Category: Austin (Page 268 of 318)

BY ANDREW MOORE
Reporter with Silicon Hills News
Nathan Green’s company, Campus2Careers, is proof of the power of interns.
Green runs the entire operation with a staff of five interns, himself, and one developer paid full time. Campus2Careers.com is a job board for college students and graduates used by many colleges across Texas. Job boards have limitations however, and Green is now looking at a new way to connect students and employers more effectively through internship programs.
“We are the largest student job board in the state of Texas – 250,000 students and 20,000 jobs – some great numbers,” said Green. “But at the end of the day, job boards suck – because there’s nothing personal about them.”

To add this personal element, Campus2Careers is organizing internship fairs in the major cities of Texas. Intern In San Antonio, which was held at TriPoint last Saturday, featured internship opportunities with 38 companies in or near San Antonio. A total of 450 students from 20 different schools registered for the event. It was the second internship fair the company has held in San Antonio. Campus2Careers focuses their events towards non-profits and small to mid-sized companies. It charges the companies $50 to be part of the event – a much lower price than most career fairs. The organization sees small business internships as an important part of the Texas economy.
“A student is 50 percent more likely to start his or her own small business years from now if they had an internship with a small business,” claims Green. “Students today are the future small business owners of Texas.”
Campus2Careers has helped place around 2,000 students in the eight events they’ve held so far. Their surveys indicate that companies have hired 450 interns for full time jobs.
Green spends the first 30 minutes of his fairs coaching companies on how to make the most out of their interns. He advises companies to pay interns a stipend, keep them on for at least a year, get them business cards to make them feel invested in the company, and use them to test out new ideas – such as establishing a social media presence for the company.
“You could go right now and hire an agency at about $5,000 a month to manage your social media here in San Antonio. That could be the best investment you could make,” said Green. “What I am saying is — why don’t you spend $500 a month with an intern and then see if it’s worthwhile.”
Green also gave the companies guidelines and advice for creating a structured internship program.
After chatting with the students that attended, many companies were impressed at the potential the interns offered.
“I’m surprised that as many interns know about e-commerce,” said Gerry Gerardo of Orion 2013 – a company that helps other companies establish an online presence. “I was expecting just a few here and there, but a lot of them know about it.”
Sportybird.io, which was just awarded funding by Geekdom in January, found several candidates that could help grow their company and have already scheduled interviews.
“I’ve been pleasantly surprised,” said Founder Joshua Swank — speaking about the students interviewed. “Two of them we already really like for two positions.”
The students spoke with non-profit companies as well. National non-profit City Year is expanding in San Antonio and working to help high school kids stay on track and graduate. Admissions Manager Abraham Johns sees interns as an important part of their operation.
“As a non-profit we don’t have tons of money so it’s good to get that young-adult, eager-to-do-anything vibe and put them on social media or put them on marketing for our program,” said Johns.
Of the 450 students that registered, Campus2Careers estimates that around 350 showed up. Students like Kristan Heart, who attends UTSA but has not declared a major, sees the fair as an opportunity to broaden her horizons.
“Seeing these other Job offers for internships – it’s kind of motivating to see what else is out there,” said Heart.
For some students, the experience opened new doors.
“This is the first time I’ve ever done anything like this for an internship, or even looked to go into an internship,” said UTSA student Ashley Stephens. “I’m getting really good feedback from every person at the different tables so it’s really exciting.”
To make the most of their opportunities, Green advises students to put together a strong résumé, research the attending companies before hand, and get themselves business cards so they can exchange them for a prospective employer’s business card.
Campus2Careers plans to hold additional internship fairs in the future. They have already held events in San Antonio, Austin, Dallas, and Houston. Campus2Careers organizes the events in partnership with the Governor’s office and the Texas Foundation for Innovative Communities. The San Antonio event was sponsored by Constant Contact – an e-mail marketing software company for small businesses. Geekdom of San Antonio was a promotional partner and invited several of its portfolio companies.

Crowdfunding is getting a lot of attention as an alternative way to finance a project or a startup company.
The first Crowdfund Texas Conference took place earlier this year.
While countless companies have raised millions of dollars through crowdfunding sites like IndieGoGo, Kickstarter and Hubrocket for all kinds of projects, crowdfunding is not without its perils.
A Kickstarter backer sued a project creator last year after he failed to deliver the product he promised.
And soon the Securities and Exchange Commission is expected to release rules to govern equity-based crowdfunding that will allows companies to raise funds from small investors.
So I created this Slideshare to give some information the state of the industry today.

If you’re looking for an internship, there’s an event on Saturday that offers lots of possibilities.
More than 20 agencies, chambers and other organizations along with 13 colleges and universities, the Governor’s office and Campus2Careers are putting on InternInSanAntonio to connect students with employers looking for interns.
The event takes place Saturday, Feb. 2, from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. at Grantham Center at the Tripoint YMCS at 3233 N. St. Mary’s, San Antonio.
More than 80 local companies are offering more than 200 Spring internships and the event is expected to attract more than 600 students.

The Texas Ventures Labs Investment Competition will be held at the AT&T Executive Education Center in downtown Austin starting next Thursday.
The annual event is a business plan competition featuring 25 University of Texas at Austin graduate student teams.
Those teams are vying for prizes worth a total of $135,000.
The two-day event starts with the semi-finals on Thursday at 5:30 p.m. The top five teams will then advance to the final round on Friday starting at 6:30 p.m. The winner will be announced later that evening at a reception at Gabriel’s Cafe.
The public may attend, but registration is required.
There’s also a TVL Scholarship Competition held on Feb. 9th.

Eleven startups will join the Spring 2013 Accelerator put on by the Jon Brumley Texas Venture Labs at the University of Texas at Austin.
Half of the companies focus on the software industry with the remaining companies working on hardware, biotechnology, consumer goods and healthcare.
“I am excited to see what the students and entrepreneurs in the program can produce this semester,” Sid Allen, CEO of Escapaide and Accenture Venture Partner for TVL, said in a news release. “I have high expectations as, across-the-board, this is the best group of companies TVL has ever worked with.”

From Jon Brumley Texas Venture Labs, here’s the list of companies with a description of each one provided by TVL:

Cellular Machines designs and manufactures a $399 monitoring device that uses the cell phone network to send text message alarms and continuously send reports to a Cloud Server. Installation takes five minutes and no IT skills are needed. While still a start-up company, Cellular Machines has installed over 170 products as part of a test marketing program through the www.refrigerationmonitor.com website. Twenty percent of the customers have reordered. All of the software and circuit designs were done in-house. The success of the test marketing effort prompted the company to redesign the product to achieve 35% less cost and add a line of wireless temperature sensors. The TVL analysis will include recommendations of what markets to concentrate on and possible funding or merger opportunities.

Admittance Technologies is committed to improving the quality of life of patients with heart disease through innovative electrical engineering solutions. We provide a platform technology compatible with all existing pacemakers to determine heart volume in real time. CardioVol™, our flagship product, is ahead of the curve in three areas by providing: 1) the only device which can determine the hemodynamic stability of ventricular tachycardia, 2) an automatic therapy to tune the timing of pacemakers previously implanted in these patients, 3) the earliest detection of impending heart failure, and 4) technology that requires no additional surgery because we are piggybacking into devices already indicated in all patients with weakened hearts. We are currently working on a completely new platform with Texas Venture Labs involving tissue viability that will be valuable in markets such as kidney tumor surgery, organ transplant, and ablation surgery for arrhythmias.

Altogen Labs is a Good Laboratory Practice (GLP)-compliant laboratory that provides innovative biotechnology research services for pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and academic institutions worldwide. Our scientists have years of experience and expertise that includes all types of pre-clinical CRO studies, cell and molecular biology research and development. Altogen Labs recently developed a bioremediation technology based on an approach using the most potent oil-degrading bacteria found at multiple oil spill sites in Texas. This technology allows remediation of large amounts of hydrocarbon-contaminated liquids or soil. We have completed laboratory and field tests, performed genome characterization, secured IP, and are focused on commercialization of this technology.

StatusPath is an online platform for recurring employee status reports. Our customized status report templates and status report samples, intuitive user interfaces, and built-in collaborative tools enable our customers to write and read better status reports more quickly. We love status reports, so you can too.

Moniker Guitars gives you the ability to design and purchase custom electric guitars online. Choose colors, shapes, and parts and even add text and graphics to make your new guitar truly unique. All our guitars are built in Austin, TX and shipped to your door. Design yours at MonikerGuitars.com

Inifinite io is a stealth-mode IT systems company developing disruptive technology for the data storage market. Our game changing new technology combines Flash memory with Cloud storage to help data center managers gain control of exploding data storage costs. It’s an accepted fact that eighty percent or more of all data is written once and never accessed again and that inactive data in the typical data center doubles every twenty four months or less. Infinite io is developing technology to automatically control and manage the massive growth of inactive data that assumes the majority of most IT storage budgets while dramatically increasing the access performance of data that is actively used.

Vampire Labs was founded in Austin, TX, by a handful of eclectic, pioneering talents focused on ending vampire energy loss with innovations designed to save energy on a massive scale at minimal cost. To date, Vampire Labs has a dozen issued or pending patents for technology that eliminates vampire energy loss in mobile device battery chargers, external power supplies, and microprocessor cores.

AuManil assists the $40B (2015) online games market to reduce whale churn, increase whale conversion, improve whale acquisition and manage whales across a portfolio of games. Our team of data scientists analyze an individual player’s financial and game play behavior to profile each player in order to predict lifetime value, churn risk and life-cycle patterns. The patterns let our customers engage their players with personal messaging or offers to support that player’s competitive or bulk purchasing or Sunday-church-avoiding nature.

Carnegie Design Systems provides chip design services to the semiconductor industry in the processor, audio, communication, power and consumer electronic space. Carnegie Design System has developed a class of encryption algorithms based on correction codes for the data security space.

IncentTo is a SaaS Sales Incentive Management and Marketing Program Management company designed to simplify and automate sales incentives and marketing campaigns. It is specially designed to improve the performance of sales and marketing organizations through a web based system that quickly, efficiently, and consistently designs, deploys, procures, distributes and reports on sales incentive programs.

Kin Valley is the social network that provides the best way to Connect with Kin. Kin are the people who are most important to you…your family, your best friends, and your family support system — teachers, coaches, teammates, troop leaders, etc. Kin Valley also happens to be the only multi-generational social network where kids (including children under 13) and adults can interact freely. Only Kin Valley is “Safe for adults” and “Super-Safe for kids.” This makes Kin Valley the social network of choice for parents as well as many organizations including schools, sports leagues, and the Girl Scouts.

Every once in a while, startup entrepreneurs need a “Pep Talk” well here it is from Rainn Wilson’s SoulPancake and a 9-year-old kid from Tennessee known as Kid President.

This week, We Are Austin Tech features an interview with Josh Rubin, who can often be found covering startup events throughout the city for CNN.
Rubin runs the CNN Express Bus, a broadcast-ready mobile news bureau.
During his interview, Rubin discusses the coverage of technology in Austin and says it’s not where he thinks it should be. We couldn’t agree more at Silicon Hills News. That’s why we’re working to close the gap and bring more startup news to the Austin and San Antonio region.
That’s why organizations like We Are Austin Tech are vital to shining a spotlight on the innovators in the technology industry locally.
“I think there is over emphasis in America on the tech scenes of New York and Silicon Valley,” Rubin says in the interview. “I understand why it is, I understand that’s where the critical mass is. I’m not interested that. I think there is more fire in the middle of the country right now.”
Rubin also talks about how difficult it is for a startup to get national press and how the best stories bubble up through a network. That’s also why social media is so important in keeping an audience informed of a startup’s activities and progress. It’s easy to get buried in a fox hole and code, code, code until the cows come home. But it’s equally as important to go to the coffee machine and talk to other like minded individuals. Attend a few of the high tech happy hours and schmooze with other startups. You never know who you might meet and how they might positively impact your business.
Rubin also mentions Geekdom, which shows the cross-pollination going on among the two largest cities that make up this thriving technology region.
“The best piece of advice I was ever given for new ideas and for startups was… I was reporting… I was down at Geekdom, which is an incubator down in San Antonio.And I walk in there and I’m meeting all of these different companies, and I walk in and this one company is telling absolutely everything about their business: who they’re funded by, who their competitors are, what they do, how they do it. And I pause for a second and I say “Guys, thank you, but aren’t you concerned about intellectual property, aren’t you concerned about piracy?” Rubin says in the interview. “And they said no, flat out. Piracy is not the issue in startups. Obscurity is the issue in startups. You need to tell people what you do, you need to tell everybody what you do and you need to be telling them that all the time.”