Three months ago, a group of entrepreneurs moved into Geekdom in downtown San Antonio.
Since then, the inaugural TechStars Cloud participants have been toiling away and working to create blockbuster cloud businesses that will change the world.
Some have iterated, pivoted and overhauled their operations countless times. Names have changed. Teams have mixed it up.
But in the end, 11 companies stand ready to present today at the Charline McCombs Empire Theatre in downtown San Antonio.
The event kicks off at 9:30 a.m. and ends around 2 p.m. But a reception later in the evening at the Weston Centre will celebrate the accomplishments of this group of entrepreneurs and their leaders, Jason Seats, founder of SliceHost and Nicole Glaros, managing director of TechStars in Boulder, Colo. Seats and Glaros ran the TechStars Cloud program.
The TechStars Cloud focused on cloud computing and cloud infrastructure. Its mentors included Pat Condon, founder of Rackspace, Jeff Lawson, founder and CEO of Twilio, Brad Feld, head of the Foundry Group, George Kardis with SoftLayer, Rajat Bhargava, founder and CEO of StillSecure and dozens more.
All of the companies received $18,000 and access to more. Today, some of the companies will ask for investment capital, while others are fully funded. The audience will include venture capitalists and angel investors.
Tag: San Antonio (Page 13 of 17)
This weekend a special 3 Day Startup takes place at Home Away’s headquarters in Austin.
And another 3 Day Startup is scheduled for the weekend of April 27 at Geekdom at the Weston Centre in downtown San Antonio.
The deadline to apply to participate is April 18th. And there’s a top secret meet up at Trinity on April 12 to learn more about the event.
Alan Weinkrantz, a PR expert who resides at Geekdom, has written this post on what 3 Day Startup is and why you should apply to attend.
To get a glimpse of what it was like at the last 3 Day Startup in San Antonio last November, check out this story I wrote about it. I was impressed with the level of passion and commitment the participants had and their creative ideas and execution in a short period of time. At the end of the weekend, the entrepreneurs pitched their companies to a group of judges and investors. In fact, several companies have spun out of 3 Day Startup including Hoot.me.
InnoTech San Antonio has grown dramatically since it started five years ago, said Sean Lowery, the event’s executive director.
This year 65 exhibitors showcased their technology on the exhibit floor including Geekdom, a collaborative downtown workspace, Sirius Computer Solutions, a San Antonio-based information technology solutions provider and Nuboso, a startup cloud computing hosting company.
The show also served as a platform for a handful of startup companies to present their companies to potential investors and others interested in technology companies.
The day-long education program also featured dozens of speakers talking about everything from mobile apps to cloud computing and hiring high tech workers.
A self-described “motley crew of passionate developers, marketers, mattress testers, and professional eaters” took home the top prize at the fourth annual InnoTech San Antonio Beta Summit Thursday.
CallGrader, a 9-month old startup, won the three judges over to claim first place in the competition. The founders include Daniel Garcia, Ben Niemietz, Chip Mobley and Jonathan Dobbertin.
CallGrader has created a software application that allows companies to track the performance of advertising campaigns using its grading system. The software tracks phone calls to a designated number and then grades the quality of those calls to tell whether the advertising is on target and delivering the desired results.
CallGrader launched its beta version of its product in January and quickly signed up about 300 non-paying customers. It has focused on plumbers and heating and air-conditioning markets so far.
The team is currently finishing out building the platform. So far, they’ve bootstrapped their operations, but they plan to seek about $350,000 in venture financing within a few months, said Garcia.
ZippyKid, a WordPress hosting company, and SnappTours, a smartphone platform targeted at art museums, came in second and third respectively.
All of the top three companies reside at Geekdom at the Weston Centre in downtown San Antonio.
In all, six companies competed at the San Antonio Convention Center. They delivered eight-minute pitches. But the summit dragged on longer because of technical difficulties in loading up the computer presentations.
The other companies included BudgetDoc, a healthcare referral service, Making Sense, a mobile app developer and REDU Concepts, which makes a Kinect rehabilitation game aimed at those with traumatic brain injury and autism. REDU Concepts, formed by a group of University of Texas at San Antonio students, just advanced to round three of the Microsoft XBox/Windows competition.
“Today is all about showcasing innovation,” said Richard Perez, president of the Greater San Antonio Chamber of Commerce. The winner received a one-year membership in the chamber.
SnappTours took home third place in the InnoTech San Antonio Beta Summit. The 18-month old startup has created a mobile app platform aimed at museums to share their art collections with visitors via a smartphone.
Gary Shapiro, president and CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association
He also supports the JOBS Act, which President Obama is expected to sign into law today. That legislation contains a crowd funding provision that makes it easier for startup companies to crowd fund their operations.
Shapiro also wrote a 2011 bestselling book The Comeback: How Innovation will Restore the American Dream, outlining ways that the U.S. can compete globally with powerhouses such as China and India.
For more information, Shapiro has established Innovation-Movement.org.
(InnoTech is an advertiser with SiliconHillsNews.com)
At the Starbucks across the street from Rackspace, Stacey Zuniga, a founder of Unwired Nation, last Friday talked about the company’s latest partnership.
“We’re here to enable the enablers,” Zuniga said.
Austin-based Unwired Nation creates a mobile app platform for companies. It recently joined the Rackspace Partner Program to offer mobile apps as a service to select Rackspace customers.
Stacey Zuniga, founder of Unwired Nation
Every company wants a mobile app for its business, Zuniga said. Unwired Nation can deliver uniquely branded apps quickly and cheaply, he said.
The problem is that for many large companies like car dealerships or pharmacies, it’s difficult for them to offer their customers a mobile version of their app across all the different types of mobile phone platforms.
But Unwired Nation can create a mobile app for them that scales to fit the size of their business, Zuniga said.
Founded in 2004, Unwired Nation has gone through several changes or “pivots” as its known in the startup world. Now the company focuses solely on delivering mobile applications through its platform that focuses on delivering affordable, scalable business functions.
“In this space, we’re the non-sexy solution that makes money,” Zuniga said.
Driving Force Auto in Houston with hundreds of dealerships is one of Unwired Nation’s customers. So is Q2ebanking, an online banking company. Rackspace chose Unwired Nation to partner with because “they happen to be in our backyard,” said Schroepfer. “Their technology seems unique.”
Unwired Nation has created a special messaging system that operates in the background of the app. It allows the app developers to closely communicate with customers and it keeps all the messages in one place.
“That solves some real problems,” Schroepfer said. “There is some real intellectual property to making mobile rich. We want to have that solution be available to our customers.”
“Mobile is not going away,” he said. “It’s only going to get bigger.”
Rackspace launched Appmatcher aimed at businesses. It’s still in beta form, Schroepfer said.
“We launched a marketplace in a crowded marketplace,” Schroepfer said.
Rackspace and Unwired Nation have selected certain markets to target and they have identified customers that would benefit for the mobile app platform, Schroepfer said.
Unwired Nation with 15 employees is ready to gear up for the new customers, Zuniga said. Late last year, the company closed on a $6.5 million round of funding that will help the company expand.
Rackspace is a sponsor of SiliconHillsNews
At the Geekdom, twice a week, entrepreneurs behind the 11 TechStars Cloud companies gather to pitch their ventures.
Jason Seats with laptop, Nicole Glaros behind him and Nicholas Longo, Geekdom director , listening to TechStar Cloud pitches
“Jokes are only good if they land,” Seats said at the end of one pitch.
“I was totally wrapped up in the story, which was great,” said Glaros in response to another pitch.
“I want to see more interactions with data and the service,” said Seats.
“It was just a little too dragged out,” Glaros said. “I want you to move through it faster.”
“Maybe you need less of those slides,” Seats said.
The goal is by April 11, the TechStars Demo Day at the Charline McCombs Empire Theatre in downtown San Antonio, that the 11 companies rate at least an eight on a presentation scale that ranges from one to ten. At this session, almost three weeks from Demo Day, most of the companies rank at seven or lower. (Seats takes away a point from those presenters still using notes and almost all of the presenters are still reading from note cards.)
One of the TechStars Cloud entrepreneurs pitching his venture during practice
Most of the names of the companies are embargoed until Demo Day. But Cloudability, a Portland-based company, has already publicly posted about its involvement in the program. The company, which launched in November of 2011, has created a software platform that allows companies to track their cloud spending online. The company’s software draws from hosting companies’ data. It has more than 1,000 companies from 72 countries signed up to manage nearly $52 million in cloud spending. Cloudability has 10 employees and has already raised $1.2 million in a seed round of funding.
Mat Ellis, the company’s founder, has written about his TechStars incubator experiences on his company’s blog. Cloudability also participated in the Portland Incubator Experiment’s inaugural class.
Cloudability is one of the more mature startups involved in the TechStars Cloud program. Some of the companies are just starting out.
“It’s been a good program,” said Seats, during a recent interview at his office. “I feel like everyone has gotten a lot of value out of it.”
The TechStars program has had its ups and downs. Some people left the program. Other startups completely revamped their companies. But that’s Ok, Seats said.
In fact, the first phase of the program focused on the TechStar members’ ideas and setting up a foundation for their businesses. The TechStars’ 170 mentors hammered the entrepreneurs with questions and poked holes in their business plans.
“You either crumble or adapt,” Seats said. “Good ideas respond positively to that kind of pummeling.”
Seats compared the process to forging metal.
“The first month is about applying enough beatings to see if this is the right direction,” Seats said. “What’s working or what’s not working?”
During the second phase, the companies did mentor “dating” to match up with the right mentors for their business. In the end, each team got between three to six lead mentors, Seats said.
The last phase of the program is all about execution, Seats said. The TechStar Cloud companies spend countless hours programming, working on business fundamentals, marketing and more. They often work until late into the night and on the weekends.
But the TechStar Cloud startup founders have also had some fun. They all went to South by Southwest in Austin in March. They also regularly go to local bars, restaurants and museums together.
But in the final weeks of the program, everyone is focused on nailing their presentation pitches and running their businesses.
“For the majority of these companies, this is their shot,” Seats said.
San Antonio-based Startech Foundation is now accepting applications to the Texas Emerging Technology Fund from south central Texas based technology startups.
The program is aimed at providing seed stage funding for technology startups, university faculty and others focused on emerging technology.
“Funds may be used for any legitimate business purpose but the primary focus of the fund is to facilitate those technologies that are ready to come off the lab bench and get into the marketplace,” Jim Poage, president of Startech, said in a news statement.
Companies interested in applying should contact Erica Amaya or at 210-458-2713 for details. Startech will be accepting applications until 11:59 p.m. on April 17.
In January, entrepreneurs from all over the country arrived in San Antonio for the first ever TechStars Cloud.
Nicole Glaros, one of the program’s directors, moved to San Antonio with her family for the three month program.
Jason Seats, the other director, says the program is coming to a conclusion with TechStars Cloud Demo Day on April 11th at the Charline McCombs Empire Theater at 226 N. St. Mary’s Street.
At the event, 11 TechStars Cloud teams will give eight minute company pitches to the audience which will include investors, TechStar mentors, family and friends as well as community members.
To reserve a seat, you’ve got to RSVP on Eventbrite because the event is expected to be at capacity.
Angel and other investors can also contact Jason Seats directly about reserving a seat at the event.
TechStars Cloud Demo Day runs from 9:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. with an after party at the Weston Center Terrace starting at 7 p.m.