $1.7 million in venture capital and $1.9 million from the Texas’ Emerging Technology Fund for the commercialization of its Glucagon Rescue Pen (G-Pen) ™ and G-Pen Mini™ for diabetes treatment.
- Admittance Technologies received $2 million from the ETF for the development and commercialization of CardioVol™, their first platform technology, which enhances the performance of existing cardiac devices and the detection of early signs of heart failure.
- WheelInnovationz received $868,000 in seed funding to continue the development of its mobile-device management software.
“Our number one job is to get ATI companies funded. We accomplish this by surrounding them with talent they couldn’t access otherwise,especially at their early stage,” Isaac Barchas, director, Austin Technology Incubator, said in a news release. “Q1 2013 delivered on this, and we congratulate our portfolio and alumni companies on their momentum.”
InCube Labs, a research incubator in San Antonio, Thursday announced it has launched two new life sciences companies.
Those companies are Theracle, which has developed a treatment for brain cancer, and iBridge Medical, which is developing a technology platform to manage patient’s implanted medical devices.
That brings to five the total number of companies at InCube Labs. The others are Corhythm, Neurolink and Fe3 Medical.
“These new companies represent the 21st century innovation and high-wage job creation that are fast becoming a thriving part of San Antonio’s economy,” Mayor Julian Castro said in a news statement.
“Our new companies represent exciting opportunities to dramatically improve patient care,” Mir Imran, InCube Labs Chairman & CEO, said in a statement.
In 2010, InCube Labs and the City of San Antonio announced the creation of InCube Lab’s San Antonio Innovation Center and three companies moved from Silicon Valley to San Antonio – Fe3 Medical, Corhythm and Neurolink.
InCube Labs also has a center in San Jose, CA.
Providing further validation that Texas has a red hot tech market, Xconomy has launched its eighth bureau in the Lone Star State.
Xconomy, based in Cambridge, MA., covers innovation hubs in Boston, Boulder/Denver, Detroit, New York, San Diego, San Francisco and Seattle.
“Texans pride themselves on being independent, adventurous, and hard-charging: the same characteristics that make for great innovators,” according to Xconomy’s news release.
Angela Shah, a former reporter with the Dallas Morning News and the Austin American-Statesman, is the editor of Xconomy Texas. She’s based in Houston. But it’s Xconomy’s first bureau named after a state instead of a city.
“Texas is unique in that the people who live there identify more with the state as a whole than an individual city,” Bob Buderi, Xconomy CEO and Editor in Chief said in a news statement. “In keeping with this spirit, we felt that it made more sense to have a statewide bureau, rather than a city-based model, especially as we build our presence.”
“Texas has long been a robust part of the U.S. economy with contributions in energy, life sciences and technology,” Shah said in a news statement. “I’m looking forward to now being able to share with Xconomy’s readers the stories of Texas’ personalities and their innovations coming out of its startups, universities and research centers.”
To support the Texas bureau, Xconomy has partnered with BioHouston, BioMed San Antonio, Capital Royalty, Cooley LLP, Rice University, Texas Medical Center, University of Houston, and the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston.
Bob Metcalfe, professor of innovation at the University of Texas at Austin, is known to say “the world’s problems will not be solved by another website.”
The co-inventor of Ethernet, which celebrates its 40th anniversary on May 22, and founder of 3Com, should know.
Metcalfe falls into the category of entrepreneur known as an innovator. He created an innovation driven entreprise that changed the world.
He’s even got his own law: Metcalfe’s Law.
To illustrate the difference between innovators and the other startups, the Kauffman Foundation has just released a report, “A Tale of Two Entrepreneurs: Understanding Differences in the Types of Entrepreneurship in the Economy,” detailing how “not all startup companies are created equal.”
Both “innovation-driven entreprises” and “traditional small and medium sized entreprises” can create valuable products, services and jobs, but it’s the big innovators that take on global problems and “can potentially create hundreds or even thousands of high skill jobs if they succeed.”
So the question begs does the high tech region of Austin and San Antonio have enough innovation driven entreprises? And if not, why not?
Certainly, the region has produced quite a few: Dell, National Instruments and Rackspace among others.
“People who use entrepreneurship as a ‘catch-all’ phase to capture a single economic activity make an important mistake,” Bill Aulet, managing director, Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship and coauthor of the paper, said in a statement. “Each type faces different hiring challenges, funding needs, growth potential, risk levels and other needs that support organizations must understand to successfully help these companies.”
The Kauffman report details how innovation driven startups are often focused on global markets and are often founded by highly educated individuals with diverse skills and they require external investors. Whereas small and medium startups focus on local or regional markets and they require little outside investment.
Registration for RISE Week 2013 kicked off today and already some sessions have almost filled up.
Do you want to know about veteran entrepreneur Gary Hoover’s latest venture, his fifth startup, and how he comes up with great ideas? There’s a session for that. Hoover founded the Bookstop book store chain and Hoover’s in Austin.
How about a course on the ART of the Startup? Bob Metcalfe, co-inventor of Ethernet, founder of 3Com and now professor of innovation at the University of Texas at Austin, has got that covered. He’s doing an introductory session on entrepreneurship. But you better hurry to sign up because only one spot out of 25 remained late Wednesday night.
There’s even a session on the Austin-San Antonio connection, organized by Roberto Rondero de Mosier. Jason Seats, TechStars managing director is participating along with Steven Quintanilla, founder of Kirpeep and Nick Longo of Geekdom. And Silicon Hills News might even be involved in the discussion on that one.
The nonprofit organization behind RISE hosts sessions by experienced entrepreneurs all over Austin from Monday, May 13 through Friday, May 17. The kickoff party is Monday at the Bullock Texas State History Museum. And the closing party, sponsored by Dell and Turnstone, is Friday night at Stage on Sixth.
By Ian Panchèvre
Reporter with Silicon Hills News
3 Day Startup was a success!
“How so?” you ask.
Well, one of my takeaways from 3DS was an emphasis on using key metrics. In that spirit, I’ve developed a metric that I call the Active Sleep Debt Ratio (ASDR), which is the ratio of the number of hours you’ve slept over the past day.
For example, if over the past 24 hours you’ve enjoyed a healthy 8 hours of sleep, you would have an ASDR of 0.33. The highest ASDR is 1.0, which is only possible after a period of extreme sleep deprivation or medical hardship.
Well, in this case, the day after 3DS, I posted an ASDR of 0.71 with 17 hours of sleep. When it was all said and done, I was very tired.
A break in the action at #3DSSATX – Photo by Michael Girdley, via Twitter
For one, I grew as an entrepreneur. Little things, like a worthy book or an interesting concept, frequently came up during conversation. More mechanical things, like research and pitch techniques, were absorbed from both mentors and other participants.
But the opportunity to immediately apply those new insights to a particular task was the best part of the educational experience.
“The experiential learning is really great to see in action,” noted Josh Schechter, an organizer of the event.
Cristal Glangchai, also an event organizer and the director of Trinity’s entrepreneurship program, built on that sentiment during her remarks Sunday evening. Glangchai pointed out that while chemists and biologist have laboratories, artists have studios, and engineers have machine shops, entrepreneurs don’t necessarily have a defined destination for developing their skills.
“3DS is essentially an applied environment for entrepreneurship,” stated Glangchai.
What are some of the things that happen when you compress the entrepreneurial experience into a single weekend? Nerf gun battles and sprints to the kitchen for food were only part of it.
“Pivots,” declared Cole Wollak, a 3DS mentor. “We saw multiple pivots throughout the weekend. Which is good, it indicates that teams are learning.”
Yes, if there is one constant in entrepreneurship, it is that there are no constants. Change is an ever-present force that should be embraced rather than resisted.
To that extent, it was interesting to see how the various projects and teams morphed over the weekend. The company my team worked on, grantsfor.me, changed quite a bit, quite often.
Our journey started with general observations from Wesley Zernial, a grant expert who works with non-profit organizations. Through him, we learned that the system was broken. Market research, brainstorming sessions, and friendly debates caused our team to explore a number of possible solutions: a marketplace to connect grant writers and applicants; an online educational resource center; a common platform for grant providers and grant seekers…
Ultimately, grantsfor.me would improve the grant experience by matching grant seekers with the best possible grant opportunities for them, and by making it easy to electronically file grant applications online. “Match.com meets TurboTax,” we were fond of saying.
Before I knew it, Sunday evening came around. While the Spurs were steamrolling over the Lakers to complete their playoff sweep, I was part of a large crowd that attended the final pitches.
On Friday, 15 concepts were presented. By Saturday evening, the list of concepts had narrowed down to 9. And on Sunday, 5 startups, including grantsfor.me, pitched to a panel of judges, investors, and supporters of San Antonio’s entrepreneurial community.
Dean’s List helps reduce dishonesty and risk during the hiring process by supplementing the traditional resume with a more nuanced work history.
Deal Frenzy seeks to gamify the deal hunting and mobile couponing experience.
Maker Cubes is getting in on the exciting additive manufacturing revolution with its own version of 3D printing.
And finally, one of the more memorable quotes of the weekend – “Think about Kickstarter and American Apparel having a baby and ‘BOOM!’” – came courtesy of Martel Mathews when he was describing 10,000 Threads, a marketplace for fashion designers.
“I thought they all performed admirably,” said Sheridan Chambers, a member of the 3DS judging panel and a Principal at the Denim Group. “The groups were all great. They did an amazing amount of work in a very short period of time.”
After the pitches concluded and the audience had dispersed, an awards ceremony and after party had the entire 3DS body in an upbeat mood.
Photo by Mariah Noelle via Twitter.
Glangchai concurred: “The chemistry of the groups was amazing, everyone took feedback really well.”
But perhaps, what had everyone most excited, wasn’t reflective joy over a weekend well-spent, but rather, growing excitement for the future of our community.
“I am thrilled for San Antonio, that it has the brain power and entrepreneurial minds that we were able to see in action,” beamed Cynthia Schluter, an audience member at the final pitches.
Thanks to 3DS, forty local entrepreneurs are now better equipped to pursue their dreams and start new ventures.
A year ago, TechRanch expanded its reach into Chile.
It struck up a partnership with startups in South America to foster that region’s entrepreneurial base.
Now, TechRanch, a coworking space and incubator in Austin, has expanded even further this time into Asia with a partnership in the city-state island of Singapore.
TechRanch and Get2Volume announced their partnership today “to incubate and grow technology companies in Austin, Texas and Singapore,” according to a news release.
Get2volume, funded by Singapore’s National Research Foundation, invests in, mentors and helps grow innovative microelectronics-centric companies.
TechRanch and G2V plan to collaborate to help each venture launch startups in their respective countries.
“Technology companies are global from day one,” Mike Holt, Get2Volume CEO, said in a news release. “Working together with TechRanch, we bring our companies global growth and execution capabilities”.
“This partnership provides portfolio companies with access to capital, connections and complementary capability. We look forward to working together to nurture and empower the next generation of technology entrepreneurs and enable their success” Sandeep Kumar, General Partner Business Development, TechRanch, said in a news release.
By Andrew Moore
Reporter with Silicon Hills News
The Glos-Guide Team, photo by Andrew Moore
Recently, Quigley posted the following on Facebook:
“This class was just a blurry idea a year ago. Today, one of my student groups – Glos Guide for Journalists – got an app in the Apple App Store. Amazing work for a team of undergrads to pull this off in one semester.”
The Mobile News App Design class held their first ever Demo Day at the Belo Center for New Media at the University of Texas Austin campus on Saturday. The class produced five apps — all of which will be available in the Apple App Store at some point. Students will be able to keep the revenue. Judges from several different news organizations provided feedback and advice to the student developers and gave them awards.
The Glos Guide for Journalists iPhone app won Best Overall App. It is essentially a quick reference guide for the AP stylebook – the official grammar, punctuation, and practices guide of the U.S. news industry. The app breaks down rules into categories for easy navigation, and allows users to bookmark and print out rules in a PDF format.
The students who created the Glos Guide consulted different journalism professionals throughout its development. As a result, they compiled a resource of tips and advice given by each professional. Users can search these journalism tips by author. Several UT journalism professors contributed advice, including Robert Quigley and Kate Dawson.
The app does not include the complete AP stylebook – that would have caused a copyright issue – but it does include basic hard-to-find rules such as when to capitalize directions such as “north”. It is available in the Apple App Store for 99 cents.
One of the reasons for the Glos Guide’s success was the simplicity of the product, as the team was careful to avoid a problem known as “feature creep”.
“Some of the more successful apps are the apps that are just simpler in nature,” said Event Judge Chris Visit of Frank+Victor design. “Apps that are resources tend to be the most successful because they have a finite universe of content. You’re not aggregating data or dealing with user submissions.”
The most news-related app of the bunch was Nerv, a newsfeed app that piggybacks on Twitter. Nerv aggregates credible twitter news handles for major cities, and makes them easily searchable. The app’s goal is to help users find out what is going on quickly and easily.
“The big difference is that it’s credible,” said UT computer science senior Jonathan Long. “It is definitely easier to use and the information is more readily available.”
Currently the app only covers Austin, Boston, San Francisco and Portland; but the team is looking at adding more cities. Nerv is available in the App Store for free. Long hopes that local businesses in these cities will want to work with their app to provide better information and perhaps some revenue.
The one iPad app of the bunch was PicBook – a scrapbooking app integrated with Facebook. PicBook works with the picture tags in Facebook to let users pull the photos they have in common with one or multiple friends. Once the pictures load, the iPad app will automatically resize them to fit in a digital scrapbook were users can easily move and rotate the photos. Users can also add text, colorful backgrounds, and other touches to their digital scrapbook.
Implementing a good graphic design was a major challenge for all the teams, and PicBook’s biggest development issue was keeping the layout clean and simple enough for anyone to use the PicBook interface.
“It was hard to decide how to set up the pages so that they were really intuitive to use and also looked aesthetically pleasing,” said journalism graduate student Jeana Bertoldi. “For the journalism students it was hard to make the design, and then for them (Computer Science students) it was hard to implement the design.”
PicBook will have a freemium business model where the core app is free and users can purchase additional features. The PicBook team is now putting the finishing touches on the app and will submit it to the App Store next month. They will eventually incorporate a website where users can upload and compare their PicBooks. Users will also be able to post the PicBooks to their Facebook pages.
An app with a more narrow news approach was Prix-Party – which focused on Formula One racing news. Designed to keep people keep connected to Formula One events, the app keeps track of the location, time, and cost of the events around Austin with a simple list view. The Prix-Party team worked closely with Kevin Olsen at The Austin Grand Prix to bring the app to market. Additionally, their app collects Formula One tweets so users know what the racing community is talking about.
The Prix-Party team experienced the pressures of a real world app development cycle first hand, giving them valuable experience in working with team dynamics.
“At first our team was getting along great, and then as the pressure began to build we started to have this stormy phase where we were getting irritated with each other,” said journalism senior Caleb Ingles. “It got to the point where we had no choice but to figure out a way to work together.”
“You have to learn a lot about project management,” said computer science major Angela Deng. “If you don’t manage things right you’re going to hold up your entire team and just waste time.”
The Prix-Party app will be submitted to the App Store a few weeks from now. The students have already created an iPhone style commercial for the app.
Last but not least is Pxljam. This app is designed to give the “360 concert experience” by allowing all the users who attend a concert to easily upload the photos to a consolidated gallery accessible with the Pxljam app. After a fan takes a concert picture, they add the name of the band and the location before uploading the image. Pxljam will then collect all these images and sort them.
The Pxljam team presenting. Photo by Robert Quigley
One of the biggest challenges the Pxljam team faced was settling on a layout design and style for the product that really represented who they are.
“We went through so many phases of what Pxljam was,” said journalism graduate student Carlos Morales. “The hardest part was coming to a point where we could say ‘ok, this is what it is.’”
Pxljam has already been submitted to the App Store as a free download, and will notify fans on their Pxljam Facebook page when the app is live. They hope to work with Austin music venues to begin creating revenue.
The Mobil News App Design course was the first class of its kind at the journalism school of the University of Texas in Austin.
The class was composed of 13 computer science students and 13 journalism students. Senior Lecturer Robert Quigley led the class from a journalism perspective. Austin tech entrepreneur Joshua McClure mentored the class on the app development and computer science side. Students in both disciplines had to quickly learn basic skills in iOS coding language “Objective C”, as well as Photoshop skills, app layout principles, and the basic principles of media and journalism.
“The idea was to bridge the two disciplines and try to make journalists who can apply to geek jobs and know that they’re going to get it because they have the experience of having built an app,” said journalism professor Robert Quigley. “And also to give the computer science students more of a well rounded communications perspective.”
Quigley originally pitched the idea for the class to Journalism School Director Glenn Frankel and Associate Director Wanda Cash more than a year ago. After this class’s success, the Journalism School will continue to pursue app design courses.
Quigley will help create an Intro to Mobile Programming for Journalists course this fall, which will be taught by freelance iPhone developer Jeff Linwood who helped teach coding in this inaugural class. The class has been posted and is already full. Professor Quigley is more than impressed with the students in his first app design class, and can’t wait to teach the next Mobile News App Design class In spring of 2014.
“I’m unbelievably proud of my students. They worked so hard. They were so creative. They had so much fun. They learned so much. I can’t put it into words how exciting this is for me,” said Quigley. “This was a really special class.”
