Like countless pioneers, the quintessential Austin technology, music and film conference, South by Southwest ventures West.
SXSW announced Tuesday that it plans to host SXSW V2V in Las Vegas next August 11th to 14th at The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas. The show will focus on entrepreneurial innovation. The four day event seeks to bring together startup companies and entrepreneurs with venture capitalists and mentors. The schedule can be found here.
Badges to attend the show are on sale now at the early bird rate of $695 through Dec. 14th and the prices go up from there with a walk up rate of $1,050.
The show will select some of its speakers and presentations from those submitted through its SXSW Panel Picker process. But SXSW V2V is also accepting new applications to speak through March 29th. The event is also seeking mentors and coaches.
The SXSW Las Vegas conference also features V2Venture, a two day pitch event focused on innovative startups. That program will begin accepting applications in January.
“With the growth and popularity of the startup-related programming across the SXSW family of events, it is clear that there is enough momentum to create a wholly unique and independent event focused on entrepreneurs,” SXSW V2V Producer Christine Auten said in a news release. “SXSW V2V will follow the same general strategy we have followed with other SXSW experiences. It is about turning creative ideas into reality — bringing visionaries to Vegas.”
“Las Vegas is repositioning itself as a hub for innovators and digital creatives. We are excited about all the new energy in this city. This is the perfect place for this small, offshoot event to find its voice and grow as the Las Vegas tech scene emerges onto the national scene,” SXSW Interactive director Hugh Forrest said in a news release. He visited Las Vegas and spoke to the technology community there last summer.
Category: Austin (Page 280 of 318)
By SUSAN LAHEY
Reporter with Silicon Hills News
An application that helps chronic pain sufferers manage pain through increasing activity won the Health 2.0 Austin Codeo Sunday, October 21st at the Capital Factory.
Triumph Over Pain was one of seven teams to spend the weekend creating health-related tools at the event, which was sponsored by Athena Health/More Disruption Please. Athena Health is a cloud-based medical management company and More Disruption Please holds conferences and code-a-thons to try to identify new ideas and fresh thinkers in the medical space. Frequently the company adopts some of these ideas into its accelerator.
The codeo teams formed Friday night had a little more than 24 hours to build something around the ideas they’d chosen. Triumph Over Pain was a company already founded by Tricia Scott, Business Office Director for the Cooper Fitness Center Foundation of McKinney Texas. But the app was new.
David Walling, Chris Huntley and Tricia Scott
But the chief goal of the app was to help people see how increased activity shrinks the intensity of their pain.
Other winners of the competition included CrowdRX, a team from UT’s one semester startup. CrowdRX used data sets to create an algorithm to help doctors know, almost instantly, whether a stroke victim was a good candidate for a drug called t-PA which has remarkable results in helping some stroke victims when administered early; but which has disastrous effects on others.
In third place was Followup Doc, which let emergency room doctors follow up with patients they’ve seen, rather than just treating them, releasing them and not knowing the outcome of the treatment or whether the patient would receive further care.
The most important factor in judging was patient centeredness and application of health literacy concepts. Judges included not only developers for Athena Health, but physicians Tracey Haas and Tammy McConnell, John Lebkowsky, founder of Society for Participatory Medicine and Hugh Forrest, director of SXSW.
Other sponsors included Twilio, Frog design, Texas Health Alliance, attorney Erin M. Gilmer, Ad Clarity, WCG and HCB Health.
Venture capital investments in Texas dropped nearly 29 percent in dollar volume to $127.7 million in 35 deals during the third quarter, according to the Moneytree survey.
That compares to $179.5 million invested in 38 deals in the second quarter.
For the first three quarters of the year, Texas companies have received $716.8 million in 119 deals.
Nationwide, venture capitalists invested $6.5 billion in 590 deals in the third quarter, down 11 percent in dollar amount from the second quarter.
The MoneyTree Report comes from PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association based on data provided by Thomson Reuters.
For the first three quarters of the year, venture capital investment drop was $20 billion into 2,661 deals, well below this point last year.
“The decline in funding for Seed/Early stage companies is firmly in place – we’ve seen a drop in dollars and deals both quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year,” Tracy T. Lefteroff, global managing partner of the venture capital practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers, said in a news release.
“We’re seeing fewer new venture funds being raised which means less capital is available for new investments. And, we’re seeing venture capitalists be very cautious with the capital that is available due to the lack of a significant number of liquidity events. Instead, venture capitalists are continuing to support the companies already in their portfolio.”
The software industry continues to get the bulk of the funding with $2.1 billion invested in 304 deals during the third quarter and the fourth quarter in a row in which investment exceeded $2 billion.
Investment in biotechnology and medical devices topped $1.7 billion in 181 deals showing an increase in dollar volume but declined in the number of deals done for the third quarter.
Overall, though, investment in biotechnology and medical devices is down 19 percent in dollars and 12 percent in deals for the first three quarters of 2012, compared to the same time last year.
Investments in alternative energy, pollution and recycling, power supplies and conservation also dropped 20 percent in dollars but rose slightly, 2 percent, in deal volume with $791 million going into 58 deals during the third quarter.
Other industries seeing growth in dollars invested in the third quarter included financial services, healthcare services, business products and services and retailing.
AirStrip Technologies has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against mVisum.
The federal lawsuit, filed in New York, accuses mVisum of violating AirStrip’s patented intellectual property rights. San Antonio-based Airstrip received a patent on Aug. 28th this year covering “an industry-leading method for remote monitoring of patient medical data on smartphones such as the iPhone®, tablets such as the iPad®, and on other mobile devices.”
“AirStrip has a responsibility to exercise its patent protection in ways that rapidly drive the evolution of mHealth in a
uniform and positive direction,” AirStrip CEO Alan Portela said in a news release. “AirStrip respects the intellectual property of others, and will vigorously defend our own. Such action is not taken lightly, but we feel it is in the best interest of providers, our partners, and ultimately, patients.”
AirStrip Technologies develops mobile apps for physicians and other medical workers to care for patients remotely. AirStrip is backed by investments from Sequoia Capital, Qualcomm, Inc., Hospital
Corporation of America (HCA), and the Wellcome Trust. Dow Jones VentureWire this week reported that AirStrip Technologies had just landed an estimated $10 million in additional venture funding.
Ready to leave your wallet or purse at home?
Soon smartphone customers in Austin and Salt Lake City, Utah will get that opportunity when the Isis Mobile Wallet launches in a test market trail on Monday, Oct. 22. It is currently available in the Google Play marketplace.
The Isis Mobile Wallet puts everything that people carry around with them in their wallets on their mobile phone. The program is available right now by invitation with general availability beginning Oct. 22 in Austin and Salt Lake City.
Isis is a joint venture between AT&T Mobility, T-Mobile USA and Verizon Wireless. The app will be available on a variety of NFC-enabled smartphone mobile devices by HTC< Motorola, RIM, Samsung Mobile and Sony Ericsson. Wired Magazine reports that it can’t find a phone that the Isis Mobile Wallet works on yet.
The Isis app allows consumers to “securely make payments, store and present loyalty cards and redeem offers at participating merchants with the tap of their phones,” according to Isis. It will store your existing credit cards including American Express, Chase and Capital One on the phone. Or consumers can use free Isis Cash card.
“Seamlessly transmit your payment info, loyalty and offers at checkout with just one tap at Isis Ready SmartTap merchants,” according to Isis. “No more fumbling through your wallet or purse.”
The Isis Mobile Wallet is PIN protected and has the same protections against fraud that physical credit cards have and can be frozen with one call to T-Mobile if it’s lost or stolen.
Cinegif has struck a partnership with PulseConnect to bring high-quality animated GIFs to their client’s email marketing campaigns.
Under the partnership, Cinegif will license its patented technology to convert and compress video clips and still images into professionally looking animated GIFs. Austin-based Cinegif’s video conversion software reduces file size and makes sharing short videos easy. The company has three patents on its technology and one more pending. The animated GIFs play on any browser.
PulseConnect plans to offer Cinegif’s animated GIF technology to its customers as a way to create unique and visually appealing e-mail campaigns.
“The animated GIF is experiencing a “rebirth” as teens and artists are breathing new life into this twenty-five year old standard image format,” according to Graham McFarland, Cinegraf’s CEO. “The GIF trend is beginning to go main stream as big name brands such as Coca-Cola, Calvin Klein, Adidas, MTV, and Burberry are using animated GIFs as part of their digital advertising and social media strategies.”
“Cinegif’s unique technology fits nicely with our client platform and helps deliver more visually appealing content for our clients,” Damian Borichevsky, VP of Professional Services PulseConnect, said in a statement.
Silicon Hills News did this story on Cinegraf this summer.
Calxeda, which uses cellular technology to power datacenter servers, recently landed $55 million in investment.
And Wednesday, the Austin-based startup announced that Penguin Computing is now selling servers equipped with Calxeda chips. Boston Limited and Hewlett-Packard already offer servers with Calxeda’s technology.
The Calxeda has shipped thousands of its EnergyCore ECX-1000 to customers, and it is also providing free access to the technology on the OpenStack Trystack.org cloud.
Calxeda plans to market its products for public and private cloud operators and large datacenters.
“We are very excited about the market’s response to our pioneering first generation product,” Barry Evans, Calxeda’s founder and CEO, said in a news release. “Now we are taking it two steps further to reinvent the server, first into a rack-based cloud appliance, and then extending into an integrated fleet of computing resources, spanning many thousands of efficient servers.”
Have you always wanted to launch a tech company but didn’t know how to go about it?
Well now is your chance to learn. 3 Day Startup San Antonio takes place Nov. 16 to 18 at Geekdom, on the 11th floor of the Weston Centre downtown.
The program is like getting a mini-MBA in a weekend. It is all about forming a company in three days. About 40 students and professionals gather to brainstorm ideas on the first night and then they vote on the best ones. They spend the rest of the weekend hashing out business and marketing plans, programming websites and creating their business. Throughout the weekend, the participants interact with mentors who have actually built businesses. They also get catered meals and all kinds of drinks and snacks. The program culminates with a pitch session to a panel of judges and investors on Sunday night.
And often the business doesn’t end there. Several 3 Day Startup ideas have become viable businesses including Cabstr, Grapevine, Embarkly, Console.FM, JiveTickets and many more.
To participate, you must apply for a spot. The organizers are looking for people “with an entrepreneurial drive, including backgrounds in Computer Science, MBAs, law, graphic designers, PR, business, etc.”
“We believe 3 Day Startup is a great way to get the community excited about entrepreneurship and to spend an intense weekend with creative people who want to actually bring an idea to life as opposed to sitting back and listening to YATAE (yet another talk about entrepreneurship),” according to 3 Day Startup San Antonio’s Website. “It’s also a social and business experiment to see how much a group of passionate people can accomplish over the course of 60 hours.”
If you want to learn more, there’s a super secret meetup Thursday (Oct. 18) night at Geekdom starting at 7 p.m. and followed by a happy hour at Tycoon Flats.
Alan Weinkrantz, who serves as a mentor during the 3 Day Startup San Antonio program, recently created this video of Cristal Glangchai, director of the Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Trinity University and organizer of 3 Day Startup San Antonio.
The OpenStack Summit kicks off today and San Antonio-based Rackspace is there in force.
Its OpenStack experts are giving all kinds of presentations today through Thursday at the Manchester Grand Hyatt in San Diego.
About 1,000 people are expected to attend the event.
Garrett Heath, a Racker and his team, created the following video to explain the impact of the cloud.
By SUSAN LAHEY
Reporter with Silicon Hills News
Larry Chiang, investor and teacher at Stanford University, is famous for his after-parties—not in a Hugh Hefner, bad boy kind
Johnny Van, student at UT participating in Larry Chiang’s Lemonade and Guacamole party following Austin Startup Week Crawl.
“When you throw a party you’re building something and wondering if anyone going to show up,” Chiang said. “You have to put your own name on it. You’re inviting people and you have to promote it. That’s a skill set they don’t teach you inside of engineering business school. Throwing a party is the same as running an election is the same as getting 150 users.”
Which is why his latest party at the end of the Startup Crawl of Austin Startup Week was hosted by the students of a workshop he taught: Engineering 145 Preview. It was a 90-minute version of the class he teaches at Stanford that teaches all the social and sales skills engineering schools don’t teach. Chiang has written a book on that topic “What They Don’t Teach You at Stanford Business School.” The class concluded with students throwing the after-party featuring lemonade and a special Larry Chiang guacamole recipe whipped up by the staff at the Four Seasons. The guac had a couple dozen extra ingredients like roasted garlic and roasted peppers. An iterative guac.
“Lemonade and guacamole are the execution of all the knowledge from the class. Lemonade is a baby business, not a startup.
Larry Chiang’s Lemonade and Guacamole Party in Austin
After Chiang’s class, attended by half a dozen budding entrepreneurs including some from University of Texas’ One Semester Startup, participants had to secure sponsors for the party.
“There were little hacks on how to execute and be entrepreneur, how to do cold calls” said co-host Johnny Van, a One Semester Startup graduate. Students who sold sponsorships were allowed to keep the proceeds.
Irene Nguyen, a computer science undergrad at UT signed up for the class because she’s drawn to the startup culture, though not sure if she plans to be entrepreneur. “He talked about how to get a legendary signature. It was very inspirational to me.”
About 60 people showed up for the party Thursday night. Much guacamole was consumed.