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MapMyFitness Co-Founder Kevin Callahan on his Entrepreneurial Journey and the Big Sale

December 3, 2013 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 1 Comment

By SUSAN LAHEY
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

Kevin Callahan, co-founder of MapMyFitness recounted his entrepreneurial journey at Austin Startup Grind at Capital Factory Monday night–two weeks after his company announced it was being acquired for $150 million by Under Armour.
The acquisition will bring together a company that has never been sold before with one that has never acquired…so they’re going to do the “slow bake,” Callahan said. Under Armour has a heavy football culture and history whereas MapMyFitness is also sports oriented but full of runners and cyclists. Still it’s a great fit considering where the fitness industry is going. “Right now wearables are hot and trendy,” he said. “But soon wearables will be embeddable then embeddable will just be….” With all the available data, he said, your shirt monitoring your temperature, your shoes counting your steps, your watch monitoring your heart rate, it’s overwhelming. “Is it steps or reps or calories I should be paying attention to?” he asked. “We want to distill all that down and create a compelling story to educate you and help you get to how you want to feel through your exercise.”
Callahan is one of those successful entrepreneurs who got there by building something he, himself, wanted.

Birth of a Serial Entrepreneur

As a kid, Callahan lived in nearly a dozen countries because his father worked for the state department. He was “a typical, anti-social, socially awkward, Star Trek, Star Wars nerd,” before moving to South Africa for high school. There, he said, he was away from computers and cable TV and had a life experience that was unique for “a dorky sci-fi guy.” He wanted to stay in Africa but his father told him he would only pay for college if Callahan studied in the United States.
He studied at Johns Hopkins and was considering a career in space tech. He received a leadership grant with NASA working on products that simulated microgravity environments. But while he was in college, working toward his bachelor’s in mechanical engineering and economics, the dotcom world exploded and he decided he’d rather be involved with this new, fast-moving medium.
He started to launch on online food delivery company for college campuses called Easy Meals. It was supposed to help students find treasures, like the pizza place that delivered at 2 a.m. But it turned out that most of the restaurants he meant to feature had no website at all. When companies found out he could program websites, he was offered $100 an hour to create sites and decided to become a web design agency.
In 1999, he started working with a new website, Voter.com, which meant to bring politics back to the people. Voters would put in their zip code and see their elected officials. The site linked candidates to the issues the voters supported. It was listed among the top 22 most popular news and election sites for the 2000 elections.
But, he said, “The candidates didn’t like it and the elected officials didn’t like it. We started scoring elected officials on their votes. They didn’t like that.”
By 2001, the dotcom bubble had burst. Callahan became a management consultant for six months. He had to wear a suit and help a bank do call center integration. And he hated it. One day he was contacted by a small travel insurance company he’d built a site for previously. They wanted an update. But instead, Callahan and the business owner started working on a new project that would be bootstrapped. At this point, Callahan said, he was living in Boston, in his mid-20s, and all of his friends were bankers and lawyers. He decided if he was going to be poor, at least he’d be happy. So he liquidated his life in Boston and moved to San Diego.

Running for Fun and Profit

He also joined Team in Training and began to train for marathons to raise money for cancer research.
It was 2005, Callahan said, and GPS watches cost $400 a pop. Without one, the only way to gauge how far you were running was to drive the course and look at your car’s mileage. But Google had just released its mapping API and Callahan decided to create a very easy website that let people use Google maps to calculate the distance of their runs: the beginnings of MapMyRun, the precursor to MapMyFitness.
The website started getting a lot of traction, sharing, comments and feedback. Meanwhile the insurance business he’d been working on was collapsing. Suddenly it dawned on him that he could put banner ads on the run mapping site and actually make money at it. He thought of calling it Poorman’s GPS.com. He’s glad he thought better of that.
In 2006, Callahan teamed up with Jeffrey Kalikstein, who became the company’s CTO, though Kalikstein lived in Austin and Callahan, at the time, lived in Denver. They also met Robin Thurston who had independently started his own website for cyclists, MapMyRide. Thurston, he said, had a strong business approach and saw a lot of opportunity.
Thurston invested $1.5 million to give Callahan two years to really figure out a business model. It would cover his and Kalistein’s salaries, money for designers and servers. They came up with a number of options beyond running and cycling including hiking and walking mapping and dog walking, for various customer groups. They added an online training log, the community component, started sponsoring virtual events, and were among the first 200 apps in the iTunes store.
At one point, Callahan said, they got a phone call offering a quarter of a million dollars to white label the site. He called Thurston to ask “What do I do?” Thurston replied: “Take the fucking money.”
They wound up monetizing everything they could and relentlessly sending emails to clients. That may have been obnoxious, Callahan admits, but it kept them going when the economy went south.
When they offered the paid, premium membership for $2.99 a month, he said, “Some of the more vocal users came at us with pitchforks….. Robin said ‘The ones who complain are usually the loudest but that doesn’t mean that’s the bulk of the users. Let’s let this bake for awhile.’” He was right, the complaints died down and the subscription service is now a key part of the business.
In 2007, Callahan said, Reebok came out with a campaign that was all over the Boston Marathon: Go Run Easy, with a site that was exactly like MapMyFitness. “I thought, shit, there goes our business,” Callahan said. But while the Reebok site was briefly successful, it didn’t capture the experience MapMyFitness gave its users and it faded out.
By 2011, the site was listed among Time magazine’s Top 50 websites. A year later it was on Inc. magazine’s list of the 500 fastest growing companies and named on Time’s list of top apps.
And two weeks ago, it sold for $150 million. Total investment up to this point has been $23.5 million.
“We’re looking at this space and being one of the early players, innovators,” Callahan said. “I knew there would be a time when there was a lot of commoditization going on…. The only way to win is to consolidate. They have a locker room culture, a football culture….. They’re not shy about telling us they want to dominate the industry.”

Coffeecup Software Founder Nick Longo on Startup Grind San Antonio

December 2, 2013 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 2 Comments

Nick Longo, founder of Coffeecup Software, co-founder of Geekdom

Nick Longo, founder of Coffeecup Software and co-founder of Geekdom, grew up in New York, really, really poor.
He shoveled snow. He also sold briefcases from a warehouse on a corner in New York at the age of 13. He was hustling and making money. That’s where entrepreneurship started with him.
He also served in the U.S. Air Force. When he got out, he ended up training greyhounds in Corpus Christi. He later opened up a coffeehouse with money borrowed from his wife, a nurse. He ended up adding Internet access to the coffeehouse and he created one of the first Internet cafes in the country. He also started developing websites and eventually he launched Coffeecup Software, which sold an HTML editor to create business websites. He later sold it and joined Rackspace. In late 2011, Longo and Rackspace Chairman Graham Weston created Geekdom, a co-working space in downtown San Antonio which nurtures high-tech startups.
This summer, Longo had just come back from running with the bulls in Pamplona, Spain – twice. He said he mitigated the risks of running the course. He had researched the entire course. He found out the best place to start is at the beginning of the course. All of the injuries took place at the end of the course, Longo said.
A lot of people told him to start at the end of the course. But his research told him different. That’s kind of the double-edged sword of mentoring in entrepreneurship.
“You should get advice from as many people as you can,” Longo said. Then sort through it and make your own decisions.

Geekdom is a sponsor of Silicon Hills News

Texas Intrepid Ventures’ David Spencer on Startup Grind San Antonio

December 1, 2013 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 0 Comments

David Spencer is an advocate for San Antonio’s technology community.
Spencer was a founding board member and co-chair of the now defunct San Antonio Technology Accelerator Initiative, known as SATAI. He also served a two year term as chairman of the Texas Emerging Technology Fund, which invested in early stage technology companies in Texas. Aside from his public advocacy for the technology industry, Spencer is an entrepreneur. He founded OnBoard Software with a friend in 1996 when his employer, Kelly Air Force Base shut down. The software development company grew to $17 million in annual sales.
In 2005, Spencer sold OnBoard Software to MTC Technologies for $34 million. He has invested in a few startups since then and currently runs Texas Intrepid Ventures, which invests in commercializing military medicine.

Techstars Austin’s Jason Seats on Startup Grind San Antonio

November 29, 2013 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 1 Comment

Jason Seats, managing director of Techstars Austin

Jason Seats loved playing with Lego blocks as a kid and even did college projects with Legos as a young adult.
His heroes were Carl Sagan and Richard Feynman growing up and the fictional Indiana Jones. At the age of eight, he thought he wanted to be an archaeologist.
But even as a little kid he dreamed of running his own business, which he would call Seats Enterprises.
He grew up in St. Louis. His older sister is a nurse and his younger brother is getting his Phd in physics at Stanford.
He graduated in 2001 from St. Louis University with two degrees.
In 2006, he co-founded Slicehost, an early cloud hosting company, with Matt Tanase, a college friend. Two years later, they sold it to Rackspace for millions.
Seats served as managing director of Techstars Cloud at Geekdom in San Antonio for two years. He moved to Austin earlier this year to head up the inaugural Techstars Austin class.

Startup Grind San Antonio Features Bob Metcalfe

November 28, 2013 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 1 Comment

Bob Metcalfe is the Professor of Innovation, Murchison Fellow of Free Enterprise at the University of Texas at Austin.
He has taught an undergraduate course on entrepreneurship called Longhorn Startup for the past two years along with Joshua Baer and Entrepreneur in Residence Ben Dyer.
Metcalfe was also inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame this past summer for inventing Ethernet, a local area networking technology that lets computers communicate with one another. Metcalfe also co-founded 3Com and served as a publisher and pundit at InfoWorld. He worked as a full time venture capitalist for a decade as a partner at Polaris Ventures. He has also climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro. His wife runs ultra marathons. His children both just qualified to run the Boston Marathon, which they have run previously. And Metcalfe completed his first triathlon last year.
In this interview, Metcalfe recounts how he tried to license ARCnet, a local area network protocol similar to Ethernet, from San Antonio-based Datapoint, one of the first local area networking computer companies. Datapoint wouldn’t license ARCnet.
For 10 years, everyone told Metcalfe that the IBM Token Ring, a local area network protocol that also competed with Ethernet, would become the standard. He persevered and continued to promote Ethernet, which did ultimately become the standard.
Metcalfe started 3Com with $27,000 from a real estate settlement. He even lent $3,000 to one of his partners so he could invest it in the company and then take a salary and pay Metcalfe back $300 a month for 10 months.

Startup Grind Features Graham Weston of Rackspace

November 27, 2013 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 3 Comments

Graham Weston, co-founder and chairman of Rackspace Hosting, grew up in the greater San Antonio area.
At his first job, he worked in his dad’s cookie plant balancing the books from delivery drivers and occasionally packaging cookies. His dad owned Grandma’s Cookies and later sold the company to Frito Lay.
Weston’s first venture into entrepreneurship in grade school involved selling organic pork from his family’s ranch through advertisements proclaiming “Go Hog Wild” in the local newspaper. He also ran a photography business in high school.
In college, he would drive back and forth from Texas A&M in his VW Diesel Rabbit listening to get rich quick tapes in his cassette player.
His junior year at Texas A&M, Weston launched a successful real estate venture while going through college. He successfully protested his family’s property tax appraisal and then figured that there might be a business doing that for others. He founded a company that protested commercial property taxes.
Because of his property tax business, Weston was well positioned to see opportunities in real estate during the financial crisis of the late 1980s.
After school, Weston ended up buying one of the tallest buildings in downtown San Antonio, later named the Weston Centre at the age of 27. The building had fallen into foreclosure and then bankruptcy during the Savings and Loan Crisis of the late 1980s. He wanted to buy the KCI Tower, but wasn’t able to do it. Later the former National Bank of Commerce building came open. It was way more than Weston wanted to spend. But he raised more money and then bid against real estate mogul Sam Zell and won.
The Weston Centre later contained one of the first data centers for Rackspace. It housed some of the first websites on the Internet for YouTube and HotorNot and other Internet pioneers.
Rackspace, now a multi-billion dollar company, had a humble beginning.
Weston and his partner, Morris Miller, met three college students who bid to wire the Weston Centre with high-speed Internet access. The students didn’t get the contract, but Weston and Miller liked them. They asked them what else they were working on. That’s when Pat Condon, Dirk Elmendorf and Richard Yoo told them about their hosting business, which would later come to be known as Rackspace.
Weston recounted how they invested $1 million and in less than a year another company wanted to buy the business for $20 million. That deal fell through. But they knew they had a solid business, which was making money every month. They grew Rackspace by adding more servers and data centers and in 2001 they planned to take the company public, but the dot com bust occurred. They went through a few tough years, but they were able to persevere and succeed where many failed largely through Rackspace’s focus on providing “fanatical” customer support.
In 2008, Rackspace went public at $12 a share. Its stock closed Wednesday at $37 a share. The company has a market capitalization of more than $5 billion.
Today, Rackspace has more than 5,000 employees worldwide and is San Antonio’s largest high-tech employer with close to 3,000 employees in Central Texas. Rackspace also has an Austin office.

Insights from Gov. Rick Perry’s Visit to Israel

November 26, 2013 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 1 Comment

By ALAN WEINKRANTZ
Special Contributor to Silicon Hills News

Photo and videos by Alan Weinkrantz

I have been traveling back and forth to Israel for just about twenty years. Most of what I worked on with my Israeli clients has been focused on platform technologies such as the commercialization of VoIP, the rise of computer security, the birth of rapid prototyping and Wi-Fi, the deployment of IPTV, the tablet PC, and many other transformational technologies, which today are mainstream.
Israel is going through a transformation in its startup and innovation economy. The technologies of what became the core infrastructure of the Internet we live on today, are now being replicated in areas such as agriculture, security, medical devices, energy, and water.
People come to Israel from all over the world to create and do new things. While you can say it’s technology in the literal sense, I think what’s going on there is something that borders on being spiritual and even possibly religious, depending on what you believe in.
It’s code.
You know, the code from the various religions, beliefs sets and the rising consciousness of our planet that are now being written into the Internet of things.
I believe that a new type of scripture is being written – one that is part of a gigantic interconnected network and massive data sets. And much of that scripture is being written, or rather, coded in Israel.
If you take into account that Israel is the home of major R&D centers like Apple, Intel, GE, Cisco, Google, HP, TI, IBM, Microsoft , eBay and recently, Facebook, much of what drives the future of the global innovation comes from this very blessed region of the world.
Last month, Texas Governor Rick Perry visited Israel to open the new Texas A&M “Peace” campus in Nazareth. He gave a keynote at the WATEC Water Conference and met with various business and political leaders, such as President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu
A long time friend, Jon Medved, who runs the world’s largest equity-based crowdfunding platform, OurCrowd, invited me to join Governor Perry for breakfast in Jerusalem.
We met with the Governor and six others with him on the trip, and discussed the startup economy of Israel and addressed the opportunities for Texas to be greater aligned with Israel.

In addition to our discussion about Texas and Israel, Governor Perry was kind enough to provide this impromptu video inviting Israeli startups to come to Austin for SXSW 2014. (Disclosure: SXSW was a partial travel sponsor of my trip).
Medved is a long time VC, investor, and entrepreneur whose fund has some very interesting deal flow of companies to look at. In doing so, he is very much an economic and innovation indicator of what’s coming out of Israel.
Medved will be in Texas next month to hold meetings in Dallas and Houston to connect with the community who has expressed an interest in being part of his approach to investing in Israel’s startup economy.
When it comes to areas of energy, agriculture, security, medical devices and water, I believe that there is no other state in the U.S. that can even come close to where both Texas and Israel are heading. We have the smarts, the money, the land and the natural resources to build what’s next and what’s possible if Texas and Israel will more closely align.
While doing the traditional things that politicians do when they travel abroad, my sense was that Governor Perry went to Israel to sew the seeds of bringing the State of Israel and The Lone Star State closer together what could be a new wave of economic and social entrepreneurial development over the next 20 years.
It will be interesting to see what transpires from Governor Perry’s mission to Israel, some of which I genuinely believe involved some degree of divine intervention from both sides, regardless of what religious beliefs one may have.
To whoever becomes our next Governor, I hope you will continue to follow in his vision.
After all, it’s just code.

Based at Geekdom in San Antonio, Alan Weinkrantz is a Public Relations Advisor and Communications Strategist focused on technology, platforms, and industry standards.

New Rules, New Tools for Startups and Tech Companies

November 26, 2013 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 1 Comment

By LAURA LOREK
Founder of Silicon Hills News

Duane La Bom with the Open Cloud Academy

The demand for high tech workers outstrips the supply.
So Rackspace Hosting came up with an innovative solution. The San Antonio-based company launched the Open Cloud Academy last year to put people through a rigorous training program that equips them to do jobs as network systems administrators and other technical positions.
“I can get you job ready in a matter of two to three months,” said Duane La Bom, director of training at Rackspace and director at the Open Cloud Academy.
La Bom spoke on a panel at FreeFlow Research’s New Rules, New Tools San Antonio event Monday night at Geekdom. The panel focused on new training opportunities to match skilled workers with jobs. It also touched on new ways to raise money for startups through equity-based crowdfunding.

Peter French, founder of FreeFlow Research

Peter French, founder of FreeFlow Research, also announced his startup has merged with John Hill’s Technology Connexus Association, a nonprofit technology research organization. FreeFlow Research will continue to be based at Geekdom and will also sponsor more events in coming months, French said.
The other panelists included Andres Traslavina with MyEdu, an Austin-based startup, Luis Martinez with Trinity University, Joy Schoffler with Leverage PR and CF50 and Nathan Roach with Greenhouse.
Originally, Rackspace planned to hire about a third of the graduates from the Open Cloud Academy. But to date, it has hired 68 percent of the graduates, La Bom said. The other 30 percent have found jobs with other companies, he said.
The Open Cloud Academy also focuses on helping military veterans find jobs in the commercial world and it adds some diversity to the typical candidates Rackspace hires for IT jobs, La Bom said.
“We wanted to get more females and more minorities into IT. The Open Cloud Academy was a way to do that,” he said.
The Open Cloud Academy classes costs between $3,500 and $4,000 and lasts between eight to ten weeks. Typically, Rackspace paid $12,000 to $15,000 to a recruiter for each technical person it hired. Now it can avoid those costs by training its own IT workers, La Bom said.
Traslavina with MyEdu said the startup helps students plan their careers by using academic tools and simple apps to make their lives easier. MyEdu can also unveil their innate talent and help them visually set up a portfolio of their projects, work experiences and academic credentials, he said.
“We focus on helping recruiters hire potential and not focus on the traditional hiring credentials,” he said. .

New Rules, New Tools San Antonio panel

Trinity University’s focus is on undergraduate education and its strength is in equipping students with critical thinking skills, said Martinez with Trinity.
“We match students with opportunities for real world experience plus the community here in San Antonio,” Martinez said.
San Antonio’s entrepreneurial community is like Boston in the 1980s, Martinez said. Lots of entrepreneurial ventures and innovate growth is happening in San Antonio right now, he said.
Rackspace has also partnered with high school programs to recruit younger students to pursue careers in Information Technology jobs, La Bom said.
And the Open Cloud Academy does not yet have specific funding for veterans yet, but Project Quest and Workforce Solutions Alamo both provide scholarships to attend the programs.
Project Quest covers 50 percent of the tuition costs for students who qualify and also reimburses them up to two months rent and provides money for utilities and childcare costs too.
The Workforce Solutions Alamo provides funding through a Federal fund.
To date, 20 students have received a full scholarship to attend the Open Cloud Academy under that program and another 45 received funding through Project Quest, La Bom said.

Geekdom is a sponsor of Silicon Hills News

Five Startups Pitch at 3 Day Startup San Antonio

November 25, 2013 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 0 Comments

By ANDREW MOORE
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

Five startup teams pitched ideas at the latest 3 Day Startup San Antonio event last weekend.
Cristal Glangchai and the Venturelab team ran the event, which was the ninth 3DS San Antonio. Trinity University sponsored the event hosted at Geekdom.
Thirty-five students participated in the 3 Day Startup. They went through all the phases of starting a company, including the idea phase, market validation and research, prototyping, and pitch preparation.
“The event has been really eye opening,” said UTSA Sophomore David Barrick. “It’s been very hard. We’ve been shut down a lot by the mentors, but there has been very good feedback and constructive criticism, especially for our group.”
Mentors for the event included Cole Wollak, Richard Ortega, Michael Girdley, Pat Condon, Kaoru Fujita, Niraj Kumar, Nick Honegger, and Cristal Glangchai. They worked with each team to refine ideas and perfect pitches right up to the final pitch Sunday night. After giving their final pitch, a panel of Judges including Rackspace founder Dirk Elmendorf questioned each team’s presenter. The other panelists included Sweb Development founder Magaly Chocano, UTSA Entrepreneurship professor Anita Leffel, Trinity University Entrepreneurship Professor Luis Martinez, and Pressable founder Vid Luther.

The following five startups presented:

Code Venture

Presented by Trinity freshman Kylie Moden, Code Ventures is creating an iPhone and iPad app that teaches kids how to code at an early age. The app takes a story book approach, and entering the correct coding syntax for each lesson will make the story characters talk or interact. The lessons are designed for kids ages 7 to 12 and will help them take the very first steps into the coding world. The demo shown was programmed to teach Java, but Moden says the app could be easily adapted to other languages.
Code Venture’s app will give away the first lesson – or chapter — for free, with additional lessons costing $4.99. They will target the app to parents that are already professionals in high tech jobs, such as those at Rackspace Hosting and USAA. The app will also be marketed to the homeschooling community, which Moden plans to reach by going to homeschooled conventions and conferences.
Code Ventures is looking for a mentor specializing in CS education and a graphic designer.

Seat Check

Seat Check is creating an app based solution to a rather disgusting real world problem: dirty toilets. Trinity accounting graduate Sergio Giralt opened the presentation with a video of a public bathroom user’s worst fear – having to clean the toilet seat.
His solution, Seat Check, will use both a disinfectant wipe dispenser and an app which functions like a prepaid card. Using the app’s “bump” feature, a user will be able to make a wipe dispense from a machine without having to touch anything else in the restroom. The wipe can then be used to sanitize the toilet and can be flushed after use. The app will cost users 25 cents to 50 cents a wipe, depending on the deal struck with the venue location.
Seat Check plans to market the solution first to Regal Cinemas, but also wants to target restaurants, gas stations, and arenas. The startup is looking for an initial investment of $15,000 and wants to hire someone who can help build the actual product dispenser. The investment will help them move their first prototypes into the movie theaters.

Fashion Connection

Fashion Connection’s business model is based on a simple assumption: Men hate to shop. UTSA sophomore Rohit Saxena’s solution is to connect male shoppers with fashion experts who can help them shop — either through a video consultation service or connecting the shopper to a fashion connoisseur to walk them through the store.
The online consultation would start at $19.95 for 30 minutes and the connoisseur service would start at $39.95 per shopping session – though the startup did not define how long it would last. It would differ from similar services offered in other stores in that the connoisseur could be available to shop anywhere. Potential connoisseurs would have to upload a fashion profile of themselves to be considered by the startup and would be paid as contractors. The service would start in San Antonio and would begin advertising primarily in local malls.
Fashion Connection is looking for graphic designers and web developers to help them put their service together.

BodyH4X

Presented by Rackspace developer and running enthusiast Gus Ireland, BodyH4X helps athletes know when they are overworking themselves by providing a way to track their body’s cortisol levels. Cortisol is a stress related hormone that can make the body covert muscle to fat as a survival mechanism, hindering athletic performance.
Every person has a specific cortisol baseline, and BodyH4X helps runners establish that baseline by using a mouth swab litmus test. After testing their levels, users will record them in the BodyH4X app by utilizing their smartphone’s camera to input the swab color and record a level. Additionally, the app will import data from a runner’s fitness tracking device, such as FitBit, to compare those levels with the athlete’s performance data. Ultimately, this will help athletes determine when they are losing performance to high cortisol levels.
Ireland plans to market the product to runners, bikers, and swimmers. The app will have a free version that tracks cortisol levels along with the performance data and a paid version which will give athletes predictions and warnings about their workout routines. The paid version is $25 a month.

Local Care Package

Local Care Package was started to create a way for distant parents to order packages of San Antonio products for students attending colleges in the city. Presented by Graphic Designer and Marketer Leslie Tolbert, the startup has already begun to form partnerships with various businesses around town to create the packages. Parents can choose from several pre-assembled packages or can select from a list of products. According to Tolbert, it is both a good way for parents to show that they care and a way for local businesses to find new customers. The packages will range in price from $30 to $100.
Local Care Package hopes to partnership with local universities and campus organizations to get their service advertised on flyers and newsletters that go out to parents. They will also work to build a team of drivers in San Antonio. They have already received their first order from parents in Honduras, who they connected with while doing market research.
Of the many startup ideas pitched at the previous eight 3DS San Antonio events, seven companies have gone on to receive a combined total of $2.6 million in funding.
While most 3DS pitches will not result in successful companies, panelist and UTSA entrepreneurship professor Anita Leffel sees the events as critical to producing future entrepreneurs.
“It gives them self-confidence,” Leffel said. “That is what I like so much about this type of program, why we did it at UTSA and will now do it every semester. I’ve watched people blossom.”
Pressable founder and panelist Vid Luther sees 3 Day Startup as having an important link to the Geekdom ecosystem, as many of those first 3DS participants still pursue startups at Geekdom.
“You see entrepreneurs over here that, while their ideas may not be the ones that they are pursuing today, they were able to make networks and connections that got them to build and work on the things that they are currently working on,” Luther said. “I think long term it’s very hard to tell how successful this will be but short term it’s a very good networking thing that allows you to do more than just your résumé.”

Geekdom is a sponsor of Silicon Hills News