Category: Austin (Page 46 of 318)

By LAURA LOREK, Publisher of Silicon Hills News

With remote work becoming routine, more conversations are moving to informal communications channels like Facebook messenger, Slack, and direct messages.

“All of these platforms are just going bonkers,” said Kevin Brinig, CEO and Co-Founder of LitLingo. “Things that have traditionally been nonchalant communications have all moved to the digital realm now.”

Training people how to communicate appropriately in these channels as well as email, text, and other platforms is the sweet spot of LitLingo. The Austin-based startup employs artificial intelligence and natural language processing databases to help organizations communicate more effectively.

On Monday, LitLingo announced that it has closed a $2 million seed round led by Austin-based LiveOak Venture Partners. The company plans to use the funds to further develop its software and to hire additional engineers. LitLingo has 5 employees now. The company signed a lease at Industrious, a coworking space in downtown Austin, a few weeks before the pandemic lockdown in March and its staff have been working remotely ever since.

LitLingo’s Co-Founders Brinig and Todd Sifleet met at a ride-sharing company they worked at together in the San Francisco Bay area. They both ended up moving to Austin. And in January of 2019, they came up with the idea for LitLingo to provide AI-powered monitoring, prevention, and training solutions in real-time across a variety of communications channels.

LitLingo’s platform can help companies avoid costly lawsuits and build stronger culture, Brinig said. It can correct employee’s communication in real-time and flag inappropriate content and train employees on the best way to communicate, he said.

Working in the technology industry, Brinig and Sifleet saw people make mistakes with their communications, not in a malicious way, but by saying slightly the wrong thing, Brinig said.

“It happens in every single industry especially with the rise of remote work,” Brinig said. “And that kind of was the initial instigator for us to start the company.”

Inappropriate messages are happening every single day in all kinds of companies, Brinig said.

“Where people’s meaning and what they intend to say is not actually what they say and that causes a lot of headaches for employees, customers, and management,” he said. “It just creates a lot of friction in the universe for any organization.”

Over time, LitLingo’s system can evolve to be customer-specific, domain-specific, Sifleet said.

“And that’s one of the things that is great about artificial intelligence, you’re always learning and getting better,” Sifleet said. “Your system is more powerful in three months than it was three months before, which is really exciting.”

The founder and CEO of DISCO, which makes AI-powered software for electronic discovery services for law firms, told Krishna Srinivasan, managing partner of LiveOak, about LitLingo. DISCO is also a portfolio company of LiveOak.

LitLingo’s real-time platform can tell people if there is a risk in what they are typing, Srinivasan said.

“It’s like Grammarly for business communications,” he said.

Grammarly developed software that uses artificial intelligence and natural language processing to correct people’s grammar mistakes in real-time.

LitLingo’s platform adds another layer of business intelligence on natural language processing software and it can detect hateful language and other things that people need to be more careful in typing, Srinivasan said. It minimizes toxic language, he said.

“People need to be careful about what they write and what they say,” Srinivasan said. “Companies need to be more culturally aware and the sensitivities in the modern age.”

LitLingo also met LiveOak Venture Partners’ criteria for investment. The company’s founders have extensive backgrounds in the technology industry tackling complex problems, and they also have a clear understanding of the market for their product, Srinivasan said.

“It’s an incredibly hard problem to do it across different types of platforms and do this in real time and not be annoying,” Srinivasan said.

The addressable market is massive, said Brinig

“Any organization can glean insights from its own data and improve,” he said. “Early adopters will have a competitive edge when they are adopting technology like with LitLingo you can improve customer service, which is a function of every single industry. You can improve sales language.”

If you think about a team that is selling a new product, people can make mundane mistakes like guaranteeing something that they don’t have authorization to guarantee, Brinig said.

“Our software can pick up that kind of language and make sure it’s being used in the most appropriate way,” he said. “At the end of the day, it’s really a real-time training platform.”

With informal communications channels like Slack companies need to be thoughtful and mindful about the culture they are creating, Brinig said.

“The employees that you have, you want to create the best environment for them,” he said. “If you can do a really great job at that you have happier teams, happier individuals and less churn”

LitLingo is another tool in the toolbox to help people be more effective communicators in a business environment, Sifleet said.

LitLingo integrates with Slack, Zendesk, Gmail and Office 365 with a couple more coming down the pike, Brinig said.

“If everyone had the training of your best customer service agent, that email would never have gone out,” Brinig said. “That’s what we are trying to do. We are trying to take your expertise and encode it into an AI system that is applicable to everyone.”

BigCommerce is Austin’s latest startup to go public.

BigCommerce Holdings’ shares were priced Tuesday night at $24 a share. It went public on the Nasdaq stock exchange opening at $68 a share on Wednesday morning and nearly tripled in price on its first day. Within three minutes of trading, the stock was halted for volatility, according to Business Insider.

BigCommerce’s stock, traded under the ticker symbol BIGC, closed at $72,27, up 201 percent, according to Yahoo Finance.

At one point during the day, BigCommerce’s stock hit a high of $93.99.

BigCommerce offered 9 million shares of its Series 1 common stock at $24 a share and raised $216 million.

BigCommerce makes a software as a service ecommerce platform. It competes with Shopify, based in Ottowa, Canada, that trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol SHOP. Shopify’s stock closed at $1,094, up 1 percent on Wednesday.

BigCommerce has customers in more than 120 countries that use BigCommerce to create their online stores including Ben & Jerry’s, Skullcandy, Sony and Woolrich.

BigCommerce, founded in 2009, has received $219.2  million in funding from Goldman Sachs, SoftBank Capital, American Express, Telstra Ventures, General Catalysts, Revolution Growth and Floodgate, according to Crunchbase. BigCommerce has offices in San Francisco, London and Sydney and has more than 400 employees.

“As some of our customers remember, co-founders Mitchell Harper and Eddie Machaalani launched BigCommerce in 2009 with the goal to make it easier for small businesses to sell online,” Brent Bellm, CEO of BigCommerce, wrote in a blog post. “Ecommerce accounted for less than 6% of total U.S. retail sales at the time, but Eddie and Mitch saw the great potential for small businesses to succeed if they had an easy-to-use, affordable ecommerce platform.”

The pandemic has also accelerated the adoption of online shopping and led to an even greater demand for BigCommerce’s software, Bellm wrote.

The company plans to use proceeds from its initial public offering to further invest in its software, he said.

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By LAURA LOREK, Publisher of Silicon Hills News

Ceresa, a leadership development platform, announced Wednesday that it has raised $1 million in seed funding.

Austin-based Next Coast Ventures and LiveOak Venture Partners led the round.

Ceresa plans to use the funds to expand product development. It has created a data-driven, personalized program called the Ceresa Leadership Accelerator that provides 100 percent virtual coaching, mentoring, and support for startups to Fortune 500 companies.

“We believe that the lack of diverse leadership in corporations today is not because of a skills gap, it’s an access gap,” said Anna Robinson, co-founder and CEO. “There is a lack of access to role models, mentors, coaches, and high-impact leadership resources for underrepresented groups.”

Ceresa did a few pilot programs in 2018 and officially launched in 2019. The company, based at 1702 E. 6^th street in downtown Austin, has 11 employees and plans to add a few more in the next six months, Robinson said.

The program starts off  by having participants write a mission statement and they must answer the question posed by a Mary Oliver poem “tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” Participants must also make a list of eight people they wish to get feedback from and a questionnaire about them is sent out to those people to answer anonymously. At the end of the first few months, Ceresa has dozens of data points to use to match that person with the perfect mentor. Then they meet once a month with a structured agenda.

“For participants, the impact has been even higher than I even thought it would be,” Robinson said. “It’s a very deep journey for people. It’s quite transformative.”

“In the matching, there is often a little X factor that is the magic in the match,” Robinson said. “It’s hard to say what it is because it’s different for everyone. But we’re looking for that and we’re trying to draw it out of them for their match.”

In one case, Ceresa was matching a data scientist with a technical expert at Disney who was an executive who ran animal programs and animal animation for its studios. It was a really great match, Robinson said.

“The one thing we found in the match is they had both been zookeepers,” she said.

People who have gone through Ceresa’s nine-month program reach out to Ceresa all the time and tell them how much the program has changed their lives, Robinson said.

The platform is virtual, easy, affordable, research-driven with credible content, and has a focus on diversity, Robinson said.

There were a few different pieces that drove Robinson to create the Ceresa platform.

Robinson had been at McKinsey for about 12 years and she wanted to do something more mission-driven. She left as a partner but didn’t know what she wanted to do. She had a health scare that just gave her the realization that she needed to focus on the lack of diversity from a gender perspective in leadership. She has three young daughters and that provided even further motivation to change the status quo.

“I kind of knew it, but when I was looking at all the data with fresh eyes, I saw that we literally made no change at the top in two generations,” Robinson said. “That was a bit of oh my gosh, realizing that my daughters could have these same conversations in another 40 years.”

In Fortune 500 companies, there are 33 female CEOs, less than 7 percent and only three Black CEOs, less than 1 percent, barely changing in a generation, according to Ceresa. 

That’s when Robinson decided to do something to change that with Ceresa, which derives its name from Ceres, a Roman goddess of agriculture, fertility, grains, the harvest, and motherhood. Robinson founded the company with tech executive Nicole Tanzillo.

The platform is extremely flexible. And the journey for the participant is the same no matter what stage the company is at, Robinson said.

Ceresa is not a training platform, she said. Its theory of change is that while there are some core skills that are needed to progress in a career, the focus is on leadership development.

“Things that differentiate people who have a path to the top are those people that have more self-awareness, they actually have access to coaching that helps them do that reflection and set their goals,” Robinson said. “They also have access to these broader networks of mentors. That can happen organically for certain people. But for a lot of people that is just missing.”

Ceresa is focused on letting people learn from people who have “walked the path you want to walk,” Robinson said.

“That’s what is missing for a lot of people that don’t have that privileged access to networks,” Robinson said.

McKinsey’s leadership program is one of the best in the world, Robinson said. And yes, it is focused on skills building, but really it is an apprenticeship program, Robinson said. It is also focused on softer skills building, and a lot of people don’t have access to those kinds of programs, she said.

“I had incredible mentors there and that just doesn’t exist for so many people,” she said.

The platform can be particularly helpful for young women who may struggle to find a leadership mentor among male colleagues. In the wake of the #Metoo movement, male executives have reported that they have been more reluctant to mentor a female colleague, according to research done by Survey Monkey and the Lean In Foundation.

Ceresa solves that problem because the platform is virtual and structured. It stays on topic, Robinson said.

The people going through the program are mostly first-time managers through vice presidents, Robinson said. They have had everyone from 23-year-olds in their first jobs to senior vice presidents and general managers later in their careers, she said.

“Everyone can benefit from it,” she said.

To measure the impact the program is having, Ceresa measures the engagement rate with its platform, which is more than 90 percent, Robinson said. The company also does satisfaction surveys and its satisfaction rates are 4.8 out of 5 points, she said. They also track feedback data on what participants want to work on, she said. As a result, a company in the program can get great insights on things it needs to do to retain and support employees, Robinson said.

LiveOak Venture Partners invested in Ceresa because the startup is led by an experienced team, and they are solving a big problem for companies in a disruptive technology-enabled fashion, said Krishna Srinivasan, founder partner at LiveOak Venture Partners.

Companies are looking for scalable and efficient ways to develop their talent and Ceresa has the solution, Srinivasan said.

“Ceresa, with a novel technology-enabled platform, has quickly surged as a leader to tackle this vast, underserved market and already demonstrated evidence of huge business and cultural impact for some of the thought-leading corporations in this arena,” he said.

Next Coast saw the potential of Ceresa’s platform from its first discussions with the founders, Mike Smerklo, co-founder and managing director at Next Coast Ventures, said in a news release.

“Ceresa is changing the face of leadership development – bringing together a user-first platform with a modern leadership curriculum to transform how enterprises develop their talent,” Smerklo said. “We are excited about what’s to come.”

Breyer Capital has announced plans to open a new office in Austin.

The Silicon Valley-based venture capital and private equity firm, founded in 2006, is already an investor in Austin-based OJO Labs and Swivel.

“I personally will be spending significant time in the city, investing in new opportunities and working alongside longtime friends and colleagues,” Jim Breyer, CEO, and Founder of Breyer Capital wrote in a post “Introducing Breyer Capital Austin” on Medium on Tuesday.

Breyer is one of Silicon Valley’s most successful VCs. He was an early investor in Facebook and has invested in “more than 40 companies that have had successful IPOs or mergers including Etsy, Marvel Entertainment and Legendary Entertainment,” according to Forbes. Breyer is also on Forbes’ list of the world’s billionaires with a 2020 net worth of $2.5 billion.

“Breyer is the brother-in-law of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his wife, U.S. Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao,” according to Forbes.

“Breyer Capital’s Silicon Valley presence remains as important as ever, and at the same time, Austin offers a remarkable new frontier of opportunity,” Breyer wrote.

In his post, Breyer writes that “Austin today resembles a globally fascinating and fast-advancing geographic hub.”

He cites Austin’s “impressive pool of creative and dedicated women and men,” which is contributing to the city’s “robust climate of innovation.”

Breyer reports that he has spent a lot of time in Austin both personally enjoying films and music and professionally.

Breyer got to know Austin in the 1980s as a Dell board member and he considers Michael Dell and Mike Maples, a former Austin entrepreneur turned Silicon Valley VC, as friends.

Breyer spent 28 years at Accel Ventures before launching his own firm. He received his bachelor’s degree from Stanford University and a Master of Business Administration from Harvard Business School.

“Despite the fact that this is a historically tough moment for our nation and the world, Austin’s future, from my perspective, has never been brighter,” Breyer writes.

In his post, Breyer also cites the recent decision by Tesla to put a $1.1 billion plant in the Austin area as another reason to be optimistic about the city’s future. He also mentions major local investments by Facebook, Google, Oracle, and Apple.

“Some of the best founders I’ve backed in Silicon Valley started their careers at large companies,” Breyer said. “I predict that many founders and innovators will gain valuable experience working for exceptional companies in Austin and then stay in the city to build something themselves.”

Another big factor in Austin’s ability to innovate stems from the University of Texas at Austin and its “entrepreneurial and technical programs and leaders,” according to Breyer.

The Breyer Capital office is located at 301 West Ave, Suite 200, in downtown Austin.

Tesla has picked Austin for its $1.1 billion Gigafactory that will make Cybertrucks, Semi, Model 3, and Model Y electric vehicles.

Elon Musk, Founder and CEO of Tesla, made the announcement Wednesday during Tesla’s second-quarter earnings call with analysts.

“We’re going to make it a factory that’s going to be stunning. It’s right on the Colorado River,” Musk said. “We’re actually going to have a boardwalk where there is going to be a hiking and biking trail. It’s going to be basically an ecological paradise: birds in the trees, butterflies, fish in the stream. It’s going to be open to the public as well.”

Tesla’s plant will be located in eastern Travis County on 2,100 acres at SH 130 and Harold Green Road. It’s five minutes from the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport and about 15 minutes from downtown, Musk said. The site is currently a sand and gravel site that houses a concrete batch plant. Tesla paid $5.3 million for the various parcels of land, according to its filing with the Texas Comptroller’s Office.

In reports submitted to Travis County government officials, Tesla representatives have said they wanted to begin construction on the plant in the third quarter of 2020.

Tesla, based in Palo Alto, makes electric cars and last year it launched the Tesla Cybertruck, with prices starting at $39,000. It is expected to enter production next year. Telsa’s main plant is in Fremont, California.

Tesla plans to grow its California operations as well as the Texas site, Musk said.

“This is a nice split between California and Texas,” he said.

Musk also gave a shoutout to Tulsa, Oklahoma, which was in the running for the new plant location, along with Austin. Musk said he would keep Tulsa in mind for future expansions.

The Tesla electric vehicle plant will create 5,000 new jobs. And Tesla has pledged to hire at least 50 percent of its employees from Travis Country. Tesla’s jobs will pay more than $35,000 a year with benefits including equity in the company or its cash equivalent.

Governor Greg Abbott tweeted a picture of himself with Musk and issued a statement calling Tesla “one of the most exciting and innovative companies in the world.”

“Texas has the best workforce in the nation and we’ve built an economic environment that allows companies like Tesla to innovate and succeed,” Abbott said. “Tesla’s Gigafactory Texas will keep the Texas economy the strongest in the nation and will create thousands of jobs for hard-working Texans. I look forward to the tremendous benefits that Tesla’s investment will bring to Central Texas and to the entire state.”

Last week, Travis County Commissioners voted to approve a 20-year economic incentive package for the Tesla project, which was dubbed the Colorado River Project.

“In addition to the 5,000 new jobs and $1 billion facility investment, Travis County has been able to take a tract of land that paid $64,000 in tax revenue over 10 years and turn it into a tract that will pay $8 million in tax revenue during the same period,” Travis County Judge Sam Biscoe said in a news release. “I am proud of the agreement we have reached. It strikes a balance between incentivizing Tesla, securing significant community benefits, and ensuring the protection of workers and the environment.”

The Tesla plant faced some pushback from local residents and union leaders. Several people spoke out against the plant during weeks of virtual meetings of the Travis County Commissioners Court. Their main concerns were that Tesla was not paying enough for workers to live in the Austin area and they wanted reassurances that the labor force would be treated well during the COVID-19 Pandemic, including construction workers. Others spoke out against giving tax breaks to Musk, a billionaire and Tesla, now one of the largest automakers in the world. There were also concerns about increased traffic and plant emissions impacting the environment.

The Del Valle Independent School District board of trustees also approved a tax incentive deal for Tesla worth nearly $50 million over 10 years.

Tesla representatives have said they plan to work closely with the Del Valle school district as well as local colleges on workforce development.

“We are excited to welcome our new neighbors Tesla into the DVISD community,” Del Valle ISD Board of Trustees President Rebecca Birch said in a news release. “From the start, their support, generosity, and commitment to our students has been unwavering. Based on the overwhelmingly positive feedback at both of our public board meetings, this sentiment is shared not only with our board and superintendent, but our community at large. As demonstrated in other locations, Tesla can make a big impact on student learning. We are looking forward to developing multiple pathways to enrich our students and community’s lives with programming and employment opportunities. We are confident that Tesla will be ‘DV Proud’ partnering with us on the journey of preparing students for a successful future.”

The Texas plant will be Tesla’s third gigafactory in the U.S. and fifth worldwide. It already has gigafactories in Nevada and New York and a gigafactory in Shanghai, China, and a new one in Berlin, Germany. The factory in China began producing vehicles this year. The German plant is still under construction.

“The long-term sustainable advantage of Tesla is manufacturing,” Musk said.

The Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce estimates for every position created at the Gigafactory, an estimated four indirect and induced jobs will be created in the region.

Gary Farmer, the Chair of Opportunity Austin, the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce’s five-county economic development initiative, said: “Tesla’s decision to locate its news Gigafactory in Austin will expand and enhance our innovative culture while also providing new and exciting career opportunities for all segments of our Central Texas workforce.”

“The company’s pioneering spirit and advanced manufacturing technologies will be instrumental in our region’s economic recovery and our sustainable growth for the longer term,” he said.

The consumer packed goods industry is huge in Texas.

It creates 1.7 million jobs and generates $87.8 billion in annual income, according to the Consumer Brand Association, which reports one out of every ten jobs in Texas can be traced back to the CPG industry.

Now, that industry is getting a boost from Austin-based SKU, which recently announced plans to expand into the Dallas-Fort Worth market with its consumer-packaged goods accelerator.

Walter Robb, former Whole Foods Co-CEO, will kick off the program this fall. It will focus on later-stage startups with $500,000 or more in annual revenue.

“SKU is an essential and exciting part of the powerhouse Austin entrepreneur ecosystem and offers support, encouragement and capital for the next generation of companies,” Robb said in a news release.

SKU plans to select five companies for its eight-week program, which will begin on Sept. 10^th and run through Nov. 11^th, concluding with a pitch event.

DFW CPG is also supporting the program. That organization, founded in 2019 by Richard Riccardi and Rick Jordan, helps to connect and build food and beverage companies in the Dallas Fort Worth area.

SKU is currently recruiting companies and mentors for the program.

“We are thrilled to support SKU’s entry into the DFW market, the addition of a nationally recognized CPG accelerator to the DFW CPG community and the utilization of the region’s strength to help build great companies,”  Riccardi said in a news release.

The SKU program will combine in-person and virtual programming as the Pandemic continues to impact businesses in Texas.

“One of the common themes that has come up from entrepreneurs is the need for guidance weathering these uncertain conditions,” SKU Executive Director Kirstin Ross said in a news release. “SKU’s program provides emerging brands the mentorship, network and support they need to grow and thrive.”

In addition to Dallas-Fort Worth, SKU, founded in 2011, has expanded out of the Texas market with the completion of its Beyond SKU program last year in New York, which ran from September through Demo Day on Dec. 3^rd.

SKU is also expanding into Minneapolis, Minnesota with the launch of SKU Impact, an accelerator program partnered with Finnovation, an impact accelerator.

In Austin, SKU has a track record of success with 50 companies going through its accelerator programs. Its alumni include Siete Family Foods, Austin Eastciders and EPIC Bar.

Lawyer Shari Wynne Ressler and serial entrepreneur Clayton Christopher, founder of Sweet Leaf Tea and Deep Eddy Vodka, created SKU with the mission of accelerating CPGs.

The pandemic looks like it may have adversely affected venture-backed deals in the Austin metro area and Texas market.

In the second quarter, Austin-based companies received $257 million invested in 35 deals, according to the latest MoneyTree Report from PwC and CB Insights. That’s down nearly 32 percent in dollars invested and nearly 26 percent in deal flow, compared to the same quarter in 2019 when Austin based companies raised $377 million across 47 deals.

Overall, Texas companies attracted $420 million in investment in 59 deals during the second quarter of 2020, which is down 39 percent from $687 million invested in the second quarter of 2019. And deal flow is down 18 percent compared with 72 deals for the same quarter in 2019.

Nationwide, venture capitalists invested  $26.9 billion, down 7 percent from the same quarter a year earlier into 1,374 deals, down 16 percent from the second quarter in 2019, according to the MoneyTree report.

Texas still only gets a small part of the overall venture capital invested nationwide. Startups in the top three states of California, New York and Massachusetts raised 79 percent of all U.S. investments in the second quarter of 2020.

Despite the pandemic, mega-rounds hit a new record with 69 companies raising rounds worth $100 million or more in the second quarter of 2020.

OJO Labs claimed the top spot on MoneyTree’s report for top ten deals for Austin. OJO Labs raised $62.5 million in Series D funding during the second quarter. It was also the number one deal for the entire state of Texas for the quarter.

Other companies on the top 10 list in Austin included Coder with $30 million, Medici Technologies with $25 million, Homeward with $20 million, AlertMedia with $15 million, SourceDay with $12.5 million, Ontic Technologies with 12 million, Sevco Security $6.75 million, Alleviant Medical with $6.5 million and Ambiq Micro with $5.05 million.

Top Ten Deals for Austin in the Second Quarter of 2020

OJO Labs	Series D	$62.5
Coder	Series B	30
Medici Technologies	Series B	25
Homeward	Series B	20
AlertMedia	Series C	15
SourceDay	Series C	12.5
Ontic Technologies	Series A	12
Sevco Security	Other	6.75
Alleviant Medical	Other	6.5
Ambiq Micro	Convertible Note	5.05

Source: MoneyTree report, dollar figures in millions

Top Ten Deals for Texas in the Second Quarter of 2020

OJO Labs	Series D	$62.5	Austin
Bestow	Series B	50	Dallas
Coder	Series B	30	Austin
Taysha Gene Therapies	Seed / Angel	30	Dallas
Medici Technologies	Series B	25	Austin
Homeward	Series B	20	Austin
Liongard	Series B	17.5	Houston
AlertMedia	Series C	15	Austin
Stirista	Growth Equity	13	San Antonio
SourceDay	Series C	12.5	Austin

Source: MoneyTree Report from PwC and CB Insights. Dollar figures in millions.

By SUSAN LAHEY, Contributor to Silicon Hills News

For a lot of people, COVID-19 was like a tsunami they never saw coming; not Joi Chevalier. The founder of the Cook’s Nook culinary incubator knows Austin and Travis County’s food landscape—and its gaps. She understands the brittleness of supply chains and that many people live just one incident away from food insecurity, without knowing it. She also knew that when restaurants shut down, that blocked a food path for a secondary population who benefitted from the overflow. Before many people had even registered what hit them, Chevalier had founded and gotten approval and funding from Travis County for Keep Austin Together, an initiative to deal with a new population of food insecure Austinites.

“If you think about how transportation works in Travis County, we have food deserts; we have transportation routes that don’t exist,” Chevalier said. “Del Valle does not have a grocery store. You were going to have those who can’t even get to where the supply chain does go, and others who are under quarantine or immunocompromised who can’t leave their homes.” 

Unexpected food insecurity

Chevalier, who narrowly lost a bid to become Texas Comptroller in 2018, worked in product management and marketing for decades. She was accustomed to defining a product’s “audience.” The audience for Keep Austin Together included a lot of people who weren’t necessarily receiving food assistance prior to COVID: The elderly or people in assisted living facilities; people with disabilities (physical or mental); community members isolated in rural areas without access to facilities; people who have been displaced due to COVID-19; people who are pregnant, postpartum or sole caregivers for infants and small children; independent youths; people lacking transportation, a kitchen or other resources including students, people in recovery, people who have recently arrived in the community, those in supported housing, focused on childcare or home-bound services, as well as communities in transition or experiencing homelessness

Many of these people would not think of themselves as candidates for a program like this, so they’d be tough to find, she said. “Finding those audiences was paramount; they will not speak up for themselves.” Chevalier has an extensive network in the local food industry. She and her team enlisted the help of other food programs like Caritas and Keep Austin Fed to identify recipients and how to connect with and get food to them.

While many food programs provide packaged goods—pasta, beans, milk–this program needed to provide fully prepared meals for people who didn’t have any place to prepare their own.

Building the plane in the air

In figuring out the strategy, they focused on institutional kitchens like hotel kitchens, rather than restaurants. Restaurants, Chevalier said, are designed around their own menus and aren’t particularly flexible to prepare different menus of emergency food every few days. Plus, as noted by Mokshika Sharma, program manager for Keep Austin Together and co-founder of Sigma Lion, they weren’t sure when restaurants would be opening and they’d lose their meal source.

They ended up working with Sysco, a major food distributor whose normal customer base includes hotels, stadiums, and university campuses, all of which were suddenly empty. But they worked with many others, too.

“We worked with a total of 25 organizations, that spanned from established organizations that have been around for 25-plus years, to social initiatives that were built just for COVID response,” said Sharma.

Co-organizer Robert Nathan Allen said that, in addition to paid participants, more than 45 volunteers have donated over 116 hours providing support to The Cook’s Nook and RPM Kitchens, where the food is made. More than half of these volunteers were organized through the Austin Stone Community Church, the rest are just community members who wanted to help.

They make a meal a day for their beneficiaries. In the first eight weeks, they served just over 40,800 meals; by June 30th they will have served about 50,000.

That’s when the program is scheduled to end, though it may have to be extended as the virus continues to ravage the country. It’s not, Chevalier notes, a program that would be necessary if everything were working the way it’s supposed to. But it benefits the community tremendously in times like these when everything isn’t.