Category: San Antonio (Page 7 of 62)

Nick Longo and Graham Weston, co-founders of Geekdom, announce a partnership with USAA.

Under the partnership, USAA will subsidize the cost of a membership at Geekdom for military veterans, active duty military, and spouses of military, up to 50 percent, said Eric Smith, Chief Technology Officer at USAA. USAA is providing $60,000 in sponsorship which it estimates will cover about 200 members, he said.

“The goal is to leverage the unique ecosystem here at Geekdom to help more military members and their families,” he said.

At a press conference at Geekdom’s event center, Nick Longo, co-founder of Geekdom and a U.S. Air Force veteran, spoke about the need for a place like Geekdom for military personnel to go to startup companies, network with like-minded individuals and learn new tech skills. Geekdom fills a need in San Antonio, which has the nickname Military City USA for the number of active duty military and military veterans who live here.

Geekdom is building a pipeline of talented people and that is critical to build San Antonio’s workforce for the future, said Graham Weston, co-founder of Geekdom.

USAA is one of the nation’s top insurance and financial services company and Geekdom is the city’s number one technology coworking space and technology accelerator. Most importantly, the partnership benefits those who have served our country, Longo said.

Kat Strus, retired Lt. Col. United States Air Force, became a Geekdom member a year ago, to launch her company, Kaleidoscope Sharing, a human capital consulting firm. She’s also a USAA member. She sang the national anthem at the event and she’s thrilled to see the partnership between USAA and Geekdom.

Mayor Ivy Taylor also spoke at the event as well as Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff. Other city dignitaries and USAA leadership attended and several Geekdom and USAA employees had a networking event following the announcement.

USAA is also sponsoring Bunker Labs in San Antonio, a nonprofit organization that holds entrepreneurial workshops and training for military veterans. Johnathan and Sabrina Wojtewicz, directors of Bunker Lab, also attended the event. They are currently looking for an office to house Bunker Labs SA and they were looking at Geekdom and USAA’s downtown office, Wojtewicz said. They also run Bunker Labs Austin, which USAA also sponsors.

Geekdom is still the center of technology entrepreneurial activity in San Antonio as evidenced by the number of events taking place this week.

But this week, San Antonio is also the center of activity for tech leaders from all over Texas. The Academy of Math, Engineering and Science of Texas, known as TAMEST, is having its annual conference kicking off with programming Tuesday morning at the Westin Hotel downtown.

MONDAY: Dream Week: Building business with a Purpose at Geekdom’s event center from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. Brain Coach and e-Webstrategy is putting on a seminar where you will learn to access the entire brain to accelerate success, learn simple keys to building personal resilence and translate purpose into profit and more.

TUESDAY: TAMEST’s annual meeting in San Antonio at the Westin Hotel downtown with programming kicking off Tuesday morning. It features Texas leaders in the STEM fields discussing everything from oil and gas to water to healthcare and more.

WEDNESDAY: No one million cups of coffee event this week. It returns next week. Instead, Launch SA on Wednesday at noon until 1 p.m. is hosting Venture Challenge’s Idea Labs Annual Report Creation. Launch SA is kicking off its 2017 Venture Challenge soon. To participate, entrepreneurs must sign up by January 30th on its website.

WEDNESDAY: San Antonio NewTech at Geekdom’s event center starts at 6 p.m. The hour-long event features short pitches from new technology startups.

THURSDAY: Cloud Technologies Meetup at Geekdom’s event center from 6:15 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Discussion focuses on OpenStack, Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure and other products.

FRIDAY: Fermented Friday from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. – a weekly tradition at Geekdom for entrepreneurs to take a break and gather to sample some beer and socialize.

FRIDAY: Board Game Night at Geekdom – a new event to bring geeks together to play board games at the Geekdom event center from 7 p.m. until 11 p.m.

San Antonio had a roller coaster year in tech in 2016 with the sale of one of its largest technology companies, Rackspace, to Apollo Global for $4.3 billion.

It also increased the funding available to entrepreneurs through the founding of the San Antonio Angel Network. But it also saw the Techstars Cloud program leave the city.

And San Antonio lost a huge advocate for the city and its tech community this year. Alan Weinkrantz, a long time public relations professional who split his time between San Antonio and Israel, died in a tragic car accident. He is missed by so many. He truly brightened the day of everyone he met. And he worked tirelessly to help so many people and their tech companies. He always had encouraging words and sage advice to give to others. He embodied the true spirit of the #behelpful mantra everyone associated with his work.

Geekdom, a collaborative coworking space and technology incubator, turned five this year and released a report about the tremendous impact it has had in San Antonio. It now has its own building, The Rand building on Houston Street. It also has more than 1,200 members, 500 member companies and it hosted 500 events this past year. It is also the nucleus of the emerging downtown Tech District which includes about a dozen other buildings hosting startups like Codeup, Parlevel, Merge VR, Grok Interactive and others.

And now here’s the top 20 tech stories that attracted the most views on our site for San Antonio in 2016.

1. Apollo Global Acquires Rackspace for $4.3 Billion
2. USAA Plans to Expand Downtown San Antonio Office and Open an Austin Office
3. Techstars Cloud Shuts Down in San Antonio
4. San Antonio Tech Community to Host its First Startup Week
5. Driverless Vehicles and Other Projects Being Developed at Southwest Research Institute
6. Technology Advocate Alan Weinkrantz Dies in a Tragic Car Accident
7. Ten Life Sciences Companies to Watch in San Antonio
8. Cybersecurity Incubator Launches in San Antonio
9. Merge VR of San Antonio Raises $10 Million in Funding
10. San Antonio Investors Launch an Angel Network
    

11. Geekdom has a Huge Impact on San Antonio’s Tech District
12. San Antonio Raises Money for a New High Tech High School
13. Rackspace Sells Cloud Sites Business to Liquid Web
14. Google Fiber Will Continue to Roll Out in Austin and San Antonio
15. Open Cloud Academy Launches Cybersecurity Program for Veterans
16. Austin and San Antonio Ranked Top Metros for Startups
17. TPG Capital Buys Grande Communications for $650 Million
18. On the Hunt for Pokemon in San Antonio
19. Google Fiber Seeking Digital Inclusion Fellows in Austin and San Antonio
20. The Fourth Techstars Cloud Cohort Showed Off Their Ventures at Demo Day 2016
    

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Lorenzo Gomez, CEO of Geekdom, courtesy photo

Five years ago, Geekdom set up operations on the 10th floor of the Weston Centre in downtown San Antonio.

Geekdom was the brainchild of Graham Weston, former Chairman and co-founder of Rackspace and Nick Longo, founder of CoffeeCup Software. They wanted to create a technology hub in downtown San Antonio to attract the best and brightest minds in the technology industry to dream up new ideas, launch companies and create the next 10,000 new jobs for the city.

Since then, the collaborative technology coworking space has expanded and grown tremendously, said Lorenzo Gomez, its Chief Executive Officer. He spoke Monday to more than 100 people attending a Geekdom State of the Ecosystem event at Geekdom. He released a 24 page report at the meeting detailing the impact Geekdom has had on the city.

And he joked that none of it would have been possible without pizza, beer and the 1.7 million cups of coffee Geekdom members have consumed since its launch.

Today, Geekdom, which now occupies the Rand Building on Houston Street, reports it has 1,200 members, 500 member companies and it hosted 500 events in 2016, according to the report.

Geekdom has also served as the catalyst to ignite San Antonio’s downtown tech district and it has helped to bring together the technology community, Gomez said.

To date, 800 people have gone through 3 Day Startup programs held at Geekdom. It has also hosted the Techstars Cloud program, which recently shut down. Companies in Techstars Cloud raised nearly $247 million, but Gomez said Geekdom doesn’t count that venture capital investment in its overall tally since many of those companies are not based in San Antonio.

Geekdom has also worked closely with SA Tech Bloc, a community organization focused on fostering the city’s technology industry and new job creation. And it has worked with Trinity University, the University of Texas at San Antonio and Venture for America to put students to work at local startups.
To do all this, Geekdom has partnered with the San Antonio Economic Development Foundation, the City of San Antonio Economic Development Department and Bexar County’s Economic Development Office.

Also, in the last five years, Geekdom-based companies have raised $68.8 million in venture capital. This year, San Antonio tech startups are expected to post revenue of $35.7 million and they have created 658 new jobs with a median salary of $65,010, well above San Antonio’s median salary of $46,317 in 2014.
And all 115,000 square feet of the Rand Building is fully occupied, Gomez said. Geekdom is the largest tenant, followed by Google Fiber, Open Cloud Academy, WP Engine, Build Sec Foundry, Tech Bloc and the Rivard Report.

Geekdom is also at the heart of the new and developing San Antonio Tech District which includes a handful of other buildings around downtown with a couple dozen other tech companies including Grok Interactive, Codeup, Parlevel, Merge VR and more.

Technology trends moving forward for Geekdom include more Cybersecurity startups like Infocyte and Build Sec Foundry, tech companies with ties to Mexico setting up operations in San Antonio like Parlevel, Yupicall and CodersLink, startups that are led or founded by former Rackspace employees such as Jungle Disk, Promoter.io and Help Social and companies establishing offices in San Antonio to scale for growth like WP Engine.

San Antonio is also building up its talent pool through programs like Open Cloud Academy, Codeup, the Iron Yard and Austin Coding Academy. The San Antonio Independent School District with funding from HEB and the 80/20 Foundation is also establishing a high tech high school called the Centers for Applied Science and Technology downtown to provide even more talent.

The reason tech startups are so vital to the future of San Antonio’s economy is because historically small businesses provide 55 percent of all jobs since the 1970s, according to U.S. Small Business Administration data, Gomez said.

Geekdom dedicated its State of the Ecosystem report to Alan Weinkrantz, an early member of Geekdom and a champion for the technology industry in San Antonio. He died tragically last summer in a car accident in Israel.

The Cancer Therapy & Research Center at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio just landed a $5.8 million in grants from the Cancer Prevention & Research Institute of Texas.

The center plans to use almost $4 million to fund five additional years of cancer research training at the health Science Center, according to a UT Health Science Center post. It will also fund a summer program focused on cancer research.

The center will use another $900,000 grant for breast cancer research associated with preventing breast cancer. Yanfen Hu, Ph.D., associate professor of molecular medicine and a CTRC member, leads that project.

And a third grant for $900,000 over three years will focus on lymphoma. Ricardo C. T. Aguiar, M.D., Ph.D., professor of medicine and a CTRC member, leads that project.

The Cancer Therapy & Research Center at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio is one of the elite academic cancer centers in the country to be named a National Cancer Institute Designated Cancer Center, and is one of only four in Texas.

Photo courtesy of Rackspace

Its common stock, under the symbol RAX, will no longer be listed for trading on the New York Stock Exchange, effective immediately, according to a news release.

Apollo acquired Rackspace for $32 per share, a 38 percent premium compared to Rackspace’s closing stock price on August 3, the last day before news reports began circulating about the possible buyout.

“We are excited to begin this new chapter for Rackspace as a private company,” Taylor Rhodes, president and CEO of Rackspace, said in a news release. “I would like to thank our Rackers around the world who, throughout this process, have remained focused on serving our customers. Every day they deliver expertise and Fanatical Support for the world’s leading clouds. We look forward to working with Apollo as we manage Rackspace for long-term growth and expand our early leadership of the managed cloud market. We believe that the best years for Rackspace are yet to come.”

“We are pleased for our managed funds to invest in Rackspace and are excited to be associated with the company and its world class employees, who go to enormous lengths to offer industry-leading expertise and service,” David Sambur, Partner at Apollo, said in a news release. “We look forward to working together with the Rackspace management team and its employees, as well as with Searchlight to help advance Rackspace’s strategy and continue the company’s strong heritage of innovation and customer satisfaction.”

Founded in 1998, Rackspace has a rich history in San Antonio. It grew from just a few employees to more than 6,000 employees worldwide. It went public in 2008. Today, it serves business customers in more than 120 countries with offices and data centers on four continents. It reported 2015 revenue of $2 billion.