Category: Austin (Page 273 of 318)

Nearly 20 years ago, President Bill Clinton took over as leader of the United States.
In 1993, an average cell phone weighed five pounds.
Only 50 websites made up the Internet.
And Clinton sent a total of two emails as president.
“It’s all different now,” Clinton told more than 5,000 people gathered for Dell World in Austin. He gave the afternoon keynote address on Wednesday.
“In a world that seems to be full of zero sum games and conflict models that try to hold on to the past, the future belongs to network collaborators,” Clinton said.
Today, the world is more interdependent than at any time in the history of humanity, Clinton said.
“We cannot shut each other out,” Clinton said.
In this interconnected world, defense budgets still matter and so does security, but not as much as they used to, Clinton said. To solve the world’s problems, people need to build inclusive communities and focus on non-zero sum games, he said.
“We like zero sum games,” Clinton said. “But non-zero sum games are making sure you win by making sure everyone else wins. If we want the world to work we have to have more non-zero sum games.”
Non-zero sum games ultimately benefit everyone, Clinton said. For example, during his presidency, Clinton spent $3 billion of taxpayer money to support research to develop the Human Genome. That has led to remarkable new treatments for children’s cancer and an open sharing of information. A genome test now costs $5,000 and will decrease to $1,500 next year, Clinton said.
“Networks of creative collaboration,” have made the advancements in finding cures for cancer possible, Clinton said.
The Hubble telescope and space exploration technology led to the identification of more than ten planets in the solar system that are able to support life, Clinton said.
Clinton said he’s an optimist and he sees “a lot of good things about this world.”
But the world has three huge problems.
“First of all it’s too unequal,” he said.
Nearly half the world’s population lives on less than $2 a day, nearly 1 billion people are illiterate and 1 billion do not have safe water, according to United Nations statistics. And 100 million kids don’t go to school.
“Within America and around the world, we have to create ways to share prosperity and reduce inequality,” Clinton said.
Some inequality and some instability are good for the economy, he said. But extremes shut things down and make people entirely too risk averse, he said. The economy needs sufficient instability with the chance to fail as well as the chance to succeed, he said.
Another problem is the world is unsustainable because of the way we consume energy, Clinton said. Climate change is real and the U.S. must consume less energy and do things differently, he said. People need to deal with the problem and not debate whether it exists, he said.
Twenty years ago, Sweden imposed a carbon tax on its business. Swedes are inherently responsible, Clinton said. The government gave the tax money back and told the companies they just wanted them to know how their actions would impact the future. The companies invested more money on reducing energy consumption by putting in more efficient lighting and cooling systems and other infrastructure changes. Between 1997 and 2010, Sweden’s economy grew by 50 percent and it reduced its greenhouse gases by 7 percent mostly through efficiencies, Clinton said.
“That’s the sort of debate we ought to be having,” he said.
Lastly, Clinton is focused on fighting childhood obesity through the “Alliance for a Healthier Generation.”
“Poor, overweight kids were getting more than half their calories from sodas,” Clinton said.
If that trend continued, the soda manufacturers wouldn’t have any customers because they would die an early death from diseases like diabetes. And the children would have their lives cut short. Instead, Clinton worked with the soda manufacturers to create a different future in which everyone makes money in a different way. And in the last five years, there has been a 90 percent reduction in total calories sold to students in 98 percent of schools, Clinton said. Through “a creative network of collaboration” they were able to solve a huge problem, he said. Michael and Susan Dell’s son, Zach, serves on the board of the Alliance for a Healthier Nation, Clinton said. Some of the best ideas they get are from kids, he said.
People also need to become more tolerant of our differences and learn to live together regardless of political or other beliefs.
“If we can get back into the tomorrow business and do it together we’ll be just fine,” he said.
Following his keynote address, Clinton, who wore orange and white Texas Longhorn cowboy boots, sat down with Michael Dell to answer a few questions about the economy. He said the government needs to spend more on research and development and that will help the U.S. remain competitive globally. He pointed out that countries like Singapore are spending $5 billion to become the world’s biotechnology leader. The U.S. faces stiff competition and the government should never let research and development spending fall below three percent of the nation’s gross domestic product. It’s currently in jeopardy of doing so, he said.

In a packed Austin Convention Center ballroom, the lights dim and a video plays.
“In 1984, Dell was one guy with a dream,” says the narrator.
In the last 28 years, Dell has evolved into a $58 billion company with 109,000 employees worldwide. And in the last four years, Dell has pushed to transform itself from a PC maker into a software, services, solutions and hardware company. In the process, it has diversified into new areas like data centers.
“While much has changed in that transformation, much has stayed the same,” the video announcer proclaims.
Michael Dell enters the stage. He’s been actively involved in Dell since he founded the company in his dorm room at the University of Texas. He has articulated the company’s vision and worked to change its culture through organic growth and acquisitions. He’s fired executives, hired new ones, acquired new businesses and shifted the company’s focus from PCs to solutions.
“This is an incredibly powerful moment for me,” Dell tells the audience of more than 5,000 customers, partners, employees, analysts and media. He is delivering the keynote address at the second annual Dell World event. “I’m so proud of what you’ve accomplished with Dell at your side.”
Then Dell shows a video of a rover landing on Mars, exploration at the South Pole, Genomics research and more. Dell’s customers have used its products to solve some of the universe’s most vexing problems.
“From the beginning Dell has been out to power your dreams,” Dell said.
Some of its customers achievements are on display at the Dell World Expo. The showcase has examples of Dell’s customers using its products in a variety of industries. Dell is working on cloud, data center and security solutions for customers and much more.
“We’re working to democratize and simplify these innovations,” Dell said.
A major focus is securing all the devices in a “Bring Your Own Device” environment at companies. It’s all part of Dell’s focus to become the industry’s leading provider of end to end solutions. The company spent $5 billion in the last year to build out its solutions portfolio. But the PC business, or what it refers to as the “client” business, continues to contribute to its bottom line.
“We strongly believe PCs are important,” Dell said. “Overwhelmingly PCs are still how business gets done today.”
Microsoft’s new operating system, Windows 8, also brings together PCs with touch screen technology creating more dynamic computing devices. Dell’s Latitude 10 tablets run Windows 8 along with Dell’s XPS 12 Notebook, which transforms from a laptop into a tablet. In addition, Dell just introduced an all in one portable workstation and entertainment center that also runs on Windows 8.
“The possibilities are limitless,” Dell said.
Windows 8 gives the 1.5 billion installed base of PCs worldwide a reason to get a new PC, Dell said.
Dell is also pushing big into the data center industry. It has been in the server business for more than two decades. Dell is number one in North America and Asia in the server market and is only 64,000 servers away from being number one in the world, Dell said.
Dell’s open standards have made it easy to integrate its products into existing data centers. Its software really helps to secure and manage customers’ environments, he said.
“The consistency of our vision and strategy is paying off big time,” Dell said.
The final piece of Dell’s strategy is the services industry, which now employs 47,000 of its workers.
“We’re ready to help you achieve your objectives,” Dell said.
The company manages 32 billion in security incidences every day.
“We know about what’s going on in the world of cyber security more than anyone,” Dell said.
In the healthcare industry, Dell manages 114 million mission critical devices. Dell also prides itself on its customer support and gives a response time of two to four hours, Dell said.

The transformation of Dell into a software solutions, services and cloud computing company is underway.
“We needed to go beyond the origins of the company” into areas like data centers and services “to build out a broad portfolio,” Dell Founder and CEO Michael Dell said during a meeting with media and analysts Tuesday afternoon.
The company has invested $10 billion in the last four years to create an end-to-end solutions company, Dell said. Most notably, the company acquired Quest Software for $2.4 billion in July.
Dell Enterprise Solutions and Services now make up $20 billion, or one-third of its revenue.
But the Round Rock-based company still has its personal computer business and it isn’t getting rid of it anytime soon.
In fact, Dell will unveil a next generation workstation and portable entertainment product during his keynote speech at Dell World 2012 Wednesday morning.
This is the second annual Dell World event. It takes place through Thursday at the Austin Convention Center. More than 6,000 Dell customers, partners, media, analysts and employees are expected to attend. Many of them gathered Tuesday evening at Austin City Limits to listen to music and eat from Austin food trucks.
On Wednesday, former President Bill Clinton and Dell will talk about the Clinton Global Initiative, philanthropy and other issues during the morning keynote.
The authors of the Freakonomics and SuperFreakonomics books, Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, will deliver the closing keynote address “Think like a Freak.”

Geekdom plans to launch the Open Cloud Academy early next year to teach veterans and the public technology skills.
The Open Cloud Academy will be located on the 6th floor of the Weston Centre downtown. Its eight-week classes will begin in the middle of January.
“We’re still working on the plans,” said Nick Longo, director of Geekdom. “It’s very complex when we’re trying to bring in Rackspace, the military, USAA, Red Hat and us.”

Nick Longo, director and co-founder of Geekdom

Geekdom co-founder and Rackspace Hosting Chairman Graham Weston

By ANDREW MOORE
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

San Antonio New Tech held its fourth monthly meeting this week — showcasing four new San Antonio start-ups ready to show-and-tell. The ideas ranged from providing discount doctors and creating virtual business cards to creating an online bartering site that reduces the need for currency. And due to their start-up nature, many are still hiring.

BudgetDoc

“Imagine if you could tell what the price would be of going and visiting a doctor before you actually go visit,” said Gopinath Khandavalli, the presenter for Budgetdoc. “BudgetDoc is like Priceline for doctors.”
BudgetDoc wants to make affordable healthcare available to more people by creating a network of doctors willing to give discounts to patients that pay cash up front. The site was designed primarily for people that can only afford catastrophic care insurance – meaning low cost and very high deductible – and for those who are uninsured. People using the site can research a doctor, what services the doctor offers, how expensive they are, and what discounts the doctor gives for paying in cash. Coupons for the discounts will be on the webpage for customers to print at home. BudgetDoc makes it easy for customers to contact physicians if they have any questions not covered on the site. The site also allows patients to rate doctors and to evaluate them in side-by-side comparisons.
“No competitors are doing price transparency like we are,” said Khandavalli. “Nobody is working towards doctors who offer cash prices at the time of service.”
While Khandavalli acknowledges that patients will probably need additional services at additional costs after the initial check-up, he says the site will endeavor to list prices for all services a doctor provides. Khandavalli hopes that this will empower people who would otherwise not seek healthcare because of the large hidden costs associated with treatment. He also hopes it will help insured patients who cannot find inexpensive or timely healthcare in their healthcare provider’s network and seek services outside that network.
The BudgetDoc network already has around 30 providers — including a pathology lab — and all providers are vetted through information from the Texas Medical Board. BudgetDoc uses the information to insure that doctors have a license and insure that they have had the proper education and training credentials. The network includes both cash-only doctors and those that accept insurance and Medicare. Khandavalli says that doctors accepting insurance can still offer discounts as long as the discounts are restricted to cash-up-front services.
The BudgetDoc site already has around 350 unique visits a month and has been used by 800 patients. BudgetDoc is looking to hire a marketing manager that can do social media outreach as well as blogging and community events. If the site sees success in creating a large network that attracts many patients, it will pay for the increased workload by charging providers a small fee. The site will always be free for patients.

Contact Card

Contact Card is the brainchild of urologist Naveen Kella. It’s a virtual business card – or v-card — sharing app designed to simplify the process of exchanging business cards at conferences and big group events.
“When you do come back home from a conference, you have your suitcase – open it up and there’s like 30 cards in there,” said Kella. “When do you have time to organize all that?”
Contact Card allows the user to quickly create a virtual business card and then share that card through e-mail or a QR code. In a pinch customers can just take a picture of your card as well. The QR code functionality means the app will work even without phone reception or internet access. Contacts you meet can use any other QR reader to download the v-card as well. Kella says the app is ideal for professionals that “wear many hats” and don’t have business cards for all of their services.
Contact Card will also automatically organize v-cards it obtains from other users into a virtual rolodex. From there, the app lets you call or e-mail a contact just by taping on the number or address on their v-card. In the future, Kella hopes to incorporate a feature that organizes business cards based on the location a user received them.
Contact card launched on Nov. 15 and is currently available only for iPhones, iPads, and iPods which are using iOS 5.0 or later. The basic app is free but it will come with a premium card design pack for $1.99. Kella does not have any plans to adapt it for Android, though that may change depending on the app’s reception.

Appfog

Appfog was founded by CEO Lucas Carlson. It’s a web hosting and platform-as-a-service provider that gives developers a platform to work with so they can create, launch, or improve their mobile app products without spending days on creating the necessary infrastructure. Appfog handles the internet hosting, the IT infrastructure, and any necessary maintenance for the developers — through cloud computing technology – to help them save time and cut costs. Senior Director of Customer Experience Chad Keck claims that Appfog can help a developer deploy an app in less than a day.
“Come to Appfog, pick your technology, choose your provider and region, launch your app and you’ll be home in time for dinner,” said Keck. “We want developers to stay focused on their core competency, which is developing their application, and not on running servers all day.”
Appfog allows developers to work with many different types of code including PHP, Node, Ruby, Python, Java, and .NET. There are also many different regions and mobile providers that you can choose from without getting tied down to a particular one. Appfog has agreements with these providers and gives you a choice of the one you want to use. Appfog also allows developers to switch between providers within minutes – an option Keck says is not available with other companies like Amazon. In fact, Keck says that many of Appfog’s customers come from Amazon because they need more flexibility and features.
Appfog caters mostly to individual developers but works with small and medium businesses as well. It is free for applications that can run within 2 GB of ram – such as a WordPress site or simple blog – and starts at $100 a month for 4 GB of ram. Today Appfog has over 80,000 users and Keck says that around 10 percent of those users are paying for 4 GB and above. Many of the paying customers are enterprises running Appfog: Private Edition, which can run inside corporate firewalls.
Appfog is currently hiring for sales and support positions.

Steven Quintanilla (Left) and the Kirpeep team photo by Andrew Moore

Kirpeep

Kirpeep is a bartering and exchange website where users can exchange goods and services with or without the use of money. CEO Steven Quintanilla created the site in the hopes of reducing societies dependency on currency and helping people get things that they need by using their time and talents.
“Kirpeep is an exchange engine working to empower people who provide value to the community by making it easy to exchange goods and services with and without money,” said Quintanilla. “You can barter, you can buy, you can sell.”
Quintanilla demonstrated how a user could barter a slightly used iPhone for a set of tire rims. He also showed how users could post things they want to sell, barter, or buy on their Kirpeep profiles and then re-post them on social media sites such as Facebook.
Kirpeep is not limited to just bartering goods. Any service or talent can be put up for trade against any other service, talent, or good for sale – as long as it’s not prohibited by Kirpeep’s very specific terms of service. A user could trade a session of calculus tutoring for a dance lesson or a set of DVDs if they wanted.
If users want to use money they can purchase kirpoints from PayPal which have a 1-to-1 ratio to dollars. Kirpoints can be used alone or in combination with other goods and services to negotiate a transaction. The only catch is that users must buy 25 kirpoints at a time and must cash out in 50 kirpoints increments – a decision made to make bartering more attractive than spending money.
Once two users agree to an exchange and complete it, each is given a confirmation code to be used when they are provided with the others good or service. Once the codes have been entered you can rate the other user and impact their reputation.
Kirpeep has received $25,000 from Geekdom to start their business. Their website, and concept, is still in beta and has only been up for a few weeks, so potential difficulties may still lie ahead for the website. The IRS, for instance, will require people to report the value of what they barter — but because Kirpeep sees the value of something as subjective and ever-changing there are no guidelines for users to follow when reporting. Quintanilla says Kirpeep is only viewed as “a connector” by law and reporting the value of transactions is the responsibility of users alone.
As Kirpeep develops, they hope to be able to create a “value graph” for communities to help classify what is valued locally by what people trade the most for. They can then suggest matches and make recommendations to users. According to Quintanilla, once the real value of goods and services are recognized in a community, members of the community can find a better way of getting what they need than by spending money.
“What Google did for search, we want to do for exchange,” says Quintanilla. “There are seven billion of us, it’s crazy that we cannot have the basic human essentials with the 7 billion people we have as resources.”
Kirpeep currently has 7 employees and 5 consultants. They are looking to hire more developers that have experience coding in Ruby.

Disclosure: Geekdom is a sponsor of Silicon Hills News

University of Texas cheerleaders turned out to celebrate a group of student entrepreneurs at 1 Semester Startup Demo Day Thursday night.
“We want our entrepreneurs to be as supported and celebrated as our athletes,” said Bob Metcalfe, a 1SS professor, co-inventor of Ethernet, founder of 3Com and the Cockrell School’s Murchison Fellow of Free Enterprise.
That’s why, in part, 1 Semester Startup has changed its name to Longhorn Startup Lab. They’ve also added Longhorn Startup Seminar for students and Longhorn Startup Studio for faculty, Metcalfe said.
Metcalfe teaches the class for undergraduate students interested in entrepreneurship, along with Joshua Baer, co-founder of Capital Factory, serial entrepreneur and professor of computer science and Johnny Butler of the IC2 Institute and professor in the McCombs School of Business.
The program is about mentors, inspiring speakers and course credit, Baer said.
So far, the class has graduated more than 35 startups in three semesters.
At Demo Day, 11 student-run startups pitched their companies to more than 300 people.
The companies included Beehive, Book512, Caysun, Clay.io, CrowdRx, Hoot.me, Lynx Labs, Predictable Data, Servuss, StillOpen and Team Pi.
Lucas Holt, a senior in engineering at UT, has taken the 1SS course for two semesters. Last semester, his group launched BeDJ, an app that let people change the music at a café, but it didn’t take off.
“People just weren’t grasping the concept of this new type of jukebox,” Holt said.
That’s when the five engineers behind BeDJ decided to pivot and turn the company into a marketplace for DJs called Book512. They even found the DJ for the reception event at Demo Day.
“We’re trying to create more gigs for them,” Holt said. “If we can make it cheap enough and simple enough for people they’ll use it.”
Book512 takes a small percentage of each transaction booked. The site has already booked several gigs and generated cash, Holt said.
“One thing that 1 Semester Startup has done for us – our team we’re all engineers – is it taught us that if you’re going to make a product and a startup company, you really need to do the research first,” Holt said.
Damon Clinkscales, a software engineer who has served as a 1SS mentor in the past, liked Clay.io, a platform for HTML game development and Team.Pi, an algorithmic trading and crowdfunding site. He also liked Lynx Labs, which developed a handheld 3-D camera that captures 3-D models of an environment.
Lynx Labs grew organically from a research lab in the electrical engineering department at UT into a commercial company, said Chris Slaughter, its CEO. The company received some initial funding from the National Science Foundation and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, known as DARPA.
“1SS has provided us a cocoon by which we can grow this technology and develop this company,” Slaughter said.
The company just received notification that it has been recommended for a Phase 1 Small Business Innovation Research grant for $150,000. In addition, the five-member team at Lynx is seeking $350,000 in seed stage funding. And in January, they plan to launch a Kickstarter campaign to raise awareness about their product, Slaughter said.
The class has provided valuable connections and advice to Lynx Labs, Slaughter said.
“Josh Baer and Bob Metcalfe aren’t just figure heads,” he said. “They sit down and help us. They’ve been so valuable.”
Lynx Labs shows what’s possible with spinning technology developed at UT into startups, said Kyle Cox, director of wireless and IT at the Austin Technology Incubator and a 1SS mentor. Lynx Labs also helps ignite Austin’s hardware industry, he said. The city’s startups have traditionally been focused on enterprise software, he said.
“They’ve also done a lot of really hard work at assessing multiple marketplaces,” Cox said. They’re focusing on entertainment and architecture marketplaces, he said.
“Longhorn Startup Labs is just a fantastic farm system for the UT and the Austin startup communities,” said Rudy Garza, founder of G-51 Capital Management.
Several of the companies spun out of the program will go on to become viable companies and those entrepreneurs will come back and help the next generation, he said.
“They don’t just have one semester to be successful,” Garza said. “They have a continuum of time to pivot into a commercial company.”
Some of the companies that pitched at the Demo Day will get funded, Garza said.
“The exciting thing is in Austin we have a more developed investment ecosystem,” Garza said. That includes angels, investors, micro-VCs like G-51 and big VCs like Austin Ventures, he said.
“You’re going to see companies get funded and UT’s investment go up,” he said. “We hope to build a better Silicon Valley here in Austin.”

Rony Kahan and his wife spent more than a week hiking from base camp at Mount Everest to Kathmandu without a guide.
The couple didn’t follow a path. Instead, they used a compass and found their own way.
That journey is analogous to the one that Kahan and his co-founder Paul Forster took creating Austin-based Indeed.com, which has become the most popular job site in the world.
“You have to make your own path,” Kahan told more than 300 people attending 1 Semester Startup’s Demo Day at the University of Texas Thursday night. To illustrate his point, he showed a picture of the couple hugging at Mount Everest at the start of their hike.
Kahan kicked off the event as the keynote speaker. He recounted his entrepreneurial journeys and lessons learned from building two companies in Austin. Recruit Co., a Japanese-based provider of human resources and recruitment services, bought Indeed.com in September. Although the terms were not disclosed, the New York Times, an early investor, reported its gain from the sale at more than $100 million. In his introduction of Kahan, Joshua Baer, 1 Semester Startup professor and serial entrepreneur, said news reports puts the sale price at $1 billion.
Indeed.com, founded in November of 2004, has more than 600 employees, including 175 in Austin. It has been profitable since 2007. Its website gets more than 80 million unique visitors every month.

Rony Kahan speaking at 1 Semester Startup at UT