The Keiretsu Forum’s members gave $3 million as the lead investor on a Series B round for Savara Pharmaceuticals.
Savara is developing pulmonary drugs to treat serious and life threatening conditions.
“The opportunity to invest in Savara Pharmaceuticals attracted many of our accredited investors, who are deeply committed to supporting products and technologies with the potential to positively impact people’s lives,” Randy Williams, Founder and CEO of Keiretsu Forum, said in a news release. “With a solid business plan for developing an innovative and much-needed product, Savara exemplifies the type of company Keiretsu Forum members are seeking to identify and support. We are proud to have given Savara a giant leap forward and look forward to working with our members and entrepreneurs in funding other exciting enterprises.”
So far, Savara has raised more than $8 million in its latest financing round. The company plans to use the money on its lead product, AeroVanc, an antibiotic inhalant to treat MRSA infection, which is a Phase II clinical trial.
“The Keiretsu Forum takes a disciplined approach to deal screening, in-depth due diligence and investing, enabling companies to access a large group of sophisticated investors and enabling its members to access pre-qualified deal flow,” Robert Neville, Chief Executive Officer of Savara Pharmaceuticals, said in a statement. “The enthusiasm Savara received has been tremendous, and we are delighted for the Keiretsu Forum’s member support as we work to advance our lead program through Phase II clinical development.”
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Dell Ventures, the investment arm of Dell, wants to find and fund the “next big thing.”
So the Round Rock-based company has unveiled a $60 million investment fund focusing on early stage companies in the “storage, server, networking, cloud computing and virtualization, analytics/BI/Big Data, mobility, end-user computing, services and software” businesses, according to a news release. The company plans to invest in five to ten promising storage startups.
Storage is a huge market with ever increasing implications, and one in which Dell is already gaining ground. Through internal
“We plan to invest more than just money; we will contribute with sweat equity too, bringing the power of Dell to startups,” according to Dell.
Austin-based startup latakoo struck a partnership with NBC News and NBC Universal to provide video transfer services to its news operations.
NBC has been testings latakoo’s technology for the past year.
“We think this is a great moment for us and NBC News,” Paul Adrian, CEO of latakoo, said in a news release. “The Internet offers tremendous possibilities for simplicity, speed, and cost savings to news crews traveling the world. And before latakoo was developed, TV networks had to build expensive proprietary tools of their own or buy very pricey hardware and software. We’ve shown NBC there is a better way.”
“We like the way latakoo works because it’s so easy to use,” Danny Miller, NBC’s Director of Engineering Field and Satellite Operations said in a news release. “A correspondent could review video on a laptop and just drop the best of it into latakoo to quickly send back to the newsroom.”
Latakoo provides TV broadcast businesses with online video delivery, storage and file transcoding and other services.
Jon Weisblatt, founder and CEO of Austin-based UpgradeUSA, recently sat down with me at Tech Ranch, where he has an office, to discuss his startup. UpgradeUSA has received a lot of press in recent months including a story by PandoDaily that ignited a bit of controversy in the comments section from readers concerned with the prices UpgradeUSA charges its customers. The Austin Business Journal and the Austin American Statesman have also written articles on the company, which launched last December. And even the Huffington Post mentioned the company in an article about establishing credit.
UpgradeUSA provides financing to consumers with bad credit or no credit to buy a laptop or tablet computer. By making timely monthly payments, the consumer can start to build a credit history since UpgradeUSA reports each payment to the three major credit bureaus. The company this week launched a special program for students going back to school who wish to buy a new or refurbished laptop computer from Dell, Apple, HP and others. The computers all come with a warranty and payments start at $55.
Q. What do you do?
A. We offer an online service where we help people build credit by leasing out laptop computers. We’re providing people who can’t pay for a laptop computer access to one.
Q. Who is your customer?
A. Our customers are across the board. We’ve got students, who have little to no credit, and people with good credit, who are on a budget, and people who have moved to the United States. We’ve got people who have filed bankruptcy, divorced or had some other kind of financial problem. Some of our competitors will approve anyone who can fog a mirror. We’re not that type of company.
Jon Weisblatt, Founder & CEO, UpgradeUSA
A. We’re online only. There are other companies that provide similar services to consumers. They are storefronts. We are focused on the computer business. Customers have demonstrated they are comfortable buying computers online. We’re only online which brings our costs down and we can offer PCs at lower prices. We are really focused on helping people establish credit and build credit. Most companies in this space don’t do that.
Q. Are you bootstrapped? Do you have VC funds or Angel investment?
A. We’re bootstrapped. I left Dell in 2008. I had a consulting business for three years. The last year of that business I focused on socking away money so I could start my own business.
Q. Why did you choose Austin?
A. I’m a native Texan. I’ve been (in Austin) since 1998. Dell moved me here from Silicon Valley. My wife worked at Dell too. We’ve got kids here. We love the community. Austin is a great place to live.
Q. What markets do you serve?
A. We’re in Texas, California, Florida and New York. We have plans to expand into additional states.
Q. What is your biggest accomplishment so far?
A. I’ll tell you what gives me the most satisfaction. I talk to just about every one of our customers. We have great customers. This feeling like we’re actively making a difference. It’s really genuine. We see it in their emails and we hear it in their voices.
Q. What’s your biggest mistake?
A. Very few companies are doing this online. We had to go build a lot of systems. We took pieces on the market and forced them to work together. We were going down the path of getting custom development done. Then we changed course. That set us back. This business doesn’t come in a box. We had to find a payment processor who could handle our unique needs of a lease to buy program.
Q. How does the program work?
A. Customers apply online. They get an approval email. Then they pick out the computer they want. They schedule their first payment. They have to lease the computer for a minimum term. It varies by state. Then they can choose to send it back or keep leasing it. At the end of 17 months, they own it. We report every payment to the three major credit bureaus. (Customers) who make consistent payments over time establish good credit. If they don’t make the payments, UpgradeUSA can remotely turn on a software program that locks the computer until they make payments again.
Q. How do you get the word out about the service?
A. Through Search Engine Optimization techniques, Google Adwords, email marketing and P.R.
Q. What’s the biggest hurdle you’ve had to overcome?
A. Getting the word out. The Internet is a big place. We’ve got a great solution for customers. Making sure they’re aware of it is a challenge. This isn’t Instagram. We have revenue. We provide a service to people who need it.
Q. How many employees do you have?
A. We’ve got three and we contract with Sundram, a local development and design firm.
Q. What other resources in Austin have you drawn on to help your startup?
A. The Hoover Academy. Gary Hoover has been a phenomenal resource. My wife was a manager at Dell in the consumer finance space. She’s helped a lot with site design and advertising campaigns. Tech Ranch provides us with a community of entrepreneurs and a private office with a door that locks. That’s a requirement if you’re processing credit.
Q. What are your plans for the future?
A. We’ll expand into other states. We’re actively looking for a seasoned sales person to complement our online efforts. We’re experimenting with offering tablet computers. We’re excited about the Microsoft Surface Tablet.
Q. What advice would you give to others wanting to do a startup?
A. The biggest piece of advice is to plan. It’s Ok to make a mistake and make a misjudgment. But you need to make a plan of where you want your business to be. Spend hours and hours and hours planning.
Q. What else is there that you would like to make a point of that I haven’t asked you about?
A. You didn’t ask a lot of the questions that I thought you would like have we talked to VCs? I have talked to VCs. They tell me our product isn’t sexy enough. If you like making money, then this is a sexy business. If you like helping people in the process, then this is a sexy business.
Q. Is there anything else I forgot?
A. You didn’t ask me how I came up with this idea. I’d been in the high tech business a little over 20 years in Silicon Valley, Austin and Washington, D.C. My family has a furniture and appliance business in Fort Worth. They know who to approve and who not to approve. I added a little sprinkle of technology to their business model. Taking Gary’s (Hoover) class helped me see that opportunity.
On Sunday, Sprint officially launched its 4G LTE service in San Antonio, Houston Dallas and Waco and 11 other markets nationwide.
“Sprint and our vendors have been deploying Network Vision sites all across the country for the last several months and we are thrilled to deliver our new network to our customers today in and around Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Kansas City, San Antonio and Waco,” Bob Azzi, Sprint’s senior vice president-Network, said in a news release.
Sprint has provided a map listing all of its 4G LTE coverage. Sprint plans to add more cities by the end of the year including Austin.
Last week at San Francisco Bakery and Café on Anderson Lane, Paula Soileau, cofounder and partner at Affintus Scientific Hiring, sat down with me to talk about her startup. Before Affintus, Soileau worked at the American Heart Association as senior vice president of finance and chief financial officer. She’s passionate about connecting people with the right jobs.
Q. What do you do?
A. We help companies identify which candidates are right for the job. We help companies improve their hiring. Affintus assesses a job candidate’s skills through a proprietary test called Affini-T.
Q. What is your market?
A. We are a software as a service company. We could do business anywhere but we focus our efforts on the Texas metros because that’s where business is thriving. Our major markets are Austin, Houston and San Antonio.
Q. Who are some of your customers?
Paula Soileau, cofounder and partner of Affintus Scientific Hiring
Q. What’s your secret sauce that differentiates your company from the competition?
A. We have a proprietary assessment that looks at cognitive ability, personality and work culture. We can create a benchmark or custom formula that is situated to that job. The benchmark is are customized for each job based on current top-performing employees in those jobs. If the company has employees that are already working out and that are high performers that is what we’re helping them find. High performers at a company can help elevate the whole team and low performers can have the opposite effect. A company’s secret sauce is their people and if they hire the right ones they do a lot better.
Q. Why don’t companies just look at a job candidate’s resume?
A. Resumes are not a strong indicator of performance. Personality and cognitive ability have the highest correlation of future success.
Q. Can someone game the system and cheat on the assessment?
A. We’re working with a company that has a fraud detection algorithm. It can tell if you’re not being truthful. There are patterns of lying that can be detected.
Q. Why should your competition fear Affintus?
A. Because we’re able to establish unbelievable customer loyalty. We’ve got employees who will stand up and talk about us in meetings. The people who use our product have unbelievable loyalty to us.
Q. How is Affintus financed?
A. Bootstrapped. Three founders started the company. (Her cofounders are Deborah L. Kerr and Dennis E. Wilison Jr.) The first two and a half years one of my partners was the only one working full time. That’s the downside of bootstrapping. Things move slower.
Q. What’s the biggest mistake so far?
A. We didn’t talk to enough prospective customers and do enough meetings early on. We spent so much time building our product. The sooner you get into the market the better.
Q. What’s the company’s biggest achievement?
A. The customer support and loyalty that we have.
Q. What’s the biggest hurdle Affintus has overcome?
A. Every few days there is a big hurdle. Managing resources is our biggest hurdle. Doing sales fast enough to do all the other things we want.
Q. Why did you choose to base your company in Austin?
A. We were all living here and working here. We launched in 2008 and we feel very fortunate we were in Austin. If we launched anywhere else in the country at that time the odds would have been against us. The economic climate here is better than the rest of the country.
Q. What philanthropic ventures are you involved with locally?
A. We support Dress for Success. We assess job candidates and explain their personality types and teach them how to talk about themselves to potential employers. We’re also starting t work with the Texas Veterans Commission.
Q. What resources have helped your business?
A. That’s one advantage of being in Austin, there’s so many. I participated in Rampcorp. at Texas State University. I also attend Big Austin which provides training and resources to small businesses. Tech Ranch and Bootstrap Austin have also been really helpful. We do some work now with the Austin Chamber of Commerce.
Q. Anything else I haven’t asked you about that you would like to make a point of?
A. What we do makes hiring so much easier and more accurate so why wouldn’t a company want to try it? It streamlines the hiring process. It has a huge impact on a company’s productivity and turnover. Most companies will agree that people are their biggest asset. What that means is if you don’t have the right people you’re losing money.
It’s been awhile since I had a baby – 13 years to be exact.
And boy have things changed.
The Austin startup Belly Ballot puts a whole new twist into what’s in a name for baby.
Belly Ballot, which bills itself as a social startup, lets expecting parents survey their friends and family via Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest on the name for their baby. They compile a list and their friends and family vote on their favorite name.
Tip of the hat to Taylor Benefield with TriNet. We met for coffee earlier this week at Juan Pelotas in downtown Austin and he told me about Belly Ballot.
I have to say I think it’s a rather clever idea.
“Parents today are very social beings,” Lacey Moler, co-founder of Belly Ballot said in a news release. “We love apps and sites that allow us to interact with friends on a daily basis. Important decisions are no exception.”
Moler, a mother of three and a former private equity analyst, got the inspiration for her company from her baby shower in 2009 in which she handed out a list of top five boys and girls names on cards to friends and asked them to mark their favorite ones and drop it in the “Belly Ballot Box.”
Since its launch earlier this year, thousands of parents have created a Belly Ballot, according to Moler.
And if you need some inspiration to compile that list of names, head on over to Nameberry, which aggregates lists of the most popular baby names. The number one boy’s name is Jacob and the number one girl’s name is Sophia.
In the first TechStars class held at the Geekdom earlier this year, Cloudability already had a head start on some of the other companies.
The Portland-based startup had already participated in the Portland Incubator Experiment. When the team landed in San Antonio, they had already raised $1.1 million, according to VentureBeat.
Now Mat Ellis, Cloudability’s CEO, has announced the company has raised an $8.7 million first round of venture capital led by Foundry. In addition, Jason Mendelson and Jason Seats, managing director of the TechStars Cloud, will join its board of directors.
“Just over a year ago we were on stage at Structure with some screen shots and just a few users, so this is a really big deal for us,” Ellis wrote in a company blog post on the deal.
“Today over 3,000 people in 100 countries are using Cloudability. Collectively they have spent over $100 million on cloud services, and added over 10,000 cloud accounts,” according to Ellis. “If ever there was an advert for the power of the cloud, this is it. Three guys have an idea, and one year later that idea is being used across the planet.”
Cloudability helps companies manage how much they spend on Cloud services. Rackspace Hostings offers the service to all of its cloud customers. The company plans to use the money it has raised to hire more people and build out its product offering by adding more features. Cloudability has 15 employees, up from four in December.
The only downside to the funding? Ellis can’t get this tune out of his head:
Human Resource provier TriNet has become a “Visionary Partner” with the Austin Technology Council.
In that role, TriNet will donate money and executive expertise and become involved in the Austin Technology Council’s activities and board.
The Austin Technology Council helps entrepreneurs and supports the technology industry locally.
“TriNet is excited about our partnership with the ATC as it provides us with the opportunity to support the growth of the technology industry in Austin and in other parts of central Texas,” Steve Cohen, regional vice president at TriNet, said in a news release. “We’re eager to share our knowledge, expertise, and one-on-one guidance to help empower and equip ATC member companies for success, as well as to serve as a trusted HR resource as their business grows.”
The Austin Technology council has more than 6,000 members including 1,200 executive level members and 230 companies.
Austin-based Q2ebanking plans to open an office outside of Atlanta in August to serve its growing client base in the region.
The startup company provides electronic banking solutions to banks and credit unions nationwide.
“Expanding into the Atlanta area is a natural move for us and is a testament to the demand we are experiencing for electronic banking services,” Matt Flake, CEO and president of Q2ebanking, said in a news statement. “Atlanta is rapidly becoming an East Coast technology corridor and was recently ranked by the U.S. Census Bureau as one of the nation’s fastest growing cities. Having a presence there gives us access to some of the industry’s most well respected professionals and ensures that our clients continue to receive unprecedented support.”
