By Michael Dell
Reprinted with Permission

I grew up in a family of brothers. As you might guess, competition was a way of life. A game of cards or tag or Battleship was serious business.

My brothers and I have our mom to thank for much of our competitive spirit. Her usual parting words when we bolted out the door to play any kind of sport were “Play nice…but win.” 🙂

Those words stuck with me, and they sum up how we’ll approach this next chapter in Dell’s story—which begins today with the successful acquisition of EMC and Day 1 of Dell Technologies.

After 32 years in business, I’ve learned some important lessons about winning. Winning with integrity (to paraphrase my mom) certainly tops the list. But another lesson that’s particularly relevant and crucial in today’s business environment is this: change or die. It sounds dramatic, but it’s truer than it’s ever been.

This is a time of unprecedented change. It’s been called the next Industrial Revolution, where data, the Internet of Everything and information technology replace industrialization as the driving force of progress and transformation. Disruption is around every corner and in every industry, but so is opportunity.

To win in business today, you must be fearless about disrupting yourself and transforming for the future. Think about the big companies that didn’t—like Blockbuster, Kodak or AOL. They faded away completely or became a shadow of their former selves. ‘Business as usual’ is how you lose in the digital era in which we live.

Today, Dell, EMC and VMware play mission-critical roles in the transformation of our customers’ organizations around the world. But together as Dell Technologies, we will be unstoppable.

We will deliver the essential infrastructure our customers need to secure their digital futures. We are already a market leader across four globally recognized technology franchises—servers, storage, virtualization and PCs—and we have unmatched scale and innovation to lead in the technologies of the future, like hybrid cloud, converged and software-defined everything. Global tech companies must transform, too, and we’re doing it in a big way with Dell Technologies.

I’ve been dreaming about this day for a while. It’s yet another turning of the page for the company I started as a 19-year old college freshman, and this was very much on my mind as our new leadership team met for the first time in Austin recently. At the end of the meeting, I shared my thoughts on the future of our company and the enormous, positive impact we can have on our customers and the world. The energy and excitement from everyone in the room was palpable. We all see the opportunity ahead and are equally committed to win.

So it was only fitting that I ended the day with wise words that have served me well my whole life—Let’s play nice…but win!

This post was originally published at LinkedIn.

Shopify is on the hunt for five people to participate in its newly launched Shopify Partner Accelerator in Austin.

The company just opened up applications on Wednesday and is accepting them until Sept. 23rd. Then it will choose five people to work at WeWork University Park in Austin from Oct. 3rd until the end of December.

It’s looking for web designers or web developers interested in learning more about e-commerce and Shopify specifically, said Courtney Symons, Shopify’s partner growth manager.

Shopify, founded in Ottawa, Canada in 2006, makes software and a platform that lets small and medium-sized businesses easily launch a storefront. It is a direct competitor of BigCommerce, which is based in Austin. And Shopify is a publicly traded company which trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol SHOP. Its total revenue for 2015 was $205.2 million, up 95 percent from a year earlier. More than 300,000 merchants work with Shopify.

The Shopify Partner Accelerator will provide resources and support to local small businesses in the design, web development, and marketing spaces. Those resources include mentorship and hands-on training from Shopify.

In addition to Austin, Shopify launched its partner accelerator in three other cities: New York, Montreal, Canada and London, England.

“This is a massive opportunity for Shopify partners,” Symons said.

Shopify chose WeWork as its coworking partner site because “their spaces foster creativity,” Symons said.

Austin is a place for innovation and that’s why Shopify chose to put a Shopify Partner Accelerator here, Symons said.

“We have seen a really successful Shopify community growing in Austin,” she said. “We know it is a rich ground for opportunity. “

In a $60 billion deal, Dell Technologies Wednesday closed its acquisition of EMC Corp. launching a new chapter for Dell, a 32 year old company founded in a dorm room at the University of Texas at Austin.

It is the largest tech deal ever.

And Dell gets the award for coolest aerial stunt to introduce a new company ever.

Together Dell and EMC have created a huge powerhouse technology company. Dell Technologies sees the combination creating “the focus and innovation of a startup with the global scale and service of a large enterprise.”

The privately-held company plans to focus on its customers and partners for the long term.

“We are at the dawn of the next industrial revolution,” Michael Dell, chairman and CEO of Dell Technologies said in a news statement. “Our world is becoming more intelligent and more connected by the minute, and ultimately will become intertwined with a vast Internet of Things, paving the way for our customers to do incredible things. This is why we created Dell Technologies. We have the products, services, talent and global scale to be a catalyst for change and guide customers, large and small, on their digital journey.”

The company will continue to be based in Round Rock. It will have 140,000 employees worldwide. It will have combined revenue of $74 billion.

In a post on LinkedIn, Dell talked about the importance of adapting and changing and not growing complacent as a large company. He also talked about the importance of playing nice, but competing to win. Advice he gleaned from his mother growing up.

“After 32 years in business, I’ve learned some important lessons about winning. Winning with integrity (to paraphrase my mom) certainly tops the list. But another lesson that’s particularly relevant and crucial in today’s business environment is this: change or die. It sounds dramatic, but it’s truer than it’s ever been,” Dell wrote in the blog post. “This is a time of unprecedented change. It’s been called the next Industrial Revolution, where data, the Internet of Everything and information technology replace industrialization as the driving force of progress and transformation. Disruption is around every corner and in every industry, but so is opportunity.”

Dell chose to disrupt his own company – first by taking it private. And next, by acquiring EMC in the largest tech deal in history.

So now all eyes will be on Dell to watch the company “play nice…but win.”

Just coming off Labor Day, it’s hard to get back into the swing of things. So Silicon Hills News has made it easier by culling a few tech events worth attending this week.

Tuesday – How to Meet Investors in Austin: Ask Me Anything with Joshua Baer at Capital Factory starting at 4:30 p.m. to 6 p.m.

Tuesday: Austin Forum – Virtual Reality in Austin: A New Generation of Gaming and Beyond – Stateside Theater – Paramount – 5:15 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.

Wednesday: Texas MSTC Meet the Faculty event at Gabriel’s at the AT&T Education and Conference Center 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Wednesday – Austin Technology Incubator 2016 Company Graduation at the AT&T Education and Conference Center 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Thursday – Austin Health Tech – Ask the Venture Capitalists at Capital Factory starting at 7:45 a.m. until 9:30 a.m.

Friday – AEC Hackathon 3.6 at Austin City Hall starting at 6 p.m.

By LAURA LOREK
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

Austin is home to a small, but growing biotech and medical technology industry with about 200 companies, according to the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce.

That number is sure to skyrocket in coming years as the city feels the full effect of the new Dell Medical School at the University of Texas at Austin and the healthcare innovation zone being created in the downtown area.

Right now, the city’s strength lies in medical device and diagnostics, biologics and biotech, contract research, pharmaceuticals and startups in a wide variety of areas. Here’s just ten local companies we’ve highlighted.

Alafair Biosciences – The company, founded in 2011, a medical device startup, recently received FDA clearance for its first product, VersaWrap Tendon Protector. It is used in the treatment of tendon injuries. Earlier this year, the company closed on $2 million in funding to help roll the product out nationwide. To date, it has received $5.9 million in funding.

Curtana Pharmaceuticals – The company, founded in 2013, moved from San Diego to Austin in 2014. The Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas, known as CPRIT, awarded the company a $7.6 million grant to develop a drug for glioblastomas and other brain cancers.

Lumos Pharma – The company, founded in 2014, is a clinical stage, biopharmaceutical company developing therapeutics for rare and neglected diseases. In April, Lumos completed $34 million in funding and planned to use the proceeds for clinical trials and commercialization of its lead drug, LUM-001, for the treatment of Creatine Transporter Deficiency, the second leading cause of X-Linked mental retardation in males after Fragile X Syndrome. To date, the company has raised $48 million, according to its profile in Crunchbase.

PotentiaMetrics – The company, founded in 2010, relocated from St. Louis to Austin in 2015, and provides proprietary real-world outcomes registries and analytics platforms to reveal personalized and predictive insights. It is harnessing patient data to provide better treatments and outcomes for different diseases.

Savara Pharmaceuticals – the company, founded in 2007, creates drugs to treat rare respiratory diseases. In June, it acquired the assets of Serendex Pharmaceuticals, based in Copenhagen, Denmark. Its lead product is AeroVanc, an antibiotic being developed for the treatment of persistent MRSA infection in people with Cystic Fibrosis. The drug’s Phase III clinical trials are expected to begin later this year. In March, the company closed on $20 million in Series C financing.

Spot On Sciences – the company, founded in 2014, recently received a $225,000 grant to support research for a preanalytical, endogenous standard to compare blood sample types. The company has developed HemaSpot devices to simplify collection, preservation and shipping of dried blood samples. The company also participated in the first ever White House Demo Day in 2015.

TeVido BioDevices – The company, founded in 2011, is making nipples from human cells using 3-D printers for breast cancer patients. It has received funding through crowdfunding and a Small Business Innovation Research grant from the National Cancer Institute and a grant from the National Science Foundation. It is also a graduate of the Texas Ventures Lab at the University of Texas at Austin.

TVA Medical – The company, founded in 2008, is a medical device maker developing minimally invasive therapies for patients suffering from end-stage renal disease. In late 2015, it completed a $15 million Series C financing. It plans to use that money to support clinical activities and commercialization of everlinQ endoAVF system, a catheter-based technology designed to create hemodialysis access for chronic kidney disease patients in a minimally invasive procedure. To date, it has raised $27.1 million in funding, according to its profile in Crunchbase.

UnaliWear – The company, founded in 2013, makes the Kenega watch aimed at seniors that provides discrete support for fails, medication and reminders and guards against lost-wandering. Earlier this year, the company announced it had raised $3.4 million in seed funding. It has also joined forces with Maxim Integrated Products to make the watches. The company also successfully raised $110,154 from 306 backers on Kickstarter last year.

Xeris Pharmaceuticals – the company, founded in 2005, closed on $41 million in Series C financing in January. It is using the proceeds to develop patient friendly injectables for treatment of diabetes, epilepsy and immunology. It plans to use the proceeds of the funding for Phase 3 clinical trials and commercialization of its G-Pen, glucagon injection program for severe hypoglycemia.

By LAURA LOREK
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

San Antonio has a robust bioscience and healthcare industry which contributes more than $23.9 billion to the city’s economy annually, according to the San Antonio Economic Development Foundation.

In fact, one in every six San Antonio employees works in the bioscience and healthcare industry.
The industry is constantly creating new jobs and its startups and innovative bioscience companies are key to its continued growth. Here’s ten companies with cutting edge research and products worth watching in the coming year.

BIO2 Medical – The company, founded in 2007, has created the Angel catheter, which provides access to the central venous system and traps blood clots before they reach the lungs. It completed clinical trials last year. The U.S. Food and Drug approved the device in July. The company also recently received funding to roll out its product. To date, it has received $51.2 million in venture capital, according to Crunchbase.

Bluegrass Vascular Technologies – The company, founded in 2010 in Kentucky and relocated to San Antonio in 2014, has created the Surface Inside-Out Access Catheter System. It announced on Aug. 30th that the company received CE Mark approval and is launching limited commercial sale of its medical device in Europe. The company also announced the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office recently issued two patents related to Bluegrass Vascular’s technology for its catheter system. The company has raised $4.5 million so far.

Cytocentrics – The company, founded in Rostock, Germany in 2001, moved to San Antonio last year. It specializes in cellular patch clamp testing. “Patch clamping is a technique for measuring microscopic voltage changes caused by the movement of molecules through the membrane ion channels of a cell, a function that is central to cellular physiology and drug-cell interactions.” With the company’s patch clamp technology, drug makers can develop better medicines. Its instrument, known as the Cytopatch 4, is available for sale worldwide.

Invictus Medical – The company, founded in 2010 by University of Texas at San Antonio students, created a medical device known as the GELShield. It provides extracranial pressure relief for newborn babies. Invictus received FDA clearance last year and is now selling the device nationwide.

Mobile Stem Care – The company, founded in 2013 by a University of Texas at San Antonio student, provides stem cell therapy to pets. It uses adult stem cells, taken from the animal, to treat traumatic injuries, degenerative diseases, non-healing wounds and other ailments in pets.

Nebulab – The company, founded in 2014, has created a contextual data management portal for scientists. It’s a platform for research scientists to store and manage data and papers. It spun out of a 3 Day Startup program and received an initial $25,000 investment from the Geekdom Fund. It went on to participate in the 2015 Techstars Cloud program. The company has raised $253,000 since its inception, according to Crunchbase.

Fe3 Medical – The company, founded in 2008 in San Jose, announced in August that it raised $14.5 million in Series B funding, including $3.5 million from the State of Texas. The company is developing a transdermal patch that delivers iron across the skin for patients suffering from iron-deficiency anemia. Fe3 Medical, an InCubes Lab company, moved to San Antonio in 2010.

Pronucleotein Biotechnologies – The company, founded in 2005, won the runner up title in last year’s first ever U.S. Food and Drug Administration Food Safety Challenge. The received a $100,000 prize for their portable rapid pathogen screening system. The device is aimed at making e-coli, listeria, campylobacter and salmonella detection easier and faster.

Rapamycin Holdings – The company, founded in 2012, makes drugs to slow the aging process and to treat age-related diseases in people and animals. It raised a $2.5 million Series A round in 2015. It licensed the formulation of rapamycin from the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.

Xenex Disinfection Services – The company, founded in 2008 in Austin, moved operations to San Antonio a year later. It makes a $100,000 robot that eradicates dangerous bacteria and viruses in hospitals and clinics by using pulsed Xenon UV light to disinfect patient care environments.

By SUSAN LAHEY
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

For most people the concept of the “corner drugstore,” with or without a soda fountain, is a quaint anachronism befitting the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life,” but not modern society.

In fact, though, there are more than 22,000 small, independently owned pharmacies in the U.S. Some will still make you a Black Cow. Many will mix up your medications right on site without the gluten, lactose or other binders that make some patients sick. RxWiki was launched to help those little pharmacies.

RxWiki is essentially a digital marketing company for independent pharmacies. The company’s website offers a “medication encyclopedia” written by pharmacists, news updates around medical issues and medications, and encyclopedic content around medical conditions, similar to a WebMD site. It has more than 20,000 original articles, 7,500 health-related videos, 100 disease condition channels and co-pay assistance programs. More than 5,000 community based pharmacies use its content.

But its primary function is to create websites, mobile apps—including medication reminders–and handle social media and content for the independent pharmacies who fill a niche among the big boxes. RxWiki runs a software as a service platform that supports 1,300 specialty and community websites, mobile applications and newsletters.

RxWiki raised $5.75 million in funding last October from investors including LiveOak Venture Partners and Milestone Venture Partners LP. The company hired Chris Loughlin as its CEO last February.

Today, most medications are pretty standardized—coming in doses of a specific number of milligrams–and don’t serve people who might require a higher or lower dose, Loughlin said. Nor do many pharmacies offer compounding services in which pharmacists will create medicines without ingredients patients don’t tolerate well. While many people may never meet their pharmacist, independent pharmacists strive to play a role in patients’ medical care, ensuring they’re getting their medication and following doctors’ orders.

As “designer drugs” become more popular and we learn more about our individual bodies’ reactions to medications, the role of such specialty pharmacies might increase dramatically.

But today, it’s tough to compete when small pharmacies can’t be open 24/7 like a lot of big chains. RxWiki tries to level the field through mobile apps where patients can order refills at any time. A new feature of the app is to set up reminders at the appropriate times to take medications purchased through the pharmacy.

The Corner Drugstore Goes Digital

Austin’s MedSavers is one of these specialty pharmacies. Owner/pharmacist Chris Johnson says he may be the only one left with his business model. He doesn’t take insurance; but he does claim to have much lower prices than his competitors. Johnson had worked for the big boxes for years and was frustrated with the prices they were forced, by agreements with insurance companies, to charge for medications. One of the worst he remembers was an anti-nausea medication for chemotherapy patients that cost only $20-$30 for a bottle but he was supposed to charge closer to $1,000. So he launched his own, independent pharmacy. He only wanted a website, but RxWiki offered a lot of other services for little or no extra charge. That was a deal he didn’t want to pass up.

CEO Loughlin knows all about supporting independent businesses in a world of giants. The co-founder of Weekends.com, an internet travel company, his business was purchased by Travelzoo in 2001. Loughlin worked his way up, eventually serving as Travelzoo CEO from 2010 to 2015. Because of his background he could look at the problem with “different eyes.” For example, while many pharmacies were getting apps, few of their customers were downloading the apps. It just never occurred to them. So Loughlin, thinking of the buttons worn by airline staff, suggested pharmacists and sales associates wear buttons to remind customers to download the app.

The added technology is meant to augment, not replace, service in the independent pharmacies, he said. For example, RxWiki might offer a quiz on a particular condition and discover that patients who have that condition actually know very little about it. That can allow RxWiki to share more information about the condition and alert the pharmacist that their patient doesn’t really understand their medical condition, so the pharmacist can take proactive steps to help.

In Remington, Virginia, population 615, pharmacist and co-owner of Remington Drug Al Roberts knows his customers pretty well. The pharmacy, which has been there since 1913, is the place to go when you want to know what’s happening in Remington. But it’s also a bedroom community for Washington, D.C. and a lot of residents work in the city. They don’t make it in to order refills when the pharmacy is open. Having RxWiki has helped a lot of customers connect with the pharmacy, Roberts said.

“We had customers who went to different pharmacies because, they would tell us ‘I forget to call you when you’re open.’ They don’t have to remember now.” The store receives faxes at all hours of the night coming in from people’s apps. “It removes one more blockade from the patient to us.”

Of course, he said, he also gives people his cell number so they can call if they’d rather do that.

“I tell them ‘I’m available to you 24/7.”

athenahealth, the nation’s largest healthcare network, announced Monday its acquisition of Austin-based Filament Labs, doing business as Patient IO.

The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Patient IO, a mobile and web-based app, is a care coordination platform used by healthcare providers to engage patients and caregivers outside the clinic. Patient IO, which currently works with more more than 30 clinics, allows patients to manage medications, review educational material and record data. Patient IO will form the the basis for athenahealth’s patient-facing mobile application, athenaWell, the company said in a news release.

Silicon Hills News did this profile of Patient IO last year.

“Care coordination and patient self-management is the next big ground on which healthcare will compete,” Jon Porter, senior vice president of emerging services at athenahealth, said in a news release. “By adding Patient IO to our portfolio and delivering their solution as a native component of athenahealth’s population health services, we’ve been able to strengthen our ability to partner with providers as they enter into and become masters of value-based care delivery. Patient IO accelerates our movement towards an exciting strategic milestone: becoming a trusted resource and partner to the patient.”

Jason Bornhorst, Colin Anawaty, and Brian Gambs founded the company in 2013. They also participated in the first Techstars Austin class in 2013. And CEO Bornhorst was recently named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 in Healthcare list. They will all join athenahealth Austin and Bornhorst will serve as executive director of product strategy.

“We are eager to marry our mobile care management competencies with athenahealth’s unique, network-enabled services,” Bornhorst, co-founder and CEO of Patient IO said in a news release. “By taking a patient-centered approach to development and embracing the potential of mobile, together we can reach more healthcare organizations than ever before.”

Initially, athenahealth made an investment in Patient IO last October through its ‘More Disruption Please’ Accelerator program.

Patient IO initially raised $1.5 million in seed rounding funding from Corinthian Health, Arcadia, Mercury Fund, Techstar Ventures, Geekdom Fund and angel investors. It also closed on $3.3 million in venture funding last November, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

By SUSAN LAHEY
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

Monica Berrondo pulls up a digital schematic of an antibody. It resembles remnants of different-colored ribbon stuck together by someone with no sense of design. Each color and bend represents information about the amino acids that comprise the antibody, explains Berrondo, whose company, Macromoltek, made this model possible. If the antibody shown in this image works, it may one day be deployed in the body of a sick person, where it will hunt down and cling to a specific pathogen. There, this colored squiggle may stimulate the immune system to go after the pathogen, mark it as an enemy for other immune system cells to take out, or attack it outright.

Antibodies, unlike many older pharmaceuticals, don’t have to carpet bomb healthy cells to attack specific pathogens. They’re efficient.

It used to take months to design an antibody like this, just to get it to the point where it could be created and tested. With Macromoltek it takes hours.

Researchers who subscribe to Macromoltek can log in to a secure workstation on the website and design a digital antibody using color-coded amino acids to read and track the sequence. The digital model helps researchers evaluate and edit their work, since one error can mess up the entire sequence. In general, Berrondo said, scientists will design maybe 10 antibodies that they hope will destroy a specific pathogen. They choose the best to go to a lab to be created and tested. But the digital design process significantly reduces both the time it takes to create an antibody, and the labor to test multiple iterations. Other companies have similar digital design capabilities, but Berrondo said Macromoltek is the only one she knows of that focuses on the creation of antibodies. The company has another distinction: it is the only one that lets researchers “humanize” antibodies that were originally created using mice.

User friendly science software

Berrondo is a graduate of Johns Hopkins University where she received her PhD in chemical and biomolecular engineering.

“I’ve always been a computer person,” she said. “I did a lot of internships in high school and I hated the applications. I didn’t find them very meaningful. So starting out in college I wondered ‘How can I find a software project that’s meaningful?’” She found the answer in computational biology and molecular modeling, using computers to help researchers solve medical problems.

She also knew she wanted, one day, to start her own company. During her post-graduate work, while she was serving as a software consultant for laboratories, she got the inspiration for Macromoltek.

Most of the software laboratories were working with were difficult to use, for a lot of reasons. Some were too clunky and complicated, some too slow to do the calculations, some didn’t support object design, and so forth. Berrondo found herself returning to the same labs over and over to solve the same problems. So she launched into extensive market research to understand whether labs even used digital design—most didn’t—and if not why. She also asked the ones who did use it what issues they were having. Ultimately, she knew what she needed to make and spent six-to-nine months writing the software.

To find out if her software worked, Berrondo collaborated with the University of Texas on validation studies, designing antibodies and having them produced in the lab. With a dozen or so verified and another dozen in the works, the real world seems to be bearing out her software’s efficacy.

“Their protein modeling capabilities have provided us with a novel and reliable alternative to costly and occasionally challenging wet-lab experiments,” said molecular biologist Curt Hewitt of Signature Science, an Austin based subsidiary of Southwest Research Institute and Macromoltek customer. “Working with them has allowed us to focus on the bigger-picture scientific problems at hand with the confidence that the modeling and technical assumptions we’re operating under are solid.”

Last spring, Macromoltek became a Capital Factory Accelerator company. Since it was the accelerator’s first life science company, adviser Gordon Dougherty said he focused primarily on company strategy, customer acquisition, pricing and similar issues. Berrondo hired her mother, Susana Kaufman, a chemical engineer and software developer with experience in the financial services industry as her CFO.

“Monica is a quiet lion,” he said. “She’s reserved in her demeanor but unbelievably smart. When she asks a question, it’s a question with a purpose. I really respect that about her. I meet with a lot of entrepreneurs who shoot from the hip. She is different, in a good way.”

Though Berrondo has received grants, including recently receiving a National Science Foundation Phase II funding for $750,000 over the next two years, Dougherty said, she has come a long way without receiving investment money.

“She’s waiting until she proves things out to a certain level across her business plan. That’s hard to do. It takes a lot of patience.”

Now if she could design a program for that….