Category: Austin (Page 92 of 317)

Content marketing is driving readers to websites.

Startups that produce their own content can become an authoritative voice in the industry that they cater to. That creates trust, which can lead to higher sales of products and services.

But it’s not just about throwing content onto a website and hoping something resonates with the audience. The entrepreneurs who do the best job of creating content spend a lot of time planning their posts, surveying and understanding their audience and creating a mission statement that focuses their content and achieves the goals they set out.

And a key component to content marketing success? An editorial calendar that plans posts by the day, week, month and year. These calendars can be paper-based, online software tools and do-it-yourself excel spreadsheets or Google calendar and tasks integrated templates.

So why does an entrepreneur need a content calendar?

1. Saves time and keeps content organized and on track.
2. Allows for collaboration among teams, freelancers, partners and others.
3. Plans content around key dates.
4. A key tool for content marketing.
5. Search engine optimization or SEO relies on content and that can generate more sales.

On Wednesday, a group met at Galvanize in downtown Austin for a workshop on creating a content calendar. This is the SlideShare presentation from that event:

Austin’s ice storms have finally passed (at least we think so). And the sun is shining. So it’s a great day to plan out events to attend during the week. Here’s just a few to consider.

Sunday & Monday – The Culturati Summit, a program of the Entrepreneurs Foundation, takes place at Brazos Hall and Capital Factory – This summit brings in about 150 business leaders from all over the country to talk about creating and sustaining company culture.

Tuesday – Jan. 30 – 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at Impact Hub Austin on North Lamar – Venture Prep – A two-hour free workshop for entrepreneurs by Tech Ranch.

Wednesday – 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Galvanize – How to Create an Editorial Calendar and Content Creation Tips by Laura Lorek, publisher, editor and senior writer with Silicon Hills News. This is a hands-on workshop at Galvanize in the Paramount Conference room and is limited in participation. Only a few tickets remain. The cost is $7 and tickets are available here.

Wednesday – 5:00 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. at Galvanize – WINE NOT Learn how to do killer AdWords campaigns? Todd Nevins of ClickPlacement is teaching this workshop at Galvanize. And Dave Perez of Lumen Insurance will show off the Adwords campaign that he built. The event is free and includes wine and cheese. Tickets available here.

Wednesday – 6:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. at the AT&T Executive Education and Conference Center at UT, Room 202 – TexTalks featuring Joshua Dziabiak, cofounder of The Zebra, an insurance search engine in Austin. The event is free, but registration is required.

Wednesday and Thursday – 1:30 p.m. kickoff at Capital Factory – the HealthTech Austin Medical Device Summit features panels and demos of some of the latest medical technology devices in the Austin area. Tickets are $160.

SXSW – March 9 – 18 at the Austin Convention Center and locations all over Austin.

Upcoming events: (sponsored content)

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GroundBreak Construction Conference by Procore Technologies, Nov. 13-15 in Austin. Use the Code “LocalsOnly” to save $100 on registration costs through April 2018.

In Dallas, ShearShare, a startup that created an app to allow barbers and hair stylists to rent salon space on the fly, won $100,000 in a diversity investment challenge last week.

The diversity challenge, announced last Fall by Captial Factory, focuses on giving a $100,000 investment to one startup from Dallas with a diverse executive team. The husband and wife team of Tye and Courtney Caldwell won with their startup ShearShare, founded in 2016, which has completed the 500 Startups program and is a Y Combinator Fellow. The company has raised $415,000 to date in two seed rounds, according to Crunchbase.

The award is from Capital Factory, a coworking and accelerator in Austin, in partnership with The Dallas Entrepreneur Center and DivInc, a diversity accelerator in Austin, to help minority and female-led startups in the tech industry.

Last year, Capital Factory’s Executive Director and Founder Joshua Bear wrote the Texas Startup Manifesto about Capital Factory’s plans to expand its accelerator program to include Dallas with a presence at The Dallas Entrepreneur Center. Last week, Capital Factory opened its new space. It has already been working with Dallas startups and has hosted office hours in Dallas. Since then, Capital Factory has also taken busloads of entrepreneurs and mentors from Austin to Dallas, San Antonio, and Houston to network and do office hours.

Also last year, Capital Factory awarded $100,000 in another pitch competition focused on gender and ethnic diversity. Kiss and Tell, an online wedding planning site, won that competition and is now based at Capital Factory.

“$100,000 isn’t all of the money you’ll ever need, but it’s enough for a scrappy team to focus full-time on building a minimum viable product and finding product market fit for about a year. We give you free rent, free hosting, a lot of other free stuff to make that $100,000 last as long as possible,” Baer wrote in a blog post.

As the winner of the competition, ShearShare receives $100,000 cash investment as a convertible note, access to accomplished technology and business mentors, one year of unlimited co-working at Capital Factory and The DEC, legal services and hosting credits.

The funds for the Capital Factory investment challenge come from angel investors and mentors.

Techstars Austin announced the ten companies selected for its Techstars Austin 2018 accelerator.

The accelerator, which features a diverse set of companies, kicked off on Jan. 22nd at Techstars’ new offices at 220 S. Congress Ave. The program ends on April 20th with a Demo Day.

This is Techstars’ sixth program in Austin.

This year’s cohort includes six teams from the Carolinas and four from Austin. Seven of the companies are led by minority and female founders.

“All of the companies are tackling interesting problems, and joining Techstars Austin to focus on growth of their business,” Amos Schwartzfarb, managing director of Techstars Austin, wrote in a blog post.

The class includes the following startups:

Allstacks: It measures the productivity of software engineers on a development team.

Locus Tracking: It uses proprietary eye-tracking technology to provide real-time data on where users look on their phones.

DocStation: It connects payers and pharmacists to cut costs and improve patient outcomes.

Mesur – It enables growers to accurately water and fertilizes seed by using real-time environmental measurements and advanced analytics.

MILKFUL – makes lactation snacks for breastfeeding moms.

Rosso & Flynn: It is an online butcher shop.

SkillPop: It provides community-based pop-up classes.

Transmute: It is a blockchain development platform.

Van Robotics: It makes smart robot tutors that deliver highly personalized instruction.

The Waggle Company: It provides dog walking services through an online platform.

Next Coast Ventures announced last week that the firm has added Jeff Browning as its latest venture partner.

Browning “will focus on helping their portfolio companies with all aspects of organizational design, talent acquisition and executive development,” according to a news release.

Browning most recently worked as a principal at GTRC Private Equity and he has more than 30 years of experience in talent acquisition. He also spent 15 years as the recruiting partner for Austin Ventures.

“I’m excited to be working with Jeff again, over the ten-plus years we worked together at Austin Ventures, I saw firsthand the positive impact he made on some of the most successful companies in Austin startup history,” Tom Ball, co-founder and managing director of Next Coast Ventures, said in a news release “I’m really looking forward to more success stories working closely together with Jeff and the entrepreneurs in the NCV portfolio.”

Next Coast Ventures has been growing its staff steadily since launching in last year.

Last September, it brought on Paul Rogers and Jim Dunham as Technology Venture Partners, which will serve as mentors to the firm’s tech entrepreneurs in its portfolio and advisers to the fund’s leadership. And it hired Adam Salamon as its first Entrepreneur in Residence.

Next Coast Ventures, based in a remodeled house at 12th and Nueces, also brought on Zeynep Young, an Austin entrepreneur as a venture capital partner, last March. The same month it closed on its $85 million fund.

Earlier this month at the Google Fiber space downtown, Tarmac TX held its Demo Day for the companies in its 2017 cohorot.

Now the accelerator, based at Galvanize, is accepting applications for its 2018 program, which starts in mid-April. The free program lasts nine months and includes mentorship and help with issues facing early-stage companies. CALSO, a nonprofit organization, in partnership with 3M, puts on the program.

The program includes classes, workshops, mentorship with 3M employees, events and networking opportunities and office space at Galvanize.

The 2017 startups that participated in Tarmac TX’s program included:

AquaSprouts which combines hydroponic gardening with fish tanks to keep an aquarium clean and low-maintenance.

Care2Rock which offers online music lessons via live video with teachers from around the world. It also provides lessons to children in foster care for free.

CoachTube which provides access to online training from the world’s best coaches.

GrubTubs which picks up compost from restaurants for a free and recycles it into feed livestock feed.

ShowerStream which invented a shower device that saves waters in hotels.

Think and Zoom created a technology solution for the visually impaired using the Google Glass technology to create hands-free visual magnification powered by the human mind.

TrashBots makes low-cost science and engineering kits that allow kids to build robots and use recycled materials.

YanEngines is developing the D-Cycle piston to save on fuel costs and increase performance on existing internal combustion engines.

The deadline to apply for Tarmac TX’s 2018 program is March 15th.

Two women-led startups from Austin are among the top ten finalists in the nation for the sixth Women Startup Challenge: Emerging Tech.

The startups include Astral AR, a drone piloting system that uses the Internet of the Things and helps law enforcement stop bullets, and detect guns and bombs through walls. Leah La Salla is the founder of Astral AR, which is based at Capital Factory in Austin.

The other startup is re:3D: Creators of Gigabot, an industrial human-scale 3D printer that prints from plastic recyclables creating access to local and sustainable manufacturing material, which decimates costs and scales barriers in additive manufacturing. Samantha Snabes, CEO and co-founder, recently won $1 million in the WeWork pitch competition.

The startups will pitch on March 6th at Google’s New York campus, for a chance to win $50,000 in an event sponsored by Women Who Tech in partnership with Craig Newmark Philanthropies. The finalists were selected from nearly 300 applications nationwide.

“A meager 7 percent of investor money goes to women-led startups. Through the Women Startup Challenge, we aim to shakeup a culture that has made it exceedingly difficult for women entrepreneurs to access capital,”Allyson Kapin, founder of Women Who Tech, said in a news release. “We’re excited to showcase top early-stage women-led startups that are at the forefront of technological innovation: building drones and holographic displays, developing cutting-edge healthcare to save lives, creating renewable energy sources, and improving environmental sustainability.”

The Women Startup Challenge has worked with over 1,700 women-led startups, awarded over $1 million in cash and prizes, and seen alumni collectively raise over $20 million, according to a news release.

Ten Austin entrepreneurs have joined the WeWork, Bunker Labs and Patriot Boot Camp’s new Veterans in Residence program in Austin.

The new program provides space, community and services to Veteran-run startups to help them to grow their business for six months.

Last week, at a kick-off event at WeWork Domain, the first ten veteran entrepreneurs gave a 60-second pitch to the audience.

“As both a veteran and an entrepreneur, I understand firsthand how uniquely prepared veterans are to build a successful company,” Nathan Lenahan, Head of Operations for WeWork’s southern region. “During your time in the military, you experience the power of overcoming seemingly insurmountable obstacles through the incredible communities you build. Unfortunately, long hours, demanding clients, and lean staffing often leaves entrepreneurs feeling like they’re building their business alone, missing the communities that helped them overcome their toughest challenges. WeWork is grateful for this opportunity to partner with Bunker Labs and Patriot Bootcamp to support our nation’s heroes with the space, skills and community needed to create their life’s work.”

“We’re thrilled to continue to support the military community through the WeWork Veterans in Residence program powered by Bunker Labs here in Austin because it is a game-changing force-multiplier to join with the existing WeWork community and accelerate and expand the impact for innovators, entrepreneurs, and creators who have or are serving in uniform,” Sabrina Wojtewicz, Director at Bunker Labs, said in a news release

Bunker Labs and Patriot Bootcamp also plan to host monthly events at WeWork.

“Patriot Boot Camp is pleased to partner with WeWork and Bunker Labs to create a connected community of entrepreneurs and startup resources to help veterans advance as business owners and community leaders,” Charlotte Creech, CEO Patriot Boot Camp, said in a news release. “We know veterans have the skills, aptitude, and innovative spirit needed to succeed as entrepreneurs, and we look forward to supporting them as they launch the next generation of great American businesses.”

Veterans or military spouses in the Austin area may apply for the next cohort.

Wellnicity, which makes home health test kits and supplements, announced it has received $3.6 million in seed-stage funding.

Austin-based Capstar Partners led the investment into the company.

Wellnicity plans to use the funds to further develop its software platform, sales and marketing and to invest in packaging and fulfillment functions.

“We chose to invest in Wellnicity for two reasons. First, as a customer I experienced first-hand the positive effects it has had on my body and overall well-being. In short, I’m hooked. What I appreciate about Wellnicity is that it empowers people to take their health into their own hands with customized and convenient solutions that provide a simple way to feeling their best,” Steve Hicks of Capstar Partners, said in a news release. “Second, we believe it’s the future of personal health and wellness and we’re excited to be behind this project. Because their products, procedures and programs are so effective, retention rates are high, and lives are improved.”

Wellnicity focuses on providing tailored at-home test kits and vitamins to its customers by using quizzes to find out about a customer’s symptoms and concerns.

“Wellnicity brings a new approach to health and wellness. No more ‘one-size-fits-all’ promises. No more guesswork about what supplements – and what dosage – may or may not work for you. Wellnicity is where clinical science meets personalized wellness and convenience,” Wellnicity’s CEO Kerry Brooks said in a news release. “Wellnicity grabbed hold of the idea that if more people had access to information about what was going on in their own bodies, we could help them achieve their optimal health through customized vitamin regimens – and we tackled it.”

Pam Machemehl Helmly, a clinician, founded Wellnicity.

“Wellnicity’s story began because there were many families who chose not to do medications, or they had failed medication therapies. These clients suffered from sleep disorders, anxiety, depression and focus,” Helmly said in a news release. “Through neurotransmitter testing, we could see when the levels were imbalanced and we could create a customized supplemental and dietary solution to bring levels back into optimal ranges. There was a profound effect on patients’ health and well-being. We are excited to bring our science-backed process and premium, professional-grade supplements to more people through the help of Capstar Partners.”