HOLT Ventures, the new investment arm of HOLT CAT, plans to select 15 startups to showcase their disruptive technology in the industrial space at the first Industrial Technology Pitch Competition at South by Southwest Interactive next year.

But the deadline is looming to participate.

Interested startups must apply by Dec. 16.

HOLT Ventures has teamed up with Caterpillar Ventures, Brick & Mortar Ventures and Cottonwood Technology Fund to host the Industrial Technology Pitch Competition. Startups have the potential to win cash prizes totaling $50,000.

HOLT Ventures is a new investment group. It plans to provide funding, mentorship and other guidance to startups tackling new ideas in the industrial and manufacturing industries.

“The Holt family’s great success in the commercial dealership arena over the past 40 years is partially due to the company’s values-based leadership platform,” Charlie Strickland, HOLT Ventures managing director, said in a news release. “As a capital partner and advisor, HOLT Ventures is furthering the Holt family’s legacy of fostering innovation by helping emerging companies and entrepreneurs in our industry.”

“As we enter a new phase in industrialization, HOLT Ventures will focus on solutions that drive efficiencies across our business and the services we provide. Companies that have a strong vision in developing efficient, innovative solutions, from process improvement to smart technologies, are what we are looking for,” Peter John Holt, HOLT CAT executive vice president and general manager, said in a news release. “There is an opportunity to connect influencers from all subsets of construction and infrastructure, and to cultivate innovative ideas specific to the industries we serve.”

Peter John Holt and Corinna Holt Richter, current leaders of HOLT CAT, will serve as members of the HOLT Ventures Advisory Committee. They also represent the fifth generation of the Holt family business, which traces their heritage to Benjamin D. Holt, 1880’s inventor of the first successful track-type tractor, widely known today as the “Caterpillar.”

Get Smart Content, which makes a personalized marketing platform, has raised $1.75 million, according to a form filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The Austin-based startup plans to use the funds to expand its sales operations and marketing efforts, according to a news release. Investors included Virgo Capital and Origin Ventures. To date, the company, founded in 2011, has raised $6.92 million.

“B2B decision-makers want to quickly understand how a vendor’s products and services can help them hit their growing corporate goals, but many websites fail to engage prospects due to their generic content,” Brent Hill, Partner, Origin Ventures, said in a news release. “Get Smart Content’s personalization technology increases the effectiveness of programmatic media spend and marketing automation by delivering the right message to the right prospect, at the right time.”

Get Smart Content’s customers include HPE, GE, and IBM.

“Marketing personalization is quickly becoming a must-have for companies looking to accelerate their growth in 2017. As marketers look to scale their account-based marketing programs, website personalization offers a unique approach to tailor the digital experience for key accounts and their associated contacts,” Jim Eustace, CEO and Co-founder of Get Smart Content, said in a news release.

Procore Technologies, which makes construction management software, has expanded its operations in Austin.

The company, based in Santa Barbara, Calif. established its second largest office in Austin three years ago and because of solid growth, the company is moving into the 18th floor of the Chase Tower building, said Doug Madey, the company’s spokesman.

Procore Technologies’ project management software is widely used in the construction industry. Its software manages all types of construction projects from industrial plants to university facilities and retail centers and more.

Procore has 50 employees in Austin with room for an additional 50 in its new space, Madey said.

Next Thursday, the company is having a office party to celebrate its expansion. Procore Technologies occupies a little more than 16,000 square feet in its new Austin office. Before moving, the company had teams working out of WeWork on Congress and the Vaughn Building on Brazos street.

The company is also hosting The Groundbreak Construction Conference in Austin next March featuring a keynote speech by Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple.

By LAURA LOREK
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

Do Austin entrepreneurs think big enough?

That’s a question Silicon Hills News has heard debated in several forums for the past six years. The conclusion is often that Austin needs bigger thinkers.

But at the “Think Big! With Mike Maples Jr., Jimmy Treybig and Brett Hurt,” panel discussion put on by Capital Factory at the Alamo Drafthouse Ritz Monday night, it seems like the needle may have moved a bit more from talking about big thinking to putting big ideas into action.

At least, according to Brett Hurt, a serial entrepreneur and investor, who plans to create the world’s largest data platform at Data.World, entrepreneurs are thinking bigger. Hurt launched the “social network for data people” in June with $14 million in funding. He previously founded and took public Bazaarvoice and founded and sold Coremetrics for $300 million. He’s also a seed investor in 45 startups and 11 VC funds.

“Austin is on this journey where it’s thinking bigger and bigger,” Hurt said.

“Our goal with Data.World is to create the most meaningful, the most abundant and basically the most important data resource in the world,” he said. “That is a huge mission…Part of the reason I launched this business and it may sound crazy to you guys but it’s not crazy to me is that I want to help put Austin more on the map. I think this business at scale is going to change the world in a massive, massive way.”

That’s the kind of thinking that appeals to Maples Jr., managing director of Floodgate, a venture capital firm in Silicon Valley. He once again advocated for Austin to come up with a Thunder Lizard, which he calls a $100 billion startup. He first talked about Thunder Lizards in 2009 at Capital Factory Demo Day. He also discussed Thunder Lizards at the Austin Technology Council’s CEO summit in 2013 and at the Austin Chamber of Commerce’s 2014 A-List Awards and earlier this year at the Longhorn Startup Demo Day at UT.

In addition to Maples Jr. and Hurt, Treybig, founder of Tandem Computers, also joined the panel discussion which was moderated by Stephen Straus, an Austin entrepreneur and investor. Treybig is currently venture partner for New Enterprise Associates, one of the largest venture capital companies in the world.

Here’s a few takeaways from the discussion.

AUSTIN NEEDS MORE BIG EXITS – “My thought about Austin is we do not have enough big liquidity events,” Treybig said. Big exits put money in the pockets of employees and it’s good for the community because those employees are more likely to go and start a new venture, he said.

BIG MISSIONS – “Fundamentally, what I’m looking for in thinking big, does the team involved think of the mission of their company on that kind of level or are they just doing a startup.,” said Maples Jr., managing partner at Floodgate. He referenced the NASA teams who worked diligently on the 1969 Apollo 11 mission, during which Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon. They cut through crap and got things done, he said.

LOCATION DOESN’T MATTER – “I think every company is its own snowflake,” Maples Jr. said. “Bill Gates didn’t need to be in Silicon Valley to start Microsoft. Jeff Bezos didn’t need to be in Silicon Valley to start Amazon. Great companies happen because of great founders not because of where they are or who the VCs are or any of that nonsense. What it comes down to is great founders pursuing their passion, executing with brutal precision and bringing people along with them and the rest of the world to their point of view. And so it’s not about whether Austin thinks big. It’s about who can we find in Austin or anywhere who wants to create that Thunder Lizard amazing company that changes things and changes people’s point of view.”

VC FUNDING GAP – Treybig and Hurt said there is a funding gap for financing big ideas in Austin. Maples said the funding gap is a myth.

MIGRATION OF ENTREPENEURS TO AUSTIN – “Every month, I meet with someone who blows me away who moved here that is thinking huge,” Hurt said. “They have the capital. They’ve been successful. Now they are moving to Austin and now they are on to their next big idea.”

SERIAL ENTREPRENEURS – Serial entrepreneurs get better and better and become bigger and bigger as they become more successful” Hurt said. “In terms of my own evolution as an entrepreneur I have started to think bigger with each iteration.“

At the Think Big! Capital Factory panel discussion at Alamo Drafthouse Ritz Monday, Joshua Baer, founder of Capital Factory, asked a question about when is it time to quit doing a mediocre startup and work on something legendary.

Mike Maples Jr., managing partner of Floodgate, a venture capital firm, answered with advice that is not only good for startups but for everyone.

JOSHUA BAER: “I’m a first time entrepreneur. I’m working on some startup. It’s Uber for Uber. It’s not that next thing. I’m not deep down as passionate, as Brett said, about feeling like I’m saving the world. Do I keep trying to make this thing work to get some experience under my belt? Do I go find a startup to join? How do I get inspired so I want to go do that thing?”

MIKE MAPLES JR: “My view on this is extreme but I come by it honestly. I just don’t think you have that much time in this life. And I think that every day is a gift. And you should not squander it on anything other than things that you think are frickin excellent. People that you think are excellent. Ideas that are excellent. Things that honor the gift of your time. Your time to have a career in this industry will go faster than you can ever imagine. And if you only get involved with things that you think have a chance to be legendary and with people who are similarly legendary in their ambitions, you’ll get to enjoy it twice. ‘Cause you’ll get to look back on it and remember how awesome it was. I say this to people whether they are in a startup or whether they are in a big company if the thing that you are working on right now is not what you would define as the ultimate expression of your passion to be great and to be around great people and to honor the gift of your time, you got a choice to make. You can either fix it and make it great or put it on your stop do list and find something great. But I’m pretty extreme that way. But I just think that not enough people respect their time enough in this world and realize how little of it they really have. And I’d I rather fail trying to land on the moon and miss it slightly than just do a startup.”

By LAURA LOREK
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

University of Texas at Austin Chemistry Professor Livia Eberlin is creating a better way for surgeons to rapidly perform and diagnose cancer biopsies.

With a new pen-like medical device with a mass spectrometer, surgeons can extract molecules from tissue and test samples in real time. The sample is analyzed through a database to identify patterns of molecules that would match positively with different types of cancers. Eberlin is currently testing the device with thyroid, lung and ovarian cancer.

Eberlin spoke last Thursday evening at the monthly StART Studio put on by the Innovation Center at the University of Texas at Austin and held at the Ernest Cockrell Jr. Building on campus. She was one of three professor-led startups with plans to commercialize technology spinning out of their labs.

The monthly gatherings are sponsored by the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce, the University of Texas at Austin Office of Technology Commercialization and WeWork Austin.

With the MasSpec Pen, the idea is to make the fully automated disposal pens cheaply, Eberlin said. She received a $200,000 grant from the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas earlier this year to develop the device, software and database. Her team has also received funding from the National Institutes of Health.

The MasSpec Pen would be considered a new medical device and it would require U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval. The device has a 97 percent accuracy rate. That compares to the method surgeons use right now in which they have a 22 percent error rate by taking a tissue sample, Eberlin said. Her team is evaluating whether to form their own startup or license the technology to a company that makes spectrometers.

Next up, Professor of Chemical Engineering Roger Bonnecaze, co-director of NASCENT, presented Sandbox Semiconductor, which just won the Idea to Product Competition at the University of Texas at Austin. He serves as Chief Technology Officer of the company and UT Graduate Student Meghali Chopra serves as Chief Executive Officer. Her twin sister, UT Graduate Student Sonali Chopra is the company’s Chief Operating Officer. The company’s product is RODeo, which provides rapid recipe development for plasma etching. With RODEo, creating an etch process is up to three times faster than traditional methods. It is also much less expensive and more accurate.

Lastly, Professor of Mechanical Engineering Preston Wilson introduced AdBm Technologies, an underwater noise abatement company. The initial research for the startup spun out of research Professor Wilson did in 2008 for the U.S. Navy on detecting sea mines during the first Gulf War.

Mark S. Wochner, a Phd student in Professor Wilson’s lab, now serves as president and chief executive of AdBm. In 2014, the startup, which is a portfolio company of the Austin Technology Incubator, received $1.3 million in financing from the Central Texas Angel Network, known as CTAN. The company has also received grants from Shell, NASA and others.

AdBm has created a noise abatement system that allows businesses to meet underwater noise regulations while installing offshore oil rigs, wind turbines, foundations for bridges and other applications. The system is an air bubble curtain that mitigates subsurface noise that can be harmful to marine animals.

The company’s next step is to do a full-scale demonstration of its technology, Wochner said. So far, it has done three smaller scale demonstrations with two in the North Sea and one in Alaska, he said. During tests, AdBm’s technology has resulted in underwater noise reduction of 50 decibels, Wochner said.

At InnoTech Austin, a day long series of sessions focused on Women in Technology. It included one on one mentoring meetings and lots of talks designed to help women succeed in the technology field.

In the afternoon, Barbary Brunner, Chief Executive Officer of the Austin Technology Council, moderated a panel discussion on creating a welcoming culture and being inclusive in the workplace. The panelists included Kristin Janik, senior manager and software applications engineer at Charles Schwab, Lisa Fritsch, speaker, author, strategist and servant entrepreneur and Tracy Briscoe, senior director of enterprise information and business systems at Whole Foods Market.

Here’s seven key takeaways from that panel discussion:

AUTHENTICITY – Create an environment where every person can be their authentic self, Fritsch said. “Be who you are. Bring your values. Bring your insight.” That means women shouldn’t have to act like men to succeed in the workplace. Companies must value everyone’s skills and contributions to better recruit, train and retain women in tech, Fritsch said.

PROVIDE TRAINING – Get rid of the notion that there is a best candidate, that simply doesn’t exist, said Fritsch. “If we want to intentionally increase diversity we have to begin with presence and then we have the perfection come later,” she said. Make sure when you do recruit women or women of color that they have the tools, training and support to perform, she said.

ACKNOWLEDGE BIASES – “Each of us have to own your own bias,” Fritsch said. If you tell people they have biases, people don’t want to hear that. People must conquer that bias on their own and intentionally, she said. Create an environment where people acknowledge their own biases and then get training to deal with them in the workplace.

OUTREACH TO YOUNG WOMEN – Today, 60 percent of undergraduate degrees are earned by women but just 13 percent of those degrees are in computer science, Janik said. “We need to start younger to get girls interested in technology.” Groups like Girls in Tech, Girls Who Code and others help to encourage girls to enter Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, known as STEM, fields.

CRITICISM – Women criticizing other women in the workplace for how they dress, wear their hair and put on their makeup can lead to a hostile work environment. Women should be allowed to show up and be who they need to be to be successful, Briscoe said. Women need to make a conscious effort to lift other women up in the workplace, Fritsch said. “Find one or two other folks you can get behind and help them find their voice so they can succeed,” she said. “Don’t engage in conversations when someone is being negative about another woman. Find something good and valuable about that person and talk about something good they bring to the table. That’s something we can do to protect ourselves from being gossiped about. It also helps to embolden other women.”

ADVOCATE – “In school, you get a good grade, you get acknowledged, the workplace doesn’t work that way,” Fritsch said. Women must learn to speak out and toot their own horn. They must advocate on their own behalf and ask for what they want. It’s not good enough to just work hard and do a good job. Women must also promote themselves. Ask for more than you’re willing to accept, Briscoe said. “Ask for the next big thing and let folks know you’re willing to take it on.” Don’t be complacent. Never stop learning and growing and developing yourself, Janik said.

MENTORSHIP – Find a mentor and turn your mentors into your sponsors, Brunner said. They will advocate on your behalf and lead to career advancement.

By LAURA LOREK
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

The InnoTech Austin Beta Summit is where Austin startups go to get exposure – many for the first time.

In the past, Bryan Menell, Chief Operating Officer at AngelSpan, has hosted companies like Spredfast, OtherInbox, Trust Radius and Compare Metrics. The Beta Summit has a good track record of picking and spotting things that turn out to be really cool, he said.

“These are ideas that are just getting off the ground,” Menell said. “They are probably things you have not seen before. Many of these companies just launched or just announced or are just about to launch.”

On Thursday, five companies gave six minute presentations each which included a live demo of their product. The companies included Stacks, Get Involved, Cingo, Meretz and Face Lab by Jackrabbit Mobile.

Ian Clarke, founder and Chief Executive Officer at Stacks, a financial technology startup, kicked off the presentations.

In 2015, Clarke founded Stacks, which is based at Capital Factory, as an app that connects to a person’s bank account and other data sources and then uses machine learning to figure out ways to save and cut personal finance expenses.

Stacks is the fifth venture-backed startup that Clarke has founded or co-founded including OneSpot, Thoof, Revvr and the Freenet Project.

When people get a salary, and have limited time they don’t keep good tabs on where all of their money is going, Clarke said. When Clarke left his previous company a year and a half ago, he decided to audit his expenses to find out where all his money was going. He ended up shaving hundreds of dollars off his monthly expenses just by eliminating unnecessary charges like a credit reporting service and negotiating for a lower rate on his cable and cell phone bills.
“At the end of it I was able to save $400 a month,” Clarke said.

He commissioned a survey to find out if others experienced the same problem. He found that on average, people waste $100 to $200 a month on unnecessary expenses. That is the problem he set out to solve with Stacks, an iPhone app, that keeps tracks of monthly expenses. The app is free and makes money from advertisers and sponsors.

It’s like Google Search for your own financial data, Clarke said. The app is in beta testing right now. It will be launching in about a month, he said.

Next up, Eric Abrahams, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Meretz, gave a demonstration of his company’s app that provides rewards to gamers for exercising throughout the day.

Obesity is a huge epidemic in the U.S. and worldwide, said Abrahams.

“The problem is people would rather be playing games than working out,” he said.

That’s the problem Meretz seeks to solve. It provides gamers with points or rewards for being active. People can trade those points in for virtual currency in a game or other perks. The app connects to a fitness tracker like Fitbit or through Health tracker apps on a mobile phone.

The Meretz platform is free. The app makes money from game developers that pay fees for Meretz users who connect their games. The points can also be used toward gym memberships, restaurant discounts and merchandise.

Meretz, with five employees, is also based at Capital Factory. The app launched in February and is currently in beta testing.

The third startup to present, Get Involved lets people contribute to fundraising campaigns by volunteering time, sharing campaigns on social networks, creating wish lists of items needed, money and other resources.

Carol O’Brien, founder and chief executive officer, came up with the idea for Get Involved and enlisted her brother in law, Michael Wisor, founder and chief operating officer, to help bring the idea to reality. The site launched two weeks ago and has users raising money for a block party and a band booster club.

The penultimate startup to present, Cingo, is a customer service application that provides technology for companies to engage with customers in real-time through messaging, chat, voice and video chat within one app. The product is designed so conversations can go from chat to voice to video and even from different devices like mobile to desktop without a hitch, said Kobus Marneweck, Cingo’s Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer.

Lastly, Jackrabbit Mobile, a mobile app developer and design firm, demonstrated Face Lab. The Android app captures photos every few seconds and aggregates data based on those photos along demographic lines including age range, sex and mood. The app can give retail store owners information about customers while they are in the shop. It can even connect to a customer’s purchase history and more. Gibran Gaytan, Android developer, created the app at Jackrabbit during his 20 percent time, in which employees get to work on new projects of their own creation. Nina Ho, manager of strategic partnerships at Jackrabbit Mobile, showed a demo of how the data analysis software works.