Jason Seats, managing director of the TechStars Cloud, says hundreds of companies applied to the program. In the end, TechStars choose 11 companies. All of them are from outside of San Antonio. Seats is not revealing the company names until April 6th at TechStars Cloud Demo Day.
Nicole Glaros, one of the founders of TechStars in Boulder, will also move to San Antonio for the 13-week program with her family. Seats says the program will serve as the catalyst San Antonio needs to ignite its high-tech startup community. All of the companies will be located at Geekdom, a collaborative workspace at the Weston Centre in downtown San Antonio.
Category: San Antonio (Page 60 of 62)
Apple declares San Antonio-based AirStrip Technologies’ cardiac patient monitoring app the best medical app for the iPhone.
The App Store editorial team selected AirStrip Technologies’ app as part of its App Store Rewind 2011, which collects the year’s top apps.
“This recognition from Apple is deeply gratifying and reinforces what clinicians across the country are saying about AirStrip CARDIOLOGY — that this is a game-changing application that is already saving lives,” AirStrip Technologies CEO Alan Portela said in a statement.
The free AirStrip Cardiology app is specially designed for clinicians to monitor patients remotely. It allows them to receive ECG data on their iPad or iPhone.
The Federal Drug Administration has approved AirStrip’s patient monitoring app and its Airstrip OB app, which allows physicians to remotely monitor pregnant women during labor.
Nick Longo, head of Geekdom, a co-working and collaboration space at the Weston Centre in downtown San Antonio, created this video to provide insight into the mission of the nonprofit organization.
Geekdom opened a few months ago and has held three Startup Ignite Hackathon events along with a 3 Day Startup San Antonio Weekend and TechStars Cloud for a day. It will also host the companies selected to participate in the inaugural TechStars Cloud program. Already companies like Zippy Kid and Alan Weinkrantz Public Relations have offices there.
Geekdom from The IMG Studio on Vimeo.
Jim Plant, president and CEO of NewTek
On the small screen, current TV shows like Terra Nova, a sci-fi drama and Hawaii Five-O also use the software.
Although NewTek is far from Hollywood, the San Antonio-based company is often an integral part of any movie or television show using computerized special effects. And that means the privately-held company is booming.
NewTek now occupies two buildings on San Antonio’s Northside with 120 local employees and 250 overall. It’s doubled in size since Tim Jenison, a pioneer of desktop video, moved the company to San Antonio in 1997 from Topeka, Kansas, where he founded it in 1985.
“2012 will be the biggest year in NewTek’s history,” said Jim Plant, its president and chief executive officer.
And the growth isn’t just coming from NewTek’s software. It manufactures the NewTek Tricaster, a 42-pound portable production system that fits into a backpack and allows anyone to produce broadcast-quality video from remote locations.
The Tricaster appeals to a wide array of customers from the National Basketball Association to production professionals, entrepreneurs, journalists and corporations.
Heng Dai Media, producing Music City Roots, has a TriCaster-equipped RV to travel the country and stream concerts live. Technology reporter Leo Laporte at Twit.TV has recently expanded his Tricaster-based studio.
NewTek has a long history of bringing video to the masses.
NewTek’s flagship product was the Video Toaster, released in 1990 for the Commodore Amiga computer. The product officially went away with the demise of the Commodore in 1994.
But occasionally a NewTek customer sends one in for repair, Plant said.
“People held on to them for a long, long time,” he said.
With the demise of the Video Toaster, NewTek poured all of its energy into developing and selling Lightwave, a special effects software program aimed at television shows and moviemakers. That product drove NewTek’s bottom line for a long time, Plant said.
“We made Lightwave work on everything,” said Donetta Colboch, director of public relations, who has been with the company for more than 20 years.
“The 3-D market was lot different back then,” Plant said. “People had to spend $20,000 to $30,000 for the software and another half a million for a refrigerator-sized computer to run it on.”
NewTek’s mission was and is to make video production affordable and easy, Plant said.
“It’s not hyperbole to say that Lightwave and the Video Toaster changed the entire industry,” he said.
NewTek created the next generation of the Video Toaster based on a personal computer platform and released it in 2001.
And in 2005, NewTek launched the first Tricaster.
“That’s really been the rocket booster that has propelled us through the years,” Plant said.
Schools and colleges also use the Tricaster to cover live events. Brands like the NBA use it along with media companies, entrepreneurs, companies and nonprofit organizations. Individuals like Dick Van Dyke and Adam Carolla have Tricasters to produce their own shows.
“Anybody can start a television studio,” Plant said. “Live production is accessible and doable like never before.”
NewTek is even working with Yoko Ono and the John Lennon Tour Bus to take the Tricaster on the road next year, said Philip Nelson, NewTek’s senior vice president of strategic development.
And every year NewTek holds a contest for high school students to cover the Alamo Bowl. It selects four students to produce the event live using its Tricaster.
“It’s like Willy Wonka’s golden ticket,” Plant said.
Nelson recounts how NewTek’s Founder Jenison was quoted a long time ago saying “In the next 20 years, your favorite TV show will be made by you or someone you know.” That day has arrived and Tricaster makes it possible, Nelson said.
With the Videotoaster, NewTek aimed to democratize media through video tapes. NewTek sent out more than 300,000 copies of its “Revolution” video in the early 1990s, Donetta Colboch said.
“On the average each of those copies was seen by seven additional people,” she said. Then along came the Internet and everything moved from video tapes to digital production online.
Donetta Colboch, director of public relations for NewTek, gives a tour of the San Antonio-based company’s office. The privately held company makes Lightwave 3D software that TV and movie makers use. The software was used in Avatar, Titanic, Monsters Inc. and dozens of other movies. NewTek also makes a portable production studio called a Tricaster that makes broadcast-quality production more affordable and accessible to the masses.
We’ll publish a story later on today interviewing Jim Plant, NewTek’s president, about the company’s growth and its outlook for 2012.
Dirk Elmendorf, one of the founders of Rackspace, talks at Startup Ignite's Hack-a-thon
To start, Elmendorf went to the white board and asked the crowd of about 100 what they wanted to know. People shouted out about a dozen questions including “what was your first entrepreneurial experience, what didn’t you like about school” and “what was your biggest failure?” He wrote down their questions and then spent the next hour answering them and telling stories.
Elmendorf’s first entrepreneurial experience was with his brother selling Xeroxed space invader game sheets for a quarter.
He came from an entrepreneurial family with a lawyer dad and a mom who ran her own catering business. So he thought that was the way of the world.
Elmendorf also worked a whole summer for a company and didn’t get paid. He learned early on about the importance of contracts.
“Lesson number one write shit down and get it signed” Elmendorf said.
When he met Richard Yoo, another co-founder of Rackspace, he presented him with a four-page contract outlining the duties Elmendorf would perform.
In 1998, Yoo, Elmendorf and Pat Condon, all students at Trinity University, formed a web hosting company that became Rackspace. Graham Weston and Morris Miller met with the three later on at a burger joint and they agreed to invest in the company.
Today, Rackspace is a publicly traded company with more than 4,000 employees. Its stock, traded under the symbol RAX, closed at $44.02 share Friday on the New York Stock Exchange.
Back to his crowd-sourced talk, the thing Elmendorf didn’t like about school was it’s linear instruction.
“I can learn non-directionally all the time,” he said. “I’m a pathological learner.”
He loves Reddit and the Internet.
Someone asked him what he does when he is bored. He cooks. He once took a three-day class in meat fabrication.
What is his most important startup advice?
“It’s a team sport. It’s never just one person,” he said. “Even at the most primitive level it’s a team sport.”
It’s important to like the team you work with at a startup, Elmendorf said.
“If you don’t like them now, it’s not going to get better,” he said. “It’s like parachuting into a bad marriage.”
Elmendorf got along with Rackspace’s core team so well that he still likes them after 13 years of working together.
Also, it’s important to know what you’re good at, Elmendorf said.
“I’m not a good manager,” he said. He likes coding. “The code doesn’t get mad.”
Today, Elmendorf has a new startup, r26D, which created TruckingOffice.com, a small fleet management system. The company has 1,000 customers.
“I like projects that are targeted at small businesses,” Elmendorf said.
He advised the crowd to find a startup that customers like and are willing to pay for its products.
“You do know you can’t buy your own products,” Elmendorf said. “You need to ask yourself who is the customer and how do I serve them?”
In 2007, Rackspace Hosting moved into the former Windsor Park Mall in Windcrest, a suburb of San Antonio.
Rackspace set up its main headquarters in the old Mervyn’s department store.
Now the global web hosting company has expanded further into the former mall’s food court and the Rackspace culture of fun continues to permeate the new space. Rackspace has added a two-story sleek steel tubular slide, along with colorful Gondolas, repurposed from the old and now defunct skyline ride at Brackenridge Park downtown.
Graham Weston, chairman of Rackspace, says the company has nearly 3,000 employees in San Antonio now. It’s also moving its employees from its former headquarters on Datapoint Drive. The mall headquarters is dubbed “The Castle” after the Britsh monarchy’s Windsor Castle.
Eventually Rackspace plans to convert the entire 1.2 million square foot mall into “Tech Town,” a vibrant technology campus complete with a park for outdoor recreation.
The video posted below was shot by a Racker a few days ago and posted on Youtube.
Rackspace Hosting, which started out as a small venture in San Antonio in 1998 has since developed into a global corporation with nearly 4,000 employees.
I’ve covered the company since its early days. So it’s really thrilling to watch it launch a San Francisco office near the heart of Silicon Valley. Graham Weston, chairman of Rackspace, is in San Francisco today to celebrate the official opening. Here’s the list of today’s activities and I’ve posted a video from Rackspace that provides insight into what Rackspace does.
So many central Texas start-ups have taken off recently and some of them may need a boost to get to the next level.
This list of Austin and San Antonio incubators and accelerators help companies with a leg up in the marketplace.
Some of them have rigorous application and screening processes. Check them out to find the one that’s right for your venture.
Tech Ranch is a for-profit incubator founded in 2008 by Kevin Koym and Jonas Lamis. It offers co-working space for start-ups, consulting services and specialized programs to help entrepreneurs launch their ventures. Its flagship programs are Camp Fires, which are informal gatherings on Friday, Venture Forth, an 8-week program, and Pioneer Program, a weekly meeting coupled with monthly rent for office space.
Kevin Koym Press Kit
View more documents from Shennandoah Diaz
Capital Factory, founded in 2009 by Joshua Baer and Bryan Menell, is a seed-stage technology accelerator for startups. It runs a 10 week program that begins in May and runs through August. It ends with a Demo Day in September in which the companies pitch to potential investors, media and others.
TechStars Cloud is the newest accelerator for high-tech startups in the Silicon Hills area. It’s based at the Geekdom in downtown San Antonio. The inaugural class of TechStar Cloud companies kicks off in January. Each company receives $18,000 and access to another $100,000 loan. The 12-week program ends with a Demo Day.
Austin Technology Incubator, founded in 1989, has helped more than 200 companies. It’s part of the IC2 Institute at the University of Texas.
Texas Venture Labs at the University of Texas helps accelerate startup companies in central Texas.
SXSW Accelerator 2012 – this is the fourth year for this competition which features 48 start-up companies pitching to an audience of investors and experienced entrepreneurs. The judges then choose 18 finalists who give a final pitch and then the winners are chosen.
One Semester Start-up at the University of Texas debuted this fall. The companies will pitch to investors and others on Thursday. Professor of Innovation and Murchison Fellow of Free Enterprise Bob Metcalfe, Joshua Baer of Capital Factory and John Butler, Director of H.K. Entrepreneurship Center at the University of Texas head up the program.
This Friday, Ash Maurya, founder of Spark59 and author of Running Lean, is putting on a one-day workshop at Tech Ranch Austin. The program, which costs $249, starts at 9 a.m.
Other programs designed to spur innovation among the entrepreneurial mindset include:
Are you wonder struck over the amount of money, deals and companies flowing into the Austin area?
It’s exciting times in the Silicon Hills, the high-tech region of Austin and San Antonio.
Not only is Austin, which is known for its start-up culture and high-technology ventures, taking off like a shotgun blast, but San Antonio’s tech entrepreneurial scene has begun to bubble up to the surface like Texas crude.
So much has happened in just the past week that it’s difficult to keep on top of all the activity. So we’ve rounded up the best deals below and if we’ve left anything off, please add to it in the comments section.
San Antonio-based Rackspace Hosting Inc. has opened up satellite offices in Silicon Valley. The San Francisco Chronicle wrote a nice story about their new offices. The official opening is Dec. 1, but already employees, including Uber-blogger Robert Scobel, who runs Building 43, a technology site that specializes in video interviews with technology entrepreneurs, have moved in.
Meanwhile, Geekdom, a new collaborative workspace at the Weston Centre in downtown San Antonio, continues to host events including 3 Day Startup San Antonio and Start-up Ignite’s Hack-a-thon.
In Austin, Evernote’s CEO Phil Libin flew in to open the company’s first U.S. satellite office in the Bridgepoint Parkway Office Complex. It’s hiring a bunch of people for the Austin operations too.
Speaking of moving to town, the Austin American Statesman reported that SceneTap, a social media app for bar patrons, announced plans to relocate its operations from Chicago to Austin.
And BlackLocus, an e-commerce pricing analysis company, announced Austin as the headquarters of its company, which recently graduated from the LaunchPad program at the Austin Technology Incubator.
Meanwhile, Rapid 7, an online security firm, just landed $50 million in funding and will use the proceeds, in part, to expand its Austin operations
And ServiceMesh, a Santa Monica-based cloud platform maker, has raised $15 million and plans to expand its Austin operations, according to this story by Lori Hawkins of the Austin American Statesman.
Capital Factory graduate, WPEngine closed $1.2 million in series A financing, according to this post from Bryan Mennel at Austin Startup.
Last, but not least, SXSW continues to release a bunch of news about next year’s Interactive conference. The deadline for entering your start-up into its SXSW Accelerator is today. It was actually Friday, but SXSW, which often extends deadlines at the last minute, pushed it until today. So if you’re a totally procrastinator, get your application in now.
Tech Ranch Austin’s next Venture Forth program begins Nov. 29, and full disclosure SiliconHillsNews is going to be participating in the program. Tech Ranch still has a few openings left, but it’s limited to 15 entrepreneurs.