Category: Austin (Page 260 of 318)

The Age of Intent: Undercurrents from SXSW 2013

March 17, 2013 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 0 Comments

BY ALAN WEINKRANTZ
Special Contributor to Silicon Hills News

This year, my SXSW experience started at the Abbey Road crossing in London on

Alan Weinkrantz Crossing Abbey Road. In a Geekdom shirt, of course.

Sunday, February 23, followed by a visit to Liverpool, England on Friday, March 1.
Crossing Abbey Road. In a Geekdom shirt, of course.
I was there with a life-long friend from college, on a Beatles pilgrimage. Being in
Liverpool was incredibly special. The last time I was there, I spent my 21st birthday.
Now, approaching my 60th, it was time to return.
Like many of us then, and to some extent, today, the Beatles influenced, well, just
about everything.
Back then, music was our source code. It gave rise to a global social consciousness
raising that set the tone for everything from putting a man on the moon, to the
decline of communism, the invention of the microprocessor, and of course, what
become the Internet.
I believe we are in the middle of history repeating itself with the manifestation of
a new form of code: it’s the apps and all the cool technologies and gizmos we are
using to digitize our lives and allow us to express, communicate and manage our
relationships in new ways.

As Humanity Evolves, So Does SXSW

For me, this year’s SXSW experience was about intent.
For one week out of the fifty-two in a year, the expression of intent is not about
doing business development, landing a big deal, or a possible career move up the
food chain.
I believe the act of intent shows a sign of faith that while you may not be able to
rationalize or clearly understand what you are doing, your instinct says you just
have to go with the flow, be intentional, and be open to new flows of energy and
opportunity that could come your way.

Special thanks to my friend, Jeff Pulver(right) who shared some great insights on Israel’s startup
economy for our talk at SXSW 2013

Aside from having a speaking slot – sharing the stage with Jeff Pulver on Israel’s Startup Economy, and doing client work, my intent was to attend several of the seminars that were of personal interest to me and be inspired by big thinkers
and doers. I did make it to hear Tim Ferris, Esther Dyson, and Rabbi Mordechai Lightstone.
I had five other “must-listen / gotta get inspired” talks I wanted to sit in on, but enroute to each talk, the randomness and magic of SXSW swung into full effect. In some cases I ran into people I follow on various social networks. In others, it was friends from San Antonio that I don’t see as often as I would like to. I crossed paths with friends from Israel, the UK, and all over the U.S. There were some friends that I never got to see, but felt their presence on social platforms like Facebook and Twitter as they were there.
In one case, I was standing outside of the convention center, and saw someone “very famous” looking around trying to figure out how to get from point A to point B. I went up to him and said, “hi – I know the area pretty well. You look lost. Can I help you?” This famous person accepted my offer and we walked a couple of blocks as I helped him find his way to his next appointment or interview.
While I have always been awestruck of this very famous person, suddenly I realized that he was just a normal person.
He was human.
He was real.
And he showed his vulnerability.
In another special moment in time, I ran into a friend, and we started to compare notes in the challenges of getting budgets for clients. In her infinite wisdom, my friend said, “there’s always a budget, but not for me…” On the spot, I knew there was a country western song in there. We agreed to save that nugget and re-visit it again at our next random encounter. For those of you reading this story, just you wait; we’ll be on stage on day singing this very famous song to be.

The Dow at Almost 14,500. Happy Days Are Here Again, But For Different Reasons

During SXSW Interactive, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was zooming and booming to new highs, almost getting to 14,500. Happy days were here again, but for totally different reasons.

On the show floor, countries like Korea, Chile, Ireland, and Mexico were there showcasing startups, and promoting innovation that were indigenous to the genetic code of their country. Offsite, there was the State of Israel’s dinner at an Italian restaurant that I attended. As with the folks from Chile, we celebrated with great food and terrific wine.
Going from booth to booth, each foreign country I visited all had similar messages: we see the future, we have connectivity, smart and passionate people, and we are out to rule the world.
While not on the show floor, I spent quite a bit of time with someone who is doing some amazing things with a non-profit organization in Egypt. He told me that the best thing that happened since the revolution, was that young people want to take part in the startup economy. He’s creating a new type of venture capital fund to tap into the entrepreneurial opportunities that is taking hold in his country.

Microsoft Comes A Calling

In my travels to Israel, I get to speak at many of the accelerators, one of which includes the Microsoft Azure Accelerator program in Herzliya, near Tel Aviv. Knowing that I was at SXSW, they asked me to interview one of the companies that
was in their program. I was not only happy to help out, I was thrilled. I knew the company when it was a great idea and had some early stage seed funding. Fast forward one year later, and they had not only raised a nice round, but they were
doing licensing deals with some major brands.

New Terms of Art

From what evolves at SXSW, are born new trades and terms of art.
Big data was used in various forms and for the first time ever, I learned the term, “data journalist,” in the Visual.ly booth. The “ quantified self” was on my radar. Devices like FitBit and Nike Fuelband were in full motion, adorned from the jeans and wrists of attendees.
The liberation of currency was clearly on the tradeshow floor. Several crowdfunding sites and professional services providers who are becoming part of this ecosystem were also promoting their message.
One of my favorite talks during SXSW: Transcending Tech: Is G-d Rebooting the World, with Rabbi Mordechai Lightstone from Lubavitch.com

One of my favorite talks during SXSW: Transcending Tech: Is G-d Rebooting the World, with Rabbi
Mordechai Lightstone from Lubavitch.com

The Rise of Mentorship
I saw themes of mentorship this year, which also plays a big role in what I am doing. It’s part of the ethos of what we, as residents at San Antonio-based Geekdom have taken a pledge to mentor our fellow community members at what has now become the largest collaborative workspace in the State of Texas.
Tuesday afternoon, I had to leave to return back to my office at Geekdom for a very special event. Brad Feld was in town, sharing his vision on what it takes to build a startup community. I’m fortunate to have my office at Geekdom where I can mentor, do client work, and be around incredibly smart people whose goodness, intellect and intent is clearly there.
In our intent to do new things with the tools, bandwidth and platforms we now have, there is forever something that’s not just better, but more optimistic that was in full swing at SXSW.
SXSW is a platform that creates a place for you to open yourself up to experiencing the medium of intent.
When you put intent into motion, you can reset, calibrate, discover and yes, be discovered. There are people from all over the world randomly (or not so randomly) connecting through the medium of intent.
You now have twelve months to get ready for SXSW 2014.
Think about what your intent is, how you can discover what’s new, and be open to being discovered.
With positive intent, March 2014 will be a good time to return to Austin, Texas for the next adventures of SXSW.

Alan Weinkrantz is a Public Relations advisor to technology companies and startups
worldwide.

Disclosure: Geekdom is a sponsor of Silicon Hills News. Alan Weinkrantz is an advertiser on the site.

Grapevine Featured on A Slice of Silicon Hills

March 16, 2013 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 0 Comments

This week, Slice of Silicon Hills News Host Andrew Moore interviews Grapevine’s Co-Founder Erik Larson about the company’s latest version of its software.
Grapevine, based at Geekdom, makes a reputation management software program aimed at businesses in the hospitality industry like restaurants and hotels.

I survived South by Southwest 2013! (Adventures in Austin, Part 4.9.9)

March 13, 2013 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 2 Comments

BY IAN PANCHEVRE
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

Austin is now in my rearview mirror.
Well, not exactly. I reasoned that writing this article while driving would be rather imprudent. So instead, I find myself at a Starbucks in Buda, TX, reflecting on the blur of events and emotions that transpired over the past few days.
It’s hard to summarize SXSW in a concise, all encapsulating sentence or phrase. Even the great Rachel Maddow struggled with the following question posed by @IanPanchevre via Twitter: #AskMaddow – Fill in the blank, SXSW is a lot like _______________.
Maddow’s answer – “I feel like it’s a cross between a political convention and lollapalooza” – came off a little flat. Lollapalooza? I’ll buy that. A political convention? Hmm…
Here’s another attempt to summarize the festival: Inspiring and humbling.
Starting with the inspiring, Astro Teller, a member of Google’s experimental laboratory, Google[x], spoke Tuesday morning on “Moonshots,” Teller’s term for ambitious, far-reaching projects and people. He encouraged the audience to think creatively, to set big goals, and to fearlessly pursue the supposed impossible.
“We want to work on something really thrilling, something that really matters, something that pushes us to our limits while doing it with people whom we deeply respect and admire,” explained Teller.
As for a modern day archetype of a moonshot, Teller points to Elon Musk. Without a doubt, Musk stole the show on Saturday with narratives from SpaceX (a private space exploration company), Tesla Motors (an electric vehicle manufacturer), and SolarCity (a provider of solar power systems).
“He’s doing all these amazing things at the same time!” exclaimed Stephen Blank, author of Four Steps to the Epiphany. “So, next time you take a look at your little mobile app, realize there’s still more to accomplish.”
And that leads me to the humbling.
Blank, speaking Saturday morning, drew a comparison between the two industry clusters in California – technology in Silicon Valley and film and entertainment in Hollywood. His assessment was that Silicon Valley, like Hollywood, has become a “star ecosystem” where celebrity figures are idolized, gossip constantly churns, and supporting industries extract value from the few who do productive work.
Blank’s message: don’t get distracted by the glamour of startups, stay focused on building a great product and good things should follow.
Okay, but what about the tech? Yes, there was lots of that too.
Surprisingly, mobile technologies were quiet at SXSW 2013. Given the track record of mobile launches at the festival, there was certainly an air of expectation for something to rise above the noise.
Not this year. If there were truly a breakout mobile app, I didn’t hear about it.
Yes, there were some cool apps. Aurasma, an augmented reality application boasts great performance, design, and branding. Tout, a Twitter-like service for short videos, got some attention. But that was mostly because Shaquille O’Neal, a Tout-backer, made a few appearances on the company’s behalf.
All things considered, no true marvels of technical accomplishment nor user engagement presented themselves among the mobile applications.
Perhaps what is most telling is that the only app that did seem to organically capture a fragment of the festival’s attention was Tinder – a dating app that, though well designed and fairly “sticky,” can be easily written off as flashy, valueless, and ephemeral.
Rather, SXSW 2013 will most likely be known as a year for hardware products, as opposed to enterprise software or consumer applications.
Additive printing technologies (i.e. 3D printing) built upon the momentum they gained at SXSW 2012 to claim a lot of the spotlight in 2013. The festival was given a proper kickoff by Bre Pettis, Founder and CEO of MakerBot, who entertained the audience at the first keynote. Conversations abounded throughout the weekend about the social, economic, and legal implications of this coming revolution in manufacturing.
OUYA – the new gaming console that will soon come to a store near you – was introduced to the SXSW audience by Julie Uhrman, its Founder and CEO. OUYA, priced at $99, empowers game developers of any size and budget to sell games through OUYA’s marketplace. Uhrman shared insights on running a successful Kickstarter (OUYA holds the record for the most amount of money raised on Kickstarter; $8.6 million from over 63,000 individual backers), the difficulties of product design, manufacturing, and distribution, and the deficiencies of the existing gaming ecosystem.
Leap Motion’s motion-control device was a big hit as well. Co-founders Michael Buckwald and David Holz dazzled the crowd by elucidating upon the technical wizardry of their controller’s hardware and software. The Leap Motion promotional tent – where attendees could manipulate various applications by waiving their hands and fingers – was a popular destination. In fact, yours truly was so impressed that he pre-ordered a Leap Motion Controller for $80, to be shipped later in March.
And then there were the wearables. Wristbands and watches that capture key biometrics à la FitBit abounded. But Google Glass – Mountain View’s bold new technology that places an internet overlay in front of a user’s eyes – perhaps stirred the most geek juice at SXSW. Sadly, my attempts to sneak into a presentation on the technology (the room reached capacity before I could get in) were unsuccessful.
Space exploration was another area that captured curiosity. Not only did Musk raise excitement about private space exploration, but NASA also provided perspective on the status of our public space program. A well-attended session on the user experience of a space station touched on interesting topics, such as the challenges of replacing laptops on a space station with iPads.
In retrospect, my extended weekend in Austin was fantastically stimulating. I couldn’t have hoped for better exposure to the latest, most magical, technologies.
Then there was the social side of things. During the day my mind was regularly blown with new ideas. At night, my poor iPhone 5 was barely able to keep up with the onslaught of texts, tweets, trending places, Facebook messages, and emails broadcasting the coolest spots for scoring free food, drinks, and swag; the quality of which was generally very satisfying.
Perhaps the ethos of the festival was best captured during an exchange between Dennis Crowley, Founder and CEO of Foursquare, and Anil Dash, Co-Founder of Activate.
Crowley noted during his interview that at South by Southwest, “you get to experience the future for a couple of days and then you go home and live in the present.”
”Wow, the future has a lot of hangovers!” retorted Dash.
The crowd immediately roared with laughter. Evidently, Dash’s witty remark resonated with a few of the attendees.
As for myself, all I can say is that if I had stayed any longer, I ran a real risk of having my body pull an emergency force quit. So I’m calling it a wrap now, while I can still boast that I survived South by Southwest 2013.
I hope you’ve enjoyed Adventures in Austin! Please feel free to share your thoughts on the series in the comments below.

Previous segments:

Apparently there’s this conference happening in Austin?? Adventures in Austin, Part 1.0.0

Adventures in Austin, Part 2.0.5: SXSW = big fun and big business.

Flying High with Interact ATX! (Adventures in Austin, part 3.2.1)

SXSW Accelerator 2013 Award Winners

March 13, 2013 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 0 Comments

TrueAbility Competes in the Finals of the SXSW Accelerator

March 12, 2013 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 0 Comments

TrueAbility of San Antonio made it to the finals of the South by Southwest Interactive’s Accelerator in the New Web Technologies category.
TrueAbility helps companies hire the best technical talent by assessing a job candidate’s technical skills in a live server environment. The company shortnes a company’s recruiting process and makes it easier and cheaper to hire great technical talent.
Luke Owen, co-founder and CEO, pitched the company in less than five minutes in front of a panel of judges Tuesday afternoon. Marcus Robertson, co-founder and chief technology officer, is also at the show.
At the end of his presentation, Owen fielded a lot of questions from the judges asking about whether the company would partner with universities doing Massive Open Online Courses, known as MOOCs, to certify students’ skills.
Bob Metcafle, one of the judges, mentioned he was taking a MOOC course in Python programming from MIT and he wanted to use TrueAbility’s testing to certify his skills at the end of the course.
Owen said universities have approached the company about partnerships but it is laser focused right now on helping companies hire the best information technology workers for their organizations.
TrueAbility faces three other competitors in the finals. They include Memoto, a company form Stockholm, Sweden, that makes a tiny wearable camera that automatically captures a person’s life in still photos. It’s also searchable and shareable through its smartphone apps. The other finalist is Wanderu from Boston. They company is a new travel startup that provides a simple way to find and book bus and train travel from Point A to Point B.
Rackspace Hosting sponsored the accelerator. The finalists will be announced tonight at 6 p.m. at SXSW Interactive.

Disclosure: TrueAbility is an advertiser with Silicon Hills News

Elon Musk and Grumpy Cat Are Big Hits at SXSW Interactive

March 12, 2013 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 0 Comments

BY L.A. LOREK
Founder of Silicon Hills News

Photo courtesy of NASA

Elon Musk and Grumpy Cat stole the show at South by Southwest Interactive.
They received the most mentions in social media on Twitter and Facebook during the first four days of the technology festival, said Itai Asseo, vice president and creative architect of Digitas Labs.
Musk, co-founder of Paypal, founder of Tesla Motor and SpaceX, received 10,000 mentions on Twitter, followed closely by Grumpy Cat, which made a debut at Mashable’s tent and attracted a 600 person line outside the Mashable tent on Saturday to get their picture taken with the cat.
What people are tweeting about is a different type of thing than what garnered the most attention at the show, Asseo said.
Digitas collaborated with SXSW Interactive to crunch data from the show to present the real picture of SXSW Interactive during a panel Tuesday morning. Digitas’ Beth McCabe and Asseo, creative technologist behind Digitas Labs analyzed a variety of data collected before, during and at the end of the show.
Digitas used a new social data visualization tool called SODA to present their findings to more than 300 people gathered for the session.
The big themes from this year’s show revolved around space, the maker’s movement, data and entrepreneurs, McCabe said. Storytelling was also a big theme, but it is every year, she said.

Photo of Grumpy Cat courtesy of Mashable

Some of the most visible images shared from the show include Grumpy Cat, the Task Rabbit Van, which looked like a giant furry bunny, Brilliant Brew, a coffee truck run by General Electric that used a printing device to create intricate drawings in the foam of the lattes and Lyft, a ride sharing app that didn’t have any cars at the show so they brandished giant pink mustaches and gave people piggyback rides.

Photo by Guy Kawasaki

Also, NASA’s full-scale model of the James Webb Space Telescope was on display for two days at SXSW and it received a lot of attention.
“It’s inspiring and cool that a government organization like NASA was here at SXSW,” McCabe said.
The show’s attendance is expected to top 27,000 this year, up from 24,569 last year. Interactive has eclipsed music and film as the most popular part of the SXSW festival.
One of the interesting facts Digitas discovered is that no one from South Dakota made it to SXSW Interactive this year.

Elon Musck, SXSW Official Photo, courtesy of Peter Tsai Photography

Elon Musk, SXSW Official Photo, courtesy of Peter Tsai Photography

But people from every other state from the nation and dozens of foreign countries made it to Austin for the show.
The show targets young affluent decision makers. The most attendees fall into the 25 to 34 age range, followed by 35 to 44 year olds.
“We are the next generation of the leaders of this industry,” Asseo said. “We’re going to set the tone for this industry for the years to come.”
It’s also a highly educated group, he said.
Every panelist at the show, on average had 3,000 Twitter followers, 1,000 Facebook followers and the attendees also had quite a lot of influence, Asseo said.
From the words tweeted about the most at SXSW Interactive, Asseo and McCabe created Haikus for each day of the show. They are listed below.

Day One Haiku

SXSW Badge
MakerBot Vine Awesome Love
Party Play Talk Live

How much people were using Vine – fairly new tool launched by Twitter

Day Two Haiku

GrumpyCat Premier
Future-Looking Elon Musk
Biggest Party Time

Day Three Haiku

Watch Blogger Swiss Miss
Gore Defends Al Jazeera
Tonight Bands Perform

Day Four

Cityseed App Launch
Gomez Duck Lips, Spring Breakers
Shaq Interview Win

Three Entrepreneurs Recount Their Paths to Being Funded in Austin

March 11, 2013 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 0 Comments

BY L.A. LOREK
Founder of Silicon Hills News

Justin Jensen with Cinetics, Matt Cohen with Onespot, Barry Evans with Calxeda and Claire England, executive director of RISE Austin

Barry Evans, co-founder and CEO of Calxeda, bootstrapped and eventually landed Venture Capital funding after seeking investment from California and Boston for his microchip company.
Justin Jensen, founder and CEO of Cinetics launched two successful Kickstarter campaigns to fund products for his company.
And Matt Cohen, a former partner with G-51 Capital, an early stage investment company in Austin, received angel money to launch OneSpot, an online advertising company.
They all detailed how they got money to back their ventures during a “Funded in Austin” panel in the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce’s Office at South by Southwest on Sunday afternoon.
“We really wanted to explore the entrepreneur’s perspective on fundraising in Austin,” said Claire England, executive director of RISE Global, an entrepreneurial conference in Austin. She moderated the panel.
People packed the room to hear the stories about how to get investors to back an early-stage startup. About a third of them were entrepreneurs, some investors and others interested in the subject, according to an informal survey England took of the room.
At first, England quizzed the panelists about their experiences and then the audience members asked the founders questions about their ventures.
Calxeda, founded in 2008, spent a year bootstrapped, got some strategic investment, Texas Emerging Technology Fund money and angel money and in 2010 closed on a $48 million Venture Capital round, Evans said. Calxeda makes ultra-low power server microchips that use ARM-based processors, which are the same ones used in iPhones and iPads.
Austin in 2008 through 2010 would not invest in early-stage hardware companies, Evans said.
He said he “burned a lot of time double checking that fact” and then went to Silicon Valley, Boston and even the Middle East for investors. The company’s first round of funding came from ARM Holdings, Abu Dhabi-based Advanced Technology Investment Co., Texas Instruments, Battery Ventures, Flybridge Capital Partners and Highland Capital Partners.
Eventually, Austin investors did back the company, Evans said. Last year, the company closed on a $55 million round adding Austin Ventures and Vulcan Capital as investors.
“The breakthrough for us was the help of the ATI (Austin Technology Incubator) we were able to figure out the VCs in the Bay that had investments in Austin,” he said.
Evans made sure to get on their schedule when they were visiting Austin. He also learned Battery Ventures was an early investor in Bazaarvoice, Solarwinds and others in town.
In the beginning, Evans spent 50 percent of his time looking for funding and now it’s about 10 percent to 15 percent, he said.
“You never stop fundraising as a CEO,” he said.
It’s Evans first startup and he learned a lot from the early days of fundraising. He said he developed a tactic early on where he would reach out to a potential investor to meet for coffee to just talk about his big idea. If they said yes, then he would pitch them. If they weren’t a fit, it was OK, because it really wasn’t a formal pitch, he said.
His biggest mistake was trying to raise too little money.
“I was asking for $5 million and ended up getting $48 million,” he said.
It was easier and faster to raise a larger amount and spread out the risk among several VC firms.
“It spoke to the risk that everyone was feeling about this crazy idea,” he said.
Onespot, an advertising company that created a platform to turn online content into ads, raised $1.5 million in angel funding last year.
“Angels invest for slightly different reasons than VCs,” said Cohen, the company’s president and founder. “Typically the main reason why angel investors are investing is that they really want to help out companies.”
Onespot sought out investors that could help the company make connections and give it advice, Cohen said.
“Angel investors have a lot more availability and time to give us than VCs,” Cohen said. “We will almost certainly raise a venture capital round later on.”
He advised the entrepreneurs in the room to continue to develop their minimal viable product and gain traction in their marketplace while seeking funding.
“If you’re not making a lot of progress fundraising, make progress on the product or service and then the actual fundraising processes will go a lot easier,” Cohen said.
It’s also important to find the right investors, he said. The most important thing is to do research on which angel investor is the best fit for your company, he said.
“Angel investors are investing in an individual,” he said. “They are putting their bet on you.”
Angel investing is about cultivating relationships, building a network and getting warm introductions anywhere you can, Cohen said.
At G-51 Capital, Cohen often took recommendations from lawyers that work with startups. Many of the lawyers will defer fees until a company gets funded.
Angel investors have their own vetting processes but they like referrals from lawyers and other trusted sources, he said.
“Angel investment is one of the areas where Austin really shines,” Cohen said.
Most angel investors write checks between $25,000 and $200,000, Cohen said. To be successful angel investors, they need to make between a dozen and three-dozen investments, he said.
“I wound up getting a number of angel investors in Austin and also in New York and California,” he said.
Cohen said he’s looking forward to seeing successful entrepreneurs in Austin giving back.
“The thing that brings capital and resources to a town is success,” he said.
In October of 2011, Cinetics completed a successful fundraising campaign on Kickstarter. The Austin-based startup originally sought to raise $20,000 and ended up with $486,518 from 2,019 backers.
“We were bootstrapped,” said Jensen. “We went to Kickstarter for presales.”
Cinetics created CineSkates “a portable tripod slider system that enables fluid, rolling video without the hassle of bulky camera gear.”
It’s a camera dolly that fits into a backpack for independent filmmakers and hobbyists so they “can get shots without breaking their bank or their back,” Jensen said.
“It was really a product that didn’t require a lot of prototyping and funding,” he said. “We built the first product for under $10,000. We really didn’t need any significant capital.”
Jensen advised entrepreneurs to put as much information as possible on the Kickstarter campaign so that potential funders don’t have to ask a lot of questions.
In January, Cinetics launched a second successful Kickstarter campaign for “CineMoco, a compact motor controlled dolly and slider for video and time-lapse photography.”
The CineMoco campaign more than doubled its goal of raising $50,000. The company ended up raising $113,913 from 283 backers.
When Cinetics started crowdfunding, it was one of the first Austin hardware companies to do so, Jensen said. But now many resources exist for companies seeking crowdfunding. He recommended the Austin Hardware Startup Meetup Group to learn about projects and funding.

It Takes a Startup Village and Chris Valentine Created One for SXSW

March 11, 2013 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 1 Comment

BY SUSAN LAHEY
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

Chris Valentine seems to be everywhere at once in SXSW Startup Village, watching, analyzing, conferencing, counting. One minute he’s in the Hilton’s Grand Ballroom gauging the crowd and seemingly an instant later he’s transported to the Austin Chamber offices (which actually can only be reached by an escalator, an outside door and an elevator).
This is his baby. The Startup Village, which last year was the darling of SXSW Interactive, was an idea he brought to Interactive director Hugh Forrest three years ago. Last year, he introduced Startup Austin—a series of events within the event– to showcase all the reasons Austin is a great city to build to transplant a startup. Ultimately, he’d love for Startup Village to consume an entire block of buildings…like an actual village.
There is a palpable energy in Startup Village. Everyone is hopped up on the possibilities of the new technologies, new companies, new investments. And Valentine shares in all of it.
“I’m so excited by all of it,” he said. “There are so many incredible things happening with technology and I get to work with some of the most amazing, smartest people alive. I was fortunate to find something I am passionate about. I love what I do, I am good at what I do and I’m respected for what I do. ‘Before, I did events but I didn’t specialize. I didn’t have a passion. Now I love to focus on technology.”
He says this despite the fact that managing the Accelerator and Startup Village is fraught with potential failure.
“Because it’s such a large event you don’t get to do what you do at other events, like rehearsals,” Valentine said. “And it’s fluid, things are constantly changing. At other events it’s considered rude if you walk out but because at SXSW it’s actually okay…. The deal with startups—there were 56 at the accelerator this year– is there’s a lot of volatility. We’ve had startups that got acquired, like, two weeks out. Some people run out of money. Some are in acquisition mode and their buyers say ‘We don’t want you to market.’”
Add to that the staffing reality that Valentine works with two professionals, Michelle Murdough—Accelerator assistant– and Maria Alonso—Startup Village assistant—but everyone else on his staff of 50-60 people are volunteers.
And yet, Mudough said, “Perfection is his starting point.” Murdough has worked with Valentine six years on various events including SXSW. She noted his focus on detail, down to making sure each pen on the judge’s table works.
“The smallest thing is something he would obsess over, more than….” she gestures a big picture. “And I’ve been like: Are you kidding me? You really want me to sit and check on every pen? Sure enough, one of them doesn’t work.”
They’ve had their blow ups in all the tension, but over the years they’ve learned to work together when something cranks up the pressure, like today when a pitching team that was supposed to pitch at 3:30 never appeared. Someone had to talk to the judges, the other teams, the emcee and make changes that would all be upended if the team suddenly showed up. Valentine and Murdough spell each other in those moments, taking turns dealing with the circumstance. “He has a huge heart and a tremendous focus on his work,” she said.
Valentine sees SXSW Accelerator and Startup Village as part of the startup ecosystem of the city that has been steadily growing over the past 10 years.
“I love this community,” he said, “the eclecticness, the quality of lifestyle…we have our own identity as far as a tech community. A new wave coming up and we’re different from the other tech communities. SXSW is not your traditional conference and I think people see and appreciate that. It’s so intertwined with the city. More and more the city realizes the value of startups, that they create vibrancies, possibilities.”
Valentine wound up as SXSW Accelerator and Startup Village Producer by a circuitous route. He got his degree in communication and behavioral science. But what he really loved was the arts. When he was a kid he lived part of the time in New York and New Jersey and his parents often took him to the museum. He began volunteering at various arts events just to be around the arts and wound up being asked to run the events. Two years in a row he created a Dancefest with 39 dance companies and 450 dancers over five days.
He was working as a recruiter with Intelquest when he decided to ask the marketing department if he could switch jobs and become their event manager. When he showed the head of marketing his portfolio, they were thrilled.
“People love it when you are passionate and have a lot of energy,” he said. Two years later, he was asked to run events for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and they elevated him to Executive Director. Then he started his own events video and audio company for the Chamber of Commerce and tourism industry, but when the tourism industry slowed down he segued to other jobs. He took on events management for the Busby Foundation for Central Texas for families of patients with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease) which he still does.
When he feels overwhelmed by the pressure at SXSW, he remembers the families he deals with who are dealing with really painful issues and it restores his perspective. “People are dealing with really hard life issues,” he said.
But none of that means he lets anything slide.
“This event is very, very important to Chris,” Murdough said. “This one has his name and reputation on it. This one has to go right.”

SubtleData’s Developers Garage at SXSW

March 11, 2013 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 3 Comments

BY ANDREW MOORE
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

At the SubtleData Developer Garage event

Wouldn’t it be cool if you could order and pay for a beer – or any other food or beverage – at your favorite bar just by using a smartphone? Sure it would. Can you? Well, probably not. While there are most likely a million cool ways to build an app that lets you order from your table or have a cold beer waiting for you at your favorite bar, there probably isn’t any.
Why? Your Smartphone app doesn’t speak the same language as the cash register at the bar. In fact, having a cloud based app communicate with the server infrastructure of an establishment’s point of sale system is really difficult. The POS infrastructure – as in your favorite bar’s registers, touch screen software, servers the software talks to, etc – doesn’t speak in a smartphone-friendly language.
Building software that translates into each of the many different POS systems used in bars and restaurants is time consuming prohibitively expensive for app developers–costing thousands of dollars. Thus, your smartphone simply can’t buy you a beer.
SubtleData – an Austin-based startup – is solving this problem. It has created software that integrates with 12 of the major POS systems — including four of the five most-used systems – which gives them the ability to communicate with 60 percent of the POS system market. SubtleData installs a plug-in on local POS servers which translates to the SubtleData cloud platform. The cloud platform speaks the same code language as smartphone app developers – enabling developers to finally build that app which can tell your bar’s register you would like a beer.

Richard Bagdonas of SubtleData

“Our goal is to make it easy for people to build apps that interact with point of sale systems at bars, restaurants, casinos, hotels, nightclubs,” says President and CTO Richard Bagdonas. “The developers that build the actual apps utilize our framework and platform to get to the point of sale.”
This year, SubtleData will release new API technology that provides developers with code shortcuts to create POS related apps even faster — replacing operations that require around 80 lines of code with ones requiring 20. They showed a demo of the new technology at the SubtleData Developer Garage event, which was held yesterday at Bourbon Girl in Austin, TX.
“Mobile application developers can build an app in days, and it used to take them months and years,” says Bagdonas.
Bagdonas says that 550 startups are already using the SubtleData platform. Several such startups attended their SubtleData event and pitched their ideas to venture capitalists.

Pitching to investors

Innovative Delivery Systems President Dietrich Diehl, who pitched his Ordr It product to investors, is using SubtleData to integrate into the POS systems of stadium concessions. Diehl’s product is an app that would let fans at sporting events order food right from their seats instead of waiting at the concession stand.
“If you want to integrate yourself into these POS systems it will cost you like $100,000 to $500,000,” said Diehl. “These guys do it essentially for free and then charge a percentage of revenue.”
Diehl says that using SubtleData helps their sales pitch to companies who own stadiums — who would otherwise need to agree to split the high cost of software integration.
Coupon Media project manager Eric Moore also attended the event, but did not present. Moore does not use SubtleData, but is interested in its potential. Moore’s business helps companies integrate coupon services in their POS while preventing fraud.
“We are looking at SubtleData as a way to kind of streamline our process into some of the newer POS systems,” says Moore. “It’s a huge cost saving if it works.”
Moore said his company spent “tens of thousands of dollars” integrating with their first POS vendor. He hopes that SubtleData will incorporate coding for “shopping cart” style transactions to help his company fully integrate coupons.

: The Panel (From left) Mark Turner, Lyle Worthington, Bryan Menell

The SubtleData Developer Garage event also had a panel of industry operators, who fielded questions about the current technologies in the restaurant and hotel industry and talked about what they would like to see from new technologies that use POS communications.
Restaurant Freedom Owner Mark Turner, who operates 18 restaurant locations, says that he sees potential in the new apps based on SubtleData’s technology but needs them to be integrated in a simple and easy way.
“I don’t want to have a loyalty program that is stand alone, that is different than my ability to checkout, that is different than my interactions on social media,” says Turner. “It’s just a matter of – can they get them all to work together as simplistically as possible?”
Turner says that for a restaurant owner to bite on a new technology there has to be some cost efficiency or certainty of revenue.
“It’s an allocation of my marketing dollars,” says Turner. “I’ve got at budget already that I am planning on spending. If you bring me a way that seems to be cost efficient and have a better return on investment over all, I am absolutely open to looking at that.”
One returning SXSW startup has already decided to use SubtleData for its efficiency. Noom – or Next One’s On Me – is an app that lets users gift small food or drink items to friends or acquaintances. The current version of Noom requires you to redeem gifts by showing the app to an employee at a Noom-friendly establishment. The employee must enter a coupon-like code back at the register before you receive your item. NOOM CEO Sara Rodell is using SubtleData to make the app’s gift redeeming process more elegant.
“With SubtleData, the user gets to choose what they want to redeem,” says Rodell. “Once they make that selection, which is entered into the POS, there’s no interaction that’s needed with the waiter or waitress.”
Soon, Noom users will be able to redeem a gift simply by walking into a Noom-friendly establishment, selecting their item, and entering their table number. The app can either generate an already paid ticket in the establishment’s POS system or can add the gift to an existing bill. Rodell hopes to have the new Noom app ready by this fall.
So thanks to Noom, and SubtleData, we will soon be able to walk into a pub, enter a table number, and have a pint delivered right to our table. Cheers!

Realty Mogul Won the HATCH Pitch Competition at SXSW

March 10, 2013 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 0 Comments

BY SUSAN LAHEY
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

It may be good news for the economy that two of the top winners of the HATCH pitch competition make it easier for investors to invest.
Realty Mogul, a company that calls itself “crowdfunding for real estate” won the HATCH pitch competition presented by the Houston Technology Center Sunday. The Los Angeles company, whose impassioned pitch earned it the term “histrionic” by judges, makes it simple for accredited investors to find qualified real estate investments and pool resources with minimum investments as low as $5,000.
Second place was won by Molecule Software, a Houston company that simplifies trading of stocks for small energy companies.
Third place was claimed by Austin company Taskbox, which processes mobile email inboxes into priority tasks according to due dates and other factors. Taskbox also won the audience popularity award, a new feature this year created and managed by Protexting.
Greg Wright, HATCH founder, said the 100 companies that applied for the pitch competition were very diverse in focus and product type including a health IT company—Snap Health—and Lynx Laboratories which created a 3-D camera that measures the object it’s photographing. Last year, the HATCH competition spilled out into the hall with many people standing in line, trying to get in. A number of the audience members were last year’s participants, Wright said.
The HATCH competition, which was staged for the first time at the 2012 SXSW Startup Village, is unique in that all the participants are coached extensively before presenting. Each team has a coach who meets with them either in person or virtually, until the pitch is right.
One of the judges, this year, last year’s winner Distil Inc. CEO Rami Essaid, has done a lot of Google hangouts with various startups and blogged extensively about the pitching process.
“A big piece of what pitches needs to happen is to make the audience relate. What made us successful last year was we told a story about the problem. A lot of the companies don’t engage the audience that well. When you tell a story in four minutes, it’s really hard to be concise with the message. You have to treat it like you have 30 seconds instead of four minutes. That forces you to get the message down.”
Distil found an investor among the judges last year, John Frankel, a partner with ff Venture Capital and closed a $1.8 million deal in December. Frankel was also a judge this year.
Wright said it was largely Essaid’s energy and enthusiasm that sealed the deal last year.
“You just have to watch Rami to understand why they will be successful,” he said. “He was there at everything. I would email the group or send out a Tweet ‘Got a TV opportunity in 15 minutes; be here or miss it’ and he would be the first one there. Or ‘At the Bing lot, one of the investors is here, come and join us,’ and he would be there.”
Each of the 12 judges had a virtual $1 million to invest and whichever contestant garnered the largest share of that investment won. Each contestant had four minutes to pitch with six minutes of questions from the judges.
Judges were blunt, sometimes almost chiding with contestants, calling them out on business models that looked more like features of other products than businesses on their own, questioning their ability to get customers. Joel Yarmon of Draper Associates told Taskbox founder Andrew Eye that he’d be “pissed” if he’d given a seed-round investment to a company—as the Central Texas Angel Network recently did for Taskbox—and the company used it to find more investments. Eye assured him that CTAN recognized the size of the players he was competing against and supported his pitching to which Yarmon replied “Let’s agree to disagree.”
“I don’t think the judges are harsher this year than last year,” Frankel quipped. “I just think they’re grumpier.”