Savara Pharmaceuticals closed on $7.4 million, the second tranche of a $16 million Series B financing round to expand the clinical trial testing of its drug to treat lung infections in Cystic Fibrosis patients.
In addition, Savara was awarded a $4 million grant by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health.
The Austin-based company has created a drug called AeroVanc, which is the first “inhaled antibiotic being developed to address the growing population of MRSA-infected Cystic Fibrosis patients.”
“Savara’s new investors include members of the Tech Coast Angels and the North Texas Angel Network, along with returning investors from the Central Texas Angel Network and The Keiretsu Forum, which led the $8.6 million first tranche of the Series B in June 2012,” according to a news release. Other independent investors also participated.
The company increased the round, which was oversubscribed, from $13 million to $16 million. Since its founding in 2007, Savara Pharmaceuticals has raised $19 million.
“Savara has quickly emerged as one of the key players in inhaled antibiotics, but unlike all other similar products, AeroVanc is the first one to specifically address the growing problem of MRSA lung infection in cystic fibrosis,” Rob Neville, Chief Executive Officer of Savara Pharmaceuticals, said in a news release. “This has created substantial interest among an increasing number of high caliber investors, with strong support from key opinion leaders and the CF medical community.”
Page 287 of 351
BY ANDREW MOORE
Reporter with Silicon Hills News
Mayor Julian Castro, Rackspace Co-Founder and Chairman Graham Weston and City Manager Sheryl Sculley at the Rackspace Open Cloud Academy dedication. Photo courtesy of Mayor Julian Castro’s office
“You are sitting in an historic place,” Weston said. “Do you know what started right here? Rackspace started here. But another historic thing that happened on this floor is right behind that glass back there were the first three servers of Youtube.”
Weston along with other dignitaries including Mayor Julian Castro, City Manager Sheryl Sculley and Rackspace’s Director of Learning and Development Duane La Bom gathered to officially open the new Open Cloud Academy on the sixth floor of the Weston Centre.
The Open Cloud Academy will be a mirror of Rackspace University, the company’s internal training program, LaBom said. He will be managing the academy. It will teach the general public the same essential cloud computing and system administration skills and technologies that are required to work for Rackspace.
“We’re going to teach our students specifically what they need to know to gain employment today,” La Bom said. “And we are going to do that in an affordable way and a way that makes sense for our students.”
The academy has already started a pilot program with 100 students. These students will be going through the Linux Academy – a division of the Open Cloud Academy that certifies students to be L1 Linux administrators and teaches them the Rackspace system of customer support. Other divisions that will be available in the near future include the Network Security – or NetSec – Academy, the Cyber Security Academy, and the Cloud Computing Academy.
By the end of 2013, Rackspace also hopes to roll out additional divisions to provide training programs in the cutting-edge Ruby and Python coding languages.
Currently few university courses or certification programs exist for many of these much-needed coding languages, Weston said. And programs for Linux certifications are generally long and prohibitively expensive, he said.
“Technical training is very expensive everywhere,” Weston said. “There is really not a place today in the country where people can get training and certifications that are more than just a day or two.”
The Open Cloud Academy will offer courses that span six weeks to eight weeks. The cost will generally be $4000 or less depending on the skills learned.
Mayor Julian Castro is especially optimistic for the new Academy, hoping that it will help put San Antonio on the map as a hotspot for technology and IT jobs.
“San Antonio’s competitive advantage out there is that we are a young city,” Castro said. “We have tremendous numbers of folks coming out of high school, going to community college.. ..that have an interest in IT. And this is a fantastic opportunity for them to get the skills that will make them employable at Rackspace and many other companies in San Antonio and outside of San Antonio.”
In the big picture, the Open Cloud Academy is as important to Rackspace’s continued success as it is to the development of a technological workforce and ecosystem in San Antonio.
Rackspace Hosting spends a lot of money finding personnel with knowledge and skill-sets needed for their business. Increasingly, this means relocating employees from other markets or convincing them to work for Rackspace from home.
“We’re in a war for talent, and our options are we can either buy talent or build talent,” La Bom said. “The short term goal is to help Rackspace fill jobs we struggle to fill because, to some degree, we have tapped (out) the local market for technical skills.”
The academy will produce immediately qualified personnel to work at entry level positions at Rackspace, and the programs require no prior knowledge of IT or cloud computing.
“That’s coming to us with no knowledge of IT and walking out 10 to 12 weeks later with several IT industry standard certifications,” La Bom said.
La Bom estimates that Rackspace will hire around one-third of the students graduating from the Academy. The remaining students will have skills and experience as cloud computing system administrators that enable them to work for other companies or even start their own businesses. Rackspace hopes that these graduates will become customers after they leave.
A great deal of opportunity exists for the graduates. According to an IDC report sponsored by Microsoft, “Needed cloud skills will grow at six times the rate of IT skills overall.”
The report predicted “cloud-related skills represent virtually all of the growth opportunities in IT worldwide and will grow by 26 percent annually through 2015. IDC believes there could be as many as 7 million cloud-related jobs in IT worldwide by 2015.”
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that IT employment in the United States will only grow at a maximum of 2.7 percent annually, which is a long way from keeping up with worldwide growth.
In addition, training opportunities in cutting edge technologies are also severely lacking.
This is why Rackspace is developing training programs for coding languages such as Ruby and Python – languages required to be on the cutting edge of new apps and programs based on the cloud. There are currently no certification programs for these languages — which makes hiring developers difficult – but Rackspace hopes to have training programs ready as early as the last quarter of 2013.
Geekdom Co-founder and Mentor-In-Chief Nicholas Longo said this is a huge opportunity for advancing both San Antonio’s tech scene and cloud computing in general. Longo said there was previously no real opportunity for developers to quickly learn these job-essential languages.
“You couldn’t walk into a place that needs Ruby, Python, or cloud technology expertise because they don’t teach it. Now we teach it!” Longo said. “You come here, you learn the things that you need to know to get a real job or start your own startup. And you literally get certified with a certificate just like it was a normal vocation.”
Longo believes that the Open Cloud Academy is just the first step of a wave of innovation where technology will be taught and certified like other basic vocations. He and Geekdom were instrumental in putting the event together – creating exposure for the grand opening and holding information sessions for the Academy’s first students. In fact, Geekdom referred most of the pilot students.
One of the students, Tom Hoffman, is attending in the evenings after finishing at his regular job.
“It’s an awesome opportunity,” Hoffman said. “I can’t quit my job to go back to college, but I can do this self-based stuff and attend this open academy at night – re-tool myself with modern skills.”
The first stage of Hoffman’s Linux course involves reading a book, watching online instructional videos, and attending workshops for practice. He looks forward to getting his A+ certification and Network+ certification at the end of the first phase.
The Open Cloud Academy will also seek to specifically target military veterans as students – many of whom are now returning from their tours of duty and are looking for employment in the civilian market.
“We’re really wanting to give those individuals who are wrapping up their military career an option – we’d like to make IT an option for them as they made the decision about transitioning from a military career to a civilian career,” La Bom said.
Rackspace has already started the process of approving their Academy for use with the military’s GI bill. La Bom is hoping to get this approval in the next six months.
BY ALAN WEINKRANTZ
Special Contributor to Silicon Hills News
This year, my SXSW experience started at the Abbey Road crossing in London on
Alan Weinkrantz Crossing Abbey Road. In a Geekdom shirt, of course.
Crossing Abbey Road. In a Geekdom shirt, of course.
I was there with a life-long friend from college, on a Beatles pilgrimage. Being in
Liverpool was incredibly special. The last time I was there, I spent my 21st birthday.
Now, approaching my 60th, it was time to return.
Like many of us then, and to some extent, today, the Beatles influenced, well, just
about everything.
Back then, music was our source code. It gave rise to a global social consciousness
raising that set the tone for everything from putting a man on the moon, to the
decline of communism, the invention of the microprocessor, and of course, what
become the Internet.
I believe we are in the middle of history repeating itself with the manifestation of
a new form of code: it’s the apps and all the cool technologies and gizmos we are
using to digitize our lives and allow us to express, communicate and manage our
relationships in new ways.
As Humanity Evolves, So Does SXSW
For me, this year’s SXSW experience was about intent.
For one week out of the fifty-two in a year, the expression of intent is not about
doing business development, landing a big deal, or a possible career move up the
food chain.
I believe the act of intent shows a sign of faith that while you may not be able to
rationalize or clearly understand what you are doing, your instinct says you just
have to go with the flow, be intentional, and be open to new flows of energy and
opportunity that could come your way.
Special thanks to my friend, Jeff Pulver(right) who shared some great insights on Israel’s startup
economy for our talk at SXSW 2013
and doers. I did make it to hear Tim Ferris, Esther Dyson, and Rabbi Mordechai Lightstone.
I had five other “must-listen / gotta get inspired” talks I wanted to sit in on, but enroute to each talk, the randomness and magic of SXSW swung into full effect. In some cases I ran into people I follow on various social networks. In others, it was friends from San Antonio that I don’t see as often as I would like to. I crossed paths with friends from Israel, the UK, and all over the U.S. There were some friends that I never got to see, but felt their presence on social platforms like Facebook and Twitter as they were there.
In one case, I was standing outside of the convention center, and saw someone “very famous” looking around trying to figure out how to get from point A to point B. I went up to him and said, “hi – I know the area pretty well. You look lost. Can I help you?” This famous person accepted my offer and we walked a couple of blocks as I helped him find his way to his next appointment or interview.
While I have always been awestruck of this very famous person, suddenly I realized that he was just a normal person.
He was human.
He was real.
And he showed his vulnerability.
In another special moment in time, I ran into a friend, and we started to compare notes in the challenges of getting budgets for clients. In her infinite wisdom, my friend said, “there’s always a budget, but not for me…” On the spot, I knew there was a country western song in there. We agreed to save that nugget and re-visit it again at our next random encounter. For those of you reading this story, just you wait; we’ll be on stage on day singing this very famous song to be.
The Dow at Almost 14,500. Happy Days Are Here Again, But For Different Reasons
During SXSW Interactive, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was zooming and booming to new highs, almost getting to 14,500. Happy days were here again, but for totally different reasons.
On the show floor, countries like Korea, Chile, Ireland, and Mexico were there showcasing startups, and promoting innovation that were indigenous to the genetic code of their country. Offsite, there was the State of Israel’s dinner at an Italian restaurant that I attended. As with the folks from Chile, we celebrated with great food and terrific wine.
Going from booth to booth, each foreign country I visited all had similar messages: we see the future, we have connectivity, smart and passionate people, and we are out to rule the world.
While not on the show floor, I spent quite a bit of time with someone who is doing some amazing things with a non-profit organization in Egypt. He told me that the best thing that happened since the revolution, was that young people want to take part in the startup economy. He’s creating a new type of venture capital fund to tap into the entrepreneurial opportunities that is taking hold in his country.
Microsoft Comes A Calling
In my travels to Israel, I get to speak at many of the accelerators, one of which includes the Microsoft Azure Accelerator program in Herzliya, near Tel Aviv. Knowing that I was at SXSW, they asked me to interview one of the companies that
was in their program. I was not only happy to help out, I was thrilled. I knew the company when it was a great idea and had some early stage seed funding. Fast forward one year later, and they had not only raised a nice round, but they were
doing licensing deals with some major brands.
New Terms of Art
From what evolves at SXSW, are born new trades and terms of art.
Big data was used in various forms and for the first time ever, I learned the term, “data journalist,” in the Visual.ly booth. The “ quantified self” was on my radar. Devices like FitBit and Nike Fuelband were in full motion, adorned from the jeans and wrists of attendees.
The liberation of currency was clearly on the tradeshow floor. Several crowdfunding sites and professional services providers who are becoming part of this ecosystem were also promoting their message.
One of my favorite talks during SXSW: Transcending Tech: Is G-d Rebooting the World, with Rabbi Mordechai Lightstone from Lubavitch.com
One of my favorite talks during SXSW: Transcending Tech: Is G-d Rebooting the World, with Rabbi
Mordechai Lightstone from Lubavitch.com
I saw themes of mentorship this year, which also plays a big role in what I am doing. It’s part of the ethos of what we, as residents at San Antonio-based Geekdom have taken a pledge to mentor our fellow community members at what has now become the largest collaborative workspace in the State of Texas.
Tuesday afternoon, I had to leave to return back to my office at Geekdom for a very special event. Brad Feld was in town, sharing his vision on what it takes to build a startup community. I’m fortunate to have my office at Geekdom where I can mentor, do client work, and be around incredibly smart people whose goodness, intellect and intent is clearly there.
In our intent to do new things with the tools, bandwidth and platforms we now have, there is forever something that’s not just better, but more optimistic that was in full swing at SXSW.
SXSW is a platform that creates a place for you to open yourself up to experiencing the medium of intent.
When you put intent into motion, you can reset, calibrate, discover and yes, be discovered. There are people from all over the world randomly (or not so randomly) connecting through the medium of intent.
You now have twelve months to get ready for SXSW 2014.
Think about what your intent is, how you can discover what’s new, and be open to being discovered.
With positive intent, March 2014 will be a good time to return to Austin, Texas for the next adventures of SXSW.
Alan Weinkrantz is a Public Relations advisor to technology companies and startups
worldwide.
Disclosure: Geekdom is a sponsor of Silicon Hills News. Alan Weinkrantz is an advertiser on the site.
This week, Slice of Silicon Hills News Host Andrew Moore interviews Grapevine’s Co-Founder Erik Larson about the company’s latest version of its software.
Grapevine, based at Geekdom, makes a reputation management software program aimed at businesses in the hospitality industry like restaurants and hotels.
BY IAN PANCHEVRE
Reporter with Silicon Hills News
Austin is now in my rearview mirror.
Well, not exactly. I reasoned that writing this article while driving would be rather imprudent. So instead, I find myself at a Starbucks in Buda, TX, reflecting on the blur of events and emotions that transpired over the past few days.
It’s hard to summarize SXSW in a concise, all encapsulating sentence or phrase. Even the great Rachel Maddow struggled with the following question posed by @IanPanchevre via Twitter: #AskMaddow – Fill in the blank, SXSW is a lot like _______________.
Maddow’s answer – “I feel like it’s a cross between a political convention and lollapalooza” – came off a little flat. Lollapalooza? I’ll buy that. A political convention? Hmm…
Here’s another attempt to summarize the festival: Inspiring and humbling.
Starting with the inspiring, Astro Teller, a member of Google’s experimental laboratory, Google[x], spoke Tuesday morning on “Moonshots,” Teller’s term for ambitious, far-reaching projects and people. He encouraged the audience to think creatively, to set big goals, and to fearlessly pursue the supposed impossible.
“We want to work on something really thrilling, something that really matters, something that pushes us to our limits while doing it with people whom we deeply respect and admire,” explained Teller.
As for a modern day archetype of a moonshot, Teller points to Elon Musk. Without a doubt, Musk stole the show on Saturday with narratives from SpaceX (a private space exploration company), Tesla Motors (an electric vehicle manufacturer), and SolarCity (a provider of solar power systems).
“He’s doing all these amazing things at the same time!” exclaimed Stephen Blank, author of Four Steps to the Epiphany. “So, next time you take a look at your little mobile app, realize there’s still more to accomplish.”
And that leads me to the humbling.
Blank, speaking Saturday morning, drew a comparison between the two industry clusters in California – technology in Silicon Valley and film and entertainment in Hollywood. His assessment was that Silicon Valley, like Hollywood, has become a “star ecosystem” where celebrity figures are idolized, gossip constantly churns, and supporting industries extract value from the few who do productive work.
Blank’s message: don’t get distracted by the glamour of startups, stay focused on building a great product and good things should follow.
Okay, but what about the tech? Yes, there was lots of that too.
Surprisingly, mobile technologies were quiet at SXSW 2013. Given the track record of mobile launches at the festival, there was certainly an air of expectation for something to rise above the noise.
Not this year. If there were truly a breakout mobile app, I didn’t hear about it.
Yes, there were some cool apps. Aurasma, an augmented reality application boasts great performance, design, and branding. Tout, a Twitter-like service for short videos, got some attention. But that was mostly because Shaquille O’Neal, a Tout-backer, made a few appearances on the company’s behalf.
All things considered, no true marvels of technical accomplishment nor user engagement presented themselves among the mobile applications.
Perhaps what is most telling is that the only app that did seem to organically capture a fragment of the festival’s attention was Tinder – a dating app that, though well designed and fairly “sticky,” can be easily written off as flashy, valueless, and ephemeral.
Rather, SXSW 2013 will most likely be known as a year for hardware products, as opposed to enterprise software or consumer applications.
Additive printing technologies (i.e. 3D printing) built upon the momentum they gained at SXSW 2012 to claim a lot of the spotlight in 2013. The festival was given a proper kickoff by Bre Pettis, Founder and CEO of MakerBot, who entertained the audience at the first keynote. Conversations abounded throughout the weekend about the social, economic, and legal implications of this coming revolution in manufacturing.
OUYA – the new gaming console that will soon come to a store near you – was introduced to the SXSW audience by Julie Uhrman, its Founder and CEO. OUYA, priced at $99, empowers game developers of any size and budget to sell games through OUYA’s marketplace. Uhrman shared insights on running a successful Kickstarter (OUYA holds the record for the most amount of money raised on Kickstarter; $8.6 million from over 63,000 individual backers), the difficulties of product design, manufacturing, and distribution, and the deficiencies of the existing gaming ecosystem.
Leap Motion’s motion-control device was a big hit as well. Co-founders Michael Buckwald and David Holz dazzled the crowd by elucidating upon the technical wizardry of their controller’s hardware and software. The Leap Motion promotional tent – where attendees could manipulate various applications by waiving their hands and fingers – was a popular destination. In fact, yours truly was so impressed that he pre-ordered a Leap Motion Controller for $80, to be shipped later in March.
And then there were the wearables. Wristbands and watches that capture key biometrics à la FitBit abounded. But Google Glass – Mountain View’s bold new technology that places an internet overlay in front of a user’s eyes – perhaps stirred the most geek juice at SXSW. Sadly, my attempts to sneak into a presentation on the technology (the room reached capacity before I could get in) were unsuccessful.
Space exploration was another area that captured curiosity. Not only did Musk raise excitement about private space exploration, but NASA also provided perspective on the status of our public space program. A well-attended session on the user experience of a space station touched on interesting topics, such as the challenges of replacing laptops on a space station with iPads.
In retrospect, my extended weekend in Austin was fantastically stimulating. I couldn’t have hoped for better exposure to the latest, most magical, technologies.
Then there was the social side of things. During the day my mind was regularly blown with new ideas. At night, my poor iPhone 5 was barely able to keep up with the onslaught of texts, tweets, trending places, Facebook messages, and emails broadcasting the coolest spots for scoring free food, drinks, and swag; the quality of which was generally very satisfying.
Perhaps the ethos of the festival was best captured during an exchange between Dennis Crowley, Founder and CEO of Foursquare, and Anil Dash, Co-Founder of Activate.
Crowley noted during his interview that at South by Southwest, “you get to experience the future for a couple of days and then you go home and live in the present.”
”Wow, the future has a lot of hangovers!” retorted Dash.
The crowd immediately roared with laughter. Evidently, Dash’s witty remark resonated with a few of the attendees.
As for myself, all I can say is that if I had stayed any longer, I ran a real risk of having my body pull an emergency force quit. So I’m calling it a wrap now, while I can still boast that I survived South by Southwest 2013.
I hope you’ve enjoyed Adventures in Austin! Please feel free to share your thoughts on the series in the comments below.
Previous segments:
Apparently there’s this conference happening in Austin?? Adventures in Austin, Part 1.0.0
Adventures in Austin, Part 2.0.5: SXSW = big fun and big business.
Flying High with Interact ATX! (Adventures in Austin, part 3.2.1)
TrueAbility of San Antonio made it to the finals of the South by Southwest Interactive’s Accelerator in the New Web Technologies category.
TrueAbility helps companies hire the best technical talent by assessing a job candidate’s technical skills in a live server environment. The company shortnes a company’s recruiting process and makes it easier and cheaper to hire great technical talent.
Luke Owen, co-founder and CEO, pitched the company in less than five minutes in front of a panel of judges Tuesday afternoon. Marcus Robertson, co-founder and chief technology officer, is also at the show.
At the end of his presentation, Owen fielded a lot of questions from the judges asking about whether the company would partner with universities doing Massive Open Online Courses, known as MOOCs, to certify students’ skills.
Bob Metcafle, one of the judges, mentioned he was taking a MOOC course in Python programming from MIT and he wanted to use TrueAbility’s testing to certify his skills at the end of the course.
Owen said universities have approached the company about partnerships but it is laser focused right now on helping companies hire the best information technology workers for their organizations.
TrueAbility faces three other competitors in the finals. They include Memoto, a company form Stockholm, Sweden, that makes a tiny wearable camera that automatically captures a person’s life in still photos. It’s also searchable and shareable through its smartphone apps. The other finalist is Wanderu from Boston. They company is a new travel startup that provides a simple way to find and book bus and train travel from Point A to Point B.
Rackspace Hosting sponsored the accelerator. The finalists will be announced tonight at 6 p.m. at SXSW Interactive.
Disclosure: TrueAbility is an advertiser with Silicon Hills News
BY L.A. LOREK
Founder of Silicon Hills News
Photo courtesy of NASA
They received the most mentions in social media on Twitter and Facebook during the first four days of the technology festival, said Itai Asseo, vice president and creative architect of Digitas Labs.
Musk, co-founder of Paypal, founder of Tesla Motor and SpaceX, received 10,000 mentions on Twitter, followed closely by Grumpy Cat, which made a debut at Mashable’s tent and attracted a 600 person line outside the Mashable tent on Saturday to get their picture taken with the cat.
What people are tweeting about is a different type of thing than what garnered the most attention at the show, Asseo said.
Digitas collaborated with SXSW Interactive to crunch data from the show to present the real picture of SXSW Interactive during a panel Tuesday morning. Digitas’ Beth McCabe and Asseo, creative technologist behind Digitas Labs analyzed a variety of data collected before, during and at the end of the show.
Digitas used a new social data visualization tool called SODA to present their findings to more than 300 people gathered for the session.
The big themes from this year’s show revolved around space, the maker’s movement, data and entrepreneurs, McCabe said. Storytelling was also a big theme, but it is every year, she said.
Photo of Grumpy Cat courtesy of Mashable
Photo by Guy Kawasaki
“It’s inspiring and cool that a government organization like NASA was here at SXSW,” McCabe said.
The show’s attendance is expected to top 27,000 this year, up from 24,569 last year. Interactive has eclipsed music and film as the most popular part of the SXSW festival.
One of the interesting facts Digitas discovered is that no one from South Dakota made it to SXSW Interactive this year.
Elon Musk, SXSW Official Photo, courtesy of Peter Tsai Photography
The show targets young affluent decision makers. The most attendees fall into the 25 to 34 age range, followed by 35 to 44 year olds.
“We are the next generation of the leaders of this industry,” Asseo said. “We’re going to set the tone for this industry for the years to come.”
It’s also a highly educated group, he said.
Every panelist at the show, on average had 3,000 Twitter followers, 1,000 Facebook followers and the attendees also had quite a lot of influence, Asseo said.
From the words tweeted about the most at SXSW Interactive, Asseo and McCabe created Haikus for each day of the show. They are listed below.
Day One Haiku
SXSW Badge
MakerBot Vine Awesome Love
Party Play Talk Live
How much people were using Vine – fairly new tool launched by Twitter
Day Two Haiku
GrumpyCat Premier
Future-Looking Elon Musk
Biggest Party Time
Day Three Haiku
Watch Blogger Swiss Miss
Gore Defends Al Jazeera
Tonight Bands Perform
Day Four
Cityseed App Launch
Gomez Duck Lips, Spring Breakers
Shaq Interview Win
BY L.A. LOREK
Founder of Silicon Hills News
Justin Jensen with Cinetics, Matt Cohen with Onespot, Barry Evans with Calxeda and Claire England, executive director of RISE Austin
Barry Evans, co-founder and CEO of Calxeda, bootstrapped and eventually landed Venture Capital funding after seeking investment from California and Boston for his microchip company.
Justin Jensen, founder and CEO of Cinetics launched two successful Kickstarter campaigns to fund products for his company.
And Matt Cohen, a former partner with G-51 Capital, an early stage investment company in Austin, received angel money to launch OneSpot, an online advertising company.
They all detailed how they got money to back their ventures during a “Funded in Austin” panel in the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce’s Office at South by Southwest on Sunday afternoon.
“We really wanted to explore the entrepreneur’s perspective on fundraising in Austin,” said Claire England, executive director of RISE Global, an entrepreneurial conference in Austin. She moderated the panel.
People packed the room to hear the stories about how to get investors to back an early-stage startup. About a third of them were entrepreneurs, some investors and others interested in the subject, according to an informal survey England took of the room.
At first, England quizzed the panelists about their experiences and then the audience members asked the founders questions about their ventures.
Calxeda, founded in 2008, spent a year bootstrapped, got some strategic investment, Texas Emerging Technology Fund money and angel money and in 2010 closed on a $48 million Venture Capital round, Evans said. Calxeda makes ultra-low power server microchips that use ARM-based processors, which are the same ones used in iPhones and iPads.
Austin in 2008 through 2010 would not invest in early-stage hardware companies, Evans said.
He said he “burned a lot of time double checking that fact” and then went to Silicon Valley, Boston and even the Middle East for investors. The company’s first round of funding came from ARM Holdings, Abu Dhabi-based Advanced Technology Investment Co., Texas Instruments, Battery Ventures, Flybridge Capital Partners and Highland Capital Partners.
Eventually, Austin investors did back the company, Evans said. Last year, the company closed on a $55 million round adding Austin Ventures and Vulcan Capital as investors.
“The breakthrough for us was the help of the ATI (Austin Technology Incubator) we were able to figure out the VCs in the Bay that had investments in Austin,” he said.
Evans made sure to get on their schedule when they were visiting Austin. He also learned Battery Ventures was an early investor in Bazaarvoice, Solarwinds and others in town.
In the beginning, Evans spent 50 percent of his time looking for funding and now it’s about 10 percent to 15 percent, he said.
“You never stop fundraising as a CEO,” he said.
It’s Evans first startup and he learned a lot from the early days of fundraising. He said he developed a tactic early on where he would reach out to a potential investor to meet for coffee to just talk about his big idea. If they said yes, then he would pitch them. If they weren’t a fit, it was OK, because it really wasn’t a formal pitch, he said.
His biggest mistake was trying to raise too little money.
“I was asking for $5 million and ended up getting $48 million,” he said.
It was easier and faster to raise a larger amount and spread out the risk among several VC firms.
“It spoke to the risk that everyone was feeling about this crazy idea,” he said.
Onespot, an advertising company that created a platform to turn online content into ads, raised $1.5 million in angel funding last year.
“Angels invest for slightly different reasons than VCs,” said Cohen, the company’s president and founder. “Typically the main reason why angel investors are investing is that they really want to help out companies.”
Onespot sought out investors that could help the company make connections and give it advice, Cohen said.
“Angel investors have a lot more availability and time to give us than VCs,” Cohen said. “We will almost certainly raise a venture capital round later on.”
He advised the entrepreneurs in the room to continue to develop their minimal viable product and gain traction in their marketplace while seeking funding.
“If you’re not making a lot of progress fundraising, make progress on the product or service and then the actual fundraising processes will go a lot easier,” Cohen said.
It’s also important to find the right investors, he said. The most important thing is to do research on which angel investor is the best fit for your company, he said.
“Angel investors are investing in an individual,” he said. “They are putting their bet on you.”
Angel investing is about cultivating relationships, building a network and getting warm introductions anywhere you can, Cohen said.
At G-51 Capital, Cohen often took recommendations from lawyers that work with startups. Many of the lawyers will defer fees until a company gets funded.
Angel investors have their own vetting processes but they like referrals from lawyers and other trusted sources, he said.
“Angel investment is one of the areas where Austin really shines,” Cohen said.
Most angel investors write checks between $25,000 and $200,000, Cohen said. To be successful angel investors, they need to make between a dozen and three-dozen investments, he said.
“I wound up getting a number of angel investors in Austin and also in New York and California,” he said.
Cohen said he’s looking forward to seeing successful entrepreneurs in Austin giving back.
“The thing that brings capital and resources to a town is success,” he said.
In October of 2011, Cinetics completed a successful fundraising campaign on Kickstarter. The Austin-based startup originally sought to raise $20,000 and ended up with $486,518 from 2,019 backers.
“We were bootstrapped,” said Jensen. “We went to Kickstarter for presales.”
Cinetics created CineSkates “a portable tripod slider system that enables fluid, rolling video without the hassle of bulky camera gear.”
It’s a camera dolly that fits into a backpack for independent filmmakers and hobbyists so they “can get shots without breaking their bank or their back,” Jensen said.
“It was really a product that didn’t require a lot of prototyping and funding,” he said. “We built the first product for under $10,000. We really didn’t need any significant capital.”
Jensen advised entrepreneurs to put as much information as possible on the Kickstarter campaign so that potential funders don’t have to ask a lot of questions.
In January, Cinetics launched a second successful Kickstarter campaign for “CineMoco, a compact motor controlled dolly and slider for video and time-lapse photography.”
The CineMoco campaign more than doubled its goal of raising $50,000. The company ended up raising $113,913 from 283 backers.
When Cinetics started crowdfunding, it was one of the first Austin hardware companies to do so, Jensen said. But now many resources exist for companies seeking crowdfunding. He recommended the Austin Hardware Startup Meetup Group to learn about projects and funding.
