Category: Austin (Page 249 of 318)

By ANDREW MOORE
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

How can a mobile app help small microbreweries become more profitable? After all, the practice of microbrewing today is not fundamentally different from the way monks brewed beer hundreds of years ago.
What has changed, however, is the way the beer is sold and regulated. Brewers are taxed per month on what they produce; not what they sell – something monks didn’t worry about. This means that a brewer must keep track of large amounts of data each month for both tax forms and general quality control. And while Budweiser can pay for expensive accounting software and numerous office staff to address this problem, microbreweries often have just a single accountant and are more or less on their own.
This is where San Antonio startup Monk’s Toolbox comes in. Founded by the small craft beer-loving team of Zac Harris, Jeremy Karney, and Adam Pryor in the 3 Day Startup San Antonio event last November; Monk’s Toolbox is working on a mobile app that largely automates data collection and back-office work for microbreweries. The startup just received the $25,000 Geekdom fund last April, which will allow them to finish building out the first versions of their app. The initial launch is set for May 27 and six brewers across the country are signed up to try it out. The company plans to have the full product on the market by last quarter of 2013.
“They’ve built tools that are more for the accountants and the executives instead of building tools for the brewers,” Technical Monk Jeremy Karney said. “What we want to do is build a tool for the brewer to give them the data that they need just by going through the brewing process.”
The Monk’s Toolbox Brewers app will help microbrewers by storing data for operating procedures, inventory management, and recipe databases. It will also automate the tax process monthly.
“If you are operating a brew house, there are a million things you do besides brewing beer. You are storing stuff, cleaning stuff, fixing stuff,” Chief Monk Zac Harris said. “All that stuff right now is done on pen and paper, and we are trying to put all that into our application.”
Brewer Larry Chase of the Standing Stone Brewery in Ashland, Ore., will be one of the first to test out the product.
“Spreadsheets are great, but when you end up having five spreadsheets – one that tracks your brewing, one that tracks your inventory, one that tracks your usage rates – none of them really combine together very well,” Chase said. “The hope is that someone like Monks Toolbox is going to pull all of that data together in one place and make it accessible.”
Trading out a mobile app for beer stained brewing forms and spreadsheets has several advantages. It keeps all the checklists for standard operating procedures and maintenance procedures in one place, saving the brewer time. The Brewers App will also keep track of inventory and will alert its user if the brewery is running low on ingredients or supplies.
When it comes to the actual brewing process, the app’s updatable recipe database will help brewers stay consistent with flavor. Craft breweries have unique processes that give their beer unique flavor. These processes can be affected by changes in the local temperature and humidity and changes in ingredients used – such as grain from a new supplier. Brewers must compensate for these changes by adjusting their brewing process. Having data on recipe changes in the past can help the brewer stay consistent in the future, but only if that data is accessible.
“Right now I’ve got a clipboard and I’ve got like 100 pages on the clipboard. I have to just kind of flip through them all if I need to reference something I did a couple months ago,” said Brewer Alex Rattray from the Granary in San Antonio, Texas. “It would be easier to reference just one thing where all the information is stored.”
The feature that Monk’s Toolbox touts most, however, is the tax portion. At the end of each month, brewers must fill out both state and federal tax forms. The Brewers app can use all data collected throughout that month to automatically populate these forms in PDF format, saving brewers several hours of accounting work.
“For me this is really a helpful step because I spend probably an average of four hours every month, at least, just filling out tax paperwork,” said Director of Brewing Operations Sebastian Wolfrum from Natty Greene’s Brewing Company in North Carolina. “This data based solution lets you print out a form based on your brew logs and packaging logs. The software essentially combines all this and I think a lot of people who are new could use the help to figure out what goes in the forms and what doesn’t.”
Monk’s Toolbox is working on other ways to help microbrewers as well. One example is the On Tap app, which is currently in its alpha version and in use at The Friendly Spot in San Antonio.
As its name suggests, the application displays what craft beers the bar has on tap at any given time. The monitors around the establishment show each beer’s style, name, brewery, and alcohol content, and can be customized to display additional information. The display can be quickly and easily changed via a laptop in the back.
“Customers in the craft brewing industry want to know where their beer came from,” Harris said. “It’s about the bar and the brewer interacting with the customer, on a level where the customer gets excited about the product.”
According to the National Brewers Association, the craft beer brewing industry increased its production volume by 15 percent in 2012 and is now worth $10.2 Billion in the U.S. There are about 2,347 craft brewers in the nation. Director of Brewing Operations Sebastian Wolfrum, who runs a mid-sized regional operation in North Carolina, believes that keeping up with data is essential to the continued growth of the industry.
“Why Monk’s Toolbox is a very good undertaking is that, making good quality beer over time is really important to this young industry with all these new brewers coming online,” Wolfrum said. “If this project really works well and we all come together with something that is a really nice online tool, it will allow people to make better beer.”

By ANDREW MOORE
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

Geekdom of San Antonio Wednesday night held a virtual town hall meeting for the March for Innovation, a movement supporting immigration reform by creating a virtual march on Washington.
The virtual march was a series of online town halls streamed live from New York, Austin, San Antonio, and San Francisco. The cities streamed their town halls in a coordinated consecutive event, with San Antonio going live at 7:15 p.m.
Free Flow Research founder Peter French organized San Antonio’s virtual town hall meeting along with the Silver Fox Studios, located on the 10th floor of the Weston Centre. French was also coordinating with Jeremy Robbins, the director of the Partnership for a New American Economy and senior policy advisor to New York City, Mayor Bloomberg.
Hosted by Talk Now SA’s Chris Duel, the event included guest appearances by Trinity University President Dennis Ahlburg, San Antonio Councilman Diego M. Bernal, a skype chat with Congressman Joaquin Castro and more.
“The March for Innovation itself is built as the largest virtual march on Washington,” said French. “The idea is to leverage the power of social media to send digital waves across the country over a two day period and activate hundreds of thousands of people.”
To become part of the event, Twitter users sounded off with the hashtag #iMarch and Facebook users switched their picture to the iMarch logo to show support. The March for Innovation website is also pushing social media — allowing users to easily tweet, facebook, or call their local representatives in support of immigration reform.
All this comes in the wake of the Senate Judiciary Committee passing immigration reform legislation with a vote of 13-5. Action on the legislation has been led by a bipartisan group of senators called the “gang of eight” including Senators Marco Rubio, R-Fla., John McCain, R-Ariz., Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., Dick Durbin, D-Ill., Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., Michael Bennet, D-Colo. and Bob Menedez, D-N.J. The legislation will finally reach the Senate after June 1, with no opposition from Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
San Antonio leaders such as City Councilman Bernal see this as a positive step for both the country and the city of San Antonio.
“From a city perspective, our job is to make sure that we retain and attract talent,” said Bernal. “Without comprehensive immigration reform we are losing out on lots of opportunity for great folks to be here, work here, live here; and not take jobs as people have said but really create jobs.”
Ramiro A. Cavazos, president of the San Antonio Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, said the current immigration policy actually leads to a loss of talent.
“Unless you are a political exile….or you are leaving a communist country, we are not embracing talented people,” said Cavazos. “You come to a graduate school in this country and you get a degree in innovation and technology, and we ship you back to India or China and then they start companies competing against the U.S. We want to keep the high-tech and low-tech workforce in San Antonio.”
The issue hit closest to home for Parlevel Systems co-founder Walter Teele, who has gone through the long, complex, and uncertain process for immigrant students coming to the United States.
“There are immigrants who are very hungry and very eager to build companies in the U.S. that are creating jobs. And those companies are going to have a high impact on the economy.” said Teele. “So it’s counterproductive to create barriers for these immigrants to create companies in the U.S.”
Teele is all too familiar with the barriers to becoming an immigrant entrepreneur. According to Teele, students wishing to study in the U.S. must first come on a F1 visa. The student must work full time and can only take part time employment offered by the college. After they graduate, a student must pursue a job in his or her field and apply for a OPT, or Optional Practical Training visa, to stay in the country.
This only lasts the student one year. To work in the country longer, immigrants must find a company that will hire them on long term and sponsor them for the H1-B visa process. The H1-B Visas is a nonimmigrant visa that allows companies to hire foreign workers with specialized skills.
After completing this process, there is still a risk that the student immigrant might have to leave the country. If the U.S. receives petitions for more than its annual quota of 85,000 H1-B visas, such in 2013 when it received 124,000, then all of the petitions submitted will go into a lottery process and will be randomly drawn – leaving both the business and the graduating immigrant on the hook for months.
“Even if your application was literally the first in the door, if the lottery goes into effect you don’t know for certain of your application will be chosen,” said French. “The economic crux of this issue is that current economic policy makes us less competitive.”
Fortunately, as a founder of Parlevel Systems who has invested in his startup, Teele may sponsor himself under special visa rules. Teele’s particular type of visa can be renewed indefinitely, but normal H1-B visas last only a maximum of six years. Teele believes that the economy would greatly benefit by creating a system where entrepreneurs can become citizens and continue to contribute.
“If you want to open a company in the U.S. and you are going to create jobs and you can raise money for it, you should be able to stay. Period,” says Teele. “There has to be a path to citizenship for entrepreneurs.”
Currently, however, there is no path to citizenship for Teele. But this is an issue that the new immigration reform bill will hopefully address.
“I do think that the current immigration bill does a decent job for trying to account for some of those things,” said City Councilman Bernal. “It does account for the transition from being foreign born and getting and education to wanting to be a U.S. employee.”

Full disclosure: Geekdom is a sponsor of Silicon Hills News. Silver Fox Studios is also an advertiser with Silicon Hills News. Laura Lorek, founder of Silicon Hills News, supports H1-B Visa expansion and immigration reform.

San Antonio was one of four cities nationwide to participate in a livestream city to city town hall to discuss the need for immigration reform.
Austin also held a virtual town hall along with New York City and San Francisco.
An immigration reform bill is currently pending in the U.S. Senate. Among the issues being considering is the expansion of the H1-B Visa that allows companies to hire highly skilled technical talent from other countries. The H1-B Visas are currently capped at 85,000 per year and the bill would expand that to 110,000 per year.
Several politicians, heads of chambers, technology industry executives and others gathered in the Silver Fox Studios Wednesday to broadcast live on the Internet a program about the need for immigration reform. And a call to action to encourage viewers to contact their representatives and senators to express their support for immigration reform.

Full disclosure: I participated in the March for Innovation and I’m in favor of expanding the H1-B Visa program and for immigration reform.

Bob Metcalfe, professor of innovation at the University of Texas at Austin, celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Ethernet today at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif.
“On May 22, 1973 with David R. Boggs, I used my IBM Selectric with its Orator ball to type up a memo to my bosses at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), outlining our idea for this little invention called “Ethernet”, which we later patented,” Metcalfe wrote in a post to Reddit.
In addition to attending a celebration at the Computer History Museum, Metcalfe participated in a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” two hour long session.
Metcalfe kicked off the session with this post: “You’re probably connecting to reddit through a technology I invented. I’m Bob Metcalfe and I invented Ethernet – AMA”
During the AMA, Metcalfe answered a wide range of questions including whether he made a lot of money off his invention, to which he answered he didn’t make a lot on patent royalties from Ethernet “but by SELLING Ethernet for a decade to people who didn’t know they needed it.”
Metcalfe has given several talks and written articles about the importance of sales for entrepreneurs. In his 1999 article “Invention is a Flower, Innovation is a Weed” he explains why sales matter.
Metcalfe also reported that the official Ethernet cable color is yellow. (I thought it was blue)
One of my favorite answers from Metcalfe is to the question “Do you think someone else could have done it at the time?”
Metcalfe responded “Yes, but they didn’t. I was lucky to be born to my parents, to accidentally get accepted to MIT, to sneak into Xerox Parc, and lucky to get the completely new problem of having a building full of personal computers, one on every desk, if you can image.”
Another thing Metcalfe often says is that he doesn’t know why he succeeded.
“Most successful entrepreneurs I’ve met have no idea about the reasons for their success. They were thrown-like rocks. I had the good fortune to be thrown into Silicon Valley. My trajectory was a mystery to me then, and only a little less so now,” according to that 1999 article.
And the best advice someone gave Metcalfe on how to deal with challenging people or situations?
“God (or Darwin) gave us one mouth and two ears. Take the hint. Best to listen first. Summarize back with the language you’ve heard. Then, act!”
Someone should really give Metcalfe his own talk show. He dispenses good advice as easily as Oprah. And although I’ve been lucky enough to hear Metcalfe speak several times since he landed in Austin two years ago, he is always inspiring and insightful. I learn from him every time.
Metcalfe also answered a few questions about the Internet’s impact on society.
“The Internet reduces market frictions and expands freedom of choice. I give the Internet credit for everything good that has happened since 1969.”
He also said that he thought Google’s Fiber rollout in Austin would spur even more competition to provide even faster Internet speeds throughout the region.
In response to a question about his opinion of Google, he said he wished he had thought of it.
“As a professor of innovation, I like Google especially because of its “pivot” from fast search to auctioned targeted advertising. Google unseated Microsoft which unseated IBM. Who will unseat Google? Cannot wait to see how that plays out.”

You can read the full post here.

You can also find more about the 40th anniversary of the Internet on its Facebook page.

Virgin America this month launched a new daily roundtrip service from Austin-Bergstrom International Airport to San Jose.
To keep the high tech travelers happy, Virgin America offers WiFi on every flight and has other features like power outlets and personal touch-screen entertainment platforms at every seat.
The addition of the direct route shows the growing ties between the Austin region and San Francisco and Silicon Valley.
Fares between San Francisco and Austin start from $79. Southwest Airlines also offers a daily roundtrip direct service between Austin and San Jose, and the flight has affectionately become known as the “nerd bird,” for all the technology workers who travel the route.
Virgin America celebrated its first flight to touch down in Austin on Tuesday with a red carpet welcome for its customers. Austin-based psychedelic rock band, The Bright Light Social Hour also entertained the passengers on the plane in route to Austin.
“Austin and San Francisco share deep cultural and economic ties, so it made perfect sense for us to expand our network into this area that deserves not only increased flight options, but a better brand of service,” Virgin America President and CEO David Cush said in a news release. “As the only airline serving Austin with WiFi and power outlets at every seat, Virgin America allows business travelers flying between Silicon Valley and the Silicon Hills to stay connected and productive at 35,000 feet. And for those who prefer to tune out in-flight, we offer the largest and most advanced entertainment library in the skies, with on-demand music, live television, video games, interactive Google maps and more than 25 films, all available at their seatback touch-screen.”

Compare Metrics announced it has received $4.2 million in first round financing led by Austin Ventures.
Other investors included Mike Maples with Floodgate, Bob Greene with Contour Venture Partners, Julie Allegro with Allegro Venture Partners and Ralph Mack with Mack Capital as well as investors Tom Meredith and Adam Ross.
The Austin-based company plans to use the money to support its expansion. The company makes an analytics software aimed at retailers.
“Compare Metrics is transforming the way people are making buying decisions,” Compare Metrics’ co-founder and CEO Garrett Eastham, said in a news release. “We believe the future of online consumer discovery is not about creating the ultimate algorithm to tell consumers what they want but about giving consumers the best tools to articulate their personal desires and confidently follow their unique decision-making path.”
Compare Metrics has created a platform that delivers only the most relevant features to a customer. The platform becomes more intelligent the more a user interacts with it. It learns a person’s preferences and then makes product suggestions based on certain features. The company has a patent pending on its feature discovery and comparison platform.
Compare Metrics makes money by selling categories to e-commerce sites on a monthly basis. It is a software as a service company and charges $500 per month per category to retailers.
Eastham, Mikael Solomon and Stephen Goodwin founded Compare Metrics in late 2012. The company debuted its product at the Innotech Beta Summit last November.
“The solution was inspired by cognitive science research Eastham led at Stanford University to understand the impact of different computer interfaces on the decision-making process,” according to a news release. “The team has grown the idea into an innovative technology platform built from the ground-up, grown a highly scalable content curation team and content management system, and has signed market-leading customers.”

SolarWinds announced it has signed an agreement to buy N-able Technologies for $120 million in cash.
Austin-based Solarwinds, which makes information technology management software, expects the deal to close by the end of May.
N-able, based in Ottawa, Canada, makes remote monitoring, management and service automated software that is based in what has come to be known as the Cloud, computing resources such as hardware and software accessible over a network from a remote location.
“Upon completion of the acquisition, the addition of N-able to the SolarWinds family gives us the opportunity to respond to a growing need in the IT industry,” Kevin Thompson, SolarWinds’ President and CEO said in a news release.

The March for Innovation kicks off today.
The event is designed to raise awareness about immigration reform, said Peter French with Free Flow Research.
He’s organizing the San Antonio event for the March for Innovation virtual town hall meeting in the Silver Fox Studios. He’s been working with Jeremy Robbins, the director of the Partnership for a New American Economy and senior policy advisor to New York City Mayor Bloomberg.
Austin and San Antonio are two of only four cities participating in the virtual event nationwide to put the spotlight on the need for “smart immigration reform,” French said.
Austin is holding its event at uShip which will be live-streamed beginning at 5:30 p.m.
The other cities participating include New York and San Francisco. The event is a city-to-city pass-the-baton media event that includes live Google hangouts, tweet chats, Twitter town hall meetings, email blasts, and other media coverage.
Participants will include Arianna Huffington, Mayor Bloomberg, Steve Case, Mark Cuban and Eva Longoria nationally.
In San Antonio, the list of participants includes Diego Bernal, San Antonio City Councilman, Dennis Ahlburg, president of Trinity University, Nick Longo, director of Geekdom, Jason Seats, director of the TechStars Cloud, Inigo Arzec with GlobalScape, Magaly Chocano, CEO of Sweb Development and Walter Teele, co-founder of Parlevel Systems.The San Antonio event takes place from 6:30 pm to 8:00 pm and will be live-streamed nationally from 7:15 to 8 p.m.
In Austin, Burnie Burns with Rooster Teeth will moderate the event featuring Hector Dominguez, Co-Founder of Digital Union & Verdte, Olga Pechnenko, CEO & Founder at Revenue Hire, Samantha Dwinell, Director of Human Resources, Texas Instruments, Luke Kyohere, Founder of Beyonic, and Anurag Kumar, Founder and CEO of iTexico.
The March for Innovation event wants to harness the power of social media to reach as wide an audience as possible. French says the event will be the largest ever virtual march on Washington where business leaders, politicians, civic leaders, and celebrities use social and traditional media to share their support for immigration reform.
“We hope to drive hundreds of thousands of people to the March for Innovation website where they will be able to call on their Senators to pass immigration reform,” he said.
“This isn’t about us versus them partisan politics. It’s about all of us – Republicans and Democrats – seizing the moment and finally fixing our broken immigration system,” Carlos Gutierrez said in an email message. “To make sure Congress hears our voices, we’re going to flood them with tweets, calls, and Facebook messages. And we’ll be holding live, online events throughout the two days.”
People have already changed their Facebook and Twitter profile pictures to support the cause. They are also tweeting under the hashtag #iMarch.
According to Texans for Economic Progress, immigration is a key factor in the ability to retain top talent and create jobs, particularly in tech, and improve the nation’s economy. Immigrant-owned businesses generated more than $775 billion in revenue for the U.S. economy in 2011, according to Bloomberg.

Full disclosure: I, Laura Lorek, believe strongly in the need for immigration reform and I will be participating in and supporting the March for Innovation.

Design BIG is a free weekend design workshop for entrepreneurs that our team at Pushstart, an Austin-based industrial and interactive design firm, is organizing.
The three-day event is designed to help entrepreneurs design their product with customers in mind. During the weekend, design consultants will help the entrepreneurs. The weekend features a series of lectures, discussions and creative exercises.
The workshop ends with a pitch session in front of experts who will give feedback on their product design.
Design BIG will take place the weekend of June 28th through June 30th at Maker Square.
To attend, entrepreneurs must apply by June 7th.

Spot on Sciences‘ Founder Jeanette Hill credits the RampCorp program at Texas State University with helping her launch her venture.
RampCorp is designed primarily for women entrepreneurs who want to build a scalable business.
Spot on Sciences won the RISE Austin Fast Pitch Competition last week. Hill received the $3,000 cash prize, a Dell Ultrabook laptop and American Airlines points.
Spot on Sciences makes an portable, convenient device that allows anyone to take a blood sample easily from anywhere.
In the video segment posted below, Hill explains that RampCorp not only helped her understand the process of launching an entrepreneurial business, but introduced her to mentors and helped her avoid problems.
Hill is featured in the “Austin’s Top Female Entrepreneurs” episode of Capital of Innovation, which will repeat on KLRU May 30 at 8 pm.