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First 3 Day Startup Program at UTSA

October 28, 2013 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 2 Comments

By ANDREW MOORE
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

The University of Texas at San Antonio held its inaugural 3 Day Startup event last weekend.
Friday afternoon, 35 students began working to create startups with viable business models within a 52 hour deadline.
At the final presentation Sunday evening, the students pitched six startups to a panel of judges, including Flashscan3D CEO Mike Troy, CEO and President of Liquid Networx Don Douglas, and Harvey Najim Center for Business Innovation and Social Responsibility Director Suz Burroughs.
“What we have done today here is begin to introduce entrepreneurship across the campus,” UTSA CITE Assistant Director and 3DS mentor Anita Leffel said. “All of you are in one way or another entrepreneurial. You will be more willing to take these risks, to stand up and fight and work for what you believe in and for improving our city.”
Leffel led the 3DS mentoring team along with entrepreneur and angel investor Michael Girdley. The mentoring team also included Cole Wollak of SA New Tech, Nathan Roach of RAM Law Firm and Greenhouse, Ev Kunetsov of Rackspace, Richard Ortega of TrueAbility, Andrew Trickett of the UTSA Texas Sustainability Research Institute, Jerry Wassum and others. UTSA’s CEO student organization helped organize and recruit for the event. The 80/20 Foundation sponsored the 3 Day Startup.
While it’s the first 3 Day Startup at UTSA, it’s not the first one in San Antonio. Rackspace hosted the first two 3 Day Startup programs at its headquarters a few years ago. Since then, Geekdom has hosted several 3 Day Startup programs. The program originated at the University of Texas at Austin and has since gone global as a way to easily teach entrepreneurship in a weekend.
Out of the 35 original students at UTSA, 28 made it to the final presentation. The others dropped out. The program is not easy. It’s demanding. And few of the participants sleep. Throughout the weekend, the students worked on creating business models with the lean canvas approach. They learned verbal strategies to explain their ideas concisely and court potential customers. They did primary research – talking to San Antonio businesses about their ideas and changing them if no one was interested. They practiced pitching over and over while getting constant input from mentors.
At the final presentation, some of the business models were completely different from the original idea, which is quite common in the 3 Day Startup process.
One of the startups, Smart Bar Technologies created a bottle-weighing pad that helped bar owners keep track of their most expensive spirits. They plan to design an app for the pads that will allow bar owners to monitor the bar in real time and find out if their bartenders are over pouring or giving away drinks. While the team knew they wanted to do something to help bars, their idea constantly changed throughout the weekend.
“We pivoted nine times,” said Luis Sauceda, the Smart Bar Technologies’ presenter. “We went from a machine that would pour drinks for you, to an application that will show you how to bartend, then we were going to do solar panels, and then we came back to this.”
Another team changed their idea completely. The resulting startup, Gift Gram, is a mobile app that sends personalized video messages along with a digital gift card. The app generates revenue by taking a portion of its gift card sales — possible because they can get a discount buying cards in bulk — and by selling premium video message templates.
Schedutary, which also had changes, is a mobile calendar app that – after some initial data input and use – can guess what appointments a user might have in the future and will reschedule existing appointments by notifying the user of free time in the future. The app will also be able to sync with existing calendar applications such as Google Calendar. The team also wants to tie the app to Facebook, so friends can find out if the user is busy and why.
Several original startup ideas withstood the three days of testing. Emergensleep designed an enclosed, rectangle-shaped sleeping pod, inspired by Japanese capsule motels, that can be quickly deployed when needed or stacked to gather like red solo cups when not in use. Nick Villarreal, who had the idea ready for 3DS, envisions the pods being used in disaster relief situations in place of traditional cots because pods are faster to set up and stackable as bunks.
“Ninety two million people are how many people were displaced worldwide by disasters last year. What do you do when that many people have no place to sleep?” Villarreal asked. “It takes a lot of time to set up a whole bunch of cots. You have to figure them out and put them in a spot. This one you can just pull out and place in that spot.”
Engineer-aiding startup Listo also got their idea through unscathed. Listo is a web application that combines parts catalogs for different construction industries into one list on one website, simplifying the process of finding and buying specific parts for engineers. Eventually, the Listo team wants to make the lists searchable by industry, part availability, price, and so on. The startup will make money from both ads and premium listing options from manufacturers.
The most popular idea at Fridays pitch meeting, Kommingle, also made it through to the final presentation. Created by Anton Moczygemba, Kommingle is a web based app that allows restaurants to push out special coupons at strategic times to get more traffic. The application is designed with a map so users can see what deals are available at what times. Additionally, however, the app helps friends organize group discounts at specific restaurants were the discounted rate increases with the size of the group. Kommingle will charge participating restaurants a one-time activation fee as well as a monthly fee.
While some presentations were rockier than others, panelist Susan Burroughs was impressed with many of the business concepts.
“I think a lot of them were very, very strong. In the first idea, I really enjoyed seeing somebody presenting from storytelling and from their heart rather than being an actor and having everything memorized,” Burroughs said. “I also felt like the last presentation was incredibly strong (Emergensleep – stackable sleeping pods.) I absolutely love social enterprise and the idea that you can do significant good in the world while still making a profit and paying your rent.”
Both Burroughs and fellow panelist Mike Troy have participated in several 3DS events. Troy believes 3DS is invaluable in showing students how the real world works.
“There is so much in school about being right. The real world operates on, ‘do the best job you can in a certain amount of time that you are given,’” Troy said. “Be okay with that, you know, and then come back and revisit it later if you really need to.”

Mark Cuban and Cotter Cunningham to Speak at Longhorn Startup Lab

October 27, 2013 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 0 Comments

Longhorn Startup Lab started out two years ago as a way to jump start undergraduate entrepreneurs at the University of Texas at Austin.
The program run by Bob Metcalfe, UT professor of innovation, and Joshua Baer, serial entrepreneur and co-founder of Capital Factory, has graduated four classes so far. Ben Dyer, entrepreneur in residence at UT, officially joined the class this semester, but he has been helping out since its inception.
During the semester, undergraduate students create business plans, assemble teams and launch startup companies. They work with a group of seasoned veteran entrepreneurs who volunteer as mentors. Some even land financing at the end of the program from angel investors or venture capitalists. Many of the student-run companies are still operating today including Lynx Laboratories, which created 3-D imaging software, Clay.io, a platform for HTML5 games and Burpy.com, a grocery delivery service.
The fifth class, featuring 14 undergraduate startups, showcase their ventures at Longhorn Startup Lab Demo Day on December 5th. Each team will give a six minute pitch.
And this Demo Day will have two all-star entrepreneur speakers. Mark Cuban, founder of Broadcast.com and Dallas Mavericks owner and Cotter Cunningham, founder of RetailMeNot, the world’s largest online coupon and deal marketplace, will give keynote addresses at the event.
Baer officially announced the speakers on a Facebook post Sunday evening.
Metcalfe also announced the speakers on Twitter.

Cunningham opens, 14 Longhorn Startups pitch, then I get to interview, moderate your Q&A with Mark Cuban. https://t.co/H6Qlpe33Go

— Bob Metcalfe (@BobMetcalfe) October 28, 2013

Previous speakers have included Metcalfe, Baer, James Truchard, who co-founded National Instruments in 1976 while a graduate student at UT and Rony Kahan, co-founder of Indeed.com.
The event is open to the public and already hundreds of people have signed up to attend.

Disclosure: Burpy.com is an advertiser with SiliconHillsNews.com

Hong Kong Seeks to Collaborate with Austin Startups

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

Simon Galpin, the director general of investment promotion at Invest Hong Kong, also known as InvestHK

For years, Hong Kong has served as the gateway to China for the Western world looking to get products designed and prototyped and then manufactured on the mainland.
But now the exotic Asian island wants to reinvent itself into a startup hub with the Startmeup.HK initiative.
And it seems to be working.
During Austin Startup Week, a lot of the focus spotlighted the local bustling startup culture.
But one international visitor managed to host a lunch at Capital Factory and attract quite a crowd.
Simon Galpin, the director general of investment promotion at Invest Hong Kong, also known as InvestHK, gave an overview of all the startup activity happening in Hong Kong. InvestHK is the government’s effort to attract foreign investment into Hong Kong.
“In the last two or three years, we’ve noticed the whole startup ecosystem has started to develop rapidly,” Galpin said.
Hong Kong now has 14 co-working sites focused on a variety of different industries, he said. The startup crowd likes to be in the center of the action and not in a high-rise building on the hillside, he said. Hong Kong also has some government run tech incubators and about 14 privately run incubators, Galpin said.
Hong Kong also has an active angel investment community, Galpin said. Some Hong Kong investors have also shifted investment from real estate into technology and startup businesses, he said. And Hong Kong officials are working on attracting more venture capital firms to the region, he said.
“Hong Kong is a springboard for companies to go global,” Galpin said.
The Austin visit was part of Galpin’s U.S. tour, which also included visits to New York City and Philadelphia, to promote the new “Startmeup.HK” initiative.
InvestHK launched “Startmeup.HK” to support startups globally to provide them with access to money as well as intellectual and social connections. The goal is also to develop Hong Kong as an entrepreneurship and innovation hub, Galpin said.
His visit to Austin is hopefully the first of many, Galpin said. He plans to come back and bring entrepreneurs with him, he said. And he would like to see some startups from Austin visit Hong Kong.

HomeAway Joins Forces with Expedia

October 26, 2013 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 0 Comments

HomeAway, the world’s biggest marketplace for vacation home rentals, has struck an agreement with Expedia to offer its properties on the popular travel search site.
The pilot is expected to launch early next year and it will include properties in the U.S. and Mexico, according to a news release.
“This is a significant milestone for the vacation rental industry and for realizing HomeAway’s mission to make every vacation rental in the world available to every traveler in the world,” HomeAway CEO Brian Sharples said in a news release. “As one of the most visited online travel agencies, each month Expedia.com will give millions of travelers the opportunity to discover the benefits of booking a vacation rental, and we look forward to also helping our customers increase the visibility of their properties.”
In addition to the Expedia deal, this month HomeAway launched two new services: a pay per booking model and its professional referral network.
Under its new system, homeowners and property managers can opt to pay 10 percent of the rental charge every time a home is booked.
HomeAway also launched a Professional Referral Network which offers a director of professional property management services.
The new service is also targeted at homeowners who rent their properties for six weeks or less, particularly those in seasonal destinations or cities that hold popular events.

Pivot3 Gets $14 Million in Financing

October 25, 2013 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 1 Comment

Pivot3 has closed on $14 million in venture capital.
The Austin-based company plans to use the money to fund its growth next year.
InterWest Partners and Mesirow Financial Capital Partners led the round, according to a news release. Other funders included Focus Ventures, Lightspeed Partners, Silver Creek Ventures, Northleaf Ventures and Wilson Sonsini. Comerica Bank also provided financial support.
The company, founded in 2003, makes software and hardware storage devices for the surveillance market. It partners with Dell to make and distribute its products. The company has more than 600 customers worldwide.

Connect at Central Gives More San Antonian’s Web Access

October 25, 2013 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 1 Comment

By ANDREW MOORE
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro speaking at the

San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro at the opening of Connect at Central

Broadband Internet access is not something new to the tech world. We couldn’t live without it, but we may also take it for granted. In fact, 44 percent of Bexar County residents do not have access to broadband and 7.3 percent still use a dial up modem connection according to the latest Esri survey of electronics and internet use.
To bring the Internet to more residents, the San Antonio Public library has created Connect at Central – a 12,800 square foot technology space at the downtown central library where residents can access the web on new desktops, laptops, and tablets with almost no wait time. The city has also upgraded Internet access in 13 other branch libraries so they could handle more computers and Wi-Fi devices.

The improvements were funded by a grant of $1.5 million from the Federal Broadband Technology Opportunity Program, or BTOP, which was part of the 2009 stimulus package designed to bring broadband technology to communities without Internet access. San Antonio has gradually been upgrading their library infrastructure for the last three years. The last piece, Connect at Central, had its official grand opening Thursday.
“We are excited that the library continues to play a role in addressing the digital divide,” San Antonio Public Library Director Ramiro S. Salazar said. “As you know, many households cannot afford to provide access to high-speed internet so the library plays an important role in doing that and supporting such things as people registering for the Affordable Care Act.”
Mayor Julian Castro says the upgrades are necessary to help San Antonians gain knowledge in the digital age.
“Today libraries are about books but they are also about technology,” said Mayor Julian Castro. “And Connect at Central strikes at the heart by providing a full multimedia experience and the possibility for wireless and digital learning here at the central library.”
Connect at Central adds a substantial amount of new hardware to the library: 100 new Apple desktops as well as 15 laptops and 20 Google Nexus 7 tablets available for checkout. Those entering the tech space are greeted by a “technology test drive” area where they can get comfortable using tablets and browse 36,000 digital items on a big touch screen referred to as the “overdrive media station.” Additionally, the free Wi-Fi has been upgraded to a gigabit connection which the city claims parallels Google Fiber.
The teen services department received 18 new iMac desktops, new furniture, and a “Mediascape” area where teens can display two laptop screens side by side on monitors and easily share files for collaborative learning. The computers are equipped with iMovie and other media programs. Additionally, the computers enable new educational programs such as News Know-How in which journalists from around the country teach teens how to use media and judge news validity.

For adult education, the upgraded training center is fully stocked with desktops where the community can access a variety of job training classes. This includes general computer use, writing résumés, gaining interview skills, and preparing for standard college tests like the LSAT or G.R.E. They also teach how to use library databases and give users 1-on-1 assistance finding databases or downloading ebooks. While the library offered some of these services previously, they were formerly in a hands-off lecture format.

“To me, training is the part that is most exciting,” Reference Department Manager Dianna Morganti said. “It’s a need we saw in our community.”
Learning about new technologies at the library may also be much less intimidating than the local electronics store. Library Assistant Director Kathy Donellan sees the library as a great place to learn new devices because of the comfortable environment.
“One of the great things about the library environment and introducing people to technology is it’s a really trusted resource for information. If someone comes in and they have never used a computer before, they feel comfortable asking for help and getting assistance,” Donellan said.

IT Award Winners at InnoTech Austin

October 24, 2013 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 1 Comment

InnoTech Austin recently recognized four of the city’s “best and brightest” in the field of Information Technology.
The annual technology conference presented the 16th annual Austin IT Executive of the Year Awards hosted by AITP & SIM on Oct. 16th at the Austin Convention Center.
The awards recognized IT leaders in the private, public, sector and for Information Technologist and Technology Community Leadership. “The following recipients were selected for their leadership as demonstrated through their innovation, creativity, impact and delivery,” according to Sean Lowry, the conference organizer.

2013 Award Winners Include:

Diane Kenyon, Senior Vice President of IT, Harden Healthcare
IT Executive of the Year Award Winner – Private Sector

Bowden Hight, Deputy Executive Commissioner for Information Technology and CIO, Texas Health and Human Services Commission
IT Executive of the Year Award Winner – Public Sector

Jim Keeler, PhD, Vice President of Engineering and Operations, Invodo
Information Technology of the Year Award Winner

Amanda Justice, CyrusOne & Chairperson of IT Collegiate & Women of Tech Summit – Austin Technology Community Leadership Award

Full disclosure: InnoTech is a sponsor of Silicon Hills News

Big Data’s Just a Lot of Noise…Unless You Can Visualize It Panelists Say

October 24, 2013 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 0 Comments

By SUSAN LAHEY
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

Michael Baldea, assistant professor at the University of Texas Department of Chemical Engineering

When you get right down to it, all the data in the world doesn’t really make a difference unless you can process it. And the most effective way for people to process giant waves of data (they keep inventing new words to describe the quantity) is to see it as an image.
That seemed to be the bottom line on the panel hosted by TechAmerica Foundation for its Big Data Roadshow on Energy.
Brian Jones, a principal of SAP Energy and Utilities, moderated the panel. He explained that big data and visualization were responsible for much of the U.S.’s ability to find sources of oil and gas previously thought impossible to extract. SAP’s database configuration, Hana, can process raw, structured and unstructured data up to 30,000 times faster than most other applications. This speed of processing information is also speeding up the decision making process, Jones said.
“Because of the big data insights we’re able to figure out where, when and how to explore for resources,” through hydraulic fracturing and other methods, Jones said. This means that by the year 2025 we will have surpassed Saudi Arabia as an exporter of crude oil.
But in order to make this data useful, it has to be translated into a visual image that people can cognitively use to solve problems.
“The data themselves are not actually a solution to anything, they’re more of a problem,” said Michael Baldea, assistant professor at the University of Texas Department of Chemical Engineering. When it comes to studying energy, he said, physical systems, power plants, wind turbines all generate data. And recent research into energy usage by household demonstrates that the data coming from disparate households varies widely—much more widely than commercial energy use. A popular new format for capturing and graphing this wildly disparate data, Baldea said, looks to him like hair caught in the drain.
On the other hand, when people can visualize their energy use in a way that’s relevant to them, it’s likely to change behavior. If thermostats, for example, didn’t tell homeowners how many kilowatt hours they were using—since no one knows what a kilowatt hour looks like—but measured energy use in dollar signs, he thinks it would have a dramatic effect on the way people conserve or use energy.

From left to right - Baldea, Boisseau, David A. Reynolds, chief of staff for the intelligence and security sector of BAE Systems, Christian Shuler, director for project management for BAE Systems

From left to right – John Boisseau, director of the Texas Advanced Computing Center at UT, David A. Reynolds, chief of staff for the intelligence and security sector of BAE Systems, Baldea, Christian Shuler, director for project management for BAE Systems

John Boisseau, Director of the Texas Advanced Computing Center at UT explained the TACC’s visualization display system is one of the largest and highest resolution tiled display centers in the world and helps scientists visualize synthetic images of data. This visualization helps them understand and work with enormous data sets that would otherwise be too difficult to extract meaning from. Among research being done are the conversion of CO2 into a substance used in industrial applications and the study of brain tumor growth and brain tumor surgery.
UT’s visualization resources, named things like Stallion, Mustang and Stampede, are available to scientists not only in the U.S. but internationally to further research.
Other ways that visualization aids in energy and resource industries includes the use of overlaying visual representations of data in countries where companies may have oil operations that are at risk either from people who merely want to destroy the oil for political reasons or to sell it.
David A. Reynolds, chief of staff for the intelligence and security sector of BAE Systems, said that company may use political data, meteorological data—that tells something about people’s behavior during certain seasons and weather episodes—social media intelligence and many other layers of information about an area to ascertain the risks. Some of these areas may be in remote or rural parts of the country where data from news sources is scarce.
The problem, he said, is partly that finding the relevant data in the noise has always been a matter of finding a needle in a haystack. As a former intelligence analyst for the CIA, he said this big data problem is not new for him or anyone in the intelligence community. Currently there are so many organizations and individuals generating and analyzing data, it’s as if the haystack itself has expanded exponentially.
The panel took place at the AT&T Executive Education and Conference Center Thursday morning.

Codeup Seeks to Create New Developers in San Antonio

October 24, 2013 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 8 Comments

By ANDREW MOORE
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

“Learn to Program. Get a Job Offer. Guaranteed.”
This is the not-so-humble sales pitch of Codeup – a for-profit code education startup founded by San Antonio entrepreneur and angel investor Michael Girdley. The startup offers a nine week programming boot camp located at Geekdom of San Antonio which will teach the programming skills currently sought for in the workforce. The startup’s first boot camp, starting Feb. 3, will focus on web development and will cover Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP, and JavaScript. The camp price tag is $7,430, and if the student does not receive a job offer within six months of completing the course they get half their tuition back. Enrollment has already begun.
Girdley justifies his guarantee with his business approach. Before launch, he collaborated with both small startups and larger companies in need of developers to find out exactly what skill-set they want to hire.
“We went and talked to them and got feedback on what they are looking for. We added a whole set of methodologies in terms of how to work as a team of programmers to the course after meeting with certain employers,” Girdley said. “Ultimately we have two customers. One is the student and the other is the employers. We have really worked hard to have them meet in the middle for everyone to be happy.”
Codeup’s classroom experience is designed to be as intensive and hands-on as possible. Students will learn concepts quickly in 15 minute intervals and then immediately implement them with exercises lasting 20 minutes. Each class will hold 20 students. Girdley will be teaching the classes along with Jason Straughn, Samantha Atkins, and Chris Turner. During exercises, all four instructors will be present to answer any questions. Classes will be eight hours a day and five days week.
To ensure that graduating students get hired, Codeup has formed agreements with 18 startups and recruiting companies who have agreed to consider hiring the graduates upon completion of the course. A few of the employers Girdley has talked to – whom he can’t name at this time – have such difficulty finding developers that they are willing to hire immediately after graduation.
Despite its growing tech talent, finding full time developers in San Antonio is a difficult task — both for large companies like Labatt Food Service and smaller startups such as Geekdom’s TrueAbility. Founder and COO Frederick “Suizo” Mendler welcomes an easier way to find developer talent.
“For us, it is a constant challenge to find folks that can operate at a fairly high level when it comes to the dev stuff. If they produce a good candidate then, yea, we’ll take a look at them,” Mendler said. “All the other developers we hire, we have to go out and hunt them down, go find them in weird places.”
Codeup will start out with only one class of 20, and that class is already starting to fill up. Codeup has received seven applicants since they went public a week ago and have already confirmed two spots. Texas State University Communications Graduate Leslie Tolbert was the first to sign up. She developed a love of programming in her last semester of college but was having trouble learning it all on her own.
“I really feel it’s an investment to myself to make this bigger commitment. It’s really hard to teach yourself how to program through all the other resources out there,” Tolbert said. “It was really appealing to me to have the option that Codeup presents to work with a team of peers…in a collaborative space with expert instructors available to answer questions.”
Tolbert was also able to take advantage of one of the three women’s scholarships Codeup offers, which will pay for half of the tuition. Two are still available.
As a for-profit company, Codeup will raise revenue by charging tuition and by charging a placement fee to the employer when they hire a graduate. The employer’s fee will be equal to 10 percent of the graduates annual salary. Codeup currently has no competitors in San Antonio, but would be competing with MakerSquare in Austin. While the model is similar to Rackspace Hosting’s Open Cloud Academy, the two will not directly compete because they are teaching different skills. In another similarity to the Open Cloud Academy, Girdley says applicants do not need any prior coding experience to be admitted.
“If you are a smart person and you are willing to work hard, you don’t need to know anything. Show up, we will take care of you.” Girdley said.

Geekdom was a sponsor of Silicon Hills News. TrueAbility is an advertiser with Silicon Hills News.

Gravitant Raises $10 Million in Venture Funding

October 24, 2013 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 2 Comments

Gravitant, which makes software for companies to manage their cloud services, announced Wednesday that it has received $10 million in Series B funding.
Corsa Ventures led the round and was joined by existing investor S3 Ventures.
The Austin-based company plans to use the money to expand its sales and marketing, to fulfill customer orders and to add more features to its cloud management platform.
In addition, Alex Gruzen with Corsa Ventures will join Gravitant’s board of directors.
“Gravitant has the potential to change the way Enterprise IT is done,” Gruzen said in a news statement. “While cloud computing shows much promise in transforming IT, CIOs are struggling with cloud adoption and simply not getting the ROI they expect from their private and public cloud investments. Gravitant’s cloudMatrix brokerage and management platform optimizes agility and cost while maintaining control. The result is a vastly improved cloud ROI.”
“Customer interest in cloud brokerage and management platforms is accelerating, and this funding will help us take advantage of this rapidly growing market space,” Mohammed Farooq, co-founder and CEO of Gravitant said in a news statement. “We believe Gravitant will be the next major software company in Austin, and we are very pleased to see the support from Austin-based venture capitalists to help us realize this goal.”