Category: Austin (Page 272 of 318)

If I had a buck for every time an entrepreneur asked me how to get media attention, I’d be as wealthy as a venture capitalist.
Ok, that may be a bit of stretch. I’d probably have enough money to run my own bar, which I’d call “The Story Distillery.”
But I’ve got to say the startup entrepreneurs who ask me that question are smart. Because what they really want to know is how do they tell a story good enough to reach the widest audience possible. The key is to have a good story to tell. One that resonates with people. One that they want to share with their friends and family.

Here’s my five tips on story telling for entrepreneurs:

1. WAIT: Have a great story to tell. Sometimes this means waiting until you’ve landed a great big contract or found a major investor willing to back your idea or hit $1 million in revenue or sold the company or any significant material event in the company’s life. A bad story is “Hey, we’re launching a new version of our product” will you write about us so that we can attract new customers? Reporters are not PR agents.

2. BE UNIQUE: Make sure that your story is unique and interesting. Try it out on friends. Get feedback. Pretend like you’re writing a novel and when you publish it you want it to be the best possible version. It’s Ok to tell a bad story. I’ve told plenty. Just learn from the experience and refine the story until it flows like a real-life fairy tale with a beginning, middle and end and some exciting climaxes throughout to keep the reader engaged. Also, you can think like a reporter and include the 5 Ws and H: Who, What, When, Where, Why and How.

3. BE HUMAN: Make sure your story has plenty of characters in it. People like to read about people and their lives and their experiences. People who create the products are the innovators. Think about Steve Jobs. If people just talked about his products and not the person behind the ideas, then Apple wouldn’t have nearly as great a cult-like following.

4. BE AWARE OF YOUR AUDIENCE: Whole Foods’ social media director says Pinterest drives more traffic to its website than Twitter. That’s because Whole Foods crafts stories with compelling visuals especially for Pinterest. It doesn’t tell the same stories on Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest. The company understands the different audiences. Just because your company created a special story doesn’t mean you should blast the same story on different social media channels.

5. BE HELPFUL: Help tell other people’s stories. Dell is really good at this. The computer company tells its story through its customers and partners. This creates new narratives that keeps the stories fresh and interesting.

And if a reporter tells your story and it’s a good one, be sure to thank that person. Reporters remember people who say thank you. I’ve been a reporter for two decades and I keep a collection of all of the letters, e-mails and cards I’ve received throughout the years from people who were kind of enough to say thanks. They mean a lot to me.

And for more on story telling, I would recommend reading this post on Lyn Graft of Austin. He did this presentation last year at SXSW Interactive on Story telling for Entrepreneurs.
Alan Weinkrantz, a public relations professional in San Antonio, who I have known for a long time, recently gave this Slideshare presentation on the importance of story telling to some startups in Israel. He originally posted this on his blog.

President Barack Obama named 12 researchers as recipients of the National Medal of Science on Friday including two University of Texas professors.
Allen Bard, a professor of chemistry, and John Goodenough, professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Texas received the nation’s highest honor for scientists. Professor Goodenough developed materials that led to the first lithium-ion batteries. He’s also worked extensively on fuel cells. Professor Bard invented the scanning electrochemical microscope, “now used worldwide in investigations of electro-catalytic mechanism, in identification of cancerous cells, in mapping transport paths in the paths in the skin for trans-dermal drug delivery, and for lithographic patterning of surfaces” according to the Wolf Prize in Chemistry, which Bard won in 2008.
In addition, President Obama gave 11 inventors the National Medal of Technology and Innovation. They will receive their awards at a White House ceremony in early 2013.
“I am proud to honor these inspiring American innovators,” President Obama said in a statement. “They represent the ingenuity and imagination that has long made this Nation great—and they remind us of the enormous impact a few good ideas can have when these creative qualities are unleashed in an entrepreneurial environment.”
The full list of winners is available here.

The largest railroad network in the United States, Union Pacific Railroad has picked Austin for its new technology innovation center.
Union Pacific has opened an Information Technology Center at 807 Las Cimas Parkway in northwest Austin. The railroad plans to develop software and do engineering research and development at the site. The office can support up to 40 programmers and engineers.
A few months ago, General Motors and Visa have both announced plans to put innovation centers in Austin. And earlier this year, Apple announced plans to hire up to 3,600 employees at its Americas Operation Center in Austin during the next 10 years.
Union Pacific, one of the oldest companies in the U.S. founded 150 years ago, operates 6,300 miles of railroad tracks in Texas, more than any other state. It also has more employees here than any state except Nebraska, where it is based in Omaha, according to a news release.
“We continue to pursue aggressive recruiting efforts within the Texas university systems and found many of the candidates prefer to live and work in Austin,” Lynden Tennison, Union Pacific senior vice president and chief information officer, said in a news release. “Having an office in the heart of Austin will help us bring exciting new opportunities to the exceptional talent being developed in Texas.”
Union Pacific coordinates recruiting and outreach programs with the University of Texas at Austin, Texas A&M University, and the University of Texas at San Antonio, among others.
Union Pacific has its own telecommunications networks, which supports the company’s 10,000 customers and 32,000-mile rail network across 23 states.

Dell announced plans to acquire Credant Technologies, a data security firm.
Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.
Founded in 2001, Credant Technologies, based in Addison, adds strength to Dell’s computing solutions products. During the last three years, Dell has expanded its security products to offer clients.
“In today’s work environment data is always in-flight – from work being done on a local PC, being sent via email, stored on a USB drive and saved in the cloud. Each one of those experiences represents a potential security risk. As a result, businesses need a data protection strategy that is comprehensive, flexible and easy to deploy,” Jeff Clarke, president, End User Computing Solutions at Dell, said in a news release. “The Credant assets will complement and extend current Dell device security features to make Dell Latitude, OptiPlex and Precision PCs some of the world’s most secure. And when combined with the change in compute behaviors and data in-flight, Dell can now offer a differentiated security proposition based on its own Intellectual Property.”
Credant protects and encrypts information whether stored on a mobile device or in the cloud. The technology also supports a variety of mobile operating systems.
“Protecting critical information has only become more important as organizations globally struggle to protect their data in an ever more complex world,” Bob Heard, chief executive officer and founder of Credant, said in a news release. “This combination allows Credant to bring its deep capabilities in data security to Dell’s robust solution set and customer base. Together we will continue to focus on innovation and building value that results in beneficial outcomes for our customers.”

IBM announced plans to acquire StoredIQ Inc., a privately-held data analysis and management firm in Austin.
The companies did not disclose the financial terms of the deal.
StoredIQ will help IBM’s clients manage their data to know what to keep and what to throw away and how to use that data in its operations.
In addition to StoredIQ, IBM offers a solution called Information Lifecycle Governance to deal with data. StoredIQ will further enhance IBM’s ability to help clients manage data effectively.
IBM’s focus in helping clients manage data is to help them run their businesses more efficiently and to lower costs for storing data and to adhere to regulations on how long to keep information such as email.
“When StoredIQ was founded in 2001, the size of the digital universe was 6,500 petabytes. Back then, our mission was to help companies understand their digital content, and help them turn data into information they could use and act on,” according to this posting on the company’s site. “This year, the digital universe is expected to reach 1.2 million petabytes, and it’s growing by tenfold every year. Every year! To give you some perspective, thats 7.6 million Libraries of Congress.”

This Slideshare presentation shows how IBM is using big data to help its clients understand their businesses better.

uShip.com has closed on a $18 million Series C financing round with Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

The Austin-based startup plans to use the money for development, sales and marketing and to expand globally, according to a news release. Since its founding in 2004, uShip has raised $28 million including this round. Other investors include Benchmark Capital and DAG Ventures.

As part of the deal, Maritza Liaw, partner at KPCB, will join uShip’s board.

“Kleiner Perkins funding and resources will propel uShip’s next phase of growth. Commercial freight is trending toward complete automation and greater efficiency, meaning uShip’s PRO platform has the opportunity to impact the entire industry, from enterprise shippers to freight brokers to carriers,” Matt Chasen, CEO and founder of uShip, said in a news release. “We’ve already built an online shipping marketplace of over 1.6 million shipping customers and 325,000 registered carriers, a key distinction between our efforts and those of our competitors. KPCB’s funding and support will allow us to continue our global expansions plans and further develop our innovative shipping platform.”

uShip is a disruptive player in the transportation industry and KPCB sees a “huge opportunity for growth in the commercial sector,” Liaw with KPCB said in a news release.

uShip targets both business shippers and freight brokers as well as consumers. Its platform helps connect truckers and other people with extra space to transport products with people who need to move goods.

uShip is available in 18 countries and plans to expand further in Latin America and Europe.

In addition, the third season of Shipping Wars, an A&E real-life series that features uShip, premiered on Dec. 12.

“The show follows six independent truck drivers who use uShip to competitively bid to transport oversized loads found on the marketplace. Seasons 1 and 2 attracted 2-3 million viewers per episode, placing it among cable’s top 10 shows (Nielsen).”

Austin-based startup BlackLocus, a software data mining firm, announced Monday that the company has been acquired by The Home Depot.
The terms of the deal were not disclosed.
In a blog post, the company’s co-founders Rodrigo Carvalho and Lukas Bouvrie said that BlackLocus will become the innovation lab for The Home Depot.
“Our passion for data-driven decision making led us to start BlackLocus a few years ago,” they wrote. “We wanted to create the next version of business intelligence software for retailers. We wanted to mix internal data with public data. We wanted to turn large and complex data sets into simple and intuitive interfaces. We wanted to make it all actionable! Our vision has always been to allow retailers to extract value out of the vast, and ever growing, amount of information that exists today.”
But the co-founders reported that they had trouble bringing their vision to a product and that its engineering team faced a “multitude of very difficult technical challenges, and over the last year we created some disruptive innovations that enabled our business to soar. Solving those problems through technical and research innovation was part of the fun.”
The merger with Home Depot lets the company continue to pursue its vision with the backing of one of the world’s largest retailers.
“The company, which arrived in Austin in July 2011, has been named one of Inc.’s “Startups to Watch in 2012” as well as one of CNET’s Best Startup Ideas from 2011. The founders were classmates at Carnegie Mellon University and started their business at Pittsburgh’s AlphaLab Accelerator,” according to this profile Susan Lahey wrote on BlackLocus earlier this year.
BlackLocus had raised a $2.5 million first round of venture capital from DFJ Mercury and Silverton Partners.

By ANDREW MOORE
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

Austin startup Rockify hosted its first inaugural TechTainment retreat last Friday in the West Lake Hills area of Austin. The event was a fundraiser sponsored by Arthur Edstrom and Kathleen Blackwell of XYZ2Y Ventures and was held in the couple’s new home. Deep Eddy Vodka was also a sponsor.
The retreat featured an interview with music legend Gregg Rolie — co-founder of both Santana and Journey – and an intimate living room performance with notable musicians Ron Wikso, Alan Haynes, and Evan “Sticky” Arredondo.
Rockify is currently in the seed round of fundraising and needs to raise $250,000 by the end of the year. They will need another $3 million by the summer of 2013 to hire additional staff and improve their product.

CEO Joel Korpi invented Rockify to take advantage of current trends in the way people listen to music and view music videos.
“YouTube serves more music than Spotify, Pandora, and all other music companies combined,” Korpi said. “The problem is, YouTube is not a music platform … the user experience is just not designed for it.”
Taking advantage of this gap in online entertainment, Korpi invented Rockify — a music video discovery platform that looks like old-school MTV but works like Pandora. The platform curates music videos from sources around the web – YouTube, Vimeo, Daily Motion, etc – and displays them in a constant stream that is tailored to the user’s music taste.
The key feature of Rockify is Korpi’s decision making algorithm that discovers not only what users like but what they will like in the future. Users log in with either their Facebook or Twitter account and the algorithm uses their social information and interaction to discover and predict what content the user will be interested in.
“We use the entire social graph,” Korpi said. “What your best friend likes. What your girlfriend, your wife likes. We use that statistically for better accuracy.”
Korpi said that the algorithm can learn a user’s patterns over time and – after about 100 hours of use – can reliably find new music that a user will like. Users will also be able to like or dislike videos shown to further refine the video discovery process.
The Rockify website launched in May and has already acquired 25,000 users by word of mouth alone. Korpi said that the site’s analytics show users spending an average of 23 minutes on the site. Ten percent of those have already switched to the paid premium content offered by Rockify, which currently has an indexed web library of 250,000 music videos.
Several companies and investors have already taken notice of the huge potential for entertainment, advertizing revenue, and direct sales that Rockify’s content platform and decision making algorithms provide. The startup has already entered a business partnership with Austin City Limits, which will use the Rockify platform on their ACL iPad app to display performances in full HD.
Rockify also has a partnership with Whoohoo! Media Group– which it announced for the first time at Friday’s TechTainment event. Created by CEO David Skye, Whoohoo! archives and re-masters historical recordings of live music performances over the last 30 to 40 years. The archives come from many sources including old storage facilities and bootleg recordings. Skye plans to use the advantages of the Rockify platform to release his library of digital archives and provide a fun way for fans to discover, enjoy, and purchase them.
“The key is taking these older archives from bands and re-mastering them along with the Rockify platform to get them out there in a digital format – streaming, downloading – and really bringing the fans what they want,” Skye said.
Umbel is another of Rockify’s partners. An audience analytics company — Umbel utilizes different sources of data, including social media, to help businesses better target their customer base. Korpi envisions working with Umbel to help artists and bands maximize their fan base, publicity and sales by using Rockify’s discovery algorithms. Umbel will also play a key role in helping Rockify understand their consumer base.
While potential investors attending the TechTainment event were eager to hear how Rockify will make money, CEO Korpi currently has no plans for monetization. Instead, Korpi is focused on growing an industry-changing member base that will gain value and recognition as it grows – much the same way that Facebook began.
“Like Facebook or Twitter or Google we’re worried about building a kick-ass product first and growing an audience,” Korpi said. “We are not necessarily worried about how we are going to monetize it because if you have people then you can monetize them.”
Korpi said he will use established revenue models – such as the ads and commercials found on other sites – once Rockify builds a large enough user base. Rockify’s platform is currently limited to music videos, but Korpi said that his discovery platform and decision making algorithms could be adapted to any form of digital media – providing a wide range of producers and advertisers a platform which can easily target their most likely consumers.
Some of Rockify’s investors include Arthur Edstrom and Kathleen Blackwell of XYZ2Y Ventures, Kip McClanahan of Silverton Partners, former head of New Line Cinema Gordon Patterson and Austin Technology Incubator Director Kyle Cox. XYZ2Y Ventures and Kip McClanahan provided much of the initial $180,000 that got the startup on its feet.
Arthur Edstrom, who served as the MC for the event, said that investing in companies like Rockify is essential if Austin wants to keep their entertainment technology market.
“If we don’t step up and really get behind companies like Rockify, then they have to go someplace else,” Edstrom said. “And it would be a shame because Austin has everything that Rockify needs.”
After the Rockify presentation Edstrom held a keynote interview with music legend Gregg Rolie. The interview discussed Rolie’s experience in the music business as both a musician and a businessman. The business world has changed since Rolie co-founded Santana years ago, but Rolie said there are some things that don’t change.
“I’m telling you, it’s all the same,” Rolie said. “You don’t have a good product, you have a problem. You don’t have good people, you have a problem. You can’t get along, you really have a problem. So there are a lot of similarities.”
The night ended with Rolie playing a set in Edstrom’s living room. He was joined by guitarist Alan Haynes who has played with Stevie Ray Vaughan, drummer and close friend Ron Wikso who was part of Foreigner, and bass player Evan “Sticky” Arredondo who has toured with the late Sonny Bono as well as other notable stars. The band played several alternate versions of Santana and Journey songs – including Black Magic Woman – as well as favorites from other groups.
Edstrom hopes to continue creating events that brings together Austin’s technology and entertainment industries. Korpi said that Rockify will host another TechTainment event no later than Austin’s next South by Southwest festival.

Next year, Snap Trends, plans to hire 100 new employees.
The Austin-based startup, launched last summer, does social media monitoring and currently has 20 employees. It is hiring web developers, administration and sales people, said Eric Klasson, its founder and CEO. The company raised more than $500,000 from investors in August, according to an SEC filing. Klasson attended Dell’s Austin Think Tank for Entrepreneurs on Friday. His company belongs to Dell’s Founders Club, designed to assist a hand-picked group of startups.
Access to talent is one of the big challenges facing small business in Austin today, according to many of the 30 people attending the think tank event. And more than half of them expect to add employees next year.
Gene Marks, a nationally recognized small business columnist and speaker, led the discussion along with Ingrid Vanderveldt, Dell’s entrepreneur in residence and Drew Scheberle, senior vice president with the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce.
Dell invited the entrepreneurs, which ranged from a furniture storeowner to a web design firm. The meeting is part of Dell’s big push to help startups and small businesses. It was its sixth think tank, but the first one in Austin. Dell held others in Miami, Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles and the Bay Area.
The focus for small and mid-sized companies in the next year is on increasing productivity, growing revenue and reducing costs, according to Dell’s research.
This week at Dell World, Michael Dell announced the launch of its new Center for Entrepreneurs. Vanderveldt leads the center, which offers access to technology, expertise and capital through programs like the Dell Innovators Credit Fund, Dell Financial Services and Dell Ventures.
At the event, the entrepreneurs talked about ways to hire new talent in an increasingly competition marketplace. They suggested networking at events like Door 64’s job fairs and happy hours, hiring interns and working with local universities. But some business owners complained that they could find talent but they couldn’t find people with a strong work ethic and passion. Some had to hire offshore to meet their staffing needs. They said passion and motivation often trump experience.
A skilled workforce exists here, said Scheberle with the Austin Chamber.
“People see Austin as a place of opportunity,” he said.
The workforce attracts big companies like Visa, General Motors and Union Pacific, which all recently announced plans to establish new innovation centers in Austin. But small business can still find people to hire here, he said. He estimates 100,000 people in Austin are underemployed. Retraining programs could put them to work in better jobs, he said.
“We can’t be complacent,” Scheberle said. “We have to work really hard to make sure we’re developing talent.”
In addition to attracting new talent, Austin’s small businesses face big hurdles finding capital to expand.
In 2013, 55 percent of Austin small businesses expect finances to improve and 70 percent expect a better sales outlook, according to Dell research. And 58 percent of small businesses tap into their savings as the top source to fund their ventures.
Tim Porter, CEO of Appddiction Studio in San Antonio, said he hasn’t been able to find bank financing despite having $600,000 in revenue in the last year.
The lenders want to see three years of financial statements before they’re willing to take a risk, he said. He’s financed his startup by tapping into his 401K retirement account.
David Davis, CEO of Provencal Home, said the bank for the furniture store cut off credit lines and called loans following the 2008 financial crisis.
The group brainstormed creative ways to finance businesses through crowdfunding, seeking angel investment from the Central Texas Angels Network and even using credit cards.
In addition, Dell will host a Technology Innovators Day on January 24th at its headquarters in Round Rock in which small business owners and startups can pitch to the top business executives at Dell to do business with the company or seek investment, Vanderveldt said. Companies need to apply at its website beforehand and Dell will select who gets to pitch, she said. Dell will evaluate the companies for acquisition, partnership or as potential investors, she said.
“Dell is basically doing everything and anything in our power to help entrepreneurs gain access to the capital they need,” Vandervelt said. “I’ve never seen a Fortune 50 company do anything as extensive as this. Dell is really reaching out to the entrepreneurial community.”