Category: Austin (Page 58 of 318)

The University of Texas at Austin has a new Nobel Prize winner in chemistry: John B. Goodenough, a professor in the Cockrell School of Engineering.

The Royal Academy of Sciences Wednesday awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry to Goodenough along with Stanley Whittingham of the State University of New York at Binghamton and Akira Yoshina of Meijo University “for the development of lithium-ion batteries.”

“They created a rechargeable world,” according to a news release. Lithium-ion batteries power everything from laptops and cell phones today to electric vehicles.

The Nobel Foundation cited the researchers’ work for creating “the right conditions for a wireless and fossil-fuel-free society, and so brought the greatest benefit to humankind.”

Goodenough, 97, is the oldest person to receive the Nobel Prize, according to the New York Times.

Stanley Whittingham laid the foundation of the lithium-ion battery in the 1970s during the oil crisis. He made a lithium-ion battery but the“battery was too explosive to be viable,” according to the Nobel Foundation. In 1980, John Goodenough demonstrated that “cobalt oxide with intercalated lithium ions can produce as much as four volts. This was an important breakthrough and would lead to much more powerful batteries.”

And in 1985, Akira Yoshina created the first commercially viable lithium-ion battery, “resulting in a lightweight, hardwearing battery that could be charged hundreds of times before its performance deteriorated,” according to the Nobel Foundation.

 “Billions of people around the world benefit every day from John’s innovations,” Gregory L. Fenves, president of The University of Texas at Austin and former dean of the Cockrell School said in a news release. “In addition to being a world-class inventor, he’s an outstanding teacher, mentor and researcher. We are grateful for John’s three decades of contributions to UT Austin’s mission.”

“Live to 97 (years old) and you can do anything,” Goodenough said in a news release. “I’m honored and humbled to win the Nobel prize. I thank all my friends for the support and assistance throughout my life.”

“Goodenough began his career at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Lincoln Laboratory in 1952, where he laid the groundwork for the development of random-access memory (RAM) for the digital computer,” according to a news release. “After leaving MIT, he became professor and head of the Inorganic Chemistry Laboratory at the University of Oxford. During this time, Goodenough made the lithium-ion discovery.”

For the past three months, Cowtribe Cofounders Peter Awin and Alima Bawah, have rented apartments throughout Austin after moving more than 6,000 miles from Ghana to participate in the Techstars Impact program.

“We have had a great experience,” Awin said. “We’ve gone from one apartment to another trying to understand the culture here.”

Cowtribe participated in the second annual Techstars Impact Accelerator, which held its Demo Day last Thursday at the Austin Central Library.

Techstars Impact backs for-profit, mission-driven founders building tech to solve social and environmental problems, said Zoe Schlag, managing director of the program. The number of impact companies being accepted globally across Techstars’ ecosystem has been increasing year over year since 2013, and Techstars has seen strong performance from impact companies at later stages such as Zipline, recently valued at over $1 Billion, Schlag said.

The Techstars Impact program has helped Cowtribe immensely, Awin said. The startup, founded in 2016, is a livestock pharmaceutical distribution company. It leverages mobile technology to distribute vaccines to farmers in remote locations in Ghana through a monthly subscription program.

 “Africa has 200 million small livestock producers and they are losing 25 percent of what they produce to diseases that can be easily treated if they had access to the medication,” Awin said. For example, 75 percent of all chickens with Newcastle disease die without the vaccine, he said.

Cowtribe, which has raised about $800,000 to date, is only in Ghana now but plans to roll out to neighboring countries like Nigeria soon, Awin said.

Another agriculture tech startup, AgHelp, based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, is addressing the agriculture labor shortage by connecting ag workers to employers and worker resources nationwide.

With AgHelp employers pay a monthly subscription to post jobs which allows them to source labor nationally, said Feliciano Paredes, its founder.

In the past three months, AgHelp has built a presence in over 15 states with 22 employers and over 1,000 workers, Paredes said. It is piloting a project with the largest ag lender in the Midwest to roll out AgHelp to over 50,000 customers. It has also created a partnership with the Texas Migrant Education Program which will reach thousands of workers every season.

The agriculture labor shortage represents a $2.8 billion market opportunity for AgHelp, Paredes said.  

VitalFlo makes hardware and software to monitor the health of patients with asthma. The startup has created a Bluetooth-enabled handheld device, called a spirometer, and an app to make respiratory patient management easy, reduce the cost of care and improve patient outcomes, said Luke Marshall, Founder and CEO.

With a doctor’s prescription, VitalFlo watches for lung health, and asthma triggers in a patient’s home using advanced analytics it can deliver forecasts back to the doctor so they can intervene and prevent an asthma attack before it happens.

VitalFlo, based in Raleigh, North Carolina, is backed by funding from the National Science Foundation and Institute of Health.

One in 12 people in the U.S. has asthma and the U.S. spends $1.3 billion a year on ER visits due to asthma attacks alone, Marshall said.

Later this month, VitalFlo is launching a paid partnership with two programs at the Duke Clinical Research Institute, Marshall said.

R3 Score, based in Baltimore, has created an alternative risk analysis tool for the one in three American consumers living with a criminal record otherwise barred from financial products and opportunities, said Teresa Hodge, CEO of R3 Score.

“I understand this problem personally, I am one of the one in three Americans living with a criminal record,” she said.

The problem is criminal background checks and credit scores are two tools that are widely used to determine access to opportunities for all, denies opportunity for a third of all people, Hodge said.

R3 Score provides a ranking on the severity of the crime a person committed on a scale from one to ten, Hodge said. And then R3 Score evaluates a person’s past and recent accomplishments and assigns a score from 300 to 850 like a credit score, she said. Decision makers now have two more data points to act on, she said.

With R3 Scores individuals who are making positive changes in their lives can now have that reflected in their R3 Score, Hodge said. It is working with non-profit banks to provide more opportunities to people with criminal records, she said.

“For us, this is the America we believe in,” Hodge said. “One that allows second chances and allows full participation for everyone.”

Wellahealth, based in Nigeria, provides affordable micro-health insurance for Africans targeting high-occurrence diseases such as Malaria

‘Fifty percent of all people in Nigeria have one episode of Malaria once a year,” said Ikpemo Neto, founder and CEO of Wellahealth.

Only eight percent of Nigerians have healthcare insurance, Neto said. The market is a multi-billion-dollar opportunity and Wellahealth has a solution with its affordable micro-health insurance that costs $1 month, he said.

The founding team of Wellahealth has had malaria more than 50 times during their lifetimes and the story is similar for other Africans, Neto said.

Wellahealth has sold 2,000 policies so far, Neto said. And it has signed on as an underwriter, one of the largest insurers of the world, Axa, he said.

DontGetMadGetPaid, based in New Orleans, has a solution to help women collect unpaid child support.

The U.S. government reports there is $118 billion in child support that is owed to women, said Simone Spence, Founder and CEO of DontGetMadGetPaid. There are 14 million unique cases and 7 million women that are owed, she said. But, millions of cases are not reported because women get frustrated and walk away leaving money on the table because the system is not working for them, she said.

“We’ve created a solution to fix this problem,” she said. 

The DontGetMadGetPaid platform does all the asset searching for the moms, she said. It also generates the paperwork and state requirements they need to collect what they are owed. The platform is available in all 50 states.

The solution came out of Spence’s own experience. She had a child support collection problem and learned how to navigate the system.

“I am on a mission to help women collect this ginormous amount of money,” Spence said.

Creation Crate, based in Toronto, Canada, is a subscription service that delivers a new tech project each month. The startup, founded in 2016, is taking on the $200 billion e-learning market, said Chris Gatbonton, co-founder and CEO.

Creation Crate is focused on programming and electronics, Gatbonton said. For example, subscribers can learn how to build a Bluetooth speaker.

“I started this company with $150 and we bootstrapped it to over $1.2 million in sales today,” Gatbonton said.

Creation Crate has shipped 32,000 projects to 65 different countries, Gatbonton said. About 65 percent of its customers are in the U.S., he said.

DrugViu, based in New York, is a population health platform that is expanding the data set of health, medication and genomics data. It launched earlier this year to capture medication reviews from people who are Asian, Black, Latino, Native American, and Indigenous people. The platform aggregates their responses and synthesizes that data to show trends based on demographics.

“So now you can look at a medication and say I am a woman, I am African American and I’m in this age range, these are what the women who look like me are saying about this drug,” said Melanie Igwe. She co-founded the company along with Kwaku Owusu.

“The reason that we do this is because 94 percent of medical participants, primarily for clinical trials, are white,” Igwe said. That means medications are not optimized for the 40 percent of Americans who are not white, she said.

And that can have dire consequences. African American and Hispanic children are four to six times more likely to die from an asthma attack because asthma medications do not metabolize as well for them, Igwe said.

The research that was done on a lot of drugs did not take into consideration the efficacy and side effects in people of color, she said. DrugViu is providing that information to consumers, she said.

Jerold McDonald, CEO and Co-Founder, started Austin-based Omaiven Health to help healthcare providers deal with no-shows or missed appointments. It’s a $150 billion problem in the U.S. annually.

McDonald started the company in 2017 with his cofounder Ani Bagepalli. The company also graduated from the DivInc Accelerator in 2018. The company created an artificial intelligence-powered app, AskMia, to make sure a doctor’s schedule stays full and that patients don’t miss appointments.

Mr. Presta is a small business lending company operating in Latin America. It is a full-service lender.

The Austin-based startup, founded in 2015, has raised $700,000 to date. It was also part of the RealCo Accelerator program based at Geekdom in San Antonio.

“Small businesses have challenges getting funding,” said Carlos Rosso, co-founder of Mr. Presta.

Its main business line has been ecommerce merchants in the categories of electronics, clothing and auto parts, he said. Mr. Presta has processed more than 10,000 loan applications to date, and it has issued loans worth more $5 million, he said.

SparkCognition announced Tuesday that it has raised $100 million in additional VC funding.

March Capital Partners led the Series C round. To date, the Austin-based startup, founded in 2013, has raised $175 million.

“In a short few years, SparkCognition has proven itself to be one of the leading industrial AI companies in the world,” Sumant Mandal, managing director and co-founder of March Capital Partners, said in a news release.

SparkCognition, an artificial intelligence technology company, makes applications for industries such as oil and gas, defense, utilities, aviation, and financial services. Its customers include The Boeing Company, Hitachi High-Technologies, Aker BP and many others.

SparkCognition’s products include the Darwin for automated model building, DeepArmor for AI-built cybersecurity, SparkPredict, an analytics solution, and DeepLNP, a natural language processing solution.

SparkCognition also recently partnered with Boeing to form SkyGrid, a joint venture focused on delivering unmanned aircraft system traffic management solutions through AI and blockchain technologies.

Other new investors included Temasek, Kerogen Digital Solutions, Hearst Ventures, Dalus Capital, Former CEO and Chairman of the Dow Chemical Company Andrew Liveris, Sustainable Technology Ventures, Blue Horizon eVentures, Paul and Ann-Kristin Achleitner, Founders Equity Partners, Richard and Laetitia Garriott de Cayeux, former Australian Prime Minster and former managing director of Goldman Sachs Australia Malcolm Turnbull.

Existing investors in the found included The Boeing Company, Former CEO and Chairman Emeritus of Cisco and current founder and CEO of JC2 Ventures, John Chambers, Former President of Goldman Sachs John Thornton, MSD Capital, the private investment fund of Michael S. Dell and family, former EVP and Chief Development Officer of Cisco Pankaj Patel and Alameda Ventures.

SparkCognition has also been ranked among the top 10 companies for patent applications on CB Insights AI 100 list.

“It is very rewarding to gain such distinguished investors who see our long-term commitment to building the future and have chosen to join us on this path,” Amir Husain, Founder and Chief Executive Officer at SparkCognition, said in a news release.

Next month, SparkCognition is hosting its annual AI and future tech summit, Time Machine in Austin. Time Machine 2019 brings together leaders from various industries who are building and deploying technology to shape the future.

By Sabina Bharwani, Founder and CEO of Hello World

Contributed Post to Silicon Hills News

Throughout the 2018-2019 academic year and this fall, RetailMeNot has quietly donated significant funds for computer science education to over 500 students across Harmony Public Schools Austin.

Through a partnership with Hello World, 4th-7th-grade students across four Harmony campuses work directly with professional engineers to cover subjects including data science and artificial intelligence, web development, and music composition. Students visit tech companies and institutions including  IBM’s Design Studio and UT’s Department of Computer Science and present computer science projects for review.

Harmony Public Schools is a system of public charter schools that provides students from traditionally underserved communities the opportunity to excel in a range of subjects, especially Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM). The network prides itself on being an innovator and leader in the STEM education space through its high bar for the quality of STEM curriculum adopted in schools and its requirements around mastery of content knowledge for educators. This is notable given the pressures many schools experience to focus on state-tested subjects.

The three entities involved – RetailMeNot, Harmony Public Schools, and Hello World – aligned on the following: 

• The students engaged in the program must be those that would not have had meaningful exposure to computer science fields otherwise. 
• The programs should target students before they reach high school. 
• The program must involve direct and frequent engagement with engineers in computer science fields and connect what students are learning to the work of high tech industries 

Each campus selected for the program is a Title 1 school comprised of a unique and diverse student population. Students at Harmony Science Academy – Rundberg, for example, are 98% Latino, 92% low-income, and 73% English language learners. Students at the Harmony School of Endeavor campus near Cedar Park are primarily Middle Eastern and the majority of families immigrated recently to the U.S. 

Through computer science, students can engage with the intersection of technology and creative expression to build programs. An example of this is through our Music Composition curriculum. Students apply their own creative expression to code various musical pieces, such as this example piece submitted by a 5th-grade student titled “Darkness & Light”. Working through the curriculum in the Ruby programming language incorporates the computational and logic-based components of music theory such as counting beats and duration and using tempo and beats per minute to measure the speed of a song. Each project requires students to start with a complex task or challenge and tackle it piece by piece all the while creating music with some level of abstraction and algorithmic thinking.

The alignment around targeting students before they reach high school is multi-faceted. First, the focus for this initiative is not centered around job training or placement – the idea is that if we provide these students with the software engineering skills of today’s industry, they will be able to obtain engineering jobs that are in high demand. This is a commendable vision. However, our goal is to support underrepresented talent that will join the workforce around 2035, and a focus on computer science – problem-solving, algorithmic thinking, and creativity – is more likely to enable students to thrive than a narrower scope on coding and specific programming languages.

It’s under 100 degrees in Austin so that can only mean one thing: it is Fall! And while temperatures might be cooling off a bit, the Austin Startup and Technology scene is heating up.

Lots of cool, fun events to attend in October.

And Silicon Hills News is a month away from hosting its first SpaceATX event. To celebrate, we’re hosting a Flash 48-hour sale for $7.50 tickets to the event. Join us for what promises to be a fascinating discussion of Austin, San Antonio, and overall Texas’ role in the emerging new space industry. And thank you to our sponsors: Hypergiant, ATX Venture Partners, Egan-Nelson, The Silicon Hills Lawyer, UT Center for Space Research and there’s still room for two more.

Oct. 2nd

Global Startup Program Pitch Night

When: 6:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.

Where: Impact Hub 5540 N Lamar Blvd Austin, TX 78751

Why: Pitch Night celebrates the startups of the Global Startup Program launched in Austin by the Italian Trade Agency and Tech Ranch. The startups pitching represent Italian innovation and have spent the last 3 months in Austin, TX as part of the Tech Ranch Accelerator. For more info.

Oct. 2nd

Health Tech Companies Confronting the Opioid Crisis

When: 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.

Where: Capital Factory, 701 Brazos St., ACL Room on the 16^th Floor

Why: The Healthcare Device and Data Meetup® event is a slide free presentation zone. Companies chosen to present will engage in a dynamic moderated discussion, interacting with a select panel of providers, administrators, investors, and technologists to share insights and gain valuable feedback. For more info.

Oct. 3rd

Austin Open Coffee

When: 8:30 a.m. to 10:30 a.m.

Where: Houndstooth Coffee, 401 Congress Ave

Why: A semi-monthly meetup for entrepreneurs and investors to share their experience, to motivate, and to explore ideas. For more info.

Oct. 3rd

Techstars Impact Demo Day

When: 3 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.

Where: Austin Public Library, 701 W Cesar Chavez, Austin, TX

Why: Join us for the Techstars Impact Demo Day as our founders take the stage to share how they are building venture-backable companies to scale solutions to some of our generation’s most pressing social and environmental challenges. For more info.

Oct. 5th

Austin Coding Academy October Graduation & Demo Day

When: 6:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.

Where: Austin Coding Academy, 314 East Highland Mall Boulevard, Suite 115Austin, TX

Why: After more than nine months of painstaking work, the October 2019 ACA graduates are ready to show off their new skills and apps. Balancing night classes with work, family, and life, our students have truly earned this party. Celebrate this massive accomplishment and see their apps over some refreshments with us at our Highland campus! For more info.

Oct. 10th

Intro to Fundraising: The Most Important Things to Know Before You Raise 

When: 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.

Where: The Riveter 1145 W. 5^th Street, Austin, TX

Why: Raising money can feel daunting to those who haven’t done it before. When should you raise, or should you raise at all? What is a cap table? How and when should you give away equity? 

Join Women@Austin CEO & Executive Director Jessica Gaffney, Venture Capitalist Bill Wood, Springdale Ventures General Partner Genevieve Gilbreath, TalentGuard CEO Linda Ginac and Regional Managing Director – Texas of The Riveter Elisa Sepulveda as they get in the weeds on the most important things you need to know before you raise. For more info.

Oct. 11^th

Silverton Startup Breakfast for Female Founders Only

When: 8:30 p.m. to 10:30 p.m.

Where: Silverton Offices 600 W 7th St, Austin, TX 78701

Why: Silverton Partners is opening our doors to female founders in Austin for breakfast tacos & coffee, in partnership with Silicon Valley Bank. For more info.

Oct. 14th

Cofounder Austin Meetup Keynote Speaker Joseph Kopser

When: 6:30 p.m. to 9 p.m.

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

Why: Network and connect to find your next employee, your next co-founder, or build your professional network! Work might be from 9-5, but business happens between 5-9. The Co-Founder Meetup by The tech^map is a forum for professionals to pitch their business, idea, startup, etc. to the community and gain valuable feedback. For more info.

Oct. 15th

Latinx in Tech Summit

When: 12 p.m. to 6 p.m.

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

Why: Capital Factory is dedicated to increasing diversity in the tech community and making our coworking space an inclusive and welcoming environment for people of all backgrounds and identities. For more info.

Oct. 16th

Quake Capital ATX 2019

When: 2:30 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.

Where: Robert B. Rowling Hall, UT Austin, 300 W. MLK Blvd., Austin, TX

Why: The Quake Austin team has been heads down for the past 8 weeks and are finally announcing their 2019 Cohort! The current cohort is full of potential and it has been a privilege to work with each and every company. These companies range anywhere from a recent (and well-received) product launch to several companies over 50k MRR, and they’ve already raised millions of dollars during the first 8 weeks of the program (and counting). For more info.

Oct. 17th

October Austin Forum: The Evolution of Energy

When: 6 p.m. to 7:45 p.m.

Where: Austin Central Library 710 West Cesar Chavez Street, Austin, TX

Why: A take with Karl Popham of Austin Energy, Dan Bradley of Navigant Consulting and other speakers to be announced. For more info.

Oct. 17th

MassChallenge Texas in Austin Awards Ceremony

When: 6:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.

Where: Hilton Austin, 500 East 4^th Street, 6^th floor ballroom, Austin, TX

Why: The MassChallenge Awards Ceremonies are the grand finale of each MassChallenge accelerator program. This is when the top startups from each cohort are recognized by community leaders to a room full of potential investors and customers, MassChallenge mentors, VIP community leaders, and loved ones. This event is the flagship experience of the accelerator program and when programs award equity-free cash prizes. For more info.

Oct. 17th

Austin Tech Happy Hour

When: 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.

Where: Dogwood on W. Sixth

Why: We had a great event up north last time, and we’re back downtown again to celebrate the imminent arrival of the fall season. You can almost feel a little bit of a chill in the air in the early mornings around Austin, which is the signal that cooler weather is just around the corner as well as a certain favorite music festival in the park.

Oct. 23rd

DivInc Community Happy Hour

When: 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.

Where: Moontower Cafe at Robert B. Rowling Hall at UT, 300 West Martin Luther King Junior Boulevard, Austin, TX 

Why: We’d love to bring all of you fabulous people together to catch up with our founders, alumni and each other! Join us for drinks, light bites and great conversation. For more info.

Oct. 28th

Austin Technology Council CEO

When: 1:30 p.m. to 9 p.m.

Where: JW Marriott 110 E. 2^nd St.

Why: This October, CEO Summit 2019 will be held at The JW Marriott and include several opportunities to network and business development panels. For more info.

Upcoming November Events

Nov 6: SpaceATX

Nov. 7^th: TiE Austin Pitch Competition

Nov 13–14: Time Machine 2019

Nov 14: DivInc Demo Day

Nov 16–17: Cowboy Space Ball

Nov 19: InnoTech Austin

PreFix announced Wednesday that it has closed on $2.7 million in funding.

The Austin-based home maintenance startup reported that Chicago Ventures led the seed-stage round, which was oversubscribed. To date, PreFix has raised $5 million.

Other investors included Brand Foundry Ventures, Brian Spaly, founder of Bonobos and Trunk Club, Paul Hedrick, founder and CEO of Tecovas, Brett Hurt, Founder and CEO of BazaarVoice and data.world and Firebrand Ventures.

PreFix, founded in 2014, commercially launched in 2018, said James Bilodeau, Founder and CEO.

PreFix provides homeowners with a dedicated Home Manager to fix most things for a low monthly co-payment. The service includes seasonal preventive maintenance on all appliances and systems.

For complex repairs, PreFix uses its own vetted contractors at low, negotiated rates with no markup.

“We started the company because we recognized how broken this market is,” Bilodeau said. “Consumers are left to manage a complexity of home maintenance tasks with no one to trust for help and advice. Consensus “gig economy” models have been attempted in this space but have not addressed core customer pain points. We have invested in building the long-term careers of our employees as part of a tech-enabled platform.”

PreFix plans to use the funding to continue its expansion in Greater Austin, launch in new markets and expand the portfolio of service it provides to its customers, Bilodeau said.

“We have just expanded coverage to a number of new zip codes this month which include the Avery Ranch and Circle C communities,” according to PreFix. “We will be launching in Cedar Park/Leander shortly and will continue to add new zip codes monthly.”

PreFix has 18 employees and plans to hire more rapidly, Bilodeau said. Most of PreFix’s employees are military veterans. The company also went through the Capital Factory Accelerator and the Techstars Austin accelerator.

Threatcare, an Austin-based cybersecurity firm founded by Marcus J. Carey, has been acquired by Tampa-based ReliaQuest.

The financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Under the deal, Carey will join ReliaQuest’s office of the Chief Technology Officer and the rest of the Threatcare team will join ReliaQuest in various roles.

ReliaQuest plans to integrate Threatcare’s technology including its attack simulation capabilities into its GreyMatter security platform. It plans to make it available to its customers early next year.

“We are focused on delivering operational excellence and world-class cybersecurity outcomes through GreyMatter, so we jumped at the opportunity to offer our customers an even stronger platform,” Brian Murphy, CEO at ReliaQuest, said in a news release. “By combining Threatcare’s attack simulation technologies with GreyMatter, we are enabling better visibility, real-time insights and more control over enterprise security programs. I’m also personally thrilled to welcome Marcus and colleagues to the team, given their exceptional talent and our shared vision for proactive Security Model Management.”

“ReliaQuest is the secret weapon of some of the world’s most trusted brands and is exactly the kind of company I like to be a part of,” Carey said in a news release.

Carey is well known in the Austin technology community. He is a Cybersecurity expert who has co-authored a bestselling book: Tribe of Hackers. He also has participated in two Austin-based accelerator programs.

In 2015, Carey went through the Bunker Labs Austin accelerator, which focuses on helping veterans launch companies.

At that time, Carey’s company was named vThreat, a software as a service platform that does enterprise attacks and solutions to show companies where their vulnerability exist on their network.

Carey previously served in the U.S. Navy as a cryptologist stationed on a ship in Scotland and at the National Security Agency in Maryland. He originally launched the company in Herndon, Virginia after participating in a special cybersecurity incubator. But he’s from Marlin, Texas and he relocated the company to Austin. The company, which had raised $650,000 in seed-stage funding, originally worked out of Capital Factory but moved into its own offices.

In 2017, the company, now called Threatcare, graduated from the Techstars Austin accelerator program. At that time, Threatcare had seven full-time employees with plans to add two more and it had raised $2 million in funding.

ReliaQuest, founded in 2007, has raised $30 million in private equity funding in 2016, according to Crunchbase. The privately held company has more than 300 employees, according to its LinkedIn profile.

Diligent Robotics has launched its first product, a hospital assistant named Moxi.

The Austin-based company has been beta testing its robot and starting Wednesday Moxi will be working fulltime in a Texas hospital.

Diligent Robotics also announced it has raised $3 million in seed-stage funding to fuel the launch of Moxi. True Ventures and Ubiquity Ventures co-led the investment with participation from Next Coast Ventures, Capital Factory, Pathbreaker Ventures, Boom Capital, Grit Ventures and additional angel investors.

Diligent Robotics, founded in 2017, has raised $2.1 million in a previous seed round of funding in January of 2018 and also received Small Business Innovation Research grants from the National Science Foundation worth $725,000.

During its beta test, Diligent Robotics tested Moxi at four U.S. hospitals. It was received positively. Moxi also received recognition as one of Fast Company’s World Changing Ideas in 2019.

 “Our vision is to improve the way people think about their work by giving them more time to utilize their unique human skills, and let friendly robot assistants efficiently take care of their chores,” Andrea Thomaz, CEO and Co-Founder of Diligent Robotics, said in a news release. “We are proud to have the full support of our past investors as well as new key investors to accelerate the roll-out of Moxi robots into hospitals.”

Diligent Robotics plans to use the funds raised to continue investing in product strategy and development in both hardware and software. It is also using the funds to support the launch of Moxi into the market.

 “Over the last year, Diligent Robotics has made rapid progress in delivering and testing Moxi in multiple hospitals,” Rohit Sharma, partner at True Ventures and board member for Diligent Robotics, said in a news release. “The team continues to demonstrate unmatched robotics-specific innovation by combining social intelligence and human-guided learning capabilities. We’re thrilled to continue our partnership with Vivian and Andrea as they build a world-class, leading robotics company.”

In addition, Diligent Robotics has reached key milestones in the last year including hiring Josh Tippy, Head of Clinical Integrations. Additionally, Diligent Robotics’ CTO and Co-Founder, Vivian Chu, received MIT Technology Review’s highly prestigious 35 Under 35 for 2019 award, and Thomaz was named one of Inc. Magazine’s 100 Female Founders in 2019 Building America’s Most Innovative & Ambitious Businesses.

“It is now obvious that robots will improve our quality of life, but only when implemented thoughtfully,” Sunil Nagaraj, partner at Ubiquity Ventures and newly named board member for Diligent Robotics, said in a news release. “I am lucky to partner with such an experienced and agile team as they use Moxi robots to make hospitals better places for patients, nurses, and doctors.”

TiE Austin is holding a pitch competition open to startups that have been through an accelerator program.

It’s targeting startups that have graduated from an Austin-based accelerator program in the last three years, raised no more than Series A funding, said Tejal Sahasrabudhe, executive director of TiE Austin.

The TiE Austin chapter is part of the global nonprofit organization, TIE, which has 15,000 members in 61 chapters in 14 countries. The Austin TIE chapter has 50 members, and is expanding its presence locally, Sahasrabudhe said.

The pitch competition is free to apply, and applications are due by Oct. 7^th, she said. Startups may apply here.

Startups applying must also have a presence in the Central Texas region, and they must have a commercially viable product with some revenue, Sahasrabudhe said. It’s open to any kind of startup, she said.

“Mainly we are not just looking for tech solutions, we are looking for impact companies as well,” she said.

TiE will be selecting between eight to ten companies to pitch for $20,000 in cash prizes, $250.000 in investment, and the ability to leverage to the TiE global network, Sahasrabudhe said. The event will be held at Vrbo’s office in the domain at 11920 Alterra Parkway on Nov. 7^th. It is sponsored by Vrbo, iTexico, and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati.

“We feel TiE Austin is the great organization to be doing this because it’s globally known and has so many connections,” she said. “It exposes startups and entrepreneurs to investors that they would not otherwise get an opportunity to meet.”

TiE globally has a lot of pitch competitions and the Austin Chapter wanted to provide an opportunity for local startups to get exposure and receive funding, Sahasrabudhe said.

“We feel like there is a gap in between companies that have gone through an accelerator program and the next phase for funding,” she said. “We are trying to provide a runway for those startups.”

Austin has several accelerator programs including MassChallenge Texas, Sputnik, Tarmac TX, Techstars, Capital Factory, Founders Institute, SKU Accelerator, DIV Inc and more.

“The main thing about this competition that is different from other competitions, is we are only selecting companies that have gone through the accelerator,” Sahasrabudhe said. “Also, this will showcase how great accelerator programs there are in Austin.”

OJO Labs has acquired Austin-based RealSavvy to create an even bigger platform for real estate brokers, agents, and teams and the customers they serve.

The companies did not disclose the financial details of the deal.

RealSavvy, founded in 2014, has become a popular real estate software platform, dubbed the Pinterest for Real Estate, aimed at realtors, brokers, and teams. The company, founded by Rick Orr, a former realtor, and entrepreneur, had raised $6.3 million. It also won the SXSW Accelerator competition in 2015 in the social technologies category. RealSavvy’s 15 employees have joined OJO Labs along with Orr.

“Our visions are aligned to effect transformative changes in the behaviors of agents and consumers working together,” said Orr, CEO of RealSavvy. “Bringing our platforms together, with a team of exceptional talent solving hard technical problems, adds fuel to our vision and helps agents have less dependency on portals, or aging technology, giving the industry a momentous advantage.”

RealSavvy offers its customers branded real estate mobile apps, customizable websites, and a customer relationship management system.

The acquisition doesn’t signal any shift in OJO’s strategy but strengthens what the company is already doing, said John Berkowitz, OJO’s CEO, and co-founder.

“We were in the website business already with WolfNet. We were already in the game providing data and technology to agents. This is just a big upgrade. Incredible mobile app. It’s the best mobile app in real estate,” Berkowitz said. “They knocked it out of the park with additional consumer features. “

We have a bunch of brokers and agents we can add this technology to. It’s really doubling down on the vision than anything else.”

RealSavvy’s platform keeps agents and their clients connected throughout the home buying cycle.

“Among all homebuyers, the top two sources for information and property search are online websites (93%) and real estate agents (86%) as published by the National Association of REALTORS® research division,” according to a news release. “RealSavvy’s products bring these sources together in a consumer-centric, shared space with superior CRM functionality, rich client search analytics and notifications, as well as its real-time chat functionality, ensuring agents build and retain momentum from search to close.”

This is OJO’s second acquisition. Last October, the company merged with real estate data giant, WolfNet Technologies, based in St. Paul, Minn. 

OJO Labs now has 370 employees, including 100 based at its news on South Congress in Austin. OJO also has offices in St. Paul, and on the island of St. Lucia in the Caribbean.

Earlier this year, OJO Labs closed on its Series C funding of $45 million. To date, the company has raised $76 million.

OJO is focused on building a large real estate company that combines the best data, proprietary artificial intelligence, and technology platforms to offer custom home buying and selling experiences, and help agents engage at optimal times during the process, Berkowitz said.

“The trend that you will see is RealSavvy, OJO and WolfNet are banding together to do significant things,” Berkowitz said. “Startups know how to move fast with an aligned vision. “

The real estate industry has desperately needed new technology for a long time, Orr said.

“There’s something of a trend of the dinosaur companies combining to become bigger,” he said.

OJO and RealSavvy joined together to provide the real estate industry with the combined forces of data, intelligence and insights with an easy to navigate the platform, Orr said.

The news is good for Austin too, which is emerging as a hotspot for real estate technology, Berkowitz said.

“One thing that was important to us – in real estate you’ll see a company acquire a company and fire the customers,” Berkowitz said. “We invested in the customers and made it better. We don’t want to lose a signal customer.”

As two entrepreneurs in Austin’s real estate industry, Berkowitz and Orr had known each other for a long time. They had talked about doing partnerships in the past.

“A bunch of things aligned where we felt like on OJO’s side it was time to double down on the technology,” Berkowitz said. “The best, sexiest, most aesthetically pleasing websites were coming out of RealSavvy’s tech site. There was a real synergy there. We made a move to bring Rick in. It was our aligned vision and technology that was value-added to the agents we work with today.”