The good news is there is an Initial Public Offering or IPO market, said Daniel Klausner, managing director of PricewaterhouseCoopers based in New York.

“At times, I think it’s been dormant or hidden,” he said. “September has been a great month.”

But overall the IPO market in the U.S. is on track to have the lowest number of companies going public since 2009, according to PwC research.

Klausner gave an overview of the market during a PwC event last Wednesday at Capital Factory in downtown Austin on IPO Readiness: Going Public and Being Public.

“The equity market has been pretty volatile in the last few years and 2016 has been no exception,” Klausner said. The themes behind that volatility are well-worn like the Federal Reserve and whether it’s going to raise interest rates, geo-political unrest around the world, Brexit or the United Kingdom voting to leave the European Union and the Chinese Yuan devaluation, he said.

The S&P is up 6 percent this year, but it doesn’t feel like it because of all the volatility, Klausner said.

“On the flip side for companies it’s a good time to go public because the markets are giving companies high valuations,” Klausner said.

To gauge whether or not it’s a good time to go public, PwC looks at the Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index, known as the VIX, to judge the market’s anxiety level. When the VIX is under 20 it’s a good time to go public, Klausner said. It’s currently at 12, he said.

So far, 83 companies have gone public this year and they have raised $13.6 billion, according to PwC research. Last year, 196 companies went public and raised $33.2 billion. And in 2014, 304 companies went public raising $87.1 billion.
September is a very busy month but everything slows down going into November around the election, Klausner said.

“Yes the IPO market is healthy with some caveats we’re not going to have the same number of IPOs as last year,” he said.

In 2016, U.S. IPOs are being led by the healthcare sector with 33 deals that makes up 40 percent of the deals, followed by technology with 15 deals or 18 percent, Klausner said.

The technology market is now looking for profitable growth and not growth for growth’s sake, Klausner said.

It’s a busy week in Austin and for Austin Startups.

Not only is Austin Startup Week taking place and SXSL at the Whitehouse on Monday, but MedTechTX 2016, put on by the Texas State Small Business Development Center in partnership with the Austin Technology Council, kicks off its two-day conference on Monday.

The program begins at 1 p.m. at the Radisson Downtown Austin at 111 Cesar Chavez at Congress. The opening keynote features Dr. Vonda Wright, orthopaedic surgeon, UPMC Center for Sports Medicine, medical director of the UPMC Lemieux Sports Complex and founder of the Women’s Health Conversations Conference. Her talk is on Building Clinical Champions: Healthcare is a Team Sport.

The event agenda is posted online. If you’re not able to attend, you can follow it in real time at SiliconHillsNews.com. We will be live blogging the event on our website. The hashtag for the event is #MedTechTX2016. Check out posts on Twitter from @ATCouncil @TxStateSBDC and @SiliconHillsNews.

After the panels, a networking reception sponsored by Lee & Hayes runs from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. followed by ATC Battle of the Tech Bands at The Mohawk at 912 Red River St.

MedTechTX 2016 continues Tuesday morning and runs through the afternoon. Silicon Hills News will be live blogging day two of the conference as well. Check out the coverage on our website in real time and follow along with the #MedTechTX2016 hashtag.

On Wednesday, the MPO Summit starts Wednesday morning in the ballroom of the Austin Hilton at 8:30 a.m. with a welcome address from Howard Revitch, MPO/ODT publisher and Sean Fenske, MPO/ODT editor. Next, Thomas R. Kowalski, president and CEO of the Texas Healthcare and Bioscience Institute gives an overview of the industry in Texas with a focus on the medical device sector.

The full agenda for the two day conference can be found here.

It’s hard to believe six years have flown by since the first Austin Startup Week kicked off with their first event at the Tiniest Bar in Texas.

And Silicon Hills News, which is on its sixth year in business as the premier technology media startup covering Austin and San Antonio, was there to cover it.

Jacqueline Hughes and Joshua Baer founded Austin Startup Week to shine a spotlight on the city’s startup community, which has grown tremendously in the last six years.

Austin Startup Week is free, but registration is required. It features more than 150 speakers throughout the week at various meetups, panels, happy hours, coffee breaks and more. The event has certainly grown in six years with lots of diverse panels.

Here’s a link to the full schedule and here’s 15 that Silicon Hills News has highlighted to check out:

MONDAY:

The Central Texas Angels Network’s Entrepreneur Workshop with Claire England, CTAN executive director, and Rick Timmins, CTAN board chairman. At Galvanize from 2:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. This is a great overview of the funding landscape for new entrepreneurs in Austin. CTAN is often a first source of funds for Austin startups. To get an idea of some of the topics they might cover, check out our story from last year.

Leaning in: Why People of Color and Women Must Pull up a Seat: At Galvanize from 4 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. Diversity is one of the hottest topics in technology right now. Studies show diverse teams outperform homogeneous ones. So everyone would think it would be a no brainer to add more minorities and women to the mix of tech entrepreneurs getting funded, but it’s not that easy to change a system. Panels like this highlight the issue and seek to find solutions. It’s good to be a part of this conversation.

Austin Startup Week’s ATC’s Battle of Bands: 6:30 p.m. to 10 p.m. at The Mohawk. The best place to kick back and enjoy some good music produced by Austin’s own startup bands at startups. It’s a truly unique event that spotlights how creative Austin’s technology community is at work and outside of it.

TUESDAY:

Startups for Veterans: 10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. at Brazos Hall. This event put on by Bunker Labs Austin and Patriot Boot Camp is focused on getting military veterans into the Austin startup scene as founders and key employees.

Austin’s Capital Landscape: Demystifying the Capital Scene: Noon until 1:30 pm. at Capital Factory featuring Paul O’Brien of Accelerate Texas, Rob Adams, director of Texas Venture Labs, Jim Brown, founder and partner of Arena Growth Partners and Kerry Rupp, general partner of True Wealth Ventures. They’ll talk money and hopefully explain how startups can get some.

Women in Tech Meetup at Galvanize from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. Want to meet kickass women in Austin’s entrepreneurial ecosystem getting stuff done? Then attend this meetup. Enough said.

VentureCrushATX Panels: Mistakes Startups Make and How Startups Should Think About Cybersecurity at Umbel’s Office from 6 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. There’s already a waitlist for these back to back panels, make this event one of the most popular events at Austin Startup Week. But if you can get in, it’s worth attending. They’ve got a stellar lineup of speakers and hot topics.

WEDNESDAY

Health Tech Austin: Winning Strategies for Taking Your Innovation and Product to Market– 7:45 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. at Capital Factory. This is a news you can use panel for health tech startups. It features Jean Anne Booth, founder of UnaliWear and Chris Loughlin, CEO of RxWiki. This is a great place to pick up a copy of Silicon Hills News’ life sciences magazine.

Pathways for Global Startups: The International Entrepreneurial Rule at noon to 1:30 p.m. at Capital Factory. The panel focuses on the power of immigrants to found companies and contribute to the nation’s technology industry.

Tech’s Emerging Role in Austin’s Politics, Policies and Philanthropy – 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at Owen’s Garage. This is a powerhouse panel featuring Mayor Steve Adler, Austin Technology Council’s CEO Barbary Brunner, Capital Factory Founder Joshua Baer and with the Austin Tech Alliance, to talk about the tech industry’s role in Austin government and shaping the city.

THURSDAY

Austin Open Coffee from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. at Atlassian – Damon Clinkscales has been running Austin Open Coffee for years. It’s a casual gathering of Austin entrepreneurs and others to socialize and network and drink great coffee.

Techstars Open House and Fireside Chat with Amos Schwartzfarb, managing director of Techstars Austin at 2 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. at Techstars. The program is currently accepting applications for its next class. Come to this gathering to learn more.

SXSW Success for Your Startup: Leveraging March Magic in Austin – 4 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. at Galvanize featuring a talk with Chris Valentine, accelerator pitch event manager at SXSW and Hugh Forrest, chief programming officer and partner at SXSW.

Austin Startup Crawl presented by Hired – Kicks off at 5 p.m. and goes until 10 p.m. It is held at various venues around town. The megastop is at Capital Factory.

FRIDAY

Smart Policy for Smart Cities – 8 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. A discussion about policies to encourage Austin to adopt Smart City practices.

Caringo announced Thursday that it has received $8.8 million in additional funding.

The Austin-based company closed on its Series B round of funding and reports that so far the company, founded in 2005, has raised $33 million.

The company plans to use the funds for development, marketing and distribution of Caringo Swarm, software used to manage and store data.

“The additional funds raised in this tranche of our Round B funding will help us accelerate our product roadmap, expand in key vertical market segments and continue to invest in demand generation and awareness programs,” Jonathan Ring, Caringo CEO and Co-Founder, said in a news release. “Scale-out object storage is increasingly recognized as the best approach to providing organizations of all sizes with the massive scalability and reduced complexity that is needed in today’s data-intensive environments. Our investors understand this sea change and are helping us continue to deliver our market-leading technology to customers frustrated with their existing storage infrastructure.”

Caringo makes software that protects data and allows its customers to manage, organize and search that data at a massive scale. Its software, Caringo Swarm, lets its customers consolidate their files, find data easily and quickly and reduce storage costs. The company estimates customers can save up to 75 percent on storage costs using its software.

Some of Caringo’s customers include the Department of Defense, the Brazilian Federal Court System, City of Austin, Telefonica, British Telcom, Ask.com, Johns Hopkins University and hundreds more worldwide.

Speachme, a two year old educational technology company, announced Tuesday the launch of its U.S. operations, based in Austin.

The French company makes a peer-to-peer knowledge transfer platform used by global brands such as Tesla, Airbus, PwC, Nissan and Coca-Cola. It was founded in 2012 and has 41 employees.

The company is also hiring 10 employees in Austin to fill several position in the next six months and it is moving two employees from San Francisco. It also announced it received $2.2 million in funding for its U.S. expansion led by Alven Capital Partners, based in Paris.

The company set up its offices at WeWork on Congress with four employees. But it will be moving to the new WeWork location at the Domain to get a bigger office. Speachme set up offices at WeWork on Congress and will be moving to WeWork at the Domain to get a bigger office.

“speachme is a total departure from traditional online training programs and learning management systems. We put the user in the driver’s seat of content creation, and our platform allows workers – on the shop floor or in the office – to capture and share technical skills and physical gestures in a completely innovative way,” speachme Chief Executive Officer Najette Fellache, said in a news release. “The innovation and unique needs of the manufacturing and industrial business sectors are the primary driver for the expansion of our operations. And basing the company in Austin is a strategic move – the city has long been a center of innovation and often breaks with convention. We share this DNA and look forward to contributing to the thriving local business community.”

The company is targeting customers in the automotive and airline industries, food service, and manufacturing. It’s aimed at large workplaces of 10,000 or more employees.

“The Center for Creative Leadership found that 70 percent of workplace learning comes from real, on-the-job experiences. Compare that to only about 10 percent coming from formal, structured training programs. This finding is the basis for our innovative model for skills-based learning and knowledge transfer,” Kader Garnier Aw, Chief Operating Officer of speachme said in a news release. “At speachme, we believe that employees should be empowered to train and learn from each other, on-demand and in the moment, versus relying solely on classroom-style or basic slideshow learning methods.”

Speachme’s platform can be used on any device and uses what the company calls “knowledge capsules.” Those training programs can be created by managers or workers. They contain interactive visual content. The speachme platform provides the tools for employees to record audio, video, audio with slides, screencast and enables you to mix multiple types of media to create compelling, interactive content. Speachme also provides data and analytics and dashboard to monitor how effective the content is.

The platform works best for manufacturing companies that need to train employees but not all at the same time for specific tasks.

“The skills transfer between workers relies on a keen understanding of important technical procedures,” Garnier Aw said in a news release. “The physical gestures that perform these procedures are not easily captured in standard training tools or manuals. speachme’s ‘trainer’s-eye’ point of view allows the trainee to virtually and visually shadow the trainer through every step of the procedure. This approach, combined with our multi-media interface, is unlike any other solution available.”

Able Lending announced Tuesday that it has secured $100 million in debt financing from Community Investment Management to provide low-cost loans to small businesses.

The Austin-based online lender reports that the money will be used to fund approximately 500 small businesses in the United States. To qualify for a loan, the businesses need to be operating for at least one year with at lest $100,000 in revenue. Able’s loans have a unique structure built on a collaborative lending platform. The borrowers lower their interest rate by raising part of the loan from friends and family, who act as co-lenders with Able. The loans range in size from $25,000 to up to 41 million with rates starting at 8 percent.

“We are excited about CIM’s investment so that we can fund more deserving small businesses,” Able’s CEO and Cofounder Will Davis said in a news release. “During a time when investors’ confidence in alternative lending has plunged, this investment is a vote of confidence in our loan model and our team.”

Able, founded in 2014, lends to consumer products, tech, and main street businesses of all types. Loan recipients look to Able for working capital and to purchase inventory, open a new location, hire employees, invest in marketing, or as a bridge round to retain more equity. Able also helps small businesses get out of high-interest, short-term debt by refinancing cash advances and credit cards, which saves entrepreneurs $5,000 a month on average.

Silicon Hills News did this profile on the company in 2014.

There once was a startup in Austin
WP Engine grew lickety-split like Boston
It set out to expand to Ireland’s land of opportunity
Its website hosting business grew with such unity
And now it’s part of a bigger European economic community
– Anonymous

The big news for WP Engine Monday is it has expanded to Limerick, Ireland.

The Austin-based startup specializes in hosting websites based on the WordPress publishing platform. It is opening a Technical Support & Innovation Center in Limerick which is expected to create 100 jobs during the next three years.

WP Engine reports it works with more than 350,000 digital brands in 136 countries. WP Engine’s customers include AMD, Network Rail, New Relic, Soundcloud, UnderArmour and Warby Parker. WP Engine opened a London office in 2015 and reports its customer base has doubled since then. The new center in Ireland will help to further its expansion in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

The announcement is being celebrated at an event Monday in Limerick with the Irish Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation Mary Mitchell O’Conner, Finance Minister Michael Noonan, Minister of State for Employment & Small Business Pat Breen and Mary Buckley, executive director of IDA Ireland along with WP Engine CEO Heather Brunner, Chief Financial Officer April Downing and Fabio Torlini, managing director of EMEA.

The project is supported by the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation through IDA Ireland.

“WP Engine is focused on building the best managed WordPress platform in the world and we’re incredibly proud to be opening our new Technical Support and Innovation Centre in Ireland,“ Heather Brunner, CEO of WP Engine, said in a news release. “As a company we aim to be present in cities that are successful in terms of job creation and attracting businesses – as represented by our offices in Austin, San Antonio, San Francisco, and more recently London. Limerick, similarly, has a terrific environment and culture where the community, government and business leaders are committed to building local talent and creating a technology innovation and incubation center. We wanted to help further build and be a part of that ecosystem.”

In 2010, Jason Cohen founded WP Engine at Capital Factory in downtown Austin. It has quickly grown into a global brand with offices in San Francisco, San Antonio, London and now Limerick.

Like a lot of educational programs, driver’s ed hasn’t changed much in the past 30 years.

For the most part, it’s still taught in a classroom with an instructor, worksheets, quizzes, videos and some time spent driving with an instructor.

That’s where the founders of Aceable saw an opportunity to disrupt the driver’s education industry. They created classroom materials and videos and put all the original, up to date, content into a mobile phone app.

That app has resonated with the teenage market and on Friday, Austin-based Aceable announced it has raised an additional $4 million to fuel its growth. Silverton Partners and Floodgate led the Series A funding round. The company previously raised $4.7 million in seed stage funding last year and $1.1 million in 2014.

Aceable currently has more than 300,000 users in Texas, California, Florida, Ohio and Illinois, and maintains a 98 percent pass rate for the course.

With the money, Aceable plans to continue to expand its driver ed app state by state but also plans to branch into new industries that require professional certifications such as real estate, corporate HR, nursing and food safety.

“The rapid adoption of our drivers ed app proves that demand exists for not only engaging but also cutting edge mobile learning experiences,” Blake Garrett, Founder and CEO, Aceable, said in a news release. “Astoundingly, 1 in 3 jobs in the United States require some form of professional certification; however, despite that opportunity, the number one complaint we hear from professionals in the fields we’re exploring is that course content is boring at best – and irrelevant at worst. We know we can fix both of these problems the same way we did with driving.”

Already, Aceable, which launched in 2014, has captured more than 35 percent of the market for online drivers ed courses in Texas and California. It now plans to expand into Georgia, Pennsylvania, Nevada and Indiana.

“The future of professional education is in mobile learning. Aceable’s outstanding app store reviews and user growth prove their product is best-in-class, making them well poised to continue tremendous growth into new fields,” Morgan Flager of Silverton Partners, said in a news release. “It’s rare to see a company reach profitability with such explosive growth.”

Silicon Hills News did this profile on the company last year.

Kahoot, a Norwegian-based educational startup with its U.S. headquarters based at Capital Factory in Austin, has closed on $10 million in funding.

The company’s founder, Johan Brand, made the announcement in a post on Medium. Fredrik Cassel at Creandum led the funding round with participation from current investor Tellef Thorleifsson at Northzone and Nagraj Kashyap at Microsoft Ventures. To date, the company has raised $17 million, Brand said in a brief interview from New York.

Kahoot, which launched in 2013, makes a game-based learning platform for the K-12 market. Its platform reaches 33 million monthly active users, according to Brand. It also reaches a community of more than 3.5 million teachers. And the game platform has more than 10 million learning games, created and shared by fans in 180 countries.

Kahoot plans to use the funds to support the “development of additional game formats, our global team, and new applications for brands, publishers and audiences in the Kahoot! game space.”

“The capital is giving us the runway to do that globally,” Brand said. “We can roll out new products now because we have the capital to back them.”

Kahoot built its platform on the Web through getkahoot.com and kahoot.it. But the company recently released an Android app which has been a serial Top Performing App in Google Play. And its iOS app, just released this past Monday, is in the top 50 apps in the Apple Store and number one in educational apps.

Kahoot plans to stay at Capital Factory. It has four employees based there and it’s a perfect location to participate in conferences like SXSW.edu in March and the ISTE 2017 Conference and Expo in San Antonio next June.

“We love Austin,” Brand said.

Susan Lahey did this profile on Kahoot last year.