Music and technology go hand in hand like bananas and cheerios, coffee and biscotti and alligators and a swamp.
And the music and tech industry in Austin work together in such perfect harmony like Paul McCartney’s Ebony and Ivory lyrics.
“Ebony, Ivory Living In Perfect Harmony
Ebony, Ivory, Ooh”
So it just makes sense, so much sense, that SpareFoot, the irreverent and fun startup known for pinup calendars and a sketchy workplace hiring Mockumentary would hold its first Battle of the Storage Bands contest in the self-proclaimed “Live Music Capital of the World.”
That’s right and you don’t even have to work at a storage center to enter. But you do have to be a musical act from the Austin area that practices in local self storage units. (Who knew there was such a thing? Put down your hands SpareFoot people, I’m talking to other readers.)
Apparently you can be a one man or one woman band in a storage unit. (I might have to find my old squeeze box and spoons, rent a unit and begin practicing at Uncle Bob’s Self Storage.)
The talent search began on Jan. 13. Sparefoot requires contestants to submit a YouTube video of a performance of an original song. (Might I suggest: Ode to my locker, There’ll always be space for you in my storage unit, I love my stuff or Finding Treasures at Uncle Bob’s.) You can enter the contest here.
“SpareFoot’s Band Selection Committee then will consider the three musical acts that collect the most online votes by Feb. 21,” according to a news release. “Committee members will choose the one act that will play a 30-minute set to open The SpareFoot Party on March 7 at Austin’s Scoot Inn. Plus, the winner will receive VIP passes to the party, along with event transportation and one night’s lodging.”
SpareFoot, the nation’s largest online marketplace for self storage, has 102 employees in Austin. It was founded in 2008 and has raised $6.5 million in venture capital to date, according to its CrunchBase profile.
Tag: Austin (Page 12 of 37)
Biofuel researchers have figured out how to make fuel from switchgrass, algae, corn, soy, canola oil, plants and paper.
All of those biofuels are tough to scale to meet the demands of filling up millions of gas tanks on a daily basis.
But now the innovative researchers at the University of Texas at Austin’s Cockrell School of Engineering have developed a new type of biofuel or renewable energy source.
It’s fuel from genetically engineered yeast cells and ordinary table sugar. The combination creates oil and fats, “known as lipids, that can be used in place of petroleum-derived products,” according to a news release.
“You can take the lipids formed and theoretically use it to power a car,” UT Assistant Professor Hal Alper said in a news release. He and his team of students have dubbed the concoction “a renewable version of sweet crude.” They published their research on Jan. 20 in Nature Communications.
Alper believes their invention could scale to meet the marketplace’s growing demand for alternative fuels.
Spanning Cloud Apps announced that it more than doubled the size of its workforce last year and its revenue and customers quadrupled from 2012.
The Austin-based startup now has 40 employees, up from 16. It plans to double its workforce this year. The company also moved into new headquarters last year at 823 Congress, four times larger than its old offices.
Spanning Cloud Apps provides data backup and recovery for cloud applications. Its customers include Megabrands, Pivotal, Redfin, Jawbone and Netflix.
“2013 was a pivotal year for Spanning. We added world-class customers, expanded our product offering and established new partnerships with industry leaders including Salesforce.com and EMC,” Jeff Erramouspe, Spanning’s CEO and president said in a news release. “Leading enterprises and educational institutions are choosing our cloud backup and recovery solutions because of our product innovation and exceptional customer service. We’re the organization they can trust and partner with to protect their critical data.”
Last year, Spanning hired some key managers including Erramouspe, who replaced its founder Charlie Wood, now chairman. And Melanie Sommer became the new vice president of marketing. Spanning also closed on $6 million in Series B financing, bringing its total financing to date to $9 million.
This week, Silicon Hills News launched its first Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign to create a slick print magazine to be released at South by Southwest Interactive.
At SXSW, Silicon Hills News is hosting a startup pitch competition in conjunction with the Austin Technology Incubator.
We plan to distribute the 32-page color magazine at the SXSW panel. The magazine will feature a dozen or so Austin and San Antonio startup companies along with information on technology resources in both cities.
The Silicon Hills News mission is to shine a spotlight on all of the innovation going on in the Central Texas technology industry. For the past two years and four months, we have worked tirelessly to cover the Austin and San Antonio region. We’re also evolving into a networking platform for the technology industry in Central Texas. We seek to foster collaboration among people doing interesting technology ventures. We do this through event coverage, news stories, tech profiles, calendar postings, job listings, resource listings, expert contributors and soon monthly, quarterly and annual events and a section devoted to aggregating all of the local technology news.
Veteran technology journalists with two decades of experience covering technology lead Silicon Hills News. Laura Lorek and Susan Lahey understand business, technology and news startups. We are also trained journalists with a strong code of ethics and adherence to traditional reporting values.
We also believe in being a part of the community we cover. We are storytelling entrepreneurs blazing a trail in the new media landscape.
But we need your help.
To produce 5,000 copies of the magazine, we need to raise $5,000 and another $2,000 to pay for stories and photos and $500 more for marketing expenses.
We can do all of this with your support of our Kickstarter Campaign. But you don’t just get a warm and fuzzy feeling for helping out another bootstrapped startup entrepreneur, you also get perks.
For just $120, a startup can advertise on our site for a year – that’s just $10 a month (that’s less than a case or 36 packs of Ramen noodles) even pre-seed stage entrepreneurs can afford that. The ad is for 140 characters with a link and it will run on the main page for a year.
Technology companies with a little more disposable income might consider the $500 full page ad in the magazine or the combo for $1,000 of an ad in both the print and digital version of Silicon Hills News. You also get invited to a happy hour where we will debut the magazine and give you some free drinks.
If you like the job we are doing, please become part of our mission and support our Kickstarter campaign at whatever level you like. We’ve even got a $1 offering. We appreciate you and your support. Thank you, in advance, for helping to make our first ever print magazine possible.
Athenahealth, an electronic health care records provider, plans to expand in Austin creating 607 jobs and investing more than $13 million.
The Texas Enterprise Fund is providing $5 million to the company.
In addition, the City of Austin next Thursday will vote on a request to provide an economic development grant worth $679,000, during the next 10 years, from its Economic Incentives Reserve Fund.
Athenahealth, based in Watertown, Ma., is proposing to create 607 new full-time jobs in Austin during the next 10 years with an average annual wage of $132,085, according to a proposal to the city of Austin. The company, founded in 1997, has 2,853 employees. The publicly traded company, traded on the NASDAQ stock market under the symbol ATHN, reported revenue of $539.7 million in fiscal 2013 and a net loss of $4.6 million.
“This TEF investment will create hundreds of high-paying tech jobs in Austin, building on the city’s thriving technology sector and strengthening the state and local economies,” Gov. Rick Perry said in a news release.
Athenahealth plans to move into the Seaholm Power Plant in Downtown Austin and lease 115,000 square feet of space to support its products and customers.
“We’re thrilled at the prospect of growing our presence in Austin, a city with a culture and vibe that perfectly aligns with our own,” athenahealth chairman and CEO Jonathan Bush said in a news statement. “athenahealth is growing all across the country as we work to fulfill our vision of becoming a national information backbone to make health care work as it should. Austin offers a strong talent pool to aid in the important work we do at athenahealth to advance connectivity in health care.”
By LESLIE ANNE JONES
Reporter with Silicon Hills News
Jeffrey Schwartz and Sara Rodell, co-founders of Loop & Tie, an online gift site, based in Austin., photo by
“I was a stressed-out gifter,” she said, but a few years ago she became so obsessed with removing the stress involved in gift-giving that she quit her stock broker job in New York and moved home to Austin to figure it out.
Her solution is Loop & Tie, an e-commerce site that curates products from Texas and around the world that have a “maker aesthetic” (handcrafted cherrywood coasters, a meat sampler from Kickstarter-funded Lawless Jerky). The site gives the gift of choice: The giver chooses a price tier ($25-100), then places his order for one or multiple recipients, whom are then able to choose any item within the category, though recipients can’t see how much the items cost. The site went live in November and over the holiday season tripled initial sales projections, according to Rodell.
Owner of Tuscan Trading Ian Meltzer said in the past he usually only sent holiday gifts to four to six clients, but this year he gave to 25 people using Loop & Tie.
“Most of my customer base is men,” Meltzer said. “So in the past, I would send them something and they would bring it home and their wives would probably throw it out. This year, they could pick out their gift with their wives so everyone’s happy.”
The speed and the fact it’s possible to slate gifts for delivery months in advance are useful features for corporate gifters, but Rodell says Loop & Tie has attracted both individuals and companies, without a clear trend emerging either way.
To date, the company has raised $625,000 and would like to add $375,000. Loop & Tie is based at Capital Factory and is part of its accelerator program. The main tasks for the year ahead are raising brand awareness and gathering data to tweak the user experience where needed. “Where we go will be dictated by the consumers,” Rodell said.Her quest to close the gap between intentions and results in gift-giving started more than two years ago with a different concept. The first effort was a phone app called NOOM (Next One’s On Me) that let users give a friend a treat, like a coffee or beer, from a local Austin outlet without having to buy it in person.
In August 2011, Rodell was visiting Austin from New York when she was introduced to Jeffrey Schwartz, who also happened to be visiting. At the time, he was working in business development for Sony Pictures in Los Angeles.
“We met for coffee for thirty minutes,” Schwartz recalled. “Her dad dropped her off and waited on the other side of the coffee shop.” That was enough time to convince: Schwartz quit his job three weeks later and moved to Austin to work on NOOM.
NOOM went live in March 2012. Geographically, it was limited to Austin, but Schwartz and Rodell discovered that 70 percent of users were from outside the redeemable area. (Rodell guesses this was because Austin is a major event destination and people were using the app during travel.) The profit margins are better in the gifting business than in restaurant food, but Rodell says the main impetus to pivot directions was to remove the locational restraint.
Rodell and Schwartz have been across the country searching for worthy products. They spend a lot of time looking for items that have both quality design and a good brand story; many of the things they carry are made by people who left careers to become artisans.
“When you give a gift, you’re also giving an impression of what your tastes are,” Rodell said. The idea is to curate products that customers don’t have the time to suss out themselves.
The question of content curation in the digital sphere is almost as old as the Internet, but there’s been a market push in the past couple years leading to an increased number of e-commerce sites offering a more personalized experience, according to industry analyst Daniel Rasmus, a former director of business insights at Microsoft. “The idea of curation is fairly recent, outside of us knowledge-management people who’ve been talking about it for twenty some years,” he said.
Loop & Tie has been compared to Wantful, a start-up gifting site that helped gift givers assemble a selection of gift options for the recipient to choose from. That start-up raised $5.5 million before abruptly shuttering in September for lack of investment.Rodell pointed out that check-out time at Loop & Tie can take less than one minute because the products have already been curated for the recipient, whereas at Wantful users had to go through a longer process putting together a catalogue of products for the receiver.
For Rodell, the challenge was always to simplify the task but retain the meaningfulness of the gifting ritual in a way where fruit baskets and random bottles of wine typically fail.
“The thought doesn’t count if you don’t do anything,” Rodell said, and she’s thought a lot about how to make the thought count. In college, she majored in economics and has ever since been interested in areas where emotions interfere with making the most market-efficient decision. “Economics,” Rodell laughed, “says we should just give people cash.”
Blackboard announced Wednesday that is has acquired MyEdu, an Austin-based educational site tailored to college students.
The Washington, D.C.-based Blackboard did not disclose the terms of the acquisition.
MyEdu, founded in 2008, focuses on helping students create a study plan geared to the career they wish to pursue. It’s like LinkedIn for college students. The site helps them create “professional profiles” to find jobs and internships.
MyEdu has helped one million students at more than 800 schools, according to a news release.
“Everyone is looking for ways to help more students obtain degrees more quickly,” Jay Bhatt, CEO of Blackboard said in a news release. “MyEdu has created user-friendly tools that help students succeed and create a stronger connection between higher education and the workforce. MyEdu is highly complementary to our current solution set and will help us drive more value and a higher quality experience for learners and enable new paths to support student goals. This strengthens the focus we have on learner success, which is a big priority for us going forward.”
MyEdu has partnerships with the University of Texas, the University of Louisiana and other institutions.
The company, which has 20 employees, has raised more than $20 million in venture funding, with the majority coming from Bain Capital Ventures, according to its Crunchbase profile.
Bigcommerce is hosting a job fair on Jan. 21st at its Austin office with hopes of hiring 100 new employees this year.
The company’s “Rock Your Resume concert and recruiting event” is an invitation-only event featuring a live acoustic concert by Austin’s LC Rocks. Snacks and drinks will served. The company is encouraging people to apply to its website.
“What’s exciting and different is that top candidates will get hired on the spot,” according to Bigcommerce.
The company is looking to hire people for technology support and technical operations positions.
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Bigcommerce received a $40 million Series C investment last summer from Revolution Growth and that’s fueling the company’s latest expansion. Bigcommerce founded by Eddie Machaalani and Mitchell Harper in 2009, has raised $75 million to date.
Bigcommerce’s software has already helped more than 50,000 companies launch online stores, market their businesses and build brands for just $25 a month. Its customers include Gibson Guitar, Zaggora.com and YETI Coolers.
Bigcommerce has 190 employees in Austin and 80 employees in Sydney, Australia.
By INGRID VANDERVELDT
Dell’s Entrepreneur in Residence
Special Contribution to Silicon Hills News
We’re seeing more entrepreneurial activity in the U.S. than ever before – a result of factors including low cost of entry for startups, increased availability of funding for early-stage startups, and valuations for successful startups hitting an all-time high. With the New Year upon us, it’s the time we all start thinking about how this year will be different than last and what trends will have the largest impact on the entrepreneurial community in 2014. Some of my top predictions are as follows:
1. Social media space continues to grow ever-crowded. While not a new trend, social media has fully matured as a channel, with 73 percent of adults in the U.S. using at least one platform and 42 percent using multiple social networking sites. Every company needs a comprehensive, customer-driven marketing and communications strategy, and in 2014, that means knowing where your customers are and finding ways to have meaningful and personalized interactions. Over the last year, Pinterest became wildly popular among women and surpassed Twitter in total users, while new applications such as Snapchat stole attention from Facebook among the teen market.
Although the decline in Facebook usage among teens may be over-hyped, the truth is that all users, teens and adults alike, are using multiple platforms to suit their needs – LinkedIn for professional networking, Pinterest for social bookmarking, Instagram for photo-sharing, etc. With so many platforms, it’s important to have a strategy that doesn’t put all your eggs in one basket. Pay attention to demographics and make sure you are where your customers are. Entrepreneurs should also look to leverage their own personal and professional social networking activities to build their brand while integrating social across their enterprise. Also, consider taking a page out of Dell’s book by leveraging the passion, talent and networks of your employees by starting an employee advocacy program.
2. Marrying profits with purpose. Launching and maintaining a successful business is no longer just about the bottom line. We’re seeing more and more companies building sustainability and a vision beyond profits into their cultures from day one, and attracting customers and top talent in the process. Tesla may be a car company but its vision is to “expedite the move from a mine-and-burn hydrocarbon economy towards a solar electric economy.” Warby Parker may sell fashionable eyewear, but the B Corp aspires to “do good in the world” for its “employees, customers, community and the environment.”
I joined Dell because I believe in its vision of technology powering human potential. Supporting entrepreneurs and empowering women in business are key tenets to who Dell is as a company. Just one example of this is the Pay it Forward initiative Dell launched last year, setting a goal to track support for one million women entrepreneurs by the end of 2015.
3. It’s no longer a question of Silicon Valley or Silicon Alley. While the Valley is still seen as the epicenter of the startup universe by many, opportunity is becoming more geographically dispersed than ever before. Cities including Austin, Tennessee, Denver, New Orleans, and Detroit are all cultivating their own startup ecosystems and the number of startups founded outside of traditional entrepreneurship hubs is growing significantly. This trend is being supported by large national initiatives such as Google’s Tech Hubs and the White House’s Startup America Partnership, along with local efforts by cities across the U.S.
For entrepreneurs, the hunt for financing and top talent may make the Bay Area appear attractive but think twice before jumping on flight and heading straight to Sand Hill Road. Not only are there benefits to being a big fish in a small pond, but the competitive advantage of regional economies should also be a factor in your decision-making process. Silicon Valley may still be the right place for you if you’re in enterprise technology, as might New York City if you’re launching a media-focused startup, but know your industry and do your research as new hotbeds of innovation are emerging worldwide, and it may be easier to break through the clutter and get noticed in a less saturated market.
4. Alternative forms of payment and digital currency move into the mainstream. PayPal launched in 1999 as the first mainstream online money transfer service, creating new opportunities for merchants and entrepreneurs on the web. 10 years later, Square’s card reader made it exceptionally easy for just about anyone to accept physical credit cards at their point of sale. In 2013, a formerly obscure cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, took to the mainstream evolving into a multi-billion dollar ecosystem recognized by hedge funds and Congress. With Bitcoin BitPay processing over $100,000,000 in transactions, Bitcoins were used to purchase spots on Virgin Galactic flights to space, Lamborghinis, and OKCupid credits.
These alternate forms of payment are offering businesses a compelling way to expand their customer base, reduce per transaction costs and improve user experience. With the pace of innovation in financial transactions increasing and the desire for frictionless transactions on the rise, startups, especially those involved in e-commerce, will need to familiarize themselves with alternative currencies and payment methods. While accepting mobile payments or embracing digital currency may not be the right fit for your business, 2014 might be the right time to figure out your policy and ensure you’re taking the appropriate security measures if you do decide to try out new technology.
5. It’s time to think twice before you IPO. The nimbleness and passion that got your startup where it is today can be difficult to sustain under the watchful eyes of shareholders. Going public has been shown to zap innovation and foster short-term thinking by measuring success in quarterly earnings rather than taking the long-view.
If there’s a lesson to be learned from Michael Dell’s battle to bring Dell private in 2013, it’s that stockholders require an intense focus on short-term gains, which can sometimes be counterproductive to the long-term viability of a company. Entrepreneurs thinking about going public should take note. Will fewer companies go public in 2014 than in previous years? Probably not, but they should definitely weigh the pros and cons more carefully.
6. Women are rising to the top. Not a new trend, but, in 2014, I believe the rate at which women are taking leadership positions and “owning their potential” is going to grow at rates we can’t even fathom. For example, just yesterday it was announced that the first female law firm just opened in Saudi Arabia – something that would’ve been unheard of just 12 months ago!
With public/private partnerships such as Dell’s work with the UN Foundation, we are now in a position to create change for women on a global scale and this year we’ll continue to see increased collaboration between governments, international organizations, the private sector, and individual stakeholders to positively impact female entrepreneurship worldwide.
Ingrid Vanderveldt is an entrepreneur, investor and media personality connecting entrepreneurs to corporations. Ingrid is leveraging her business, policy and media initiatives to “Empower a Billion Women by 2020” to help provide women with tools, technology & resources. As Dell’s first Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR), Ingrid serves as the bridge from the “outside, in” connecting the entrepreneur community to the expansive resources the Fortune 50 company. Ingrid created and oversees the $100M Dell Innovators Credit Fund and The Dell Center for Entrepreneurs. In 2012, Ingrid helped architect The Federal EIR Bill with Senator Mary Landreau (LA) and Representative Mike Honda (CA), and is currently working on legislation with State Senators to bring out a State-wide EIR bill in 2013. She is also the co-founder of The Billionaire Girls Club, is a Dell Women’s Entrepreneur Network Member and serves on the UN Foundation Global Entrepreneurs Council.
Volusion announced the completion of $35 million in debt financing to expand its ecommerce software and services.
The Austin-based company secured the line of credit from Silicon Valley Bank. The company plans to use the money to further develop its software platform and to hire product, support, sales, marketing and IT workers.
The company decided to finance its growth through debt financing instead of venture capital or private equity to retain ownership. It plans to file an initial public offering in the future.
“As Volusion continues to grow and power some of the most successful merchants’ online presence, we believe this new financing will give the team the flexibility it needs to tackle its goals in 2014 and beyond,” Blake English, managing director for Silicon Valley Bank in Austin, said in a news release.
Volusion, founded in 2009, currently has more than 400 employees.
The company has “aggressive expansion plans” for its products targeted at the small to medium sized business market, according to Clay Oliver, CEO of Volusion.
