Category: Austin (Page 81 of 318)

A week after he moved to Austin, Chris Ripley waited in line at Walmart and noticed a woman covered in paint standing in front of him.

He struck up a conversation with her and discovered she worked at the City of Austin‘s Resource Recovery Center and was learning to recycle paint. Together, they went to the center and Ripley ended up volunteering his expertise as a paint maker there for nine months.

One day he wanted to get some paint solvent from a Drum Storage Container behind a red line, only to discover he was not allowed to touch the “hazardous waste” after people yelled at him. Two Drum Storage Containers were slated to be picked up by a disposal company and sent to an incinerator. The City of Austin paid the company about $5 a gallon to haul off and dispose of the waste. Retailers can pay up to $15 a gallon to dispose of the waste, Ripley said.

Ripley got to use some of the solvents under a re-use policy and that sparked the idea for Smarter Sorting.

Smarter Sorting, based at Galvanize in downtown Austin, takes unwanted consumer chemical products from cities and businesses, primarily retailers, and finds a reuse for them to prevent waste from going up in smoke.

Smarter Sorting, founded in 2017, has closed on $9.3 million in seed funding including $2.5 million from RTP Ventures. The company is using the funds to drive transparency in the chemical waste management industry and to automate environmental compliance processes for retailers. It has created a one of its kind smart chemical database.

Smarter Sorting’s technology gives municipalities, retailers, and waste management companies the ability to accurately identify, categorize and sort every class of chemical-containing product, said Ripley, the company’s founder, and CEO. Next, Smarter Sorting helps to recycle chemical products back into use instead of having them be destroyed.

Smarter Sorting has 30 employees including a team of data scientists and experts behind Wolfram Alpha.

Smarter Sorting’s customers include 17 municipalities nationwide and Canada’s largest retailer, Canadian Tire. And the City of Austin, with its zero waste goal, has partnered with Smarter Sorting to develop its industry-changing technology.

“Everyone using it has experienced substantial savings, both in employee hours needed to sort the waste and in the actual reuse process itself – helping to solve the problem of 1.4 billion pounds of consumer chemical products being incinerated as waste every year,” according to Smarter Sorting.

Just recently, the California Product Stewardship Council awarded Smarter Sorting their most prestigious honor: the Arrow Award for giving cities and retailers the tools they need to identify items that can be reused.

“We are delighted to promote and celebrate California companies who are leaders in driving a circular economy so that nothing is landfilled or incinerated,” Heidi Sanborn, Executive Director of the California Product Stewardship Council, said in a news statement. “I congratulate Smarter Sorting for creating the first database technology that makes it fast scalable and convenient to redirect hazardous products from incineration to reuse.”

“Because of existing compliance and disposal burdens, Smarter Sorting customers save money, increase staff efficiency, and improve their compliance,” according to Ripley.

Smarter Sorting uses a combination of hardware and software to solve the data disconnect to reuse chemical products. The company sends the retailer a machine that scans chemical-based products such as spray paint and cleaners for reuse. Smarter Sorting then takes the products and finds a market for them. Products that have to be destroyed go to an industrial disposal company that incinerates the products.

“We’re the hottest department of weird stuff that is profitable,“ Ripley said.

One of its partners for reuse is Habitat for Humanity.

HFH Home Centers and Smarter Sorting Partnership from Cloudy Logic on Vimeo.

Zac Maurais and Ben Doherty’s first startup, Favor, had a pretty good outcome.

Favor, which launched in Austin in 2013, to deliver food to people’s homes, sold to H-E-B earlier this year.

Instead of taking time off, Maurais and Doherty are back at the startup grind, launching Sunroom, a company that helps people rent apartments and homes.

Maurais knows the pain of finding a rental and moving firsthand. He has rented apartments and homes eight times in the last ten years and he continues to rent today.

“It was hard to find a place in a lot of circumstances,” Maurais said. “Moving is a stressful time. You are up against the clock. You are trying to find a place that checks all of the boxes for you.”

That’s when they came up with the idea for Sunroom.

With Sunroom, renters can view as many apartments or houses as they like with Sunroom’s in-house licensed agents, which they call Tour Guides. Then when they find a place they like, they apply online through Sunroom. The service is free for renters. Agents and landlords pay Sunroom if the company places a renter with them.

Sunroom can help people rent properties in the Greater Austin and Round Rock area initially. Then it plans to expand statewide in Texas and eventually nationally, Maurais said.

And they have raised $1.5M in seed funding from investors including Founders Fund Angel, Tim Draper of Draper Associates, Joshua Baer of Capital Factory, Active Capital, and Boost.VC.

Rentals are a big market with the average person spending 33 percent of their income on housing, Maurais said.

“It meets one of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, everyone has to find shelter,” Maurais said.

Favor also met Maslow’s hierarchy of needs for food because everyone needs to eat, he said.

“Both Ben and I are interested in how we can build really big companies,” Maurais said. They tackle basic needs everyone has and provide a seamless way to get them with complex logistics and technology at a large scale that is all behind the scenes, he said.

And Tim Draper, an angel investor in Favor, is on board with the new venture. He helped Maurais and Doherty think big when they were crafting Favor, which was initially called NeighborFavor and they dropped Neighbor at Draper’s suggestion. He wanted them to think about how they could deliver burritos around the world.

“Draper has lofty goals that sound a little bit crazy to the average person but he’s totally serious,” Maurais said. He challenges Maurais and Doherty to tackle big problems and to create solutions that scale.

This time around, raising money for Sunroom was a bit easier than raising money for Favor, Maurais said.

“All of the investors did really well from our last company, so it was really easy to go to the people we like working with and say we’re back at it again,” he said.

“They just wanted to get behind us as entrepreneurs,” Maurais said. “They know we might not have it all figured out on day one. But we’re going to make the right iterations and pivots and that it is going to work.”

But the grind is still the grind.

“Adam Draper, Tim Draper’s son, lovingly calls us cockroaches because we persevere through the most challenging of times and we’re capital efficient. We just keep going. We can live through anything,” Maurais said.

In fact, when Favor first came to Austin, the company was almost out of money, Maurais said. Doherty was living underneath his office desk to save money just, so the company could survive, he said.

“That is one of the things we’ve had to do to make Favor successful,” Maurais said. “We still have that drive more than ever.”

And Maurais and Doherty are big believers in doing every role in the company.

At Favor, they made hundreds of deliveries. They would code during the day and make deliveries at night.

This past year, they each got real estate licenses. Maurais has done hundreds of showings with renters already.

“You have to get on that front line of defense and talk to customers and do the activity, so you can figure out how to make it better,” he said.

Sunroom has nine full-time employees and seven tour guides, which are contractors.

Sunroom launched a pilot program a few months ago. It is now available to everyone in the Austin area. Renters can sign up at SunroomRentals.com.

Galvanize recently announced plans to buy San Francisco-based Hack Reactor, which will make it one of the largest coding programs in the country.

“From the beginning, we saw a clear compatibility through a shared passion for innovative, high-quality instruction combined with measurable outcomes and we are thrilled to welcome the Hack Reactor team to the Galvanize family,” Galvanize CEO Al Rosabal said in a news release. “This combination continues to position Galvanize as one of the largest, fastest-growing and highest quality immersive technology education providers focused on delivering extraordinary outcomes for students, members and enterprise partners.”

The acquisition of Hack Reactor will make Galvanize Austin the go to place for people looking to acquire software engineering, Web development and data science skills, said Bill Blackstone, general manager of Galvanize Austin.

“What this does do is continue to drive us in a position of leadership when it comes to accelerated learning programs,” Blackstone said. “It takes the best of Hack Reactor and the best of what we have been able to do and provides even better outcomes for individuals to take advantage of the digital economy.”

Galvanize Austin, which has 14 employees, will combine operations with Hack Reactor at its Second Street location. Hack Reactor will move its operations to Galvanize by the end of September, Blackstone said.

Currently, Galvanize Austin offers courses in Data Science and Web Development and it plans to integrate Hack Reactors programs to offer a single software engineering program, Blackstone said.

Galvanize and Hack Reactor combined have 7,400 graduates who have been placed with 450 employers nationwide with a 87 percent placement rate for Web development and an 85 percent placement rate for data science.

In a way it is an Austin story because Hack Reactor purchased Austin-based Maker Square in early 2015, Blackstone said.

“It’s neat that now a local brand that was started here and acquired by someone else is now part of our ecosystem,” Blackstone said. “There is part of that Austin flair within Hack Reactor.”

But Blackstone is primarily excited about the opportunities the combined company offers in giving people more access to education.

“It allows as many people as possible that have the drive and determination to access these technical careers,” Blackstone said. “Places like Galvanize provide a welcome home to everyone and equal access to the digital economy.”

In addition, Galvanize has secured a $32 million Series C financing led by growth equity firm Catalyst Investors with participation from New Markets Venture Partners and existing investors: ABS Capital Partners, University Ventures, and the Colorado Impact Fund. Tyler Newton from Catalyst Investors will join the Galvanize board of directors.

“When searching for the right organization, Galvanize emerged as the best possible partner, with complementary strengths in community, software engineering, enterprise partnerships, data science, and a shared focus on quality education,” Hack Reactor CEO, Harsh Patel, said in a news release “This deal ensures we continue delivering the best possible education to the students and create vibrant community destinations – on campuses and online – that connect entrepreneurs, alumni, enterprise partners and students.”

The acquisition adds Los Angeles to Galvanize’s innovation hubs for technology students, alumni, entrepreneurs, startups and established companies, in addition to the markets it currently serves including Austin, Boulder, Denver, New York, Phoenix, San Francisco, Seattle and online.

This is a Sponsored Post

Austin is home to several interesting and innovative drone technology companies, but when most people think of drones they typically think of a toy or a piece of military equipment. Software companies in the drone space are now taking off, helping businesses across a wide array of sectors. One of the most interesting of these companies is DroneSense, launched in 2015 by UT alums, Christopher Eyhorn and Gerard Juarez. The company recently secured its Series A financing, led by public company FLIR Systems, a pioneer in thermal imagery sensors and systems.

“Drones are a transformative technology ideally suited to help first responders get ‘eyes in the sky,’” says Juarez. “DroneSense has worked hand-in-hand with public safety professionals to create a software platform designed to revolutionize the way police, firefighters, search and rescue and other public safety workers do their job.” With DroneSense’s software, first responders can fly any drone, easily collaborate with other pilots, and access all the data collected in a central location. From managing flights, hardware, and team member data, to providing detailed reporting and direct integration with the FAA for flight authorization, DroneSense platform offers an end-to-end, simple solution that allows users to focus on the mission at hand.

While drone imagery and video footage have already been used for a few years by public safety organizations, implementations of drone programs have experienced obstacles and limited success to date. “There is a host of reasons why many organizations struggled to build their programs,” Eyhorn says. “A lack of skilled pilots, difficulty sharing data, concerns about privacy, and the security of collected data – we build our software to specifically address these problems.” The result of all this work is the DroneSense platform, which consists of three components:

• Pilot is the drone-agnostic flight control app that provides real-time views and mission-critical functionality, including tools for autonomous operations and pilot-to-pilot collaboration.
• OpsCenter is the command and control module, giving stakeholders and pilots collaborative tools and multiple live aerial views via a secure and common operating picture.
• AirBase is a full system of record, enabling detailed and automated data collection and management of an organization’s drone program, leading to greater accountability and transparency.

For local, state and federal law enforcement agencies, drones are becoming a necessary tool, and are applicable to a wide range of use cases. For example, aerial views from a drone can not only provide police officers the location of an active shooter, but also an understanding of the surrounding area. This level of situational awareness provides valuable information such as the direction the shooter might be headed, escape routes for victims, and the shooter’s firing line. Officers can then plan the appropriate response (without putting each other at risk) while also helping to prevent civilian casualties.

Firefighters can also realize many benefits from using drones such as timely, multi-dimensional views of fires that were previously unattainable or required expensive helicopters. Firefighters equipped with drones can better understand a situation and determine the best way to respond, helping save time while mitigating their exposure to harm. Moreover, drones equipped with thermal sensors can see through smoke, identify hot spots on a roof, and determine the intensity of a fire from a safe distance. Following an incident, drones can provide data and imagery to map an entire scene in 3D–valuable information that can be used for preventative measures, future planning, analysis, and investigations.

Drones are also increasingly being used in natural disaster response, such as wildfires and flooding to assess environmental and terrain conditions before the first responders (and second responders, such as utility crews) hit the ground. A prime example of how drones can save lives was in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey that hit the Houston area in 2017. Drones were used throughout the region to assess damage, identify stranded residents, and inspect critical infrastructure such as power lines and roadways.

“Despite the devastation and loss, it was highly encouraging to see the wide deployment of drones in this catastrophic situation. Drones used by our platform have a tremendous opportunity to be a force multiplier in such widespread and chaotic situations,” says Eyhorn. “Everyone at DroneSense is driven by a common desire to make a positive impact in real-world situations, namely using drones to help save lives.”

Additional use cases are being discovered every day in public safety, and drones have enhanced many missions already. Please visit our website to see a selection of these.

The genesis of DroneSense was the culmination of the founders’ interests, passions, and background in technology and aviation. Juarez had an established career in aerial photography and was an early adopter of drones in his business. Eyhorn is a manned aviation pilot and proven entrepreneur in the tech industry. Together, both founders recognized a significant opportunity in helping first responders utilize these new innovative tools in their operations.

“Working hand-in-hand with first responders has given us great insight into how we can help the men and women tasked with keeping us safe use drone technology to solve real-world problems,“ said Juarez.

Check out more at dronesense.com.

Editor’s note: This is a sponsored post.

Five years ago, Austin’s top technology company, Dell went private in a deal valued at $24.4 billion.

And Monday, that same company, now known as Dell Technologies, announced that it is going public and its stock will be listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

Dell Technologies plans to exchange each share of Dell Technologies Class V tracking stock for 1.3665 shares of Dell Technologies Class C common stock, or $109 in cash, up to a total of $9 billion.

VMWare’s board of directors has voted to declare an $11 billion cash dividend to all its shareholders with Dell Technologies’ share being approximately $9 billion.

Michael Dell, who currently owns 72 percent of Dell Technologies common shares, will continue to serve as Chairman and CEO.

“I am proud to lead this great company into its next chapter as we continue to evolve and grow to the benefit of our customers, partners, investors and team members,” Dell said in a news release. “Unprecedented data growth is fueling the digital era of IT, and we are uniquely positioned with our portfolio of technologies and services to enable the digital, IT, security and workforce transformations of our customers. Most importantly, I remain deeply committed to this company and working with our world-class team to build the long-term value of Dell Technologies and its businesses.”

Silver Lake, which partnered with Dell in 2013 to execute the largest privatization in the history of the technology industry, currently owns 24 percent of Dell Technologies’ common shares and as part of this transaction will maintain the entirety of its investment in the company.

The proposal is subject to shareholder approval. It is expected to close by the end of the year.

Amazon’s Austin Tech Hub on Monday launched Warriors@Amazon.

The group is comprised of Amazon employees who have served in the military and those still serving in the Guard and Reserve and all Amazon employees who support them.

In 2016, Amazon pledged to hire 25,000 veterans and military spouses by 2021 and since then the company has hired more than 17,500, said Austin General Manager Terry Leeper.

“We are way ahead of schedule for that and we’re very proud of that,” Leeper said.

In a little over two years, Amazon has hired 900 employees and occupies two buildings in the Domain area. It also has more than 100 jobs open in the Austin area including 17 listed in the Austin Warriors@Amazon group. The jobs are primarily for engineers. Overall, Amazon has more than 1,500 jobs listed worldwide targeted at military veterans and spouses.

“We have a big strong community here at Amazon for those in the military, veterans, and spouses,” Leeper said.

To help military veterans and spouses fill those jobs, Amazon launched an apprenticeship program that trains them in cloud computing, data service or software development, followed by a 12-month paid apprenticeship at Amazon.

In Austin, Amazon employees work on Amazon Web Services, Amazon Business, Alexa, video game design, advertising and more.

Amazon’s overall footprint in Austin is expanding. It bought Whole Foods a year ago and operates several distributions centers in the greater Austin area.
Austin is also a finalist for Amazon’s H2Q, a second Amazon headquarters. Amazon held a small event at its Austin offices in the Domain Monday to recognize the new chapter. Congressman Michael McCaul spoke at the event.

“Proud that Amazon is in Austin. We’re kind of hoping that the headquarters moves to Austin,” Congressman McCaul said. “But this is a really phenomenal step forward in terms of the veteran and helping treat the warfighter.”

“As chairman of the homeland security committee, I’ve been to the theater of war whether it be Iraq, Afghanistan, in the Persian Gulf on an aircraft carrier, I’ve seen the work they are capable of doing,” McCaul said. “When they come back from the theater of war they are looking a job, experience and an opportunity and I think that’s exactly what Amazon is providing.”

And it’s great to see the private sector step up and through this Warriors program and hire veterans, McCaul said.

“It’s such a noble effort,” McCaul said.

In August, Amazon will be honored with the Secretary of Defense’s Employer Support Freedom Award. It is given by the U.S. government to employers for their outstanding support of employees serving in the Guard and Reserve.

“Many of the qualities I valued in the military are also present here at Amazon,” said Michael Nelms, a Navy veteran and now an Amazon technical recruiter in Austin. He co-founded the Warriors@Amazon group with Christina Brown, an Amazon senior human resources assistant and the spouse of an Army veteran.

Military spouses can adapt rapidly, and problem solve regularly, Brown said. She moved from the Seattle Amazon headquarters to Austin with her husband and wanted to establish a Warriors@Amazon group here to foster comradery and support.

Austin-based Mood Media, the parent company of Muzak, announced Monday afternoon that it has acquired focus4media, one of the largest Mood independent affiliates in North America.

The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Focus4media provides sight, sound, scent and system solutions to businesses in the mid-Atlantic region, including Alabama, Florida, Virginia and more places in the Eastern United States.

“This acquisition allows us to expand our client base in a region that continues to grow and show great opportunity,” Ken Eissing, Mood Media’s President of In-Store Media, said in a news release. “Focus4media has a strong leadership team and a history of serving its clients well, and we look forward to continued success in the region.”

“The timing was right for both parties,” Gary Alshouse, focus4media’s CEO, said in a news release. “I’m proud of what our team built, but I’m also excited about the new opportunities that lie ahead for us, together.”

Mood Media reaches more than 150 million consumers each day through its in-store media solutions. The company provides sight, sound, scent and social mobile technology systems for restaurants, hotels, banks, retailers and small businesses.

By LAURA LOREK
Publisher of Silicon Hills News

The U.S Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson officially launched AFWERX, an innovation lab, at Capital Factory on Wednesday.

AFWERX is like the skunkworks of the Air Force. It allows military personnel to collaborate with industry, educators, entrepreneurs and others on new ideas and products without dealing with military bureaucracy.

Earlier today we launched our @AFWERX Austin site @CapitalFactory. I’m looking forward to seeing what game-changing #innovations will result from the collaboration with industry, educators and influencers that’s already happening at this hub. pic.twitter.com/oZrsaJuhke

— Dr. Heather Wilson (@SecAFOfficial) June 27, 2018

Wilson officially opened the AFWERX office at Capital Factory at a 7:00 a.m. event that included Austin Mayor Steve Adler, Democratic Candidate for Congress and Retired U.S. Army Lt. Colonel Joseph Kopser, various politicians, military members, entrepreneurs, business leaders, community members, press and Ret. Admiral Bobby Inman, a pioneer of the Austin technology community.

The origins of AFWERX came from Air Force Special Operations Command and something they called softworks that was going on in Florida to try to drive innovation, Wilson said. They got outside the fence and engaged with the entrepreneurial community in solving some of its toughest problems in ways that the military usually just isn’t good at, she said.

“We looked at what they were doing, and we said we need to do more of this,” Wilson said. “We need to engage more communities in this way.”

The U.S. Air Force as a corporate entity is tough to do business with, Wilson said. So AFWERX provides the outreach to that entrepreneurial community to make innovation easier. AFWERX has a technology accelerator program in conjunction with Techstars that it launched in Boston last year. It also has an AFWERX location at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas.

“We have returned to an era of great power and competition,” Wilson said. “For the last 27 years of continuous combat, the U.S. Air Force has been focused on the violent extremist fight in the Middle East where we were dominating in technology.”

The U.S.’s adversaries have been studying the Air Force and studying its vulnerabilities, Wilson said.

“We are now in a circumstance where in many areas our adversaries, particularly China is innovating faster than we are,” Wilson said. “We need to take note of that as we return to great power and competition. Not in imitating what they are doing but in accelerating the pace of innovation for the warfighter today.”

The U.S. needs to look at what China’s not doing to innovate faster and to be successful in protecting this country in the 21st century, she said.

Today, the world is seeing an accelerated pace of change where ideas can become products relatively quickly, Wilson said.

“We recognize the bureaucracy in which we work doesn’t always work to allow innovation to happen and that’s one of the reasons for creating things like AFWERX,” Wilson said.

“Don’t’ wait for us. Get after this,” Wilson said. “We’ll clear the way and we’ll allow innovation to happen and we’ll drive forward in the future together.”

AFWERX has an office on the ground floor of Capital Factory, which is a technology accelerator with 60,000 square feet of space and three floors in the Omni building in downtown Austin.

“This is really becoming a hotbed of military innovation,” said Joshua Baer, managing director of Capital Factory.

AFWERX is the second military innovation office at Capital Factory.

Secretary of the @usairforce Heather Wilson launching @AFWERX at @CapitalFactory. @SecAFOfficial pic.twitter.com/vdg4sQRy2C

— Joshua Baer 🇺🇸 (@JoshuaBaer) June 27, 2018

In 2016, U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter established the Defense Innovation Unit Experimental or DIUx at Capital Factory. It has similar offices in Silicon Valley and Boston. The DIUx works with Austin entrepreneurs to create cutting-edge technology for military applications. The DIUx is tackling big challenges in the areas of autonomy, artificial intelligence, machine learning, cybersecurity, and analytics.

Recently, Capital Factory has had visits from members of the Army Futures Command. Austin is one of five finalists for the headquarters that will lead the Army’s innovation and modernization efforts. The other cities under consideration are Boston, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, and Raleigh, North Carolina.

“It’s exciting for AFWERX to be here and also very fitting for it to be in Austin, Texas,” said Mayor Steve Adler. “I really do think innovation, creativity, entrepreneurship, and drive is part of our DNA in this city. It’s who we are. I think it’s in the water.”

Nine ventures pitched solutions to provide better jobs for Austin’s low-income workers at Impact Hub’s inaugural Workforce Development Accelerator Demo Day Monday night.

The 11-week accelerator, sponsored by Capital City Innovation, Workforce Solutions and Impact Hub, worked with nine ventures. Other sponsors included Google, JPMorgan Chase & Co., BuildFax, and Digi.City.

“We are creating this new path forward for the city of Austin and beyond,” said Ashley Phillips, managing director of Impact Hub.

Impact Hub will be launching another cohort in the fall around affordability, Phillips said.

“If you have an idea, we want to hear it,” she said.

Austin is doing really well for many people, but others are being left behind, said Tamara Atkinson, Chief Executive Officer of Workforce Solutions. One of the goals of the accelerator is to help Austin residents find better jobs and get out of poverty. The city’s poverty rate is around 14.5 percent.
The nine ventures in the accelerator gave presentations on each of their ventures and their plans to transform Austin’s workforce.

CENTRAL TEXAS ALLIED HEALTH: Jereka Thomas-Hockaday, presented her venture: Central Texas Allied Health Institute, which will offer certificate, applied associate and applied bachelor’s degree programs in the medical field. It is partnering with MedToMarket BioSkills Lab for classroom and laboratory space.

“Our mission is to create a world where vulnerable communities can have quality healthcare education at an affordable price,” Thomas-Hockaday said.

The goal is to offer a for-profit career college education at a community college price, Thomas-Hockaday said. It is targeting the low-income populations in East Austin to provide healthcare training to obtain jobs in the medical field, she said.
It plans to graduate 200 students per year. It plans to begin enrolling students in the fall of 2019.

ALCYE: Lav Chintapalli, CEO and founder of Alcye, presented her online platform for peer to peer learning, mentoring, and social learning.
The focus isn’t solely on content, it’s on collaboration and exchange, Chintapalli said.

Peer engagement helps students with learning, she said. Alcye creates community and engagement, she said.

“There are a lot of platforms out there, and Alcye sits right in the middle of them,” Chintapalli said.

“We want to help increase learning and create community in any adult learning environment,” Chintapalli said.

In the end, everyone is looking for connection, community and shared learning and Alcye provides that, Chintapalli said.

Alcye plans to launch in Austin and rollout nationwide and eventually internationally, Chintapalli said.

THE NOURISH FOUNDATION: Olivia Hernandez, founder of The Nourish Foundation, created a catering and event business that provides its workers with living wages and gives them life skills development opportunities.

One of the people she worked with, Omar, worked his way up in her company, Hernandez Hospitality, to become an onsite manager. He left her organization with a 66 percent wage increase, she said. He is now studying to get his bachelor’s degree in math and physics.

“That’s what happens when you get a living wage,” Hernandez said.

Through giving these opportunities to her workers, Hernandez developed The Nourish Foundation to reach more people.

MEDIATECH VENTURES: Paul O’Brien and John Zozzaro presented their idea for a media accelerator to help Austin’s creative economy.

“The problem that we’ve identified and that we’re most passionate about is a big one,” O’Brien said. “It’s that in the entire United States workforce in just about two years almost half of everyone is going to work for themselves in some capacity.”

These are freelance professionals, consultants, designers, journalists, musicians, O’Brien said.

“Nowhere is that more evident than here in Austin,” he said.

The challenge before all is that in the live music capital of the world, almost half of everyone works below the poverty line, O’Brien said.

Austin’s creative class is exploding now, but they aren’t being supported, O’Brien said.

MediaTech Ventures is developing its accelerator at the old Motorola campus and plans to roll out its program to other cities in coming years, said Zozzarro, a musician.

#WI – Ryan Steglich and Tasha McCarter founded #WI, a platform that connects top talent from diverse backgrounds to Austin companies.

During the accelerator, #WI interviewed more than 70 business leaders and community stakeholders about their access to diverse talent. A small group kept wanting to talk about the pipeline problem, Steglich said.

“The pipeline problem is an excuse,” he said.

Diverse workplaces financially outperform others, Steglich said. #WI stands for workforce inclusion, diversity, he said.

With Austin’s unemployment rate of 2.6 percent, the competition for talent continues to increase, Steglich said.

#WI has a relationship with BWSE – Black Women in Science and Engineering and with a diversity recruiter that servers Fortune 500 companies, said McCarter. #WI puts its network to work to find qualified diverse candidates to fill jobs at companies, she said.

“We build bridges before the need arises,” McCarter said.

#WI is a one-stop shop for posting jobs and recruiting diverse talent, McCarter said.

AUSTIN CODING ACADEMY: Four years ago, Chris Lofton created the Austin Coding Academy to provide flexible and evening classes for students to learn to become web developers and software engineers.

“At Austin Coding Academy we give people opportunities who would not have them otherwise,” Lofton said.

Austin has a problem. About 55 percent of Austin residents make less than $40,000 a year and at the same time, an average salary for a web developer in Austin is $71,000, Lofton said.

There are companies that want to hire people and they cannot find them, Lofton said. The disconnect is training and education. Coding boot camps last, on average three months and cost $20,000, he said. Austin Coding Academy provides flexible, evening and part-time courses with the program costing around $9,000. Austin Coding Academy also provides mentoring, tutoring and support, he said.

The instructors are all professional developers, he said.

Austin Coding Academy has an 80 percent completion rate and an 80 percent placement rate, Lofton said. Hundreds of people have gone through the program, he said.

However, Austin Coding Academy wants to do more. It wants to serve the underrepresented populations that don’t have anyone in their network in the technology industry, Lofton said. It recently partnered with the Dreams Come True Foundation to put two people through its program that couldn’t afford it. It’s also working with Goodwill.

“I want Austin Coding Academy to be a talent pipeline for your company,” Lofton said.

“Help us change more lives, Austin needs us,” Lofton said.

3 DAY STARTUP: Brianna Kablack presented a 3 Day Startup program called Next Level targeted at accelerating the careers of middle-skilled workers through entrepreneurship education.

“In 2030, 85 percent of the jobs that will exist have not been created yet,” Kablack said.

3 Day Startup has run its entrepreneurship foundations program over 500 times in 30 countries around the world. And it has seen more than 100 companies launch from its programs, Kablack said.

At the core of what 3 Day Startup does is teach the entrepreneurial mindset, she said.

Next Level has a career canvass that helps people reach their goals, Kablack said. It has partnerships with the Austin Coding Academy and Nourish Foundation. It ran a pilot program with those organizations and plans to run another program this fall.

PELOTONU- Navid Ladha and Hudson Baird founded the nonprofit organization that helps working adults earn a college degree on time and debt free.

“We’re all here because a skills gap exists in Austin,” Ladha said.

Last month, there were 43,000 jobs open in Austin and a workforce in Austin that wants them but there isn’t a bridge between the two, Ladha said. That’s where PelotonU comes in, he said. Its education pathway fits around the lives and schedules of working adults, he said.

PelotonU is not a college but it facilities the introduction to qualified, high-quality online degree programs and it provides support to students to help them graduate on time. Its graduation rate is 81 percent, compared to 16 percent at Texas community colleges, he said.

KEYUP: Adam Chasen and Mary Hannah Duhon created KeyUp, a web platform built to connect individuals with training programs and support services.

Americans are taught to believe there is only one path to gaining skills in the U.S. and that’s through a four-year college degree, Duhon said.

But that’s not true, people can become a nurse, electrician or a computer programmer without obtaining a four-year degree, she said.

KeyUp gives young adults from low-income families an alternative path to middle-class jobs other than a four-year college degree, Duhon said.

KeyUp has spoken to 24 organizations that are willing to partner with them to help educate low-income adults in Austin, Chasen said.

By 2024, most jobs will require some training beyond high school, but not a four-year degree, Chasen said. KeyUp plans to help people get those skills, he said.

Newchip, the online platform that aggregates crowdfunding deals, announced recently that it has closed on $2 million in seed funding.

Austin-based Newchip also launched an equity-based crowdfunding campaign on Wefunder. It has already raised $102,000 of its $1 million goal from 84 investors. Wefunder is an equity-based crowdfunding platform that lets people invest as little as $100 into a company.

Newchip doesn’t run a crowdfunding platform, but aggregates campaigns from other platforms on its site and categorizes them by investment type and more. It’s like the Kayak of crowdfunding, said Ryan Rafols, its founder and Chief Executive Officer. Newchip has more than 20 platform partners and more than 50,000 users on its platform.

“We’ve helped Austin become one of the biggest cities in getting deals backed,” Rafols said.

Newchip, founded in June of 2016, saw an opportunity to create an investment marketplace aggregator for everyone. It officially launched at South by Southwest in 2017, Rafols said.

“This is angel investing for everyone,” Rafols said.

Before the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved equity-based crowdfunding in 2015, only accredited investors or high net worth individuals, could invest in startups at the early stage.

Newchip recently closed on $2 million in seed stage funding with institutional investment from JadeValue, SputnikATX, Youbi Capital, and Polymath.
Newchip held a kickoff event at Barile downtown last week to launch its first equity-based crowdfunding campaign. The company has ten employees.

“Newchip is bringing massive value to the industry and we love the team, they are helping democratize investing in high-growth startups,” Joe Merrill, partner with SputnikATX said in a news release. “There are hundreds of crowd investing platforms and that’s why aggregating them into a single market is such a revolutionary idea.”

“By aggregating investment opportunities into a single platform, it makes it easier for everyday Americans to build a diverse portfolio and find investments they believe in and can back in exchange for equity,” according to Newchip. “Also, Newchip recently opened its marketplace to blockchain and securitized tokens and is continually adding in new sectors, categories, and hundreds of investment opportunities each month. “