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The New Techstars Cloud Class Kicked Off in San Antonio

January 13, 2015 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 0 Comments

By LAURA LOREK
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

Blake Yeager, head of the Techstars Cloud program in San Antonio at Geekdom

The Techstars Cloud program for 2015 kicked off Monday at Geekdom in San Antonio with a pizza and beer reception in the evening.

The program features ten companies including one from San Antonio, Nebulab, a cloud-based storage, organization and collaboration web app for researchers and one from Austin, BitFusion, which makes hardware aimed at researchers and scientists.

Nebulab originally spun out of a 3 Day Startup program in San Antonio and received initial funding from the original Geekdom Fund.

This year’s class also has three international teams from Poland, Israel and Brazil, said Blake Yeager, managing director of the Techstars Cloud program. And entrepreneurs from Mexico and India. The other teams come from New York, Seattle and Blacksburg, VA. and two teams from the Silicon Valley region.

The three month program concludes April 9th with Demo Day at the Aztec Theater.

The Techstars Cloud program emphasizes intense mentorship, Yaeger said. The first week the teams meet with between 60 to 80 mentors, he said. The local mentors include Pat Matthews, Pat Condon, Graham Weston, Michael Girdley and Lew Moorman. The rest of the program includes an accelerated development timeline which includes drills on pitching to investors, business planning, marketing and advertising and customer acquisition. The teams also benefit from workshops and talks given by experienced and successful entrepreneurs and experts.

“With the cloud program we try to go after teams that are solving technical problems,” Yaeger said.

This class includes business to business companies but it also has a few consumer facing companies, Yaeger said. Three of the companies already have paying customers, a few have beta customers and some are pre-revenue and haven’t even launched yet, he said.

“I’m really excited about the class,” he said. “We’ve got 10 awesome companies.”

This is the third Techstars Cloud class in San Antonio. The first classes took place in 2012 and 2013. Jason Seats ran the program. He then left in 2013 to launch a Techstars program in Austin. Yeager previously served as a mentor to the Techstars Cloud program. He also joined one of the teams, ZeroVM, which Rackspace acquired.

The 11 companies in the Techstars Cloud 2012 program collectively raised $44 million. To date, eight are still operating, two failed and one got acquired. The 12 companies in the 2013 Techstars Cloud class raised $49 million. Eleven are still operating and one got acquired.

The team behind Fantasmo Studios includes xxx, Jameson Detweiler,

The team behind Fantasmo Studios includes Thomas Pytleski, Jameson Detweiler and Ryan Measel.

Thomas Pytleski, Jameson Detweiler and Ryan Measel make up the Fantasmo Studios team. They are creating a virtual reality and augmented reality game for mobile phones. The first game will be like the card game Pokemon, but will take characters and layer them into the real world using augmented reality. Then game players will be able to catch them.

The other teams include (descriptions supplied by Techstars):

Appbase is building a real time events based database with full-text search and collaborative features via an easy to use API. With Appbase, building a real time production app takes only a few hours.

Card Isle distributes greeting cards through touch screen printer-based kiosks, utilizing local and independent artists as well as personalized text.

Callinize integrates your existing phone system and your CRM. It’s a hosted solution which takes just minutes to setup and works with the systems you already use.

Elasticode provides an online platform that enables real time deployment and unique personalization, optimizing end user mobile experiences.

Knowtify is Mailchimp for the personalized emails you send from your app. It saves app builders from having to code and maintain their own email systems allowing them to drive better user engagement, retention and growth.

Stabilitas addresses the safety and security concerns of international travelers with location-specific safety information, and a lifeline to help, all through a traveler’s smartphone.

VirtKick is a free and open source platform that easily hosts virtual servers to improve VPS business with one click installation. The functional, streamlined interface provides users with a feature packed marketplace and freedom from cloud providers.

Payment Data Systems Processed Nearly $3 Billion in Transactions in 2014

January 12, 2015 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 1 Comment

Payment Data Systems, an online bill paying company, reported a record fourth quarter for 2014 in which it processed more than $833 million in payments.

The record breaks the previous record which the company reached in the prior quarter of $796 million.

The San Antonio-based company reported its electronic check processing volumes were up four percent from the previous quarter and were the highest in its history, up 522 percent from 2013. And its credit card processing volumes were also the highest in its history.

Overall, the company processed nearly $3 billion in payments in 2014, up from $630 million in 2013.

“All of our annual transaction processing volumes and associated metrics exceeded our expectations and have led to dramatic growth for our company,” Payment Data Systems CEO Michael Long said in a statement. “This growth has led to a dramatic and positive increase in revenues, gross profit, operating income and net income both for the fourth quarter and the year. We will report record earnings for 2014.”

The company, which is currently traded on the over the counter bulletin board trading system, is positioned for “potential up-listing to the New York Stock Exchange market, Long said.

“We anticipate that we will be filing our application for approval to list on the NYSE shortly after we report or annual earnings for 2014,” Long said.

Payment Data Systems plans to release its annual report at the end of March.

Payment Data System’s subsidiary, Ficentive, last month bought Akimbo Financial Services, a startup in San Antonio, which sells pre-paid credit cards.

A Spectrum Event on How to Win an SBIR Grant

January 12, 2015 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 0 Comments

The U.S. government invests more than $2 billion every year in promising new startups with creative innovations.

In Austin, startups including Tevido Biodevices, Spot on Sciences and Lynx Labs have received Small Business Innovation Research grants.

So how does a startup go about getting one of the SBIR grants?

That’s the subject of a meeting Thursday at the Austin Chamber of Commerce offices at 535 E. 5th Street from 2 p.m. until 5 p.m. co-hosted with the South Texas Business Development Center at Texas State University as part of its Spectrum series for entrepreneurs.

The session features advice from SBIR expert and grant writer Lisa Kurek and an update on the I-Corps Node from Heath Naquin.

Registration is required to attend the event.

MyTime Launches and Finds Austin Less “Bougie” than Dallas and Houston

January 9, 2015 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 0 Comments

MyTime Founder Ethan Anderson, courtesy photo

MyTime allows people to book appointments online without any hassle.

The app launched last November in Austin and lists more than 18,000 local businesses. It lets people book everything from haircuts to dog groomings to massages easily online.

“We’ve all experienced the frustration of booking appointments by phone,” said Ethan Anderson, founder of MyTime. “You’re put on hold forever, or the business is closed when you try to call, or you play endless games of phone tag just to book a simple appointment.”

That’s why Anderson created MyTime. The website and mobile app solves this problem by letting people book all of their appointments at any local business through MyTime.com or through itts mobile app.

Austin is a test market for MyTime’s new business model.

“In other cities, we charge businesses who want to promote themselves a commission on revenue whenever a new customer books an appointment,” Anderson said. “In Austin, we are testing out a new flat fee structure for businesses who want to promote themselves.” The businesses pay $50 a month and if they do not receive $50 in revenue from the app, MyTime doesn’t charge the fee, Anderson said.

In Texas, people have used MyTime to book thousands of appointments already. The service has combed through that data to find some interesting comparisons among cities. Compared to Dallas and Houston, Austin is more last minute when it comes to appointment booking, according to MyTime.

“Austin books appointments an average of 72 hours in advance, compared to 78 hours in Houston,” according to MyTime. “Austinites book their appointments during the day. Only 26% of appointments are booked at night between 6 p.m. and 7 a.m. vs. 30 percent of bookings in Dallas and Houston during the same time.”

“Austin might be less bougie,” according to MyTime. “Austin over-indexes on basic haircut bookings while massages over-index in Dallas and hair styling over-indexes in Houston.”

MyTime is making a big push to attract Austin consumers to its app. It’s launched radio ads and hired out billboards.

The reception has been good so far, Anderson said.

Anderson created MyTime, which was incubated at 500 Startups, launched in San Francisco and Los Angeles in 2013. The company now has more millions of businesses listed nationwide and has 75 employees, including two contractors in Austin. MyTime has raised $3 million from 12 investors, according to its CrunchBase profile.

“It always felt weird to me that there wasn’t a single destination to do this like there was for OpenTable,” Anderson said.

“We literally want any appointment based business to be on MyTime,” Anderson said.

Some of the most popular bookings are for haircuts, waxing services, manicures and dog grooming, but things like dental exams and massages are growing, he said.

“We are making a bigger push into automotive and housing clean services,” Anderson said.

The site offers exclusive deals for customers who book services during off-peak times. It also gives its users a $20 credit when they refer friends to a particular business.

MyTime also offers a loyalty program to its users. When they book three different types of appointments, they get the fourth one free.

The End of an Era for AustinStartup.com

January 9, 2015 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 0 Comments

Bryan Menell, photo courtesy of We Are Austin Tech

AustinStartup.com, the blog created by serial tech entrepreneur Bryan Menell, has ceased to publish.

Menell wrote a post to his readers just before the holidays informing them of his plans to shutter his blog, but to keep up a tech entrepreneurial resource page listing accelerators, venture investors, groups, co-working sites, angel organizations and publications.

Menell launched the blog in May of 2007 and since then he wrote 1,842 posts.

“I created the blog because back then I was meeting tons of cool technology entrepreneurs, and nobody had ever heard of them or their companies,” Menell wrote in his letter to readers. “Their stories went untold, and many felt like they were building in a vacuum.”

“Things are far different today with fantastic business accelerators like Capital Factory, several organized angel investment groups, co-working spaces, the Austin Tech Happy Hour, and publications like Silicon Hills News,” according to Menell.

Menell also Co-founded Mahana, a customer service app using Beacon technology aimed at the hospital industry. He also co-founded Capital Factory and serves as a mentor to many technology startups and he serves on the board of a few of them.

Menell and his wife also run the long-standing and popular Austin Tech Happy Hour.

SHIFT Communications Opens Austin Office

January 8, 2015 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 0 Comments

SHIFT Communications, a public relations firm based in Boston, has opened an Austin office focused on social media, marketing technology and communications.

“Increasingly we are seeing strategic clients with ties to the Austin area and we only expect this trend to grow,” CEO Todd Defren said in a news release. “With a combination of great talent, strategic clients on the ground and a desire to contribute to a community that is truly fueling startup growth, expanding our footprint into Austin makes perfect sense for SHIFT.”

Matt Trocchio, vice president with SHIFT, is heading up the Austin office. He has worked for SHIFT for a decade specializing in cybersecurity, event management and marketing technologies. The Austin office is located at 7500 Rialto Blvd and has two local employees and two working remotely with plans to expand this year. SHIFT’s Austin clients include CommVault, Fortinet, OutboundEngine and RSA Conference.

SHIFT, which has 110 employees in offices in Boston, New York and San Francisco, also plans to hold its “Masters of the New Marcom” seminar series on Feb. 3rd at The Driskill Hotel. The event features CEO Todd Defren, Vice President of Marketing Technology Christopher Penn and Executive Vice President of Strategy Scott Monty.

Saxena Joins the Board of the Federal Reserve Bank’s San Antonio Branch

January 8, 2015 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 2 Comments

The Federal Reserve Board of Governors in Washington, D.C. appointed Manoj Saxena to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas’ San Antonio Branch board of directors

Saxena will serve a three-year term ending Dec. 31, 2017. He has served on the San Antonio Branch board as a Dallas Fed appointment since 2012. “In his role as a board member, Saxena will continue to provide input on regional economic conditions as part of the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy functions,” according to a news release.

Saxena has held leadership positions as a business leader, IT executive and venture capitalist. He currently serves as chairman of Cognitive Scale and founding managing director of The Entrepreneur’s Fund IV. He also is a special advisor to IBM senior leadership.

The San Antonio Branch board consists of seven members, four appointed by the Dallas Fed board and three by the Federal Reserve Board of Governors in Washington, D.C.

The 2015 Austin Startup Games Kicks Off Jan. 24th

January 8, 2015 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 0 Comments

A lot has changed since the Austin Startup Games first launched in 2012.

For one thing, it’s no longer called the Startup Olympics. And it’s bigger. The first games had seven teams competing. Sixteen teams competed in the last event and 14 are signed up for this year’s event.

uShip won the first games. Since then, the event has been held three more times including a summer games. SpareFoot won last year’s startup games and earned $23,000 for Kure It, a charity focused on cancer research.

This year, the Startup Games plans to hold events nationwide in other tech centers with the goal of raising $1 million for charity, Josh Baer, co-founder of Capital Factory, told KVUE News earlier this week.

This year’s event will be held at Vintage Innovations’ Innovation Station starting at noon on Jan. 24th. The event is open to the public with a $10 donation and a canned good.

The events usually include foosball, darts, shuffleboard, Pop-a-shot, beerpong, flip cup, connect four and trivia and a special event.

So far, 14 startups have signed up to participate. Those startups include Capital Factory, SpareFoot, uShip, Boundless Network, Headspring, theChive, WPEngine, TrendKite, Buzz Points, OutboundEngine, OneSpot, HomeImprovement Leads, RideScout and Civitas Learning.

“Each company plays for the charity of their choice, and at the end of the event, every charity walks away with money for their organization, with the largest portion of the pot going to 1st, 2nd and 3rd place teams,” according to the Startup Games.

Here’s a vintage video from the first Startup Games at uShip.

SXSW Interactive Names Girlstart’s Tamara Hudgins to its Hall of Fame

January 8, 2015 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 1 Comment

South by Southwest has named Girlstart Executive Director Tamara Hudgins to its Interactive Hall of Fame for 2015.

SXSW is honoring Hudgins for her work in expanding and developing the Austin-based nonprofit organization since 2009.

Girlstart, founded in 1997, runs programs to empower girls in the fields of Science Technology Engineering and Math, known as STEM. The goal is to encourage more girls to enter into STEM fields. Under Hudgin’s leadership, the program has grown from reaching 1,500 girls, teachers and family members in 2009 to more than 15,000 last year. Also, the program now offers 45 after school programs, up from four in 2009. Girlstart also offers a 22 week long summer programs, up from eight. And it has expanded to six states nationwide.

Girlstart offers programs in the Bay Area, Seattle, Chicago, and other urban centers. It has also partnered with companies like Dell, AMD, Freescale, Google, Motorola Solutions, National Instruments, and 3M to develop STEM education programs.

“This is an honor that reflects the work of the entire Girlstart team, and shows the importance of programming that inspires girls to pursue STEM fields of study and STEM careers,” Hudgins said in a news release. “While we’ve come a long way as an organization in our first 18 years, we’re setting our sights on making even more of a difference in the years to come.”

CTAN Hires Claire England as New Executive Director

January 5, 2015 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 5 Comments

The Central Texas Angel Network, one of the country’s most active angel investing groups, named Claire England as its new executive director.

An Austin native, England, who previously served as director of global expansion for Tech Ranch, has a long history of supporting local startups. She also previously served as executive director of RISE Austin and serves as the Austin Chair for Startup America.

Brent Elyea, the previous director, left last October to join an early-stage venture capital fund. The CTAN board unanimously chose England after an extensive regional search, according to a news release.

“We are very excited to announce this appointment,” Rick Timmins, CTAN board chair said in a news release. “Claire brings a strong background in member development, community relations and nonprofit organization building to CTAN’s programs. She has a deep sense of commitment to Austin’s startup ecosystem and to angel investing. And she has served nonprofits at all program, fundraising, and executive levels, bringing significant perspective to our organization.”

“I am absolutely thrilled to continue supporting Austin’s startup ecosystem through this new role with CTAN,” England said. “Early-stage investment is key to the long-term vitality of our economy, and Austin is very lucky to have one of the top angel networks in the country based right her in our backyard.”

In addition, CTAN announced its first 2015 funding cycle deadline is Friday. Entrepreneurs may apply via the CTAN website.

CTAN members have invested more than $45 million in more than 100 companies since 2006. CTAN is one of the top five angel investing networks in the country.