SiliconHills

Page 304 of 351

Rackspace Gives Back at 6th Annual Thanksgiving Food Drive

November 18, 2012 / / 2 Comments

By ANDREW MOORE
Special Contributor to Silicon Hills News

Rackspace Hosting held its 6th annual Thanksgiving food drive on Saturday at its headquarters in San Antonio.
Cars lined up along both sides of the makeshift food distribution center in Rackspace’s parking lot as the K-Rack DJ created a party atmosphere of re-mixed music. In coordination with the San Antonio Food Bank, Rackspace employees – or Rackers – prepared to distribute a thousand turkeys, as well as tea, coffee, pumpkins, watermelons, and yogurt.
Rackers also distributed 1,270 food boxes containing the rest of the Thanksgiving meal, which they had personally bought for community residents. Some Rackers had even decorated the boxes.
According to Chief Operating Officer Mark Roenigk, maintaining a fun, party-like atmosphere was a key part of the food drive.
“We like to do things that are uplifting,” Roenigk said. “We are trying to make it a fun thing. People should not feel bad that they are coming to get food for their thanksgiving.”

Stan Slimp and “Sugar Bear” dressed as turkeys with DJ Dale Bracey, photograph by Samantha Davis

Two rackers helped keep the party going by dressing up like turkeys and dancing in the front parking lot while greeting members of the community as they drove in. Resident Jana Martinez appreciated the happy mood.
“The music helps it out and everyone is so friendly,” Martinez said. “It makes it not seem like we need the help so much.”
The annual food drive was one of the largest events Rackspace had hosted this year. Fifteen hundred of the companies’ 2,800 employees were involved in the drive. The company spent $10,000 on turkeys and partnered with the San Antonio Food Bank to distribute them, and many other food items, to 1,000 families in the local community. According to Roenigk, sharing success with the community is a big deal at Rackspace.
“Our business model is very successful so we’re very, very blessed and we like to give back to the community,” Roenigk said. “We try to pick the highest impact events to serve the community of San Antonio.”
According to the San Antonio Food Bank, Rackspace’s Thanksgiving distribution event is by far the largest the food bank will do this year. Director of Community Investments Katie Ramsey said the help is sorely needed in the community.
“In November we usually get 90 people per day coming into the food bank and this year we are getting 110 people or more,” Ramsey said. “It’s just an increased need.”
Rackspace and the San Antonio Food Bank worked to meet that need by distributing 1,000 vouchers to residents of the surrounding community. Six hundred vouchers were distributed in cooperation with family specialists in local schools and 400 were distributed with the help of local non profit organizations, churches, and food pantries. Local residents appreciated the much needed support.

A local resident and her daughter happy to receive their meal, photo by Samantha Davis


“I think it’s a great thing that they’re doing here. It helps out a lot of us that can’t get certain things that we need,” Kelly Nevarro said. “It helps out a lot, these little things here, it great for the kids too.”
The food drive also got support from Roosevelt High School. A Roosevelt Junior, Jesse, volunteered to help and also recruited a few other classmates. The Roosevelt students served as Rackspace’s turkey brigade, loading turkey after turkey into the cars that pulled in.

Roosevelt High School students help load food into vehicle, photo by Samantha Davis

“It’s a great feeling inside to know that you can give something to someone who doesn’t have all the resources that you have,” said Roosevelt High School Student Carlos.
The annual Thanksgiving food drive is just one part of the much broader Rack-Gives-Back project, which is the community volunteer arm of Rackspace. In fact, there are three Rackspace employees dedicated solely to community support events. Community Affairs Specialist Cristina Ruiz said Rackspace is scheduled to have at least one major outreach event quarterly and smaller monthly events.
“We don’t just want to be a tenant,” Ruiz said. “We want to be part of the community, be a neighbor, and give back to this area.”

3DS San Antonio Breeds Innovators and Clothing Savers

November 18, 2012 / / 1 Comment

By CARLOS SALINAS
Special Contributor to Silicon Hills News

Since 3 Day Startup San Antonio kicked off Friday, some people have been working almost nonstop to fine tune their ideas.
The seven teams divided up into groups and have been toiling away in conference rooms to create logos, websites, business plans and more. On Saturday, some of the groups left the building to hit the streets to do market research to validate their ideas.
Since its founding four years ago at the University of Texas, 38 3 Day Startup events have taken place on four continents and those events have created 28 companies which have received $8 million in funding. Many of the companies have been accepted into startup accelerators such as Y Combinator, TechStars, 500 Startups, and Capital Factory. Central Texas companies to spin out of the events include Grapevine, Cabstr, Embarkly, Hoot.me, Famigo and Ordoro.
At Geekdom on the 11th floor of the Weston Centre downtown, the group members on Saturday sometimes engaged in Nerf dart wars in the lounge areas to blow off steam. They also got catered meals from local restaurants and had an entire pantry stacked with snacks from chips to chocolate.
“We didn’t have much off time, but when we weren’t working we were eating,” said Austin Oliver, one of the 3DS participants.
“3DS is a lot of fun, but it’s so bad for your health,” added DeaAnna Hodges, another 3DS entrepreneur who owns her own clothing line.
Jackie Davis came to 3 Day Startup San Antonio with an idea for a ReInVintag, a service that would boost the sales and popularity of vintage clothing stores through use of her unique designs and alterations. She’s been running the business out of her bedroom for several months. She wanted to take it to the next level and she thought this event would be the right way to do that. On Friday, the group selected her ideas as one of the companies they wanted to work on.
“It was an honor to be one of the finalists,” Davis said. “There were so many intelligent people with great ideas, so it was a great validation to have all my peers support my idea.”
This weekend, Davis wants to build out a fully functional website that will connect shoppers with the vintage clothes they want. Online her site will allow people to make simple alterations such as trimming the sleeves off a dress or shortening a hemline to tailor the clothes to their needs.
“I want to build a platform to redesign vintage clothes thus making them more wearable today and therefore easier for clothing stores to sell” Davis said.
Davis has already validated the market by creating a small and successful business at home, but she wants to take it to a bigger audience and she wants to do something that’s beneficial for the environment.
That pitch resonated with many in the group because ReInVintage attracted more than 10 team members.
At 3 Day Startup San Antonio, mentors play a key role in helping the young companies get over hurdles and find the sweet spot of success in the market they want to tackle.
Nick Longo, director of Geekdom and of Strategic Initiatives for Rackspace, entered the ReInVintag team room during the first meeting Friday night and quickly made his presence known.
“No Startup will ever succeed without a noble cause,” he announced to the team. Longo assigned one of the team members to be a scribe and had her write down 5 questions of attack for the team. He took a seat in the middle of the ReInVintag team room and offered his perspective on how the group should proceed. As the night grew older and thinking processes began to slow down, the team turned towards Longo for guidance.
“The next thing you need to do is assign jobs to your team-members and actually go do something,” he told the group. “If no one is doing it, then you go do it!” he announced to the team as they finally progressed past the brainstorming stage and into the action stage.
Entrepreneurs Austin Oliver and DeaAnna Hodges both joined the ReInVintag team.
When asked why he joined the group, Austin responded “I felt like it was a business that would take off right away since they already have products for sale.”
On Sunday, the teams will present their companies during a final pitch session at 7 p.m. It’s open to the public and tickets are still available here.

Technology Fuels Formula 1 Racing in Austin

November 17, 2012 / / 0 Comments

By SUSAN LAHEY
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

F1 Racing Photo courtesy of Circuit of the Americas

Every year, Formula 1 teams the world over have to design and build a new car, including redesigning all its roughly 4,000 components, in seven months.
Each component, car and driver must meet intense standards of performance, safety and efficiency that the Federation Internationale de l’Automobile changes yearly.
According to Nick Fry, CEO of Mercedes AMG Petronas Formula One team, a successful F1 car, racing internationally, costs about $200 million annually. And in many cases about half of that is funded by spinning off the incredible technologies these teams devise into products for industries including transportation, health care, defense and space programs.
Friday, UK Trade & Investment and the Central Texas Angel Network sponsored a Formula One Tech Rally at the AT&T Executive Education and Conference Center featuring representatives from three different British teams: Fry, Geoff McGrath, managing

Geoff McGrath, managing director of McLaren Applied Technologies, photo by Susan Lahey

director of McLaren Applied Technologies and Kirsty Andrew, head of commercial operations for Williams Advanced Engineering. Motorsport, the speakers said, is in Britain’s DNA and the country has led in F1 championships.
The reason for the focus on F1 technology in Austin is because the U.S. Grand Prix debuts here on Sunday. The Circuit of the Americas track, designed by University of Texas graduates, has the capacity for 120,000 and cost roughly $400 million.
People have traveled to Austin from all over the world to watch the 24 drivers compete in the sold out race.
The F1 cars are reported to be “the most technologically advanced in the world. They have V8 engines that scream at 18,000 rpms and, literally, shake your insides as they fly by,” according to an ABC News report. The cars can reach speeds of up to 185 miles per hour.
NetApp 360 has put together this graphic detailing how much technology is involved in the F1 racers.
Each of the panelists on Friday explained how teams are challenged to improve their performance by 10 percent annually and each year they reexamine and redesign everything. For Williams’ team, that has translated into creating high performance flywheel Kinetic Energy Recovery System (KERS) they sold to the London transportation system, increasing city buses’ fuel efficiency by 20 percent. And subsequently building a battery KERS that went into the new electric Jaguar that can go from 0-to-60 in 3.4 seconds. Besides buses and trains, Andrew said, “We’re talking about putting these in remote locations, the mining industry, wind turbines.”
McGrath talked about McLaren’s focus on data collection and application.
“It’s what you do with the data that sets you apart,” he said. “When you feed it to actionable intelligence models, you get predictive intelligence which gives you the capability of prescriptive intelligence, real time strategy and decision making so you can compete for the future based on real time data today.”
One area where his company has poured that data is into performance improvement for the drivers themselves, improvements that emergency rooms, the military and others who need people to move fast, decisively and skillfully can use. McLaren invented a simulator for F1 drivers that is, according to Fry “significantly in advance of flight simulators.” Calling it Play Station on steroids, Fry said the simulator—which drivers from many teams use—tricks the driver’s brain so it can’t tell the difference between an actual track and the simulator.
Moreover, as McGrath said, “The drivers, of course are, are high performance athletes who can process data fast and consistently, something that would be highly prized by any executive.”
Another product they have devised is sensors to give performance data both on the machine and the driver, since data drives everything. The sensors were tested on elite athletes, but McLaren had to be strategic about that.

Seven Companies Incubating at 3 Day Startup San Antonio

November 17, 2012 / / 0 Comments

Jim Pyle pitches his idea for the Amazing Jellybean at 3 Day Startup San Antonio

On Friday, Jim Pyle arrived at Geekdom for 3 Day Startup San Antonio with an idea for a company.
When the 40 participants broke into nine groups to brainstorm, Pyle presented his idea. He has a patent pending on a device called the Amazing Jellybean. It’s a consumer electronics product that reboots a computer and the Internet when problems arise with the Internet’s connectivity.
Pyle, a former customer service representative for Time Warner, knows the pain firsthand from helping consumers reconnect their Internet. So he created a device to do it automatically.
Pyle later pitched the Amazing Jellybean to the entire group around 8 p.m. Friday night. His was one of the 18 ideas being considered. The other ideas included business templates for Facebook, Streaming Yoga, Mentor Nation, Smart Aisle, Parking Buddy, a Veteran’s job portal and others.
At around 10 p.m., everyone put their heads down and voted by raising their hands for their two favorite project ideas.
In the end, six companies got the most votes. They included Audius.co, an application that lets performers harness the power of the audience’s smart phones, ReInVintag, a recycled clothing site, Social Connex, a applications developers interface with Facebook, Yelp for Online Courses, Monk’s Toolbox, a graphic business app for brewers and Heirloom, an online repository for family memories. Some of the people who couldn’t decide what team to join decided to revive one of the old ideas for Print.me, a portal for consumers to order prints of famous paintings and other works of art.
Pyle was disappointed his idea wasn’t chosen but he was OK with the process. He decided to join the Heirloom team.
“There’s a lot of different perspectives from people with different disciplines here,” Pyle said.
This time 3 Day Startup San Antonio worked hard to make sure that they had a diverse crowd, said Joshua Schechter, one of the organizers. They received more than 340 applications and whittled the finalists down to 100, he said. They reached out to a fashion incubator and food incubator in town and all of the universities to get participants.
“The criteria was about passion,” Schechter said. “The program is about education and entrepreneurship. We were looking for a lot of diversity.”
This is the fifth 3 Day Startup Weekend in San Antonio. The first two took place at Rackspace and the rest at Geekdom on the 11th floor of the Weston Centre downtown.
‘There’s a lot of passion and excitement,” said Luz Cristal Glangchai, associate director of Trinity University’s Center for Entrepreneurship and one of the event’s organizers. “The participants are super motivated.”
During the three day weekend, the groups will hash out business plans, create websites and products and do customer research. They’ll also dine on barbeque and dozens of different kinds of snacks ranging from pop tarts to apples. They also have all kinds of drinks from beer to Red Bull and ice tea.
But it’s not all work.
The 3 Day Startup teams often have giant Nerf gun battles and have been known to play dodge ball on the roof of the building.
Lauren Anzaldua, a senior studying entrepreneurship at the University of Texas at San Antonio, pitched an idea for marketing small businesses on Facebook by using page templates. It wasn’t chosen. She ended up working on the Print.Me group.
“I’m kind of just going with the flow,” she said. “I like having this experience. It’s beneficial either way.”

Astrotech Puts a Spotlight on the Space Industry From Austin

November 16, 2012 / / 3 Comments

UT Professor of Innovation Bob Metcalfe interviews Tom Pickens, CEO of Astrotech, photo by Dave Michaels


By DAVE MICHAELS
Special Contributor to Silicon Hills News

The Technology Entrepreneurship Society (TES) and 1 Semester Startup (1SS) Thursday hosted its Fall Finale, inviting Tom Pickens, President and CEO of Astrotech Corp., to speak on the space industry and his company.
TES President Aaron Sanchez said that TES’s mission is to plant the seed of entrepreneurship and provide crucial resources through their vast network to catalyze projects and startups. By exposing members, mainly technology students, to successful entrepreneurs and hands on activities such as hackathons, the hope is that students will see it’s possible to take an idea to market and consider entrepreneurship as a viable alternative to the more established route of a corporate job.
More than 100 students attended the event, which featured UT Professor of Innovation Bob Metcalfe interviewing Pickens on stage at the UT Student Activity Center’s auditorium.
Astrotech’s core business is testing and preparing satellites for launch, serving as an intermediary between satellite owners and launch service providers at Cape Canaveral (FL) and Vandenberg (CA). Their service is critical, because once a satellite’s in space, there’s no way to get it back for repairs. Astrotech’s jobs span working with the satellite team to run through all functions the satellite will need to perform, mounting the satellite to a platform that fits the nosecone of the rocket, and finally delivering to the launch pad. Their ability to work quickly on mission critical and complex tasks makes them the go-to provider, as confirmed by their holding 98 percent of the market. According to Pickens, “We only had them for 13 to 14 weeks. So all the teams come in that had been working on that satellite for five to eight years. Some of those things are really complex.”
This business brings in approximately $25 million in revenue ($10 million in profit). And though they have cornered the market, the lack of growth is pushing toward diversification.
Astrotech has been operating since 1984 under the name SpaceHab, but when a shuttle carrying an Astrotech client’s payload crashed, there was subsequent legal action against NASA that caused some tension in the partnership. Ultimately they were unable to pursue legal action, and this, coupled with other debt threatened to sink the company. Pickens joined the company in 2007 and to keep the company afloat took strong action, convincing existing board members to leave, as well as negotiating debt to equity agreements to keep the creditors at bay and layoffs. The company currently employs 72 and has facilities in Florida, California, and Houston (R&D), with its headquarters in Austin (midpoint between FL and CA). Pickens decided on the name change to Astrotech to mend fences with NASA.
Astrotech had a role with the International Space Station (ISS) the biggest component of their NASA relationship for a long time. However, As U.S. involvement in ISS has been discontinued, the nature of the relationship has evolved. Astrotech stills counts NASA as a customer, servicing their satellites for launch and delivered their mass spectrometer for use (see First Detect below). They are also partnering on the ISS research side to continue the work for Astrogenetix, its subsidiary.
The growth of Astrotech is being built from past work and research. Astrotech worked with NASA on the microgravity lab in the ISS, developing the module to serve as the lab. This work has built a strong platform to harvest new ideas for development, the most prominent example being their wholly subsidiary, Astrogenetix.
Astrogenetix came from Astrotech’s work on the International Space Station where they developed a module for running a variety of experiments (over 1,500) in microgravity. The body of work that was done is a trove of possible application. A key finding that they are moving on is the discovery that some bacteria cultures grow much more in microgravity than on earth. The application is allowing for greatly improved efficiency of discovering disease biomarkers that map a path to a cure for different diseases. Currently, they are working on Salmonella and Methicilin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (“MRSA”). Drug companies that are doing similar work can spend upwards of $20 million so with a much lower cost method, Astrogenetix would have a huge market for a variety of different diseases needing a path to cure.
As Astrotech’s work with ISS wrapped up, the company realized it needed to diversify and they drew on their expertise to start developing a highly differentiated mass spectrometer. First Detect is another wholly owned subsidiary that developed a low power, miniature mass spectrometer which can detect a variety of substances through isolating individual molecules and identifying their unique signatures.
It improves the accuracy for current solutions which in the most extreme cases could save lives, not to mention lower cost of use and portability.
“I’m seeing a pretty big market size,” Pickens said. “If you go into food processing, if you go into TSA, you go into semiconductors, oil and gas, the list goes on and on, all kinds of manufacturing. I’m seeing a multi-billion dollar market.”

Outbound Engine Launches and Raises $1.6 million

November 15, 2012 / / 0 Comments

Outbound Engine has launched and announced that it has closed a $1.6 million first round of venture capital funding.
The Austin-based startup has created a platform for independent professionals to send automated, customized email and social media services to customers.
Outbound Engine’s investors include Floodgate, Austin Ventures, Silverton Partners and Capital Factory.
OutboundEngine plans to use its funds to invest in technology and expand into select markets in 2013.
“Small businesses want to look awesome to their clients any way they can, including the opportunity to harness digital innovations in marketing automation and social networking,” Mike Maples Jr., managing partner at Floodgate, said in a news release. “Outbound Engine provides a breakthrough approach for people who want to amplify their client relationships without requiring them to become IT experts. We think they are a great example of the trend toward empowering small business with powerful digital capabilities without requiring them to build IT departments.”
The company, originally founded in 2010 as Promo Labs, now focuses on software as a solution products for independent professionals who manage small-to-medium-sized businesses.

Rackspace Adds New Features and Support to its Cloud Software

November 15, 2012 / / 0 Comments

Rackspace Hosting today announced new features and enhanced support offerings for the Rackspace Private Cloud Software, dubbed “Alamo.”
Rackspace launched the software last August and thousands have downloaded the free software.
“The goal of the Rackspace Private Cloud Software is to provide customers with a fast and easy way to deploy a free OpenStack-powered private cloud anywhere in the world,” Mike Aeschliman, head of engineering and product for Rackspace Private Cloud, said in a news release. “With the new release, we can now offer Fanatical Support to customers’ cloud software using our remote access tools. This is a huge step in our mission to enable organizations to start realizing the benefits of clouds and trust them for mission-critical workloads.”
To get the software and find out more information, visit Rackspace.

SubtleData Raises Seed Funding, Launches Product and Appoints CEO

November 15, 2012 / / 0 Comments

SubtleData launches a new software platform for sales, appoints a new CEO and closes on a seed round of funding.
Bryan Menell, a successful serial entrepreneur formerly with the Dachis Group, has joined the Austin-based startup, which connects mobile applications to point of sale systems, as its CEO. He joins Richard Bagdonas, company founder and Chief Technology Officer, on the executive team.
“The range of applications being developed empower consumers to split checks at restaurants, purchase drinks for their friends, track loyalty and rewards points, and even connect with other people at the hottest night clubs,” according to the company’s news release.

Bryan Menell, CEO of SubtleData

Through AngelList, SubtleData raised $500,000 in seed funding.
“We’re extremely fortunate to have a group of investors that are bringing key customer and developer relationships to us along with their investment” Menell said in a news release. “This provides us with significant momentum as we continue to expand our Point of Sale integrations and number of mobile developers.”

NetApp Acquires Austin-based CacheIQ

November 15, 2012 / / 2 Comments

NetApp has acquired Austin-based CacheIQ, a privately-held a privately storage solutions company, for an undisclosed amount, according to a NetApp news release.
CacheIQ was started in 2010 by Joel Trammel and other veteran storage and networking entrepreneurs, according to its CrunchBase profile. The company raised $6 million in angel funding from 25 private investors.
“The company is developing software to solve the network storage bottlenecks that plague today’s data centers,” according to its profile.
“The acquisition will provide NetApp with intellectual property that extends its capabilities to support nondisruptive operations for enterprise data center environments,” according to the NetApp news release. “NetApp will integrate this intellectual property into its product offerings over time.”
The Austin Business Journal reported on Wednesday that CacheIQ had 14 employees in Austin and that it bought “the intellectual property of Austin-based Storspeed Inc., which was founded in 2007.”
Also, the Austin Business Journal reported that Trammel, chairman of the Austin Technology Council, previously co-founded Austin-based NetQoS Inc. which was sold for $200 million.

« Older posts Newer posts »

© 2025 SiliconHills

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑