Category: Austin (Page 56 of 318)

Fast-growing startup tech companies outgrow office space quickly.

That’s led to the popularity of co-working sites like WeWork but the WeWork model comes with shared space with others and doesn’t include company branding, said Scott Harmon, Founder, and CEO of Swivel, an Austin-based office leasing platform.

“It’s like working at the mall,” Harmon said.

That’s where Harmon and Mike Maples Jr., partner at Floodgate, a Silicon Valley-based VC firm, saw a sweet spot. They founded Swivel in Austin in late 2016 to deliver a short-term office leasing alternative for companies.

But it’s different from its competitors, New York-based Knotel, which leases office space directly to companies, and WeWork and Liquidspace, which target individuals and small teams with coworking and office space. Instead, Swivel targets middle tier, growing companies of 10 to 200 people looking to level-up from coworking spaces or expand into bigger private fully furnished offices, Harmon said.

Lately, Swivel has seen a lot of interest from companies that once worked out of WeWork and are uncertain about WeWork’s future since the withdraw of its IPO and the departure of its CEO,  Harmon said.

Swivel functions like Amazon Web Services for office space, Harmon said. Its platform provides a one-stop-shop for companies to search for space they need, easily lease it from one year to three-year leases and move in quickly. And if they outgrow a space, they can level up easily, without worrying about subleasing their old space, he said.

“There’s a well-known axiom in the real estate industry: “the most expansive real estate is space you don’t use,” Harmon wrote in a blog post. “Hands-down, the savviest business strategy to lease a workspace is to pay for it in shorter, incremental “chunks” after you are certain about the size of your workforce. That means one to three years for most teams.”

Harmon knows the problem first-hand. He has founded and scaled several tech companies in the Austin market including Motive in 1997 with Maples, which they took public and it was later acquired. He was also part of Tivoli Systems along with Maples, which IBM acquired. And he has led other companies including Noesis Energy and AlterPoint and served as an entrepreneur in residence at Austin Ventures.

Swivel also takes a lot of the pain away from companies that must move into larger spaces, by providing turnkey office space. Swivel allows the companies to lease furniture to outfit the space and move in quickly, Harmon said. And those companies can also personalize their workspace with artwork, plants, kitchen appliances, monitors, whiteboards and more.

Swivel takes a small percentage of the rent each company pays to lease space. It works with landlords like Capital Commercial Investments, Equitable Commercial Realty, Endeavor Real Estate Group, HPI, Kucera, PS Business Parks and leasing brokers such as Aquila, CBRE, Cushman & Wakefield, JLL, LiveOak, Site Select Group and Transwestern.

Swivel is available in Austin, Dallas and Fort Worth, Denver, Houston and San Antonio. It plans to move into more markets next year.

Swivel has raised $6.6 million in seed-stage financing in three rounds, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. It has also generated some buzz. CNBC first wrote about the company, which was then code-named Poquito, in June of 2017. And the Austin American-Statesman wrote a story in June of 2018.

And Swivel may soon become its own customer, Harmon said. The company, with 10 employees, plans to double in size in the next year and will be needing a bigger office, Harmon said. And it knows just where to go to find the space it needs in the Austin market, he said.

An investor group including several Austin founders have joined together to buy Nautilus, a literary science magazine founded in 2013.

The New York-based magazine has 10,000 paying subscribers and has an online reach of more than 10 million.

Daily Dot co-founder and CEO Nicholas White is leading the investment group that is acquiring Nautilus. He will assume the same title at Nautilus.

“Nautilus is the best and brightest science brand I know,” White said in a news release. “It’s also a love letter to the intersection of science, art, and culture. It will be an honor and privilege to help steward our team and mission. The editorial operation at Nautilus is world-class and will remain so. Our proposed plan will put the right growth team in place, which will allow us to deliver Nautilus to the wide audience it so clearly deserves.”

Other Austin-based investors include Ben Lamm, CEO of Hypergiant, and Josh Jones Dilworth, founder of JDI.

Other investors include Larry Summers, 71st Secretary of the Treasury, former Chief Economist of the World Bank, Charles W. Eliot University Professor and President Emeritus, Harvard University and Alexander Falk, co-founder and CEO Altova and prominent angel investor. And Elisa New, Director of Poetry in America and the Powell M. Cabot Professor of American Literature at Harvard University, Drew Hamlin, software designer and Fraser Howie, author.

John Steele will remain as Nautilus’ Publisher and Editorial Director. Kevin Berger will take the helm as Editor-in-Chief and Michael Segal will be Editor-at-Large.

Notable contributors to Nautilus have included: Scott Aaronson, Amanda Gefter, Martin Rees, Lisa Randall, Robert Sapolsky, Hope Jahren, Nicholas Carr, Sylvia Earl, Carl Zimmer, B.J. Novak, Alan Lightman, and Cormac McCarthy.

“The proposed deal gives Nautilus the resources it needs to continue to support the same kind of vibrant, original writing and reporting that has differentiated it from the very beginning,” Steele said in a news release. “Like our staff, contributors, partners and advisors, our new ownership group will be in it for the long haul, and for all the right reasons. Together we will work even harder to expand the public’s knowledge and understanding of fundamental questions of scientific inquiry, as well as their connection to human culture.”

“Science needs all of the love it can get. It deserves everything we have to give,” Jones-Dilworth said in a news release. “We want everyone to understand the fundamental scientific questions of our day, and appreciate how advances both large and small positively impact daily life. All of us in the proposed ownership group share this drive. Nautilus is essential today. If you’re not already a subscriber, you really need to be.”

Nautilus is currently a project of NautilusThink, a New York not-for-profit corporation, which will continue to run programs to advance interest in the sciences following the proposed acquisition.

November is jam-packed with lots of fun events to attend.

Silicon Hills News is hosting its first SpaceATX event on Wednesday, Nov. 6^th. We hope to see you all there.

And Silicon Hills News is currently taking photos for our 2020 Austin Tech Calendar. There is only one spot left for a startup to be featured. Contact LauraLorek@gmail.com if you are interested. Get your early bird tickets to the party here.

Without further ado, let’s check out what’s happening in November.

Nov. 1st

Laughter Therapy with Yasim Butt

When: 7:00 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.

Where: Capital Factory, 701 Brazos St., Austin, TX 78701

Why: Laughter Therapy is a Stress Management Exercise. It is 40 minutes of Continuous Laughter in a group that produces a chemical in the brain called dopamine responsible for happiness. People who regularly participate in Laughter Therapy report increased levels of happiness, life satisfaction and deep sleep. For more info.

Nov. 4-8th

Austin Design Week

When: Monday-Friday

Where: Various Venues Around Austin, Texas

Why: Celebrate Austin design through a week of workshops, talks, studio tours and events this November as the city celebrates its creative economy in the fourth annual Austin Design Week. For more info.

Nov. 6th

SpaceATX: Space the Next Frontier: Exploring Space, Travel and Colonization

When: 8:30 p.m. to 12:30 p.m.

Where: Blanton Auditorium 200 E. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. Austin, TX 78712

Why: Space is big business in Texas and it’s getting bigger.To explore the industry and its impact in Austin and San Antonio, Silicon Hills News is putting on its first space industry conference: SpaceATX: Space the Next Frontier: Exploring Space, Travel and Colonization. SpaceATX is focused on Texas’ booming space industry and geared to those interested in its development. For more info.

Nov. 6th

ATC and Google Fireside Chat:  

When: 4:00 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.

Where: Google, 500 West 2^nd Street, Austin, TX

Why: Google is excited to host C level executives and other decision-makers from Austin and surrounding areas. We will cover multiple topics surrounding Google Cloud including Machine Learning, AI and infrastructure modernization from Googlers and other experts. For more info.

Nov. 7th

ATC Roundtable Breakfast: Women in Tech

When: 7:30 a.m. to 9:00 a.m.

Where: Galvanize, 119 Nueces Street, Austin, TX

Why: Monthly breakfasts targeted to specific groups within the Austin technology community to come together in a small group of 25-40. These events include a featured speaker who kicks off open discussion amongst attendees. Women-only event. For more info.

Nov. 7th

TiE Austin Pitch Competition

When: 5:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.

Where: Vrbo’s office, 11920 Alterra Parkway, Austin, TX

Why: TiE Austin is holding a pitch competition open to startups that have been through an accelerator program. For more info.

Nov. 8^th

Austin Tech Summit hosted by BYU Alumni & Friends 2019

When: 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.

Where: Dell Technologies Campus, 524 Louis Henna Blvd., Building 2 East – rooms Dallas and Houston, Round Rock, TX

Why: BYU Alumni Austin Chapter will host the Austin Tech Summit at the new Dell Campus in Round Rock. While BYU is spearheading this event, one need not be BYU alumni to attend. The purpose of this event is to build and support the local tech community by providing networking and professional development opportunities. For more info.

Nov. 12th

Austin Forum: Internet of Things

When: 5:15 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.

Where: Austin Central Library; 701 W. Cesar Chavez

Why: Rhonda Dirvin of ARM and Jason Shepherd of Dell Technologies will discuss technologies that demonstrate IoT’s power to shape our lives, jobs and society. For more info.

Nov. 13^th-14th

Time Machine 2019 by SparkCognition

When: Nov. 13^th and Nov. 14th

Where: Palmer Events Center, 900 Barton Springs Road

Why: “The Time Machine summit is a vital opportunity for your organization to take its place among the early adopters who will define the businesses of the future. At Time Machine, you will discover how to leverage AI technologies to ensure your business is future-ready in the changing technology landscape.” For more info.

Nov. 14th

DivInc Demo Day

When: 2:30 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.

Where: Rowling Hall, 300 West Martin Luther King Junior Boulevard Austin, TX, 78705

Why: DivIn’s latest cohort will show off their hard work following their participation in the 12-week accelerator program. The event will feature pitch presentations, a chance to meet the companies, and light bites during conversations with the founders. For more info.

Nov. 16^th-17th

New Worlds 2019 Conference and Cowboy Space Ball

When: Nov. 16^th and Nov. 17th

Where: Bullock Texas State History Museum 1800 Congress Ave., Austin, TX 78701

Why: A day long conference on space featuring former astronauts, engineers, space company founders, NASA officials and more. Followed by the Cowboy Space Ball where Astronaut Buzz Aldrin will receive the Space Cowboy Award. For more info.

Nov. 19th

InnoTech Austin

When: 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.

Where: Austin Convention Center

Why: The 16^th annual technology conference showcases a variety of tech companies based in Austin and in Texas. It features speakers, an exhibit hall and a special conference focused on women in tech – the Women in Tech Summit. For more info.

Nov. 19th

Defense Innovation Summit

When: 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.

Where: Capital Factory, 701 Brazos Street, Austin, TX 78701

Why: The Defense Innovation Summit brings defense partners, corporations, the startup community and investors together for a full day of programming to promote valuable collaborations in defense innovation. It includes a pitch competition featuring a $100,000 prize. For more info.

Nov. 20th

Invent + Innovate Awards

When: 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.

Where: AT&T Conference Center

Why: UT’s Office of Technology Commercialization’s annual Inventor Awards Reception and Ceremony is now called the Invent + Innovate Awards. The program has been expanded to recognize even more UT Austin researchers whose work is changing the world. For more info.

Nov. 21st

Fall 2019 JBTVL Venture Expo

When: 4:30 p.m. to :630 p.m.

Where: Robert B. Rowling Hall, The University of Texas at Austin300 W Martin Luther King Jr. , Blvd, Crum Auditorium (First Floor), Austin, TX 78701

Why: This semester, the exposition will feature the 12 members of our Fall 2019 JBTVL Accelerator Cohort who comprise some of the best early-stage startups in the area. Additionally, we will feature a selection of our past years’ JBTVL Accelerator alumni companies.  For more info.

Rainmaking, a corporate innovation and development firm, has opened an office in downtown Austin.

The organization, founded in 2006 in Denmark, runs Startupbootcamp accelerator programs throughout Europe. It launches impact-focused startups, builds them into successful companies and eventually exits them.

To date, Rainmaking has scaled more than 700 ventures in 15 different industries, which collectively have secured $1.3 billion in investment and created more than 1,500 jobs. They work with large corporations including IKEA, HSBC, Airbus, Jaguar, Facebook, VISA and others.

But now Rainmaking is expanding to the U.S. with Todd O’Brien, CEO of corporate startup engagement partner at Rainmaking, opening the Austin office.

“We already work with a lot of businesses in the U.S. and we have an established presence in the market through our Startupbootcamp accelerator programs. Opening an office in Austin allows us to partner with more corporations that want to integrate impact into their business while leveraging the ever-growing tech startup scene in Austin and beyond,” O’Brien said in a news statement.

Rainmaking is also partnering with Ingrid Vanderveldt, founder of the “Empowering a Billion Women by 2020” movement.

Vanderveldt and O’Brien worked together previously at Dell as Entrepreneurs in Residence. Together, they plan to help companies drive financial growth and make real progress on business, environmental and social issues. Sustainable Development Goals is a trillion-dollar problem, according to Rainmaking.

“For most organizations, sustainability transformations remain challenging to achieve and come with risks,” Vanderveldt said in a news release. “I have met a lot of executives seeking to balance the desire to create impact while also driving bottom-line business and financial results. Very often, results can be achieved faster by engaging with innovative startups.”

Rainmaking helps its clients refine and focus on its strategic areas to source and select startups who are the right fit, according to O’Brien.

“We mitigate the key touchpoints to drive growth through the integration and balance of social, human and financial capital,” he said.

Rainmaking is also driving major initiatives on a broad spectrum of social impact issues, closely aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals and it’s a member of the UN Global Compact.

Brands have worked with influencers to sell products through social media for a long time.

But it’s been more difficult for them to engage with regular customers who might like their products.

And that’s where LoudCrowd saw an opportunity. The Austin-based startup sells software directly to brands that allow them to reward customers who promote their products.

“It’s about taking behavior that is already happening and creating a structure around it,” said Justin Papermaster, Co-Founder of LoudCrowd.

LoudCrowd on Thursday announced that it has closed a $515,000 Pre-Seed round led by Active Capital, with participation from local angel investors. Papermaster co-founded the company along with Gary Garofalo. They both have extensive experience in the marketing and analytics software space from working at several Austin-area startups including TrendKite, Umbel, and Spredfast.

They came up with the idea after dealing with chief marketing officers and vice presidents of marketing on social engagement projects. The companies wanted a product that would leverage their customers’ user-generated content and get them to be more vocal about its products, Papermaster said.

There wasn’t a product, Papermaster said. So LoudCrowd created one, he said.

The LoudCrowd platform helps brands create a personalized program to turn customers into a vocal brand supporter. LoudCrowd’s platform makes it easy for brands to provide customer incentives when the customers mention the brand on social media. It creates a lot of micro-influencers for the brand, Papermaster said.

Already, companies that do referral marketing provide customers with sign up referral code and they get $10 every time a friend signs up. But people are not going to blast out referral codes, Papermaster said.

Instead, People are tagging brands and acting like influencers on Instagram, Papermaster said. LoudCrowd’s software encourages all customers to act as influencers and ambassadors for the products they like and then they get rewards from the brands, he said.

LoudCrowd democratizes the whole concept of influencer marketing by incentivizing thousands of a brand’s customers instead of a select few, Papermaster said. LoudCrowd’s software also verifies that the person is a customer, he said.

“We’re not asking people to do these shameless photos,” Papermaster said. LoudCrowd incentivizes a person for a photo they already took and posted and tagged the brand in it. It’s becoming a normal thing for people to tag brands in Instagram posts, Papermaster said.

“Normal people are tagging the brands they really love,” he said.

Right now, LoudCrowd is only available on Instagram, but it plans to branch out to Pinterest, Snapchat, and TikTok, Papermaster said.

LoudCrowd is based in an office at E. 3rd St. and Chicon St., which is the original Zebra office in Austin. It has eight employees.

“Influencer marketing has clearly become a huge and growing business,” Pat Matthews, founder, and CEO of Active Capital. “We love the approach Justin and Gary are taking to help everyday consumers become engaged “influencers” for their favorite brands.”

Sana announced Tuesday that it has received an additional $3.6 million in seed funding, bringing its total seed funding raised to date to $6.3 million.

The Austin-based healthcare insurance startup reported that the seed funding was led by Gigafund and Trust Ventures.

Other investors include Greenlight Re and Mark VC as the other major institutional investors in Sana.

The company offers premium health benefits for small and medium-sized businesses at 30 percent lower costs than traditional options, according to Will Young, its cofounder.

Silicon Hills News wrote about Sana moving from San Francisco to Austin a year ago. Young and Nathan Hackley, founded Sana in 2017. The two previously worked together at Justworks, benefits and payroll company in New York.

Initially, Sana worked out of WeWork on Barton Springs but has since moved to its own 5,500 square-foot headquarters on Manchaca Road. The company now has 37 employees.

“Through vertical integration, modern care management, and intelligent backend automation, we cut out much of the waste associated with traditional health insurance and pass that benefit on to our customers,” Young said.  “Sana members can see the doctors they want and get concierge care.”

 Sana works to solve a simple problem: healthcare in the US is insanely overpriced, Young said.

The U.S. spends more on healthcare per capita than most countries because of wasteful spending that costs roughly $1 trillion every year in waste, Young said.

A lack of competition, broken distribution and massive cascading technical debt is contributing to the problem, Young said. In addition, giant monopolies dominate the U.S. healthcare market, which leads to arbitrary price hikes, he said.

“Those monopolies are enabled by traditional broker distributors who have a direct financial incentive to sell expensive plans,” Young said. “These excessive profits have made incumbent players complacent and they haven’t updated their technology in forty years.”

Sana sells its plans directly. It offers premium services to its customers through partnerships with Plushcare, Maven, Beam, ClassPass, and Calm. Sana has built all of its own technology from scratch on a modern HIPAA compliant web stack which enables Sana to be a leader in back-office automation and data-driven approaches to care management, Young said.

Sana launched in Texas last year and now has dozens of customers and thousands of individuals on Sana health plans.

“Clients tell us they save tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars each year because of our services and their employees see the doctors they want,” Young said.  “Most importantly, our members feel like we have their back when they need it. We are building a more human kind of healthcare that gets us excited.”

In the modern era, every company is a global company, said Arlo Gilbert, CEO, and Co-Founder of Osano.

Today, more than 65 laws exist worldwide governing how companies handle customers’ data online and privacy laws, Gilbert said.

Most notably, the General Data Protection Regulation, known as GDPR, went into effect in May of 2018. It is a law that governs privacy for all citizens of the European Union and how their data is handled by companies.

And a similar law, the California Consumer Privacy Act will take effect Jan. 1, 2020. It is designed to give consumers more control of their data and personal information online and it will have a huge impact on how to handle customer privacy online, Gilbert said.

“The California law is like GDPR – the biggest common elements – you have to ask permission of a visitor to your website – before you share data with other people,” Gilbert said. “And you have to record that permission somewhere.”

Other rights include the right to delete and modify data and opt-out of data selling or sharing, Gilbert said. The GDPR law also has the right to be forgotten to exclude information about an individual, he said.

Osano, founded in 2018, is focused on helping companies, particularly mid-sized enterprise companies, comply with privacy laws. It has created an online data privacy platform that companies subscribe to on a monthly basis and keeps them in compliance with GDPR and other privacy laws like the California law. It offers a free platform for solo entrepreneurs and prices ranging from $99 up to $199 monthly for larger companies.  It launched publicly this month and it already has signed up more than 300 companies.

Osano’s name is intentional, Gilbert said. In Hindi, Osano means make it easy and that’s what Osano is doing for its customers when it comes to keeping them in good standing with privacy laws, he said. Being compliant with privacy laws also helps reduce data breaches and potentially exposing customer information, he said.

Companies with local websites must comply with global laws because they have people visiting from outside their region, Gilbert said.

“That means you have to comply with the laws in Brazil, and China and France and Germany and California,” Gilbert said during a talk on the future of Big Data & Online Privacy put on by America’s Future Foundation. “And it’s really, really hard. And big companies have big teams that they use to go and solve all these problems with lots of lawyers and lots of tech people and they hire lots of privacy experts.”

But companies with under about 5,000 employees the odds are high that they are just kind of “winging it,” Gilbert said. “And that’s not good.”

Gilbert is a serial entrepreneur. He and his co-founder, Scott Hertel, previously built Meta SaaS and sold it in 2018 to Flexera. Gilbert started his first bootstrapped company in 1997 while a student at the University of Texas. He grew that to $50 million in revenue before selling it.

Osano has built a set of tools that makes it easy to comply with all these data laws for companies with just a few employees up to 5,000 employees, he said.

“A lot of really great companies have chosen not to do anything with data privacy,” Gilbert said.

But the California law is going to make them act, he said.

“It’s effectively a national law,” he said.

Right now, only eight percent of companies online are compliant with the requirements of the California law, Gilbert said.

“We’re trying to help them get ready fast,” he said.

Osano has raised $3 million from LiveOak Venture Partners in 2018 with participation from Next Coast Ventures, Capital Factory, Social Starts, Barracuda Networks and 345Partners Co-Founder Michael Perone, data.world and Bazaarvoice Founder Brett Hurt, and Indeed Founder Rony Kahan. Osano has seven full-time employees and works with a team of contract lawyers nationwide. Those lawyers read company privacy policies and rate them.

Osano has built a comprehensive product for privacy that handles consent, vendor monitoring, and advisory services, Gilbert said.

It makes a consent form pop up that asks website visitors if they agree to the company’s policy of using cookies to track website visitors. More than 750,000 companies use Osano’s website popup and it serves up 2.5 billion pop-ups a month, Gilbert said.

The consent manager keeps a marketing team from getting a company in trouble, Gilbert said. It requires a person visiting the webpage to give consent to use their data, he said.

“The consent component is table stakes these days – if you’re not doing it, your company is going to get sued,” he said.

Osano also operates an Irish subsidiary, Osano International Compliance Services, based in Dublin, Ireland. Companies with more than 200 employees are supposed to have a presence in the European Union to comply with GDPR, Gilbert said. Osano handles that requirement for its customers.

Osano also offers up to date privacy monitoring. It has created its own rating scorecard on more than 7,000 vendors and how their privacy policies rate.

“It’s really hard to figure out if one company is doing a good job of privacy vs. another one,” Gilbert said. So Osano created a standardized form to rate them.

Companies have convoluted privacy statements, Gilbert said. Osano contracts with 24 attorneys who read those statements and then answer 163 questions on a standard form which ranks how the company’s privacy policies rate. It also monitors the sites for changes in policies and updates them. The rating scale also lists how many lawsuits the company has pending against it in court. Facebook has more than 2,200 lawsuits, Gilbert said. The average company has one, he said.

“You can really assess the risk and determine whether this is a company you should be doing business with,” he said.

“One of the important reasons for vendor monitoring – it’s a good idea to understand your supply chain,” Gilbert said. “If you’re Whole Foods you can tell me everyone in your supply chain for that can of tuna. It’s also required under the California law that you cascade down to your vendors and all their privacy policies. “

California’s fine is $7,500 fine per record of violation for 1000 records that is a $7.5 million fine.

Lastly, Osano provides advisory services that help companies build internal privacy policy, Gilbert said.

“Compliance is kind of boring,” Gilbert said. “This is not a sexy industry. We’re not making a new Rocketship.”

But data protection is a $125 billion industry, Gilbert said. And Berkeley Economic Advising and Research predict companies will spend $55 billion over the next two years just to get complaint with California’s law.

“We just thought this product needed to exist,” Gilbert said. “This is the second time we’ve been really lucky about timing. We are in the right place at the right time.”

Osano is a B-Corp, which is a mission-driven for-profit venture with goals to be Austin’s next company valued at $1 billion, Gilbert said.

“Aside from that noble altruistic goal, we want to turn this company into Austin’s next Unicorn,” Gilbert said. “We’re going to be part of that club. Our goal is to build a really big Austin success story.”

Shipwell, which makes an online platform for any business to ship and track freight easily, announced Thursday that it has raised $35 million.

Georgian Partners, based in Toronto, Canada, led the Series B round. Other investors include Fifth Wall, Global Founders Capital, Box Group and Aspect Ventures.

To date, Shipwell, founded in 2016, has raised $47 million in funding.

With the latest funds, Shipwell plans to open an additional office in Austin in the Domain area, said Jason Traff, President and Co-founder of Shipwell. It has a 7,800 square foot office with 88 employees in the Bank of America building downtown, said Traff said. Shipwell plans to keep that office. It also plans to open an office in Chicago in January, he said.

Right now, Shipwell has 95 employees, but the company plans to hire another 200 employees, Traff said.

Both Traff and Gregory Price, co-founders of Shipwell have experience in the shipping industry. They also share ties as students at MIT. Traff dropped out of MIT’s Sloan School of Management to join Y-Combinator and launch Leaky, an insurance technology startup that was later acquired by an insurance company.

Before that, Traff had an oil painting reproduction business based in Shenzhen, China that shipped to four continents. Price worked at McKinsey with Fortune 100 companies on supply chain consulting. They saw a lot of inefficiency and waste in time and money companies spent in the shipping industry.

Together, they saw how some of the best companies in the world like Amazon and Wal-Mart invested in supply chain logistics to turn shipping into a competitive advantage.

They created Shipwell to give customers that same kind of supply chain shipping advantage by using its online platform. The company’s freight shipping platform provides quotes, and tracking information on every shipment.

Its customer saves an average of 15 percent on shipping costs, Traff said.

“Everything everywhere should ship as easy as Amazon,” Traff said.

Shipwell has been focused on the domestic US market but has also expanded into Canada. Shipwell is also now handling parcel shipping along with its traditional freight shipping modes. It is now FedEx compatible, allowing its customers to manage their parcel and freight shipping on one centralized platform.

“For a lot of companies, we are able to give them visibility to where their shipments are at any moment,” Traff said.

Since October 2018, Shipwell grew shipments on the platform by 600 percent from over 4,000 monthly customers that generate over 100 million rows of location data every day.

 “In the coming months and years ahead, our focus on delivering a platform with layers of sophistication built on machine learning and AI will take our customers to the future of supply chain execution,” Traff said.

Literati, a children’s subscription book service, announced Wednesday that it has received $12 million in new funding.

Nikhil Basu Trivedi at Shasta Ventures led the Series A round.

Jessica Ewing and Kelly Carroll founded Literati in 2016. Literati is a children’s book club aimed at children from birth to 12 years old.

The company plans to use the funding to strategically grow the business and to hire new employees in Austin.

“I’ve been on the lookout for the next great consumer subscription business, having invested at Shasta in category-defining brands such as Dollar Shave Club, Imperfect Foods, and The Farmer’s Dog,”  Basu Trivedi said in a news release. “The book market is massive, and Literati’s growth, customer love, and mission really blew me away as I spent time with Jess, Kelly, and the Literati team.”

Other investors included Dick Costolo of 01 Advisors, former CEO of Twitter, Katie Jacobs Stanton and Jessica Verrilli of #Angels, Dan Graham of Austin’s Springdale Ventures, Kevin Hartz, founder of Eventbrite, Thomas Lehrman, founder of GLG, Allan Hubbard, former director of the National Economic Council, and follow-on investments from Founders Fund, Pathfinder and Silverton Partners. Additionally, Literati received funding from Brent Montgomery at Wheelhouse, backed by comedian and late-night host Jimmy Kimmel.

“Our mission is to build a lasting company that stands for lifelong learning and sparks revolutionary excitement in books and literature,” Founder and CEO Ewing said in a news release. “We hit our stride in this round, adding key investors who really get our vision. We want to build consumer products that make life more meaningful, not merely more efficient.”

“Literati is a shining example of the innovative new companies that are being built outside of Silicon Valley. Jessica’s vision for the company is expansive and inspiring, and it is revolutionizing one of the last undisrupted media channels – the massive books market,” Costolo said in a news release. “We are excited to see the next phase of growth for Literati.”

Literati is a subscription book service that charges $9.95 a month for a box of five books. Parents have seven days to return the books they don’t want in a pre-paid envelope and they pay Amazon retail prices for the ones they want to keep.

Kids, ages eight to 18, are now using screens – laptops, tablets, phones, TVs, Playstations, Xboxes, etc., up to seven hours a day. That’s where Literati fits in with parents who want their kids to read more books and get away from electronics.

“The curation around themes is incredible and we discover books we’d never discover otherwise,” Cyan Banister, partner at Founders Fund Pathfinder who led Literati’s seed round of funding, said in a news release. “Research shows that creating a steady stream of new age-appropriate books has been shown to nearly triple interest in reading within months.”