Category: Austin (Page 259 of 318)

BY L.A. LOREK
Founder of Silicon HIlls News

Instead of having a startup company fail, Thinktiv wants to engineer a winning outcome by aligning money, talent, technology and distribution from the start.
The Austin-based accelerator seeks to remove some of the uncertainty from the startup process through its special formula to take ideas to market quicker and more efficiently than a traditional technology incubator or venture capital fund.
“The whole infrastructure of the VC industry didn’t work for us,” said Jonathan Berkowitz, Thinktiv CEO. So he and the other three principals, all veteran entrepreneurs, invented a better process. “We’re in the game to build a very big VC firm with talent as the currency as opposed to money.”
Thinktiv has developed an entrepreneurship recipe and they adjust it to fit the needs of the companies they take on as clients. They take a batch of developers, based in India and the Ukraine, mixed with a bunch of seasoned executives drawn from their own ranks and combine that with a creative marketing and branding campaign. They brainstorm, create and innovate for a company. And sometimes they add to that some capital funding, and then they launch the business into the marketplace.
And voila, they’ve taken some of the pain out of the startup process for entrepreneurs struggling to do it all themselves.
“It’s very different and we’re getting recognized for being very different,” Berkowitz said.
Like in the Wizard of Oz, when Toto pulls back the curtain on the wizard, if someone peeked beneath the veil of more than a dozen local startups they would find Thinktiv.
Thinktiv’s client list reads like a “Who’s Who of Startups in Austin” and includes Adlucent, BazaarVoice, OtherInbox, BlackLocus, Socialware, Icon and Rockify, among others.
The company, founded in 2007, has helped hundreds of entrepreneurs. It acts as an accelerator by supplying resources like software developers, project managers, designers, branding and marketing experts and more to bring a product to market quickly. It charges anywhere from $50,000 to $250,000 to transform or launch a company, usually within 90 to 120 days.
In addition to providing services, Thinktiv can also act as an investment firm. The company can take an ownership stake, ranging from 1 percent to 5 percent in a company in exchange for providing services. It might also act as a cofounder and bring initial capital to the table – taking a larger stake from 10 percent to 35 percent, depending on the extent of its involvement.
A lot of times Thinktiv works with companies that just land financing so that they don’t burn through all of their money just to hire big-name talent.
“Talent is the hardest problem to solve and we are in a position to solve it every time,” said Steve Waters, co-founder, chief ventures officer and also Thinktiv’s marketing wiz.
The commonality of the principal owners is Trilogy, a successful software company founded in Austin in 1989. Three of the four founders were recruited to work at Trilogy from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and they jokingly refer to themselves as being members of the Trilogy Mafia. The Thinktiv principals include Berkowitz, Justin Petro, chief product officer and Paul Burke, managing partner, and Waters, who was employee number 20 at Trilogy.
“The biggest challenge a startup faces is that they can’t hire big talent,” Waters said.
Thinktiv has the talent and deploys it to rebrand and revitalize a business with 90 to 120 days, Waters said.
“Each of us brings a totally unique set of skills that complement one another,” Waters said.
Berkowitz focuses on product strategy and Petro’s specialty is User Interface design for Web and mobile products, Waters said. Burke is focused on building brands and demand generation, and Waters has years of experience as both a Chief Marketing Officer and investment banker.
In addition to startups, Thinktiv also works with companies with strong assets in need of a turnaround.
“We work with a lot of Austin companies in the background building and contemplating their second product,” Waters said.
If a company’s brand and customer acquisition processes are broken that creates an opportunity to create a huge uptick in the business and Thinktiv can help make that happen, Waters said.
“One of the most impactful things about us is that we connect the dots all the way from that big picture concept to where should a pixel be on a screen,” Waters said.
Thinktiv’s team of 50 employees looks at more than 250 deals every year, but only works on 60 of them.
“We deploy really big talent into their companies that would otherwise be impossible for them to deploy,” Berkowitz said.
Also, Thinktiv has access to a deep pool of capital through its network of 60 high-net wealth investors. It invests in about 10 companies a year.
With its unique fund and accelerator, Thinktiv is disrupting the venture capital industry. The company can create transformation with modest amounts of capital at every stage of a company’s growth from seed stage and beyond.
Since 2011, Thinktiv has invested $2 million worth of services in seven companies. Its Thinktiv Network has invested more than $3 million into Thinktiv’s portfolio companies and it expects to have more than 30 companies by the end of this year. Two of its investments in Collider Media and Otherinbox have already achieved successful exits.
“The thing we wanted to go after wasn’t going after the people in the seed stage investment,” Berkowitz said. “We wanted to go after the VC model. We thought there’s a better way to do this. This can’t the only way to capitalize a company. We have to provide big talent. We’re building a product, brand and attracting customers.”
The traditional venture capital space had “a lot of years under its belt,” Berkowitz said.
“The economic equation is kind of the same as it was decades and decades ago,” Berkowitz said.
A lot of VCs don’t understand the companies they invest in, Waters said.
“A lot of venture funds are operated by people who have never operated companies,” he said.
All of the principals at Thinktiv have been involved in numerous startups, he said. They understand the process. They know the problems entrepreneurs face.
“It’s not just hard to find talent, it’s also hard to find financing,” Berkowitz said.
Thinktiv can bring financing to a company but it’s not the same as angel investing. They don’t have a network of mentors. They vet the companies and then provide services to them to reduce the risk of investing.
“In our network, people are first and foremost investing in our model,” Berkowitz said. “We’re the trusted filter.”
A 90 percent failure rate exists with traditional venture investments, but Thinktiv doesn’t accept that, said David Wieland, an active investor, advisor and board member in the Thinktiv Network.
“With their seasoned executives, nine out of ten deals succeed,” Wieland said. “I believe firmly in the Thinktiv model.”
Thinktiv can dramatically change the success rate of startups and they don’t do that with money, Wieland said.
“The level of engagement from the Thinktiv model is far beyond what you would see from a traditional incubator or accelerator. I think it’s incredibly unique and incredibly successful.’’
Thinktiv “chiropractically” adjusts some companies that don’t get it right the first time, Berkowitz said.
Take Austin-based QuickGifts. Thinktiv helped rebrand the company and redesign their customer experience, Waters said.
“When we started working with them they had 35 local merchants on their platform,” Waters said. “Last year, they had 4,300. They are now the dominant player in local gift cards.”
QuickGifts started in 2002 and developed a marketplace for big name national merchant gift cards, said Stacy Young, the company’s founder and CEO.
Thinktiv’s involvement resulted in a 40 percent increase in revenue last year and a 250 percent increase this year, Young said. They did a lot of development work and overhauled the site, he said.
“I can’t say that it was just instant,” Young said. “But you can see the work that they did taking hold in the marketplace and how it’s accelerated our business.”
Thinktiv also helped the company close on a Series A investment round of $750,000 and a Series B investment round of $1.4 million, which the company closed in September last year.
“They brought more than half the people to the table in both rounds,” Young said.
Today, QuickGifts, with 25 employees, still goes back to Thinktiv to help out with holiday campaigns, Young said.
“I don’t hesitate to refer them to a lot of people and promising startups in town,” Young said. “I believe in their process and their commitment to their customers. I would advise anyone starting a company to go to them. There’s a go to market strategy that they’ve mastered. It’s something that entrepreneurs don’t necessarily think about – like how to go from A to B. When you bring that product to Thinktiv they’ll give you a holistic approach on how to get from A to Z.”
They simplify the process, Young said.
BootlegMarket hired Thinktiv to help develop an online community for shoe lovers.
“They’re like me,” said Sarah Ellison Lewis, founder and CEO of BootlegMarket. “They’re curious, passionate and driven. It’s just an enormous relief. I worked with another company before them. All they could do was sell me on their creative projects that would cost a ton of money.”
As an entrepreneur, Lewis felt like she needed to be in an invested relationship.
“They shifted out of what can we do for you to what can we do together,” she said. “That attitude is what makes everything great.”
The teamwork at Thinktiv created a whole lot of new opportunities, she said.
“It’s the nature of the founders,” she said. “It’s a cool, good group of people. It’s the kind of people I want to be associated with and I’m a perfectionist.”
Thinktiv is also flexible and amenable to the passion of entrepreneurs, she said.
“They know how to deal with entrepreneurs,” she said.
Lewis, a fashion industry expert who just returned from the Paris Fashion Show, opened Bootleg in an Airstream trailer in Austin a year ago. She filled it with shoes from all over. Her customers gave her the idea to start an online community for shoe lovers. BootlegMarket enables anyone to buy, sell and stalk shoes. Consignment shops, wholesalers, designers and regular people can all create closets to showcase and sell their shoes.
“I was haunted by the idea and I had to do it,” she said.
Her friend had just moved to Thinktiv from Chaotic Moon and that’s when she decided to approach them with her venture.
“It was really an incredible experience,” she said. “It was an honor. They don’t do that many projects.”
Lewis expects to launch the e-commerce portion of BootlegMarket within a few weeks. Thinktiv has built the site and the e-commerce engine behind it. They also helped with the business side of stuff along with branding and marketing, she said. They also helped her raise angel capital.
“This is the way of digital ventures in the future,” she said. “It allows startups to thrive instead of struggle.”

Time Warner Cable launched its IntelligentHome, a security and home management system, this week in Austin and San Antonio.
And the team developing the project in Austin was formerly uControl, which merged with iControl in November of 2010. The iControl Cable Division locally has grown from 25 employees to 60 employees in the last three years, said Jim Johnson, the founder of uControl, who now heads up the Austin office.
iControl, based in Redwood City, and founded in 2004, has raised $120 million and is backed by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and has 120 employees. The company has developed home security and control systems for ADT, Comcast, Cox, Rogers in Canada and Swisscom in Europe.
“The ability to do all this stuff has just happened in the last few years,” Johnson said.
Time Warner’s new home management and security system allows customers to access their home controls anywhere and anytime through the Internet, their smart phone or an iPad app.
The company’s camera feeds allow homeowners to keep tabs on pets and children or to monitor their homes while they travel. They can also change light settings remotely.
“The consumer awareness is hitting a tipping point on this technology,” Johnson said. “People aren’t going to buy normal home security systems anymore. It’s just going to be expected that they have intelligence systems and remote controls built into them.”

Accenture announced Wednesday plans to open an Austin center of innovation to provide software and technology services to its health and public sector divisions.
Accenture plans to hire 300 employees for the center by the end of the year, bringing its total Texas workforce to more than 5,000. Accenture already has an office in Austin and others in San Antonio, Houston and Dallas.
“Accenture has been growing in Texas for many years, and this expansion in Austin is being driven by our success in helping state health and human service agencies around the country leverage cost-effective, leading-edge technology to modernize their IT systems and improve productivity,” Stephen J. Rohleder, the Austin-based group chief executive of Accenture’s Health & Public Service operating group, said in a news statement. “We are focused on helping public agencies seize transformative opportunities to improve citizen services while adapting to budget realities. We have worked with the state of Texas for over 30 years and Austin is key to our efforts to leverage technology and software to meet government needs.”
Accenture is the fifth major company to pick Austin for a major expansion in the last year. General Motors put an innovation center there and plans to hire 500 employees. So did Union Pacific and Visa. And Apple announced a major $304 million expansion there with 3,600 new employees in Austin.

Every year, a meeting of the minds takes place in Austin with the region’s top technology CEOs.
That event is the Austin Technology Council‘s third annual CEO Summit and Startup Showdown which takes place on May 8th at ACL Live at the Moody Theater. The theme this year is “Setting the Tech Agenda” and it puts the spotlight on recruiting and retaining technology talent, investment capital and promoting education in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Math fields.
The evening before, the ATC will host its first Hall of Fame awards reception. Bill Bock, CFO at Silicon Laboratories and a serial entrepreneur, will host the event along with Mark McClain of Sailpoint. The evening will honor people who have made a big impact on the Austin technology industry.
“This annual gathering of state-wide CEOs of technology companies facilitates critical discussion around the opportunities, and challenges, of taking Texas to the next level,” Julie Huls, ATC president said in a news statement. “The CEO Summit is a rare opportunity for the industry to collectively create the vision and direct the next phase of growth for the technology industry.”
The day long event will end with the Startup Showdown fast pitch competition. The Central Texas Angel Network is also a sponsor of this year’s event which will feature six companies that will present their companies to a panel of judges.
Companies seeking either series A or series B funding are asked to submit their businesses for consideration at the ATC website.
The companies competing last year included Baytan Labs, Convergence Wireless, MapMyFitness, NeedTo.com, Toopher and Vivogig. Toopher won the Showdown.
To register for the 2013 CEO Summit, please visit ATC’s website. Only members of ATC are allowed to attend.

Tucked into a corner of Geekdom’s 10th floor, Silver Fox Studios plans to change the way people consume media.
Already, Roell Vento and Tommy McNish, the co-founders of the studio, have produced several Web-based programs and they plan a dozen more in the coming weeks.
“The Web creates a level playing field,” Vento said. “It’s a general equalizer for anyone in their garage that has a good idea. The Web makes the execution so much easier.”
Silver Fox Studios’ flagship program Talk Now SA launched a few months ago and features Chris Duel and Vanessa Macias, the co-founders and on-air show hosts. Travis McGehee, a multimedia producer and chief engineer at Silver Fox Studios, runs everything behind the scenes along with McNish and Vento.
The Talk Now SA show broadcasts from the studio every weekday at 10 a.m. and lasts an hour. It’s an eclectic show featuring interviews with a wide variety of experts in diverse fields including movie stars, comedians, reporters, musicians, politicians and sports stars.
“It’s a format for us to truly be ourselves,” Macias said. She has worked for several radio and television stations in San Antonio and was also a contestant on The Amazing Race. “We’ve been in broadcast so long.”
The restrictions traditional TV and radio jobs place on the talent doesn’t exist on the Web, Macias said. She says she has crude humor and she likes to be able to speak her mind. The show also features a swear jar, which they put a dollar in every time they cuss during the program. They donate the money every week to a charity.
“This is a venue for me to be me,” she said. “It’s fun.”
Other shows include Plaza de Armas Live featuring Elaine Wolff and Jade Esteban Estrada, which takes place every Tuesday at 2 p.m.
And Slice of Silicon Hills News’ Host Andrew Moore does a live interview with a San Antonio or Austin startup technology entrepreneur every Friday at 11 a.m.
Vento and McNish got the idea for the studio last year when Matt Scherer, a public relations professional, approached them about Chris Duel’s show.
“We started meeting regularly and seeing what it would be like,” Vento said. “We thought that it would a really good idea.”
Vento, who also owns a stake in the Talk Now SA show, has a background in advertising. His company, Silver Fox Multimedia focuses on political and media applications.
McNish, who serves as general manager of Silver Fox Studios, previously worked for a startup in San Antonio and at Rackspace.
At first, Vento and McNish thought they could take a spare room at Geekdom and easily covert it into a studio. But they ended up spending more than $60,000 and almost immediately outgrew the space and they took over a neighboring conference room. They’re outfitting that room with a couch and other amenities to provide a true talk show setting and will soon host new content including a sports show, a geek show and a leadership show. Meanwhile, they’re working on getting sponsors for the shows.
Vento and McNish are all about experimenting and taking risks with new shows. They also like the live component of the show that encourages community involvement and audience interactions. They like the idea of hosting Google hangouts with viewers to get feedback on the programs.
“It gets the community involved and they truly become part of the show,” McNish said.
The little studio has already attracted some big interest from local radio and television stations and even a newspaper chain. “Lots of executives have toured the studio to find out about what we’re doing and to find out how they can be a part of it,” Vento said.
In addition to the shows, Silver Fox Studios also produces marketing and training videos for companies. Vento and McNish set aside 10 hours every week for Geekdom members to use the studio to create videos to promote their companies.
“Silver Fox gets to do what we all want to do, play with video gadgets and make our own shows,” said Nick Longo, co-founder and mentor in chief of Geekdom. “It’s awesome to see them have such great success by being so open and creative. Having a resource like this for Geekdom members to shoot team and product videos is also a great opportunity most Startups will never get anywhere else.”
Silver Fox Studios is meeting a need that exists in the market, McNish said.
“What we have is a lot of good momentum,” he said.
In coming weeks, they plan to launch several more shows including “This Week in Geek” featuring a show about gadgets, geek culture, comic books and more. They would also like to expand to Austin and open a studio there.
“We’re at the intersection of a lot of great opportunities,” Vento said.

Disclosure: Geekdom is a sponsor of Silicon Hills News. Silver Fox Studios is an advertiser with Silicon Hills News and produces our weekly Slice of Silicon Hills News show.

At the last 3 Day Startup San Antonio at Geekdom, Jim Pyle pitched his idea for a device that automatically reboots a computer and router called the Amazing Jellybean.
While his idea was not selected as one of the ones to work on that weekend, he never gave up on the idea. In fact, he filed a patent and developed a prototype.
That’s because Pyle, a former technician with Time Warner Cable, knew first hand that 80 percent of the problems people call their cable company about when their service doesn’t work can be fixed with a simple reboot of the computer and router. But to non-technical people that task can seem confusing and daunting. So Pyle created a solution to make it as simple as pressing one button. The Amazing Jellybean then takes over. The device shuts off and restarts the devices in the correct order.
He’s already got manufacturing set up in India and has launched a Kickstarter project to launch the Amazing Jellybean into the marketplace.
So far, Pyle’s Kickstarter campaign has raised $5,627 of its $10,000 goal from 102 backers with 13 days to go.
And today, PC Magazine named the Amazing Jellybean as its Kickstarter Tech Project of the Week.
A pledge of $40 gets you an Amazing Jellybean and access to the remote control app, plus a packet of jellybeans and stickers.
For a pledge of $150 or more, you’ll get a special edition Amazing Jellybean in hot pink, lime green, safety orange, baby blue, devil red or midnight black, plus the stickers and jellybeans.
Pyle expects to deliver the Amazing Jellybeans by November. And his company is also one of six startups pitching at the Innotech Beta Summit on April 17th at 3 p.m. in the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center downtown.

Q1Media on Thursday announced that it has completed its merger with AdExcite, a video ad network company.
Austin-based Q1Media, founded in 2004, runs a display advertising network with millions of monthly visitors.
The merger with AdExcite, founded in 2009, allows Q1Media to offer video and mobile web advertising. The company will operate as Q1Media with AdExcite remaining as a brand and AdExcite’s co-founder Phil Banfield will now serve as Q1Media’s CEO. Bill Wiemann, Q1Media’s founder and CEO, will serve as president and COO.
The terms of the deal were not disclosed.
“Adding AdExcite’s proprietary online and mobile video advertising technology to the real time bidding and ad targeting platforms we’ve built at Q1Media allows us to offer broader and more immersive digital advertising solutions,” Wiemann said in a news release. “Phil and his team have done a remarkable job growing AdExcite’s video advertising network. I welcome his leadership as we become a single entity with the power to rapidly create greenfield online advertising inventory while building better value for web publishers.”
AdExite offers customers its vSlider and vPlayer that allows web publishers to add video advertising to their site. It currently has about a third of the online video advertising market in the U.S.
Q1Media has 30 employees and plans to add 25 more locally and in Los Angeles and New York this year.

HomeAway, a vacation homes rental marketplace announced Thursday a partnership with travelmob, an online travel marketplace focused on the Asia Pacific region.
Through its partnership, HomeAway’s customers will be able to access travelmob’s “unique, high quality accommodations in Asia Pacific – from luxury villas to tatami-mat apartments and houseboats.”
“travelmob is honored to partner with the global leader in vacation rentals. This partnership enables us to significantly expand our global reach and provide our property owners and managers with the opportunity to market their properties to more travelers worldwide. It is also a testament of travelmob’s mission to enable global travelers to experience Asia Pacific like a local,” travelmob Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder Turochas Fuad said in a news release.
The Asia Pacific is a fast growing region for tourism.
“We are excited to offer travelmob’s unique properties on the HomeAway websites and meet the growing demand for villas and vacation rentals in Asia,” HomeAway Chief Executive Officer Brian Sharples said in a news release. “This partnership enables HomeAway to create additional accommodation options, in one of the world’s most dynamic regions, to the families and groups who rely on HomeAway for vacation rental travel.”

Bigcommerce announced Thursday that it has funded 31 applications through its $2 million integration fund for developers.
The Austin-based company that provides an e-commerce platform for businesses launched the fund early last year.
The apps are available in the Bigcommerce app directory.
“Our vision is to become the operating system of commerce, and the platform we’ve built for developers to leverage is the key piece to that vision,” Mitchell Harper, co-CEO at Bigcommerce, said in a news release. “We were blown away by the massive response from the developer community, and the applications we selected are truly best-of-breed integrations that meet significant needs for our clients. Using our extensive API, market-leading apps like HubSpot, MailChimp and Zendesk, as well as up-and-coming developers like Stitch Labs, are building on top of our platform and generating serious revenue.”
More than 500 developers applied to participate in the fund. Most of the apps chosen for funding focused on the marketing category.
“We know that our clients want more than just a pretty online store,” Eddie Machaalani, co-CEO at Bigcommerce, said in a news release. “They want traffic, orders and repeat customers. The range of apps built as a result of our integration fund not only extend on our 25 built-in marketing tools, but make it even easier for our clients to drive a stampede of targeted traffic to their Bigcommerce stores.”