Austin is the new headquarters of Khoros, the combined company of Spredfast and Lithium.

Khoros announced the rebranding on Tuesday. The combined company resulted from Lithium’s merger with Spredfast last year.

In September, when the two companies announced their merger, they reported the headquarters would be in San Francisco. Now, under the rebranding, the headquarters will be in Austin. But Khoros will continue to maintain its San Francisco office and no employees will be affected, according to a spokesman. Khoros has 431 employees in Austin.

Khoros has more than 2,000 customers including Pizza Hut, Sprint, and HomeAway. It “manages more than 500 million consumer touch points every day across social media, messaging, and owned channels,” according to a news release.

 “People crave connection, and companies that create authentic connections with customers will thrive—but it’s harder than ever,” Pete Hess, CEO of Khoros, said in a news statement. “This challenge doesn’t just require new technology, but also a new way of thinking. Since bringing together Spredfast and Lithium, we’ve been hard at work to deliver on our promise to make truly comprehensive engagement possible. We’re honored by the amazing reception we’ve had since the merger was announced, adding more than 40 brand new customers in the last three months to our incredible roster of leading brands.”

Khoros helps companies handle their social media accounts and outreach online.

 “This is very exciting news for companies like ours that put our customers at the heart of our business,” Unji Udeshi, Director of Global Customer Marketing at HomeAway, said in a news release. “Lithium and Spredfast have been a part of our customer engagement strategy for years as separate entities, helping us build customer love and grow our business through our social media and owned channels. We’re thrilled to see these two great platforms come together – it’s a real game-changer for the industry.”

Khoros provides companies with one platform to manage all of their social media accounts and provides a dashboard, data and analytics on how social media posts are performing. It also uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to provide customers with insights into their social media accounts.

Ryan Merket, a two-time founder, has also worked for Facebook, Reddit and Amazon.

And now he’s becoming a venture capitalist and joining Firebrand Ventures as a partner and opening its second office in Austin. Firebrand’s focus is investing in seed stage companies in Austin and the Midwest.

Firebrand, which was founded by John Fein in Kansas City, has strong ties to Austin. Its portfolio includes investments in five Austin-based startups from its first $17.7 million fund. Those companies include ScaleFactor, Threatcare, Candidly, PreFix and Skipper. Firebrand typically writes checks ranging in size from $250,000 to $500,000.

In total, Firebrand has invested in 20 companies from its first fund and it plans to announce its second, much larger, fund by the end of the year, Merket said. And 65 percent of its investments have a woman, person of color, or LBGBT founder, he said.

“We’re founder focused,” Merket said. “We have a really great advisory team on Firebrand.”

Firebrand’s advisers include David Cohen, Techstars’ CEO, Wendy Lea, former Cintrifuse CEO, Brian McClendon, creator of Google Earth and Maps, and Tom Ball, co-founder of Next Coast Ventures.

In addition to Firebrand, Merket is also incubating an idea with Techstars Studios on the side.

Merket, a self-taught programmer who grew up in New Braunfels, graduated from Oklahoma Wesleyan University with a communications degree. He taught himself how to code in 13 programming languages as a teenager. At college, the dean created a special self-directed program for him that allowed him to combine programming, design, and writing.

In 2008, Merket worked for a small design firm, PDG Creative in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. At that job, he wrote a Facebook application for TechCrunch that created a box that lived on people’s profiles with TechCrunch headlines in it. The app was so popular, he got calls from the New York Times, MSNBC and others to create an app for other media companies.

In 2009, Merket joined Facebook and worked on its Facebook Connect team before leaving a year later to launch his own startup, MMTG Labs, a white-label app store platform which launched on the TechCrunch DisruptNY stage in 2010.

MMTG Labs raised $1.1 million from investors such as Sequoia Scout Fund, Alfred Lin, and 19 others. Two years later, InMobi acquired the company. For the next two years, Merket worked as director of product for InMobi and managed a team in San Francisco and Bangalore. He traveled 16 times back and forth to India.

Merket left InMobi in 2014 to join Reddit as one of its first product developers. He worked there for a year before joining the Amazon startup business development team where he has worked for the past three and a half years. In addition, Merket has been an angel investor and has invested in 16 startups, five of which have been acquired.

Today, Merket, 37, lives in Austin with his wife, Jenn, and their son, Charlie, 5, and daughter, Stella, 2. They moved to Austin from the Bay Area two years ago to be closer to family.

Datical, which helps companies automate databases, Thursday announced it has received $10 million in funding.

River Cities Capital Funds led the Series C funding round with participation from existing investors S3 Ventures and Mercury Fund.

 As part of the deal, Adam Midkiff, vice president at River Cities, has joined Datical’s board of directors.

Austin-based Datical, founded in 2013, plans to use the funds on research and development, customer service, and sales and marketing. To date, the company has raised $27 million. Datical was co-founded by Daniel Nelson, Robert Reeves, and Pete Pickerill — all founders of Phurnace Software, which was acquired by BMC Software in 2010.

“We are the market leader and have seen enormous growth in the last three years. This funding provides fuel for further innovation and expansion as Datical’s remarkable momentum has proven that modernizing the database release process is a necessary step in any digital transformation journey,” Derek Hutson, CEO of Datical, said in a news release. “We’re honored to have River Cities on board as we enter this next phase of growth and begin an exciting new chapter of transforming software development.”

Datical’s software lets companies update applications on their databases easily and efficiently.

“Datical is solving a critical, yet often overlooked problem facing development teams today,” Adam Midkiff, vice president of River Cities, said in a news release. “The company is uniquely positioned to change the way that organizations improve the customer experience through software, and we’re excited to work with such an innovative team on achieving this mission.”

Datical reported strong results for 2018, increasing its annual subscription revenue by 94 percent and increasing its customer base by 30 percent, according to a news release. Its customers include Freddie Mac, Anthem, Colonial Life and Zions Bancorporation.

Last year, Datical moved into new, larger 12,000 square foot headquarters at 9211 Waterford Centre Blvd, near the Domain. The company has less than 100 employees with plans to grow the team by 25 percent.

By Laura Lorek, publisher of Silicon Hills News

Author and Journalist Malcolm Gladwell is the latest speaker to join the lineup at South by Southwest.

Gladwell is leading a documentary look at self-driving cars in the film “Autonomy,” which is set to debut at the SXSW Film Festival.

The film examines the world of automated vehicles and includes interviews with industry pioneers. It also examines how automated vehicles will affect society. Autonomous Vehicles could replace taxi, Uber and Lyft drivers, and truck drivers and be a huge disruptor in the transportation industry.

Hugh Forrest, Chief Programming Officer at SXSW, made the announcement about Gladwell joining the latest lineup of speakers during a Tech Talk breakfast meeting at the Austin Chamber of Commerce downtown Wednesday morning.

Artificial intelligence, which is the technology that powers autonomous vehicles and robots, is one of the biggest themes of SXSW Interactive this year, Forrest said. AI has been referred to as the Fourth Industrial Revolution and it’s going to have far reaching impacts on every sector of the worldwide economy.

Automation will lead to massive changes in the workplace. And several speakers at SXSW including Ellen Shell, who wrote “The Job: Work and its Future in a Time of Radical Change” and Kate Crawford, co-founder and co-director of the AI Now Research Institute, will be talking about the future of the workforce.

“A lot of the jobs we currently do are going to be digitized,” Forrest said. “They are going to be outsourced.”

Robots cannot yet think as creatively as humans, Forrest said.

In an age of increasing automation and machine learning, creativity becomes an even more valued commodity, Forrest said.

“And that’s what South by Southwest is all about,” he said.

During his talk, Forrest highlighted 30 speakers who will have a huge impact this year. On the entrepreneurial side, they include Adeo Ressi, serial entrepreneur and founder of Founder Institute and Kevin Systrom, and Mike Krieger, co-founders of Instagram,

Another trend is actors and actress and athletes increasingly turning to entrepreneurship, Forrest said. That can be seen with speakers like Gwyneth Paltrow, founder of GOOP and Zoe Saldana, founder of her own media company, BeSe.

Another highly anticipated speaker is Dr. James Allison, who won the Nobel Prize in 2018 for his immunotherapy cancer treatments. He is also the subject of a documentary film at SXSW called “Breakthrough.”

“It’s a lot about Austin the ‘60s and the “70s,” Forrest said.

Allison went to the University of Texas at Austin and was an aspiring country musician early on. The film is narrated by “Woody Harrelson, and features music by Willie Nelson, Mickey Raphael, and a power score by Mark Orton,” according to a news release. “Breakthrough tells Jim’s story in a way that is inspiring, informative and highly entertaining.”

And the focus on medical technology and health is a trend that SXSW continues to see with the opening of the Dell Medical School at UT, Forrest said.

Another big theme at this year’s SXSW reflects what’s going on in society with a growing digital distrust. Roger McNamee, a Silicon Valley investor for 35 years and an early backer of Facebook and mentor to Mark Zuckerberg, has written a just released book: “Zucked: Waking up to the Facebook Catastrophe.” His talk should be thought provoking, Forrest said.

Other speakers Forrest highlighted include the husband and wife couple, Author Neil Gaimen, and singer Amanda Palmer, Maria Shriver, who will speak about Alzheimer’s disease and its effects particularly on women, Author Brene Brown and on the music side, T. Bone Burnett, Wyclef Jean and David Byrne.

SXSW, which takes place March 8-17, has 25 tracks featuring panels, meetups, keynotes and more divided between Interactive, Film, Music, and Convergence. Forrest advises people it’s best to have a plan and not just show up and wing it to ensure people get the most of their experience.

Also, there’s a much larger presence of government speakers and politicians at SXSW this year. The talk by U.S. Rep. Alexandra Ocasio Cortez is also expected to generate a lot of excitement. In addition, SXSW just announced a two-day series of “Conversations About America’s Future” at SXSW in collaboration with the Texas Tribune. The speakers include Sen. Amy Klobuchar, former Gov. Bill Weld, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and former Governors Bill Weld, John Hickenlooper, John Kasich and former U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julian Castro, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Mayor Pete Buttigieg.

Bigger than ever this year is the number of talks on the legalization of marijuana and the burgeoning industry behind that movement. Last year, SXSW had five panels on the topic. This year, SXSW has 60 panels on the cannabis industry, Forrest said.

“SXSW is always about discovering the next big thing,” Forrest said.

By LAURA LOREK, Publisher of Silicon Hills News

The biggest problem Mark Phillip encountered in building a technology business in Austin was finding funding.

The founder and  CEO of Are You Watching This, a sports data and analytics company, got told no by everyone, he said. Phillip spoke on the “Building a Business” panel at the Black in Tech Summit at Capital Factory last Thursday.

 “I’m glad that it happened now but I wasn’t happy about it then,” he said.

In the early days, Phillip spent $7,000 a month on data and ran his credit score down to zero because he financed his company with credit cards. But being able to get through that and get to profitability through bootstrapping was a huge accomplishment, Phillip said.

Phillip has a competitor in the Bay area that is backed by venture capital. He said going toe to toe with the competitor, forced him to build a company he could run by himself with better technology. Phillip has a patent for excitement analytics that was awarded in 2016.

Today, Are You Watching This is profitable, Phillip said. He runs the business out of his office at WeWork on Congress in downtown Austin. Its customers include Bleacher Report, CBS Sports, Comcast, Golf Digest and Sportradar.

But it hasn’t been easy to watch the changes in Austin and the success of the tech community drive members of the black community further out of town, he said. Phillip moved here from Baltimore 18 years ago for a job with the intention of staying for a few years, but he never left.

Austin has undergone tremendous growth in the last two decades and because of its booming tech community, the city likes to look down its noses at the rest of Texas, Phillip said.

“We’re the cool kids, but we’re still the most socioeconomically segregated city in the country,” Phillip said. “We still have one of the smallest black populations in the state.”

Austin’s population is 7.6 percent black, according to 2018 stats from the U.S. Census Bureau. But gentrification and the growth of the tech industry in East Austin continues to displace longtime residents. Many of those residents have moved further north to Pflugerville.

It’s sad to see Facebook groups where everyone new ends up in Pflugerville because that’s where they have to be, he said.

“We fix it here, we fix it with connections,” Phillip said.

Allies and stakeholders in Austin, who are not black, who are focused on diversity are helping said Sterling Smith, founder of Launch Partner and Sandbox Commerce.

For example, Stephen Straus in Austin created the Startup Diversity and Inclusion Pledge in 2017 to help women and people of color get access to jobs, venture funding and opportunities in the technology industry, Smith said.

A.J. Bingham, who founded The Bingham Group, a law firm specializing in lobbying two years ago, grew up in Austin and graduated from the Liberal Arts and Science Academy, a magnet school at LBJ High School. He said he’s used to the lack of diversity in places like the Texas State Capitol, but he doesn’t let it deter him from going after what he wants.

Bingham became the first president of color of the Young Men’s Business League of Austin, one of the oldest social service organizations in Austin, founded in 1913. He’s also the only black person on the Long Center board of trustees. He said once a black person gets on a board, they can provide access for others to communities they might not have access to otherwise.

Panelists also talked about other challenges they have encountered building businesses.

Resiliency is necessary because being an entrepreneur is a roller coaster ride, said Lauren Washington, co-founder Black Women Talk Tech and Fundr.

Surround yourself with others who are going through the entrepreneurial journey, Washington said.

It’s important to be around people who understand what you’re going through, she said.

Also, hiring is a critical at the early stage and every hire must be someone who believes in the mission and is willing to contribute whatever it takes to make it succeed, Washington said.

“It’s a really tough thing to find in a person,” Washington said.

It’s also important to fire fast, she said.

For entrepreneurs just getting started, Phillip advises them to create a monthly newsletter to share with supporters. It provides accountability and can keep an entrepreneur on track, he said.

“When you are first getting started it’s a critical thing to do,” he said.

By LAURA LOREK, publisher of Silicon Hills News

Austin is known as a high-tech hub of innovative startups.

But it’s also the birthplace of many consumer-packaged goods like Siete Family Foods, a Mexican-American food brand, that just landed $90 million in funding. It makes grain free chips, grain free tortillas, hot sauces, cashew queso and more.

Siete graduated from the Austin-based SKU Accelerator, which is a 12-week program with a stipend focused on helping consumer products-based startups expand.

Other products to launch out of SKU include Shade Tree Lemonade, Austin Eastciders, Seaweed Bath Co. and Sway Water to name a few.

This week, SKU officially launched its seventh accelerator cohort with seven startups at a meet and greet party Tuesday night at Meet at Relay in Springdale General on Austin’s eastside. SKU selected Bhoomi Cane Water, Grocery Pup, Lamik Beauty, Pure Active CBD, Stackables, White’s Pickle Salsa and YVY.

Lamik Beauty is a vegan, non-toxic cosmetic line for women of color. The SKU accelerator will help Lamik expand, said Kim Roxie, its founder. She’s from Houston and used to run a retail cosmetics store, but she shut it down to make her own cosmetics line. Lamik has participated in DivInc and the SputnikATX accelerator programs.

SKU picked Lamik and the other six companies from more than 400 applications for its latest cohort.

Ruth Stedman and her husband Javier Marriott are also in the program with their startup, Grocery Pup. They created a healthy line of dog food made with human grade ingredients in a USDA human food facility in Round Rock. They didn’t like the highly processed dog food with bad ingredients that they found in most grocery stores. So, they created their own for their pup, Lola, a three-year-old Pomeranian Husky.

“We wanted her to eat fresh foods like us,” Stedman said.

Grocery Pup is going to be sold at Whole Foods in Austin starting next week and is currently available online. It comes in frozen one-pound pouches, which sell for $8.95 or a bigger three-pound bags with three pouches with real beef, turkey and pork flavors for $29.99. The food is cooked sous-vide style to ensure maximum freshness.

“SKU has a lot of experience scaling brands,” Stedman said. The goal is for Grocery Pup to go nationwide via retail stores, she said.

Stackables is a portable and modular gas grill for tailgating or camping, said Megan Grigsby, marketing director. One-unit costs $399, and the company is currently taking pre-orders, she said.

“It’s a heavy-duty grill that has a large cooking area and is going to last you a long time,” Grigsby said.

What Stackables hopes to get out of SKU is to really narrow down its target market, Grigsby said. And establish a scalable go to market strategy, she said.

Third generation farmer, Jon Kelley, decided to diversify his crop last year from soybeans and wheat to industrial hemp at his family farm in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. His company is Pure Active CBD.

The Hemp Farming Act in the 2018 Farm Bill removed hemp, defined as cannabis with a low concentration of THC, from Schedule 1 controlled substances and made it a regular agricultural commodity. It became legal last December.

Hemp has a lot of uses, Kelley said. He’s extracting CBD oil from the plant and putting into CBD-infused carbonated watermelon and citrus flavored waters.

His water, KAVVA, is in development right now and he plans to have it available for a pilot run in the can by March 5th, Kelley said. It will be available for retail sale in Austin and that’s why he’s in SKU to help him roll it out through distributors and stores, he said.

His product, KAVVA, is going all the way from seed on his farm to shelf in the stores, Kelley said.

The other SKU companies are:

Bhoomi Cane Water which is made from cold-pressed fresh sugar cane from local farmers.

White’s Pickle Salsa, a women-owned business based in Waco, Texas that provides a unique alternative to traditional tomato-based salsa.

YVY, a subscription-based, home cleaning product that uses an organic formula that does not harm people, kids or pets.

By LAURA LOREK Publisher of Silicon Hills News

Athena Security showed off its gun detection system at the official opening of the Defense Innovation Center Thursday at Capital Factory.

The startup uses existing security cameras coupled with its specialized software that relies on machine learning and artificial intelligence to identify guns in a public setting.

For example, if a person pulled out a pistol or an automatic rifle at a school or church, the system would immediately send an alert to law enforcement officials.

Sen. John Cornyn tested the system by pointing a handgun, which Athena supplied, toward the ceiling during a live demonstration of the technology Thursday afternoon.

Cameras captured the moment and flagged the handgun with a green square on a picture that flashed on a big screen immediately.

Athena Security, which moved to Austin recently, is run by Lisa Falzone, CEO and Chris Ciabarra, Chief Technology Officer. Their goal is to prevent a crime from occurring by identifying a shooter early on through their sophisticated artificial intelligence platform.

Athena is one of the startups that could potentially work with the military at its new Center for Defense Innovation at Capital Factory, on the eighth floor of the Omni Building in downtown Austin. The center had its official grand opening on Thursday afternoon with hundreds of people in attendance including dignitaries from local, state and federal government. They included Sen. Cornyn, Texas Speaker of the House Dennis Bonnen and Gen. John M. Murray, head of the U.S. Army Futures Command Center, based in Austin.

The Center for Defense Innovation has space for Army Futures Command, AFWERX, Defense Innovation Unit, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and a team from Booz Allen Hamilton, a military contractor. Capital Factory is a co-working and technology accelerator in downtown Austin that is home to hundreds of startups and entrepreneurs. It also has a branch in Dallas and puts on programs geared to entrepreneurs.

“Capital Factory is the center of gravity for entrepreneurs working in Texas,” said Joshua Baer, its founder and CEO. “This is the place where entrepreneurs and innovators of all kinds come together to collaborate and build a better future using technology.”

Now with this new floor, Capital Factory is a new center of gravity of defense innovation, Baer said.

“This was not our idea,” Baer said. “We didn’t ask DIU, the Air Force or the Army to come here. They came to us.”

The entire Texas ecosystem, including San Antonio, came together to welcome the Army Futures Command to Austin, Baer said. Austin competed with more than 140 cities for the command which is based at UT and employs 500 U.S. Army personnel and civilians.

Another thing that makes the Center for Defense Innovation at Capital Factory unique is that it isn’t in a secure facility, Baer said.

“This is a place for collaboration, not for secrets,” he said. “Serendipity is an essential ingredient for innovation and it’s hard to have serendipity behind barb wire. And that’s why they came here.”

Sen. Cornyn said people don’t really think of the federal government and innovation together. In fact, the federal government is often thought of as antithetical to innovation, he said.

“So, I’m really excited to see the cross-cutting collaboration taking place here,” Cornyn said. “And I think it will help us be stronger, be better and be better stewards of the taxpayer dollar.”

The Center for Innovation tears down silos and forges a path into the future for military readiness, he said.

The Army Futures Command chose to come to Austin because it’s the best petri dish of innovation in Texas, Cornyn said. It is already home to hundreds of technology startups and the University of Texas which has one of the top ranked engineering schools in the nation, he said. UT also specializes in robotics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, augmented and virtual reality and other technologies the military needs, he said.

“When it comes to equipping our military with the best resources and technology possible, we have to think outside the box and that’s what the Army Futures Command is all about,” Cornyn said. “And I can’t think of better place for that ingenuity than Austin, Texas.”

The military and Texas have a 150-year history and strong bonds, said Texas House Speaker Bonnen. Texas provides the military with more than 174,000 members, more than any other state after California. The state is also home to 15 active military installations with a $100 billion economic impact, Bonnen said.

Austin is home to 6,500 tech companies, 36 incubators and tens of thousands of students and veterans, Bonnen said.

The Army Futures Command is the largest reorganization of the Army since 1973, said Gen. Murray. The first part of a problem is addressing that there is a problem, and the Army has failed at modernizing its forces for the past 30 years, Gen. Murray said.

No one in uniform wants to fight another war, Gen. Murray said. They want to deter war and the way to do that is through strong defense and innovation, he said.

The center has great potential in allowing the U.S. Army to accomplish its mission to make sure soldiers have the tools they need, Gen. Murray said.

In a press conference, Gen. Murray said he knows there is interest from other companies in the defense industry to establish some presence inside Capital Factory. He doesn’t know how many companies will move here. That wasn’t the intention of the Army Future Command, he said. It wanted to be close to where innovation was happening and to work with existing startups to help it solve problems, he said.

In addition to Athena Technologies, Senseye also gave a demonstration of its lie detector technology at the event. Senseye, a four-year-old tech startup which moved from Los Angeles to Austin, has already worked with the U.S. Air Force to help train fighter pilots.

Aside from all the startup activity, defense contractors show up at Capital Factory daily since the Army Futures Command picked Austin, Baer said.

To get an idea of what might happen in Austin, look at Crystal City in the Washington, D.C. area, which has the nation’s largest concentration of military contractors because of the Pentagon, Sen. Cornyn said.

Already, Booz Allen Hamilton, a military contractor, plans to double its presence at Capital Factory. It currently has 35 employees and plans to have 70 within a year, said Karen Dahut, executive vice president at Booz Allen Hamilton, who leads its global defense business.

Booz Allen has been at Capital Factory for more than four years. It has worked with “creative director Mike Wikan and his Austin-based team to create Tabletop Commander, a virtual tabletop that uses immersive technology and artificial intelligence powered natural language processing to help the Air Force run virtual reality exercises,” according to news release.

Other products include Project Jellyfish, CodeLift and DataLift, to help the federal government collaborate more effectively with commercial clients, Dahut said.

By LAURA LOREK,
Publisher of Silicon Hills News

The median net worth of a black family in the United States is projected to reach zero by 2053.

Today, the net worth of a black family is about $17,000, said Rodney Sampson, co-founder, and CEO of Opportunity Hub. While white wealth will continue to grow, black families’ wealth is on the decline, he said. The data comes from a Federal Reserve report released in September of 2017.

That’s why it’s critical to provide opportunities for black people in the technology industry, Sampson said.

Automation, artificial intelligence, machine learning, quantum computing, gig economy and what’s being called the fourth industrial revolution will shake up the workforce and leave a lot of people out of jobs, Sampson said. That’s why black people must obtain software development, technical sales, analytical and critical thinking skills for the new economy, he said.

“We’re not talking about grit,” Sampson said. “We’ve had grit for 400 years. Don’t assess black grit, please. It’s an insult. Poor people got grit, immigrants got grit. That’s not a challenge. But that is a skill set of the future that should be commoditized as our unfair advantage in the tech ecosystem.”

Sampson kicked off the Black in Tech Summit at Capital Factory in Austin on Wednesday.

Sampson’s organization, Opportunity Hub, based in Atlanta, focuses on reducing poverty and the racial wealth gap by ensuring people of color and people from socially disadvantaged communities are equitably included.

“Equity is the key word,” Sampson said. “Equity ensures that we are all equitably positioned from the cap tables to the conference rooms – all the way across at every level.”

The startup ecosystem, particularly in tech, is still having surface level discussions about inclusion and representation, Sampson said.

“I’m seeing the wealth on our cap tables continuing to escape our communities,” he said. “We’ve got to do something about it.”

Top priority is to get the word out about the fourth industrial revolution and the future of work, and the disruption technology is going to have on today’s workforce, Sampson said.

Imagine bus and truck drivers who make a good salary today. In the future, autonomous vehicles will do those jobs. Think about the fast food industry or retail industry, robots will replace cooks in the kitchen and at the counter or checkout. This is already happening in communities worldwide.

To deal with the changes, every year, Austin’s institutions must create 100 black engineers, Sampson said. There must be a density of talent here, he said.

“I don’t see in any city nationwide the density of diverse talent,” he said.

Next, Austin needs people of color who are focused on solving problems, Sampson said.

“Entrepreneurs solve hard problems that people are willing to pay for,” he said.

Also, train parents in technical skills, Sampson said. If the parent is going to learn to code, the children are going to learn to code, he said.

Austin needs to build out every part of the ecosystem from the pre-accelerator to the investment fund, Sampson said. It’s not about creating one or two positions but having a huge number of diverse talent involved in the technology industry. That creates synergy, he said. Also, it’s important to have allies in the white community to advance in the mainstream, Sampson said.

“We can’t drive people away,” he said. “We have to have the hard conversations.”

That was part of the focus of Austin’s inaugural Black in Tech Summit. It provided a lay of the land of what is possible and what needs to be done, said Preston James, co-founder, and CEO of DivInc.

 “It’s possible, and we’re making it happen,” James said.

DivInc, an early stage accelerator for women and people of color, has accelerated 36 companies of which 75 percent are still active and they have collectively raised more than $4 million, James said. DivInc provides resources to forge a pathway for underrepresented entrepreneurs, he said..

“We want to create a mindset shift within the startup ecosystem,” James said.

If young people see entrepreneurs, investors and mentors that look like them, they know what is possible, James said.

The day-long Black in Tech Summit at Capital Factory featured panels, workshops and keynote speeches on a variety of topics including fundraising, building a business, legal issues, and best practices for hiring. Capital Factory and DivInc put on the event. More than 500 people registered for the event.

DivInc, the Austin-based early stage accelerator for women and people of color, on Thursday announced it is partnering with Notley Ventures.

In addition, Notley is making a major philanthropic investment in DivInc.

“This transformative gift provides us with the resources to grow out capacity and capability, expand our accelerator programming and scale our community impact,” James Preston, co-founder and CEO of DivInc, wrote in a blog post.

The partnership means DivInc will move its operations to Notley’s Center for Social Innovation. And Dan Graham, co-founder of Notley Ventures, will join DivInc’s board. DivInc will also be able to use Notley’s services which include marketing, fundraising, finance, and operations.

Dan and Lisa Graham founded Notley Ventures in 2015. Dan Graham formerly co-founded BuildASign.com. Notley Ventures is creating a national social innovation ecosystem.

DivInc, founded two years ago, has had four cohorts with 36 companies including Lamik Beauty, JuiceBox Hero, and Reavlix. DivInc’s mission is to empower and enable founders of color and women to build highly scalable startups through its 12-week accelerator.

DivInc solves the challenges of access to opportunities, James said during a talk Wednesday at the Black in Tech Summit at Capital Factory.

“To remove the barriers,” he said.

To date, 75 percent of the companies that have gone through the DivInc accelerator are still active and they have collectively raised more than $4 million, James said. DivInc provides resources to forge a pathway for underrepresented entrepreneurs, he said.

At Notley Veures, DivInc will be joining other Notley partner programs including Women@Austin, Student Inc, as well as Huston-Tillotson University’s Entrepreneurship Center.

The playing field isn’t level for women and people of color, who face persistent barriers to building ventures, especially in technology, according to a post on Notley’s website announcing the partnership.

“For example, of more than 6 million companies owned by African Americans and Hispanics, more than 90 percent are sole proprietors,” according to Notley’s blog post. “Meanwhile, only 78 percent of non-minority owned companies are sole proprietors.”

“If African American and Hispanic entrepreneurs were to achieve parity by building scalable, high growth businesses, it is estimated they would generate 5.9 million new jobs and $871 billion in revenue for the U.S. economy,” according to Notley.

On March 1, DivInc and Notley are hosting the “Oscars of Diversity and Inclusion” in Austin with an inaugural event called Champions of Change, according to Josh Jones-Dilworth, who serves as chairman of the board for DivInc. A limited number of tickets are still available to attend the event which will honor executive of the year, diversity and inclusion leader of the year, program of the year, champion of the year, investor of the year, rising star of the year and nonprofit leader of the year.