Tucked into a corner of Geekdom’s 10th floor, Silver Fox Studios plans to change the way people consume media.
Already, Roell Vento and Tommy McNish, the co-founders of the studio, have produced several Web-based programs and they plan a dozen more in the coming weeks.
“The Web creates a level playing field,” Vento said. “It’s a general equalizer for anyone in their garage that has a good idea. The Web makes the execution so much easier.”
Silver Fox Studios’ flagship program Talk Now SA launched a few months ago and features Chris Duel and Vanessa Macias, the co-founders and on-air show hosts. Travis McGehee, a multimedia producer and chief engineer at Silver Fox Studios, runs everything behind the scenes along with McNish and Vento.
The Talk Now SA show broadcasts from the studio every weekday at 10 a.m. and lasts an hour. It’s an eclectic show featuring interviews with a wide variety of experts in diverse fields including movie stars, comedians, reporters, musicians, politicians and sports stars.
“It’s a format for us to truly be ourselves,” Macias said. She has worked for several radio and television stations in San Antonio and was also a contestant on The Amazing Race. “We’ve been in broadcast so long.”
The restrictions traditional TV and radio jobs place on the talent doesn’t exist on the Web, Macias said. She says she has crude humor and she likes to be able to speak her mind. The show also features a swear jar, which they put a dollar in every time they cuss during the program. They donate the money every week to a charity.
“This is a venue for me to be me,” she said. “It’s fun.”
Other shows include Plaza de Armas Live featuring Elaine Wolff and Jade Esteban Estrada, which takes place every Tuesday at 2 p.m.
And Slice of Silicon Hills News’ Host Andrew Moore does a live interview with a San Antonio or Austin startup technology entrepreneur every Friday at 11 a.m.
Vento and McNish got the idea for the studio last year when Matt Scherer, a public relations professional, approached them about Chris Duel’s show.
“We started meeting regularly and seeing what it would be like,” Vento said. “We thought that it would a really good idea.”
Vento, who also owns a stake in the Talk Now SA show, has a background in advertising. His company, Silver Fox Multimedia focuses on political and media applications.
McNish, who serves as general manager of Silver Fox Studios, previously worked for a startup in San Antonio and at Rackspace.
At first, Vento and McNish thought they could take a spare room at Geekdom and easily covert it into a studio. But they ended up spending more than $60,000 and almost immediately outgrew the space and they took over a neighboring conference room. They’re outfitting that room with a couch and other amenities to provide a true talk show setting and will soon host new content including a sports show, a geek show and a leadership show. Meanwhile, they’re working on getting sponsors for the shows.
Vento and McNish are all about experimenting and taking risks with new shows. They also like the live component of the show that encourages community involvement and audience interactions. They like the idea of hosting Google hangouts with viewers to get feedback on the programs.
“It gets the community involved and they truly become part of the show,” McNish said.
The little studio has already attracted some big interest from local radio and television stations and even a newspaper chain. “Lots of executives have toured the studio to find out about what we’re doing and to find out how they can be a part of it,” Vento said.
In addition to the shows, Silver Fox Studios also produces marketing and training videos for companies. Vento and McNish set aside 10 hours every week for Geekdom members to use the studio to create videos to promote their companies.
“Silver Fox gets to do what we all want to do, play with video gadgets and make our own shows,” said Nick Longo, co-founder and mentor in chief of Geekdom. “It’s awesome to see them have such great success by being so open and creative. Having a resource like this for Geekdom members to shoot team and product videos is also a great opportunity most Startups will never get anywhere else.”
Silver Fox Studios is meeting a need that exists in the market, McNish said.
“What we have is a lot of good momentum,” he said.
In coming weeks, they plan to launch several more shows including “This Week in Geek” featuring a show about gadgets, geek culture, comic books and more. They would also like to expand to Austin and open a studio there.
“We’re at the intersection of a lot of great opportunities,” Vento said.

Disclosure: Geekdom is a sponsor of Silicon Hills News. Silver Fox Studios is an advertiser with Silicon Hills News and produces our weekly Slice of Silicon Hills News show.

At the last 3 Day Startup San Antonio at Geekdom, Jim Pyle pitched his idea for a device that automatically reboots a computer and router called the Amazing Jellybean.
While his idea was not selected as one of the ones to work on that weekend, he never gave up on the idea. In fact, he filed a patent and developed a prototype.
That’s because Pyle, a former technician with Time Warner Cable, knew first hand that 80 percent of the problems people call their cable company about when their service doesn’t work can be fixed with a simple reboot of the computer and router. But to non-technical people that task can seem confusing and daunting. So Pyle created a solution to make it as simple as pressing one button. The Amazing Jellybean then takes over. The device shuts off and restarts the devices in the correct order.
He’s already got manufacturing set up in India and has launched a Kickstarter project to launch the Amazing Jellybean into the marketplace.
So far, Pyle’s Kickstarter campaign has raised $5,627 of its $10,000 goal from 102 backers with 13 days to go.
And today, PC Magazine named the Amazing Jellybean as its Kickstarter Tech Project of the Week.
A pledge of $40 gets you an Amazing Jellybean and access to the remote control app, plus a packet of jellybeans and stickers.
For a pledge of $150 or more, you’ll get a special edition Amazing Jellybean in hot pink, lime green, safety orange, baby blue, devil red or midnight black, plus the stickers and jellybeans.
Pyle expects to deliver the Amazing Jellybeans by November. And his company is also one of six startups pitching at the Innotech Beta Summit on April 17th at 3 p.m. in the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center downtown.

Q1Media on Thursday announced that it has completed its merger with AdExcite, a video ad network company.
Austin-based Q1Media, founded in 2004, runs a display advertising network with millions of monthly visitors.
The merger with AdExcite, founded in 2009, allows Q1Media to offer video and mobile web advertising. The company will operate as Q1Media with AdExcite remaining as a brand and AdExcite’s co-founder Phil Banfield will now serve as Q1Media’s CEO. Bill Wiemann, Q1Media’s founder and CEO, will serve as president and COO.
The terms of the deal were not disclosed.
“Adding AdExcite’s proprietary online and mobile video advertising technology to the real time bidding and ad targeting platforms we’ve built at Q1Media allows us to offer broader and more immersive digital advertising solutions,” Wiemann said in a news release. “Phil and his team have done a remarkable job growing AdExcite’s video advertising network. I welcome his leadership as we become a single entity with the power to rapidly create greenfield online advertising inventory while building better value for web publishers.”
AdExite offers customers its vSlider and vPlayer that allows web publishers to add video advertising to their site. It currently has about a third of the online video advertising market in the U.S.
Q1Media has 30 employees and plans to add 25 more locally and in Los Angeles and New York this year.

HomeAway, a vacation homes rental marketplace announced Thursday a partnership with travelmob, an online travel marketplace focused on the Asia Pacific region.
Through its partnership, HomeAway’s customers will be able to access travelmob’s “unique, high quality accommodations in Asia Pacific – from luxury villas to tatami-mat apartments and houseboats.”
“travelmob is honored to partner with the global leader in vacation rentals. This partnership enables us to significantly expand our global reach and provide our property owners and managers with the opportunity to market their properties to more travelers worldwide. It is also a testament of travelmob’s mission to enable global travelers to experience Asia Pacific like a local,” travelmob Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder Turochas Fuad said in a news release.
The Asia Pacific is a fast growing region for tourism.
“We are excited to offer travelmob’s unique properties on the HomeAway websites and meet the growing demand for villas and vacation rentals in Asia,” HomeAway Chief Executive Officer Brian Sharples said in a news release. “This partnership enables HomeAway to create additional accommodation options, in one of the world’s most dynamic regions, to the families and groups who rely on HomeAway for vacation rental travel.”

Bigcommerce announced Thursday that it has funded 31 applications through its $2 million integration fund for developers.
The Austin-based company that provides an e-commerce platform for businesses launched the fund early last year.
The apps are available in the Bigcommerce app directory.
“Our vision is to become the operating system of commerce, and the platform we’ve built for developers to leverage is the key piece to that vision,” Mitchell Harper, co-CEO at Bigcommerce, said in a news release. “We were blown away by the massive response from the developer community, and the applications we selected are truly best-of-breed integrations that meet significant needs for our clients. Using our extensive API, market-leading apps like HubSpot, MailChimp and Zendesk, as well as up-and-coming developers like Stitch Labs, are building on top of our platform and generating serious revenue.”
More than 500 developers applied to participate in the fund. Most of the apps chosen for funding focused on the marketing category.
“We know that our clients want more than just a pretty online store,” Eddie Machaalani, co-CEO at Bigcommerce, said in a news release. “They want traffic, orders and repeat customers. The range of apps built as a result of our integration fund not only extend on our 25 built-in marketing tools, but make it even easier for our clients to drive a stampede of targeted traffic to their Bigcommerce stores.”

The Beta Summit at Innotech San Antonio showcases some of the most innovative young startups. Last year’s winner, CallGrader went on to land a spot on DreamIt Ventures’ Philadelphia incubator program. This year, Nicholas Longo, co-founder and director of Geekdom, a collaborative coworking space at the Weston Centre downtown, will moderate the event. Silicon Hills News is sponsoring the event which takes place Wednesday, April 17th at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center in San Antonio.

Innotech San Antonio 2013 Beta Summit Companies:

Amazing JellyBean is a smart power switch that reboots your devices in the correct order to solve connection problems. About 80 percent of all Internet connectivity problems can be fixed by simply rebooting the devices, according to Jim Pyle, founder and inventor of the Amazing Jellybean. The company is currently raising $10,000 on Kickstarter.

Kirpeep, which stands for Keeping It Real People, is an exchange engine working to empower those who provide value to their communities, by making it easy to exchange for goods and services, with or without money. Steven Quintanilla, a 2010 graduate of M.I.T., is the founder. The company received a $25,000 investment from the Geekdom Fund.

SocialRest is social media for developers made simple. The company, which spun out of 3 Day Startup in San Antonio, takes care of maintaining API changes on social networks so developers no longer have to redeploy their applications. They can simply code and forget about it. With SocialRest, they do not have to go back and fix old applications. Clay Selby is the company’s founder.

SOLOSHOT is a first of its kind product that enables anyone – from extreme sport athletes to little league parents – to easily film the action with NO camera operator. The SOLOSHOT tripod automatically keeps a camera pointed towards the subject. SOLOSHOT is manufactured in-house in San Antonio. Scott Taylor and Chris Boyle are the founders of SOLOSHOT.

Sportybird is a cloud-based social platform built for in-game analytics of youth soccer. All collegiate and pro teams around the world use in-game analytics to improve team performance. Joshua Swank and John Trenholm, founders of Sportybird.io, are bringing the same technology to youth teams. The company received a $25,000 investment from the Geekdom Fund.

Greenhouse connects the crowd of Funders with passionate Founders. Greenhouse recognizes that great companies begin with a great community. The Greenhouse crowdfunding platform helps Funders discover companies that are important to them, lets Funders invest for equity in the companies, and provides Funders and Founders with the tools to build value together.

Note to readers: This post originally reported four companies would be showcasing themselves at the Innotech Beta Summit. But since the originally posting, two more companies have been added to the roster. Those additional companies are SportyBird.io and Greenhouse.

Q2ebanking has closed on $20 million in Series C financing.
The Austin-based company provides highly secure electronic banking solutions for banks and credit unions throughout the U.S.
Battery Ventures, a new investor, led the round. Existing investor Adams Street Partners also participated.
Q2ebanking provides ebanking technology for approximately 400 financial institutions, reaching over 3 million online users.
The company plans to use the latest round of funding to expand its sales and marketing efforts and to invest in cloud platform technology.
“New research and development efforts will focus on a unified user experience, mobility solutions, additional commercial features and further enhancing the company’s leading edge security offering,” according to the company.
“The addition of Battery Ventures and the continued commitment from Adams Street Partners is a reaffirmation of our single echannel strategy and its corresponding value to the market,” Matt Flake, CEO and president of Q2, said in a news release. “The investments we are making will enable Q2 to further serve the needs of our current and future clients, and prepare the company for its next stage of growth.”

Spanning Cloud Apps has closed on $6 million in Series B funding.
The Austin-based company makes backup software for Google Apps.
The company reported that an undisclosed strategic investor led the round and Foundry Group of Boulder, Colo. also participated.
Since its founding in 2010, Spanning Cloud Apps has raised $9 million.
“We’ve spent the last two years building the best backup system on the planet for the millions of businesses that use Google Apps,” Charlie Wood, CEO and founder of Spanning, said in a news release “This infusion of capital will allow us to accelerate the build-out of our direct sales team and reseller channel, while extending the product lead we’ve established over our competitors. It also provides us with an important strategic partner.”
The company plans to hire additional workers. It currently has 20 employees and expects to have 50 by the end of the year.
“Businesses are increasingly moving away from the traditional desktop-based Microsoft Office to the more collaborative and cost-effective cloud-based Google Apps,” according to the company. “With over five million businesses and 50 million users currently leveraging Google Apps worldwide, and 5,000 businesses migrating to Google Apps each day, it represents the fastest growing business productivity solution segment.”
“Spanning’s cloud-to-cloud backup solution solves a critical issue for leading organizations worldwide whose data is at risk,” Seth Levine, managing director, Foundry Group, and Spanning board member, said in a news release. “This leadership team has extensive experience in Google Apps and a deep track record of success in enterprise software. They are building the right culture and have a great vision for growing their business.”

Dachis Group announced Wednesday the completion of a $7.5 million Series C funding round led by Austin Ventures.
The Austin-based company will use the money to expand development of its big data social marketing analytics platform, which measures the impact of global brands.
Since its founding in 2008 by Jeffrey Dachis, who previously founded Razorfish, the company has raised $58.5 million, according to TechCrunch. It previously raised $30 million from Austin Ventures in a Series B Round in January of 2011, TechCrunch reported.
“There is no doubt in our minds that social engagement is driving more effective brand marketing,” Chris Pacitti, General Partner, Austin Ventures, said in a news release. “Given the enormous market for brand spend globally, we are a big believer in Jeff’s vision and approach. With an ever-expanding set of social engagement currencies, it is our continued belief that the disruptive platform the team at Dachis Group has built has the opportunity to become the ‘de facto’ standard in social measurement. We are delighted to continue to partner with Jeff and his team.”
“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it, and we have the most powerful enterprise class social analytics platform in market today to help brands measure and manage social engagement programs across all social engagement touch points,” Dachis, Founder, CEO and Chairman of Dachis Group, said in a news release. “This additional funding will enable us to better meet the growing needs of our customers who all share our belief that data driven social marketing is modern marketing’s future.”
Dachis Group’s customers include Nokia, New York Life, Starwood, Bloomberg, Bank of America, Estee Lauder, Acer and AT&T. The company currently analyzes the social engagement of more than 35,000 brands and several hundred million social transactions daily.