Category: Austin (Page 51 of 319)

The show isn’t going on after all.

On Friday, City of Austin officials held a press conference and announced the cancellation of SXSW and SXSW.EDU, set to take place next week.

“We are devastated to share this news with you. “The show must go on” is in our DNA, and this is the first time in 34 years that the March event will not take place,” according to a statement from SXSW. “We are now working through the ramifications of this unprecedented situation.”

Earlier in the week, City Officials said the show would go on. But on Friday, Mayor Steve Adler, Travis County officials and a health advisory board, decided to cancel the event amid growing concerns about the spread of the Coronavirus.

“We are exploring options to reschedule the event and are working to provide a virtual SXSW online experience as soon as possible for 2020 participants, starting with SXSW EDU,” according to a SXSW statement. “For our registrants, clients, and participants we will be in touch as soon as possible and will publish an FAQ.”

SXSW is a huge event for Austin. Last year, SXSW attracted 417,400 people to Austin including participation from more than 100 countries. It also had an impact on the Austin economy of $355.9 million, according to SXSW.

And even before the SXSW cancellation, several tech companies announced plans to withdraw from various panels, keynote talks, parties and other events. 

There are no confirmed cases of the Coronavirus in Austin. But Texas now has five cases of people testing positive for the Coronavirus in the Houston area. The cases are among a group that travelled overseas together.

San Antonio also had some people who tested positive for the Coronavirus that were evacuated from China and from a cruise ship off the coast of Japan to Lackland Air Force Base. They were being held in quarantine.

The ripple effect of SXSW being cancelled will be felt throughout the local economy in hotels, restaurants, bars and stores.

“I’m not surprised SXSW was cancelled but I’m worried about the local restaurants that needed the revenue,” said Tony Tovar, head of community for Sana Benefits, an Austin-based healthcare startup. “I asked all of my coworkers to support their neighborhood restaurants, bars, coffeeshops, etc.”

Earlier in the week, Joshua Baer announced Capital Factory would not be hosting its Austin Startup Crawl, an annual ritual involving hordes of people visiting various tech centers around town. He also said Capital Factory cancelled Capital Factory House at SXSW and would not be hosting activities at its offices as it originally planned.

“Safety is our top priority,” Baer wrote in a post on Medium. “There is no hesitation about this decision after reviewing all of the available information and speaking at length with all of our team, our members, our partners, and our advisors.”

Ben Lamm, co-founder, and CEO of Hypergiant, also announced Friday that it was no longer hosting three days of special events focused on the space industry and artificial intelligence at its headquarters downtown.

Zoho, which has a large and growing campus in Austin, announced on Wednesday plans to cancel its annual Zoholics event in Austin, in late April.

“After consulting with global health experts across our various regions, we believe that this is the safest and most responsible decision for the entire Zoho community,” ccording to an email from Sandra Lo, Zoho spokeswoman. 

Zoholics is Zoho’s annual user conference. It was set to take place April 28 to April 30th at the Palmer Events Center. Zoholics featured keynote speeches, panel discussions, product demonstrations, parties and more.

Zoho is not the only tech company to cancel annual events. In February, the organizers behind the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona canceled the event because of fears of spreading the Coronavirus. Other tech giants have followed suit. Google cancelled Google I/O and Facebook nixed F8, its developers conference and the Adobe Summit is now an online event. The economic impact of those cancellations is expected to exceed $500 million, according to Recode, citing data from PredictHQ.

SXSW, which kicks off on March 13, is still going on as scheduled with a few alterations to its programming from a few cancelled speakers and pullback from a few tech companies.

The Coronavirus is now in 22 countries with more than 90,000 confirmed cases and more than 3,100 confirmed deaths, according to the World Health Organization. The virus can bring on flu-like symptoms, ranging from mild to severe illness and death. Symptoms may appear between two days and 14 days after exposure. Symptoms include fever, cough, and shortness of breath.

“We are proud of the time and attention we always give to our guests at events, from customers, partners to influencers, but this requires a large global employee presence on our end to provide the 1-1 access Zoho is known for,” Lo said in the email.  “Without the support of our international teams, we cannot deliver the extensive agenda we had planned for this year’s Zoholics.  This would have been the largest Zoholics to date — 3X larger than last year’s in projected attendance and number of sessions.”

The 2019 Zoholics event at the Palmer Events Center attracted more than 1,600 people attending, including 200 Zoho employees.

At Zoho’s 2019 event, Sridhar Vembu, Zoho’s founder, announced the software company is moving its headquarters from Pleasanton, Calif. to a 369-acre campus near the Austin airport.

Zoho has more than 100 local employees and it has leased office space int he Bergstrom Tech Center. It is building a 100,000 square foot building on its campus, which it expects to complete next year. That building is expected to house 500 employees.

Zoho, founded 24 years ago, has more 7,000 employees with many of them based at a 45-acre campus in Chennai, India. Zoho makes a suite of software applications to run a business. It calls its Zoho One product “an operating system for business.”

The show will go on.

South by Southwest is not cancelled.

“There’s no evidence to suggest cancelling SXSW makes the community safer,” Mayor Steve Adler said during a press conference Wednesday morning. 

If that changes, the city, county and a health advisory panel will take action, Adler said. They are continually evaluating the evidence and data around the coronavirus, he said. 

SXSW organizers said the conference will still take place and they have posted extensive information about the Covid-19 Coronavirus on its website with information on how the conference is dealing with the threat. The conference kicks off March 13^thand runs through March 22^nd.

SXSW is a huge event for Austin. Last year, SXSW attracted 417,400 people to Austin including participation from more than 100 countries. It also had an impact on the Austin economy of $355.9 million, according to SXSW.

And even though city, county and SXSW officials have not cancelled the conference, several tech companies have announced plans to withdraw from various panels, keynote talks, parties and other events. 

Facebook and Twitter have both announced plans to withdraw from SXSW amid growing concerns about the spread of the coronavirus.

Earlier, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, who was scheduled to give a keynote talk at SXSW, announced he would not be participating because of the coronavirus. 

As of Wednesday, the list of tech companies withdrawing from participating has grown to include Intel, SAP, Vevo, Mashable and Tik Tok, according to CNN.  And Amazon Studios just announced plans to curtail its participation, according to Deadline.com.

And Author and Podcaster Tim Ferriss has announced he will not participate in SXSW and he took to Twitter to ask Mayor Adler to cancel the event to prevent a widespread outbreak of the virus in Austin.

An online petition calling for SXSW to be cancelled has also garnered more than 44,000 signatures.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports 80 cases of Coronavirus in the U.S. resulting in nine deaths, and 13 states reporting cases. 

The outbreak first started in Wuhan China with the first reported cases on Dec. 31^st, 2019. 

To date, there are 90,893 reported cases of Covid-19 in 22 countries globally and 3,110 deaths, according to the World Health Organization press briefing on Wednesday.  Officials with the World Health Organizations did not recommend cancelling large events unless there is an immediate threat posed to those participating.

There are no confirmed cases in Texas, according to the Texas Department of Health Services. There are a number of people who tested positive for Covid-19 in people evacuated from China to Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, according to the agency. But those people are under federal; quarantine and do not pose a risk to the general population. “The individuals will remain isolated at medical facilities until they test negative for the virus and are no longer at risk of spreading it.”

“The risk for all Texans remains low,” according to the Texas Department of Health Services.

The Coronavirus can bring on flu-like symptoms, ranging from mild to severe illness and death. Symptoms may appear between two days and 14 days after exposure. Symptoms include fever, cough, and shortness of breath.

The best way to prevent the spread of the disease is to stay home if you’re sick. The other recommendations from the CDC include:

• Avoid close contact with people who are sick.
• Avoid touching your eyes, nose, and mouth.
• Cover your cough or sneeze with a tissue, then throw the tissue in the trash.
• Clean and disinfect frequently touched objects and surfaces using a regular household cleaning spray or wipe.
• Wash your hands often with soap and water for at least 20 seconds, especially after going to the bathroom; before eating; and after blowing your nose, coughing, or sneezing. If soap and water are not readily available, use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer with at least 60% alcohol. Always wash hands with soap and water if hands are visibly dirty.

SXSW is less than three weeks away and Austin is going to be hopping.

There’s a ton of great programming for those with badges, but there are also some great activities going on for the general public.

This year, Hypergiant, a startup in downtown Austin cofounded by Ben Lamm, is hosting two special events and three days of panels, speakers and programming open to the public.

The first event kicks off at 10 a.m. on Saturday, March 14^th, at Hypergiant’s headquarters at 522 W 6th St. It’s the first ever, SpaceCom and it explores how aerospace and industry come together to connect space technologies and business innovation.

Space is limited, so make sure to grab a ticket on Eventbrite.

The second event is Hypergiant Presents: The AI Collective, which runs Sunday, March 15^ththrough Monday March 16^thfrom 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. 

“The AI Collective is an inclusive space for education, conversation, and collaboration around AI and emerging technologies for social good,” according to Hypergiant.

The AI Collective also requires tickets.

Hypergiant is also hosting some invite-only events like the Texas Takeover on Friday, March 14^that The Venue from 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. It is an “invite-only VIP party for the who’s who of SXSW,” according to Hypergiant. The party will feature special musical guests Paul Wall and Slim Thug.

The Wall Street Journal has ranked Austin as the hottest big city labor market in the country.

Austin beat out number two, Nashville, on the list.

The Wall Street Journal ranked Austin, which has an unemployment rate of 2.7 percent, as its top spot because of big expansion projects announced in the area, particularly Apple’s $1 billion new campus in North Austin. That campus is expected to employ 15,000 when fully operational. Already, Apple has more than 7,000 local employees.

The Wall Street Journal, using Moody’s Analytics, examined the labor markets in 381 metro areas. It ranked the cities based on the unemployment rate, labor-force participation rate, job growth, labor-force growth and wage growth.

Austin had 70.3 percent labor force job participation rate, 2.3 percent job growth, labor force job growth of 1.6 percent and wage growth of 5 percent, according to the Wall Street Journal. 

That means in a job market with relatively tight supply, people are getting paid more in Austin in recent years. 

It’s no secret Austin is booming. Take a look at the city’s skyline and count the cranes to see how many new skyscrapers are going up around town. The city of Austin also has a map detailing all of the project underway. Contributing to its growth is Austin’s booming tech sector with lots of startup activity as well as big tech giants like Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple having large campuses here. The city also has an emerging medical technology industry with Dell Medical School at the University of Texas at Austin making an impact.

The other cities on the top ten list included Denver, 3, and Seattle, San Francisco, and Salt Lake City, Utah, all tied for fourth place, followed by Raleigh, North Carolina, 7, Orlando, 8, Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, 9, and San Jose, 10^th.

San Antonio-New Braunfels ranked 13^thon the list.  Houston, The Woodlands and Sugar Land, ranked 21^st. 

In the Wall Street Journal’s ranking of small cities with less than 1 million people, two Texas cities ranked near the top, Midland, 2, followed by Odessa and Boulder, Colorado took the number one spot.

Austin ranked third on Milken Institute’s list of 2020 Best Performing Cities.

It ranked third last year as well.

The greater San Francisco area claimed the top spot on the list, followed by Provo-Orem, Utah.

Rounding out the top 10 list was Reno, Nevada in fourth place, followed by the greater San Jose area, the greater Orlando area, Boise City, Idaho, the greater Seattle area, the Dallas metropolitan area and Palm Bay, Melbourne and Titusville, Florida. 

The Milken Institute, which has been publishing its index since 1999, ranks 200 of the nation’s metro areas and 201 small cities. It focuses on job creation, wage growth, and innovation industry metrics.

In Texas, Austin, 3, and Dallas, 9, ranked in the top ten, followed by San Antonio-New Braunfels at 30, Fort Worth-Arlington at 56, Waco at 90, and Houston, the Woodlands and Sugarland at 117. Other large Texas cities on the list included Lubbock at 131, El Paso at 141, Killeen-Temple at 143, Laredo at 149, Beaumont-Port Arthur at 184, Corpus Christi at 185 and Brownsville-Harlingen at 194.

 “The top-performing cities have cohesive strategies that allow them to weather economic storms and leverage their assets for sustained growth,” Kevin Klowden, executive director of the Milken Institute Center for Regional Economics, said in a news release. “San Francisco’s legacy of innovation, research universities, and abundance of skilled labor and tech startups highlight the depth and dynamism of the region’s economy.”

California continues to dominate the list with four metro areas ranking in the top 25 including San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland, Riverside-San Bernardino.

“While San Francisco has returned to the top spot in this year’s index, the most compelling story is the rise of non-traditional tech and employment centers in other parts of the country,” Klowden said. “These emerging centers include cities like Reno, Boise, and Melbourne, which experienced an incredible rise to break into this year’s top-10.”

Reno made the list this year because it’s home to “Tesla’s Gigafactory 1, an emerging cluster of data centers, and a thriving logistics and drone sector, including the first commercial drone delivery company in the U.S.,” according to the Milken Institute.

“Among small cities, Bend-Redmond, Oregon, retained its first-place ranking for the fourth year running, boasting a well-diversified economy, the best five-year wage growth, the second-best five-year job growth among all small metros, and nascent vehicle technology and hemp industries,” according to the Milken Institute.

2020 Top-10 Best-Performing Large U.S. Cities (prior year’s ranking)
1.    San Francisco-Redwood City-South San Francisco, California (4)
2.    Provo-Orem, Utah (1)
3.    Austin-Round Rock, Texas (3)
4.    Reno, Nevada (11)
5.    San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, California (2)
5.    Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford, Florida (7)
7.    Boise City, Idaho (12)
8.    Seattle-Bellevue-Everett, Washington (8)
9.    Dallas-Plano-Irving, Texas (5)
10.    Palm Bay-Melbourne-Titusville, Florida (57)

Swivel, an Austin-based office leasing platform, announced Tuesday that it has raised $8 million.

The Austin-based startup plans to use the funds to expand nationwide starting with the Denver, Colorado market, said Scott Harmon, Swivel’s co-founder, and CEO.

Swivel’s $8 million Series A round was led by Jim Breyer of Breyer Capital. Breyer was one of the first institutional investors in Facebook. Breyer is investing $5 million with the remaining investment coming from JLL Spark, which is the largest real estate brokerage firm in Austin.

“The future of real estate will continue to be defined by the demand for flexibility,” Breyer, founder, and CEO, Breyer Capital, said in a news release. “Swivel is positioned to redefine the entire office leasing experience for startups and established companies alike by eliminating upfront costs and move-out penalties. Swivel brings an innovative fintech-based approach that allows landlords to streamline leasing through terms that deliver the value of flexibility to tenants, as well as their investors.”

Swivel, founded in 2016, previously raised $6.6 million in seed-stage financing. It officially launched last November with its agile leasing platform targeting middle tier, growing companies seeking to level-up from co-working spaces or expand into bigger private spaces. Swivel works with tenants such as Dremio, Graylog, Guideline 401K, hOp, Plivo, Samcart, TalentRobot and Vertify.

 “We’ve been testing the Swivel platform out primarily in Austin for two years now,” Harmon said. Swivel has been perfecting its model in Texas before launching it nationwide, he said.

“Late last year we felt like we had enough landlords and tenants that had used Swivel to go nationwide,” he said.

Swivel, which has 10 employees, plans to hire 10 to 20 more people this year to take Swivel beyond Texas to eight or nine cities, Harmon said.

In addition to Denver, Swivel is considering expanding to Boston, New York, Northern Virginia, Charlotte, NC, Los Angeles, Salt Lake, and San Francisco.

“Swivel works hand and glove with landlords,” Harmon said.

The company looks for landlords that want to offer more flexible leases ranging from one year to three years for their buildings. Those short-term leases appeal to fast-growing companies in the technology industry, but also to marketing firms, financial services companies, and creative firms, he said.

“That’s really a trend that started in tech but has grown really rapidly,” Harmon said. The number one requirement is companies want a more flexible way to lease office space today, he said.

Swivel has primarily been in the Austin market, but it has partners in Dallas and Houston, Harmon said. It doesn’t have a presence yet in San Antonio, but it is working on launching one, he said.

Austin remains a real tight real estate market, Harmon said. The prices continue to go up and downtown is becoming prohibitively expensive, he said. Now, the number one requested area is East Austin for office space, he said. But most California companies relocating to Austin are still asking for downtown locations, he said.

“They want their first office to be in a cool space,” he said.

Companies like to be in areas where there are good restaurants, Harmon said.

And the prices are still relatively inexpensive in Austin compared to the Bay area, he said

“The workforce whether they are engineers, sales or marketing people they want to be where the action is,” Harmon said.

PurPics, a Generation Z intelligence, and brand advocacy platform announced recently that it has raised $2 million in total funding.

The Austin-based startup closed on $920,000 this round, bringing total funding to $2 million. Felton Group, the family office of Jaffray Woodriff, led the round with participation from The Syndicate Fund and Techstars Ventures.

“PurPics is led by a phenomenal team that understands how to reach Gen Z consumers in a meaningful way. They already enable some of the best brands in the world to engage, learn from and work with this generation in a way that is beneficial to everyone, and we believe they’re just getting started. We are excited to watch PurPics continue to grow as they become the go-to platform for brands and the next generation of consumers,” Brett Brohl, founder and managing director of The Syndicate Fund and managing director of the Techstars Farm to Fork Accelerator, said in a news release.

PurPics is a software as a service marketplace that connects brands with Generation Z consumers around a cause. The company recently released a new product called PurPics Insights.

“Our platform already tracks real-time campaign analytics for our brand partners. By seamlessly integrating our Insights product on our current platform, PurPics can now power and measure marketing and sales strategies through the combination of social media data and consumer insights,”  Raahish Kalaria, PurPic’s Chief Technology Officer, said in a news release.

PurPics, which launched in 2017, has more than 40 brand customers such as Shake Shack, Clif Bar, and Vita Coco, and is working on more than 60 campuses and it has helped student organizations raise more than $750,000 for various causes.

“there’s a fundamental shift coming in the way brands will interact with and understand this next generation of consumers, and it’s going towards more authentic and purposeful strategies. What I’m most proud of is that as our company grows, so does our ability to give back. We’re very grateful for this round of funding and are excited for our next stage of growth,” Aneesh Dhawan, the company’s founder, and CEO said in a news release.

Correction: The headline and story have been updated to reflect that PurPics closed on $920,000 this round, bringing total company funding to $2 million.

LiveOak Venture Partners, founded in 2013, this week announced it has added four executives to its Venture Advisors Program.

The venture capital firm, which invests in early-stage companies, is adding Lynn Atchison, Peter Klante, Dave Rubin and Keith Zoellner to the program.

Last year, LiveOak Venture Partners closed a $105 million fund, its second fund.

Atchison is the former Chief Financial Officer of Spredfast, HomeAway and Hoovers. She currently serves on the boards of Q2 Technologies, Absolute Software, Convey, and RealMassive.

Klante previously worked in executive leadership positions for CA Technologies, Vignette, IBM and Cognos and he served as CEO or Chief Marketing Officer for four Austin-based startups.

Rubin is the co-founder and chief strategy officer of OJO Labs, one of LiveOak Venture Partners’ portfolio companies. Rubin has more than 30 years of experience building, operating and scaling technology companies. He has built five successful startups including ProfitFuel, which merged with Yodle in May of 2011. He also founded and ran HomeCity, an online real estate company with offices in Austin and Dallas.

Zoellner is currently Chief Technology Officer of DISCO, a LiveOak Venture Partners’ portfolio company. Previously, Zoellner worked in leadership positions at Spredfast and StoredIQ.

“Driving portfolio company success by leveraging a strong bench of experts has been a central element of our playbook as value-added investors and board members here at LiveOak. We are launching the Venture Advisors program to supercharge that effort,” Krishna Srinivasan, Founding Partner at LiveOak said in a news release. “The first four advisors in this program have demonstrated decades of proven success across multiple successful companies in Austin and guided numerous next generation of leaders across them. They have been providing similar guidance to LiveOak entrepreneurs in an ad hoc manner and as such, we are thrilled to formalize our longstanding relationships with them and welcome them to officially be a part of the LiveOak family.”