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WP Engine Revs Up on WordPress

March 4, 2014 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 0 Comments

By TIM GREEN
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

Photo courtesy of WPEngine

It’s Ticketpalooza Day at WP Engine, the Austin-based company that offers managed hosting services for WordPress-based websites.

About 30 members of the company’s support staff are gathered around two long tables fielding calls from customers having problems with their websites.

The support reps tap on their laptops, lean over to look at a neighbor’s computer screen and offer words of advice. They score prizes, devour company-provided lunch and seriously reduce the number of calls.

The idea of Ticketpalooza is to close out service tickets to customers’ satisfaction as quickly as possible, said Austin Gunter, part of the company’s marketing department.

He said WP Engine’s customers appreciate the draw down on the service queue and the staff likes the collaborative yet competitive process. “We’re all just having a lot of fun with this.”

Customer service is an essential part of what WP Engine offers. Its services help its customers’ websites run faster, more reliably, more securely and with the capability to grow.

Heather Brunner, CEO of WP Engine

In 2013, WP Engine experienced what CEO Heather Brunner called hyper growth of its own, saying that revenue and the number of customers and employees all tripled.

Now, with a $15 million venture investment and a complete executive team in place, the company, which has offices in Austin and San Francisco, is geared to keep growing.

The investment, announced in January, came from North Bridge Venture Partners, which has offices in Waltham, Mass., and Palo Alto, Calif. A previous round of $1.2 million in 2011 came from Silverton Partners and several angel investors.

The WordPress universe offers rooms for growth.

WordPress started as an open source blogging tool and has grown into a content management system that powers about 20 percent of websites and 20 percent of the biggest websites.

Brunner said WP Engine has 14,000 customers, ranging from individuals and small businesses to bigger clients such as the Country Music Association, HTC, Williams-Sonoma and the Bonnaroo music festival. The company’s customers run more than 120,000 different sites with about 40 million unique visitors a day.

Entrepreneur Jason Cohen was responding to the frustrating performance of his WordPress blog when he developed the technology on which WP Engine is based in 2010.

The foundation of WP Engine’s technology is the cloud-based infrastructure that started with Cohen’s coding.

“Now with 3 ½ years under our belt we’ve been able to architect our cloud infrastructure for massive scale and traffic and the ability to scale up and scale down,” Brunner said. “We have unique IP that runs the cloud infrastructure for our business and WordPress.”

Next is a layer of software that provides security, speed and other functions. “We’ve created a whole caching technology that is unique to the market,” she said. “There are specific innovations that are unique to us.”

A third layer includes the customer interface, user tools and a dashboard that allows the customer to make websites change and updates easily and quickly.

The top layer is WP Engine’s support team, which Brunner said is drawn from the WordPress ecosystem, developers and consultants. The support team interacts with customers over the phone, through Twitter and chat.

“We have a tremendous amount of expertise in our support customer-facing operation to help whether they have a proactive question or have an issue they need help with,” she said.

In its interactions with customers, WP Engine can track what’s working and what’s not and make changes.

“We’ve seen a lot of changes to their service over the years,” said Brandon Dove at Pixel Jar, a WordPress development company that uses WP Engine. “They’ve added developer-facing things like git integration for deployment, backup postings with an instant restore feature and built-in staging servers for active development cycles.”

Dove said he appreciates WP Engine’s honesty and transparency when there’s a problem.

“No host can offer you 100 percent up time,” he said. “Knowing that you can trust your host to have your best interests in mind when something goes wrong is crucial. They have an SLA (service-level agreement) in place that keeps them accountable for downtime and other support-related issues.”

Brunner said the company will use part of the $15 million investment to continue to improve and expand its technology and services. That includes adding self-service functions to make it easier for the customers to help themselves, she said.

“That’s a big, big part of our focus for 2014, extending the market leadership we have and continue to invest in things that mean an even better experience for our customers,” she said.

Brunner became affiliated with WP Engine in early 2013 as a board member. She became COO in the spring and CEO in October, all of which were planned moves. She had been COO of BazaarVoice before joining WP Engine.

Other members of the executive staff who came aboard in 2013 are April Downing, chief financial officer; Matt Schatz, vice president of sales; and Tina Dobie, vice president of customer experience. Cohen, who founded the company with Ben Metcalfe, shifted from CEO to chief technology officer.

The company has three basic pricing plans, from $29 per month to $249 per month. Beyond that is a premium level, in which pricing is based on factors including the number of sites, the amount of traffic and number of functions.

“We want to have a really fair exchange for value,” Brunner said. “So we’re delivering this innovation, we’re delivering fantastic expertise, we’re creating an incredible experience. That’s our aspiration for our customers for them to say, “This just works.” And for that we want to give a fair exchange. That’s what we’re looking to create.”

WP Engine is one of several companies providing managed hosting for WordPress websites. Competitors include San Antonio-based Pressable.

WP Engine does well in several comparisons online. Cohen and Pressable founder Vid Luther noted similarities and differences on Quora.

“We definitely have competition, it’s a dynamic space,” Brunner said. “But there’s no one single company we’re going head to head against.”

Brunner said the company practices what it preachers and uses WordPress for its website. It refreshed its brand and rolled out a new website in October.

“It’s all built on WordPress and shows you the best of how you would use WordPress to build a corporate website, get your message out as well as use thought leadership within your website such as blogs for content.”

For WP Engine, that’s the ticket.

Immigration Reform Needs a Strong Push Now Panelists Say

March 3, 2014 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 0 Comments

By SUSAN LAHEY
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

Congressman Lloyd Doggett and John Holmes, vice president with Freescale Semiconductor

Congressman Lloyd Doggett said some immigration reform bill must be passed this year, because if Congress waits until January, the hurdles will be even greater.

Rep. Doggett spoke Monday morning at Capital Factory on a panel about immigration reform sponsored by FWD.US. Other panelists included Bill Hammond, president of the Texas Association of Business, Peter French, founder at FreeFlow Research in San Antonio that works with small businesses and immigrants to help identify routes that would let qualified STEM workers remain in the U.S., Michael Golden, partner with Boulette & Golden with handles employment and immigration law. The panel was moderated by John Holmes, vice president, legal at Freescale Semiconductor.

The immigration reform issue has many facets. On one hand it tackles how to deal with illegal immigrants. Some conservative factions want to build a fence between the U.S. and Mexico and allow medical facilities to report illegal immigrants who come in for treatment. Doggett has voted against those measures. But more pertinent to the audience Monday was the talent shortage for STEM companies, especially small businesses that would happily hire recent grads from U.S. universities—the majority of whom are not citizens–but for uncertainty of being able to keep them in the country. In addition, many startups are founded by immigrants, creating jobs and boosting the economy in general.

Goodbye Gang of Eight

Immigration reform panelists: Michael Golden, partner with Boulette & Golden, Peter French with FreeFlow Research, Bill Hammond, with the Texas Association of Business, Rep. Lloyd Doggett and John Holmes with Freescale Semiconductor.

Rep. Doggett co-sponsored the “Attracting the Best and Brightest Act” to expand visas for applicants with STEM backgrounds and supported measures to slow illegal immigration while encouraging more avenues for residency and citizenship. He said he thought there would be action on the bill last summer. But then the Gang of Eight pushing it forward began to dissolve as various members dropped out saying they “didn’t trust President Obama.” Doggett said he suspected they hadn’t trusted President Obama before they worked on the bill either, but that was their reason for abandoning it.

“I still hope that there could be action this year,” Doggett said. “There are several ways to get this issue up in front of the House. The only way we ended the government shutdown or passed the Violence Against Women Act was to let a majority of the House rule.” Doggett is talking about getting a discharge petition which would have to be signed by all the House Democrats and 18 or 19 Republicans and would force the bill out of committee and up for a vote.

Linking With Bibles and Badges

Hammond pointed out that the opponents of immigration reform would be “melting down” the phones of their representatives and that supporters of immigration reform had to do the same. But they have to speak the language of the Republicans they’re trying to sway. Hammond, who is a member of a group called Bibles, Badges and Business for Immigration Reform, suggested finding a law enforcement officer or member of the Evangelical community to petition Republicans.

“They are the natural allies of Republicans,” Hammond said. “You need to get them engaged…. All these groups need to work together.” Speaking for himself, Hammond said, he’d like to take all the immigration caps off and let the marketplace “tell us what to do.”

French said that there were more than 800,000 foreign born students in the U.S. and only 85,000 H-1B Visas every year. “They are encouraged to go back to their home countries and compete against the United States. That’s a problem for the competitiveness of the United States as a whole.”

In addition French said, many of the spouses of people with H-1B Visas are not allowed to work while in the U.S. But they, too, have master’s degrees or PhDs and could be making valuable contributions to innovation and the economy.

Golden said the worst part was the uncertainty. Last year there were 124,000 applicants for the 85,000 H-1B Visas and the numbers may double or triple this year. The process for choosing who gets to stay is a lottery. He’s known people who were waiting since 2007. These are people who might build businesses if they had confidence that they would not have to pack up everything and leave once they’d established themselves. They’re also people who could contribute to existing companies if those companies had confidence they would not lose a key employee because the lottery didn’t pick them. Those immigrants, French and Golden said, are being wooed by countries like Canada who will then have a competitive advantage over the U.S.

Simple Majority

Doggett pointed out that there are definitely people who will never be swayed to reform immigration to allow more people to stay, regardless of their qualifications.

“We have to all move forward together or we won’t move at all,” he said. The House may pass some measures individually and pass them to the Senate where they’ll be formed into a cohesive law. But debate in Congress, he said, isn’t fact based. A lot of it has to do with emotions. Proponents need to come up with the stories that will appeal to the sensibilities of opponents.

“Some people will never be persuaded,” he said. “But we just need a majority. We don’t need to win over the entire population on this issue. “

Guides to SXSW 2014 in Austin

March 3, 2014 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 0 Comments

By LAURA LOREK
Founder of Silicon Hills News

Austin Skyline Photo licensed from iStockphoto.com

It’s that crazy time of year in Austin when locals leave for Spring Break and rent out their houses and apartments for gobs of money to the estimated 30,000 people expected to attend this year’s South by Southwest Interactive.
That’s right, it’s the biggest, wildest and wackiest SXSW ever.
And while some think the event has jumped the shark, we don’t think so.
In fact, we get a lot of value out of SXSW every year and it’s a fabulous place to meet with all kinds of people. We always come away filled with new ideas.
This year, Silicon Hills News will launch its first print magazine at the event. Read this article on why we’re doing it.
To find a copy of it all you need to do is attend the Silicon Hills, Austin Technology Incubator and Central Texas Angel Network Pitch competition on Sunday in the Austin Chamber of Commerce’s offices. Hope to see you there.
Copies will also be at the entrepreneur’s lounge at Fogo de Chao and at Capital Factory, Techstars and other select locations around town.
But enough about us, let’s get to all the great panels, parties and people that make up SXSW.

To get a jump start on SXSW Interactive, check out the lineup of all the great events for University of Texas at Austin Entrepreneurship Week which kicked off last Friday.

The University of Texas has also published this 2014 Interactive Events and Activities schedule for all things Longhorn-related.

And SXSWedu Conference and Festival kicked off Monday and runs through Thursday.

The Austin Technology Council just released its member guide lineup of must-attend events.

Capital Factory has its agenda of SXSW events.

And don’t forget to read Joshua Baer’s 10 Austin Startups to Watch at SXSW.

Austin Ventures published this list of can’t miss events.

Mad Betty has published the party list.

And Fosbury has a directory featuring 30 local companies and landmarks along with the “best of” and “cant miss” spots in Austin.

Halfpastnow.com has created this “unofficial guide to SXSW.”

And the folks at WeAreAustinTech.com created the video embedded below as a guide for first timers.

Geekdom Fund Invests in Three San Antonio Startups

March 2, 2014 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 0 Comments

By LAURA LOREK
Founder Silicon Hills News

Photo courtesy of Geekdom.

Three new startups in San Antonio have received $25,000 cash investments each from the Geekdom Fund.

The two-year-old fund aims to jumpstart the city’s startup community by providing seed-stage funding to tech startups.

In February, the Geekdom Fund made investments in Nebulab Technologies and Lightphile. Last November, the fund invested in Remote Garage. All of the startups are based at Geekdom, a collaborative coworking space in downtown San Antonio.

The fund “seeks to enable these companies to build businesses around a problem worth solving and a market large enough for high growth potential with a team that can build a profitable business,” according to a statement from Cole Wollak with the fund. “The Geekdom Fund will make investments for which the expected social, economic and cultural impact from the investment being made will have a net positive gain on the broader startup community of San Antonio.”

But the fund aims to make a profit for its investors.

“We won’t invest in a company that we believe won’t make a return for the fund,” Wollak said. “Things we look at when making decisions are like any fund or accelerator: idea, market, team, stage and progress. We’ve said no to people for not having a complete team, we’ve said no to people for lack of execution, too small of a market, the whole gamut.”

Guillermo Vela, co-founder of Nebulab Technologies, got turned down before Nebulab received an investment. The idea behind the company spun out of a 3-Day Startup program in San Antonio and wasn’t developed enough initially, he said. But now, the founders have worked out the kinks and they presented a more polished pitch.

Five members make up the team: Vela, Arturo Covarrubias, Diego Castro, Simon Barnett and Jonathan Loo.

Nebulab Technologies is developing a web app for scientists to organize their data in a visual way, he said. It combines the visual appeal of PowerPoint with the functionality of Microsoft One Notes with the ability to drag and drop data files onto a blank canvas, Vela said. It’s cloud-based, collaborative and real time, he said. The product will help scientists share and communicate their scientific data and to add greater transparency to the process, he said.

“Our goal is really to facilitate the way scientists store and share information,” Vela said.

The Geekdom funding will help to evolve its product, Vela said.

“This vast majority is going to go to pay the lead developer a salary and to incorporate as well,” he said.

Previously, Vela worked as a brain cancer research at John Hopkins University.

Lightphile plans to use its funding to develop its software as well as with the prototyping cost of its hardware, said David Barrick, co-founder.

The company has made a $500 hardware device controlled by an iPad that acts as a lighting controller at concerts, replacing other hardware systems that costs thousands more, Barrick said.

His co-founder is Logan Butler and together the two have designed many lighting sets. They have 10 years of industry experience.

“We’ve never been satisfied with the lighting control experience,” he said.

So they created a solution. Now they’ve got a working prototype that they’ve tested and they’re working to create the final product, which will be Wi-Fi based.

“Our primary market is churches at the start,” Barrick said.

Jaakko Piipponen, co-founder of Remote Garage, received the Geekdom Fund investment late last year.

Remote Garage is a storage on demand service. It provides customers with a storage container and then its drivers pick up customers’ belongings and stores them and delivers them back whenever needed. The company charges by the cubic foot, and users can see their storage inventory online.

“Our typical customer is an apartment dweller with limited space and limited time, who just wants that extra space without the hassle,” he said.

Geekdom is a sponsor of Silicon Hills News

Students Showcase Engineering Skills at FIRST Robotics Super Regional Championship

March 1, 2014 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 3 Comments

By LAURA LOREK
Founder of Silicon Hills News

Dean Kamen, founder of FIRST Robotics, at Alamo FIRST Regional Robotics Championship

Want to see some of the best and brightest young minds in our country in action?
Go to the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center Saturday for the finals of the FIRST Robotics Super Regional Championship, a three-day robotics competition with more than 3,500 students and more than 200 teams from across the U.S. and Canada.
Rackspace is sponsoring the event.
The FIRST programs are important because they are creating the STEM workers the U.S. needs so much, said Dean Kamen, inventor and founder of FIRST Robotics. He attended the event Friday.
“Everybody has finally figured out that the future of our country, our competitiveness, our ability to deal with problems like healthcare, environment and energy, requires way more kids to get involved in science and technology and inventing as a career,” Kamen said.

Kids need more role models so they can envision themselves as scientists. “Particularly, young women don’t think about it as a career because they don’t see women in science and technology on TV,” Kamen said.
There are very few jobs in the world of sports and entertainment compared to the millions of jobs available in technology, he said.
Kamen founded FIRST, which means For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, 25 years ago to provide four hands-on Science, Technology, Engineering and Math focused programs for students in grades kindergarten through high school. His goal is to make FIRST available in every school in the country.
“The great thing about FIRST is not that we teach anything, that’s what teachers do, that’s what schools do,” Kamen said. “What we do is create a whole movement, a generation of kids excited about participating to learn, to become part of the tech community.”
FIRST also appeals to women and minorities, Kamen said. Through the robotics program he’s hoping to reach students everywhere, he said.
“So that over the next ten years I hope through FIRST the U.S. will re-emerge as the country in this world that has the most and the best scientists, technologists, engineers, inventors because that’s what raises the bar of every generation, compared to the last one.,” he said.
Every field that has seen improvement, it’s because of technology, Kamen said.
“We used to pretty much be the only country in the world focused on technology,” Kamen said. “But now the rest of the world has figured out that the key to the future is tech and their kids are focused like laser beams, which we invented, on technology and our kids are distracted by things that are amusing and fun.”
The U.S. focuses too much on sports and entertainment, he said.
“I think they are great too. But they are a pastime,” he said.
The kids in this generation have got to start with technology early at the FIRST Lego League competitions and stick with it and develop their skills.
“They’ve got to come out ready to be the best in the world.” Kamen said.

Rackspace CEO Graham Weston also spoke to students about the importance of STEM education at the opening ceremony on Friday.
“We think FIRST robotics is the cornerstone event for getting future geeks and getting more kids into science and technology,” Weston said. The FIRST programs develop critical thinking and problem solving at a young age, he said.
“It’s much better to start tackling these engineering challenges when you’re young,” Weston said. “When you’re mind is still open and ready to tackle big questions. This is a competition but it is one of the most intellectual and toughest troubleshooting and engineering competitions in the world. It takes real skill to win these prizes.”
Rackspace also considers FIRST to be a great place to “hire future Rackers,” Weston said.

Sean McDonald, member of the Purple Gear team from North Carolina, holding up one of the team's patents

Sean McDonald, member of the Purple Gears team from North Carolina, holding up one of the team’s patents

In the mechanics pits before the competition, Sean McDonald, programmer for Purple Gears from Raleigh, North Carolina, showed off his team’s two pending patents. And they’ve got another one in process, said Sean Greene, the team’s modeler.
“We’ve got a patent on the wheel,” Greene said. “So we’ve reinvented the wheel.”
Their robot was competing in the FIRST Robotics Tech Challenge in the “Block Party” game in which their robot has to place plastic blocks into goals in an arena competition. The teams also can raise their team alliance flag up a pole and pull their robots up on a bar to earn extra points.
“We’re learning a lot about engineering in this process,” said Jessica Bayeh, junior at Cinco Ranch High School in Katy. She’s a member of Cryptonite 624. All of the team members wore spiked up green hair. Cryptonite’s robot, Sidewinder, is competing in the FIRST Robotics Competition game Aerial Assist, in which large robots must score as many balls in goals during a two minute and 30 second match.

Libby Perego, freshman, and Jessica Bayeh, junior at Cinco Ranch High School in Katy.

Bayeh attended a special lunch to honor women in technology on Friday. She wants to pursue a career in engineering.
Her teammate, Libby Perego, a freshman, said she loves engineering. The robotics program has taken most of her time after school and on the weekends, but it’s been worth it, she said.
“I’m really interested in engineering in general,” Perego said.
Susan Pope, assistant director in the department of space science at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, gave the keynote address during the Women in Technology luncheon. More than 200 students and mentors attended.

Websense Moves Offices to Austin and Plans to Create 470 Jobs

March 1, 2014 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 0 Comments

Websense, a data security company, announced Friday plans to move its corporate headquarters to Austin and create 470 new jobs.
The city of Austin approved an incentive package estimated at $438,000 during the next ten years. The company also received a $4.5 million Texas Enterprise Fund grant.
The Austin Chamber of Commerce, through its Opportunity Austin program, worked to bring the company here.
Websense also expects to invest $9.9 million in Austin during the next two years, according to the chamber’s news release.
The company, founded in 1994, currently has 1,500 employees worldwide.
“The security software industry will undoubtedly continue to grow nationwide and we are delighted that Websense has chosen to relocate their corporate headquarters to the Austin region,” Peter Winstead, shareholder at Winstead PC and Chairman of Opportunity Austin, said in a news release.
“Establishing Austin as our headquarters will heighten our security industry leadership position and enable us to better serve our growing global customer base,” John McCormack, CEO of Websense, said in a news release. “The city is quickly becoming a technology hub with an invigorating quality of life and multi-tiered workforce that fits well into our future plans.”
Websense plans to lease a 90,000 square-foot building.

Digby Helps Retailers Provide Location-based Offers to Customers

February 27, 2014 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 0 Comments

By Amy McCullough
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

With online commerce ever increasing, retailers with big investments in physical storefronts are trying to drive good, old-fashioned customer foot traffic to those locations. Austin-based Digby is helping businesses do that by gathering mobile data about which customers are shopping when and where.

Digby’s location-based marketing and analytics platform called Localpoint allows clients to use customers’ location as a triggering mechanism for messages and offers.

“The premise for our business is that the retailers’ mobile app is their next-generation loyalty and payments vehicle,” said Digby CEO and founder David Sikora. “We work with a retailer who has a mobile app, and, through Localpoint, we make that app very elegantly location-aware. The technology that we add to their app … allows the retailer to put virtual perimeters—we call them geofences—around anything of interest to them. That could be their stores. It could be their competitor’s stores. It could be other venues. Those perimeters, those geofences, are now made part of the app. We also have the ability to create messages and campaigns, which get attached to the fences. So, if you have the Kohl’s app on your phone and you walk into a Kohl’s store, you’ve reached the fence around the Kohl’s store. That is an opportunity for them to engage with you.”

That engagement could take the form of a coupon or a special offer. Digby can collect data about when customers entered the store and how long they stayed. Upon a customer’s exit, the retailer can send a customer service survey.

In addition to Kohl’s, Digby clients include HP, Cabela’s, Hasbro and Radio Shack.

A loyalty and rewards company called Punchcard, which works with major retail brands from Starbucks to Target to Banana Republic, now uses Digby’s services to offer its clients the ability to send tailored offers to customers based on their shopping history and current location.

To earn rewards where they shop, Punchcard users use the Punchcard app to take pictures of receipts, start virtual punch cards for specific participating retailers, and play spin and win games to earn points and free rewards.

Instead of going to the trouble of creating their own loyalty and rewards app, businesses can team up with Punchcard and have a mobile rewards presence activated in 10 minutes, said Punchcard founder and CEO Andy Steur. Adding Digby’s Localpoint service to their package has given their clients the ability to make rewards more personal to shoppers.

With Punchcard, you can “earn rewards everywhere you shop. Now, with Digby’s capability built in, it gives us the capability to create location-aware offers to consumers so that we tie the right offer to consumers based on where they are in their purchase history,” Steur said.

Digby has a few competitors now but expects to see more soon. “If there are no competitors, there’s no market,” Sikora said. “There are some smaller companies that do what we do. There’s a company called Xtify that was just acquired by IBM. Digby now gets to compete with IBM. But that’s what happens. It’s a really exciting space that’s starting to get a lot attention from some of the bigger players.”

Digby now has around 45 employees, which includes contractors, and although they don’t disclose revenue numbers, the company is “pretty bullish” about growth opportunities this year. Sikora expects that Digby will seek another round of funding in the next few months.

The company began in 2006 with angel funding from Daylight Partners. Later, Austin’s S3 Ventures, California-based Relay Ventures and Boston-based Battery Ventures invested. It has been three years since Digby’s last round of funding. Digby has raised $17.5 million in three rounds of financing to date, according to its CrunchBase profile.

S3 Ventures Managing Director Brian Smith said his firm invested an undisclosed amount in Digby in 2008, as the concept of mobile commerce was just starting to develop. Digby started out designing mobile storefronts for businesses and then pivoted to a focus on location marketing services with the launch of Localpoint in 2012.

“They’ve built this Localpoint product that’s really awesome and closed some pretty cool customers. We’re excited about that,” Smith said. “We think that space has a lot more growing to go. Retailers really need to figure out this holistic solution of how to get people in the door. … Foot traffic seems to be going down, so attracting people to your store is a big deal.”

While Digby is not yet profitable, Smith said “they are close. They are growing nicely. We’re happy with where they are—kind of on that edge. … When markets are young like this, you want to grab as much as you can and get your stuff out there. I think they’re finding a pretty decent balance there.”

AT&T Plans to Open Innovation Center in Austin

February 26, 2014 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 1 Comment

AT&T announced plans Wednesday to open a new center for technology innovation and collaboration in Austin.

The Dallas-based company did not provide details on how many people the center will employ or its cost. It did report its making a multi-million dollar investment. Currently, AT&T employs about 2,600 people in the Austin area.

In addition, AT&T is awarding a series of technology grants to local technology organizations and is sponsoring the 10th anniversary of Austin Fusebox Festival.

The innovation center will focus on education, data analytics, video and mobile applications and solutions. It will also include a studio open to community members to create unique content for AT&T’s TV, online and mobile platforms.

“The new AT&T center is being designed to help connect Austin in new and rewarding ways based on community member input,” Dahna Hull, vice president and general manager, Austin, AT&T Services, said in a news release.

AT&T is also rolling out an all-fiber AT&T U-Verse with GigaPowerSM service, which the company announced last year.
AT&T’s new innovation center will serve as a catalyst for collaboration among community leaders, residents, educators, technologies and entrepreneurs.

“Opening a center for innovation in the heart of the city will create even greater opportunities for Austin’s entrepreneurs, technology developers, and students,” Austin Mayor Lee Leffingwell said. “AT&T will have an opportunity to work closely with the many talents in our city, and the community stands to benefit from the exciting collaboration that will take place in this facility. We are fortunate to have companies like AT&T that appreciate our culture and invest in our future.”

In addition, AT&T announced plans to award endowments to the Austin Technology Council, the Austin Technology Incubator, Capital Factory, Entrepreneurs Foundation and Tech Ranch.

“The community investment initiative will also support the 10-year anniversary of the Austin Fusebox Festival, a 12-day hybrid arts festival promoting local culture, arts and technology, planned for April 2014,” according to a news release.

Dropbox to Expand in Austin and Hire 170 Employees

February 24, 2014 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 13 Comments

Dropbox plans to expand its office by 170 employees adding to its existing Austin workforce of 30.

Dropbox, based in San Francisco, provides an online storage box that allows people and businesses to exchange files including documents, photos and videos from anywhere.

More than 200 million people and 4 million businesses including BCBG, Kayak, National Geographic and Rockstar Energy use Dropbox and 1 billion files are uploaded to Dropbox every 24 hours. Last December, Dropbox struck a deal with Dell to create Dropbox for Business using Dell’s Cloud software and services.

“We are honored that Dropbox has decided to further its growth and investment in Austin,” Pete Winstead, Shareholder at Winstead PC and Chairman of Austin Chamber of Commerce’s Opportunity Austin, said in a news release. “Investments like Dropbox’s continue to facilitate the creation of good jobs and future prosperity for the Austin region.”

Austin’s central location, vibrant tech community and culture drew Dropbox to expand here, Sujay Jaswa, vice president of business at Dropbox, said in a news release.

“The city has been a welcoming home for us, with a great bunch of Austinites joining the Dropbox team,” he said. “We’re excited to expand our presence in the area as we continue to bring exceptional products and user experience to our customers.”

The Austin Chamber of Commerce through its initiative Opportunity Austin helped Dropbox expand here. The City of Austin also approved an incentive package worth $244,500 during the next 10 years. Earlier, the state announced Dropbox would receive a $1.5 million Texas Enterprise Fund grant.

“Not only does Dropbox bring with it international name recognition, this incentive provides quality job creation in the ever growing technology industry,” Mayor Lee Leffingwell said in a news release. “The competition to attract quality companies is stiff and I’m pleased that Austin is now one of the new homes to Dropbox, along with San Francisco and Dublin, Ireland.”

SpareFoot Raises $10 Million More in Funding

February 24, 2014 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 0 Comments

The fun loving startup, SpareFoot that has created the nation’s largest online storage marketplace, has just raised $10 million in venture capital from Insight Venture Partners.
Austin-based SpareFoot has raised $26 million since its founding in 2008. New York-based Insight Venture Partners provided $22 million of those funds. Its other major investors include Capital Factory, Floodgate and Silverton Partners.
“SpareFoot will use this latest investment to double down on engineering and product development,” Chuck Gordon, co-founder and CEO, said in a news release. “We believe there is a big opportunity to expand our offerings in the market, and that’s what we’re going to do. Our goal is to make renting a storage unit easier than booking a hotel room, and this new investment will help us make that happen.”
SpareFoot has 120 employees at its downtown headquarters and plans to add more than 40 this year in the customer service, engineering and product development areas, according to the news release.
“SpareFoot has done a great job of bringing together a highly fragmented market of small self-storage operators and is doing an even better job helping them compete with the large players,” Richard Wells, managing director of Insight Venture Partners said in a news release.
SpareFoot operates a free marketplace that lets customers find and reserve storage units online. It has the largest inventory of storage units in the U.S. with more than 7,000 facilities in its network.