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WiseWear Corp. Launches Evolve, a Wearable Fitness Device

November 14, 2014 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 0 Comments

At Geekdom Friday night, WiseWear Corp. officially launched Evolve its all in one wearable fitness tracking device.

“It’s been a wild journey this past year,” said Gerald Wilmink, the company’s founder and CEO.

The San Antonio-based startup, founded in 2013, plans to kick off a Kickstarter campaign to pre-sale the device, which can be worn as a watch or clipped onto clothing. It tracks fitness activity, sleep and more.

Wearables is a hot market right now. The market is expected to top $14 billion this year and grow to more than $70 billion by 2024, according to a report from IDTechEx, a research firm based in the United Kingdom. Some of the most popular devices on the market are Fitbit One, Jawbone UP24, Basis Carbon Steel Edition and the Garmin Vivofit. And more devices are added all the time.

In Austin, Atlas Wearables, a Techstars company, created a fitness device that tracks all kinds of fitness activity. It is expected to deliver its first devices to customers next month.

WiseWear plans to make its Evolve device available for sale in 2015. And its Kickstarter campaign is expected to launch any day now.

During the event at Geekdom, Wilmink thanked his investors and backers and introduced the team behind WiseWear which consists of several engineers with PhDs and patents and several C-level executives with MBAs and sales and marketing experience.

Earlier this year, WiseWear, in a profile in Silicon Hills News’ Life Sciences Issue, said its Evolve device would adhere to a user’s chest “with ultrathin, ultra soft, transfer-printed micro-circuitry and sensors.” But the company wasn’t able to commercialize that technology for manufacturing, Wilmink said. So it developed an alternative technology in house for a device that is about the size of a poker chip and can communicate with a smartphone via Bluetooth technology.

WiseWear Kickstarter from Chris Bourke on Vimeo.

San Antonio-based Infocyte Lands $500,000 in Funding

November 13, 2014 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 0 Comments

By LAURA LOREK
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

Infocyte Inc. just landed $500,000 in seed stage funding led by Austin-based LiveOak Venture Partners.

The San Antonio-based startup plans to use the funds to further develops Pulse, its cyber security assessment platform.

This is LiveOak’s first investment in San Antonio.

“The Infocyte team has a storied history and deep domain knowledge gained from their time in national defense,” Venu Shamapant, LiveOak’s general partner said in a news release. “We are excited to partner with them in their ambitions to bring advanced threat detection to a wider audience.”

Infocyte plans to release its product, which is currently in beta testing, to the public early next year, said Chris Gerritz, CEO and co-founder of Infocyte.

Gerritz and Ryan Morris, co-founder, both formerly worked as officers in the U.S. Air Force on Security Hill at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio in cyber security roles.

Infocyte created Pulse, a software and hardware device installed on a company’s computer network to monitors and scan for any irregularities such as malicious code or unauthorized activity. The product detects and identifies attackers and audits a network pro-actively before an attack takes place, Gerritz said.

“What we offer is a proactive security assessment that asks a question that no other security assessment does and that is are you comprised right now?” Gerritz said.

A lot of times, intruders can remain on a network, undetected, for months or years, Gerritz said. Infocyte’s software seeks to find them and deal with them before they cause major problems, he said.

“The majority of security assessments right now look for holes in a network that could be exploited by hackers,” Gerritz. “Our assessment answers has anyone actually used those holes to comprise your network. Are they in your network right now? Do you know about them?”

Generally, Infocyte’s customers are companies that don’t know that they are comprised yet, but they want to know if they are, Gerritz said.

The malware remains hidden on a network so the intruders can gather intelligence over time like credit card numbers, Morris said. The companies generally don’t know they’ve got a problem until the FBI tells them, he said.

Gerritz and Morris founded the company in May of 2013. They received $200,000 in initial funding from an unnamed angel investor. The company is based at Geekdom in downtown San Antonio and now has three employees, Gerritz said. Infocyte has hired some contractors and wants to hire two more people, he said.

Since August, Infocyte has been working by providing professional assessment services to detect vulnerabilities with local banks and credit unions. When it releases its software and hardware product in February, Infocyte plans to target Fortune 1000 companies, initially in the financial services and retail industries.

Gerritz and Morris just returned from Dublin, Ireland and the Web Summit, where they pitched Infocyte to an international audience.

Online Courier Service Dropoff Launches in Austin

November 12, 2014 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 7 Comments

About a year ago, Sean Spector needed to get some important documents to downtown Austin by 5 p.m. He hired a local courier service and they arrived late for the pickup, got lost on the delivery, and ultimately arrived late for the delivery and didn’t get a confirmation signature.

Spector investigated the industry and decided to create a better solution.

That solution is Dropoff, which officially launched Wednesday in Austin, to provide same-day delivery for businesses, of all kinds of goods, ranging from food catering orders to medicines to legal documents.

“I found the overall level of service lacking. Surprisingly, few couriers provided delivery confirmations and virtually none offered real-time package tracking — best practices already utilized by other industries,” Spector said.

Dropoff’s secret sauce is in making the courier process easy to track in real time and easy to order online. The company has 16 employees and is backed by $1.85 million in seed stage funding from Austin Ventures, Silverton Partners, Techstars/Bullet Time Ventures, Mucker Capital and angel investors. It employs contractors to make the actual deliveries. They use their own cars and smart phones to process and deliver the orders. Spector, for competitive reasons, declined to disclose the number of contract couriers Dropoff employs. But he did say the company keeps them busy all day long and they are not like other shareable company ventures which allow people to pick up work during a few spare hours of time.

Dropoff’s couriers, called agents, also wear uniforms.

“With bikes, cars, trucks and vans, Dropoff can deliver anything from a letter to catering for 200 people to a 500 pound pallet,” according to the company. “Dropoffs originating in Austin can be delivered as far as Houston, Dallas and San Antonio. Online and phone support makes it easy for customers to contact Dropoff with any questions they may have.”

Dropoff has been in beta testing since this summer, Spector said. It has delivered everything from catering orders to businesses for HEB to legal documents for a law firm. It will not deliver pets, people or anything prohibited like guns, illegal drugs, etc.

Dropoff Founders: Sean Spector, Christian Carollo, Ted Hong and Jason Klann

The service will start in Austin and then rollout to other cities in early 2015, said Spector, Dropoff’s CEO and co-founder. The team behind Dropoff have extensive experience launching and working at startups. Spector, co-founded Gamefly. Other members of the team include Christian Carollo, former head of mobile and cloud development at Gamefly, Ted Hong, former chief marketing officer of Fandango and Jason Klann, former senior vice president of business development and strategy at Schneider Electric.

Spector isn’t worried about his couriers being replaced by drones. (Amazon is testing drones for same day delivery and has recently announced same-day delivery of packages in select cities.) The key to Dropoff’s success is providing excellent customer service to businesses, he said.

Ambiq Micro Gets $15 Million More in Venture Capital

November 12, 2014 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 0 Comments

Ambiq Micro, maker of ultra low power integrated circuits, announced it has received $15 million in Series C funding.

The Austin-based company, founded in 2010, has raised $36.9 million from eight investors in eight rounds, according to its Crunchbase profile.

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) led the latest funding round which was supported by existing investors including Austin Ventures, Mercury Fund, and ARM Holdings. KPCB partner Wen Hsieh will be joining Ambiq Micro’s board.

Ambig Micro plans to use the funding to further develop its SPOT platform, which “dramatically reduces the energy consumption of semiconductors by reducing the voltage level at which switching occurs inside the chips,” according to a news release. It also makes real time clocks. The company is targeting the Internet of Things marketplace and the wearables marketplace, which require energy efficient and long-last batteries.

“KPCB’s Low Power Everywhere initiative believes that in a world where consumers and businesses are always on, there’s an increasing need for devices with improved energy efficiency and battery life,” KPCB partner Wen Hsieh said in a news release. “Ambiq Micro has developed a 10X lower power MCU for mobile, wearables and IoT devices. We’re excited to back an exceptional team and to help them quickly scale this opportunity.”

Worldpay Acquires Austin-based SecureNet Payment Systems

November 11, 2014 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 0 Comments

Worldpay, a London-based electronic payment company, announced Tuesday that it has entered into an agreement to acquire SecureNet Payment Systems, based in Austin.

The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Sterling Partners, a private equity firm in Chicago, owned SecureNet.

SecureNet, which has 100 employees, will remain in Austin and is planning on expanding and hiring additional employees. The company provides payment processing, data analytics and inventory management for merchants. The company has partnerships and relationships with more than 17,000 merchants.

“By combining SecureNet’s innovative software integration with Worldpay’s direct acquirer distribution advantages and partnership management strengths gained by our acquisition of Century Payments, we can uniquely accelerate the delivery of an integrated, omni-channel payments environment to the market,” Tony Catalfano, CEO of Worldpay US said in a news statement. “As the US leader in modern money, this also gives us a differentiated ability to offer actionable, SKU-level data insights to our customers to help them grow their businesses.”

The deal is expected to close in December, pending regulatory approvals.

BuildASign.com’s Troops Program Honors Veterans with Free Signs

November 11, 2014 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 1 Comment

Photo courtesy of BuildASign.com

Austin-based BuildASign.com has a special way to honor soldiers on Veteran’s Day and every day.

BuildASign.com announced Tuesday that the company has donated more than 337,000 welcome home signs and banners, worth more than $10 million, to the friends and families of returning military service members.

BuildASign.com, an online custom printer, has created a site that allows visitors to order free welcome home signs and banners or free banners and signs to show support for troops at home.

“Military families sacrifice so much and we are honored to support them,” Dan Graham, CEO of BuildASign.com, said in a news release. “I am immensely proud of our Troops Program and am excited that it is expanding.”

Fullscreen Buys Austin-based Rooster Teeth

November 10, 2014 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 16 Comments

Burnie Burns and Matt Hullum, photo courtesy of Annie Ray

Rooster Teeth, which started 11 years ago in Burnie Burns’ spare bedroom in Austin, just got acquired by Fullscreen, a global youth media company based in Los Angeles.

Rooster Teeth created the long running video series on the Internet Red Vs. Blue. The company has about 70 employees in Austin and will remain here, operating as a subsidiary of Fullscreen with Burns and Matt Hullum heading up the operations. Silicon Hills News did this profile of the company back in April.

The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The acquisition means Fullscreen will continue to support Rooster Teeth’s shows and help them develop new content. It will also accelerate Fullscreen’s expansion into both live and animated content. It plans to expand its merchandise and live events and “integrate the innovative gaming and culture brand into its technology and advertising infrastructure.”

Otter Media, a venture between The Chernin Group and AT&T, recently acquired a majority stake in Fullscreen.

“Rooster Teeth is one of the strongest and most authentic media brands in the world amongst 18-34 year old, male-skewing audiences,” George Strompolos, Fullscreen CEO and founder, said in a news release. “The combination of its massive reach, unique creative voice and insanely powerful community makes it a perfect match for Fullscreen. Burnie and Matt are widely recognized as true pioneers in the world of online video. It’s an honor to team up with them as Fullscreen continues to redefine youth media.”

Rooster Teeth has an estimated fan base of eight million. It holds the Rooster Teeth Expo, an annual convention celebrating gaming and Internet culture every year in Austin.

“Recently, the company crowd-funded nearly $2.5 million to produce “Lazer Team,” which broke records as the most funded film on Indiegogo to date,” according to a news release.

“At Rooster Teeth, we have a long history of creating the best digital content in the industry,” Burnie Burns, Rooster Teeth creative director, said in a news release. “With Fullscreen, we look forward to continuing that tradition in even bigger and better ways. Matt and I are excited about the opportunities this alliance will present for our creators and all the amazing content it will empower them to produce for our audience.”

SunPower Corp. Buys Austin-based SolarBridge Technologies

November 10, 2014 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 0 Comments

SunPower Corp., one of the nation’s largest producers of solar panels, Monday announced it has purchased Austin-based SolarBridge Technologies.

The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

SolarBridge is a leader in making integrated microinverter technology which converts direct current generated by a solar panel into alternating current. Its technology is already integrated into the panel, which eliminates the need to assemble additional components when installing the panels on a home.

SunPower, based in San Jose, Calif., plans to use SolarBridge’s microinverter technology with its high efficiency solar panels.

“SunPower’s acquisition of SolarBridge and its high performance microinverter technology will allow us to develop a differentiated product specifically optimized for our high efficiency solar panels,” Tom Werner, SunPower president and CEO, said in a news release. “This is the beginning of integrating electronics into our world-class solar panel technology. In this case, the combined result will provide our residential customers with an elegant, reliable and complete solution that fits their home specifications, including system design flexibility, ease of installation and maintenance and improved overall aesthetics.”

Upland Software Goes Public

November 6, 2014 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 0 Comments

Upland Software, which makes cloud-based management software for companies, went public Thursday with its stock price opening up at $11 per share.

The Austin-based company had priced its stock at $12 per share, the low end of the expected $12 to $14 range, with plans to raise $46.15 million.

The company’s stock continued to fall throughout the day. It closed at $9.75 down nearly 19 percent, giving the company a market capitalization of $140 million.

“Upland expects to use the net proceeds of the offering to repay a portion of its bank debt and for working capital and general corporate purposes, including to finance its growth through acquisitions and by expanding its sales force,” according to a news release.

William Blair & Company, L.L.C. and Raymond James & Associates, Inc. managed the offering along with Canaccord Genuity Inc. and Needham & Company, LLC.

Upland makes cloud-based enterprise management software. Its software is used to plan, manage and execute projects. It sells its software applications through a direct sales organization. It also sells through distributors and resellers. At the end of last year, Upland has more than 1,200 customers and more than 200,000 users in a variety of industries including financial services, retail, healthcare, technology manufacturing, education and more. The company reports increasing its staff from three employees in 2011 to 277 employees at the end of last year.

Upland’s revenue was $41.2 million in 2013, up from $22.8 million in 2012. It reported a net loss of $2.5 million in 2012 and $9.2 million in 2013.

Upland Software, with 296 employees, has raised $31.4 million in two rounds of investment from two investors.

Austin-based PenPal Schools Wins the Dell World 2014 Pitch Slam Competition

November 6, 2014 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 1 Comment

Seven startups pitched before Michael Dell and a panel of judges at Dell World and Austin-based PenPal Schools won the Pitch Days 2014 competition.

“We were incredibly impressed,” with all of the startups, Dell said. “Ultimately we liked PenPal Schools as the winner.”

PenPal Schools, a Capital Factory incubator company which moved to Austin three months ago, connects more than 50,000 students from more than 40 countries worldwide, said Joe Troyen, its founder. PenPal Schools participated in the New York-based ed tech accelerator Socratic Labs.

PenPal Schools allows students to practice their language skills through one on one PenPal interactions and by learning through news and current events, he said. It also lets them learn about new cultures and countries, he said.

PenPal Schools is growing quickly through word of mouth marketing among the teachers and schools, Troyen said.

PenPal schools also offers PenPal Lingo curriculum which connects students to native speakers to learn about life in their PenPal’s country.

Dell judged the competition with Heidi Messer, co-founder of Collective[i] and Chris Valentine, producer of the annual SXSW Accelerator competition.

Dell for Entrepreneurs presented the Pitch Slam event at Dell World. During 2014, Dell held more than 10 pitch slam competitions nationwide with the top companies in Healthcare, Education and the Internet of Things winning a spot in the competition at Dell World. Each company gave a five minute pitch followed by questions and answers.