It’s that time of the year again when your social media news feeds get clogged with people asking you to vote for their panel.
South by Southwest PanelPicker, in which votes and comments count for 30 percent of the decision making on whether a panel makes it, went live this morning. SXSW uses a crowd-source method to winnow the not so great ideas from the great ideas. Voting runs through Aug. 31.
And if you’re looking for something to vote for you could cast a vote for Silicon Hills News’ presentation “The Myths and Reality of a New Media Entrepreneur.”
It’s one of those tell it like it is talks. I’ll let it all hang out and talk about the good, the bad and the ugly of being a new media entrepreneur.
Here’s my pitch: “On the Internet, anyone can publish a blog, become a video star or take amazing photos. But running a business is another story. Making a buck from online publishing takes a lot of time and work. It’s possible to earn a living as a new media site, but it takes a lot of skills and connections and time to make it work. In this session, I’ll share the lessons I’ve learned during the past year and a half creating SiliconHillsNews.com, a regional technology publication covering technology entrepreneurs and companies in the Austin and San Antonio region known as Silicon Hills.”
But enough about me, let’s talk about you. If you’re in Austin or San Antonio or parts in between (heck we’re in Wimberley – that’s Texas Hill Country living at its finest folks) and you’ve submitted a panel for 2013 SXSW Interactive then leave a comment or send me an e-mail and I’ll plug your panel. Right here. We reach thousands of Central Texas’ most plugged in people so let us know and we’ll spread the word. It’s SXSW panel picking time right here in the Silicon Hills of Texas.
Category: Austin (Page 276 of 310)
Louis Pacilli, director of education at Geekdom
Already, the San Antonio-based coworking and collaborative center, located on the 11th floor of the Weston Centre downtown, has hosted robotics programs for kids.
That’s just the start.
On Sept. 29th, the first Geekdom SparkEd program kicks off, said Louis Pacilli, the center’s director of education. The program will run from September through June, and during the school year, Pacilli expects to serve approximately 1,500 middle school boys and girls in a total of 30 weekend camps. Each camp will have between 40 to 50 kids from numerous school districts around San Antonio, Pacilli said.
Pacilli works with San Antonio middle schools to select the kids for a weekend program focused on a entrepreneurship, website design, programming or robotics. The kids get to vote on which curriculum they want to pursue, Pacilli said.
“We want to teach kids about storytelling through entrepreneurship,” he said.
For the entrepreneurship program, the weekend activities focus on business concepts such as pitching, marketing, research and writing a business plan, Pacilli said. The programs follow the guidelines of the Texas Education Standards, he said.
Pacilli has sent information to select middle schools and he plans to work with teachers and counselors to select the first kids to participate in the program, which will be free, he said. He’s looking for kids who need inspiration.
The program will rely heavily on local mentors from companies like Boeing, Rackspace, USAA, Lockheed and others, Pacilli said. It will also use local high school and college students, he said.
“We have to get the kids that are disconnected to school and re-excite them,” Pacilli said. “We want to teach them that geek is chic.”
Earlier this year, ParkMe launched a free iPhone app that allows people to check real-time availability of garage and street parking for areas around downtown Austin and the University of Texas.
The company also made quite an impression at South by Southwest in March. It placed paper boots and fake parking tickets on hundreds of cars all around the convention center. The clever marketing stunt got the attention of the media as well as consumers.
Recently, ParkMe’s Kevin Blomberg took time to answer a few questions about how the company, based in Santa Monica, Calif. has been doing since its launch.
Q. Can you explain what ParkMe does?
ParkMe is the leading provider of static and real-time parking data in the US, Canada and Europe. We provide robust data (parking rates, hours of operation, entry points, occupancy levels etc) to navigation systems and cars, as well as through our free iPhone app. Ultimately, our goal is to change the paradigm of navigation by including parking, the last and oftentimes most important leg of the journey. We take the thinking out of this annoying process by empowering drivers with intelligent parking information.
Q. Where did you come up with the idea for ParkMe?
ParkMe (formerly Parking In Motion) began in 2009 as a backlash to the daily nuisance of trying to find parking in downtown Santa Monica. We realized that the navigation experience was incomplete without including parking, and that drivers needed in addition to being directed to the front door of a destination. There was a serious lack of this type information out there, so we began to work with cities and private operators to aggregate many different types of data. And as we went forward, it became clear to us that the industry was mostly still in analog mode and lacked the key component of technology. Much like real-time traffic reports, we think people deserve up-to-the-minute parking info.
Q. Who makes up the team behind ParkMe?
Two local boys, Sam Friedman (CEO) and Alex Israel (COO), initially formed the company in 2009 as a response to the daily frustration of parking in Los Angeles. These two humbly started the operation out of Sam’s garage, and now ParkMe maintains 15 full time employees in our beautiful downtown Santa Monica offices.
Q. What is your market?
There is indeed a very large market for our service. We’re not only marketing our app to transient consumers, drivers and tourists, but also to navigation and car companies. Additionally, any local business or events site can embed our free web map widget onto their websites to allow their customers to reach them faster and more efficiently. Everybody needs to park, so the opportunities are vast.
Q. How does ParkMe make money?
Good question. Our app is completely free, but we make money by licensing our data to navigation systems, third party app developers, and eventually directly to automobiles. We also work with reservation and payment platforms, and derive profit from those transactions. However, ParkMe’s future is certainly in car navigation systems, and we’ve already been approached by major manufacturers about including our data in their vehicles.
Q. Who are some of your customers? How many people are using the ParkMe app?
Because our app is free, we don’t make money off our transient users. We’re heavily focused on the “car-sumer,” as we like to call it and I’d say we have somewhere between 40k – 70k downloads.
Q. What differentiates your company from the competition?
We don’t really have any direct competitors, but the closest ones are just focusing on the US, whereas our database reached Europe, Australia, and eventually into parking nightmare places like India. Also, our so-called competitors aren’t giving their customers “real-time” data. Not only can we tap into existing infrastructure to provide valuable data such as a garage’s occupancy, we also have a patent pending algorithm that shows the availability of on-street meters.
Q. How is your company financed?
We have been funded by two very well respected firms with tremendous experience in the startup and transportation technology realm. The first is Fontinalis Ventures, which is based out of Detroit and co-founded by Bill Ford. IDG Ventures is our other sponsor, and they are based out of Silicon Valley with a history of backing many prominent startups and larger tech companies.
Q. What’s the biggest mistake so far?
Well, our company is mostly comprised of people in their 20s and 30s, so there have certainly been times where we’ll try a tactic, or an app design idea that won’t work. Learning from mistakes is something that is emphasized office-wide. A lot of us are establishing a company for the first time, and to say it’s been a flawless experience would be untruthful. That being said, we’ve been deftly able to learn and grow alongside the company.
Q. What’s the company’s biggest achievement?
I’d say it’s hands down our launch of real-time parking with the city of Austin, which was preceded by our SXSW guerrilla marketing stunt. If you haven’t seen it, please check out the video of us “booting” all the cars in the downtown core. People loved the stunt, and were very good sports about it. But clearly, that was a great setup for our subsequent launch with the city. Austin now has fully operational, up-to-the-minute parking information in its downtown core.
Q. Why did you choose to expand into Austin?
Several reasons, but mainly because of its population and economic boom. Forbes recently called Austin the fastest growing US city, and of course it has also become a hotbed for innovations in media and technology. Another reason was the willingness of Austin’s civic leaders to work with a startup like ParkMe to help residents and tourists have better access to this valuable transit information.
Team Giraffe Stand: Scott Davidson, Tina Bao, Jack Thoene and Advaith Anand
Photo by Laura Cole
They worked from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m. putting together Kickstarter campaigns, shooting videos, working on computer aided design software and tinkering with product prototypes.
In three weekends, four teams built and launched companies and products.
This isn’t a typical summer camp. The entire focus of the program is to build products people want, said Jeremy Guillory, its organizer. He also cofounded 3 Day Startup Weekend at the University of Texas.
“One of our questions was what can students accomplish in three weekends” Guillory said. It turns out they can do a lot.
One team built a gearbox for robots called a Switchbox. Another made a bed mount for an iPad called a Giraffe Stand. And two other teams created mobile phone apps.
Each student paid $385 to participate in the program, sponsored by Rackspace and Anderson High School. Pat Condon, one of the founders of Rackspace and Jason Seats, the founder of SliceHost and managing director of the TechStars Cloud, served as advisors and mentors. The program aims to turn kids into makers.
“We believe that kids should be building robots and rockets and not taking standardized tests,” said Guillory, who has a masters degree in mechanical engineering from UT.
Jeremy Guillory, standing, helps students participating in the High School Startup program
Tina Bao’s arms got tired while she tried to use her iPad in bed.
Bao’s problem became her team’s product. For the last three weekends, Bao, 17, a graduate of TAMS in Denton, and her team have been refining the idea and building it into a project.
“We’ve worked outside the weekend too,” said Advaith Anand, 15, and a junior in the LASA magnet program at Lyndon B. Johnson High School. Their other teammates include Scott Davidson of Round Rock High School and Jack Thoene of Anderson High School.
The team interviewed potential customers at The Domain and at Barton Creek Mall. They even took their prototype to Macy’s and tried it out on a bed and asked customers to use it and give them feedback.
“A lot of iPad owners had this problem,” Bao said.
The stand has a bed mount with a giant arm that attaches to an iPad and allows a person to use their iPad hands-free in bed.
At Lowe’s, they bought the hardware to create the prototype. They plan to raise $10,000 through Kickstarter to make 200 Giraffe Stands, which will sell for $40 to $100, depending on options.
Laura Cole, a senior at the University of Texas earning a design degree, helped the teams with iPhone mockups, logos, photography and website designs. She was one of ten mentors who volunteered to help the students.
“It’s been fun to see the ideas come to life,” Cole said. “I think they’re awesome.”
John Sperry, one of the program’s organizers and an engineering instructor at Anderson High School, stands beside his school’s 3-D printer.
“I don’t want to solely produce engineers and programmers to work for big companies,” Sperry said. “I’m thrilled with the idea of entrepreneurs making something. That’s something that inspires a lot of students.”
Business is lacking in school, Sperry said. Somewhere the excitement is lost, he said.
“We need more hands on types of activities that make kids want to show up at 9 a.m. on a Saturday or Sunday,” he said.
In addition to the traditional lathes, drill presses and grinders, Sperry’s shop has computers, design software and a 3-D printer for rapid prototyping.
Mo Freid, a junior at Anderson High School, holds the prototype for Switchbox, a gearbox for robots.
Charlie Manion, a graduate student at the University of Texas studying mechanical engineering, has served as a mentor to the teams for all three weekends.
“I thought it would be cool,” Manion said. “It’s also fun. We have Nerf gun battles.”
He helps them tweak their CAD models and make it look and work better.
“High School Startup is largely a student driven process,” Freid said. “Whenever any of the students need help we just ask one of the mentors. Most of them have helped us throughout this entire process.”
By the end of the program, the teams had real products and experience in bringing them to market. And perhaps some of the students will go on to become the next Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Pat Condon or Jason Seats and change the world.
“I want to be an entrepreneur,” Anand said. “A lot of our team shares that goal.”
This decade will be remembered as the decade of the angel investor, said Paul Singh, partner in 500 Startups.
He spoke to a gathering of angel investors and startup founders at Capital Factory in Austin Thursday night.
‘The number one mistake angels make is that they take the entire round,” Singh said. “One of the things we have to think about today is are we going to be the only suckers in the deal.”
Angel investors who put money into 20 deals have the greatest chance of getting multiple returns on their investment, Singh said.
“You will make the most multiples on your initial check,” said Singh. “But you will make the most absolute returns on your second one.”
It’s all about quantitative portfolio analysis and controlling risk, he said.
As an angel if you do five deals you might double your money, said Singh. Ten companies returns closer to a 1.7 times return and 20 deals gets a 2.3 return, he said. To get a three times return, an investor must put money into 123 companies, he said.
“The takeaway for angels is you shouldn’t get into this asset class unless you’re wiling to do 20 deals,” Singh said. “Do not get excited about any one company.”
Instead of doing due diligence on one company for six months and then writing a $1 million check, it’s better to turn that investment into 20 checks of $50,000 each, Singh said.
The analogy he uses is a casino. Old school venture capitalists walk into the casino and go to the roulette table and put their chips down.
“What I’m doing is going to the blackjack table, playing the minimum hand while I count the cards,” Singh said. “When I see a pattern I double down heavy.”
500 Startups provides initial investments ranging from $10,000 to $50,000 and second rounds or bridge rounds of $250,000 to $500,000.
“Bad bets fail fast,” Singh said. “Smaller check sizes force companies to figure stuff out quickly.”
Interesting phenomenon that happens on the backside of that is the best companies are raising lots of little checks and so you’ve got a lot of living dead out there.
“There are a lot of companies today that have raised too much money,” Singh said.
After 500 Startups writes a check, a company can raise on average $535,000 within 30 days.
But most founders don’t come to 500 Startups for money or that initial check, he said.
They want to tie into 500 Startups’ network. They can get founders access to the guys who run the Facebook API. They can resolve a Paypal problem within 8 minutes at 2 a.m.
By L.A. Lorek
Founder of Silicon Hills News
No one could pitch at Moneyball for Startups last night at Capital Factory in Austin.
“This is a safe haven,” said Paul Singh, partner at 500 Startups, a seed fund and startup accelerator.
“If you do pitch here, I’m going to tweet your handle out and say you’re a shitty company,” he joked.
That was the ground rule for attending the Moneyball presentation aimed at angel investors. The invitation-only event attracted about 100 people, including one-third startup founders.
The event is the kind Capital Factory regularly hosts, said Joshua Baer, its founder. The coworking space now has more than 30 companies and 90 people. It has the capacity to house up to 250 people, he said. Baer is an active angel investor who has put money into more than 70 deals.
“Some people are looking to invest in what they think will be the next Google,” he said. “I’m looking for good teams, good companies. I don’t look to pick the next IPO.”
Paul Singh, partner in 500 Startups, giving his Moneyball for Startups presentation at Capital Factory.
Last week, Google acquired Wildfire Interactive, a 500 Startups portfolio company, which helps companies place social media ads, for a reported $400 million. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.
“I’m happier than the number that was reported,” Singh said. “That’s all I’m going to say. Wildfire was literally the first check we wrote on the day we closed the first fund. There is some method to this.”
The entire early stage investing industry is going through a sea change, Singh said. He deals primarily with 6 month old technology startups. Locally, 500 Startups has invested in Loku, PublikDemand, OwnLocal and ZippyKid.
“We write small checks to start with and we double down heavy when the companies show some progress,” he said.
The startup founders’ sole job is to build a company and make something that people want, he said.
“If you are an investor, certainly you need to write checks, but you also need to add value,” he said.
And government agencies need to make it easy for startups to operate in a region by providing subsidized office space and no cumbersome regulations, he said.
Investing in startups has gotten very sophisticated. Singh relies on information gleaned from numerous books including Michael Lewis’ Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game. The book, published in 2003, later became a movie starring Brad Pitt. The story is about the Oakland Athletics baseball team and its general manager Billy Beane. He used statistics and analytics to assemble a winning baseball team.
That same strategy can be applied to investing in startup companies, Singh said. Investors rely on big data and open source analytics to make decisions.
“There’s this proliferation of data sources,” Singh said.
So far, 500 Startups has had more than 20 exits. Its first $30 million fund took 18 months to raise. It closed on its second $50 million fund within 16 weeks. And 50 percent of its deals are done internationally.“As the web gets bigger the world’s getting smaller,” Singh said.
“Someone can start a startup now in a suburb of Brazil and then put $100 into a Google Adword campaign and market to one square block right in your neighborhood. That wasn’t possible five years ago.”
In fact, 10 years ago when Singh did his first startup, he had to raise $1 million to buy computer servers and get a data center and then he could start coding and working on the business.
Today, startup costs are lower than ever thanks to open source software, cloud computing, Ruby on Rails and Heroku. A startup can launch on $5,000, he said.
That’s why investors should never fund pre-launch startups, Singh said.
“It’s 2012 you don’t need to do that anymore,” he said. “Because traction is the new intellectual property.”
“I’ll make an assertion that if a founder comes to you and says something about having a patent, you should just run. Just run as fast as you can,” Singh said. “No one should be using your money right now to file a patent. They should be building and focusing on user engagement and retention and the nitty gritty stuff. Platforms like search, social and mobile are driving that change.”
A founder can launch a company and go on Facebook and have access to 800 million people through its ad network, he said. Distribution is so accessible today, he said.
So when 500 Startups looks to invest in a startup they look for small, but measurable traction. They want to see progress in the right direction.
Capital is also becoming more available than ever to startups through funding venues like AngelList and in other countries with government and private investment funds like Chile, Singapore and Canada.
“And what that means is that the new reality is that money follows founders in the early stage,” he said. “The reality now is that the best founders don’t need your money because they probably don’t need any money.”
That means Singh travels worldwide to find the best startup companies. Already this year, he has flown 200,000 miles and visited nine countries and 35 cities.
“It’s not a badge of honor,” he said. “It’s the reality of what we do.”
500 Startups regularly collects data on 15,000 startups around the world and has a program that triggers alerts on about 200 of those.
“If you think about it, we’re chasing startups,” Singh said. “There’s no excuse why we wouldn’t know everything about you as a startup when you walk in the door.”
500 Startups also looks for signs that indicate a funding round is about to start. It looks for a flurry of activity around the startup and who is following them on social media networks. Once 500 Startups invests in a company, the founders don’t have to worry about funding as long as they perform, Singh said.
“We tell our guys that we have unlimited money for shit that works,” Singh said. “You just can’t tell us that it’s working. We have to find out.”
The company doesn’t invest in biotech or pharmaceutical companies. It sticks to the technology vertical and looks for companies that can get operational in six months on less than $1 million.Red flags that send 500 Startups and other investors running for the door include founders who want help finding a cofounder and anyone who says they are outsourcing anything, Singh said. 500 Startups typically makes funding decisions in less than 20 minutes.
“People always call us spray and pray,” Singh said. “I’ll just say it’s a process.”
A lot of founders like getting funding from 500 Startups to tap into its connections and mentors. The company has created an ecosystem with 190 mentors, who must contribute office hours every month and hit certain stats and quality ratings to remain valid. In exchange, the mentors get to buy into the companies.
“My primarily goal is to buy wins not to get into the hottest deal” Singh said.
He’s not chasing companies looking to go public.
“So if that thing is on TechCrunch already I don’t really care about it,” he said. “I probably should have been in it already. But more importantly it doesn’t really matter to me if it’s on TechCrunch or not. Often the best deals are actually running under the radar. So you focus on team, execution, traction and data.”
First of a two part post on investing in startups and Moneyball for Startups
As a kid, I played countless games of Ping Pong in my uncle’s recreation room with my brothers and cousins.
Now I’ve got a kid, and we play Ping Pong too.
But in all those years, the paddles still look the same: green and brown.
Now Uberpong seeks to change that.
They want to make Ping Pong Uber Cool and what better way to do that than with the coolest paddles ever?
Uberpong creates Ping Pong paddles featuring the designs of 20 artists and graphic designers. Hipsters no long have to suffer from green paddle syndrome.
So how do you get your hands on one of these uber cool paddles? There’s a Kickstarter Program for that. David Lowe of Austin is spearheading the project.
The program launched on July 16 and so far has 65 contributors who have pledged $3,289. But Uberpong needs to reach its goal of $10,000 to fund the project. It has until August 15 to do that.
“Uberpong is an Origin of Cool project with the aim being to bring more color and style to the game of table tennis” according to its posting. Why do they call it table tennis?
“Think of table tennis being the traditional, formal English parlor game, Ping Pong being the more contemporary American version and Uberpong being the future of the sport.”
The paddle artists include British artist Hannah Adamaszek, American design firm The Bungaloo and Swedish graphic designer Viktor Hertz.
This project is also a way to help out the local arts community as the paddles feature designs from Austin artists Jay Bramhall, Nathan Brown, Charlie Chauvin, Sophie Roach and Dan Patton. The artists each receive 20 percent on every paddle of their design sold.
Ping Pong is a hot sport for high-tech startups. And it’s even an Olympic sport at the summer 2012 games.
Full Disclosure: I just backed this project on Kickstarter because I think it’s clever, cool and artistic.
Everyone knows by now that tech talent is in short supply nationwide.
So ZippyKid, a fast growing WordPress hosting site, is offering $3,000 and the latest iPhone to someone who refers the winning candidate for its job opening.
The company, based at Geekdom in San Antonio, is hiring a senior systems administrator. ZippyKid offers managed WordPress hosting to WordPress content publishers who don’t want to hassel with the technology behind their sites. It offers fast loading and top level security and it specializes in providing services to small businesses, a-list bloggers and entrepreneurs.
“We’re looking for someone who will help build one of the finest data center/ops teams in the world,” according to the job posting. “This means the ability to identify and hire top notch team members, the ability to identify gaps in the architecture and help us work towards closing those gaps.”
Vid Luther founded ZippyKid in 2009. The company recently raised angel funding from the founders of Rackspace, Slicehost and 500 Startups.
“ZippyKid has grown over the past two years by word of mouth,” Luther wrote in a post on Facebook. “Everyone we’ve hired, and every customer that has switched to has, has done it because a friend of a friend told them about us. So, with that in mind, we want to make the pot sweeter for this latest hire. This is a very important job at ZippyKid, and we want to reward you for telling your friends (who qualify) about it.”
To get the $3,000 referral bonus, the person hired for the job must meet certain goals for the first three months in the job. The total reward including the latest iPhone is worth $3,650.
To apply for the job, please visit this site and fill out the application. Make sure to say who sent you so they can get the referral bonus!
Melissa Conley Tyree, chief item officer at Itography
And in modern day times, the quest continues but with a high-tech component.
Hundreds of geocaching apps exist today that allow people with smart mobile phones equipped with GPS to find hidden treasures in parks, on city streets and other places.
Geocaching involves a real world treasure hunt for hidden containers, called geocaches. Some of the containers hold trinkets or other treasures. People sign their name on a piece of paper placed in the container showing that they’ve found the geocache. They can also share their experiences online.
Melissa Conley Tyree and her husband Jeremy Tyree have created a mobile phone app, Itography, that makes a game out of finding and placing items at real world locations.
The Tyrees lives in Dripping Springs with their two daughters. We recently met up at Thyme & Dough bakery downtown to talk about Itography. Melissa attended Venture 14, a startup accelerator program at Tech Ranch Austin, to get help with marketing and advertising and other business fundamentals.
Itography, which is financed by its founders via the startup bootstrapping method, plans to make money by doing mobile marketing campaigns for brands.
Tyree is a civil engineer who grew up around computers. Her dad was a programmer and her grandfather was a programmer.
Itography is applying to Tech Crunch Disrupt and Demo.
“My husband and I have been working on this idea for a year,” she said.
Their app is called Itography, a combination of items and geography, and it’s available for free for Android and iPhone mobile phones.
Itography is a social game that allows people to collect and move virtual items in the real world. They released the mobile phone app last fall.
“Itography is virtual geocaching at places you visit everyday,” Tyree said.
People who play the game drop items and pick up items at a variety of places. Picking up and dropping off items can earn rewards.
The items belong to collections which include plants, food, gems and seasonal.
With each pickup and drop an item gains history such as total distance traveled.
“We’ve got an item that has travelled 10,000 miles,” Tyree said.
As further proof that time flies, South by Southwest just announced it is open for business today.
That means you can register for the conference, which takes place next March 7 through March 16, but it’s going to cost you.
Badges to attend SXSW 2013 are $100 more than last year’s early bird prices for every type of badge. An interactive badge that entitles the holder to attend all the sessions, parties and other events related to the interactive conference costs $695 for 2013, up from $595 for 2012.
A platinum badge that provides access to the music, film and interactive conferences costs $1,195.
A few years ago, Ben Metcalfe reported in a post on his blog that he liked the price increase. In 2011, the price for an interactive badge rose 15 percent to $450 from $395. He argued that the price increase weeded out people who really weren’t serious about attending the event.
And despite the price increases in previous years, SXSW Interactive continues to have record breaking attendance every year. This year, conference organizers expect 40,000 people to attend the event. SXSW has become one of the most high-profile conferences for startup companies looking to gain the national spotlight. In years past, Foursquare and Twitter have found traction with the iPhone and iPad toting early adopter audience. But in the last few years, no clear app has emerged as the next big thing at the show.
SXSW’s mix of media, music and film has also made it one of the most entertaining high-tech conferences. Every year, the parties get bigger and better and have become an important part of the show. In recent years, the SXSW Interactive conference has focused heavily on the startup community with events like Startup Bus competition and the SXSW Interactive Accelerator competition.
So what do you think? Will the price hike lead to quality over quantity and a more manageable event?
