Category: Austin (Page 308 of 318)

Women in technology need to break the rules to succeed

Sherry Lowry, principal of The Lowry Group, The Vision Enactors Collective, All Content Tribe

A small group of women started Austin Women in Technology 10 years ago to network and to push each other outside their comfort zone and to empower each other.
Since then, the organization has grown to 150 members.
On Thursday evening, about 90 people gathered at Maggianos at the Domain in North Austin to celebrate.
“We want to foster women in their personal and professional lives to connect, learn, grow and lead,” said Megan Maldonado, president of Austin Women in Technology.
The event featured a panel discussion on “Why Your Time is Now (really)!”
“Chaos is our new norm,” said Lynelle McKay, CEO and president of Leadership Essentials, LLC and former senior vice president and general manager of the networking and multimedia group at Freescale Semiconductor. Paradigm shifts happens every afternoon, she said.
“We want to teach you how to surf the waves of change,” McKay said. “We want you to embrace that chaos and thrive in it.”
Business as usual is long dead, said Sherry Lowry, a serial entrepreneur, mentor and career coach. To understand the changes, Lowry recommended The Shift Index by John Hagel and John Seely Brown. She predicts that by 2015 corporate structures will completely disintegrate.
Janelle Monney, certified executive coach and former semiconductor senior vice president, disagreed. She thinks the corporate structures will disintegrate but not that quickly.
Only 12 women are CEOs at Fortune 500 companies today, Monney said. It’s difficult to get to the top, but women can do it, she said.
To succeed in business today, “you have to be technically competent in whatever you do,” Monney said. “You’ve got to develop communication skills and use the tools of today…You have to be willing to pick the juicy assignments.”
She recommended the book “Break Your Own Rules” and said that women often limit themselves.
“We have a way of thinking that prevents us from getting ahead,” Monney said.
Lowry recommended women find a mentor to move up the ladder within an organization. Mentors are everywhere and often they don’t get tapped for their expertise, she said.
“You never hear a truly component person insist they are flooded with requests to be a mentor,” Lowry said.
The ability to adapt and be flexible in today’s marketplace are key to success, said Casey Rowe, principal of Casey Rowe Consulting.
It’s also important to find people as mentors of different generations, Lowry said. She learns a lot from her youngest grandson. She recommends getting a mentor from every decade because they know what “you don’t know,” she said.
She has launched a website “Vision Enactors” to highlight current leaders in the Austin area.
“You can do anything,” Lowry said. “You can be anything you want but don’t do it alone. Find a tribe or create one. If you can’t do it in Austin, you’re living in your closet or cubicle.”
Monney’s mantra is “don’t ask permission, ask forgiveness.” She advises people to go figure out stuff that is wrong and fix it. Bring a positive energy to the job, she said.
“Companies that have diverse leadership at the top are the most successful by every metric,” Monney said.
Women who want to be CEOs and moms need to know that they can’t have it all, Monney said. There are tradeoffs. Figure out what having it all means. There’s no such thing as balance.
“You have to figure out what you’re wiling to outsource,” Monney said. “You’ve got to get help.”

Ash Maurya says startups must run lean or perish

In the technology startup world, lean is a way of life.
Being lean is not just a mantra, to many technology startups it’s how they operate day to day.
“Running lean is a systematic process for innovating from Plan A to one that works before you run out of money,” said Ash Maurya, founder of Spark59 and author of Running Lean.
Most startups fail just like most products fail, Maurya told about 50 people gathered Thursday afternoon for a Lean Startup meeting at Geekdom, a San Antonio collaborative workspace at the Weston Centre downtown. Many of the entrepreneurs in attendance belong to the TechStars Cloud, which kicked off on Jan. 9 and is based at the Geekdom.
“The odds of success are really stacked against new products,” Maurya said. “I would suggest not focusing on the failure rate but focusing on this statistic: 66 percent change their product along the way. What separates a successful company is not finding that perfect plan but perfecting that plan along the way.”
Eric Ries coined the term Lean Startup and trademarked it. His 2011 bestselling book has a similar theme of Running Lean. Ries teaches about how to use build, measure and learn cycles to identify what customers really want.
Lean comes from lean manufacturing or lean thinking, Maurya said. The key there is eliminating waste.
Companies fail because they fail to find markets for their products and they fail to find the right customers, he said.
First, entrepreneurs need to ask themselves if they have a problem worth solving. They can do this by interviewing potential customers. Next, they must create a demo to put in front of a customer as quickly as possible. It’s also important to stay focused.
“We have this myth of the visionary entrepreneur,” Maurya said. “The most visionary of our times is Steve Jobs who recently passed away.”
But Apple has a string of innovation behind its successful products like the iPod, iPhone and iPad that goes back to the first Newton, a tablet computer that Apple built that failed twice.
But Maurya said that product development actually gets in the way of learning. The best way to learn is from customers and markets in the earliest stage.
“We get some learning at that point, but the real learning occurs when we release the product into the market,” Maurya said. “Lots of companies build something hoping there will be a market for it. That’s where they go astray.”
The Running Lean process shortens the time from idea to product release. The key to success is building a product people want and knowing how to listen to customers to adjust the product.
For example, if Henry Ford asked people what they wanted for transportation they would have said faster horses, Maurya said. But Ford was able to identify the hidden problem embedded in there. People wanted faster transportation and he was able to create an alternative.
“All the customers can do is tell you what their problems are,” Maurya said. “Define what that ideal solution is for them. That’s what running lean can be boiled down to.”
One of the most important parts of Running Lean focuses on the activities entrepreneurs do to engage with customers.
“You need to get out of the building and engage with customers throughout that development process,” Maurya said. “The answers don’t lie on your computer or in the lab. You have to engage with customers and talk with them.”
Startups need to run small experiments and find ways to do 10 to 20 releases in six months to refine the product and path to one that works.
“Business plans fall short,” Maurya said. “It goes from critical thinking to fiction writing. You start making up stuff. The format for a business plan is a bad one. We call it a form of waste in the lean terminology.”
So Maurya created a shorter version to distill down the most important concepts behind a startup. He calls it the Lean Canvas format. It’s a one-page adaptation of the original business model plans. To date, more than 8,000 startups have filled out a Lean Canvas format on his site. He’s also sold 15,000 copies of his book in a combination of PDF formats and traditional publishing. The second edition will be released in March.
“Because it’s a single page it gets conversation going whether it’s good or bad,” Maurya said. “ If you put it in front of someone they can’t help but read it.”
Startups are about risk mitigation initially. If an entrepreneur is trying to raise funding, it’s not about solutions yet, Maurya said. Investors look at your business model from a completely different lens.
“What we are doing here is taking a very complex product like building a company and breaking it down to its components in manageable sizes,” Maurya said.

SOPA and PIPA protests

By now you’ve probably heard of SOPA, the Stop Online Privacy Act introduced by San Antonio Congressman Lamar Smith.
The jist of it is that media and entertainment companies want to protect the copyright on their content from pirates. Not too many people would take issue with that.
But the legislation would effectively give content producers the ability to censor the web.
On Wednesday, dozens of websites including Wikipedia, Reddit, WordPress, Craigslist and others blacked out their content in protest over the legislation. Google, which also opposes SOPA, blacked out its logo.
PIPA, the Protect IP ACT, introduced by Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont is already losing support.
But when Congress reconvenes work will begin on SOPA again, according to this article from Engadget.
San Antonio-based Rackspace Hosting has been working with lawmakers to fix the bills to effectively fight online piracy and avoid Internet disruption or “imposing unreasonable costs on Internet users and service providers,” Rackspace CEO Lanham Napier wrote in a blog post.
He said the existing bills, SOPA and PIPA, are “well-intentioned, but would do more harm than good. Their enforcement provisions could be easily evaded, and they would undermine the security and stability of the Internet.
Meanwhile, Congressman Smith contends that SOPA is vastly misunderstood. He also blasted Wikipedia for what he called a publicity stunt.
“It is ironic that a website dedicated to providing information is spreading misinformation about the Stop Online Piracy Act. The bill will not harm Wikipedia, domestic blogs or social networking sites,” according to Lamar. “This publicity stunt does a disservice to its users by promoting fear instead of facts. Perhaps during the blackout, Internet users can look elsewhere for an accurate definition of online piracy.”
Smith says the “Stop Online Piracy Act only targets foreign websites that are primarily dedicated to illegal activity. It does not grant the Justice Department the authority to seek a court order to shut down any website operated in the U.S.”

Austin-based startup Greenling plans Dallas expansion

Greenling's marketing director Kathryn Hutchinson shows off the company's locally sourced produce


By EOGHAN MCCLOSKEY
Special contributor to Silicon Hills News

Greenling has tapped into the growing interest in sustainable, organic, seasonal and locally sourced food by providing an alternative to traditional grocery stores and instead focusing on an increasingly sophisticated, organically inclined clientele.
Greenling is a start-up organic grocery delivery service which allows customers to shop for produce, meats, dairy, prepared foods and other products online and have those groceries delivered to their homes or workplaces up to four times per week.
Greenling’s mission is to provide home cooks with fresh, healthy foods in a manner that minimizes environmental impact, said Kathryn Hutchinson, Greenling’s marketing director. By delivering produce to customers’ homes, customers burn less fossil fuels than if they were to drive to the grocery store. The majority of Greenling’s produce is locally sourced, and those products not from Austin or surrounding areas are certified organic and sustainably produced. Produce that is out of season or that sells out quickly is pulled from Greenling’s webstore immediately, a practice which contrasts sharply with that of other, larger grocery stores, whose need to provide produce year-round leads to reliance on unsustainable and non-organic producers.
Lately, Greenling is seeing a big uptick in demand for its meal kits, which feature pre-cut and pre-measured ingredients ready to heat and serve. Kits are delivered in compostable or recycled containers and can even be tailored to customers’ unique dietary needs. So popular are Greenling’s meal kits that Greenling is currently expanding to a larger prep kitchen in order to accommodate demand.
Greenling was founded in 2005, funded by $5,000 investments each from Mason Arnold, current owner and CEO, and two co-founders. Since then, Greenling has raised $1.5 million from a range of investors and grown into the largest produce delivery service in central Texas, servicing roughly 5,000 customers along the I-35 corridor from Georgetown to San Antonio and everything in between. This year, Greenling is planning an expansion into the Dallas market, working with a network of farmers and producers to bring sustainable, organic produce to Dallas customers. At the heart of Greenling’s success is a simple and intuitive online store which displays available produce as large graphical icons—locally sourced produce marked with a prominent green tag—and allows customers to specify delivery dates and times. Its webstore and other innovations have allowed Greenling to succeed despite the capital-intensive nature of working with and delivering highly perishable produce. Customers who are interested in organic and sustainable produce tend to be more tech-savvy, notes Christine Blank of Supermarket News, and consumers in this demographic increasingly have less and less time to spend on going to the grocery store but still want to provide their families with healthy food options. Shopping online at Greenling only takes 10 to 15 minutes, notes owner Matthew Arnold in Blank’s piece “Organics Online,” as opposed to dealing with traffic congestion, parking and large crowds at a grocery store. Satisfying the needs of these time-strapped, net-savvy consumers has allowed Greenling to flourish on delivery services alone without the need to open a storefront. A lack of free time to shop for healthy food was what drew Patrick Condon to start shopping with Greenling, and their success in delivering such foods compelled him to invest in the company several years later. “They do all the research and vetting of farmers for me and then deliver the best of the best to my doorstep, “ Condon notes. “It is truly a farmer’s market on my doorstep.” Condon praises in particular Greenling’s plan to move into the Dallas market. “[Greenling is] positioned incredibly well for the changing tide happening in American’s taste in healthy and sustainable food alternatives,” since Greenling has been able to combine consumers’ nascent passion for sustainable foods with a successful business model.
Of course, online grocery shopping is nothing new. PeaPod, Safeway.com, Plumgood Foods, Planet Organics, MyWebGrocer and other businesses have all built successful online grocery shopping markets. Nor is interest in online grocery shopping confined to the US; global grocery giant Tesco this year rolled out a virtual grocery shopping smartphone app in Thailand and online grocery sales are expected to double in the UK over the next five years, all but overtaking traditional grocery shopping. But Greenling is unique in part because of its focus on regional geography, delivering Texas produce to central Texas eaters. Limiting business to Texas is an asset rather than a hindrance, Arnold notes, because “sometimes [Greenling has] a better timeframe for delivery” than distributors that focus on larger areas. Greenling’s marketing strategies are also very regionally focused, rarely relying on more than word of mouth to advertise their services.
“Growth has been spectacular,” Arnold remarks, noting the humble beginnings of the company running out of one of the co-founders’ garage. Seven years and $1.5 million raised from a range of investors later, Greenling is poised to continue growing and continue attempting to change the way we eat for the better.

Sharp Skirts fosters straight talk for women entrepreneurs


By SUSAN LAHEY
Special contributor to Silicon Hills News
In November 2011, Sharp Skirts CEO Carla Thompson took on Forbes Woman with a blog entitled: Forbes Woman, You’re Doing it Wrong. Though Forbes had recently dubbed Sharp Skirts among the top ten sites for entrepreneurial women, she nailed the publication for its recent articles about the dangers of wearing sexy Halloween costumes and the propensity for pretty women to breed more.
Forbes, she pointed out, is a respected business publication.
“So why are they writing about naughty Halloween costumes? Or our breeding and shopping habits? I increasingly feel like I’m reading a copy of Look magazine, circa 1957.”
Forbes responded with a readers’ survey. The survey proved that Thompson’s objections were right on the money. The online magazine gave Thompson her props in its article How Big Media Gets Women in the Biz Beat Wrong.
And that, ladies and gentleman, is one example of how this Austin based organization for women entrepreneurs is poised to transform the way the media talks to women business owners.
Carla Thompson came from the technology world. She’d done public relations for tech firms both as an employee and as head of her own high tech PR company. Then one of her clients, Guidewire Group, hired her as a tech analyst. Her job sent her all over the world, talking with 300-to-500 emerging tech companies a year about their business models, their goals, their roadblocks. She had to attend lots of networking happy hours and workshops where—as a woman– she was seriously in the minority. Few of her female peers ever showed up for these events.
“I’d get calls from girlfriends, asking me questions about their businesses and I asked them ‘Why are you ladies not taking advantage of these events?’”
The answer launched Thompson on a mission. The women avoided events because they couldn’t really talk about their business issues and questions there. They already felt like their gender knocked them down several points on the credibility scale. To be taken seriously, women had to be more competent, more knowledgeable than their male counterparts. Hashing out why something wasn’t working or testing growth ideas in that setting wasn’t comfortable.
“Many women don’t want to profess ignorance around men in business, we feel like we already have the deck stacked against us,” Thompson said.
So why didn’t they attend women’s events?
Don’t get Thompson started.
Her biggest peeve is that events, publications, everything geared to women tends to detour into work/life balance, fashion and other girly topics. Men’s business events and publications never ask “What does your hairstyle say about you?”
At the time she hatched the idea of Sharp Skirts, Thompson was working for Chris Shipley, CEO of Guidewire, a company that supports entrepreneurs and emerging tech companies based in California. In May of 2010, they sadly parted ways and Thompson began her company to build an online network of women business entrepreneurs. The tagline: No Pink. No Platitudes. Just Success for Smart Women.
“She’s always had that passion, especially about women’s entrepreneurial businesses,” said Shipley, of Guidewire, who Thompson calls “the original Sharp Skirt.”
Sharp Skirts started with membership, forums and webinars where women could hash out business issues. One of the things Thompson realized early on was that, while women like face-to-face interaction, they only want to spare the time if there’s serious content involved.
“We had a forum discussion on the website. But that’s really hard to maintain, really hard to keep active and vibrant,” Thompson said. “The forums and the online community stayed active for four or five months then just dried up.”
She also produced webinars, but instead of recording the webinar and having it available, Sharp Skirts needed people to commit to a time, which is difficult. She intends to go back to webinars but do it differently next time. So here she is with a loyal 850 member organization that stretches across the U.S. and into Canada. What direction does she take next? She’s going to use her voice to change the way the world talks to women entrepreneurs. She plans to become a media brand: A smart, candid, business-focused source of solid content for women business owners.
“In 2011, I focused on shifting more to an event producer and a new media brand. There is an almost desperate need for smart, non patronizing content for women in business.”
“It’s so trite but so frigging true that you should follow your passion rather than follow a business trend,” Thompson said. “Ever since I was in high school, I have hated the media targeted to women…Oprah is a particular bane in my existence…. The intent of the Sharp Skirts blog was to write for women who care about more than mascara reviews.”
Many online publications for women—like Sugar Media Network—are festooned with pink, hearts and stars. They could easily, Thompson said, be construed as sites for teenage girls. Her ultimate goal is to effect change in the coverage of women.
“In general, treat them like the adults that they are.”
“She’s really calling out the standard way of thinking,” said Shipley
She’s also going to expand the events piece of her business. She recently launched a Sharp Skirts branch in Chicago which had 30 people at its first event. She has subscribers interested in starting Sharp Skirts organizations in other cities.
“This space is so hungry,” Thompson said. “There are 10,000 things that women in business need with the right kind of vibe and the right venue…. When we started having events in Austin I had people in the online community asking ‘When are you going to start having events in my city?’”
Thompson acknowledges a conundrum in her business model. The mascara and fashion items are what differentiate a lot of women’s content from men’s content. After all, stock prices and tech trends are the same no matter what your gender. Writing about networking in a gender specific way runs the risk of patronizing again. So how does one gear information to women without pigeonholing them?
“There’s a reason this problem hasn’t been solved,” Thompson said. “It’s a really thorny issue to wrestle with. Let’s just say I know how I want to be talked to. I’m trying to write how I want to be talked to and find other writers who do the same.”

Tech Ranch Austin helps move startups forward

Every Tuesday, Arthur Chong drives 144 miles from the Houston suburb of Katy to Tech Ranch Austin.
He’s part of Venture Forth 12, an 8-week $495 class at Tech Ranch Austin that covers everything from creating a three-year financial forecast to putting together a pitch deck, a set of 10 slides to pitch a company to investors. Each Venture Forth program has 10 to 15 entrepreneurs. The weekly sessions require the entrepreneurs to do homework, upload documents to a class website and present them in class. They also get feedback from a network of mentors during a “meet the mentor” night.
“The Venture Forth class has certainly helped me plan my next step,” said Chong, founder of Alpha Cares, a web-based childcare management system. He’s currently deciding whether to seek venture financing or continue to bootstrap his company. He found out about Tech Ranch Austin while attending a Bootstrap Austin event.
Tech Ranch Austin is an incubator, accelerator and co-working space for early stage entrepreneurs, which offers special programs to help entrepreneurs.
“There is certainly nothing in the Houston area that speaks to seed level ventures,” Chong said.

At the end of the party at Tech Ranch Austin

Kevin Koym, who has founded several ventures and worked for several companies including NeXT, which is now part of Apple, founded Tech Ranch Austin three years ago with Jonas Lamis. About a year ago, Lamis left to join one of the Venture Forth companies: Piryx, a fundraising platform for nonprofits, political campaigns and personal causes. It’s now known as Rally.
The idea for Tech Ranch Austin first surfaced in 2003 when a close friend committed suicide, Koym said. Tech Ranch Austin honors their friend’s memory, he said.
So far, 300 entrepreneurs have gone through Venture Forth and hundreds more have attended Tech Ranch Austin’s “campfires,” which it holds twice a month on Friday afternoons. The informal sessions invite entrepreneurs to gather to discuss a wide range of topics.
TechRanch also rents office space to startup companies. Teamtopia, a Capital Factory 2011 winner, rents space there. Tech Ranch Austin’s staff also rents out office space for other events and offers consulting services.
“The thing that is making this place work is community,” Koym said.
Tech Ranch Austin held a “ranch warming” party Thursday night that attracted around 300 people to its headquarters at 9111 Jollyville Road. The crowd included many past Venture Forth participants.
Breanne Hull, with the Venture Forth 10 class, credits Tech Ranch Austin with helping the former schoolteacher learn business fundamentals. She launched Educlone, an online training site, last May.
“I didn’t know what a sales funnel was before Tech Ranch,” she said.
The collegial environmental and interaction with the other entrepreneurs also helped her refine her business ideas.
“It gave me a great forum where I could throw out a crazy idea and say what do you guys think,” she said. “They are really forward thinking people who are really supportive. Even now, I’ll e-mail someone from my cohort and ask their advice.”
Vivian Wied, president of Sagepoint Solutions, graduated from Venture Forth 11. Her company provides fundraising tools, signup sheets and scheduling tools to parents and volunteer groups. The tools are all free and supported through advertising. Wied launched her venture in September of 2009.
“Tech Ranch is a very supportive environment,” she said. Her classmates helped her refine and change her business plan.
Joe Gilson, founder of AnalyzIt.com, a fleet data analysis company, attended Venture Forth 9 and he credits the experience with focusing his business.
“It helped me to pivot from where I thought my product had traction to a point where my product had traction and customers.”
Other people in his class had transportation knowledge and experience and could help him with his venture.
“Now I have a viable business,” he said. “Tech Ranch helped take my venture from hey I’ve got this product to hey I’ve got this product people want to buy.”

Tech Ranch Austin’s 3rd anniversary in three words

Tech Ranch Austin, an early stage accelerator and incubator for entrepreneurs and their ventures, celebrated its third anniversary Thursday night at its new headquarters in North Austin at 9111 Jollyville Road. About 300 people turned out for the event which featured live music, a short speech by Kevin Koym, founder of Tech Ranch Austin, and lots of food, wine, beer and socializing.
During the event, which lasted from 6:00 p.m. until 9:00 p.m., we pulled people aside to find out their thoughts on Tech Ranch Austin in three words and recorded them with the trusty Flip camera. We’ll post a story later on along with a slideshow from the party. (Full disclosure: I’m in Tech Ranch Austin’s Venture Forth program, which helps early stage entrepreneurs.)

Chaotic Moon Labs showcases its “Board of Awesomeness” at CES

Last week I attended the first meet up for the Austin chapter of the Online News Association.
Robert Quigley, senior lecturer with the University of Texas journalism school, and Cindy Royal, professor at Texas State University, are cofounders of the Austin ONA chapter. The first meeting had a great turnout.
In addition to other journalists, I met with some people in the technology community to brainstorm story ideas for SiliconHillsNews. (We really drank a couple of beers and talked about some of the cool companies in town.) One of the names that came up was William Hurley, known as Whurley. He runs one of the most innovative companies in Austin called Chaotic Moon, a mobile application development company.
This week, the folks from Chaotic Moon Labs, a division of Chaotic Moon, are at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. They are showcasing their “Board of Awesomeness,” an electric skateboard controlled via a Microsoft Kinect and Samsung tablet computer.
Chaotic Moon announced that it plans to invest another $6 million into its lab division this year to work on more projects.
“The labs team has clearly demonstrated that with the “Board of Awesomeness” we can transform an interface previous confined to your living room and make it fun and useful for transportation in the outside world,” said Ben Lamm, CEO of Chaotic Moon Studios.
A Samsung tablet hooked up to Xbox Kinectic controls the skateboard which can reach speeds up to 32 miles per hour. ” With video recognition, speech recognition and hand signals, a rider controls the director of the board and its speed and direction.

Return Path acquires OtherInbox

Joshua Baer, serial entrepreneur, announced today that Return Path has acquired his 5 year old startup OtherInbox.
The terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Baer will remain as chief executive officer and Return Path will operate OtherInbox as a wholly owned subsidiary and all employees get to keep their jobs, according to its news release.
“We are delighted to have the OtherInbox team members join the Return Path family in our common goal of making email work better and end messaging abuse,” Matt Blumberg, CEO of Return Path, said in a news release.
AustinStartup is reporting that Return Path will keep the OtherInbox team in Austin and double its size in 2012. Its also reporting that the team will move “into new offices that will fit 40+ people. Baer will operate the OtherInbox subsidiary, and join the executive team at Return Path, working on innovative new products for the company.”
OtherInbox launched in September of 2008 at TechCrunch50 in San Francisco. TechCrunch has this story on the acquisition.
OtherInbox creates products to automatically filter emails that might be considered spam and organizes email so that messages from real people get top priority.
OtherInbox now has more than 2 million users. It has raised $4 million in venture capital.
Isadora Vail, a special contributor to Silicon Hills News, recently did this profile on OtherInbox.

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