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Austin-based SiteCondor Sold to gShift of Canada

September 4, 2015 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 2 Comments

Judd Lyon and Sebastian Brocher recently sold their startup, SiteCondor to gShift of Canada. Courtesy photo.

Judd Lyon and Sebastian Brocher accomplished what a lot of entrepreneurs strike out to do in Austin. They bootstrapped their startup and sold it for a handsome profit.

They recently sold SiteCondor, website auditing tools for digital agencies and content marketers, to gShift Labs, based in Toronto, Canada. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

“The acquisition of SiteCondor is a significant step forward in our strategy to empower digital marketers to fully maximize their investments in owned and earned media,” Krista LaRiviere, cofounder and CEO, gShift, said in a news release.

“As a joint customer of gShift and SiteCondor, this acquisition makes perfect sense,” Nick Baken, managing partner at Purple Hat Marketing & Invixio, said in a news statement. “As content remains king, it’s critical to know how to optimize it. With SiteCondor integrated into gShift, my company is able to advise clients on how, where, why and when to execute their content, search and social campaigns.”

Lyon and Brocher built SiteCondor, founded in 2013, through word of mouth advertising and bootstrapping. They subleased space at Capitol Tower downtown from You Earned It.

The idea for SiteCondor sprung out of work they were doing for a client. The client wanted information about its images extracted from 30 different websites. They wanted other information from all of their websites. They were going to have one employee manually do it. Instead, Lyon and Brocher created a computer program, which evolved into SiteCondor, to do the work automatically. SiteCondor lets agencies and brands quickly extract meta information from their clients’ websites.

Lyon and Brocher met volunteering for SCORE, the Service Corp. of Retired Executives. They helped the advisors in Austin with technology issues and taught web page design.

Brocher, with a background in engineering, is originally from Argentina. Lyon, with a background as a coder and designer, moved to Austin from California.

“Between the two of us we had what we needed to build the product end to end,” Lyon said.

“We built it for that first client. We started getting more requests for similar things,” Lyon said.

Slowly Lyon and Brocher built up the customer base for SiteCondor. They went to online marketing conferences to spread the word about the product and its features. They also went to meetups.

Lyon and Brocher never had any outside employees and they ran on revenue.

“It’s not for the faint of heart. You got to really believe in what you’re doing. But it gave us a lot of flexibility and freedom to take the company in the direction we wanted to,” Lyon said.

Lyon and Brocher are helping gShift as consultants to help integrate the product, but then they’ll be looking to launch their next venture.

But first, Lyon wants to travel the world for a little while.

Apogee Buys Campus Televideo

September 4, 2015 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 2 Comments

Apogee, higher education’s largest provider of residential network services, announced Friday it has purchased Campus Televideo of Stamford, Connecticut.

The Austin-based company did not report the financial terms of the deal. Campus Televideo, founded in 1984, will now operate as a division of Apogee, founded in 1998 by Chuck Brady.

“Apogee’s acquisition of CTV is a significant milestone and a proud moment for both companies. Our new combined entity expands our successful portfolio and brands us as the undisputed leader in the higher education technology landscape,” Brady, chief executive officer of Apogee, said in a news release.

Apogee provides colleges and universities with residential networks for telecommunications and cable services. The company reports that nine out of ten schools that outsource their residential networks, choose Apogee.

WellAware Lands $16 Million in Venture Capital

September 3, 2015 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 0 Comments

WellAware, an oil and gas industry analytics and data startup, this week announced it has received $16 million more in financing.

The San Antonio-based startup reported the Series B1 financing was led by Mitsui & Co. and Genscape. It plans to use the money to expand its operations and for research and development on its oilfield analytics products.

“This capital further validates of our full-stack solution, which is bringing a new level of automation and efficiency to American oilfields at a time when spending smarter is critical to remaining competitive,” Matt Harrison, WellAware president and chief executive officer, said in a news release.

WellAware previously received $45 million from Activant Capital Group and Carlos Slim, a Mexican telecommunications entrepreneur, Ed Whitacre Jr., formerly with AT&T and General Motors and former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney.

WellAware’s software and hardware gives oil companies information on how much a well is producing in real time data from the field.

Dropbox Shows Off its New Austin Offices

September 3, 2015 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 0 Comments

Dropbox hosted a rooftop launch party to show off its new Austin offices at 501 Congress Ave. Wednesday night.

The cloud storage company earlier this summer moved into more than 50,000 square feet in the building. It occupies two floors already with plans to expand to a third floor. The space has room for 300 employees. Dropbox declined to reveal how many people currently work there, but the company said it was actively hiring.

The employees in Austin primarily work in sales and user operations for Dropbox with some recruiters, said Shirly Mani, manager of user operations.

Dropbox’s new offices feature an open concept with a lot of natural light and windows, standing and sitting desk options, comfortable reading nooks, plenty of conference rooms, a music room, a gym in the basement and a cafeteria offering employees breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Dropbox even has a full time barista who works from 7 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. daily and makes all kinds of coffee drinks as well as smoothies. And they have a machine that provides fresh-squeezed orange juice.

The offices also feature a game room with Ping-Pong table, shuffleboard and walls decorated with bike seats with handlebar horns to look like Longhorns, which Dropbox calls the bike racks. Some rooms also have faux white deer antler chandeliers and Austin art decorates the walls. The conference rooms bear the names of different Austin landmarks and festivals.

The rooftop lounge area served as the stage for the band, Walker Lukens. The company served food catered by East Side King along with specialty craft cocktails.

Dropbox also partnered with Austin Partners in Education, HOPE and Urban Roots to bring awareness to their nonprofit organizations. The company provided guests an opportunity to donate to its community partners and pledged to match each donation.

Dropbox, based in San Francisco, has more than 1,200 employees worldwide. The company, founded in 2007, has raised $1.1 billion in funding to date.

Kony Opens Austin Office and Relocates Headquarters

September 2, 2015 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 1 Comment

Kony, a mobile application development platform, has opened an office in Austin.

The company has relocated its headquarters from Orlando to Austin. Its office is at 9225 Bee Cave Road and the company plans to hire at least 50 employees. Kony held an open house at its office Tuesday night to celebrate its expansion into the Austin market. It still has offices in Orlando and Silicon Valley. Kony has more than 1,200 employees worldwide.

“Austin is recognized as one of the fast-growing high-tech centers and a hub for mobile technology talent,” Thomas E. Hogan, chief executive officer of Kony, said in a news release. “Ensuring we have the right talent to support the needs of our growing customer base is critical to our success. With the rapid adoption of mobility by leading enterprises across the industries, there is no limit to how fast Kony will grow. We want to deliver the highest level of value and service to our enterprise customers, and we will continue to expand our business across the globe to meet this goal.”

Kony, founded in 2007, is a cloud-based mobile application development platform with more than 25 million customers in more than 45 countries. Its customer include Citibank, Aetna, Regions Bank and Weight Watchers.

The company has raised $103.4 million in six rounds of investment financing, according to its profile on Crunchbase.

SmarterHQ Opens Austin Office

September 2, 2015 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 1 Comment

SmarterHQ, an online marketing platform, announced this week the opening of its new office in Austin.

The company, based in Indianapolis, recently received $8 million in financing led by the Simon Venture Group. The five year old startup has raised $20 million to date. The office opened Aug. 31 st.

This is the company’s first office outside of its Indiana headquarters. It is occupying 4,100 square feet at 6011 West Courtyard Drive with 14 initial employees and room to expand to 25.

“We have experienced unprecedented growth over the past year, and so too did the industry, as more national brands strive to make customer data and personalized communication foundational to their marketing efforts,” Michael Osborne, CEO of SmarterHQ, said in a news statement. “It is clear that there is tremendous opportunity to bring our expertise and innovation to new markets, and we are excited that this expansion will help us grow our solutions to best fit the needs of our clients and their customers.”

SmartHQ’s customers for its online marketing platform with predictive analytics include Finish Line, Eddie Bauer and eBags.

HEB Partners with Instacart to Deliver Groceries in Austin

September 1, 2015 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 0 Comments

H-E-B, the largest grocery retailer in Texas, is partnering with Instacart to deliver milk, bread, eggs and other groceries to people in Austin and Houston in an hour.

“Don’t have time to come to H-E-B? No problem. We’ll bring H-E-B to you with Instacart,” Jeff Thomas, vice president and general manager of VP Central Texas at H-E-B, said in a news statement. “Instacart’s ability to deliver on-demand clearly matches our focus of making our customers’ lives better. We are excited to offer a larger assortment of H-E-B items to customers in Austin and Houston.”

H-E-B, based in San Antonio, is not yet providing the service in its hometown.

Instacart, based in San Francisco, is one of the fastest growing grocery delivery services in the country. It contracts with personal shoppers who deliver groceries to customers within an hour.

Instacart is offering free delivery and $10 off the first order for new customers using the promo code HEBLOVE through Sept. 30.

H-E-B, with sales of more than $22 billion, operates more than 360 stores in Texas and Mexico.

TechSpace Plans New Coworking Site in Downtown Austin

August 31, 2015 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 1 Comment

TechSpace courtesy photo

New York-based TechSpace Holding Co. announced Monday that it plans to expand into Austin by opening a new TechSpace business center.

The coworking center will be located at 98 San Jacinto Blvd. in Austin’s central business district. TechSpace plans to occupy the entire ground floor and the entire 4th floor of the San Jacinto Center.

Altogether, TechSpace will have 28,000 square feet of space featuring 24 private office suites and 250 workstations and an events space. The center is scheduled to open in January.

TechSpace already operates seven other coworking centers in New York City, Los Angeles, Orange County and San Francisco.

Parkway Properties, a real estate company that owns and operates office properties in high growth regions, is partnering with TechSpace on the project.

TechSpace joins a thriving coworking industry, which has sprung up in downtown Austin, including Capital Factory and WeWork.

Almalence Receives Investment from Intel Capital

August 31, 2015 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 0 Comments

Almalence, a computational imaging startup, announced Monday it has received an investment from Intel Capital.

The amount of investment and terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The Austin-based startup, founded in 2005, plans to use the funds to develop the next version of its mobile imaging technology to enable mobile cameras to achieve the image quality level of DSLR cameras.

The two companies have also entered into a strategic collaboration, which will allow Intel to license Almalence’s technology for its own products.

“Almalence develops computational photography technologies that significantly improve the image quality of photos and videos in mobile devices,” according to a news release. “The algorithm software can be implemented on either the device’s processor, or ported directly to the image processor for best performance. It is licensed directly to OEM customers.”

Dimitry Shmunk and Eugene Panich, Russian engineers, founded the company. Almalence’s research and development team is based in Novosibirsk, Russia.

goTransverse Lands Major Customer and Plans Expansion

August 31, 2015 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 4 Comments

James Messer, CEO and founder of goTransverse

goTransverse, a cloud-based billing company, just landed a major deal with STARZ Play Arabia, an international cable provider.

The Austin-based company is providing STARZ Play with a billing system that allows the media company to provide service to up to 385 million media consumers in 17 countries across the Middle East and North Africa.

goTransverse creates billing software, called TRACT, that lets companies charge based on subscription and usage. Its system also can handle billing for different countries with ease, said James Messer, the company’s founder and CEO. The cloud-based billing and revenue automation platform allows STARZ Play to sell direct to consumers through partners, such as international wireless telecom carriers, as well as explore new revenue models based on customer usage.

The Middle East has large numbers of mobile phone users, which makes the region a good fit for an up and coming method of watching and paying for TV, Messer said.

“We manage the whole back end,” Messer said. In the past, it used to be remarkably difficult to build this on the backend, he said. But now goTransverse’s system is programmed to handle revenue recognition and compliance issues for different countries around the world.

goTransverse works with a wide range of international and local companies to help them maximize their revenue streams based on usage and consumption, Messer said. They can provide tiered billing plans similar to telecommunications companies, he said.

“People want to only pay for what they consume,” Messer said.

GoTransverse moved to Austin from New York in April of 2008. The company has 75 employees and is based in the Sampson Building at 620 Congress. It is hiring a lot of sales staff and plans to double in size in the next year, Messer said.

Last fall, goTransverse received a $25 million investment from German private equity firm Siedentopf KG, bringing its total investment to date to $47 million. The company used the funds to further develop its TRACT platform.