By SUSAN LAHEY
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

Angel investor Gary Forni Wednesday called Austin Startup Week “Austin’s preeminent event for early-stage startups… I wouldn’t miss it,” he added. Forni, with the Central Texas Angel Network and the Austin Technology Incubator was among roughly 400 people to attend the Startup Bazaar, hosted by Tech Ranch and RISE Austin at The Stage on Sixth Street.
Nineteen companies had demo tables, including Divert-X, wireless monitoring of prescription drug dosage; Springcreek Systems, a Salesforce.com partner which developed a standalone cloud applications to automate and prioritize Customer Relationship Manager data deduplication; Alpha Cares, an online software suite for child care center management; Isthislost, which provides anonymous email and SMS communication between someone who loses something and someone who finds it, and Axelo, a patented 3D motion sensing technology.
Throughout the day, 11 companies also pitched to investors including Needto.com, a site to connect people with work and services that includes a rating service and earnable tags, Whit.li, a provider of social media intelligence for enterprises, Itography, which lets advertisers market products with a mobile scavenger hunt and Engine, which lets users retrieve texts, documents and social content from their Gmail accounts.
Alex Cox-Cuzzi, engagement manager for Tech Ranch who planned the event, said the companies who pitched were all interviewed and auditioned prior to the event and chosen for their readiness to pitch.
“We were looking for the companies that are up and running, they’re out there in the market but haven’t gathered the attention they deserve,” Cox-Cuzzi said. Companies who applied were all early-stage companies so there was a fairly level playing field.
Ben Bazzrea, vice president of business development at Balderdash, which produces mobile apps, websites and design, said the one big problem with the event was that each demo table only had one representative who could actually speak to visitors about the company or produce they represented. If that person was busy, he pointed out, “Other people aren’t going to wait. They just walk away.”
Part of the problem was that, instead of booths, each demo company only had a tiny standing bar table—big enough for a couple of pints, a couple of elbows and a basket of chips. The bazaar theme was chosen to introduce a more casual feel to the event. Frequently, Cox-Cuzzi pointed out, pitch events are formal and stressful. Having it at a bar on 6th Street lightened the atmosphere.

By SUSAN LAHEY
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

In yet another panel about why Austin’s the best place for a startup to be, one panelist summed it up nicely: “Austin is still a small pond,” said Tim Kern of Getpromotd. “And if you’re a small fish, you have a better chance of surviving in a small pond than the middle of the ocean.”
The panel on “Why I Moved My Company to Austin” was moderated by Kyle Cox, director of IT/Wireless and development portfolios at Austin Technology Incubator at the University of Texas. Panelists of the Austin Startup week event at City Hall included Evan Baehr, Co-Founder of Outbox who moved to Austin in late 2011 and secured $2.2 million in financing; Adam Lyons, founder of Insurance Zebra; John Kinzell, CEO Xeris Pharmaceuticals which moved from California to the Austin Technology Incubator in 2010, and raised $1.5M and Kern.
Most panelists agreed that Austin’s a good place to achieve modest goals like growing to profitability and either operating at a comfortable level or selling for a reasonable price. A company may be less likely to get discovered as a superstar than it would in Silicon Valley; but it’s also less likely to wind up like one of the thousands of stillbirth companies born in the Valley.
“The vision for exits is actually smaller here and that’s rational because, to take Josh Baer’s model, you can build a company that makes money for under a million,” said Baehr.
Part of the reason for that is the culture in Austin, Kern said. In Silicon Valley one is more likely to hear “’Yeah I know 1,000 people who are doing the same thing you are with a lot more money and you don’t stand a chance’…. In Austin, I really appreciate the wisdom of everybody here and their willingness to share it.”
Lyons said, “I’ve been really motivated by the collaborative culture. People are eager to get out and meet people. Everyone’s trying to make a difference. There’s a culture of encouragement: ‘Everybody should take a chance, everybody should get a chance to fail. Learning is important.’ It’s really hard to create that kind of culture somewhere else.”
Kinzell, whose company operated in the bay area before moving to Austin, cited hard business reasons for moving, including the relative cost per square foot of building a laboratory: $50 more per square foot in Palo Alto, he said.
“We moved it here because it is most of the things California is not,” he said. “There are low levels of unionization, moderate taxes, moderate regulation. It’s a good climate for business.” On the other hand, the company is moving its clinical trials to San Antonio because of Austin’s lack of a medical school.
Baehr felt like Austin could improve on its business climate but was drawn by its lifestyle: Schools, parks, community, arts and cost of living. Although when he and his wife were checking out the town on a day when it was 108 degrees his wife commented: “I must really love you.”
Among the things Austin could improve, he said, was more housing close to town. In the suburbs, where costs are low, the commute is too long. And then, panelists complained about the traffic. And the lack of investors…though more and more are looking from California toward Austin.
Panelists seemed to disagree about whether Austin was a good place or a bad place to try to attract talent. Baehr’s experience was that, for people who don’t know the town “Austin feels like Texas and that’s a little scary.” But others said they had no trouble bringing new talent in, even if the new employees had never been to Austin before.
Before the panelists spoke, Eve Richter, Emerging Technologies Coordinator for the City of Austin and Partner at Napkin Ventures, reiterated some of her top reasons for companies to move to the city from 300 days of sunshine to food carts.
Among the audience was Bijoy Goswami of Bootstrap Austin who said he appreciated that the panelists focused on Austin’s strengths of being a place where a startup can bootstrap or grow to profitability on small investment. And where startup founders can be content with small exits versus giant ones.
“I just feel like my whole thing is we need to appreciate Austin for what it is, its niche, and stop trying to compare it to other places.”

Almost a year ago, Calxeda debuted its high-performance low power semiconductor chips to power Hewlett Packard’s servers.
Today, the company announced it has secured $55 million in additional funding with Austin Ventures, Vulcan Capital and its existing investors. To date, the company has raised more than $100 million.
Calxeda plans to use the money on research and development and marketing its products for the ultra-lower power scalable computer industry. It says performance tests show that its chips are ten times more energy efficient than X86-based servers. Calxeda’s chips power servers in giant data centers that require peak efficiency.
“Since it’s based on ARM technology, its chips are similar to the low-power, yet highly capable, processors used in smartphones and tablets,” according to VentureBeat.
“Calxeda is not alone in the market. Applied Micro, Cavium, Marvell, Nvidia, and Samsung are all aggressively pursuing the opportunity to take Intel market share with new low-powered servers,” TechCrunch reports.
Calxeda, founded in 2008, now has more than 100 employees at its headquarters in Austin and its office in Silicon Valley and at subsidiaries in Asia.
“This significant infusion of capital will accelerate the exciting trajectory we’ve been on for the past four years,” Calxeda co-founder and CEO Barry Evans, said in a news release. “Businesses require a more efficient solution for the Web, Cloud, and Big Data. That is what Calxeda is now delivering and this funding will enable us to go bigger and faster.”
For more on Calexeda, read this profile Silicon Hills News did a year ago on the company.

By SUSAN LAHEY
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

Nearly 200 people showed up for the co-founders meetup at Austin Capital Factory Monday night to kickoff Austin startup week, with almost twice that many coming to the official kickoff party. Among the startups presenting were PredictMyPlace, an app that lets fans predict the outcome of sporting events, Shop Sosho, which helps people find items they’re looking for and Sandbox Ideas which uses facial recognition technology to help people network more effectively.

Jacqueline Hughes, who cofounded the event with Josh Baer last year, said the objective of the event was simply to bring more startups to Austin. The pair did not raise money for the event this year, but did so this year, helping them pay for supplies and enabling them to pay transportation costs for certain startups from out-of-town and out of the country. Dormitory style housing was provided by the Nerd Tribe and Goodybag.
“I went skeet shooting with some people from Australia yesterday,” Hughes said.
Last year, the event included 20 events. This year that has been upped to 30.
This kind of event, Hughes said, where startups are all underone roof, is the vision they have for recruiting more people to the Austin startup scene.
In addition to startups there were investors in the crowd, including Tarzan Sharif of ViralIndiustries who recently moved from the Dallas/Ft. Worth area to Austin. Sharif said he was looking for companies whose context included philanthropy.
“This is the place to find people with the same mindset,” he said, explaining why he chose Austin to relocate.
Among the companies with a philanthropic view were Global Citizen, a tool to help people stay abreast of issues in the world of extreme poverty, and Voxgift, an app that simplifies communication for people in hospitals who struggle to communicate either because of medical treatment or language barriers.
Of course, not all the companies presenting had an altruistic bent. But that was one of the characteristics that separated the “mindset” Sharif referred to, from Silicon Valley.
The rest of the week will include more meetups, a women’s tea and a startup crawl.

By SUSAN LAHEY
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

The winning entry at an Austin Music Hackathon presented by Twilio Sunday night was a social jukebox app that lets patrons at a bar or club check into a venue using Foursquare and queue up their Pandora playlists into the bar’s sound system. So, you could wind up with Pitbull followed by Bjork followed by Rachmaninoff. Theoretically.
About 25 people attended the hackathon which unofficially kicked off Austin Startup Week. Participants included software developers, designers, musicians, performance artists and more. They started Saturday morning at digital design studio thirteen23, downtown, with coffee and kolaches and had to quit by 9 p.m. Saturday night. Sunday they resumed with demos at 6 p.m.
After playing with various tech toys brought by the sponsors, participants threw around ideas and wound up with teams around the best of them.
The winning team comprised Ansa Copeland and Sara Dubuque, visual/ux designers, Shaun Dubuque, a mobile developer from thirteen23 and Kevin Walorski, a recent Austin transplant from IU in Bloomington, IN.
Another top ranked idea was a table idea from Doug Cook, Executive Director of thirteen23. Below the table was an Arduino board. Cook brought card s with pictures on them of animals—a cow, a duck etc.—that, when dropped on the board cued a corresponding sound on the sound system. He invented it for his three-year-old. When it’s bedtime, he drops a picture of a sunset on the table and the board turns off the lights in the room, turns on a nightlight and cues cricket song on the sound system.
Keith Casey of Twilio was the instigator behind the hackathon.
“I’ve run about a dozen hackathons around software development and SXSW recently hosted an eco one and one on healthcare. But it kind of surprised me we never had one around music,” Casey said.
He loves doing the hackathons because it gives people an opportunity to get creative.
“So many of these people in their day to day jobs have a lot of structure and direction and they don’t get a chance to sort of play,” he said. “Some people find it super exciting and some people are terrified by the prospect.”
The ones who are terrified get plugged in to a team and “super converted by Sunday.”
Twilio was one of the sponsors of the event which was also sponsored by Boulder, Colorado startup Sendgrid; , Rovi of Santa Clara, California and Mashery and SoundCloud from San Francisco.

The second annual Austin Startup Week kicks off on Monday.
The five day event attracts students, professionals and even out of towners from Denver, Spokane, Philadelphia, New York City and even Australia who want to check out Austin’s growing startup community.
Jacqueline Hughes and Joshua Baer organized the first Startup Week last September. It was such a success they are back again this year. They expect more than 2,000 people to participate in this year’s activities, which include coffee meetups, a startup career fair, presentations, parties and a “startup crawl,” showcasing more than a dozen startups in their offices.

“Everyone seems to have their eyes on Austin right now,” Baer, founder of OtherInbox and managing director of Capital Factory, said in a statement.
“If you are interested in checking out or getting plugged into the Austin startup scene, there isn’t a better time to come to Austin than during Austin Startup Week,” Hughes said in a statement.
For a full schedule of events, please visit Austin Startup Week’s website, which lists more than 30 events including a Startup Bazaar and Demo Day.

Technology entrepreneur Andrew Eye cofounded Taskbox to save time and increase productivity by turning an email inbox into a task list.
Six days ago, the startup launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise $30,000 to hire more engineers and expand its operations. It’s based at Capital Factory in downtown Austin. Earlier this week, Eye spoke with Silicon Hills News about his startup, the Kickstarter campaign and his passion for changing the way people interact with their email.

Q. What does Taskbox do?

A. Taskbox turns your inbox into a task list. It’s a productivity app available for iPhone. Every email you receive that isn’t spam is a request for you to do something. The key is to change the way people are able to organize their email. Email always lists what is newest as the most important thing. But Taskbox allows you to prioritize by due date and lets you manage your email more effectively. Just because a message came in a week ago doesn’t mean it’s no longer important. Taskbox gives you the tools to define what’s at the top of the list.

Q. How did you come up with the idea for Taskbox?

A. Before Taskbox I was running a 200 person consulting business. That inspired Taskbox. My inbox was always full. I wanted to tackle one of the major problems that software hasn’t yet solved. Before Taskbox, I had 6,500 messages in my inbox. With Taskbox, I have just ten messages.

Q. How is Taskbox financed?

A. We’re 100 percent bootstrapped today. The Kickstarter funds will allow us to add engineers.

Q. Who does Taskbox compete against?

A. Two of the largest competitors are Salesforce and Asana.

Q. What sets Taskbox apart from them?

A. What’s fundamentally different about us is we don’t ask you to stop doing what you’re doing. Our strategy is just different. We’ve created a better process for that email you are already seeing. I’m never going to stop using email. This is a solution for the evolution of email. The other guys want to create entire new systems to replace email.

Q. How do you make money?

A. The app offers paid features that costs $6 per user per month.

Q. What’s a smart move you’ve made so far?

A. Our biggest success is moving into the Capital Factory that has just expanded our network. Two of the biggest experts in email, Josh Baer, founder of the Other Inbox, and Bill Boeble, founder of Webmail.us, run Capital Factory. They’ve been great mentors. It’s serendipitous.

Q. What’s your biggest mistake so far?

A. We’re still so new. I don’t know we’ve had the opportunity to make a big mistake. If I had one thing I wish I could change it’s that there are a lot of competitors in our space and we need the support of folks who want to pursue a large market.

Q. Who is the team?

A. Andrew Eye, CEO and cofounder, Adam Cianfichi, chief technology officer and cofounder, Jessica Stough, community manager and Kris Wong, mobile software engineer.

Q. What local resources do you draw upon?

A. TeXchange and Mark McClain from Salespoint, Capital Factory is the center of gravity for all startups. This is my third startup. I’ve had lots of great mentors along the way. So I wanted to give back. I’m a mentor at the University of Texas’ 1SemesterStartup.

Q. What’s your favorite coffee shop for meetings and work outside of the office?

A. Opa on South Lamar. It’s off the beaten path. It has free wi-fi and good coffee and easy parking.

Q. Anything else that you’d like to point out?

A. The big thing for us right now is what is the strategy for Taskbox. With the acquisition of Sparrow by Google (July 20th) there was a big outcry from the software community. Google buys an independent software company and immediately shuts down the product. What a shame that an independent company can’t make it anymore. We’re not trying to figure out how we can make a million dollars. We’re in this to change the business world and how people communicate. We think we can help people.
We’re not the company figuring out how to sell to Google tomorrow.

During Austin Startup Week, Eye will present Taskbox at Capital Factory’s Demo Day on Thursday, Oct. 11.

Itography from Dripping Springs officially launched today at DEMO Fall 2012 in Santa Clara, Calif.
The company makes a virtual item collection game for smart phones. It offers brands a new type of advertising by providing virtual representations of real products.
It’s like a virtual scavenger hunt. With the app, people can pick up items, collect them and share them. They can also win prizes in the process.
Melissa Tyree co-founded the company with her husband, Jeremy Tyree, architect and android developer, along with Kyle Grundmann, iOS Development and partner.
On the DEMO stage today, Tyree gave a six minute demonstration of Itography and its game and mobile advertising platform for brands.
Itography makes its money from a fee to make a brand’s collection and then a monthly service fee to keep the collection active. They can also make money from players who buy services.
VentureBeat, which runs the DEMO conference, selected Itography and more than 70 other companies to present at its event. The selected companies do pay a fee to present. But Itography, which is bootstrapped and went through Tech Ranch Austin’s Venture Forth program, is a DEMO scholarship partner program recipient.
For more on the company, read this profile Silicon Hills News did earlier this year and the VentureBeat article from today’s presentation.