By LAURA LOREK
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

As a little girl in Brussels, Belgium, Diane von Furstenberg did not know what she wanted to do when she grew up but she wanted to be a woman of independence who could pay her own bills and drive her own bus.

She got what she wanted.

Fashion Mogul Diane von Furstenberg created a global fashion luxury brand and invented the iconic knit jersey wrap dress.

But her advice to the more than 7,000 women attending the Texas Conference for Women on Tuesday at the Austin Convention Center was to be curious.

“Just give everything a chance,” she said.

Early in her career, she worked at a textile scarf manufacturing plant in Milan, Italy and through that experience she learned so much about the fashion industry.

During a trip to visit her boyfriend in New York, von Furstenberg started looking at fashion in a different way. When she returned to the factory, she got inspired to make something out of the jersey fabric that the Milan designer was pioneering to use for fashionable T-shirts.

Shortly after that, von Furstenberg got married and moved to New York. She also had two babies. She took fabric from the Milan factory and she made it into samples of a top and a matching skirt and that went well. That inspired her to create the wrap dress.

“It was immediately a huge success, why I don’t know,” von Furstenberg said. The dress empowered women and gave them confidence, she said.

“It was proper but it was also sexy,” she said. “The guys liked them and their mothers didn’t mind.”

The rest is history, she said. It’s all detailed her in book: “The Woman I Wanted to Be.”

“The dialog that is the most important is the one that you have with yourself,” von Furstenberg said. “The most important relationship you have in life is the one you have with yourself. If you have that, every other relationship in life is a plus and not a minus.”

The other important person in her life that led her to become the woman that she is today is her mother, von Furstenberg said. Her mother was a Holocaust survivor. She was in the Auschwitz Nazi concentration camp for 13 months. When she came out, she weighed just 49 pounds. She returned home and married her fiance. Doctors told her not to have a child for five years because she might not live and her child would not be normal.

“I was born nine months later and I was not normal,” von Furstenberg said.

Her mother and those experiences shaped her life. The torch of freedom is what von Furstenberg carries in her hand. Her mother taught her fear is not an option.

“What I have learned over the years is all women are strong,” von Furstenberg said. “I have never met a woman who is not strong. Sometimes there is a brother, a father, a religion, but most often it is themselves. They are afraid to show their strength.”

During the next 10 years, von Furstenberg said she plans to use her voice for people who have no voices. She wants to create a network of people who advocate on behalf of others. She has created an email address for people to register at voices@dvf.com

By LAURA LOREK
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

The tech industry has a diversity problem with Black, Hispanic and Asian employees making up just 7 percent, 8 percent and 14 percent respectively of the technology workforce in the U.S., according to an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission report.

And women make up 35.6 percent of the tech workforce.

Those statistics need to change for the U.S. to retain its leadership position in the technology industry worldwide, said Jay Williams, U.S. Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Economic Development. He conducted a press conference at Austin City Hall on Tuesday to announce $1.5 million in federal grants going to Texas organizations.

Overall, 35 organizations received a total of $15 million in grants through the Economic Development Administration’s Regional Innovation Strategies program. The grant recipients are a diverse group, Williams said.

The awardees include the program’s first investments in historically black colleges and universities in the South; a women-focused, early-stage capital fund, True Wealth Ventures in Austin; a Native American-centered, proof-of-concept program in Oklahoma; and urban innovation hubs honing in on fashion technology in New York and social innovation in Louisiana.

Williams traveled to Austin to make the announcement because four of the awardees were in the state of Texas and the University of Texas at Austin received two grants, he said.

“Austin and the region here has a long history of innovation and collaboration,” Williams said. “It was just the perfect place to make the announcement.”

Innovation and entrepreneurship has been for far too long a closed club that didn’t have the diversity that fully unleashed the power of entrepreneurs and individuals in this country, Williams said.

“The President is fond of saying that one’s destination should not be determined by one’s zip code,” he said. “The fact is that opportunity is not equally distributed. Talent is. But opportunity is absolutely not. So that’s why we are proud this round of grantees represents multiple rural award winners, multiple urban innovation centers.”

Congress funded the $15 million in grants, which is a 50 percent increase from 2015, Williams said. It’s a testament to the demand and success the awardees are seeing across the country.

To highlight the need for diversity and inclusiveness, Williams mentioned a quoted from Johnathan Holifield who said we won the last economic revolution with one hand tied behind our back.

“When he said that he meant we underutilized, neglected and overlooked so many segments of the population,” Williams said. “If we’re going to compete successfully in the next century we’ve got to make sure they are on the playing field and we’re tapping into the ingenuity and creativity of those segments of society.”

The federal grants are not meant to take the place of the private sector but are meant to be “catalytic,” Williams said. The federal grants help to “de-risk” early stage investment in diverse entrepreneurs and provides funds for overlooked opportunities, he said.

And the grants aren’t focused on any industry, he said.

“We’ve seen water. We’ve seen agriculture. We’ve seen food processing. We’ve seen the whole gamut of awardees in our regional innovation strategies program,” he said.

By LAURA LOREK
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

At Austin City Hall, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Economic Development Jay Williams Tuesday announced $15 million in grants for 19 states including $1.5 million earmarked for Texas with the bulk of that going to organizations in Austin and San Antonio.

“The diversity in programs and regional representation proves that innovation and entrepreneurship are igniting all corners of the country and is a recognized tool for economic growth and resilience,” Williams said during a press conference.

“If we are going to continue to be the most dynamic and prolific economy in the face of the planet, it has to be an inclusive process,” Williams said. “We have to tap into those under served, neglected and often overlooked segments of our population because innovation exists everywhere.”

The largest local grant of $500,000 went to the Austin Technology Incubator, part of the IC2 Institute at the University of Texas at Austin for its Texas Smart Water Innovation Cluster.

The three year grant will allow ATI to establish the Austin H20 Cluster, foster new partnerships, build the water ecosystem and develop a network of talent locally, said Isaac Barchas, director of the IC2 Institute.

“Texas’ traditional strength in the oil and gas industry is giving us a leg up in water,” Barchas said. Every barrel of oil extracted from the ground in Texas, generates eight barrels of water, he said.

The American Society of Civilian Engineers estimates the U.S. needs $3.6 trillion worth of existing water infrastructure work with the primary focus on fixing leaky pipes and preventing contamination like the Flint, Michigan water crisis in which high levels of lead infiltrated the city’s water system, Barchas said. Austin’s ATI water incubator plans to work on solving those big problems, he said.

“What we’re going to need to do as a community is apply technology to an existing infrastructure,” he said.

Austin won two awards which highlights the city’s entrepreneurial spirit and focus on innovation, said Austin Mayor Steve Adler.

The ATI award will help Austin create a digital water cluster, which is going to lead to at least 100 new innovative water technologies, Adler said. It will generate millions of dollars of economic activity for the city and create jobs, he said.

Austin is the perfect location for this cluster, Adler said. The city has been the fastest growing city in the nation for the last five years and projections are that it will continue to be the fastest growing city for the next 25 years, he said.

“We are ground zero for urban areas that are dealing with urban growth,” Adler said.

The challenges cities like Austin face will be solved by small businesses and entrepreneurs, he said.

This grant strengths the partnership Austin has with the Austin Technology Incubator, which has been one of the most successful civic partnerships in the country since 1989. The partnership has resulted in more than $900 million worth of capital being raised for startups in the community, $2.5 billion in value created in companies and more than 7,000 jobs being created.

ATI has already created a clean energy cluster, wireless and IT cluster, biotechnology cluster and “now it’s time for water, let’s add a little water,” Adler said.

The University of Texas at San Antonio’s South-Texas Innovation Partnership Program, known as S-TIPP, received $499,997.

The plan for the grant is to build out regional innovation nodes to foster local entrepreneurship and they will be networked for tech transfer, said Bijo Mathew, principal investigator on the grant and director of the Small Business Development Center Technology Commercialization Center at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

“It’s a focus on building capacity for innovation in South Texas and it’s going to include Austin, Corpus Christi and the valley,” Mathew said. “It’s a way to diffuse knowledge across all these communities.”

And the Gender Lens Impact Fund at the University of Texas at Austin, led by True Wealth Ventures, a venture capital fund that invests in women-led startups, received $250,000.

The only other Texas recipient was the WERX Foundation of McKinney, Texas. It received $345,895.

Overall, the U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker announced 35 organizations in 19 states will receive nearly $15 million focused on startups, early-stage seed capital funds and commercialization programs through the Economic Development Administration’s Regional Innovation Strategies Program.

The $250,000 Seed Fund Support grant over two years for True Wealth Ventures will go to marketing the fund to potential investors, sourcing deals and connecting with women entrepreneurs as well as doing due diligence on deals, said Kerry Rupp, partner in the $20 million venture fund focused on investing in consumer health and sustainable consumer women-led ventures in Texas. The grant is not for money to put into the startups. The fund is raising that separately, she said. True Wealth Ventures has closed on $4.7 million of its $20 million fund and made its first investment of $500,000 into UnaliWear, a smart watch maker for older adults led by Jean Anne Booth.

True Wealth Ventures’ fund intends to invest in approximately 12 early-stage women-led companies over the next several years.

The Secretary of the Army Eric Fanning visited Capital Factory on Friday to announce a new program called Hack the Army, the U.S. Army’s first bug bounty challenge in partnership with HackerOne.

“The largest branch of the U.S. military is preparing to be hacked to enhance its security in the coming weeks,” according to a post on HackerOne.“Working with the hacker community is an effective way to uncover vulnerabilities in even the most powerful organizations.”

In addition to Sec. Fanning, others attending the event included Alex Rice, HackerOne CTO and co-founder as well as HackerOne partner Katie Moussouris of Luta Security.

The Hack the Army program will be run through HackerOne and will provide registered hackers the chance to compete for bounties by finding and reporting vulnerabilities in the information technology infrastructure to the U.S. Department of the Army.

The program comes on the heels of the Hack the Pentagon bug bounty program. During that program, hackers found 138 vulnerabilities during a 24 day period, according to HackerOne. It reports that the Department of Defense plans to run more hacking programs with various departments and the Hack the Army is the first of those to roll out.

More details on how to participate in the challenge will be released soon.

The 13th annual InnoTech Austin, one of the city’s longest running technology conferences, takes place next Thursday at the Austin Convention Center.

The conference organizers announced finalists for its 2016 IT executives of the year awards. The winners will be announced at an awards reception Thursday afternoon at the conference.

The finalists for corporate IT executive of the year include Everett Plante, vice president of IT and Chief Information Officer of Silicon Labs, Christine Rose, Chief Information Officer and head of e-commerce for Kendra Scott, Jeff Smedley, Chief Information Officer of J&J Worldwide Services and Charles Valentine, vice president of technology services of Indeed.

The finalists for public IT executive of the year include Mike Bell, Chief Information Officer of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Brad Englert,
Chief Information Officer of the University of Texas at Austin and Blake Holman, Chief Information Officer of St. David’s Foundation.

The finalists for Information Technologist of the Year include Ben Doherty, co-founder of Favor, Mark Magnuson, CTO of Concepture, Thomas Quintana, director of Next Generation Technologies at Inteliquent and Ben Bentzin, founder and CEO of Interactive Health Technologies LLC.

To register for InnoTech Austin, use the discount code NOV6C to receive 20 percent off registration prices for InnoTech or any special event including Women in Tech Summit, HealthTech ATX, DevOps CD summit and more. Check here for the complete agenda.

InnoTech Austin expects more than 1,500 attendees for the one-day conference, sponsored by Austin-based DoubleHorn, a leading cloud services brokerage.

Another highlight of the conference is the “Beta Summit” featuring six standout Austin startups presenting live demos.

“With technology evolving faster and faster all the time, we work hard to ensure that INNOTECH Austin remains relevant for attendees,” Sean Lowery, Director, Innotech, said in a news statement. “This year’s conference has exciting, new sessions on hot topics such as drones, the future of cloud technologies and mobility, cyber security issues like ransomware and the dark web, and much more. Our speakers are among the best and the brightest from organizations at the forefront of technology in their industries – Dell Medical School, RideScout, Charles Schwab, Amazon and Austin Technology Council, to name a few.”

By DAVE MANZER
Sponsored Contribution to Silicon Hills News

Many are familiar with Austin’s official slogan: “Live Music Capital of the World.” The city officially adopted the slogan in 1991 after it was discovered that Austin had more live music venues per capita than any other city in America.

In a bit of marketing hocus pocus, the city council seized on the idea of making Austin the live music capital of the world, not just America. It turned out to be a brilliant move. Much like a business does with a tagline and vision statement, Austin hoped its new slogan would make it a destination for live music the world over.

Austin rocks

Notwithstanding recent news about Austin’s loss of some high-profile live music venues, Austin has indeed attained a special place in the world music scene. Austin City Limits has become the longest running music series in American TV history. What’s more, it continues to attracts top music acts from around the world for Austinites to enjoy even as it cruises into its 42nd season.

Live music is still alive and well, thanks in no small part to ACL Fest and SXSW, which bookend the live music festival scene and have made Austin a household name for music lovers the world over. The bottom-line has been impressive, too, with annual revenue generated by the music industry now approaching $2 billion. In short, it’s hard to argue that Austin’s marketing strategy has not paid huge economic and brand awareness dividends for the city.

With that branding coup under its belt, Austin now has a unique opportunity to do for startups what it did for music.

But wait, Austin already has a vibrant, high-octane startup ecosystem, right? Why should we muck it up with an Austin City Council vote on a slogan?

Because when private and public visions merge there is an even greater awareness of the need to help the industry prosper, and when an industry prospers the city benefits with more jobs and highly localized spending.

Because when the city council declared Austin “Live Music Capital of the World” the slogan was used in all of its promotions and gradually became part of the city’s mystique.

Because even though Austin is a startup hotbed it still needs to establish a more sustainable startup culture in the form of more venture capital and angel investors with an appetite for risk and startups that make it to the IPO stage.

Startup reality check

Indeed, the Austin startup scene is far from perfect. It still lags Silicon Valley and New York City in terms of VC activity. Our average deal size tends to be far smaller than other markets, which forces many of our startups to pump the brakes on the kind of growth many tech startups on both coasts are known for.

Fewer and smaller investments also bring a host of economic challenges that impact many industries that exist to support the startup ecosystem. Finally, many startups either flame out or get acquired. Not that we should blame hard-working entrepreneurs for wanting to cash out at some point; it’s their economic prerogative. But if more local startups grew and matured into larger enterprises – think Dell or Whole Foods – then the entire startup ecosystem would be much richer for it.

So can a simple slogan really make a difference? Do we really think we can compete with Silicon Valley?

Trying to become the next Silicon Valley misses the point. Just look back again at the music scene in Austin. By adopting the Live Music Capital of the World brand, nobody ever expected that Austin would actually eclipse LA, NYC or even Nashville as a center for the music recording industry. What Austin did do, however, was establish a target for the city to become an epicenter of live musical performances. It’s hard to say the city hasn’t accomplished much of that objective from what amounted to a very humble beginning.

Austin tops the list

Why shouldn’t Austin claim to be Startup Capital of the World? We do startups well here. In fact, back in August Forbes declared that for the second year in a row (based on a Kaufman Foundation study) Austin is #1 on the list of America’s top 40 metro areas for startups.

For those who have been in Austin long that Forbes ranking comes as no surprise. We excel at collaboration and launching low cost startups, perhaps better than any other city of our size. We have resources of all kinds – public and private – to support the risk-takers and trailblazers. We have an incredibly vibrant food startup community from new food trucks and restaurants to craft liquor distillers and cold brew coffee makers. You can’t throw a stone in Austin these days without hitting startup professionals hard at work in coffee shops, tech accelerators and coworking spaces (see the Austin’s Startup over Coffee map).

Let’s not forget that Austin is home to the world’s preeminent tech startup festival in SXSW Interactive. Every year over 30,000 the world’s leading tech luminaries, aspiring startups and tech professionals converge on the Austin Convention Center to learn, share and network. SXSWi is where the tech world comes to discover hot new trends and break-out brands all the while enjoying a carnival-like atmosphere of parties where attendees can enjoy some VR, AR or AI with generous amounts of tacos and beer.

We also have many of the things that startup professionals value: a vibrant downtown full of great restaurants, coffee shops, hiking and biking paths, water sports and watering holes, great educational institutions like UT, ACC and St. Edward’s University. And, of course, we are the Live Music Capital of the World.

It’s our time!

It’s undeniable. The world really does look to Austin for inspiration when it comes to its live music scene. Why shouldn’t we show the rest of the world how Austin does startups?

Whether we adopt an official slogan or just a symbolic tagline for a city-wide call-to-action matters little. Austin’s startup growth has been astonishing thus far, but nothing lasts forever without careful nurturing. We can use our existing startup ecosystem — one of the richest in the U.S. — to become a beacon for startups from around the world. Austin can, in turn, benefit from the talent of international startup professionals to enrich and diversify its startup scene.

It’s time for Austin to become “Startup Capital of the World.”

Dave is the president of Manzer Communications. With offices in Austin and Denver, Manzer Communications is a marketing communications and PR agency serving technology startups and fast-growth enterprises with offices in Austin and Denver. Dave founded PR over Coffee, is a mentor at Startup Aggieland and just launched Startup over Coffee, a crowdsourced map for startups and startup professionals in Austin.

This is a sponsored post.

Joseph Kopser is global president of moovel, a division of Daimler Ag, the maker of Mercedes-Benz. But he’s also a successful entrepreneur as co-founder of RideScout, a startup smartphone app created to increase transportation efficiency by getting people out of their cars and into other public, commercial and private options. Before that, Kopser spent 20 years in the Army, retiring in 2013 as Lt. Colonel. In addition to moovel, Kopser co-founded The Bunker Labs in Austin, an organization dedicated to supporting veteran entrepreneurs. Moovel announced plans to relocate its 36 employees in Austin to its Portland, Oregon headquarters today. Kopser will stay in Austin. This interview was conducted a few weeks ago before the announcement.

Q. What brought you to Austin?

JK. Austin’s reputation. I was nearing my 20 years in the Army. I wanted to transition to a part of the country where Amy and I could put down roots. I applied for and received a position to teach leadership and strategy at the University of Texas. That position introduced me to the people who make the city so great. It gave me the inspiration to kick start RideScout.

Q. How did you start RideScout?

JK. The thinking behind it began in Washington, D.C. when I was working at the Pentagon. I only had five miles to get to work. I had lots of choices on how to get there. But no matter what mode I chose each one came with a certain cost benefit. If I did drive in, I could control my own schedule but I had to deal with this 4,000-pound albatross. So, this idea started rolling around in my brain. I didn’t do much about it until I moved to Austin. I immediately became involved in the ecosystem of entrepreneurship. Nights and weekends I was building the RideScout app.

Q. What resources in Austin helped you the most?

JK. Obviously, the University of Texas. Since I was on campus every day I sought out Johnny Butler who taught a class on entrepreneurship. I began auditing his class. That helped me learn the language. Bob Metcalfe and everything he was doing in the innovation and entrepreneurship scene helped me. He connected me to the Longhorn Startup camp. Beyond that just the people and the open world of connections in Austin. I would say something to Bob this is what I’m building and what do you think. And he would give me feedback and tell me who else to talk to about it. Also, the Austin Cofounders Meetup that goes on at Capital Factory every month. I needed a technical cofounder. I tell people I built RideScout in Austin one beer at a time. I’d take everyone out for a beer and get their advice.

A. How did Daimler acquire RideScout?

JK. Daimler’s Mercedes Benz not only invented the automobile. They did a lot of innovation for automobiles including antilock brakes, pioneered the airbag. And they recognized 10 years ago the need for transportation alternatives. They pioneered Car2Go – one of their first ventures into this whole new world of shared mobility and on demand mobility. They acquired RideScout two years ago. Then RideScout acquired GlobeSherpa.

Q. As global president of moovel what is your role?

JK. I’m working to align all the initiatives Mercedes has for smart cities. Daimler created Freightliner Inspiration, the first autonomous 18-wheel truck, Mercedes Benz created the Vision Van, a drone delivery van. There are also autonomous electric passenger city buses. So many innovations along all these lines and more.

Q. How does Austin fit into the smart cities initiative?

JK. We didn’t get the Department of Transportation Smart City grant but that doesn’t mean these things went away. We didn’t get the money, but shoot we still need to do all of this. moovel and Mercedes can participate in smart cities. Austin is also aspiring to be part of the smart state innovations between Austin, Houston, San Antonio and Dallas.

Q. How long is it going to take these innovations to get on to the street?

JK. They are already happening. Cap Metro has an app that serves as a ticket along with schedules, maps and other information. Uber and Lyft are gone for now but new ridesharing companies are entering the market. We’re working to create a car pool van system that allows commuters to come into town. Special bus lanes. Mopac has variable tolling lanes that will change the way people get around. These are all going to make incremental changes. There won’t be one thing overnight that will improve everything. All of them will come together. Austin is such an attractive community to people like me and others that want to move here. We always must be thinking of how we get ahead of this problem.

Q. What role do you see veterans playing in Austin’s economy?

JK. We need more creative leaders. I see veterans really being able to play a role in this for three reasons. We build teams well. That comes from the natural way the military operates. We can solve hard problems quickly. When you are in austere conditions you don’t want to contemplate 40 things that might work but one or two things that work quickly. And we’ve been through very stressful situations– once you’ve been in those situations you don’t sweat the small stuff and get too emotional or excited when things break or fail fast. That’s why veterans can uniquely come in and help so many of these companies. Veterans are creative people who want to build things for the benefit of others and society. That’s why I think the Bunker is such a great entity. The Defense Department is creating a Defense Innovation Unit Experimental, or DIUx outpost here. I’ve been a big proponent of Austin, Texas. This city has some incredibly unique engineers and innovators with ties to the military. There’s no better place in the country to put this DIUx than Austin, Texas

Editor’s note: Joseph Kopser was featured in Silicon Hills News’ 2016 Austin Technology calendar. SHN will run Q&As with the people featured in the calendar. For information on how you can sponsor or be a part of the 2017 Austin Technology calendar, please contact Laura@SiliconHillsNews.com. Thank you.

In April, Austin-based RideScout and Portland-based GlobeSherpa merged and re-branded to form moovel North America, a subsidiary of Daimler.

And on Wednesday, moovel announced plans to consolidate its operations and house everyone at its Portland, Oregon headquarters. All of 36 employees in the Austin office are being offered a full relocation package to move to Portland or a severance package if they choose not to relocate, according to moovel spokeswoman Patti Kelly.

Joseph Kopser, co-founder of RideScout and global president of moovel, “will remain in Austin and will be leaving moovel sometime in the near future,” Kelly wrote in an email. “He is committed to continuing to assist Daimler with their ongoing Smart City initiatives. More details will be forthcoming soon.”

Overall, moovel has 116 employees. It also has 16 transit agency contracts in the U.S.

“In September alone, more than 1.3 million public transport tickets were sold using moovel transit mobile ticketing technology in the US. Portland’s TriMet Tickets app, powered by moovel transit, sold their 10 millionth ticket in October since launching in 2013, with Chicago’s Ventra app reaching more than 1 million users and $110 million in ticket sales since launching in 2015,” according to a statement from moovel.

The move is being made to increase productivity and efficiency and to allow the company to scale faster, according to a statement.

“moovel is committed to transforming mobility as we know it today,” moovel CEO Nat Parker said in a news statement. “The success we are experiencing comes from our moovel transit platform and this is in part due to our strong relationship with TriMet, an industry innovator in public transit, and our presence in Portland. By moving the talent from our Austin office to reinforce our success in Portland, we will be able to move faster toward accomplishing the goal of seamless mobility as a service.”

William Hurley, known as Whurley, is a successful serial entrepreneur who embodies Austin’s creative spirit. Most recently, he co-founded and serves as CEO of Honest Dollar, a fintech startup which recently sold to Goldman Sachs.

Before co-founding Honest Dollar, Whurley co-founded Chaotic Moon, which sold to Accenture. He also worked in research and development at Apple and at IBM as a master inventor. And he co-founded and served as CTO for Symbiot, a network security company.

Q. Where did you grow up?

Whurley: I grew up in a military family so we moved around a lot, but we eventually settled in Temple, Texas when my father was transferred to Fort Hood.

Q. Why did you choose to live in Austin?

Whurley: I moved to Austin in the early 90’s to work for Apple Computer and I haven’t thought of leaving since.

Q. When did you first become an entrepreneur?

Whurley: Before working at Apple I was doing some consulting, and I’ve always said having to learn how to do everything yourself was a tremendously useful experience to have early on.

Q. You launched Chaotic Moon and Honest Dollar at South by Southwest Interactive. What is it about SxSW that makes it a great place to launch?

Whurley: There are a couple of things. First SxSW is, in my opinion, the best place to launch a startup bar none. There are so many potential clients in one place, it’s very easy to get the word out about what you’re doing, and the networking opportunities are unparalleled. However, there’s another reason I always launch at SxSW; I consider launching there a lucky charm of sorts. If I ever found another startup, you can be sure I will launch it at SxSW 20XX.

Q. What prompted you to start Honest Dollar?

Whurley: I’d left Chaotic Moon and really wanted to do something new, and in a completely different direction. I’d set out to find a potential startup that fit three key areas: Something that made the world a better place, something that would be able to affect every person I came into contact with in a positive way, and something where there was a huge entrepreneurial opportunity.

Q. How does Honest Dollar differentiate itself in the marketplace for financial service products?

Whurley: Well to start we’re a company focused on savings in a society based on spending. That is, we’re constantly innovating around the core of our product and services. There’s so much opportunity to do more than put assets under management. Things like applying nudge theory, or using zero user interfaces. I’m approaching this space with the same approach to innovation that I started at Chaotic Moon.

Q. Who is your ideal customer?

Whurley: Small businesses and 1099 workers are the sweet spot for Honest Dollar. We launched our first products in both of these areas in 2015 and continue to grow those markets in 2016.

Q. Why did you sell Honest Dollar to Goldman Sachs?

Whurley: It’s really simple. The most innovative startup in fintech now has the resources and credibility of the most storied company in financial services. It’s literally an unbeatable combination. Who wouldn’t want to be a part of that?

Q. And how did the deal come about?

Whurley: I had met Allison Rhodes from Goldman Sachs after selling Chaotic Moon to Accenture. During the meeting, she became intrigued and started asking about Honest Dollar. Her interest led her to discuss the company internally and that kicked off a series of unexpected meetings that eventually led to the sale.

Q. Jobs and the economy in the United States are going through a great upheaval with machine learning, robots, autonomous vehicles, artificial intelligence and other disruptive technologies. How can someone best navigate this brave new world?

Whurley: To me navigating an ever changing world is all about knowing yourself. You have to be objective in understanding what you’re not good at, and most importantly the one thing you’re better at than anyone else. Objectivity, even when you face the inevitable truths that will bring you down, is the key to having a successful career regardless of the environment you’re working in.

Q. What is the best advice you ever received as an entrepreneur?

Whurley: My business partner Mike Erwin taught me to “Use it up, wear it out, make do, or do without.” I wouldn’t say learning this first hand was my favorite experience in my career, but it has been one of the most invaluable lessons I’ve ever learned.

Q. In the startup world, the mantra is to fail fast and move on, what lessons have you learned from failures or mistakes?

Whurley: Failing fast is not a good thing. The fact is that people have made this their mantra; and that’s bad. You see failing fast leads people to think its OK, they get an endless amount of chances at the entrepreneurial game, and that’s simply not true. You build your reputation as an entrepreneur every time you change your path or start a new business. If you fail fast four or five times in a row you’ve become that great ideas person who can’t build a business instead of the entrepreneur everybody wants to work with. Failing fast is a drug, and too many young entrepreneurs get addicted to it too early in their career.

Q. What advice would you give to someone just starting out as entrepreneur?

Whurley: Don’t quit your day job. Seriously, you’ll need a paycheck and it won’t be coming from your startup. You have to understand that startups are always in one of two states, struggling or out of business. If you’re struggling, no matter how bad it seems, trust me that’s a fine place to be and in reality just the way it works. No great entrepreneurial story goes “we had a great idea, and people showered us with money, and we built it without issue, and people bought it and paid way too much, and now we’re successful and things are great.” That’s just not how being an entrepreneur works.

Q. What has been your greatest resource in the Austin startup community?

Whurley: I think the community itself. I’ve received so much love and support from the Austin community over the years and I wouldn’t be where I’m at today without it. It’s something I’ll always cherish and never forget. Startups aren’t built by founders and employees alone. You have to have unaffiliated people who love what you’re doing and support it in ways that seem minor, but cumulatively can make or break your business.

Q. In September, you announced plans to team up with the United Nations and the International Telecommunication Union to drive a global outreach effort to get more girls and women into Science Technology Engineering and Math jobs. How is the effort going?

Whurley: The effort is going extremely well. In fact I’m heading to Bangkok this month to meet the team from UN Women and the UN ITU. We’ll be signing a formal agreement, and officially kicking of the project with a number of strategic partners and organizations that have signed up since the launch. We’ll also be in a steering committee where we hope to expand on our long term goals, and most importantly document to the community how we will track and measure them. I don’t think I’ve ever been so excited about a project. It’s a great cause, and the team we’ve pulled together is simply amazing.

Q. What book would you recommend entrepreneurs read?

Whurley: Massive Change by Bruce Mau, I like it because It’s not about the world of design, but the design of the world. It sounds like semantics but read it and I think it will help reshape your perspective on a number of things.

Q. Anything else that you are working on that we should know about?

Whurley: I have some surprises set for 2017, but those will have to wait. In the meantime, my son Brooks is launching his first startup; that’s pretty exciting for me to watch as a father.

Editor’s note: Whurley was featured in Silicon Hills News’ 2016 Austin Technology calendar. SHN will run Q&As with all the people featured in the calendar. For information on how you can sponsor or be a part of the 2017 Austin Technology calendar, please contact Laura@SiliconHillsNews.com. Thank you.