Category: Austin (Page 264 of 318)

BY ANDREW MOORE
Reporter for Silicon Hills News

How influential are online reviews? Have you used a review site such as Yelp to find a restaurant lately? If you have, you may be one of the 100 million people to use Yelp in January of 2013. Did you review that restaurant? I hope it was good — a Harvard business study found that a one star increase in Yelp ratings meant a 5 to 9 percent increase in restaurant revenue. The Guardian reports that a half star increase translates to a better chance of being full at peak dining times. This means that restaurants, and other businesses, have a vested interest in keeping track of their online reviews – and that’s what Grapevine does.
“We aggregate, or gather, online reviews from customers, and notify businesses when a new review is left for them online,” says Grapevine co-founder and marketing rep Erik Larson.
Grapevine notifies it’s customers with daily email alerts. Its service covers 10 major review sites including Google, Bing, Yelp, CitySearch, Insider Pages, Yellow Pages, TripAdvisor, OpenTable, and UrbanSpoon. While there are many more review sites on the web, Grapevine claims that their service covers 95 percent of online restaurant reviews.
The email alerts show a synopsis of what the reviewers said, how many stars they gave the establishment, and the author of the review. They also include links that allow the user to quickly go to the site that originated the review to either read the whole review or respond to it.
“Instead of having to keep ten different websites bookmarked on your browser and check them every day, we now do that for you automatically,” says Larson. “We are an alerting service.”
Because Grapevine gets users their reviews quickly, it gives the user an opportunity to easily respond to a bad review or thank a customer for a good one.
“We want them to respond, we encourage them to respond,” says designer Josh Seltzer. “Owning their reputation is huge. We can help them get to that point as effectively as possible.”
Grapevine believes that responding to negative reviews and encouraging customers to leave positive reviews is the best way to improve an establishment’s reputation.
“You need to ask you customers to give reviews when they’re happy, and that’s what most businesses don’t do,” says Larson. “The most you can do with a bad review is push it down [on web searches].”
Reputation management has become a big industry in the last few years. Businessweek.com recently reported that “Media consultant BIA/Kelsey estimates that small and medium-size businesses spent about $1.6 billion managing their online reputations in 2011. It expects the figure to grow to more than $5 billion by 2015.”
The article discusses how some of the major reputation managers have hurt their own reputations by trying to push bad reviews down by creating artificial or fake review pages designed to show up high on Google searches – a tactic that Grapevine and other companies look down on.
“That actually used to work for a while and it doesn’t work anymore,” says Larson. “As time progresses, customers online will get smarter and smarter — and they’ll see through the B-S.”
There are other companies that offer services similar to Grapevine, such as Reviewtrackers.com, but Grapevine hopes to gain an advantage through speed and simplicity.
“We look at it from the standpoint of, ‘what is the simplest way to get this to the customer?’” says co-founder and developer Richard Ortega. “We are focused on simplicity in the delivery of the technology.”
Grapevine incorporates this simplicity by using email instead of a website or dashboard that must be logged into. It also touts that users can start receiving reviews the day after you sign up – which they claim is faster than most other sites. Grapevine is also the only company to offer a free version of their service. The free version gives users up to five reviews a month for as long as the user wants – there is no limited trial period.
The paid version of the service is $30 a month. On March 5, paying customers will be able to access a dashboard that gives a statistical overview of all the reviews a business has received. Users with multiple locations can have all locations covered for a negotiated price.
The Startup currently has 94 customers – half of which are paying for unlimited reviews. About one-third of Grapevine customers are restaurants, but the startup also provides services to everything from health and wellness businesses and attorneys to jewelry stores and a RV park.
Grapevine was originally created by Erik Larson and Richard Ortega as a complex and expensive costumer review management and comparison service exclusively for hotels and car dealerships. The service launched in 2011 but failed due to a lack of market research and customer demand.
“We built a product without a need, which is not the right way to do it,” says Larson.
After losing $40,000 in what startups refer to as “their first burn”, Grapevine re-invented their business model and re-launched as a greatly simplified alerting service on July 26, 2012 — bringing on co-founder Josh Seltzer. It was then re-vamped on Jan. 15 to provide reviews to customers in a faster and easier way. Grapevine was also the first startup to officially receive the $25,000 Geekdom fund from Geekdom of San Antonio.
Grapevine’s next move is to adapt their service for tracking product reviews on sites like Amazon.com and newegg.com for consumer manufacturers. It is currently looking for an intern to help web development and sales.

By L.A. LOREK
Founder of Silicon Hills News

Photo courtesy of Geekdom

Geekdom is a sponsor of Silicon Hills News

BY IAN PANCHEVRE
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

Austin-based Outbox Mail has been making huge strides as of late. Outbox, a self-described “beautiful inbox for your postal mail,” is expanding beyond its initial pilot in Austin, where for the past year and a half more than 500 customers have enjoyed the service.
As of this week, Outbox has officially broadened its reach beyond the Silicon Hills to include Silicon Valley.
Now, selected zip codes in the San Francisco bay area can take advantage of the service.
“Our time in Austin has proven out both our model and the value of the service to our customers,” explains Evan Baehr, co-founder of Outbox. “We are ecstatic to launch in San Francisco and can’t wait to show thousands how we can make their lives easier.”
Outbox is an innovative service that collects and organizes physical mail into a digital format for its users. “All a user has to do is sign up and take a picture of their mail key, and we’ll take it from there,” notes Outbox Engineer, Juan Carlos Jimenez.
After doing just that, Outbox’s team – fondly known as Unpostmen – retrieves a user’s mail from their mailbox three times a week. The mail is then returned to Outbox’s secure warehouse, where it is promptly digitized and then delivered via the Web. Users can browse, organize, prioritize, discard, and unsubscribe from their physical mail through their computer, iPad, and most recently, iPhone. Additionally, users can take advantage of features like reminders and to-do lists which help them manage important deadlines.
And the amazing thing is, this service is available for a flat fee of $4.99 per mailbox, per month. No hidden fees, no volume based billing. Just the cost of a wrinkled Lincoln.
For those interested in the service, they can experiment with a free demo to get a feel for how the technology functions. A user will quickly take note of the application’s ease-of-use and aesthetic beauty. Yep, Outbox isn’t only making mail easier to manage, it’s also making it sexier.
“This is an exciting time for anyone and everyone that receives snail mail,” explains Will Davis, Outbox co-founder and a former classmate of Baehr at Harvard Business School. “Mail is an essential mode of communication, but nobody has taken the leap to modernize it and make it meaningful again. That’s precisely what we’re doing in Austin and now San Francisco.”
Certainly, the postal system is in need of some innovation, and, dare we say, modernization. In 2011, over 168 billion pieces of mail were delivered throughout the United States. And as an industry, postal mail stands large at an estimated domestic value of $900 billion. Despite an astounding volume of physical mail underlining a tremendously valuable service, the U.S. Postal Service is struggling.
Facing layoffs and shuttered offices, the USPS recently announced its plans to discontinue mail service on Saturdays, in an attempt to address cash flow issues that exceeded $15 billion in losses in 2012. The cut, which is expected to begin in August, should save the USPS about $2 billion a year. And in perhaps a greater sign of desperation, the USPS has announced a new product line of “Rain Heat & Snow” clothing and accessories. Yes, the USPS is getting into the fashion business.
Despite the challenges facing the USPS – and the various reforms it is considering – the core service of sending and receiving mail seems all too stale and familiar for the end customer. Outbox, on the other hand, is determined to blaze a new trail. By stubbornly pushing physical mail into the digital era, Outbox breathes a fresh sense of social interaction into the postal mail experience. Outbox empowers its users to engage mail on their terms, when they want, where they want.
Outbox is backed by an impressive group of investors, including Mike Maples, Jr. (Twitter), Adam Ross (Yammer), and Peter Thiel (Facebook). The expansion into San Francisco, the recent release of its iPhone application, and the glowing reviews that Outbox has received – both offline and online – only validate the momentum that Outbox has been steadily building.
Davis hopes that Outbox will be available “across the country in the near future.” Until then, non-residents of Austin and San Francisco can continue to mutter a small curse under their breath, every time they make the trek to collect their snail mail in the rain, heat, and snow.

Liz Elam, founder of Link Coworking in Austin, is getting ready for a huge conference next week.
But it’s not South by Southwest.
It’s the Global Coworking Unconference Conference, which takes place next Tuesday and Wednesday at the Austin Music Hall at 208 Nueces St. The first day is a formal conference with an unconference taking place on the second day.
“I follow coworking and I study it all the time,” Elam said. “I look at trends. I go to the European coworking conference. And I don’t know a coworking space that isn’t planning for expansion and growth.”
The number of coworking establishments doubled last year and today more than 100,000 people work in coworking spaces, according to DeskMag, which covers the industry.
“I just opened my second space this past year,” said Elam. “You need to know how to fund it. You need to decide who you want to be and how you’re going to manage it.”
Coworking spaces are networking goldmines for people who work there, Elam said.
“They are run by Josh Baer, Liz Elam or a Kevin Koym – people who are connectors – people who know people,” Elam said. “The average coworking space is 44 spaces. Mine is about 70. The people in those spaces are also innovators, early adopters and influencers.”
This year’s conference will cover topics such as how to make coworking profitable, the impact of coworking on society, specialized coworking spaces and alternative sources of funding.
Nick Longo, co-founder of Geekdom, a coworking and collaborative workspace focused on the technology industry in San Antonio, is sponsoring the conference and speaking on a panel.
This is the second year running for GCUC, which is nicknamed “Juicy” for all its juicy content on coworking. The conference brings together the world’s experts on coworking including space owners, property managers, investors, academics and entrepreneurs.
People travel from all over the world to attend the conference which is expecting more than 300 people, Elam said.
“We have people flying in from Australia, Europe, Asia, South America, Mexico and Canada,” she said.
The conference began when groups of coworking enthusiasts met up at SXSW in 2008, 2009 and spun their gathering into an unconference in 2010 and 2011. Last year, Elam combined a traditional conference with professional speakers and a do it yourself unconference to create the first GCUC.
The coworking movement has become a serious business in the United States, Elam said.
“What we are seeing now is specialization in coworking,” she said. “It is coworking but they are really looking for a very specific demographic in a very specific part of the market.”
Capital Factory in Austin and Geekdom in San Antonio both target high-technology professionals. Link Coworking welcomes all kinds of workers and doesn’t specialize in a particular industry, Elam said.
“What I look for at Link is somebody who wants to get stuff done,” Elam said. “At the tend of the day, what you need is a place to be productive.”
But niche coworking is a very high growth area. Plug and Play in Austin targets workers with young kids. Kitchen Coworking on sixth street is aimed at people in the food industry.
“On the West Coast, we’re seeing maker spaces and people making stuff with their hands,” Elam said.
In Round Rock, TechShop is a specialized workplace aimed at making stuff with tools.
This may be the last year for GCUC in Austin. Next year, Elam is planning on hosting the conference in New York, Chicago or Los Angeles.
“It’s an amazing conference put on by a few people working really hard,” Elam said.

GCUC Tickets are still on sale. And GCUC still has a few sponsorship opportunities available.

Disclosure: Silicon Hills News is a media sponsor of GCUC. And that’s because it’s one fun, smart and informative conference and we like to cover it. We’re also a fan of coworking. And Geekdom is a sponsor of Silicon Hills News.

This week, We Are Austin Tech shines the spotlight on Chuck Gordon, co-founder of the world’s largest market for self-storage: Sparefoot.
The company, founded in 2008, is a graduate from Capital Factory accelerator and has raised $4.5 million.
Gordon and Mario Feghali founded the company during their senior year at UCLA. Today, SpareFoot has 60 employees.
“The best advice I have for up-and-coming tech entrepreneurs is something that was ingrained very early on in Capitol Factory: fail fast, fail quickly,” Gordon says in the video. “You have to understand that everything you try is not gonna work. And you need to just keep trying stuff until you find what does. We changed around what we were doing all the time at the beginning — we still do all the time.”

Door64 is putting on a startup showcase next Friday, March 8th.
The event is designed to shine the spotlight on local startups right as South by Southwest Interactive kicks off.
Already, 200 people have signed up to attend the event, says Eve Richter, Door64 spokeswoman.
The event takes place at the Norris Conference Center at 2525 West Anderson Lane from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m. It’s free to register.
The Startup Showcase will feature a series of talks on funding along with a pitch event.
To participate, fill out the Showcase Startup Application.
To have a table at the event, fill out the Showcase Service Provider Application.

Click Security a real-time security analytics company, has received $17.7 million in Series B financing.
The Austin-based company raised a Series A round led by Sequoia Capital of $7 million in 2011, bringing its total funding raised to $24.7 million.
Lightspeed Venture Partners led the round of financing with other investors including Citi Ventures and Sequoia Capital. Click Security plans to use the money to expand sales, marketing and engineering.
Click Security has customers in financial services, higher education, and retail. The company’s products alert companies to a cyber attack potentially hidden in big daa.
“Click’s core technology and solution approach has the potential to reshape the manner and speed of modern threat detection, analysis and early stage response. There still remains a significant gap in the way organizations safeguard against sophisticated attacks, and Click is approaching this with a very interesting solution model,” Mike Goguen, Managing Partner, Sequoia Capital, said in a news release.
“The business of global cybercrime, by some estimates, now exceeds $300 billion annually. Traditional security defenses are clearly not getting the job done. We believe Click Security has developed a unique approach to providing real-time visibility into the unknown – representing a game changer for organizations looking to take back their networks,” John Vrionis, Partner, Lightspeed Venture Partners, said in a news release.