Category: Austin (Page 312 of 318)

KLRU’s Capital of Innovation highlights Austin entrepreneurship

November 25, 2011 / / 1 Comment

If you were so busy Wednesday night preparing for the big turkey day, that you forgot to set the DVR and you missed Austin public television station KLRU’s new gem of a program that focuses on Austin innovation, don’t worry.
KLRU plans to re-run the program, Capital of Innovation: Episode #101, which debuted Wednesday night. The next showing is Sunday at 4:30 p.m.

Capital of Innovation’s first episode features Josh Kerr, co founder of Zosh, and maker of an iPhone app that allows people to sign contracts on the mobile phone. YouSendIt acquired Zosh in January of 2011.

The program also features Chris Richter who created a drink mix and Ruth Glendinning who turned an abandoned retail site into a micro incubator for small businesses.

Round-up of recent tech news in Silicon Hills

November 20, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Are you wonder struck over the amount of money, deals and companies flowing into the Austin area?
It’s exciting times in the Silicon Hills, the high-tech region of Austin and San Antonio.
Not only is Austin, which is known for its start-up culture and high-technology ventures, taking off like a shotgun blast, but San Antonio’s tech entrepreneurial scene has begun to bubble up to the surface like Texas crude.
So much has happened in just the past week that it’s difficult to keep on top of all the activity. So we’ve rounded up the best deals below and if we’ve left anything off, please add to it in the comments section.
San Antonio-based Rackspace Hosting Inc. has opened up satellite offices in Silicon Valley. The San Francisco Chronicle wrote a nice story about their new offices. The official opening is Dec. 1, but already employees, including Uber-blogger Robert Scobel, who runs Building 43, a technology site that specializes in video interviews with technology entrepreneurs, have moved in.
Meanwhile, Geekdom, a new collaborative workspace at the Weston Centre in downtown San Antonio, continues to host events including 3 Day Startup San Antonio and Start-up Ignite’s Hack-a-thon.
In Austin, Evernote’s CEO Phil Libin flew in to open the company’s first U.S. satellite office in the Bridgepoint Parkway Office Complex. It’s hiring a bunch of people for the Austin operations too.
Speaking of moving to town, the Austin American Statesman reported that SceneTap, a social media app for bar patrons, announced plans to relocate its operations from Chicago to Austin.
And BlackLocus, an e-commerce pricing analysis company, announced Austin as the headquarters of its company, which recently graduated from the LaunchPad program at the Austin Technology Incubator.
Meanwhile, Rapid 7, an online security firm, just landed $50 million in funding and will use the proceeds, in part, to expand its Austin operations
And ServiceMesh, a Santa Monica-based cloud platform maker, has raised $15 million and plans to expand its Austin operations, according to this story by Lori Hawkins of the Austin American Statesman.
Capital Factory graduate, WPEngine closed $1.2 million in series A financing, according to this post from Bryan Mennel at Austin Startup.
Last, but not least, SXSW continues to release a bunch of news about next year’s Interactive conference. The deadline for entering your start-up into its SXSW Accelerator is today. It was actually Friday, but SXSW, which often extends deadlines at the last minute, pushed it until today. So if you’re a totally procrastinator, get your application in now.
Tech Ranch Austin’s next Venture Forth program begins Nov. 29, and full disclosure SiliconHillsNews is going to be participating in the program. Tech Ranch still has a few openings left, but it’s limited to 15 entrepreneurs.

Hacking the night away at Geekdom

November 19, 2011 / / 1 Comment

Hackers gathered at Geekdom Friday night to socialize, listen to a speaker and build stuff.
About 50 people attended Start-up Ignite’s second all night Hack-a-thon in downtown San Antonio.
The event kicked off at 7 p.m. with pizza and soda and socializing, followed by a candid presentation from start-up entrepreneur Vid Luther, CEO of ZippyKid.
Luther launched ZippyKid, a wordpress hosting site, in May of 2010, with three customers. He received his first round of angel funding this past April. ZippyKid now has more than 1,000 customers and Luther’s hired four employees.
ZippyKid just turned profitable, Luther said.
Luther told the crowd that he didn’t have a clue what he was doing when he started the company. In fact, he just did it as a hobby at first. He helped people with their WordPress sites during his spare time, while working a full time job for Pear Analytics. But he soon realized the value in providing personalized service to people who have WordPress blogs.
“I could charge $100 to fix a problem that took me five minutes to fix,” Luther said.
Some larger hosting sites didn’t always have time to provide the best help to non-technical WordPress bloggers, and that’s where Luther found his opportunity.
Luther encouraged the crowd to try their own ventures. He tried several other ventures and had some great ideas that didn’t pan out before he found success with ZippyKid. He attracted his angel funding through a blog post he did explaining his vision for the site.
ZippyKid competes with other WordPress specialization sites like WPEngine in Austin. But ZippyKid focuses on non-technical customers, Luther said. Since launching, ZippyKid has lost only 11 customers and half of those went out of business, Luther said.
Following Luther’s talk, the crowd dispersed and began working on their laptops in small groups.
Stephen Young, Igor Gregorio and Daniel Semmens created Start-up Ignite because they wanted to work with other like-minded people.
San Antonio lacked a catalyst to bring together its technology community, Gregorio said.
“We heard that there were more and more people in San Antonio doing start-ups but none of them were connected,” Young said.
A few people came from Houston and Austin to attend the event, Semmens said
“The focus is on getting things done and helping people,” Semmens said.
Building a strong community of people working on start-ups only helps make the existing start-ups stronger, said Young.
Young and Gregorio travelled to San Francisco earlier this year and when they hopped in a cab, the cab driver asked them if they ran a start-up and asked them for their pitch. Then he gave them his pitch. They want to see that pervasive entrepreneurial spirit in San Antonio, Young said.
“It’s possible,” he said
The next Start-up Ignite Hack-a-thon is Dec. 9th and features Dirk Elmendorf, co-founder of Rackspace, as its guest speaker. They have 100 people on the Start-up Ignite mailing list and they’re hoping to attract even more as word of mouth about the events spread, Semmens said.
“Bring what you have and come and work around like minded people,” he said.
Niyolab CEO Toyin Akinmusuru travelled from Austin for the event. He’s also co-founder of HubAustin, a co-working space on South Congress Avenue. He was seeking feedback on his new venture, Niyobooks, an online customized children’s book site for families.
“This is the perfect environment for people to come and get feedback,” said Gregorio.
Dan Stuckey attended 3 Day Startup last weekend and learned about Startup Ignite’s Hack-a-thon there. So he showed up Friday night to work on a new idea.
“This is the perfect place to meet people who code,” Stuckey said. “Coders are like the golden Unicorns. They’re hard to find.”
Tim Peters, president of MartFlash.com, an e-commerce site, that he plans to launch within 18 months, attended the event to look for talent for his new venture.
“The next step is putting together a team,” he said. He’s looking for 5 people and he found some potential employees at the event.

Evernote: The 100-Year Start-up

November 18, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Most start-up entrepreneurs talk about exiting the company within five to seven years, but not Phil Libin, CEO of Evernote.
“We’re creating the 100-year start-up,” Libin said. He also calls it “The Forever Start-up.”
Evernote explicitly does not have an exit strategy, Libin said. He doesn’t want to sell the company or take it public or merge with someone else. He’s building something that he loves and he wants his customers and employees and everyone else to love it too.
That’s a pretty bold strategy for a Silicon Valley-based technology company. But the 100-year startup appears to resonate with the least likely crowd, the venture capitalists, which have given Evernote $100 million. Investors include Sequoia Capital, Morgenthaler Ventures, Troika Dialog and DOCOMO Capital.
“I may not be the CEO 100 years from now but I would like to be involved in the company,” Libin said. “There’s no exit strategy. That permeates everything we do.”
Libin spoke at the official opening of its first U.S. satellite office in Austin on Thursday.
“Austin is the ideal place to try this first,” Libin said. “Austin is a great place to build things. Austin is a crappy place to raise money.”
But Evernote already has its money in the bank and now it needs talent to create and expand its product line. That’s why Austin and Evernote make the perfect fit, Libin said.
Evernote also has offices in Tokyo and Moscow. And in the next few months, Evernote will open additional offices in Europe, Beijing and Singapore. Libin believes in going where the most talented people live. He wants to keep the “studio” offices small and nimble like start-ups but connected to each other as part of a larger mission. That mission is to put Evernote in the hands of everyone on the planet.
A Japanophil, Libin explained that Japan has many companies that are 100 years old. The country and its people believe in long term planning. He wants to combine that business longevity and ethics with a start-up’s ability to quickly change and adapt to the marketplace.
Evernote’s business model is not “clever” or “complex,” Libin said. Its model is to build something great that people will pay for, he said.
“We want Evernote to be a tool, like a hammer is a tool,” Libin said. “The right tools change your brain.”
“With Evernote, we want you to know you’ll never have to forget anything again,” Libin said.
Evernote is a free application that lets people take and save notes. It also offers a premium version that costs $5 a month or $45 per year. Its paid product offers bigger upload capacity, greater sharing options, a note history, better search tools and no ads. Evernote has more than 17 million customers worldwide and of those about 800,000 pay to use the product.
“Our product becomes more valuable over time,” Libin said. “People hate to be forced to pay for things. But people love to pay for things they love.”
In the first month, less than 1 percent of Evernote users pay for the product, but by the third year, more than 20 percent are paying, Libin said.
“We want people to use this for the rest of their life,” he said.
Evernote has more than 17 million users worldwide.
“This is all organic growth,” Libin said. “This is word of mouth growth in a little over 3 years.”
Evernote, founded in 2007, has never taken out ads or done traditional marketing. Its never appeared during the half time of the Superbowl like some other technology start-ups.
“Everything we do – all of our efforts – are put into making the best possible products,” Libin said. “We want the first time you hear about Evernote not to come from us, but to come from a buddy in a bar.”
Evernote also recently acquired Skitch, a free app that allows people to draw pictures to communicate ideas. Skitch takes communications back to the stick in the sand concept, Libin said. E-mail has become a frustrating way for many people to communicate, especially visual ideas, he said. Skitch makes it easy, he said. Anyone, who works with their hands, in the blue or white collar industries will like Skitch, Libin said.
The Evernote family of products now includes Evernote, Evernote Peak for education, Skitch and Evernote Clearly, which creates a better reading experience online. Evernote plans to add two more “super-secret mystery” products this winter, Libin said.
Evernote has 115 employees, tripling in the last year, Libin said.
“We’re hiring like crazy,” he said.
The Austin Evernote office hopes to have 25 employees by the end of year and has space to hold up to 60 employees, Libin said. It’s mostly looking for product designers, artists, engineers and product managers, but it also hires writers, marketers and others. Libin worked in Austin more than 10 years ago. He lived in Boston and commuted to Austin to head up a company called Engine 5, which he sold to Vignette in 2000.
“We’re really happy to be here,” Libin said. “I really developed a huge sense of respect for Austin and building things.”

Evernote Austin’s open house

November 18, 2011 / / 0 Comments

It took an hour and half to get everyone checked in at the door of Evernote’s new offices in Northwest Austin Thursday night.
A guy in the parking garage said it was easier to get into a ZZ Top concert than Evernote’s new offices, said Rich Warwick, its vice president and general manager for Austin products.
More than 470 people registered to attend Evernote’s open house, he said. Warwick made some brief remarks at the event, which ran from 6 to 9 p.m.
In August, Evernote announced plans to create a satellite office in Austin. It moved into the fourth floor offices at 6504 Bridgepoint Parkway.
At the event, a couple of bars offered frozen margaritas, beer and wine. A buffet featured Mexican fare like fajitas, beans and rice.
The green-clad tables hosted packets of peanuts sealed with green sticks featuring the Evernote elephant logo and a note “I’m not being rude. I’m taking notes in Evernote.” The Jessie Torrisi & The Please, Please Me band entertained the crowd.
Evernote’s office also includes a virtual window to its Mountain View, California headquarters. Through high-definition video conferencing, people in the two offices can virtually bump into each other in the hallway.
“You can literally talk to the person just like they’re standing there,” Warwick said.
Warwick said he had to hire a team and ship a product by Christmas. And the company is on track, he said. Evernote is hiring software developers and other employees for its Austin office. Their main product is Skitch.
Skitch, a free app for Macs and Android platforms, created for artists and designers, helped Evernote design its new office.
“I could literally communicate what would take me 20 minutes to type out in an e-mail, it took me less than a minute using Skitch,” Warwick said. The app helps people communicate their ideas visually.
Skitch’s creators, Cris Pearson and Keith Lang moved from Australia to Austin to head up the product’s development team. Skitch is Evernote’s first acquisition.

Famigo lets families play together safely on small screens

November 17, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Cody Powell, "Matt Sullivan" and Q Beck of Famigo. (Matt was out sick)


By Susan Lahey
Special contributor to Silicon Hills News

When people write about Austin start-up Famigo’s new tool, the Sandbox, they focus on the benefit: Parents can pass their mobile phones to children, touching the Sandbox icon, and restricting that kid to a safe world of age-appropriate games. In the Sandbox, he can never dial Mom’s boss, delete all her email or send a personal photo to her best client.

And really, that is a great benefit for an app. But that’s not what’s groundbreaking about Famigo. What sets this company apart is that, unlike many developers focused on doing cool stuff with smart phones, Famigo is committed to transforming mobile devices to something that works with families, the way families work. From its apps to its website, written in regular English, its focus is on the organic, dynamic, diverse, messy ecosystem known as a family.

“Most developers aren’t thinking about the individual,” said Bart Bohn, formerly lead advisor at the Austin Technology Incubator and currently co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of Ravel Data. “Famigo is focused on a family solution, not a specific piece of content. That’s really unique. Q (Beck, Famigo cofounder) talks about the four quadrants: If you can engage both young and old, men and women, that’s a home run. That’s approaching a family as a family.”

Q Beck (and yes, it’s Q, like Harry S Truman was just S) learned about engaging families from the masters. A Texas native, he studied at Columbia University in New York and at Columbia College and worked in film for companies such as Nickelodeon and Dreamworks. He worked as a product development executive, choosing films to make as well as picking directors, casts and more.

He loves the family as an audience; loves how a movie like The Princess Bride or E.T. can draw family members into a powerful shared experience.

Then, one day, he was staring down at Australia’s Great Barrier Reef from a helicopter. His boss’s kids were sitting behind him, playing games on mobile devices, oblivious to their surroundings. And Beck had an epiphany. Just like great media can pull families together, sometimes media can isolate people. That’s when the seed of Famigo started to germinate.

Beck was a little disillusioned with the film industry: Too little opportunity to produce really original work; too many remakes and predictable plots. He wanted to instigate something powerful for families and push back against forces dividing them. He wasn’t sure how, but he could see that smart phones played a big role in people’s lives.

“These aren’t just phones,” he said, indicating his smart phone. They’re computers. For people born after 2000, they’re the first computer they’ll ever own. I knew I wanted to do something to make this emerging technology work with families.”

He pursued an MBA at the University of Texas. And in his second year, met cofounder Matt Sullivan who had just earned a Ph.D. in neuroscience. Both of them were interns at the Austin Technology Incubator. Beck and Sullivan knew what they wanted to do, but they needed a software developer to make it work: At a speed-dating event for start-ups at Capital Factory, an Austin-based tech startup accelerator, they met Cody Powell, a Dallas native who had been making “horrible websites” for his dad’s friends since he was 14.

They launched in 2009. At first Famigo created family friendly games for mobile devices, but then the founders saw that game apps were proliferating like kudzu. So they evolved to become the company that helps families find the best apps, the right apps for their kids’ age, the family culture. Famigo has programs that cull apps for various attributes. The good ones are then tested, evaluated and rated by actual human beings working for the company—often interns. Famigo keeps track of what games kids play and the more popular ones rise to the top of the parental review list. Famigo also sends parents a weekly email telling them what games—educational or otherwise—their kids are playing and recommending other games based on what kids already play.

Then, a few weeks ago, Famigo introduced the Sandbox.

As far as Keith Gaddis—father of three-year-old Francis is concerned—the Sandbox is a godsend. A software developer, Gaddis is usually in heavy demand from clients. So he couldn’t quite get why, suddenly, he just stopped getting calls and emails. Turns out Francis had gotten hold of the shiny phone with the colorful buttons and blocked everything. Gaddis was one of the 3,000 or so Beta customers for Sandbox and he chose an android phone partly because he could use Sandbox on it. (The Sandbox doesn’t currently work with iOS though Famigo’s other services do). As of about 10 days after launch, Gaddis is one of about 10,000 Sandbox parents.

“Francis will grab the phone, open it up– he knows what the icon looks like–so he just pushes the button because he knows that’s where his games are…..” Gaddis said. “Once he’s in there, he’s locked in (until a parent releases the phone with a special code).” Nor can kids click on ads on any of the apps. Pushing the ad icon takes them right back to the opening of the Sandbox.

“We supervise what he plays very carefully. This is big win for anybody who has kids who know how to use your phone.”

Most of the Famigo team is young and kidless. Cody Powell has one-year-old August. So the company has created a parent advisory board. Beck sees this as a plus. Back in the movie business, he said, if an executive’s six-year-old fell in love with dinosaurs, there was suddenly a directive from above to make lots of dinosaur movies. With Famigo, they’re not structuring the products and services for one family, but for all families. Families can decide what apps are appropriate or not for their own kids.

Famigo’s working on customizing the experience so each family member can have his or her own profile and set of games, creating a “virtual living room.” The important thing, Beck said, is creating a shared experience, the way Angry Birds has in many families, or Princess Bride did when he was a kid.

Some day, Bohn of Ravel Data said, Famigo’s focus on the customer may become a best practice in the industry, rather than a distinguishing characteristic: “They have that kind of brand potential.”

Hurricane Party reinvents itself as Foreca.st

November 16, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Eric Katerman, one of the founders of Austin-based Hurricane Party, spoke at Austin Startup Week at the Tiniest Bar in Texas. He said the team at Hurricane Party spent a year building a product that no one really wanted. They’ve since created Foreca.st, which is in Beta testing.
Hurricane Party was party of The Capital Factory’s startup class of 2010. The founders, Rene Pinnell and Katerman received $20,000 in seed stage funding to develop their idea.
At South by Southwest 2010, Hurricane Party generated a lot of buzz. It’s free app for smart phones that helps people plan parties on the fly.
But as Katerman explains in the video, they created something that didn’t gain enough traction in the marketplace.
So they went back to the drawing board to look at what worked and what didn’t work. (The whole adage about failing and learning from it in a startup environment.) That’s when they came up with Foreca.st, an app that lets a select group of friends know where you’re heading for lunch or a party or any kind of get together.

MyLocalReporter connects companies with the media

November 15, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Dave Manzer started Austin-based PROverCoffee.com in 2010. He arranges monthly meet ups with members of the media and the business community.

This interview with Manzer is from Startup Week at the Austin Startup Bazaar. He recently launched MyLocalReporter to help companies in Austin, San Antonio, Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth pitch their companies and products to the right local reporters. The service is primarily aimed at small businesses that might not have their own public relations representative or firm. It costs $89 for a basic pitch up to $189 for a professionally crafted pitch.
“Getting in the news, half the battle is knowing which news reporter to pitch to,” Manzer said. “We connect small business with the news media with hopes of getting more media exposure for small businesses.”

Comic Con works its magic in Austin

November 14, 2011 / / 0 Comments

By Isadora Vail
Special contributor to SiliconHillsNews.com

Wizards, video game characters, sci-fi villains, super heroes and superstars attended the 2011 Wizard World Comic Con, a local spin off of the world-famous San Diego comic book convention.

Hundreds of pop-culture fans gathered at the Austin Convention Center to trade comic books, buy action figures, and listen to panels with their favorite stars. Perhaps the most impressive, and extensive part of the Austin Comic Con this year, was the artist and creators section. Famous artists such as Phil Ortiz from The Simpsons and Greg Capullo from Batman signed autographs and sold rare pieces of artwork. Dozens more decorated the large ballroom of the convention center with their intricate drawings. The convention ran Friday through Sunday, and drew big names like Kevin Sorbo from “Hercules,” Hayden Panettiere from “Heroes,” as well as James Marsters and Juliet Landau from “Buffy.”

For 24-year-old Cheryl Ball, Comic Con is about sharing a love of “cause play,” dressing up as a favorite character, and acting as that character — think of theater, she says. She was dressed as a Quest Giver from the popular video game “World of Warcraft.” With a yellow icon bobbing above her head (an exclamation point that means a new quest in the game) and a satchel full of prizes, Ball wandered through the convention on her own. Thankfully, she said, a few people caught on to her costume and asked for a quest.

“I love cause play and this is my excuse for actually do it all weekend,” said Ball, who attended last year’s Austin Comic Con. “This year seems like it has a lot more of a Sci Fi draw more than comic books, but I’m quite happy with that.”

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