ChooseWhat guides entrepreneurs through the process of starting up a business.
And now the Austin Technology Incubator has announced a formal partnership with ChooseWhat.com.
The Austin-based company, founded in 2007 by Gaines Kilpatrick and Leo Welder, seeks to solve problems for small business owners such as how to get the best deal on a fax line or phone service provider or tax service. ChooseWhat.com has set up a special site tailored to the needs of ATI’s technology companies. My favorite piece of advice? How to choose a coffee maker.
Tag: Austin (Page 31 of 37)
The Austin Technology Incubator, a non-profit organization affiliated with the IC2 Institute of the University of Texas, will host a graduation ceremony tonight for 21 of its member companies.
The event also celebrates the 23 years ATI has helped incubate central Texas companies. Founded by Dr. George Kozmetsky and first directed by Laura Kilcrease, ATI has worked with more than 200 status companies and helped them raise more than $1 billion in capital, according to this news release. Silicon Hills News will be there tonight to cover the event. So stay tuned for more information.
ATI graduates
View more presentations from Laura Lorek
By SUSAN LAHEY
Special Contributor to Silicon Hills News
William "Whurley" Hurley, founder of Chaotic Moon
For a moment, think only of Chaotic Moon Labs’ Board of Awesomeness: a battery-powered, all terrain skateboard that surges to 32 miles an hour. It’s not Chaotic Moon’s magnum opus, but it is a signature piece. The Board of Awesomeness is the kind of thing kids have fantasized about for decades, lying under big trees in the grass, drinking root beer, eating Starburst and thinking: “Wouldn’t it be cool if there was a motorized, all terrain skateboard that went as fast as a car?”
Take a bunch of people who still live that moment, give them ridiculous amounts of technological know-how, and you have Chaotic Moon.
The face of Chaotic Moon is its general manager, Whurley. Born William Hurley (and previously thoroughly insulted by the Whurley moniker because it wasn’t meant as a compliment,) Whurley started life as an Army brat. His dad gave him access to a computer when computers were still in their infancy. And his parents taught him to love ideas, inculcating him with shows like Connections, a television series in which British narrator James Burke– wearing the same pantsuit in every episode– shows how everything that happens in modern times can be traced back to inventions, decisions and cultures of 100 years ago, 500 years, a thousand. Watching that show religiously as a kid taught Whurley perspective.
His parents never explained that some things can’t be done. They were more inclined to say “Try it, see what happens.” So he did.
His first career choice was as a bassist in a successful funk band which toured regularly and achieved some success and whose name he refuses to reveal. But in 1991 his music career was interrupted by a serious car accident. He endured 13 hours of exploratory surgery and several weeks in the ICU, followed by nearly a year of recovery. The band went on without him. So Whurley—then known as Bill or Billy or William—started toying with sound synchronization on CDs. It stemmed from his interest in music but expanded to movies and games. He was able to make sound line up with action. It was a skill Apple computer needed and it was the start of Whurley’s tech career.
The career progressed from R&D for Apple to Master Inventor, Senior Manager of Targeted Internet Solutions for IBM, where he racked up many patents for the company. Then he voyaged through several other companies: Qlusters Inc., Symbiot Inc.—of which he was a cofounder–and BMC Software.
Whurley had no college degree, though he’s considering pursuing a degree in Awesomeness. But neither would he say he’s self taught.
“No one is really self taught,” he shrugged. “I’ve had dozens of amazing mentors who were nice enough to take the time to teach me.”
Among them were Steve Smith, Chaotic Moon’s Chief Technology Officer, Tom Bishop of BMC. Doug Lenat, founder of Cycorp Inc.
He’s always been fascinated by what was possible, and was among the founders of a camp for iPhone developers when another founder, Raven Zachary, invited him to go for a walk. It was 2007. Zachary announced: “I’m going to start a company building apps.” Almost without thinking about it, Whurley responded “Me too.”
At that moment, he said, he had a vision of Obi Wan Kenobi floating in front of him saying “Pioneers get all the arrows in the back.” Apps were new. Anyone who plunged in in 2007 was destined for some arrows in the back. So Whurley took his idea to his old friend Mike Erwin who suggested they wait three years. 2010. That would be the perfect moment to launch an app company.
“Waiting three years was hard for me,” Whurley said. “It’s always been so easy for me to see advanced technology and say ‘This could be a reality now. ‘ But the tech isn’t there or the people aren’t ready for it, they won’t buy it yet.”
In 2009 at SXSW, Whurley and Erwin met Ben Lamm and he instantly became “the third wheel of our tricycle.” They had three very different personalities and different skill sets but together they made a perfect team. For awhile, Whurley said, they postulated that if any one of them were to disappear, the cult/family that is Chaotic Moon would dissolve. But now they think it’s taken on a life of its own.
In the last months of 2009, they all took time off. Erwin to travel. Whurley to spend time with his teenage son. In January of 2010, he said, he started asking “Hey, remember that company we were going to start?” By mid February it was a matter of some urgency. They launched at SXSW in 2010.
The company’s structure is meant to fuel dreams. As Whurley said in an interview with Businessmakers: “Chaotic Moon…is kind of a dream engine if you will. Most people’s plan looks like a three-step plan, right? And step one is, you know, fantastic idea, and step three is profit, and step two is a big question mark.”Chaotic Moon does step two. The studios group does work for hire in very large apps such as The Daily. The games division is a publisher of original titles as well as titles people bring to the company. And the labs is the intellectual property development arm. “That’s where we respond to client needs when nothing exists to meet the client’s need,” he said.
The company runs on a two-out-of-three management system. If two of the three founders outvote the other, he stays outvoted. Whurley swore they’d never have a CEO. But one day, he was in a meeting with a client and Ben Lamm who was the Chief Creative Officer.
“The guy says, ‘This is an $8 million deal, I’m not going to negotiate with the chief creative officer.’ So I called Mike and said ‘This guy needs a CEO what do you think of making Ben CEO?’ and he said ‘Done.’ So I turned back to the guy and said, ‘Okay, he’s the CEO, let’s negotiate.’”
Currently Whurley’s working on a $20 million deal but most apps cost a couple million. Sometimes the company gets paid in cash, sometimes stock and royalties. It has a strong incentive and profit sharing program to encourage the wholehearted participation of stellar developers.
Chaotic Moon’s founders created its culture very deliberately, with a video-game, space-guy avatar that speaks to many generations, the tag line “All Your Mobile Apps Are Belong to Us” and the constant promise “We’re smarter than you.”
“You know you go to the website of most of these app developers and they’re so serious and then you go meet them and they’re all like ‘We’re so awesome.’” He said. “We wanted to do the opposite. So they go to the website and we’re like ‘We’re awesome, we’re smarter than you,’ and then they meet us and we’re just these regular guys. People who don’t have a sense of humor never call us. They don’t get it.”
“Austin has this very strong be yourself ethos,” said Bijoy Goswami, founder of The Bootstrap Network. “It’s about individualism and self expression. The question isn’t just ‘Did you build a big company?’ it’s ‘Did you build one that was unique and true to yourself?’ In a lot of ways, Chaotic Moon is the quintessential Austin company.”
Equally important, Goswami said, is how Chaotic Moon is exporting that unique culture outside of Austin “showing us where we ought to be going.”
Whurley, too, is part of the brand. Whurley intends to create a whole website, the domain of which someone acquired for him years ago. He avoided it because it originally referred to the fact that he’s high energy, all over the board. “Whirly.” But he was speaking on going for a bold brand once and an audience member challenged him about why he had failed to embrace the name. After that, he became Whurley everywhere.
“He’s part of what makes the startup community what it is,” said Eve Richter, the City of Austin’s Emerging Technologies Coordinator. “He’s one of a handful of people everyone knows, thought leaders, personalities. But I’ve never heard anyone say ‘Oh Whurley, yeah he’s full of himself or he’s posturing. I’ve never heard anyone say that. People like him and they like being around him.”
His business card, she pointed out, listed him as “Evil Genius.” Anybody with that on their business card is okay in my book.”
Keith Casey, developer evangelist of Twilio said Whurley showed him around town and heard someone refer to Whurley as Tony Stark.
“He just cracked up,” he said.
But Whurley gives entirely too much credit to his partners and the 30 or so brilliant people who work with their company to create extraordinary products to be Tony Stark.
He explains his group’s success succinctly.
“We have a healthy imagination and no respect for boundaries and limits.”
WhaleShark Media’s RetailMeNot.com, online coupon site, announced the launch of its new mobile site.
The new site provides coupons and other deals to Apple iPhone and Android mobile phone users worldwide. It also provides exclusive in-store mobile deals from retailers who want to reach customers on their mobile devices.
“In 2011, we experienced triple digit year-over-year growth of visits to RetailMeNot.com via a handheld device, which is why we made substantial investments in developing our mobile product capabilities over the past six months,” said Cotter Cunningham, Chief Executive Officer of WhaleShark Media, Inc., the operator of RetailMeNot.com, said in a news release.
The new site makes it easier to search for and redeem coupons using a mobile phone at a store.
In 2011, 13 companies moved to Austin with the assistance of the Austin Technology Incubator’s Landing Pad Program.
The companies included Amatra, BlackLocus, Convergence Wireless, Digital Harmony Games, Drivve, DXUp Close, SceneTap, Social Muse, Tactical Information Systems and V-Chain Solutions. Also, Ben Dyer, a serial entrepreneur, moved here from Atlanta with TechDrawl, and has since helped NightRaft and BeHome247 relocate here, according to this news release.
The Austin Technology Incubator’s Landing Pad Program helps companies relocate to Austin or establish headquarters here. It focuses on early-stage high technology companies in the biosciences, clean energy, wireless and IT industries. The nonprofit incubator is part of the IC2 Institute of the University of Texas at Austin.
“We are so proud of the business environment that exists in Austin, all the right ingredients for success, but via a supportive, community approach,” Robert Reeves, ATI’s director of IT and wireless, said in a news statement.
“ATI has always been focused on finding, welcoming, integrating and helping make successful new technology companies, whether from Austin or not,” Eve Richter, the city’s emerging technologies coordinator, said in a news statement. “Over the past few years, the Landing Pad concept has brought two dozen companies to town, and we are so thrilled ATI has really taken the program up a notch, formalizing it in 2011. The City of Austin is proud to support ATI in all efforts, including the Landing Pad Program.”
Never underestimate the importance in play in the workplace.
People who play together have better collaboration and social skills, according to SocialWare, which produced this info graphic on the Importance of Play in Enterprise.
But the guys at uShip already know that. They got together with seven other startups companies: BuildASign, Mass Relevance, Adlucent, Sparefoot, Spredfast, WhaleShark Media and Boundless Network to participate in the first Startup Olympics. The teams participated in ten activities on Saturday which involved copies amounts of beer and camaraderie. The events included foosball, darts, shuffleboard, pop-a-shot basketball, beerpong, flipacup, ping pong, trivia, connect four and an obstacle course.
In the end, uShip took home the big trophy, followed by BuildASign and Sparefoot. About 200 people participated in the events, which raised lots of money for local charities.
uShip took the top prize in Austin’s inaugural Startup Olympics competition Saturday at the uShip headquarters. BuildASign.com captured second place and Sparefoot came in third.
We’ll post a full story and a video later on, but for now, here’s some photos from the event.
Put Geek athletes into the Google search engine and what do you come up with?
A correction suggestion for Greek Athletes.
So the conclusion must be that Geek athletes are an evolution of the ancient Greek athletes that invented the Olympic Games in 776 BC in Olympia in Greece.
And as part of that evolutionary process, now a team of Austin innovators have created the first Austin Startup Olympics which features Austin’s elite startups Adlucent, Boundless Network, Build-a-Sign, Mass Relevance, SpareFoot, Spredfast, uShip, and WhaleShark Media competing in 10 grueling activities including Ping Pong, Foosball, Darts and Trivia.
The games begin today at 2 p.m. at the uShip headquarters. The event is closed to the public, but an after party to raise money for charity will be held at Club De Ville. “Bands performing at the after-party include The Lemurs and Burgess Meredith. All proceeds from the $10 cover charge will benefit local charities,” according to a news release.
You can also follow today’s action on Twitter.
Proceeds from the event will benefit Austin Children’s Museum, Austin Pets Alive, Austin Pro Bono, Capital Area Food Bank, Communities in Schools of Central Texas, the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Central Texas , Kure It, and Livestrong/Lance Armstrong Foundation. Sponsors for the event include Tito’s Handmade Vodka and Cedar Door.
The Startup Olympic organizers want to challenge other startups, particularly those in Silicon Valley, to come to South by Southwest and compete in the second Startup Olympics. Contact StartupOlympics.org for more information.
“Guys like Eddie the Eagle and the Jamaican Bobsled team were true innovators, giving their particular sports a new twist, a new look that made them legendary,” Shawn Bose of uShip and co-Chair of the Austin Startup Olympics said in a statement.
“You’ll find that same innovation among Austin’s startups – not only among those competing in the event, but citywide,” said Bose. “We’ve brought new ideas to existing industries and businesses. Many of these ideas came about during fierce games of ping pong, beer pong or even Connect Four while squatting at ‘innovative work spaces’ like Crown and Anchor Pub and Mozart’s Coffee Roasters.”
SceneTap wants you to know what’s going on at your favorite bar before you get there.
Today, the startup officially launches a network of cameras in 30 bars around Austin including Soho Lounge, Trophy Club, Haven, Ranch and Library that feed real-time information into its SceneTap mobile phone app and website. The network will expand to up to 50 bars with the next few months.
“It’s probably going to go beyond bars to other venues like coffee shops, retail outlets and restaurants,” said Cole Harper, co-founder and CEO of SceneTap. “It’s our goal to let people know what’s going on in their favorite place.”
With the SceneTap mobile phone application, which is available for free, people can survey the crowd and see how many men and women are at a particular bar. They can also find out what specials are being offered and what band or DJ is playing.
SceneTap gathers information from video cameras and collects statistics on the demographics of who’s there. It then compiles the stats into percentages and posts them to the site. Consumers can’t see the data associated with the stats to protect privacy, Harper said
The SceneTap app can tell you whether a bar is 85 percent full and the male to female ratio along with the average age of the patrons. The company uses facial detection software to compile these statistics.
“We’re not collecting any individual information,” Harper said. “There’s no information that’s collected or stored. People can’t see individual records.”
SceneTap aggregates its information every half hour and does not store any footage from the bars, Harper said
“It’s entirely automated. The video stream is being perpetually interpreted by the software, which creates rows of data,” Harper said. “The main purpose behind the data is to let you know where the best party is at.”
The data also lets the bars know whether they are spending their money wisely on entertainment to get customers in the door. If a bar spends $300 for a DJ and several hundred people show up then they’ll be able to track stats on the success of their promotions, Harper said.
The main way SceneTap makes money is through advertising. It has 45,000 users currently, which it hopes will rise to 50,000 tonight. It offers companies a very targeted market, Harper said.
The average bar last four years and night clubs last just two and a half years, Harper said. SceneTap can give the owners of these establishments real-time data on their bars and clubs that help them to manage them better, he said.
SceneTap launched in Chicago in December of 2010 and raised nearly $2 million in a seed fund from friends, family and angel investors. SceneTap is currently negotiating with investors to raise at least $3 million in a series A round, which it hopes to close in the next 60 to 90 days.
“We expect we’ll have some rapid growth in next six to twelve months” Harper said.
More than 50 venues in the Chicago area use SceneTap and plans for another 20 in coming months. The company moved to Austin late last year. Its headquarters are in house near Zilker Park where five of the guys live and work. SceneTap has 16 employees and another 30 sales consultants nationwide.
Within the next six months, SceneTap plans to expand into other markets including Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Atlanta, Phoenix, San Diego and San Francisco.
Privacy is one issue that Scene Tap takes very seriously, Harper said.
“We go well out of our way to ensure consumer privacy,” he said. “Our technology, as scary as it may seem, is less intrusive than a lot of technologies that have been out there in the last 10 years.”
The advantage is that a tourist visiting Austin can either go to Yelp and find a review of a bar or check out SceneTap and find out what’s happening there right now, Haper said.
Greenling's marketing director Kathryn Hutchinson shows off the company's locally sourced produce
By EOGHAN MCCLOSKEY
Special contributor to Silicon Hills News
Greenling has tapped into the growing interest in sustainable, organic, seasonal and locally sourced food by providing an alternative to traditional grocery stores and instead focusing on an increasingly sophisticated, organically inclined clientele.
Greenling is a start-up organic grocery delivery service which allows customers to shop for produce, meats, dairy, prepared foods and other products online and have those groceries delivered to their homes or workplaces up to four times per week.
Greenling’s mission is to provide home cooks with fresh, healthy foods in a manner that minimizes environmental impact, said Kathryn Hutchinson, Greenling’s marketing director. By delivering produce to customers’ homes, customers burn less fossil fuels than if they were to drive to the grocery store. The majority of Greenling’s produce is locally sourced, and those products not from Austin or surrounding areas are certified organic and sustainably produced. Produce that is out of season or that sells out quickly is pulled from Greenling’s webstore immediately, a practice which contrasts sharply with that of other, larger grocery stores, whose need to provide produce year-round leads to reliance on unsustainable and non-organic producers.
Lately, Greenling is seeing a big uptick in demand for its meal kits, which feature pre-cut and pre-measured ingredients ready to heat and serve. Kits are delivered in compostable or recycled containers and can even be tailored to customers’ unique dietary needs. So popular are Greenling’s meal kits that Greenling is currently expanding to a larger prep kitchen in order to accommodate demand.
Greenling was founded in 2005, funded by $5,000 investments each from Mason Arnold, current owner and CEO, and two co-founders. Since then, Greenling has raised $1.5 million from a range of investors and grown into the largest produce delivery service in central Texas, servicing roughly 5,000 customers along the I-35 corridor from Georgetown to San Antonio and everything in between. This year, Greenling is planning an expansion into the Dallas market, working with a network of farmers and producers to bring sustainable, organic produce to Dallas customers. At the heart of Greenling’s success is a simple and intuitive online store which displays available produce as large graphical icons—locally sourced produce marked with a prominent green tag—and allows customers to specify delivery dates and times. Its webstore and other innovations have allowed Greenling to succeed despite the capital-intensive nature of working with and delivering highly perishable produce. Customers who are interested in organic and sustainable produce tend to be more tech-savvy, notes Christine Blank of Supermarket News, and consumers in this demographic increasingly have less and less time to spend on going to the grocery store but still want to provide their families with healthy food options. Shopping online at Greenling only takes 10 to 15 minutes, notes owner Matthew Arnold in Blank’s piece “Organics Online,” as opposed to dealing with traffic congestion, parking and large crowds at a grocery store. Satisfying the needs of these time-strapped, net-savvy consumers has allowed Greenling to flourish on delivery services alone without the need to open a storefront. A lack of free time to shop for healthy food was what drew Patrick Condon to start shopping with Greenling, and their success in delivering such foods compelled him to invest in the company several years later. “They do all the research and vetting of farmers for me and then deliver the best of the best to my doorstep, “ Condon notes. “It is truly a farmer’s market on my doorstep.” Condon praises in particular Greenling’s plan to move into the Dallas market. “[Greenling is] positioned incredibly well for the changing tide happening in American’s taste in healthy and sustainable food alternatives,” since Greenling has been able to combine consumers’ nascent passion for sustainable foods with a successful business model.
Of course, online grocery shopping is nothing new. PeaPod, Safeway.com, Plumgood Foods, Planet Organics, MyWebGrocer and other businesses have all built successful online grocery shopping markets. Nor is interest in online grocery shopping confined to the US; global grocery giant Tesco this year rolled out a virtual grocery shopping smartphone app in Thailand and online grocery sales are expected to double in the UK over the next five years, all but overtaking traditional grocery shopping. But Greenling is unique in part because of its focus on regional geography, delivering Texas produce to central Texas eaters. Limiting business to Texas is an asset rather than a hindrance, Arnold notes, because “sometimes [Greenling has] a better timeframe for delivery” than distributors that focus on larger areas. Greenling’s marketing strategies are also very regionally focused, rarely relying on more than word of mouth to advertise their services.
“Growth has been spectacular,” Arnold remarks, noting the humble beginnings of the company running out of one of the co-founders’ garage. Seven years and $1.5 million raised from a range of investors later, Greenling is poised to continue growing and continue attempting to change the way we eat for the better.
