Evonik, a German company, has acquired Austin-based Structured Polymers, a startup focused on 3D printing.

The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Structured Polymers, founded in 2012, raised $1.5 million from Microventures and holds three patents in the working of plastics category, according to CrunchBase. In addition, in the fall of 2017, Evonik made a venture capital investment into the startup.

Carl Deckard, one of the inventors and developers of “Selective Laser Sintering,” the technology at the forefront of 3D printing, is one of the company’s co-founders. Deckard developed “Selective Laser Sintering” with Joe Beaman, a professor at University of Texas at Austin.

Structured Polymers created and commercialized new polymer powders for additive manufacturing processes including multi-jet fusion and select laser sintering. In addition to Deckard, the others founders include Vikram Devarajan and Jim Mikulak. And its engineering team is led by Abhimanyu Bhat. Structured Polymers created a proprietary scalable process for commercializing high-performance polymer powders for 3D-printing.

 “The acquisition of Structured Polymers’ technology excellently complements our existing activities with high-performance polymers for additive manufacturing,” Ralph Marquardt, the head of Strategy and Growth Businesses for Evonik Resource Efficiency GmbH, said in a news release. “Thanks to our decades of expertise in polymer chemistry, this means we will expand our portfolio of customized, ready-to-use polymer materials for the highly attractive, rapidly growing 3D printing market, thus giving us a key role in shaping development of that market.”

Structured Polymers will be entirely integrated into Evonik’s North American organization, while its company headquarters will remain in Austin.

“We are very pleased to harness the power of Evonik to expand our innovative technology platform even further. In the near future, this will allow us to diversify the 3D printing materials market to a significant degree and to work with our customers on developing new business opportunities,” Devarajan, CEO of Structured Polymers, said in a news release.

 Evonik, based in Essen, Germany, is one of the world leaders in specialty chemicals.

Dosh, an Austin-based startup disrupting the advertising industry, on Tuesday announced it has closed on a $40 million round of funding.

The funding includes $20 million in equity and $20 million in venture debt. Goodwater Capital and Western Technology Investment led the Series B round, with participation from investors  PayPal, BAM Capital and Anthem Venture Partners.

To date, Dosh has raised $96 million including $44 million in a Series A round in 2018 with PayPal and Goodwater Capital as lead investors. Other investors include Next Coast Ventures, Chetrit Ventures and Extol Capital.

 Dosh is disrupting the $231 billion advertising industry by going directly to consumers and giving them cash back on purchases linked to their credit card. It gives advertisers a new way to reach and reward consumers through its cash-back app.

“Consumers are tired of having their data used and sold to drive advertising revenues for companies. Dosh moves advertising spend directly into consumers’ wallets,” Ryan Wuerch, founder and CEO at Dosh, said in a news release. “We are empowering consumers for the first time to benefit from their own data, while bringing merchants new customers and greater revenues.”

Dosh, which is slang for cash, is available via the Apple App Store or Google Play Store. To activate the app, a consumer inputs credit cards into the Dosh app and then they receive cash back for purchases made using those cards. The Dosh technology finds coupons and deals from the brand or merchant and automatically applies them to the consumer’s purchase. The app also has a feature called discovery that has special offers.

In the past year, Dosh has seen dramatic growth of its business. It has given consumers more than $50 million in cash rewards. The company plans to use the latest funds raised to accelerate product development and to hire key employees.

“Dosh’s mission is to put billions of dollars of wasted advertising spend directly into consumers’ pockets,” Chi-Hua Chien, co-founder and managing partner at Goodwater Capital, said in a news release. “They are the clear leader in the rapidly growing card-linked offers market, and we are confident this latest round of funding will accelerate their achievement of that mission.”

On Silicon Hills News’ Ideas to Invoices podcast last year, Wuerch said he was going to build Dosh into a billion-dollar company. That story was also one of the most popular stories on Silicon Hills News last year. And Dosh also made Silicon Hills News’ list of 25 Hot Startups to Watch in 2019.

Austin-based ScaleFactor, an intelligent finance, and automated accounting platform, announced recently it has closed on $30 million in funding.

Bessemer Venture Partners led ScaleFactor’s Series B round of funding. ScaleFactor has raised $53 million to date, according to Crunchbase.

Other investors in the latest round include Canaan, Broadhaven Ventures, Firebrand Ventures, and multiple prominent angel investors.

ScaleFactor plans to use the funding to add news features to its platform and to hire key employees and to expand nationwide.

“Businesses get overwhelmed by administrative work jumping from siloed solution to siloed solution and should be able to focus on what makes them successful,” Kurt Rathmann, CEO and Founder of ScaleFactor, said in a news release. “Our vision of a comprehensive business operating system, built with their needs in mind, allows our customers to be proactive with their business, operate in control and drive success.”

ScaleFactor’s sweet spot is providing a way for the nation’s 19 million small businesses with less than 100 employees to keep track of finances.

“The market for how companies manage their financial operations has evolved quickly,” Byron Deeter, Partner, Bessemer Venture Partners, said in a news release. “With Kurt’s roots as a CPA, he identified this problem early and guided ScaleFactor to be the leader in intelligent finance. We are excited to support their mission and growth.”

ScaleFactor realized over 700% annual customer growth in 2018, according to a news release.

In addition, ScaleFactor announced it has hired Francis Sullivan as its new Chief Technology Officer. Sullivan brings over 30 years of industry experience to this new position. Sullivan is a co-founder of Austin-based Spiceworks.

Robert Gilbreath joins as Senior VP of Marketing, previously he worked as Chief Marketing Officer and Vice President of Partnerships at Austin-based Shipstation. And Eric Steinhoff joins the staff to connect small businesses to funding. He previously worked as Chief Compliance Officer at Apple Pie Capital and at Capital One.

By LAURA LOREK, Publisher of Silicon Hills News

Venture capital investments in Austin soared to $1.33 billion in 2018, the highest on record since the dot-com boom in 2000, according to the latest MoneyTree Report from PwC and CB Insights.

Venture capital investments in Austin rose 70 percent in 2018, from $783.4 million in total venture capital investments in 2017.

The number of deals in Austin in 2018 remained almost flat with 124 deals, compared to 123 deals in 2017.

Overall, Texas recorded $2.18 billion in venture capital invested in 226 deals in 2018, up 33 percent in dollar volume from $1.64 billion in 2017 invested in 209 deals, according to the MoneyTree report.

The fourth quarter saw a nearly 38 percent increase in dollar volume in Austin with $220 million invested in 27 deals, the same number of deals as the fourth quarter last year, according to the MoneyTree report.

Nationwide, U.S. venture capital funding jumped to $99.5 billion, the highest yearly level since 2000, with investments in 5,536 deals, the lowest level of deal activity since 2013, according to the MoneyTree report.

Mega-deals with investments of more than $100 million are driving the funding higher, said John Cummins, partner with PricewaterhouseCoopers, based in Austin. Austin had one of those mega-deal transactions in 2018 with WP Engine receiving a $250 million investment from Silver Lake last January.

“These rounds are much bigger rounds that are coming in,” Cummins said. “Money is being invested in more mature companies.”

The U.S. saw a record number of new unicorns with 53 U.S. VC-backed companies that saw their valuation rise to greater than $1 billion in 2018, according to the MoneyTree report.

In 2018, investors spent more than $100 million with 184 deals. And while big funding continues, seed stage deals continue to fall.

“Seed-stage deal share fell to 25 percent, the third consecutive yearly decline, as larger, later-stage deals take up more U.S. funding,” according to the report.

The sectors that are driving investment in Austin include Internet, Software, Healthcare Technology and Mobile, Cummins said. Those local investments are consistent with trends nationally, he said.

Overall, 2018 was a good year for Austin and Texas, Cummins said.

Investors in Austin companies also saw some exits in 2018 with SolarWinds going public in the fourth quarter of 2018, Cummins said.

“IPO (initial public offerings) activity overall was up,” Cummins said. “We saw some positive trends in the IPO market in 2018.”

 And there was a healthy number of mergers and acquisitions in Austin last year, Cummins said. Among the deals, HEB acquired Favor, GoDaddy acquired Main Street Hub and News Corp. acquired Opcity.

In Austin, the software industry led investments for the fourth quarter with Austin-based HNI Healthcare, a physician practice management company, landing the biggest investment with $65 million in funding from CRG, a New York-based investment firm.

In the mobile and telecommunications sector, Aceable, a mobile-focused platform for certification and training courses, came in with the second largest investment of the quarter with $47 million in in venture capital. Sageview Capital led Aceable’s Series B investment.

And in the Internet sector, Tenfold landed $14 million in venture capital investment. Investors included Andreessen Horowitz, Geekdom Fund, Nextcoast Ventures and Salesforce Ventures. The Austin-based company makes a web-based interface between a company’s phone and customer relationship management system to measure the effectiveness of marketing campaigns, improve customer service and increase sales.

Top 10 Austin Investments in the Fourth Quarter of 2018

Company	Investment	Industry
HNI Healthcare	$65 Million	Software
Aceable	$47 Million	Mobile/Telecom
Tenfold	$14 Million	Internet
Shipwell	$10 Million	Internet
SelfLender	$10 Million	Internet
The Guild	$9 Million	Leisure
Rollick Outdoors	$ 8.3 Million	Mobile/Telecom
Kettle & Fire	$8 Million	Food and Beverage
SourcceDay	$6.5 Million	Internet
Life by Spot	$5.85 Million	Mobile/Telecom

Source: PwC/CB Insights MoneyTree Report

Ever wanted to rent an RV from a neighbor?

Well, Outdoorsy, based in Austin, just raised another $50 million to make that transaction a reality.

Greenspring Associates led the latest round of funding with participation from Aviva Ventures, Altos Ventures, Autotech Ventures and Tandem Capital.

“We are interested in marketplace technology companies that challenge the status quo and create seamless experiences for both owners and enthusiasts, which is exactly what Outdoorsy has done,” John Avirett, General Partner from Greenspring Associates, said in a news release. “Most people buy an RV that’s unused nearly 97 percent of the year. We appreciate that Outdoorsy is unlocking these expensive assets for owners and making them available to the millions of travelers around the world who crave experiential travel without the burden of ownership.”

Outdoorsy, founded in 2014 in San Francisco, moved its headquarters to Austin. It reports more than $250 million in transactions and big increases in bookings on its platform during the last three years.

Outdoorsy has additional offices in the U.S., Canada, Australia, France and the U.K.. It is currently in eight countries worldwide and will see continual expansion into new markets this year, according to a news release.

“We are off to a terrific start in 2019,” Outdoorsy CEO Jeff Cavins said in a news release. “Our business is growing fast across all geographies and across both our owner and renter base. We’ve also significantly reduced our insurance and operating costs, which has contributed to our global leadership position as a peer-to-peer and professional fleet management platform. Given the size of the opportunity ahead of us and our goal of making Outdoorsy a global outdoor experiences marketplace, we will invest more aggressively this year, both in international markets as well as expanding our platform to include campsites and outdoor travel experiences.”

Drillinginfo, an energy software and data analytics company, has acquired Austin-based MineralSoft.

The terms of the deal were not disclosed. MineralSoft, which graduated from the Y Combinator accelerator program in 2016, had raised $9.2 million in funding to date, according to Crunchbase. Its investors included Cottonwood Venture Partners, Blue Bear Capital, and Y Combinator.

Drillinginfo, which is also based in Austin, has been working in partnership with MineralSoft, which makes a software platform to manage mineral assets and royalties, since 2017, said Gabe Wilcox, Co-founder and CEO of MineralSoft.

“From our position, this makes a lot of sense,” Wilcox said. “We have gotten to know Drillinginfo really well since we’ve been working together for two years. We have culture fit, product fit. Fundamentally, for us, this is the next step in executing our vision.”

“The two companies are stronger combined,” Wilcox said.

As part of its partnership, MineralSoft uses Drillinginfo data in its platform for “managing mineral and non-operated portfolios, including revenue and expense data; production and regulatory data; and a full land and document management system,” according to a news release.

Currently, MineralSoft works with more than 120 institutional clients and handles more than $100 million of royalty and non-operated revenue monthly across 225,000 client-owned wells. In 2018, MineralSoft clients logged more than $1.3 billion of mineral acquisitions on the platform. MineralSoft’s customers include private equity, investment funds, family offices, endowments, foundations, E&P companies, and individuals.

Drillinginfo analysts believe oil and gas mineral interests in the U.S. generate more than $50 billion per year in income for nearly 12 million owners. MineralSoft has designed a platform for those owners to more effectively manage their interests.

“When it comes to minerals, there are thousands of operators, varying lease terms and fee structures, countless payments being made and audits to perform. Managing mineral interests in thousands of wells is far too complex to be handled on a spreadsheet or using an accounting system alone,” Jeff Hughes, CEO and President of Drillinginfo, said in a news release. “Mineral interest owners want to know if they are being paid correctly, how commodity price changes will affect them, and how their interests stack up compared to their neighbors or competitors,” Hughes said.

Drillinginfo recently acquired Oildex, the largest oil & gas financial automation software firm in North America, and announced intent to acquire Cortex, a Network-as-a-Service company that enables automation of accounts payable and receivable processes for the oil and gas industry.

Drillinginfo is a portfolio company of Genstar Capital and serves over 5,000 companies globally and has more than 1,000 employees.

MineralSoft has 35 employees and recently moved into the Moody Bank building at 400 West 15^th Street downtown.

“We are going to continue to grow our team in this office,” Wilcox said. “We can do that faster with the resources and footprint DI brings to the table.”

The leadership team is staying on at MineralSoft and it is continuing to hire new employees and scale its products, Wilcox said.

South by Southwest Conference and Festivals, which is less than two months away, released its latest lineup of keynote and featured speakers Tuesday.

The keynote speakers include Endeavor Chief Marketing Officer Bozoma Saint John, director, actress, producer and activist Olivia Wilde, and Instagram Co-Founder Mike Krieger joins Instagram Co-Founder Kevin Systrom in a talk moderated by TechCrunch’s Josh Constine.

SXSW kicks off March 8th and runs through March 17th at the Austin Convention Center and various others hotels and venues throughout downtown.

Other featured speakers include musician A$AP Rocky; journalist and author Jill Abramson; actress, writer, producer and director Pamela Adlon; Chairman and CEO of Vox Media Jim Bankoff; co-founder of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Priscilla Chan; Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez; singer-songwriter David Crosby; director, producer and writer Cameron Crowe; author and popular podcaster Tim Ferriss; best-selling author Neil Gaiman and others.

 “Each of the Keynote speakers announced today reflect bold and innovative talent transforming their respective industries,”  Hugh Forrest, Chief Programming Officer, said in a news release. “The breadth and diversity of the Featured Speakers make the 2019 event an even stronger and more compelling place for creatives, innovators and storytellers alike.”

By Laura Lorek, Publisher of Silicon Hills News

RapidDeploy, a South African company that has created an emergency platform based on cloud technology, is branching out to Austin.

The company officially opened its new U.S. headquarters at a private event at Galvanize Thursday night with Austin Mayor Steve Adler and Mninwa Johannes Mahlangu, the South African Ambassador to the U.S., in attendance. Its headquarters will be based at Galvanize.

 “With customer demand booming and the US market longing for modern technology to replace their outdated infrastructure, it was time to move our headquarters to the US,” Steve Rauncher, RapidDeploy’s CEO and co-founder said in a news release. “We’ll be closer to some of our most important customers and partners and are excited to begin this new chapter.”

RapidDeploy’s cloud-based alert system was designed by first responders. It is more reliable, faster to deploy and more effective and offers more features than traditional computer-based dispatch software, said Reinhard Ekl, Chief Operating Officer of RapidDeploy.

RapidDeploy has also partnered with AT&T, which provides telephone service to most of the country’s 9-1-1 dispatchers, to provide its call centers with its cloud-based platform.

Currently, some very small dispatch systems use pen and paper and others use on premise computer aided dispatch which makes it very hard to locate callers and doesn’t give responders situational awareness, Ekl said.

RapidDeploy’s system, using the cloud, can track and locate callers as well as responders. It’s powered by a geographical information system that relies on real time data from a lot of sources, Ekl said. For example, RapidDeploy pulls information from Waze, which is a crowdsourced traffic and incident app. Other sources of information can be from real time weather apps and historical data.

 “We use vast amounts of data for predicting future emergencies so that emergency responders can prepare accordingly,” Ekl said.

Because of the way RapidDeploy combines real time traffic data and historical incident information, the company can help emergency responders relocate their ambulances and respond even faster to emergencies, Ekl said.

RapidDeploy picked Austin because of its talented technology workforce, Ekl said. And its extensive technology ecosystem, he said.

“We’re a technology company,” Ekl said. “We need access to a strong talent pool. There’s a great entrepreneurial spirit in Austin.”

RapidDeploy has 11 people at its Austin office. But the company plans to grow significantly over the next few months and plans to have 50 people by the end of the year, Ekl said.

 The company also will continue to grow its team in Cape Town, South Africa, Ekl said.

Infinitum Electric has reinvented the electric motor.

And the Austin-based startup announced Thursday that it has closed a $1.8 million Series A round of financing, led by Cottonwood Technology Fund, based in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Since launching three years ago, Infinitum Electric has raised a total of $2.7 million in funding.

The company plans to use the funds to launch its patented electric motor in the Heating, Ventilation Air Conditioning, known as HVAC, industry initially. It also plans to expand into the oil and gas markets and will use the funds raised on research and development efforts for those applications.

Infinitum Electric’s motor is more efficient, lighter and smaller than existing electric motors. It has redesigned the circuit board for the electric motor. The company has been awarded five patents and has 11 patents pending.

“We can outperform traditional motors by five and up to ten percent and we’re half the traditional weight,” said Ben Schuler, CEO, Infinitum Electric.

“Our patented circuit board stator is what sets us apart and positions us well for success, not just in the HVAC space, but for a variety of applications,” Schuler said.

The electric motor market is a $150 billion industry annually, Schuler said. And it’s over 100 years old, but only incremental changes have been made during that lifecycle, he said. Eventually, Infinitum Electric plans to enter the electric vehicles market too, he said.

“Infinitum Electric has developed a clearly disruptive approach to an industry and technology that has largely remained unchanged for decades. It’s exciting to join the effort and support their success in blazing a new trail in the electric motor industry,” Dave Blivin, Managing Director at
Cottonwood Technology Fund said in a news release. “The timing could not be better given the conversion to electric motors across many industries, in particular, transportation and hydraulics. More power, less weight and smaller form factor is a great value proposition to be selling in the current market.”

By Laura Lorek, Publisher of Silicon Hills News

Austin is the hottest tech hub in Texas.

That’s something Silicon Hills News has known for a long time since we have been writing about local technology startups since launching as an independent media startup in 2011.

In 2018, the city had several big stories. Silicon Hills News has listed the top 25 stories from our website for the year. These are some of the most popular Austin Technology stories on Silicon Hills News, according to our readers.

It’s an interesting list including an article by Susan Lahey in the top 10 on “What Austin Wants to Be When it Grows Up.” That article came out of a lively panel discussion at South by Southwest. It provides a glimpse at some of the angst people in Austin struggle with in developing the city’s tech industry.

And Tim Ferris Moves to Austin also made the top 10. He’s one of the latest California transplants to relocate to Austin. That’s a trend we don’t expect to see slow down in 2019 as evidenced by Apple’s recent expansion announcement. Its second largest campus outside of Cupertino, California headquarters is in Austin, Texas.

1. Apple to Expand in North Austin with a $1 Billion Campus with 5,000 More Jobs
2. U.S. Army Futures Command Center Opens in Austin
3. Oracles’ Founder Larry Ellison Says Austin Campus is Going to Grow to 10,000 Employees
4. OJO Labs Raises $20.5 Million in VC Funding and Plans to Double in Size
5. Ryan Wuerch Plans to Build Dosh into a Billion Dollar Company Disrupting the Ad-Tech Market
6. After Two Years in Stealth Mode, Austin-based Wanchain Launches Digital Currency Platform
7. What Austin Wants to Be When it Grows Up
8. News Corp. Buys Opcity for $210 Million
9. GoDaddy Buys Main Street Hub for $125 Million
10. Podcaster and Author Tim Ferris Moves to Austin
11. Favor has grown tremendously since its acquisition by HEB
12. Spredfast and Lithium Technologies to Merge
13. New $35 Million Trust Ventures Fund is Looking to Invest in Disruptive Startups with Billion Dollar Big Ideas
14. 11 Questions for Serial Entrepreneur Whurley who is Launching Strangeworks at SXSW
15. Mass Challenge Texas Selects 84 Startups for its First Program
16. Pot Pioneers Gather in Austin to Explore Texas Market Opportunities
17. U.S. Air Force Secretary Wilson Launches AFWERX Innovation Lab at Capital Factory
18. Silverton Partners Closes New $108 Million Fund
19. Quake Capital Launches First Accelerator Program in Austin
20. WP Engine Lands $250 Million Investment from Silver Lake
21. True Wealth Venture Closes $19 Million Fund
22. HEB Announces Plans for a Digital Innovation Center in East Austin
23. Dell Technologies Going Public
24. Hypergiant Emerges from Stealth Mode to Create AI Products
25. 10 Startups Pitch at Techstars Austin Demo Day 2018