Affinegy, which makes software for cable boxes and other devices, announced Tuesday that is has acquired part of Sagemcom’s business.
The terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The Austin-based software company says the acquisition will grow its employees by 40 percent and add an engineering and business group in Dallas and a customer support, quality and testing center in Poland.
It also acquired hardware and five patents and gained customers in Europe, Africa, Japan, Asia and Central and South America.
Affinegy’s products are aimed at connecting the home to set-top boxes, wireless gateways and other devices. Its software is used in more than 33 million households worldwide in 27 languages.
Category: Austin (Page 297 of 318)
Dan Gillmor quizes Bob Metcalfe about the Tech Bubble. Photo by Photo by Antonio Jimenez, aka @eleditor
On Saturday, Metcalfe, University of Texas professor of innovation, told a group of 280 journalists that a tech bubble still looms.
He pointed to the recent acquisition by Facebook of Instagram for $1 billion as proof.
Metcalfe made his remarks in response to a question by Dan Gillmor, technology journalist and director of the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Gillmor covered the dot com boom and bust as a columnist with the San Jose Mercury News. Metcalfe gave the morning keynote address to the University of Texas’ 13th International Symposium on Journalism, held at the Blanton Museum of Art.
Metcalfe is not alone in making the Web 2.0 Tech Bubble assertion.
Since the last bubble burst in 2000, everyone’s been talking about the next bubble. In 2007, the Web 2.0 Tech Bubble Video debuted and got people talking about overvaluations and silly names for companies. Back then Facebook was valued at $15 billion. Now it’s valued at between $75 billion and $100 billion and it plans to go public soon, according to this Washington Post story.
Last week, Dave Winer, software developer, writer and entrepreneur, penned a blog post declaring “It’s definitely a bubble.”
“We’re in a bubble now, and like all bubbles unless you’re thinking about it the “right” way, you don’t see it. That’s how bubbles are. It wouldn’t be a bubble if it were easy to see,” according to Winer.
But I think it is easy to see.
I covered the last tech bubble as a technology writer for Interactive Week magazine. I was based in Dripping Springs, just south of Austin and one day the UPS guy delivered a bottle of champagne to my front door. It was attached to a thank you note from the editor. The staff of about two-dozen reporters pumped out a ton of copy and each one of us brought in millions in advertising. The magazine made a $30 million profit in 2000. Ziff Davis, the parent company, gave us stock options. We got paid a lot better than newspaper reporters. And we held our company retreat at The Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs. We were flying high. I travelled all over the country covering companies in San Jose, San Francisco, Boston, Seattle, Chicago and then it was all over in a flash. The dot com bust hit and the magazine folded.
Many of the companies I wrote about no longer exist: Webvan, Pets.com, Toysmart.com. Austin’s dot bomb list included Garden.com, DrKoop.com and Living.com. Interestingly, Andrew Busey, the then 29-year-old CEO of Living.com, went on to found a string of successful companies and is now a venture partner with Austin Ventures focused on software and Internet startups.
The astronomical valuations for statups with little track record or profits has got to raise a few eyebrows. Just take a look at Groupon. It shows “how social media companies can game the numbers,” according to this Forbes’ article.
Still, it’s up to the market to decide what a company is worth.
Today, Square is rumored to be valuing its startup at $4 billion.
Meanwhile, Twitter’s valuation is pegged at $7.7 billion.
And dozens of entrepreneurs keep getting pumped out of tech incubators like pies in a bakery.
Investors hope one of those pies possesses the secret sauce that makes it the next billion-dollar valuation.
And Instagram, an 18 month old company with no revenue and 13 employees, provides hopes to them that some smart entrepreneurs with a bright idea will be the next billion-dollar startup.
At lunch at the journalism conference, I asked Gillmor if he thought any good came out of bubbles.(Daniel Gross wrote “Pop! Why Bubbles are Great for the Economy.”
Gillmor said absolutely not. He pointed to the last big bubble – the housing bubble and the resulting financial meltdown of the banks, collapse of the housing market, countless foreclosures and mortgage fraud. Gillmor said nothing has changed. The banks have gotten bigger and no one has been held accountable. Regulation has not gotten stricter.
Did the dot com bust have any lasting positive impact? Not for the people who lost a lot of money investing in them.
So when will this tech bubble burst? That’s the multi-billion dollar question that no one seems to know the answer to yet.
Loku is a local search site that promotes local discovery and highlights the quirks of each city. Loku recently released a mobile application that lets users discover what’s happening right around them like events, restaurants, news and tips as well as it lets users establish themselves as local experts for their cities. With the release of the app, Dan Street, CEO of Loku, has given us some more insight into the operations of Loku in this Q&A.
Why did you leave the investment firm of KKR to enter the startup world?
Prior to doing a startup, I worked at great firms like Bain, KKR, and Dell. I really liked my time at each of those places. But around 2007, I lost two grandparents who were really important to me, and thought about what I wanted to do in my life. I realized that one of my big goals was to use my career not just for me, but to leave something positive behind. Loku came out of that inspiration.
Why did you create Loku?
In particular, I chose local discovery because it meant something to me. For me, local grew out of a childhood ideal. I grew up in a lot of smaller towns and suburbs, where everybody knew each other, and you knew the local store owners. Sort of like Austin. As I grew my career, I ended up in urban places like NY or SF. I loved those cities, but felt like I lost something great about smaller towns. The purpose of Loku is to bring a smaller town feel to urban areas.
Loku had raised $1.68 million in angel and seed stage funding so far, do you plan to seek additional funding? If so, how much and when?
Yes, we’ll likely raise more money. We’re going after a big opportunity, with really tough technology. These kinds of businesses don’t come cheap.
How many people use Loku?
We don’t release numbers, I’m sorry. But it’s nearing 6 figures, and growing 50%+ each month.
Loku recently introduced its mobile app what has been the reaction to it?
People are really excited about our mobile app. We’ve seen great engagement stats, including 26+ flips and over 5 minutes per session. Although we have a long way to go, our ambitions are much higher, we’re excited to be where we are.
How does Loku make money?
At this point, our focus is on delivering the best experience for our users and attracting more folks to join our app — the app and community only get better with more people onboard. We have been successful with a number of revenue models but plan on focusing on users in the short-term.
Who are your competitors and how does Loku differentiate itself in the local search space?
Our idea, making discovering new things you’ll love on your cell phone a fun game, hasn’t really been done. There are a lot of people who might come close, but we don’t think anyone is a direct competitor at the moment.
Is Loku’s headquarters in San Francisco? What role does the Austin office play in the company?
We were started in Austin, and our heart is here. We recruit heavily from UT and Rice (my alma mater) and all but one of our employees went to school in Texas. At this point, having our exec team in SF is the right thing for our business. There is expertise in our space in the Bay Area that you can’t find anywhere else. At the same time, we’re committed to having dual HQ in Austin – it’s where we’re from.
How many employees does Loku have? Are you hiring?
We’ve got 14 people, which is a lucky number. At this point, we only take interns, and some of them end up with full-time offers. We do not hire outside of our intern program at the moment. As the app continues to take off, we will be adding folk in the next few months, but primarily through our internship program.
What are Loku’s plans for the future?
We really want to impact lots of people in a positive way. If we can make it fun, and cool, to be involved in your local community, we’ll all be very happy. To do that, we’ll need to launch native mobile apps, expand the cities we cover, and keep getting better every day.
W2O Group has acquired Austin-based Ravel.
All of Ravel’s employees will join W2O Group. The company also has acquired all of Ravel’s big data technology, pending patents and software assets.
The terms of the deal were not disclosed.
CEO Jim Weiss founded W2O Group. It operates a network of marketing, communications, research and development firms with offices in San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Austin, Los Angeles and London.
“Ravel will enhance our team’s ability to predict trends based on a combination of historical information and real-time insights so that our clients achieve advantages in the marketplace,” Bob Pearson, president of W20 Group, said in a news statement.
Ravel is a one of the Austin Technology Incubator portfolio companies. Other acquisitions have included Lombardi Software to IBM and Phurnace Software to BMC.
Ravel, founded in 2010, makes solutions and insights from big data for companies.
When I first heard about The Lean Startup, I thought it was a weight loss program for entrepreneurs.
Then I launched my own startup news site and an executive at Rackspace, the site’s first corporate sponsor, sent me Eric Ries’ bestselling book via UPS.
That night I cuddled up with the blue book and a glass of Pinot Noir in my office’s big red leather chair. I felt sure that I was about to uncover the secrets to launching a successful news site. And in a way I did. But it wasn’t what I thought it was going to be.
Instead, Ries covered a lot of the ground that I have treaded as a business reporter for the past two decades covering incredible companies like International Business Machines Corp. and its transition from the inventor of the original 1981 IBM PC to failed OS/2 software developer to a powerhouse service business. Ries also focused on lean manufacturing based on the body of work of James Womack who studied Toyota’s lean manufacturing operations. (Toyota announced plans to open a Tundra truck plant in San Antonio in 2005 and I was lucky to interview Womack about Toyota’s lean manufacturing processes) Ries has taken Toyota’s lean production principles and applied them to the startup world. That means startup workers are keenly in tune with customers and the company creation process by working in small batches and changing and adaptly quickly in a process known as iteration.
When my 13-year-old son walked into my office and asked what I was reading, I told him about the lean startup process of launching a product as quickly as possible and then adapting and changing it frequently.
“Mom that’s Windows,” Teddy said.
I laughed but realized that’s been a long standing process of software developers. And it has worked. So why not apply it to the broader process of launching companies.
Ries’ book is not a step by step manual on running a lean business. But it does provide enough examples and information to explain how this process is beneficial in the innovation cycle. Failure is an important part of the process. But it’s also important to learn from failure and to adapt.
In the two decades I’ve been writing stories about successful entrepreneurs almost all of them recount a time when they stood at the edge of a cliff and they almost lost it all. Some of them did and they were able to climb their way back up to the top of the hill again. Others just sidestepped the danger zone and were able to persevere in the face of enormous obstacles (like no money, competitors, unproven market, product failures and more).
The lean startup process makes a lot of sense and so does learning from others that have been there and done that. That’s why so many lean meet ups have become popular hangouts for entrepreneurs. Austin’s Lean Startup Circle has 1,010 members. San Antonio also has one that just started up. .
And next weekend, entrepreneurs have a chance to immerse themselves in the lean startup process during a three day weekend program called The Lean Startup Machine.
In Austin, Ash Mauyra has become an expert in the lean startup process. His book, Running Lean, was just released for a second printing by O’Reilly books last March. He’s one of the leaders of the lean startup weekend and so is Josh Baer, a serial entrepreneur and founder of The Other Inbox and Jason Cohen, founder of WP Engine.
Do you have a lean story to tell? Comment below and let us know. We want to write your story. And meanwhile, i will keep iterating and pivoting and building Silicon Hills News through bootstrapping and employing lean principles.
Umbel, which measures digital audiences, Tuesday announced that it has raised $3.7 million.
Austin Ventures led the Series A round. Other investors included Herbert Simon, Chairman and Director of the Simon Property group and owner of the Indiana Pacers, and Gordon Paddison, CEO Stradella Road, and former EVP New Media Marketing at Newline Cinema.
The Austin-based startup also announced that Paul Krasinski, the former senior vice president of digital media and analytics at Arbitron, joins Umbel as its new chief executive officer.
“Seth Goldstein, the former co-chair, IAB Social Media Committee and Turntable.fm co-founder, joins Umbel’s Board of Directors alongside Thomas Ball, a Partner at Austin Ventures,” according to a news release.
In 2010, Meredith Maycotte, Higinio (H.O.) Maycotte, Travis Turner and Nick Goggans founded Umbel. The company began a collaboration with Arbitron in August of 2011.
“Umbel leverages social data at great scale to deliver unique insights about the people who engage with any site, service or brand,” according to a news release. “The company is currently in private beta and will be using the recently raised funds to aggressively execute on its product roadmap and further business development goals. Umbel is expected to bring its first product to market in Q3 of 2012.”
“We’re on the precipice of a new era in audience measurement where brands will demand granular data and the technology is available to deliver upon the market needs,” Paul Krasinski, CEO of Umbel, said in a news release. “It is exciting. I’m proud to join Umbel’s ambitious and talented team and extend the traditional media research principles using social and big data. Umbel has an incredible opportunity to make a large impact on the future of audience measurement.”
Umbel’s customers include the Boston Bruins, Streetwise Media and Austin City Limits.
Lumeris announced plans Tuesday to build a software engineering and innovation center in Austin and to hire 100 software engineers, project managers and consultants.
The St. Louis-based healthcare technology company develops software applications for healthcare providers to access on the Internet. Its technology seeks to improve quality and reduce healthcare costs.
Lumeris has raised $220 million from investors including Kleiner Perkins, Caufield & Byers, Camden Partners, Blue Cross Blue Shield Venture Partners and Sandbox Capital.
“Healthcare is a $2.6 trillion industry that is now embracing cutting edge information technologies to improve quality and drive down costs,” John Doerr, a partner at Kleiner Perkins said in a news release. “Our country’s economic future and health demands we succeed with this mission. We spend more than any other country in the world, but our life expectancy barely makes the Top 50. We can do better. The enormous talent pool in Austin makes it a great place to fuel Lumeris’ growth and innovation.”
Lumeris and Essence Healthcare, its sister company, have 550 employees in St. Louis, Boston and Hyderabad, India. It has annual revenue of $500 million.
Lumeris want to hire Web app developers and cloud experts. For more information on job postings and recruiting events, visit Lumeris’ website.
“There is no bigger technical challenge or worthy mission than fixing our country’s healthcare system,” W. Michael Long, CEO and Chairman of Lumeris said in a news release. “The digital revolution occurring in healthcare driven by breakthroughs in digital communications and data management and a national economic crisis created in part from unmanaged healthcare costs is moving fast. We need Austin’s best and the brightest who want to build really interesting things and improve the lives of their friends and loved ones. That’s my definition of cool.”
Long was previously CEO of Austin-based Continuum that was purchased by Computer Sciences Corp. He then helped launch healthcare giant Healtheon/WebMD, serving as CEO and Chairman.
The IRS has approved the Austin Technology Council’s application for 501 C3 or nonprofit status for the ATC Community Foundation.
ATC created the public charity in response to its members request for a nonprofit organizations to handle donations from the greater Austin technology industry.
“The ATC Community Foundation will educate, inspire and lead Central Texas’ next generation of technology students into developing the skills required by current and next-generation employers,” according to a news release. “ATCCF provides Central Texas technology companies and professionals a vehicle through which they can match their experience and passion to give back with the demand for science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education.”
The foundation’s board includes Sam Coursen, recently retired from Freescale Semiconductor, who will serve as its chairman. Other board members include Michael Chawner, CPA, Edward Doan, senior technical program manager at Google in Austin, Steven Moore, partner with Jackson Walker, Trevor Schulze, corporate vice president of IT/Engineering at AMD and Julie Huls, president of the Austin Technology Council.
ATC’s foundation will operate in a similar manner to the Silicon Valley Education Foundation.
TechStars has incubators in Boulder, Boston, Seattle, New York and San Antonio.
Hey wait, how did San Antonio snag a high-tech incubator?
The investors demanded it, said Nicole Glaros, managing director of TechStars Boulder. She relocated to San Antonio for three months to aid Jason Seats, managing director of the TechStars Cloud.
And by all accounts, the inaugural TechStars Cloud, which held its Demo Day this past Wednesday at the Charline McCombs Empire Theatre downtown, was a smashing success.
The 11 teams occupying the 11th floor of the Geekdom in downtown San Antonio have packed up and plan to depart for their hometowns which include Portland, San Francisco, Reno, New York, Boston and Madison, Wisc. But one team from Virginia, Emergent One, which makes a platform that allows companies to easily create an Application Programming Interface or API, plans to stay in San Antonio for a few more months and maybe longer.
Several of the entrepreneurs that I spoke with during the Demo Day After Party at the Weston Centre talked fondly of the time they spent in San Antonio. Most of them lived downtown and they loved being able to walk along the river walk to restaurants and to explore. A few of them regretted they didn’t have more free time to visit all of the local attractions. They were spending 18 hour days working on their ventures. Still, they leave the city with fond memories.
And although the majority of the teams will depart they take with them the tech magic that TechStars Cloud created. In fact, Seats will already go to work preparing for the next TechStars Cloud class. And the desks that the TechStars Cloud companies vacated at Geekdom will quickly fill with local technology entrepreneurs looking to create the next big thing. Also, all of the out of town visitors who attended the TechStars Demo Day leave the city with a great impression of what is possible here.
“It’s super impressive,” said Brian Gorbett, with Microsoft Bizspark, during an interview at TechStars Demo Day. “Being a first year incubator they’ve managed to capture some interesting companies. I think they found some of the best cloud companies at least that I’ve seen.”
Gorbett, based in Chicago, has travelled to several Demo Day presentations around the country and said the San Antonio presentations were among the best he had seen.
And this is only the beginning. TechStars Cloud has a four-year commitment to remain in San Antonio.
Tech starscloud
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