Set.fm has raised the second half of a $1.2 million seed stage investment round.
The Austin-based startup, formerly known as Dejaset, raised $750,000 last year and just closed on an additional $500,000 led by Golden Venture Partners, based in Toronto.
“As we are exiting our beta as of today, we are going to be spending a little more on the technology and we’re gong to start ramping up our marketing,” said Matt Peterson, founder and CEO of Set.fm.
The company, founded in 2011, provides a technology platform for musicians to record their performances at live events and then sell their songs immediately to consumers.
Set.fm provides a free app, available on the iPhone, to consumers. The app helps bands make more money by providing an additional revenue stream. They pay to record the songs and then Set.fm’s technology provides them for sale immediately as an in-app purchase. Set.fm makes money by taking fees from the band for recording and gets a cut of each sale. Within five years, Peterson said he expects the company to have $100 million in revenue.
The company, based at the Austin Technology Incubator, has 10 employees and plans to hire another developer and a marketing person in the coming months. Peterson also expects to raise a Series A venture capital round in the first part of next year.
Set.fm currently has more than 250 artists and has recorded more than 300 shows during its beta testing period.
Set.fm faces competition from a number of different services, but most of them are focused on livestreaming band performances, Peterson said.
“It’s really cannibalistic on the ticket sales.” Peterson said. “Our focus is to market to people who were at the show or who really wanted to be at the show.”

Slice of Silicon Hills News featured Set.fm, then known as Dejaset, on the show last March.

Decision day is Thursday for the latest crop of startups to come out of the Austin Technology Incubator’s Student Entrepreneur Accelerator & Launch, known as SEAL, program.
“This is a program that evolved out of ATI’s activities on campus,” said Kyle Cox, director of Information Technology/Wireless and University Development Portfolios at ATI. The organization has a dual mission of serving startups in central Texas and the University of Texas community.
The SEAL program is designed to give the students a focused opportunity to work on nothing but their companies during three months in summer. Then they must decide whether to continue to pursue the idea or to dump it altogether and get on with something else.
This is the sixth year of the program.
“Historically, we’re at a 25 percent go rate,” Cox said. “The last two years, it has climbed up to be much higher. This year, every team is going to continue to pursue their ideas. We’re at a 100 percent go rate.”
ATI has a diverse list of startup ideas and the breadth of startups it services tend to be broader than a simple app or web-based solutions, Cox said. It tends to incubate heavily engineered and research supported companies, he said.
SEAL Decision Day is free and open to the public but advance registration is required as space is limited.
The event takes place on Thursday from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at the Blanton Museum at 200 E. MLK Blvd. It features nine startups: AdBm Technologies, OnSite Control, Beyonic, Clay.io, Favor, Guava, Intelligent Menu, nCarbon and LifeM.

The British are coming.
That’s British Airways. It will begin offering direct flights from London to Austin starting March next year. (Just in time for South by Southwest 2014).
The airline plans five flights a week initially and then plans daily flights starting on May 5th in its Boeing 787 Dreamliner with its three-cabin layout. Flights are on sale now starting at nearly $800.00 for economy to $5,600 for business class seats.
“The addition of the Airbus A380s and Boeing 787 Dreamliners to our fleet enables us to start new routes and increase services to a number of our destinations,” Lynne Embleton, British Airways’ director of strategy, said in a news release. “We’re excited to be the only airline offering direct flights from London to Austin. We believe it will prove very popular with both business and leisure customers and will be our third route to Texas, after Houston and Dallas. In the pioneering spirit of the Lone Star state, we are flying there in one of the world’s most advanced aircraft, the 787, to encourage more business with the scores of hi-tech businesses based in Austin’s ‘Silicon Hills’”.
The flight will connect Heathrow and Austin-Bergstrom International Airport.
“As the Mayor of Austin and a former pilot, I could not be more excited about this announcement by British Airways, one of the world’s foremost carriers,” Austin Mayor Lee Leffingwell said in a news release.

At most technology events I’ve attended in Austin during the last two years, I would see this tall handsome guy.
His name was Scott Robinson.
He was always impeccably dressed and extremely nice. Robinson, in addition to his job as vice president at USDM.net, served as the Austin Chair for The Startup America Partnership. He tirelessly championed the Austin technology startup scene. He was a huge supporter of RISE Week, the week focused on free entrepreneurial sessions put on by Claire England. He wrote this post on RISE for Startup America.
It came as a shock Tuesday to find out Scott Robinson suddenly died over the weekend. Few details are known at this time.
The visitation is Thursday evening from six until eight at Beck’s Funeral Home in Cedar Park and the funeral service will be Friday at 1 p.m. at Redeemer Lutheran on Anderson Lane.
A few weeks ago, I met Scott in his office and we talked at length about Austin’s startup technology scene. We were planning on collaborating on an event together. He had great ideas and vision. We were going to meet again on Friday, but when that didn’t work out, we were going to meet this week. It seems like everyone just saw Scott somewhere.
Scott also organized Steve Case’s visit to Capital Factory recently. And he organized an event with technology leaders at National Instruments to meet with Senator Ted Cruz. He always made sure to put me on the guest list.
Scott also served as a mentor and producer of TedXYouth@Austin, the first local Tedx event geared to kids, held last March in Austin. He told me he got involved because of his own kids. He had twins, Joshua and Sophie.
Scott will be missed immensely. He was a huge asset to Austin’s technology community. He was also a wonderful guy. And I am so saddened by the news of his death. Our thoughts and prayers go out to his family and friends.
Scott’s obituary is listed on Legacy.com. His family asks that “in lieu of flowers the James Scott Robinson Memorial Fund located at Wells Fargo bank will be available for donations to benefit Joshua & Sophie Robinson.”

Still stunned to hear that @jsratx has passed away. He was a bullish champion of all things Austin and design.

— Michael McDaniel (@mcdanyel) September 4, 2013

We are extremely sad to learn of the passing of @jsratx. He was one of our biggest fans and local advocates in Austin. RIP friend.

— The Wire (@wireaustin) September 4, 2013

Scott Robinson, @jsratx, may you rest in peace. Lucky to have met you as soon I moved to atx. You will be missed by many.

— Brett Berman (@Brett_UMT) September 4, 2013

So sorry to hear of the passing of Scott Robinson, @jsratx. He was a good man, and a great advocate for Austin business. He will be missed.

— Dean Cruse (@deancruse) September 4, 2013

I'm so sad about this. Always a nice man. “@joeymcgirr: The world lost a great one. RIP @jsratx We'll see you on the other side.”

— ∞ Nicole Forbes ∞ (@livehappy8) September 4, 2013

The world lost a great one. RIP @jsratx We'll see you on the other side.

— Joey McGirr™ (@joeymcgirr) September 3, 2013

And one of Scott Robinson’s last tweets.

It takes 1 to know 1 “@thomsinger: I ran into Scott Robinson (@jsratx ) this week. He is a good person to know in Austin! He is a giver!

— Scott Robinson (@jsratx) August 29, 2013

Brett Hurt and Jeff Harbach have joined forces to found Hurt+Harbach, a seed-stage venture capital firm in Austin.
Hurt, co-founder of Bazaarvoice and formerly with Austin Ventures, and Harbach, former executive director of the Central Texas Angel Network, plan to invest primarily in Austin companies.
“I discovered that I really enjoy being a VC. Helping entrepreneurs is the next phase of my career, and this is a natural evolution for me,” Hurt wrote in a blog post announcing the new venture. “Co-founding a new venture capital firm is the ideal way to express my passion for building extraordinary companies.”
Hurt has also invested in several Austin startups as an angel investor. In the last 10 months, he has met with “around 300 entrepreneurs.”
And he saw a need for more seed-stage investment firms.
Harbach, a serial entrepreneur and a Kauffman fellow, also saw the need.
“During my time with CTAN I saw first hand the need for more early stage capital in Austin,” Harbach wrote in a blog post. “With the blessing of the CTAN Board of Directors, I started to devote some time to researching how to get more early stage capital flowing in Austin. Those efforts culminated in Hurt+Harbach.”
The new firm held a meetup last week at Lola Savannah in West Lake Hills.

The Austin Technology Incubator’s summer-long Student Entrepreneur Acceleration & Launch, known as ATI SEAL, culminates next Thursday with a Decision Day event.
The event, on Sept. 5th, kicks off at 6:30 p.m. and runs until 8:30 p.m. at the Blanton Museum at 200 E. MLK Blvd. It features nine student-run companies showcasing their startups.
The public is invited. Please register for the free event here.
During the ATI SEAL Program, the startups decide whether to continue to pursue their startup ideas or to kill them. This is the sixth class to go through the program. To date, more than 30 companies and more than 100 students have participated in SEAL.
Among the success stories is Ordoro, a member of the 2010 SEAL class, which has since raised nearly $2 million in funding and works with Amazon, BigCommerce, eBay and others.

The 2013 ATI SEAL class includes:

AdBm Technologies: Developing high-performance, low-cost, and easy to deploy noise abatement technologies for marine environments.

OnSite Control: Providing portable wildlife access control solutions with a focus on the oil & gas industry.

Beyonic: Aggregating mobile payment networks to allow businesses to connect in emerging markets.

Clay.io: A platform for HTML5 games-helping developers distribute and improve their games with high-level social features, and helping consumers discover great cross-platform games.

Favor: Anything you want delivered in Austin

Guava: The fitness coach for the personal finances of the American worker.

nCarbon: Commercializing the novel material graphene to focus on the development of the next generation super capacitors.

Intelligent Menu: Offering consumers an intelligent way to dine, while also allowing restaurants to understand and connect with their customers to make data-driven decisions.

LifeM: Making highly flexible pressure sensors for cardiovascular
applications to revolutionize the catheter pressure sensing industry.

E.J. Lawless, who formerly worked as senior director of online marketing at indeed.com, has launched a vertical search engine called FurnitureNear.Me focused on helping consumers find furniture near their houses to save people time from going to store to store and searching on multiple Internet sites. The site is currently available for consumers to search in Austin, San Antonio and Houston.
The industry is large and highly fragmented and Lawless saw an opportunity to bring some order to the chaos with his startup. Lawless recently answered some questions, via email, about FurnitureNear.Me.

Q. Can you explain your product in the simplest language possible?

A. FurnitureNear.Me provides one site to search all the available products and store locations of top furniture retailers near you. Eventually it will include not just top retail chains but every furniture store.
Instead of driving store-to-store, shoppers can go to FurnitureNear.Me to see what stores have styles and prices they’d like, and then plan where to shop–saving time and frustration.

Q. What’s your secret sauce? What differentiates you from the competition?

A. FurnitureNear.Me focuses on having the most complete index of furniture items from retailers both big and small. It will also focus solely on furniture in order to have the best furniture search results.

Q. Who are your competitors?

A. There are a limited number of competitors. Google Product Shopping Engine has a small number of furniture retailers because furniture stores have to pay to be part of the index. There are a few other price comparison engines with limited selection as well.

Q. Are you Bootstrapped, or do you have Venture Capital or Angel Investment?

A. Bootstrapped

Q. Who makes up your team?

A. Currently, I’m the only founder, though I’ve been able to reach out to people I know for help on a variety of areas.

Q. Who are your customers?

A. People looking for furniture, whether that’s consumers looking to buy a new piece for their home or professionals like interior decorators searching for unique finds.

Q. What is your business model?

A. Right now the focus is on just building the product, but there are a few business model options for a vertical search engine like FurnitureNear.Me.

Q. What is the biggest win you’ve had to date?

A. I’ve taken a fairly lean approach to this idea working on validating key pieces in small steps. Each validated step, from whether it was possible to do the idea or if users would like it, has been a meaningful win.

Q. What are the most helpful Austin startup resources that you’ve used?

A. The network of people I’ve met over the past few years working at various startups in Austin.

Q. What are the advantages of being in Austin for launching your startup?
A. Austin is great for FurnitureNear.Me because of the local talent with experience in vertical search engines.

Q. What are your plans for the future?

A. Continue to focus on building and improving the product; specifically, including more furniture retailers in the search and improving the quality of results.

Q. Anything else you would like to add or say that I haven’t asked you about?

A. Furniture is a great market for disruption right now. It’s a large market at approximately $60 billion in sales in the U.S.; ecommerce is the fastest growing segment of the furniture businesses; and there have been new entrants recently, like One King’s Lane, that have gained significant traction.
The basic shopping process has been the same for decades, though. People get a catalog in the mail or see an ad and then drive to the store, and hope for the best. If they don’t see what they like, they drive to the next store, and so on.
FurnitureNear.Me is trying to make the buying process simpler and faster by providing one site to search across all of the furniture inventory in an area to let shoppers know what stores they like and where to go.

Makexyz is a global online marketplace that connects people who want to get a product made with a 3D printer to people who have them in their neighborhoods. Nathan Tone, the company’s co-founder, spent some time Thursday morning chatting with Silicon Hills News about the startup, which launched in January and has quickly grown both locally, nationally and internationally.

Q. What is makexyz?

A. It’s a 3D printing marketplace that links people who need something made with 3D printers in their neighborhoods.

Q. Who are your customers?

A. Our customers are consumers making things like iPhone cases and toy robots, businesses prototyping their next products. And people with 3D printed products, like a watchband, that are producing hundreds of units through makexyz.

Q. Who is on your team?

A. My co-founder, Chad Masso, and I met working at indeed.com. He comes from an engineering background. I come from the product side. Our team of four is rounded out by two other awesome developers.

Q. Why are you guys the ones to do this startup?

A. We’re here because we like making things ourselves, and makexyz is a really great opportunity to help other people make stuff at a significant scale. That perspective, in combination with our history of building great products, has proven successful so far.

Q. What challenges do you face bringing your startup into the marketplace?

A. It’s still a very new technology for a lot of people, so the education challenge is significant — helping people understand what’s possible with the technology. We’re lucky because we have a network of over 1,000 3D printers in 45 different countries who know their subject matter and who are more than willing to share their knowledge with customers.

Q. How do your acquire customers?

A. To date growth has been completely organic and referral driven. On the printer side, the community has proven very tight-knit, where printers who have made money and met interesting makers through makexyz are more than happy to tell their friends about makexyz. On the customer side, if you use makexyz, you end up with a really interesting and unique object, which your friends and family will ask: “where did you get that?” Through makexyz.

Q. What is the business model?

A. We add a charge on top of every order. Think: airbnb for 3D printers.

Q. How are people using makexyz?

A. Once you have a distributed network of 3D printers, there are some really interesting applications that you can build on top of it. For example, with printers in 45 different countries, makexyz makes it possible to produce and deliver a product to a customer anywhere in the world in less than one day.

Q. Are you bootstrapped or do you have angel or VC financing?

A. We’re bootstrapped. We’re not actively looking for funding, but if the right opportunity came along we’d consider it.

Q. What Austin resources have you found most helpful?

A. Austin’s community of very successful revenue-oriented entrepreneurs who are happy to help out in any way they can. That has been a huge help for us along the way. It’s a great town to start a company in.

Q. What has been your biggest win so far?

A. Starting out, our original goal was to start in Austin only. But as soon as we launched, printers were signing up all over the U.S. And we were receiving emails every day saying “I’d love to list my printer, but I’m not in the U.S.” So we opened everything up internationally. So we’ve been international pretty much from day one. It wasn’t a pivot as much as a fast-forward for us. When we said: this makes just as much sense globally as locally.

Q. What is your long-term vision?

A. Our goal is to help people make things. And in service of that goal, we’re willing to take the business in any direction that makes sense. In terms of long term vision, through makexyz’s global network, you will be able to produce and deliver any product to a customer anywhere in the world, for free and in less than one day. That’s a big enough mission for now.