Category: Austin (Page 94 of 317)

By LAURA LOREK
Publisher of Silicon Hills News

At Sputnik ATX’s downtown office, a group of entrepreneurs gathered to talk about e-commerce startups and eat barbeque Monday afternoon.

“We’ve learned a lot about the startup scene in Austin hosting these events,” said Oksana Malysheva, President, and CEO of Linden Education Partners and CEO of Sputnik ATX.

So far, Sputnik ATX has received more than 100 applications for its first accelerator class which will begin on Jan. 15th and runs until April 20th, Malysheva said. They are coming from all over Texas and about ten international applicants from three continents, she said.

“For an applicant, the most important thing you need to have is a viable product and one paying customer,” Malysheva said. “That really distinguishes us from the other startup accelerators.”

There is very good logic for that, Malysheva said.

“We are going to be investing in the entrepreneur,” she said. “And if you don’t have one paying customer, we cannot accelerate you enough during that time.”

The Sputnik ATX accelerator is accepting five to ten startups in its first class. The incubator will provide office space, mentorship, coaching, training, and funding. The companies can apply from anywhere, but they must be based in Austin for the duration of the accelerator class.

The deadline to apply to the accelerator is Dec. 25th. The startups chosen for the program will receive a $100,000 investment in the form of a SAFE note, which stands for Simple Agreement for Future Equity.

Josef Merrill, partner and Chief Financial Officer for the Sputnik ATX program wrote a blog post on Austin Startups explaining the SAFE note and how it is used.

Entrepreneurs also must commit to spend time at Sputnik ATX’s Austin offices located on the 22nd floor of the high rise building at 301 Congress. Sputnik ATX is industry agnostic, Malysheva said.

“We are excited for this class and we really encourage the startups to apply,” Malysheva said. “There is still enough time to apply. If you have a viable product and a paying customer give it a shot. You can never win something if you don’t apply.”

Sputnik ATX can add the most value to startups in product development, marketing and sales, Merrill said.

“We want to really help people nail it and then scale it,” he said.

There are a lot of incubators and accelerators that do proto-companies with early-stage entrepreneurs working with an idea, Merrill said. The Sputnik ATX accelerator works with companies that are further along, he said.

In meeting with entrepreneurs around the state, Merrill said he’s seen a lot of startups that have great ideas, products, and customers, but they lack funding.

“We’re really excited to service this spot because it’s a sorely neglected space in the funding cycle,” Merrill said.

That’s why Sputnik ATX provides startups with $100,000 because they can really plow that money into product development, marketing, and sales and they can begin to see a lot of traction that will help them secure that Series A round of funding, Merrill said.

“We’re giving the startups the high octane boosts to get them into their A round,” Merrill said.

The biggest mistake Sputnik ATX sees is startup founders raising money from friends and family and overvaluing their company, Merrill said. And no one signs non-disclosure agreements, he said.

“Everything that is to be known about you is known,” Merrill said. “If you’re a startup, you’re not trying to keep the world from knowing what you are doing, but you want to get the world to know what you are doing.”

Jeddy Yuan, founder and CEO of Incommon, an app to help people overcome addiction, has applied to the Sputnik ATX accelerator. The app is a peer to peer central hub that makes it easy for people to find help when it matters most, he said. He attended the luncheon to learn more about the program.

The app hit the Google Play Store and Apple App Store about three months ago and its users have been growing 9 percent week over week, Yuan said.

FourScore, a match.com for voters and candidates, has also applied for the Sputnik ATX accelerator, said Matthew Brashear, its co-founder and CEO. The company, founded in 2016, has raised a small seed stage round and is currently in beta testing in Salt Lake City, he said. Scott VanRavenswaay, co-founder and systems architect and Sheli Austin, lead business analyst, also attended the luncheon.

“Our mission is to empower local communities,” Brashear said.

For more on the Sputnik ATX accelerator, join them for free pizza at WeWork Congress on Wednesday. RSVP is required to attend.

Austin-based Slingshot Aerospace announced Tuesday that it has received $3.25 million in seed stage funding, led by ATX Seed Ventures.

Slingshot Aerospace is using artificial intelligence to provide detailed reports about the earth to industries such as Defense, insurance, and energy.

Other investors in the seed round included Okapi Venture Capital and Sway Ventures along with Stage and NoName Ventures. The company plans to use the money to “build upon its early success by unlocking insights gained from satellite images, drones, and aircraft,” according to a news release.

Slingshot Aerospace is doing deep data analysis from a variety of sources to provide a clear picture of different parts of the country and world.

“The amount of data gathered by satellites, aircraft, and drones is accelerating exponentially. Turning that into profound, useful insights via Artificial Intelligence is one of the largest market opportunities of the decade” Christopher Shonk, founder of ATX Seed Ventures, said in a news release. “We are thrilled to work with this experienced management team and, having spoken to current and potential customers, we maintain a strong outlook for Slingshot Aerospace to lead the market.”

Slingshot Aerospace worked with BAE Systems and Team Rubicon during hurricanes Harvey and Irma, to analyze flooding severity and provide up to date information on the best evacuation routes in the affected areas. That insight allowed rescuers to get help to people in need faster.

“Slingshot’s capabilities are not limited to specific industries but are built to enable our team to innovate, build and deploy ready-to-use solutions rapidly. This gives Slingshot an unfair advantage in solving high-value problems for our customers in a more timely and accurate way than our competition,” David Godwin, CEO of Slingshot, said in a news release. “This round will enable Slingshot to press our advantage to be the first place Defense and commercial senior decision makers look for assessing risk, monitoring change or evaluating opportunity around assets worldwide.”
Slingshot Aerospace has headquarters in Austin, Texas and also has a significant presence in its El Segundo offices in Los Angeles, California.

U.S. Air Force veterans Melanie Stricklan and Thomas Ashman and Serial Entrepreneur David Godwin founded Slingshot Aerospace in June of 2017. The company was part of the Techstars LA inaugural class.

By LAURA LOREK
Publisher of Silicon Hills News

GenXComm, a telecommunications startup spun out of the University of Texas at Austin, announced Tuesday it has raised $7 million in funding, led by Intel Capital.

Other investors included Azure Capital Partners, Bandgap Ventures, Capital Factory, FAM Capital Partners, Lip-Bu Tan, UT Horizon Fund and WS Investment Co. The company plans to use the Series A funding for research and development and to hire key staff, said Sriram Vishwanath, GenXComm’s co-founder, and president. He is also a professor of electrical and computer engineering at UT Austin.

In June, GenXComm announced it had received a seed round of investment of $1.5 million. To date, the company, founded in 2016, has raised $8.5 million. The company is solving the problem of wireless networks that can’t handle a lot of traffic. GenXComm has developed a patent-pending technology called S-SIX that can double the amount of traffic a wireless network can handle.

GenXComm’s technology will improve communications greatly, Vishwanath said. It will increase network performance by up to 30 times in dense environments, he said.

GenXComm, which spun out of a four-year-long research project at UT, has demonstrated its technology works in both cable and wireless applications.

“The explosion of smartphone usage and internet bandwidth is pushing the limits on today’s network architecture and available spectrum,” Vishwanath said in a news release. “GenXComm is unleashing the full potential of the spectrum used for today’s 5G mobile, Wi-Fi and cable networks – by allowing channels to be stacked with no empty spectrum between them, thereby generating new applications, revenue streams, and business models for telecom operators and the Industry 4.0.”

In a telephone interview, Vishwanath said the company now has 20 employees and it expects to add up to 15 more by next year, primarily engineers. Its headquarters are in an old house at 1604 San Antonio, a few blocks south of the UT campus. It also plans to open an office in California.

GenXComm is working with the largest telecom players in the world to test its technology, Vishwanath said. At this time, he cannot name the companies, he said. The company will be doing private demos of its technology at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas next month, Vishwanath said.

“Full duplex technology has the potential to have a tremendous impact in a number of areas that are important to Intel, including Wi-Fi, Broadband Access, and 5G,” Dan Artusi, vice president, and general manager, Connected Home Division, Intel, said in a news release. “GenXComm’s unique approach to solving the full duplex problem has the potential to significantly increase the speed and capacity of these networks. Given the large increases in the amount of data moving across different networks, technologies such as those pioneered by GenXComm will become increasingly important in the future.”

By LAURA LOREK
Publisher of Silicon Hills News

Austin’s rare snow and ice storm didn’t stop the tech community from turning out at DivInc’s Demo Day at Google’s Austin downtown office Friday night.

The night shined a spotlight on women and minority tech founders who are launching startups in Austin.

“It’s about startups. It is about diversity and inclusion but it’s also about this expanding startup ecosystem and making it more inclusive to give opportunities for this hidden talent that’s across Austin, said Preston James, co-founder of DivInc, an Austin-based accelerator that helps women and minorities launch tech startups.

“I hope tonight that we will be opening up the gates for some new talent to come in and make their contributions into Austin and make Austin the number one city for tech diversity in the United States,” James said.

It’s no secret that the tech industry lacks diversity. Women and people of color make up a small fraction of the startup founders that receive funding every year from the venture capital firms and angel investors. And Austin, which has a huge and growing tech industry, is struggling with this problem also. That’s why James, Dana Callender and Ashley Jennings founded DivInc.

The 13-week long accelerator, based at Capital Factory, provides mentorship and coaching to tech startup founders. Its third class of startups just finished the program which culminated with the Demo Day pitch event.

At the event, guest speaker Latraviette Smith, senior vice president of communications of Sundial Brands, based in New York, announced a $100 million New Voices Venture Capital Fund aimed at investing in women of color entrepreneurs.

“Together we will change the face of entrepreneurship,” Smith said.

The latest DivInc cohort consisted of eight tech startups ranging from mobile apps and online marketplaces to e-commerce sites focused on travel, wellness retreats, advertising agencies, restaurants, retail, consumer electronics, gardening, and education.

First up, Sara Brinton, founder, and CEO of Penguino Travel pitched her travel site for families with young children. It helps match travelers with families in the countries they are visiting to learn about kid-friendly spots. It also provides travel kits and other information to families traveling with children.

By 2020, Brinton forecasts Penguino will have 28,000 customers that will plan trips on its site and $10 million in revenue, with revenue coming through product sales and commissions on booking with airlines, hotels, and attractions.

Penguino Travel launched a year ago as an online store and since then the company has generated $20,000 in revenue, Brinton said. The company is about to launch its travel planning platform for families, she said. It is also going to create a mobile app, she said.

The goal is to empower one million families over the next ten years to travel different, Brinton said.

Next, Ashley Behnke, founder of Spot Loc8r, pitched her mobile app that lists picture-perfect locations in each city. The app is aimed at brands, ad agencies and social media influencers looking for the perfect place to stage a photo or make a film.

“Brands are scrambling,” Behnke said. “They are continually trying to find the most authentic and most organic ways to connect with their audiences.”

Spot Loc8r provides a visual content platform that saves time, increases efficiency and ultimately generates more revenue for brands, ad agencies and social media influencers, Behnke said. It is also creating a mobile app.

Spot Loc8r plans to generate revenue from in-app purchases, subscriptions from businesses and the sales of campaign lists to ad agencies. Currently, ad agencies send people out to scout for locations and no automated system exists yet to do this task, Behnke said.

“We will be crowdsourcing the work for our clients and leveraging machine learning to make their jobs easier,” Behnke said. “There’s no way one person knows where all the beautiful places are but together with Spot Loc8r we will.”

In 2018, the pilot program will begin in Austin, Behnke said. She’s currently looking for investors and introductions to Austin ad agencies as customers.

“We are Spot Loc8r and we help content creators produce compelling content more quickly and easily,” Behnke said.

The third presenter, Roman Gonzalez, founded Gardenio, an online marketplace for gardeners aimed at Millennials. Its products include an urban garden in a box starter kit with other follow-on products and information.

“With Gardenio, we are the path for the next generation of lifelong gardeners,” Gonzalez said.

Gardenio provides products and technology to make it easy to start and maintain and continue with a garden, he said.

They send customers everything they need to start a garden in a box including plants, soil, and care guides. The boxes cost between $50 to $100. Gardenio plans to develop a mobile app with detailed digital care guides and other gardening information, Gonzalez said. A portion of the proceeds from all sales are donated to nonprofit organizations focused on food justice, he said.

“If we succeed so do the communities that we operate in,” Gonzalez said.

“This is a market ripe for disruption,” he said.

Every year, consumers spend $36.1 billion on lawn and garden supplies, Gonzalez said.

Gardenio is now accepting pre-orders and plans to send out its first boxes in February of 2018, Gonzalez said. The company is currently fundraising and is looking for key employees in supply chain management and technology.

“This is the right time for a company like this,” Gonzalez said. “We have an opportunity in business to do something that is very rare: to do well and to do good at the same time. To build profit and lead a movement at the same time. We are the path for the next generation of life-long gardeners because at Gardenio, you don’t have to grow it alone.”

Wes Reddick, founder of Maximus Box, pitched his online retail shop for plus-sized men.

“I’m a former football player, current fashion guru for fat guys,” Reddick said.

Maximus Box sprung out Reddick’s frustration from trying to find clothes that fit his large frame. In the U.S., there are 67 million men with a size 40 waist or larger, Reddick said. They don’t have a dedicated place online to go shopping, he said.

The Maximus Box is a subscription fashion service that sends clothing items directly to the consumer, Reddick said.

So far, Maximus Box has done $160,000 in revenues in 2017, Reddick said. He expects to do at least $175,000 by the end of 2017, he said.

“The more big guys out there hear about us the more we continue to grow,” Reddick said.

Stephanie Labay, the founder of Retreat Place, created a travel and wellness marketplace. It aggregates the wellness retreats worldwide.

Fitness instructors, yoga teachers, and retreat owners can list a place on the marketplace and consumers can book experiences with them online, Labay said. The retreat trips vary between $500 to $5000 with an average price tag of $1,500, she said.

Retreat Place has generated $70,000 in advertising revenue to date, Labay said. It plans to increase its inventory of active retreats from 200 to 1,000 by early next year, she said.

Yogi Patel pitched the startup he founded: iuzeit, a mobile app, and website that serves as a recommendation platform for consumer electronics.

Shambrekia Wise, the founder of FuzeU, created an online education marketplace to connect college students studying Science, Technology, Engineering and Math majors, with mentors in their chosen field in the business world. Next year, Wise plans to launch the platform.

Airion Watkins-Clark, founded WutzGood, a mobile app that provides visual restaurant reviews with video and photos.

“We drive traffic and increase revenue for restaurants through real-time visual content,” Watkins-Clark said. “We enable the restaurateur to regain control of their brand image by publishing Chef’s Table quality moments that truly showcase the experience they have to offer.”

WutzGood has raised a seed round of $80,000 in financing. It is finishing up its minimal viable product and it has 20 restaurants signed up. It is also creating a mobile app. The company is currently fundraising.

Austin-based Dosh, a cash-back app, just raised $4.9 million in venture funding, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The company has raised $18.4 million to date in seed-stage funding and is preparing to raise more money early next year for a Series A round, according to a spokeswoman.

Goodwater Capital led the most recent funding round with participation from Extol Capital and Austin-based Next Coast Ventures.

Dosh, which is slang for cash, is a smartphone mobile app that lets consumers receive cash back on purchases. The company has partnered with more than 100,000 businesses and brands including Sam’s Club, Forever 21, Denny’s and Cost Plus World Market.

“Dosh continues to show record growth month over month in installs, card link users, and cash back transactions,” according to a spokeswoman. The company analyzes data and provides information to merchants to track consumer acquisition, loyalty, and social sharing.

The participation from Next Coast Ventures might have something to do with its news Entrepreneur in Residence at the firm: Adam Salamon, who previously served as co-founder and chief operating officer of Perk Inc., a rewards and engagement platform that went public on the Toronto Stock Exchange and then RhythmOne acquired it earlier this year.

Ryan Wuerch founded Dosh in 2016 and serves as the company’s president and CEO. He previously founded Solavei, a social commerce platform that was acquired in 2015, according to his online profile in Crunchbase. Before that, he founded Motricity, a mobile data service provider.

Transportation logistics in this country is still problematic despite all the new technology on the market.

That’s a market Austin-based Overhaul is tackling. The commercial trucking industry is a $115 billion per year industry and Overhaul aims to overhaul it. The transportation security technology startup creates software for shippers of premium cargo to track their goods.

The company just landed $4.5 million in seed financing from lead investor Abbey International Finance Group, based in Dublin, Ireland. The company plans to use the money for research and development of its software, Sentinel.

Gone are the days of the lone CB radio to track a trucker in route to deliver goods. Today, trucks have smartphones, laptops, tablet computers, wireless Internet connections and goods often have tracking devices or cargo sensors to keep track of them from shipper to customers. But despite all the fleet tracking technology available today such as cargo sensors and telematics, problems occur when that technology can get disconnected. That lack of visibility can cost shippers a lot of money and it can be risky for the drivers. So Overhaul’s software harnesses existing technology, coupled with data analysis and proprietary technology to create a better cargo tracking system, according to a news release.

“Overhaul is committed to bringing an intelligent software system that automatically integrates disparate data streams into a single unified view allowing shippers the ability to analyze and respond appropriately to prevent or address risky situations as they occur,” Barry Conlon, CEO and co-founder of Overhaul, said in a news release. “We are extremely grateful to have the support of an investor who shares in our vision to digitize the supply chain and will act as partners in the delivery of our robust product roadmap.”

“We are pleased to partner with the team at Overhaul,” John Prosser, Managing Director at Abbey International Finance, said in a news release. “We have a very strong relationship and proven track record in prior ventures with Overhaul’s founder, Barry Conlon, and are committed to supporting Mr. Conlon in realizing the vision for this latest endeavor to become an innovative leader in transportation.”

Overhaul, founded in 2016, has two patents pending on its technology in the U.S. The company began as an online marketplace for shippers to find and book truck drivers. But it has since evolved to provide tracking and security software.

By STUDIO ESTATES
Sponsored Post

On a former cotton farm in Kyle sits a beautiful piece of land with expansive views and Hill Country charm.

At Studio Estates, David Cuddy has built a burgeoning business park, home development, movie studio complex and now tech center.

Cuddy’s 800 acres is prime real estate in one of the hottest markets in the country. It sits between two of Texas’ major cities, Austin and San Antonio and easily accessible via major highways.

Studio Estates has one brand new office building at 7212 Goforth Road ready to be leased to tenants. It’s 6,000 square feet of office space outfitted with high-speed Internet. The building can be divided up into offices with a conference room and a small kitchen area for a break room.

“We would like to have high tech businesses out here,” Cuddy said.

Cuddy spends half his time in Texas managing the Studio Estates and the rest in his native state of Alaska. He spent 20 years a commercial banker and served one term in the Alaska State Legislature. He ran for the U.S. Senate in 1996.

The Studio Estates property is perfect for virtual reality, gaming companies, artificial intelligence, robotics, software and hardware development, internet web and app development, podcasting, co-working businesses and others in the high tech industry.
Another identical building next door is nearly fully leased.

Nestled in the countryside, Studio Estates seems like the perfect spot for the high tech industry. It’s a peaceful and gorgeous retreat that creative people love. And it’s perfect for digital nomads, people who telecommute and need professional office space. The site is easily accessible via Intrastate 35 or toll road 130 and highways 183 and 21. It’s only minutes away from Bergstrom International Airport and downtown Austin.

Cuddy, a producer and executive producer on a dozen films and a P&A investor on five films, currently manages Studio Estates. In 2015, he was going to build a $52 million studio complex on his land, but the project was halted due to the Governor of Texas not continuing the funding of the state’s film and TV incentives.

That 40-acre plot of land is ready to go for anyone interested in developing it.

Several movies have been shot on the location. And several commercials have also been filmed there including a recent one for Harley Davidson motorcycles.
In addition, Cuddy operates the Millennium Park, which has 10 warehouses that are rented by light industrial businesses. But there is room to expand with additional buildings.

The Noelle Business Park is the second phase of the business park development and it contains another ten warehouses that are almost all leased. There are a couple of warehouses available in that complex.

A housing development contains several beautiful brick custom built homes already and is almost fully occupied. Another 150 acres are primed are ready for additional homes. The housing complex includes a beautiful lake with some waterfront lots.

The Coyote Garden Hall serves as the events center for the area and is available for lease.

On a portion of the land, cattle still graze, and another tenant has leased land to house racehorses.

This is a sponsored post from advertiser Studio Estates. Please contact Raschell Spillers with Studio Estates at 512-668-4888 or Studioestatesoffice@yahoo.com for more information.

Tim Ferriss, angel investor and bestselling author and podcaster, recently moved to Austin.

For 17 years, Ferriss lived in Silicon Valley.

But now he’s a resident of Austin. Ferris is the author of “The 4-Hour Workweek,” “The 4-Hour Body,” “The 4-Hour Chef,” “Tools of Titans,” and his latest book: “Tribe of Mentors.”

“In the end, I absolutely LOVE the Bay Area, but it’s become a perverted Bizarro world version of what attracted me there in 2000,” Ferriss wrote in response to a question during an Ask Me Anything session on Reddit. “Many of my best friends in the world are there, and it pained me to leave, but I had to relocate for my own sanity, growth, and happiness.”

Ferriss also wrote that he wanted to move to Austin “after college but didn’t get the job at Trilogy Software. Since 2007, I’ve visited Austin every year and felt the pull to move there each time. It’s a wonderful exploding scene of art, music, film, tech, food and more. The people are also – in general – much friendlier.”

This year, Ferriss served as keynote at the 2017 SXSW Edu event and he also interviewed Cheryl Strayed about her creative process during SXSW, according to Hugh Forrest, who wrote that Ferriss is one of his favorite SXSW speakers in a blog post on Medium.

Last Saturday, Ferriss spoke and did a book signing at Book People for his latest book, “Tribe of Mentors.”

Other reasons Ferriss cited for moving to Austin include BBQ and that he really likes the sun and San Francisco is foggy and that the Golden Gate Bridge is a terrorist target and he likes to be someplace with a lower profile.

And Austin is “far more dog friendly than SF,” according to Ferriss.

“Sometimes you need to think about the “where” of happiness and change your scenery to prompt new chapters in your life,” Ferriss wrote.

Want more? Ferriss also did this Q&A with Austin Monthly about moving here.

And even more Ferriss on moving to Austin, including a video, at Business Insider.

“There has come to be a level of intellectual smugness that I found with every passing month that I spent there a little less tolerable,” Ferriss in the video on Business Insider about why he moved from California’s Silicon Valley to Texas’ Silicon Hills. “Close-mindedness masquerading as open-mindedness.”

By LAURA LOREK
Publisher of Silicon Hills News

Austin is shining brightly in the month of December with all kinds of great events to put knowledge into your noggin. But it’s also a time to have fun and celebrate our successes, which is why we invite you to our 2018 Austin Tech Calendar Party on Dec. 14th at the Zebra. We hope to see you there as we spotlight 12 of Austin’s movers and shakers in the tech industry. And we’ll continue to celebrate them throughout 2018 as each startup or technology advocate gets a month as a “high tech pinup.” So even if you can’t make the party (tickets are limited at this point), please buy a tech calendar to support the work we do at Silicon Hills News all year around. We’ve entered our 7th year as an independent woman-owned media company. Now that’s something to celebrate. Plus, 20 percent of the proceeds of ticket and calendar sales go to Austin Pets Alive!

Tuesday – Dec. 5: The Austin Forum’s Annual Tech for Giving and Sharing Event
Where: Impact Hub North, 5540 N. Lamar Blvd.
When: Doors and cash bar open at 5:45 p.m. and presentations begin at 6:15 p.m.
What: Speakers include Barbary Brunner, Austin Tech Council, Chelsea Collier, Digi.City, John Nehme, Allies Against Slavery, Leo Ramirez Jr. Encast, Zoe Schlag, Techstars Impact and Monica Maldonado Williams, The New Philanthropists. Admission is free but this month, they ask participants to bring a new, unwrapped toy for its Operation Blue Santa Toy Drive. Toy Joy will also be onsite with gift cards to donate.

Tuesday: Dec. 5th: Women in Tech Mega Happy Hour Gathering
Where: Apanas Coffee & Beer, 11501 Rock Rose, No. 118
When: 6:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.
What: A quarterly mega happy hour and networking mixer with the goal of connecting women in tech, data and code in ATX. They are also partnering with Dress for Success Austin to do a drive for shoes and purses at the event.

Wednesday – Dec. 5: iCONIC Exchange Austin
Where: 800 Congress Ave.
When: 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.
What: The event put on by Inc. and CNBC features local entrepreneurs and business leaders and Shark Tank’s Kevin “Mr. Wonderful” O’Leary.

Wednesday – Dec. 6: Unconscious Biases
Where: Accruent, 11500 Alterra Parkway #110
When: 5:45 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.
What: Unconscious bias can affect how people make decisions. This panel explores what unconscious bias is, how it affects us, and what we can do about it. Panelists include Shonte Jovan Taylor, an author, neuroscientist, success trainer and social entrepreneur, Kate Wilkinson, who oversees Accurent’s recruiting team, Ashley Jennings, co-founder of DivInc and co-owner and executive producer of Spero Labs and Jenn Lowe, an active leader in Accruent EmpoWer.

Thursday – Dec. 7: Austin Tech Happy Hour
Where: The Dogwood, 715 W. 6th Street
When: 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.
What: Since 2007, Bryan Menell has been hosting the Austin Tech Happy Hour. It’s an informal gathering of Austin’s technology community and is always a fun and festive event.

Friday- Dec. 8: DivInc Demo Day
Where: Google, 500 W. 2nd Street, 29th floor
When: 5:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.
What: It’s the Fall 2017 DivInc cohort’s Demo Day. Listen to pitches by: Roman Gonzalez, founder of Gardenio, Shambrekia Wise, founder of FuzeU, Yogi Patel, founder of juzeit, Wes Riddick and Cristina Rodgers, founder of the Maximus Box, Sara Brinton, founder of Penguino Travel, Ashley Behnke, founder of Spot Loc8r and Airion Watkins-Clark, founder of WutzGood Inc.

Friday – Dec. 8: Hack Austin presented by The City of Austin and Galvanize
Where: Galvanize, 119 Nueces Street
When: 6 p.m. Friday to 4 p.m. on Sunday
What: A weekend-long hackathon featuring data enthusiasts, developers, designers, analysts, data scientists and data engineering. They are going to tackle strategic initiatives for the City of Austin with a focus on health and safety. The event ends in a demo pitch event on Sunday to a panel of judges.

Saturday- Dec. 9: Hello World Demo Day
Where: Capital Factory, 701 Brazos Street
When: 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
What: Hello World’s Fall 2017 class featuring students from all over Austin will present projects covering a wide range of formats including mobile app competition, live coding competitions, live demos on data science concepts and more.

Monday – Dec. 11 – Sputnik ATX’s A Very B2C Christmas BBQ
Where: Sputnik ATX Headquarters, 301 Congress, Suite 2200
When: 1 p.m.
What: Sputnik ATX is hosting a barbecue lunch for entrepreneurs. It’s a chance to meet the Sputnik ATX team and learn more about the accelerator. The theme is “A Very B2C Christmas” and interested participants are asked to send their best ideas for a B2C product or service as part of a contest to attend.

Tuesday – Dec. 12 – Wednesday, Dec. 20 – Happy Hanukkah

Wednesday – Dec. 13th – Startup Grind Holiday Party
Where: Capital Factory, 701 Brazos Street
When: 7 p.m.
What: Startup Grind is hosting a holiday party at Capital Factory for tech entrepreneurs.

Thursday Daytime – Dec. 14th – Artificial Intelligence Conference
Where: Capital Factory, 701 Brazos Street: First Floor
When: 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.
What: A conference on artificial intelligence by Navidar spotlighting Austin-based AI pioneers featuring several question and answer panels.

Thursday – Dec. 14th – Silicon Hills News 2018 Austin Tech Startup Calendar Party
Where: The Zebra, 98 San Jacinto
When: 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.
What: Silicon Hills News is hosting its annual calendar party to celebrate its fourth annual calendar and the technology startups and innovators featured in it. There’s still a few tickets left to the party which kicks off at 6 p.m. at The Zebra. We’ll have Mama Fu’s thanks to TriNet, our food sponsor, and Drink Slingers will be tending bar. We’ll have Austin East Cider chilling, Twisted X beer, Champagne, Rose, White Wine, Pinot Noir, Red wine, ShadeTree Lemonade, HeyDay Cold Brew Coffee, Topo Chico and more. Thanks to our sponsors: ServiceDirect, Manzer Communications, Underminer Studios. And our entertainment sponsor: Sputnik Accelerator. And a big thank you to our venue sponsor: The Zebra and our calendar sponsors: TARC Technology Solutions, InnoTech and the Austin Chamber of Commerce.

Monday – Dec. 25 – Merry Christmas

Tuesday – Dec. 26 – Jan. 1 – Kwanzaa

Monday – Jan. 1 – Get your 2018 Austin Tech Calendar and kick off the year right!