Now WeWork is doing it again. The company announced Monday that applications are now open for its 2018 Creator Awards with $1 million available per city.
To date, WeWork has given away more than $15 million in Creator Awards to 167 winners. And WeWork reports more than 170 jobs were created as a result. The company has received more than 7,000 applications from creators worldwide.
The Creator Awards are open to WeWork members and others outside the WeWork network. Applicants are invited to submit for an award in one of four categories:
The Performing Arts Award: for entertainers and groups with a unique point of view ($18k – $72k awarded)
The Nonprofit Award: for charitable organizations big and small ($130k – $360k awarded)
The New Venture Award: for entrepreneurs and companies with fresh ideas ($130k – $360k awarded)
Community Giver Award: for those making a difference in their local community ($36k – $130k awarded)
Applications are being taken now through April 10th. Finalists from the region will be chosen to present at the Regional Semi-Final event taking place in San Francisco on May 10th.
“The Creator Awards is intended to acknowledge and empower those who exemplify the WeWork mantra: “Create Your Life’s Work,” according to WeWork. “A creator is anyone who brings a new idea into the world, pursues a passion, and believes in something greater than oneself. From artists, performers, and educators to entrepreneurs, startups, and nonprofits, creators are making the world a better place every day.”
Kerry Rupp and Sara Brand, partners in True Wealth Ventures, photo by John Davidson.
Austin’s pioneering venture capital firm, True Wealth Ventures, founded by women to invest in women, announced on Tuesday the close of the firm’s first fund with $19.1 million.
Kerry Rupp and Sara Brand, partners in True Wealth Ventures, plan to use the funds to invest in about 12 women-led startups in the sustainable consumer and consumer health technology industries.
True Wealth Ventures also announced that more than 80 percent of its limited partners are women.
While women-owned businesses continue to be founded and flourish, the funding has simply not kept pace. In 2017, women-led companies received just 2.2 percent of all venture capital funding in the U.S., according to True Wealth Ventures. That’s a problem that True Wealth Ventures set out to correct.
“We’ve seen the statistics: companies led by women show consistently higher performance. Continuing to look away from this massive investment opportunity doesn’t make business or economic sense,” General Partner and MBA Harvard Business School graduate Kerry Rupp said in a news release. “With women making 85 percent of consumer purchase decisions and 80 percent of healthcare decisions, there’s an additional advantage for companies with women on the management team in designing products for, selling to and servicing this customer base.”
So far, True Wealth Ventures has invested in Austin-based UnaliWear, a smartwatch for the senior population to guard against falls and other risks, and Houston-based BrainCheck, a startup that exists as a cognitive testing platform to manage mental health.
“When I started True Wealth Ventures, I saw women-led businesses as an extraordinary investment opportunity that had yet to be realized,” Founding General Partner and Ph.D. Sara Brand, said in a news release. “As there are no other early-stage funds targeting this market in the central/southern part of the U.S., Texas was a natural choice for this blind spot with Austin as an active startup hub and with market affinity for the target verticals.”
At South by Southwest next month, True Wealth Ventures will launch the True Wealth Ventures Startup Pitch Session focused on startups addressing problems, gaps and issues in the sustainable consumer and consumer health and wellness verticals.
Watch out Austin there’s a new accelerator in town.
Oracle, based in Redwood Shores, Calif., on Tuesday, announced it’s launching a residential Oracle Startup Cloud Accelerator program in Austin.
The Austin program is Oracle’s first residential accelerator program in North America. Oracle has eight other global locations in Bangalore, Bristol, Mumbai, Delhi, Paris, Sao Paulo, Singapore and Tel Aviv.
“Austin has a vibrant startup ecosystem and a history as a hotbed for cloud companies,” Reggie Bradford, Oracle’s senior vice president, Startup Ecosystem and Accelerator, said, via email, in response to a series of questions. “It is also surrounded by great universities, which often produce entrepreneurs, engineers and tomorrow’s startup leaders. Oracle is also expanding in Austin more broadly – from our new campus to rapid hiring – and we are working to create a flywheel effect, making it a great place for our first U.S. residential accelerator.”
Oracle just finished building a massive campus in Austin. The current phase includes a 560,000-square-foot building, as well as a parking garage, on 40 acres on the Lady Bird Lake waterfront, according to Oracle. On-campus amenities include fitness facilities, a full-service café, food truck court, expansive business training and conference center, game rooms, terraces and outdoor collaboration areas, as well as the adjacent 295-unit Azul apartment complex, which serves as a housing option for Oracle employees.
“In 2017, we launched eight residential programs ahead of schedule and attracted almost 4,000 global startups for only 40 program slots—a clear indication of the tremendous demand,” Bradford said in a news release.
Oracle will announce details including location and timing for the call for applications in the coming months, Bradford said. It plans to select five to six startups per cohort, with two programs a year that last six months each. The selected startups will receive technical support, mentoring by Oracle and industry experts, Oracle Cloud credits, co-working space, and access to Oracle’s customers, investors, partners and others. Any startup that has been in business at least six months can apply, according to Oracle. Interested startups can signup now here.
“Our current programs have ended with a pitch day, and we plan to continue this tradition in our new Austin location,” Bradford said. “Our pitch days are not “traditional” as we try to provide as much value and exposure for our startups, so often we will incorporate our pitch days at big events. For example, we recently did this for our Tel Aviv and Sao Paulo startups at Oracle CloudWorld in NYC – giving them additional exposure and engagement with our global customers, partners and product teams.”
Oracle does not take an equity stake in the companies in its accelerator, Bradford said. Oracle also works to connect the startups to customers, partners and sources of funding, helping them through their next phase of growth, Bradford said.
“Our new Oracle Scaleup Ecosystem program collaborates with PE and VC firms and will target high-growth entities across EMEA, JAPAC, and the Americas, as well as a select number of investment groups and strategic partners, Bradford said.
In addition to the Austin accelerator, Oracle also announced its first, virtual-style, non-residential global program: Oracle Scaleup Ecosystem.
Oracle’s new programs are focused on cloud-based technology. A key advantage is the participants get to partner with Oracle and its customers and partners.
The virtual program is aimed at startups and venture capital and private equity portfolio companies, according to Oracle. It offers help in product development, sales, marketing, migration assistance, cloud credits and discounts and access to Oracle’s customer and product ecosystems.
Jason Williams, industry veteran and Amazon Web Services alum, will lead the Oracle Scaleup Ecosystem program. Applications for Oracle Scaleup Ecosystem are accepted on a rolling basis here.
Oracle’s cloud-based accelerator is not the first in Central Texas. San Antonio launched the first Techstars Cloud program in 2012. It graduated four classes of startups before shutting down in 2016.
In addition to the new Oracle accelerator, Austin has several existing technology accelerators that include cloud-based companies. Austin’s accelerators include Techstars Austin, Capital Factory, Austin Technology Incubator, Tarmac Texas, MassChallenge Texas and SputnikATX. And then there are specialized accelerators like DivInc, which emphasizes diversity and inclusion, SKU, consumer products goods and the International Accelerator.
Austin’s tech scene is always hopping. No matter what the day or the time, it seems there is always something fun to do.
So if you’re looking for something to do this week, check out these fine events:
Monday – Saturday – Austin CPG Week by TEN Capital Group features more than 42 sessions across 18 venues in Austin this week.
Monday – Co-Founders Meetup at Capital Factory by the Tech Map featuring Krishna Srinivasan with LiveOak Venture Partners. The event kicks off at 6:30 p.m. Tickets cost $15.
Tuesday – Intro to the Austin Startup Scene AMA & Happy Hour with Joshua Baer at Capital Factory starting at 4 p.m. Cost is $10.
Tuesday – Tech Ranch’s Venture Forth Meet the Team Bootcamp at Impact Hub Austin’s North Lamar location. Select a time to meet with the team. It’s free.
Thursday – Open Coffee Austin Downtown – starts at 8:30 a.m. at the Houndstooth Coffee shop. The event is free.
Thursday – Big Ass Social Happy Hour, known as #BASHH and put on by Lani Rosales and The American Genius, kicks off at 6 p.m. at the Hangar Lounge. It’s free.
Friday: Sputnik’s Lunch and Learn: How to Raise Your First Round featuring a talk by Roger Chen from Silverton Partners at noon at Sputnik’s headquarters. The event is free but requires advance registration.
SXSW– March 9 – 18 at the Austin Convention Center and locations all over Austin.
Upcoming events: (sponsored content)
Silicon Hills News’ lunchtime workshop: How to Get Featured in the Media – Wednesday, Feb. 28th from noon to 1:30 p.m. at Galvanize Cost is $7.
CXL Live 2018 event is in Austin March 28-30: CXL Live is a 3-day growth and conversion optimization event. Growth leaders from Shopify, Instagram, Airbnb, Google and other impressive companies share their strategies and tactics. See the full lineup here. Use this coupon code for $200 off: SHN
GroundBreak Construction Conference by Procore Technologies, Nov. 13-15 in Austin. Use the Code “LocalsOnly” to save $100 on registration costs through April 2018.
Lots of cool tech events happening in San Antonio this week from recruiting mixers to an AI meetup and the debut of a brand new business conference.
On Tuesday – WP Engine Technical Support Meet & Greet in San Antonio- The company is hiring. It’s having a mixer to get to know job candidates better and introduce them to this rapidly growing WordPress hosting company. The event is free and takes place from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. at Stone Werks Big Rock Grille at Lincoln Heights. RSVP here.
On Tuesday – Artificial Intelligence Meet Up at 6 pm. at the Geekdom Events Centre. “For this meetup we hope to have a lightning round of the different machine learning and deep learning projects people have accomplished or are currently pursuing in SAT and nearby areas.”
On Wednesday – Codeup Demo Day at The DoSeum on February 14th from 3:15 PM to 5:30 PM
On Friday: Motiontum 2018 – Business Conference & Expo at the Holiday Inn Riverwalk, a variety of speakers and topics at this daylong inaugural conference. Tickets start at $15.
On Friday, Saturday and Sunday: Patriot Boot Camp: Technology Entrepreneurship Boot Camp in San Antonio on Feb. 16-18th.
Upcoming Events:
SA NewTech – Feb. 21st – Due to Valentine’s Day, San Antonio NewTech rescheduled its meetup set for the 14th to the 21st at 6 p.m. at the Geekdom Events Center.
It’s the Notley’s Center for Social Innovation, a campus for nonprofit organizations and for-profit companies with a socially innovative focus. And recently the center partnered with Capital Factory, a tech coworking and accelerator site, to launch the new social entrepreneurship and nonprofit coworking community at Springdale General in East Austin.
The community aims to work with entrepreneurs and organizations tackling society’s biggest challenges. It will be a hub of educational resources, mentors, capital and other resources to drive change in issues ranging from education to environment to healthcare and poverty.
“The world is experiencing an emergence of social enterprise spilling out of our universities, nonprofits, and for-profit businesses,” Dan Graham, Cofounder of Notley, said in a news release. “As Austin becomes the next social innovation capital, this coworking model is poised to provide an important missing piece – a space for people inciting action around social causes to connect with nonprofits, educational systems, and entrepreneurial programs while coming together to drive scalable and sustainable purpose-driven ventures.”
“Notley’s portfolio of successful social impact initiatives makes them an obvious partner for us and our social ventures who will be moving into the coworking space later this year,” Joshua Baer, Founder and Executive Director of Capital Factory, said in a news release. “By leveraging the Capital Factory network, coworking at CSI is much more than just a place to work – it connects social impact entrepreneurs to their first employees, mentors, customers, and investors. Austin is now one of the most exciting and connected places for social innovation in the world.”
Notely’s Center for Social Innovation will have 10,000 square feet of co-working space including private studios, dedicated desks, conference rooms and lounge areas and another 5,048 square feet of meeting space.
Graham, founder of BuildASign.com, founded Notley Ventures in 2015 with his wife, Lisa. Notley partners with seed and early-stage social impact companies and nonprofit organizations ready to scale.
The epicenter of San Antonio’s startup system downtown is Geekdom, which occupies its own building, the historic Rand Building, on Houston street.
Launched in 2011, Geekdom has grown to become the hub of startup activity and now the technology co-working site and collaborative workspace has become a source of capital to ignite the ideas that take shape there.
In its early years, Geekdom provided $25,000 grants to startups based there through the original Geekdom Fund. Many of those startups are no longer in business including Remote Garage, Sporty Bird, Grapevine, Kirpeep, and Embarkly, among others. But some still are in business. ParLevel Systems received a $25,000 grant. It went on to participate in the Techstars Cloud program and then raised $7 million in venture capital, according to its CrunchBase profile.
That initial Geekdom fund aimed to jumpstart the city’s startup community by providing seed-stage funding to tech startups.
Just recently, Geekdom announced the launch of The Community Fund, which will provide seed-stage funding to entrepreneurs. To apply, an entrepreneur must be a member of Geekdom for at least 90 days.
Geekdom plans to select one entrepreneur every month for a $10,000 reward.
“The Community Fund is critical in filling an ongoing need that currently exists and will continue to as San Antonio develops,” Geekdom CEO David Garcia, said in a statement. “As the hub of growing startup scene in the city, we realize that if we don’t take this step and provide initial seed funding for startups, others may not either. Our desire is that we can get other individuals and entities to join the effort to increase the funding we are able to award each month.”
Austin-based MineralSoft announced on Wednesday that the company has raised $4 million in funding.
The company plans to use the funds to market its software platform, which helps mineral, royalty, investors and others manage their assets. MineralSoft also signed an exclusive partnership with oil and gas data provider Austin-based DrillingInfo.
Investors included Cottonwood Venture Partners, based in Houston. Earlier investors included Bear Capital and Y Combinator.
“50% or more of the value produced by an oil or gas well might be distributed to non-operating interest owners, yet the vast majority of tools in the market today were designed with the operator in mind,” Gabe Wilcox, CEO of MineralSoft, said in a news release. “We built our technology platform and services specifically for the non-op asset class and we’ve been met with a tremendous response so far – and with interest and investment in the category skyrocketing, MineralSoft is poised to grow accordingly.”
MineralSoft’s customers include private equity, investment funds, family offices, endowments, foundations, E&P companies, and individuals.
The company, launched in 2015, recently moved to larger headquarters in Austin. It is also expanding its sales and marketing efforts.
“Investment in mineral, royalty, and non-op interests has grown substantially over the last few years, but owners faced challenges and inefficiencies before MineralSoft’s product streamlined and optimized the management of those interests,” Jeremy Arendt, Managing Partner at CVP, said in a news release. “MineralSoft has established itself as the clear leader in the modernization of minerals management and we are excited to partner with the MineralSoft team.”
Jessica Ciabarra, CEO and co-founder of Employee Wow
Austin-based Employee Wow, a software company, announced Wednesday that it has raised $1 million in seed funding.
The funds come from Sean Tomlinson, an investor based in Hong Kong. He also joined the company’s board of directors.
Employee Wow plans to use the money to hire sales staff and market its Anonymous Employee Feedback Platform, its flagship product. The platform lets businesses, employees, managers, and customers communicate better.
“I am very excited to become a part of Employee Wow,” Tomlinson said in a news release. “Through a decade of operating hospitality and other retail businesses, I’ve seen firsthand how beneficial this type of employee feedback technology could be. I expect demand for this software to increase massively in the coming years. Employee Wow benefits employee retention and saves time and money onboarding new staff members, all of which are quantifiable benefits to business owners and operators.”
Employee Wow’s Anonymous Employee Feedback Platform is like a modern-day suggestion box that is available on the Apple iPad and iPhone app, as well as via the web and through email. It also has Snapchat integration.
“Research indicates that happy, more engaged employees lead to more profitable businesses, and we’re seeing that younger employees increasingly require real-time feedback on top of check-the-box evaluations,” Jessica Ciabarra, CEO and co-founder of Employee Wow, said in a news release. “Our Anonymous Employee Feedback Platform—including its unique Snapchat integration—is the catalyst for creating new feedback loops that can lead to greater customer loyalty and employee engagement, performance and happiness.”
Chirs Ciabarra, chief technology officer, co-founded the company with Jessica Ciabarra.
Austin-based RigUp announced it has raised $15.8 million in funding.
The company, founded in 2014 as an online marketplace for services and labor for the energy industry, also secured a $30 million credit line from Silicon Valley Bank.
RigUp has raised $63.8 million to date, according to CrunchBase. The company plans to use the money for product development and to hire sales staff.
The company has created an online digital platform for oilfield services and personnel. The platform provides access to 22,000 service providers across more than 100 categories.
“Everything we’re doing is to help our service providers get more work and make more money,” CEO and co-founder Xuan Yong said in a news release. “Our service model continues to grow nicely every month. We’re excited to reach this milestone as a company and have Jeffrey Harris and the team at Quantum Energy Partners join us as investors. We are also pleased to welcome Napoleon Ta from Founders Fund to our board.”
Its investors for the Series B investment round included Quantum Energy Partners, Global Reserve Group, and Founders Fund.
Austin’s tech scene is always hopping. No matter what the day or the time, it seems there is always something fun to do. 
Lots of cool tech events happening in San Antonio this week from recruiting mixers to an AI meetup and the debut of a brand new business conference.
Something new is brewing in East Austin.
The epicenter of San Antonio’s startup system downtown is 
Austin-based 
Austin-based 
