Tag: Capital Factory (Page 4 of 5)

The Tao of “Austinpreneur” Joshua Baer

June 26, 2012 / / 1 Comment


BY SUSAN LAHEY
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

Joshua Baer has a set of those millionaire-on-a-skateboard dotcom Gold Rush stories that give the Austin startup scene its own sexy tech history.
Baer graduated Carnegie Mellon with a less-than-stellar academic record, and a couple hundred grand in revenues from being an early dabbler in web hosting and email services. He secured two houses: one for his business and one for his home and skateboarded to work every morning. He was one of the dozens of entrepreneurs spun out during of the Golden Years of Trilogy. And, as a young man, he sold his first company and made enough money that he could afford to sit back and contemplate what he’d like to do with the rest of his life, now that he could do whatever he wanted.
He decided what he wanted was to help other entrepreneurs take their own version of the wild ride that brought him there. So Baer founded Capital Factory, which provides work space and mentoring to entrepreneurs. He’s also the founder and CEO of OtherInbox—which he sold in January to Return Path. He’s also a specialist at the University of Texas and an investor and advisor at more than 25 other companies.
The man who once-upon-a-time was scared to have his own company is equipping all the entrepreneurs he can with the knowledge and contacts to create theirs.
Baer grew up in Nashua, New Hampshire, a third-generation descendant of Eastern European immigrants. His father was portrait photographer and most of his ancestors were entrepreneurs.
“So when I first started a company, I thought of it as something achievable,” he said. “It wasn’t as intimidating to me as it is to some people.”
As a computer science major at Carnegie Mellon, he was an early internet adopter. At the time, if you wanted a web site you had to run your own web server. He couldn’t afford a web server and he didn’t get chosen for the StarNine WebSTAR beta program. So instead, he applied for the beta program for ListSTAR, an email server that fewer people were applying for. Being a student with time on his hands, he could afford to play with the email software and read the manual, which led him to start answering questions on the ListSTAR forum. He became the resident expert and eventually drew the attention of the StarNine CEO, who decided to make him an intern, an official spokesman of sorts, to answer questions on behalf of the company.
Soon people were hiring him to consult about issues on their servers, paying him a pizza or $10-$15 bucks an hour. He started farming out work he didn’t have time for to fraternity buddies who were computer science majors. Then one day, one of his customers proposed that, instead of fixing problems as they arose, he would pay Baer $50 a month just to keep his server up and running to avoid chronic breakdowns and angry customers. It looked like money for nothing and Baer launched into the server industry. That was the real beginning of his first company in 1996, SKYLIST. And as it grew, rapidly, Baer got nervous.
“I was afraid to have my own business,” he said. “I didn’t know what I didn’t know.” The CEO of StarNine had sold that company and started another. He offered to help Baer out by making Baer’s company a division of his own.
“By the time I graduated in 1999 I had a couple hundred thousand dollars in revenue,” he said. “I employed a couple people doing tech support and people doing programming. I was the king of my world. I could buy more beer than anybody I knew.”
He got inundated with job offers. But then Jonathan Berkowitz, a friend who graduated six months before him, got hired by Trilogy Inc. and told him about it.
“I met with the CEO and he said ‘Keep your company. Come down here, work for me, learn a ton on my dime and when you’re done you can go back up there.” How could he refuse?
He brought his CMU gang who were working for him down to Austin. They housed servers in his house until they ran out of room, then rented a place up the street. His next company, UnsubCentral, spun out of SKYLIST. Compliance rules were emerging around email and he created a leading compliance solution for email list operators. Part of that company required him to meet with the Federal Trade Commission to provide industry comment on CAN-SPAM. He was 24.
“I don’t really enjoy wearing a suit,” he recalls. “But if I had to do it again now I am so much more confident and better prepared, I would totally show up in jeans and a t-shirt. Back then I was a 24-year-old trying to be an adult.”
When he was 30, he sold both SKYLIST and UnsubCentral to Datran Media (now PulsePoint) for an undisclosed amount estimated at $10 million in 2006. And that changed his life.
“Selling my first company was an inflection point,” he said. “Right as I turned 30 I sold my first company. It was a life changing event. I wasn’t doing poorly before I sold the company but I never had any financial security. ..your perspective on life changes when you have financial security.”
He pondered what he wanted to do. Go sit on a beach? A career as an EMT seemed exciting. “I romanticized the idea….” he said. “It must be incredible to walk home every day and say I saved two people’s lives today. But I pass out when they take blood from me.”
“Then I realized: I get a ton of personal satisfaction from helping people become entrepreneurs. … If I help somebody actually get their company started I feel successful. I get a ton of positive energy back from them…. The best way I can help the world is to help one person achieve financial independence. They’re going to make their own lives better and it’s going to have a trickle-down effect. If they start a company, that makes Austin better. That makes the world better. That’s I thing I can do and I’m good at it.”
So that’s what he does. He has always been a good networker, by his own admission. And he teaches what he’s learned along the way.
“He was one of the instructors for our class, we got to get advice from him on a weekly basis,” said Dwayne Smurdon, CEO of Predictable Data, a company that was created in one of Baer’s classes. “He’s very pragmatic. He gets down to issues you really need to worry about rather than the big scale issues like human resources. He focuses on what is the minimum you have to do to be viable, to get your company started up. “
That might include teaching students how to deal with mentors: Make sure you’re prepared to ask them very specific, targeted questions. Don’t waste your time or their time. Make sure you’re asking until they’ve said no; you never know how much a mentor is going to give.
It includes pitching advice: Start with a story people can relate to. Start with a small picture and build towards the big picture.
“He helps you network, get involved in the entrepreneurial community,” said Smurdon. “He’ll introduce you and what you do with that is up to you. It’s such a big advantage that other people who didn’t’ get to know someone like Josh don’t have.”
Both Smurdon and Baer say he emphasizes focus. There are so many potential issues to tackle, entrepreneurs don’t know where to look first. During pitch competitions, he said, entrepreneurs need to be able to drill down to the point.
“My goal is that I should be able to help everyone in some way: Introduce them to somebody, help them figure out a key tactic–something to do differently,” Baer said. And he’s carved a unique spot for himself in the world of Austin startups
“Josh is such a great catalyst for the city of Austin,” said Bryan Jones, 2012 chair of the Greater Austin Technology Partnership through the Austin Chamber of Commerce and CEO of Collider Media. “There aren’t many people that are both a successful entrepreneur, prolific investor and community activist. His ability to evangelize the city, while still making the community feel smaller by making constant introductions, is amazing.”
Baer is a fierce advocate for Austin as a tech growth center and weighs in often on the Silicon Valley vs. Silicon Hills controversy. While California benefits from a greater supply of early stage capital, for example, he points out that fewer companies need that much capital. He, for example, bootstrapped his first two companies.
“We want to learn what we can from the Silicon Valley, take their investors and their money and never become them. They’re at the pinnacle, they are the Mecca of consumer internet technology but they’re kind of like an established old boy club. It’s not impossible to break into that, but it’s hard. It’s hard to carve out a niche. Austin is a big pond that’s growing. That’s the exciting place to be for me, not in the busiest, most crowded room, but a growing one that creates opportunity…. You can affect what it’s becoming. You can change it. You’re not going to change Silicon Valley….I was a nobody in Austin but I’ve been able to get involved, get to be part of the community, stepping up and filling the void. There are places to jump in and play your part in what is going to be.”
So that’s what he’s bringing to Austin. The message and the knowledge to invite entrepreneurs: There’s opportunity here…come and play.

A Glimpse of the New Capital Factory Coworking Space

June 8, 2012 / / 0 Comments

The Austin Chamber last week selected Capital Factory to create a downtown coworking space for technology entrepreneurs as part of its Austin Tech Live initiative.
Josh Baer, cofounder of Capital Factory, a technology accelerator program for entrepreneurs, discusses the new space in this video.
Also this week, Paul O’Brien with Cospace announced its partnership with Capital Factory to manage the new facility.
Cospace will manage operations and provide classes and events for Austin’s tech and entrepreneurship scene.
Cospace, known in Austin as the home to entrepreneurs focused on Lean business and product development, is a collaborative business community that has supported nearly two dozen startups, facilitated the launch of more than 50 products, and hosted over 1500 students through classes in technology and entrepreneurship.

A Collaborative Center for Tech Entrepreneurs Launches in Austin

May 31, 2012 / / 0 Comments

Josh Baer introduces a new coworking and collaboration space downtown

A groovy new space in a downtown Austin high-rise offers tech entrepreneurs a place to develop startups.
It’s part of the Austin TechLive initiative by the Austin Chamber to create a tech-focused coworking site. Capital Factory will oversee the 22,000 square foot space on the 16th floor of Austin Centre at 701 Brazos Street. The wide-open floor offers spectacular panoramic city views. It’s furnished with Herman Miller desks and chairs and even has a full cafeteria. The workspace should appeal to creative people who like bright, expansive and beautiful office space. Smiley Media formerly occupied the offices.
“This is confirmation that coworking has moved beyond the emerging stage and is here to stay,” said Liz Elam who runs Link Coworking in Austin. She also organizes the Global Coworking Unconference Conference.
Coworking spaces provide workers with shared desks, conference rooms and other work areas. The number of co-working spaces has nearly doubled each year since 2006 to 1,300 worldwide in 2011 and projected to increase to 2,150 this year, according to Deskmag, which follows the industry.
The Capital Factory coworking site already has 60 desks filled and a waiting list from entrepreneurs wanting to rent a desk there, said Josh Baer, managing director of the Capital Factory, an Austin-based accelerator for tech startups. He referred to the coworking site as the “community entrepreneurial center of gravity.” A desk at the coworking center costs $750 a month and a community membership, which allows a person to work in the common areas, costs $150 a month. The site provides round the clock access everyday to members.
The Austin Chamber of Commerce selected the Capital Factory as its strategic partner for Austin TechLive. A few companies including Baer’s startup, OtherInBox, which Return Path acquired earlier this year, and WP Engine are already moving into the space. It will be fully launched within a few months.
In addition to the Capital Factory, the University of Texas at Austin and the General Assembly of New York are helping out with the new center. The General Assembly will offer certified educational programs at Austin TechLive.
During a press conference Thursday morning, Baer talked about the need to create “healthy vibrant strong companies” in Austin. And said there’s been a lot of talk lately about Austin versus Silicon Valley and other places. By creating a dense tech environment downtown, the new coworking center can foster interaction, connections and collaboration among the city’s high tech workforce, Baer said. That will lead to new companies and more high-tech jobs, he said. His goal is to have 250 companies occupy the space.
The other companies moving into the Capital Factory coworking space include Swoosh Traffic, Agent Pronto, Tweet.TV and Swimtopia.
The Capital Factory coworking space will also be the site of tech events, meetups and training, Baer said. The goal is to bring together tech events that happen all over the city into the central coworking site, he said. For example, Capital Factory used to host Austin on Rails but it got too big and moved to a bar. He plans to host that again in the new center.
The idea of the central coworking space focused on the tech sector is similar to an initiative launched last November in San Antonio called Geekdom. It’s a collaborative workspace with more than 300 community members and it recently expanded to another floor at the downtown Weston Centre. But while Geekdom is run as a nonprofit organization, the Capital Factory coworking space is a business, Baer said. A group of successful Austin entrepreneurs put up the money to launch the site. They include Baer, Bill Boebel, Andrew Busey, Ross Buhrdorf and Dan Graham.
“Nobody is trying to make a lot of money off this,” Baer said. “The people who did this really want to help entrepreneurs in Austin.”
“The mission is to create this great entrepreneurial center downtown,” said Bryan Jones, chair of the Austin Chamber’s Technology Partnership.
In addition to launching the coworking space, the Chamber’s Tech Partnership is focused on creating 5,000 new technology jobs, up 5 percent from last year and to attract 50 new technology startups to the Austin region, including 10 at the new Capital Factory space. It also wants to recruit 15 new entrepreneurial companies to the Austin region.
One of the biggest challenges startup companies face is hiring great talent, Baer said. The Capital Factory coworking space will attract that talent and help the new startups grow, he said.
Chuck Gordon, cofounder of Sparefoot, a Capital Factory company from 2009, has seen firsthand how being in a shared workspace with other tech companies can help a startup grow to a large company.
“It’s possible. We did it,” said Gordon.
Sparefoot recently moved out of the Omni building to 5,600 square feet in a neighboring building. The company now has 45 employees.
“Tons of companies in San Francisco and New York go to incubators,” Gordon said. Those spaces serve as entrepreneurial ecosystems that strengthens the entire technology industry in those cities, he said.
“This is going to make it happen here,” he said. “The networking opportunities of getting a bunch of smart people in one space are incredible.”
Boebel, managing director of Capital Factory, will manage the new coworking space in partnership with Cospace, an Austin coworking site.
Capital Factory will leverage Cospace’s expertise for IT services, furniture, assigning workstations and all the nuts and bolts that go into running a coworking center, Boebel said.
“I’m mostly excited about working with the startups,” he said. One of the benefits of working at the site will be access to successful entrepreneurs like Boebel, who sold his e-mail hosting company to Rackspace. And Baer, who has founded and sold several startups.
“I wish there was a space like this when I started my company,” Boebel said. He founded what eventually came to be known as Webmail.Us in the basement of a townhouse in Blacksburg, Va.
“It’s nice to be around other entrepreneurs who are going through the same things,” Boebel said. “Friends and family don’t understand what it’s like to bootstrap a company.”
The coworking environment allows the startups to learn from each other’s mistakes and that can accelerate their progress, Boebel said.
Also, the space allows them to share resources, he said. Three companies might be able to hire one User Interface Designer, he said.
Boebel is also working on setting up a fund to provide access to seed stage investment for startup companies at Capital Factory.
Jason Cohen started Capital Factory with Baer in 2009. In surveys of the program participants, the entrepreneurs always reported access to mentoring and the close working proximity of the other startups as the top benefits of the program, Cohen said. The Capital Factory coworking space provides both, he said.
“It’s an insane space,” Cohen said. “It has just the right kind of attitude and energy for creative people.”
That helps WP Engine, a hosting service for 40,000 WordPress blogs, which has 15 Austin employees and 20 overall, Cohen said. He founded WP Engine a few years ago. It’s adding two new employees every month, Cohen said. The space will help in recruiting, he said. “Who wouldn’t want to work here?”

Storymix to pitch at SXSW’s Hatch

February 28, 2012 / / 0 Comments

Storymix Media graduated from Capital Factory in Austin last year.
Since then, Mike and Ariane Fisher, the husband and wife founders, have expanded and diversified the startup’s product line from wedding videos to business, bar mitzvahs and personal videos.
“Now when people think of Storymix video we’re not just a wedding video maker,” Mike Fisher said. “We’re the perfect site to get a video for any event you’re going to.”
Storymix Media, based in Oak Park, Il., also released a free iPhone app. It works when someone buys a video production package. They get a code to activate the iPhone app, Fisher said.
Storymix Media has also launched an affiliate program that it has developed so that event planners can re-sell or refer its services to their clients.
On March 11, Storymix Media will be among 15 finalists that will present their companies in a four minute pitch at HATCH, an event being held as part of the new SXSW Startup Village.
The top three companies to gain the most “virtual dollar” votes from the judges win.
“We looked at this as an opportunity to be able to showcase what we’re doing,” Fisher said. “It’s a great chance for us to get in front of investors outside of Chicago. Investors from different areas of the country.”
Storymix Media is looking for $1.5 million in seed stage funding.

One of Storymix’s wedding videos for a client

Greenling wants to change the way you eat

December 27, 2011 / / 0 Comments

At the Capital Factory’s Demo Day, Mason Arnold gave a quick pitch on Greenling, the organic grocery delivery service.
“Our food system is broke,” Arnold said.
He estimates more than half the population in the U.S. will die from food-related disease, primarily obesity-related illnesses. He founded Greenling to change the way people eat. And he says Greenling “makes it easy, fun and delicious to change the way you eat.”
If you’re making resolutions for the new year to eat right and exercise, you might want to check them out. The Austin-based startup has more than 5,000 customers. Some of their most popular products are their seasonal veggie boxes and complete meal kits. Greenling recently partnered with Austin-based Whole Foods, which also works with local and organic farmers to bring fresh produce to customers in the Austin and San Antonio region.
This video is from the Capital Factory’s Demo Day.

And if you still want to know more, check out Greenling’s video.

Austin-San Antonio tech start-up incubators, accelerators and other programs

November 27, 2011 / / 4 Comments

So many central Texas start-ups have taken off recently and some of them may need a boost to get to the next level.
This list of Austin and San Antonio incubators and accelerators help companies with a leg up in the marketplace.
Some of them have rigorous application and screening processes. Check them out to find the one that’s right for your venture.

Tech Ranch is a for-profit incubator founded in 2008 by Kevin Koym and Jonas Lamis. It offers co-working space for start-ups, consulting services and specialized programs to help entrepreneurs launch their ventures. Its flagship programs are Camp Fires, which are informal gatherings on Friday, Venture Forth, an 8-week program, and Pioneer Program, a weekly meeting coupled with monthly rent for office space.

Kevin Koym Press Kit

View more documents from Shennandoah Diaz

Capital Factory, founded in 2009 by Joshua Baer and Bryan Menell, is a seed-stage technology accelerator for startups. It runs a 10 week program that begins in May and runs through August. It ends with a Demo Day in September in which the companies pitch to potential investors, media and others.

TechStars Cloud is the newest accelerator for high-tech startups in the Silicon Hills area. It’s based at the Geekdom in downtown San Antonio. The inaugural class of TechStar Cloud companies kicks off in January. Each company receives $18,000 and access to another $100,000 loan. The 12-week program ends with a Demo Day.

Austin Technology Incubator, founded in 1989, has helped more than 200 companies. It’s part of the IC2 Institute at the University of Texas.

Texas Venture Labs at the University of Texas helps accelerate startup companies in central Texas.

SXSW Accelerator 2012 – this is the fourth year for this competition which features 48 start-up companies pitching to an audience of investors and experienced entrepreneurs. The judges then choose 18 finalists who give a final pitch and then the winners are chosen.

One Semester Start-up at the University of Texas debuted this fall. The companies will pitch to investors and others on Thursday. Professor of Innovation and Murchison Fellow of Free Enterprise Bob Metcalfe, Joshua Baer of Capital Factory and John Butler, Director of H.K. Entrepreneurship Center at the University of Texas head up the program.

This Friday, Ash Maurya, founder of Spark59 and author of Running Lean, is putting on a one-day workshop at Tech Ranch Austin. The program, which costs $249, starts at 9 a.m.

Other programs designed to spur innovation among the entrepreneurial mindset include:

3 Day Startup

RISE Austin

Famigo lets families play together safely on small screens

November 17, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Cody Powell, "Matt Sullivan" and Q Beck of Famigo. (Matt was out sick)


By Susan Lahey
Special contributor to Silicon Hills News

When people write about Austin start-up Famigo’s new tool, the Sandbox, they focus on the benefit: Parents can pass their mobile phones to children, touching the Sandbox icon, and restricting that kid to a safe world of age-appropriate games. In the Sandbox, he can never dial Mom’s boss, delete all her email or send a personal photo to her best client.

And really, that is a great benefit for an app. But that’s not what’s groundbreaking about Famigo. What sets this company apart is that, unlike many developers focused on doing cool stuff with smart phones, Famigo is committed to transforming mobile devices to something that works with families, the way families work. From its apps to its website, written in regular English, its focus is on the organic, dynamic, diverse, messy ecosystem known as a family.

“Most developers aren’t thinking about the individual,” said Bart Bohn, formerly lead advisor at the Austin Technology Incubator and currently co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of Ravel Data. “Famigo is focused on a family solution, not a specific piece of content. That’s really unique. Q (Beck, Famigo cofounder) talks about the four quadrants: If you can engage both young and old, men and women, that’s a home run. That’s approaching a family as a family.”

Q Beck (and yes, it’s Q, like Harry S Truman was just S) learned about engaging families from the masters. A Texas native, he studied at Columbia University in New York and at Columbia College and worked in film for companies such as Nickelodeon and Dreamworks. He worked as a product development executive, choosing films to make as well as picking directors, casts and more.

He loves the family as an audience; loves how a movie like The Princess Bride or E.T. can draw family members into a powerful shared experience.

Then, one day, he was staring down at Australia’s Great Barrier Reef from a helicopter. His boss’s kids were sitting behind him, playing games on mobile devices, oblivious to their surroundings. And Beck had an epiphany. Just like great media can pull families together, sometimes media can isolate people. That’s when the seed of Famigo started to germinate.

Beck was a little disillusioned with the film industry: Too little opportunity to produce really original work; too many remakes and predictable plots. He wanted to instigate something powerful for families and push back against forces dividing them. He wasn’t sure how, but he could see that smart phones played a big role in people’s lives.

“These aren’t just phones,” he said, indicating his smart phone. They’re computers. For people born after 2000, they’re the first computer they’ll ever own. I knew I wanted to do something to make this emerging technology work with families.”

He pursued an MBA at the University of Texas. And in his second year, met cofounder Matt Sullivan who had just earned a Ph.D. in neuroscience. Both of them were interns at the Austin Technology Incubator. Beck and Sullivan knew what they wanted to do, but they needed a software developer to make it work: At a speed-dating event for start-ups at Capital Factory, an Austin-based tech startup accelerator, they met Cody Powell, a Dallas native who had been making “horrible websites” for his dad’s friends since he was 14.

They launched in 2009. At first Famigo created family friendly games for mobile devices, but then the founders saw that game apps were proliferating like kudzu. So they evolved to become the company that helps families find the best apps, the right apps for their kids’ age, the family culture. Famigo has programs that cull apps for various attributes. The good ones are then tested, evaluated and rated by actual human beings working for the company—often interns. Famigo keeps track of what games kids play and the more popular ones rise to the top of the parental review list. Famigo also sends parents a weekly email telling them what games—educational or otherwise—their kids are playing and recommending other games based on what kids already play.

Then, a few weeks ago, Famigo introduced the Sandbox.

As far as Keith Gaddis—father of three-year-old Francis is concerned—the Sandbox is a godsend. A software developer, Gaddis is usually in heavy demand from clients. So he couldn’t quite get why, suddenly, he just stopped getting calls and emails. Turns out Francis had gotten hold of the shiny phone with the colorful buttons and blocked everything. Gaddis was one of the 3,000 or so Beta customers for Sandbox and he chose an android phone partly because he could use Sandbox on it. (The Sandbox doesn’t currently work with iOS though Famigo’s other services do). As of about 10 days after launch, Gaddis is one of about 10,000 Sandbox parents.

“Francis will grab the phone, open it up– he knows what the icon looks like–so he just pushes the button because he knows that’s where his games are…..” Gaddis said. “Once he’s in there, he’s locked in (until a parent releases the phone with a special code).” Nor can kids click on ads on any of the apps. Pushing the ad icon takes them right back to the opening of the Sandbox.

“We supervise what he plays very carefully. This is big win for anybody who has kids who know how to use your phone.”

Most of the Famigo team is young and kidless. Cody Powell has one-year-old August. So the company has created a parent advisory board. Beck sees this as a plus. Back in the movie business, he said, if an executive’s six-year-old fell in love with dinosaurs, there was suddenly a directive from above to make lots of dinosaur movies. With Famigo, they’re not structuring the products and services for one family, but for all families. Families can decide what apps are appropriate or not for their own kids.

Famigo’s working on customizing the experience so each family member can have his or her own profile and set of games, creating a “virtual living room.” The important thing, Beck said, is creating a shared experience, the way Angry Birds has in many families, or Princess Bride did when he was a kid.

Some day, Bohn of Ravel Data said, Famigo’s focus on the customer may become a best practice in the industry, rather than a distinguishing characteristic: “They have that kind of brand potential.”

Hurricane Party reinvents itself as Foreca.st

November 16, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Eric Katerman, one of the founders of Austin-based Hurricane Party, spoke at Austin Startup Week at the Tiniest Bar in Texas. He said the team at Hurricane Party spent a year building a product that no one really wanted. They’ve since created Foreca.st, which is in Beta testing.
Hurricane Party was party of The Capital Factory’s startup class of 2010. The founders, Rene Pinnell and Katerman received $20,000 in seed stage funding to develop their idea.
At South by Southwest 2010, Hurricane Party generated a lot of buzz. It’s free app for smart phones that helps people plan parties on the fly.
But as Katerman explains in the video, they created something that didn’t gain enough traction in the marketplace.
So they went back to the drawing board to look at what worked and what didn’t work. (The whole adage about failing and learning from it in a startup environment.) That’s when they came up with Foreca.st, an app that lets a select group of friends know where you’re heading for lunch or a party or any kind of get together.

Famigo creates a virtual sandbox to keep kids safe

November 3, 2011 / / 1 Comment

In our backyard, under a giant oak tree, my husband built a marvelous sandbox.
My son spent hours playing there and I never worried about his safety.
The sandbox in today’s fast-paced digital world has become the cell phone, laptop or tablet computer. So parents need new tools to ensure their children are safe.
That’s the idea behind Famigo’s new virtual sandbox for kids.
The Austin-based startup released the Famigo Sandbox app for Android cell phones today. It provides a safe environment for kids to explore apps on their parents mobile devices.
The app creates a virtual wall between the kid-friendly apps on a device and the rest of the applications such as e-mail, phone contacts and web browsing.
Famigo, founded in 2009 and a graduate of the Capital Factory, an Austin startup accelerator, specializes in reviewing kid friendly applications for mobile devices. Its flagship product is the Famigo Family App Review identifying more than 30,000 kid-friendly apps.

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