Category: Austin (Page 317 of 318)
Ariane Fisher, founder of Storymix, presents at Demo Day 2011
Like a hungry mob at an all you can eat buffet, people gorged themselves on entrepreneurship information Wednesday at the third annual Capital Factory Demo Day 2011.
The day-long event at the AT&T Conference Center in downtown Austin kicked off with a keynote speech by Bob Metcalfe, the co-inventor of the Ethernet, founder of 3Com and now a professor of electrical engineering and director of innovation at the University of Texas at Austin.
Metcalfe offered great advice to the entrepreneurs in the crowd. He said a lot of young entrepreneurs appeared to be “on the verge of dying.” But, instead of pulling all nighters and eating ramen noodles, he told them to get in shape, sleep at least 8 hours and eat healthy meals. The crowd seemed skeptical.
Metcalfe also advised the entrepreneurs to write all the time, give speeches and learn about selling to pitch the company’s products.
“Some entrepreneurs think sales people are lower than whale shit,” Metcalfe said. “Sales people are a different species but they’re carbon-based like you.”
And sales people are essential to the success of a startup, he said.
Metcalfe praised Austin’s entrepreneurial spirit and innovators like Michael Dell of Dell and John Mackey of Whole Foods.
To further foster young entrepreneurs, Metcalfe also launched the one-semester start-up at the University of Texas. Joshua Baer, co-founder of the Capital Factory, is also an instructor.
Following Metcalfe, the five Capital Factory 2011 Finalists pitched their companies in eight-minute presentations with slides. At the end, SwimTopia won the applause meter reading as the audience favorite.
Brian Sharples, co-founder of HomeAway talking entrepreneurship at Demo Day 2011
At noon, Brian Sharples, founder of HomeAway, talked about pursuing his passions and launching his company at the age of 44 after making a lot of other mistakes.
“Surround yourself with as much experience as possible,” Sharples said.
Also, do your homework, Sharples advised. Before he and his co-founder Carl Shepherd started HomeAway, they spent more than six months researching the vacation rental market. They knew very little about the market. They soon discovered Expedia bought VacationSpot in 1999, but the business failed within a year. They found the former CEO of Expedia to find out what went wrong. Turns out Expedia tried to turn the business into a hotel business and get rid of the subscription fee model that customers liked. Owners also liked to interact with renters before leasing their properties. Expedia took away that conversation. HomeAway brought it back.
HomeAway, which recently went public, acquired more than 70 companies to create a business to make it as easy for consumers to find, book and stay in a vacation rental home, as it is to book a hotel.
“If you have a good idea be quiet about it until you’re ready,” Sharples said. For three or four years while HomeAway built its business and acquired competitors, the company didn’t talk to the press, Sharples said.
Sharples told entrepreneurs to be humble, to worry about competitors, to be passionate and to remain flexible. Also, entrepreneurs must have a profit model. The days of starting a business with no clear idea of how to make money, like Twitter, don’t work, he said.
“Never settle, always try to make things better,” Sharples said.
During lunch, investors mingled with entrepreneurs at an actual all you can eat buffet of veggies, chicken, beef, mashed potatoes, salad and desserts.
Silicon Valley Bank, Silverton Partners, AustinVentures, RedHouse Associates, Clearstone Venture Partners, Wildbasin Investments and Entrepreneurs Foundation of Central Texas sponsored the event.
Following lunch, 17 entrepreneurs gave three minutes pitches on their companies. They included Apptive, CopperEgg, The Daily Dot, Forecast, Greenling, Hoot.me, ihiji, Infochimps, Loku, OwnLocal, NightRaft, Ravel, Ricochet Labs, Rockify, Spanning, Stormpulse, VolunteerSpot and WPEngine.
Next, Auren Hoffman, CEO and co-founder of Rapleaf, talked about recruiting and hiring tech talent. He seemed to contrast sharply with Metcalfe’s advice from the morning. Hoffman advised entrepreneurs to work long hours and hire others who work long hours six days a week. He also advised them to return calls and e-mails in a timely fashion.
The day-long Demo Day ended with a call to action. Baer advised everyone to go to the closest bar to talk and then to take the shuttle bus to join the Startup Crawl, a series of stops at various high-tech businesses around town to meet the companies, drink and mingle.
At The Capital Factory’s office, founder Josh Baer gave an overview of Demo Day 2011 during the Startup Crawl.
The third annual Capital Factory Demo Day took place on Wednesday at the AT&T Conference Center in downtown Austin. Five Capital Factory Finalists showed off their companies to investors and others at the day-long sold out event, which was livestreamed. Each of the five companies spent 10 weeks to nurture their ventures.
Emil Hajric, CEO of HelpJuice, gave a demonstration to investors at the Capital Factory’s Demo Day 2011. His company was one the five Capital Factory 2011 Demo Day Finalists. HelpJuice makes an application that makes updating knowledgebases like Frequently Asked Questions or FAQs for companies easy.
Jack McGary, co-founder of SpeakerMix, gave a presentation to investors and others at the Capital Factory’s Demo Day 2011 Wednesday morning. SpeakerMix was one of five Capital Factory 2011 Finalists.
Speakermix is a one-stop shop for finding a speaker for an event. The company’s website is like an online match making service for event planners and speakers.
The market for speakers is $10 billion annually, McGary said. SpeakerMix already has 6,500 speakers on its site and has booked $1 million in speaking engagements, he said.
“We’ve got to work with everyone from Michael Phelps to Glenn Beck,” McGary said.
“There’s a ton of really great speakers that meeting planners are not going to find on Google.”
Kirtus Dixon, co-founder and CEO of GroupCharger was selected as one of the five Capital Factory 2011 Finalists. He pitched his company to investors during Austin Startup Week at the Capital Factory’s sold-out event Demo Day 2011.
Dixon’s company, GroupCharger, seeks to get alumni more actively involved and donating to their Alma Maters through its first web application called AlumniCharger. But that’s not an easy task.
For example, Oklahoma University has an alumni base of roughly 300,000, but only 8 percent give back every year, Dixon said. The university is using GroupCharger’s app to increase engagement with its alumni, Dixon said. The app finds alumni on social networks and then sends event information, invitations and introductions to other area alumni.
“Alumni who stay in touch with their schools after graduation are three times more likely to give back,” Dixon said.
Higher education institutions receive $30 billion in contributions annually and universities spend $2.4 billion on technology to engage alumni, Dixon said. The market is huge with 1.5 million alumni clubs, 55,000 alumni associations and each university spending, on average, $125,000 a year to market to alumni.
GroupCharger launched its beta version in July and it has 20 customers including the University of Oklahoma, the University of Texas and Texas A&M University. They pay $500 for the service, Dixon said.
GroupCharger is seeking to raise $200,000 in venture capital and already has $75,000 committed, Dixon said. It needs the money to expand to 40 universities which will be its break even mark to profitability, Dixon said.
SwimpTopia makes it easy to join a swim team.
The Austin start-up, known as TeamTopia, first product is SwimTopia, a web-based application that reduces the paperwork hassle involved in joining a swimteam, said Mason Hale, CEO of co-founder.
Launched earlier this year, SwimTopia has 2,700 registered users and 1,100 athletes for 6 teams. It has processed $120,000 in registration orders.
“At this point, we have a working product and customers who are happy,” Hale said.
The U.S. swimming market is estimated at 2.6 million athletes on 25,000 teams paying $250 registration fees and dues and another $300 million in merchandise and equipment.
50 million youth sports athletes in the U.S. that spean $5 billion in merchandise and registration fees.
“Every team uses its own registration, communication systems,” Hale said. “When I see this I see a big opportunity to save a lot of people a lot of time. To take the hassle out of something that is supposed to be fun. To enable coaches to spend more time coaching and parents to spend more time with their kids.”
The swim market is huge but it’s just the entry point to the overall youth sports market with 50 million children enrolled in organized youth sports, Hale said.
Ariane Fisher, co-founder and CEO of Storymix Media kicked off The Capital Factory’s Demo Day Wednesday morning.
“We create stories from your personal videos,” Fisher said.
The market for a tool that allows someone to put together a personal video easily with automated video editing software is huge, she said. Last year, people bought 78 million photobooks. But the solution for video is harder, a lot harder, Fisher said.
“If you just slap together some clips the end result can be painful to watch” Fisher said.
That’s where Storymix comes in, Fisher said. The site makes it simple to create a beautifully edited video as it is to create a photobook, she said.
“Storymix makes it easy,” she said.
The site allows people to gather pictures, video clips and other media together and tell a story using titles, captions and themes. It is not a slideshow with 10 second clips, Fisher said. Storymix provides a professional video mashup for as little as $99. Currently the system builds 85 percent of the product automatically, she said. The site is targeting the $90 billion wedding market.
“We don’t have users,” Fisher said. “We have paying customers.”
Already, Storymix has 100 paid customers and projects $500,000 in revenue in the next 12 months, Fisher said. The company is looking to raise $500,000 to accelerate its growth.
At WeStart, the first Austin Startup Week kicked off Tuesday evening at the Tiniest Bar in Texas.
The event featured 10 entrepreneurs answering five questions each about their venture. The companies included Jeremy Guillory’s Three Day Startup, Mark Philips’ sports site Are You Watching This, Eric Katerman’s social networking app Forecast , Anslee Connell’s curvy couture clothing designer siteSavannahRed and 5 Guys in Kilts.
Jacqueline Hughes, one of the co-founders of the first-ever Austin Startup Week along with Joshua Baer of The Capital Factory, said people are coming from all over to attend the events scheduled Tuesday through Saturday.
On Wednesday, The Capital Factory hosts Demo Day, a sold out event in which entrepreneurs pitch their companies to venture capitalists. For those without tickets, both GoLabs Austin and Cospace will be hosting parties to watch a live stream broadcast of the event starting at 9 a.m.
Following Demo Day, more than 700 people have signed up to participate in the 2nd Austin Startup Crawl. For a full list of events during Austin startup week check out the official calendar.
By L.A. Lorek
Austin’s High Tech Happy Hour takes places about eight times a year at the Molotov Lounge in downtown Austin. It’s an opportunity for people to meet and mingle. But it’s also a place where deals get done and employees get hired. The next Austin High Tech Happy Hour is this Thursday during Austin Startup Week. This footage was taken at the August gathering which featured Laura Beck’s company StripedShirt.com as a sponsor as well as IBM. Bryan and Angi Menell launched the Austin High Tech Happy Hour four years ago. Bryan Menell contributes to the AustinStartup website and is a co-founder of Capital Factory, an incubator for high-tech business.