Tag: SXSW (Page 2 of 5)

It’s All About Your Startup Story: SXSW Pitch Contest by Silicon Hills, ATI and CTAN

January 23, 2014 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 0 Comments

By SUSAN LAHEY
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

It will be a SXSW pitch competition with a media twist. ATI/Silicon Hills Startup Pitch, sponsored by Silicon Hills News, Austin Technology Incubator and Central Texas Angel Network, will give 10 Austin companies a chance to pitch in front of investors and the media to determine two things:
1. How appealing is your company as an investment?
2. Can you tell a story the media finds irresistible?
Many companies know the criteria investors look for: A strong team, market validation, disruption, potential for big returns. Then they try to pitch their story to the media using the same criteria. But what makes a story sexy to reporters doesn’t always fall in these categories. A startup might become a media darling because it has a super colorful founder who gives great quotes. It might have an inspiring back story about a person whose life was changed by the product or technology. It might include a “dark night of the soul” aspect where the company nearly failed but pivoted and rose to success.
Everybody loves a good story.
“Communication is paramount,” said Kyle Cox, director of IT/Wireless & University Development portfolios at ATI. “Often entrepreneurs are too close to their own solution and find it difficult to succinctly tell their story. (Entrepreneur and venture capitalist) Mark Suster has famously said that VC’s invest in ‘lines not dots.’ Having a memorable story, a hook, for why your company is differentiated and defensible is a key component to begin building that ‘line.’”
Among the prizes is a series of articles published in Silicon Hills—which has 20,000 unique visitors monthly–about one of the companies. This would be a kind of Hero’s Journey series which might include an initial profile about the founding of the company, another about some pivot or series of iterations they’re wrestling with, another about their process learning to pitch. The topics will depend on the company.
Other prizes include three months membership in ATI’s Landing Pad Portfolio, three hours pitch coaching from Articulate Persuasion’s Monique Maley, who has coached some of the top startups in Austin, and free entry into CTAN’s next funding cycle. Each of the 10 teams competing will receive one SXSW Interactive badge.
The first round of the competition will be held online at AustinFastPitch.com. Online applications must be in by February 5th. From those applicants, judges will pick 10 startups, each of which will pitch on March 9 at the Austin Chamber Offices. The first round will take place at 9:30; the final round at 11 a.m.
Judges for the event include Venu Shamapant Live Oak Partners, John Stockton of Mayfield Fund, Pat Noonan of Austin Ventures, Monique Maley, Gary Forni of CTAN and Tom Chederar of Venture Beat.
The event is part of SXSW’s Austin section of Startup Village, one of the most popular and fastest growing sectors of Interactive.
“It’s great to have an event where Austin startups get a chance to represent on the worldwide stage that is SXSW,” Cox said.

Silicon Hills News Launches a Kickstarter Campaign

January 18, 2014 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 0 Comments

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.

Second Annual “Move Your Company to Austin” Competition at SXSW

January 6, 2014 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 15 Comments

Joshua Baer, cofounder at Capital Factory and a serial entrepreneur, has announced the second annual “Move Your Company to Austin” competition.
The pitch competition will take place at South By Southwest. Baer announced the competition in his weekly Startup Digest Austin email newsletter.
Last year, Meritful, which is like LinkedIn for college students, won the competition in which it competed against five other startups.
The Ann Arbor, Michigan-based startup moved to Austin but it still kept an office in Ann Arbor.
The company’s competition, Pictrition, ended up moving to Austin on its own from Dallas.
“Maybe it’s because Austin is the most cost-effective place to launch a startup or the pipeline of talent coming out of the University of Texas,” Gordon Daugherty, a Capital Factory mentor and investor, wrote in a post on Capital Factory’s website. “Maybe it’s because of the 300+ days of sunshine each year or the vibrant live music scene. It’s no surprise that Austin is one of the fastest growing cities in the US and everyone wants to live somewhere that is growing and booming versus the alternative.”
This year, the package for the startup moving to Austin is even more lucrative than the $100,000 package awarded to Mertiful.
The 2014 Move Your Company to Austin winner will receive a $50,000 investment prize and more than $150,000 in other prizes.
The competition will be held on March 7th during the South by Southwest Interactive Festival. “Five startups will compete for a cash investment, office space, housing, moving expenses, free groceries and more in an epic pitch competition,” according to Daugherty.

Deadline to Apply for SXSW Accelerator is Nov. 8th

November 3, 2013 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 1 Comment

Every year, tech startups look forward to the highly selective South by Southwest Accelerator competition at the Startup Village.
The 2014 SXSW Accelerator marks the sixth year for the competition.
The organizers are expecting more than 500 startups to apply for the 48 slots available. The deadline to apply is Friday, Nov. 8th.
“This event provides an outlet for companies to present their new technology of Entertainment and Content products, Social, Enterprise and Big Data Technologies, Innovative World, Wearable, Music, or Health technology to a panel of industry experts, early adopters, and representatives from the Angel/VC community,” said Chris Valentine, its organizer.
Past judges have included Tim Draper of DFJ, Paul Graham of Y Combinator, Craig Newmark of Craiglist, Bob Metcalfe of University of Texas, Guy Kawasaki of Alltop, Tim O’Reilly of O’Reilly Media, Naval Ravikant of AngelList, and Tom Conrad of Pandora.
The competition takes place March 9th and 9th.

SXSW Eco 2013 Award Winners

October 9, 2013 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 0 Comments

Photo courtesy of SXSW Eco

South by Southwest Eco this week put the spotlight on the enormous problems facing our planet.
It also showcased innovative entrepreneurs and individuals working to solve those problems and conserve natural resources.
On Tuesday night, SXSW Eco gave awards to two videos that highlight ways people can make a difference in helping our planet in its “Sustainability Goes Viral! Video Competition.”
The winners are “Follow the Frog” and “Rachel Beckwith’s Last Wish.”

This year, SXSW Eco also featured a number of panels and sessions focused on startups. On Tuesday, several companies participated in the SXSW Eco Startup Showcase.
The winners of that competition are Sseko Designs, a sandal company, for Social Impact, New Sky Energy, conversion of industrial waste products into new products, and Blue River Technologies, advanced technology for better agriculture, for Greentech and Faraday, customer acquisition platform for energy solutions, and Watersmart, water conservation software, for Cleanweb.

Austin Startups Propose SXSW Panels for 2014

August 23, 2013 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 0 Comments

Photo courtesy of SXSW

It’s South by Southwest PanelPicker time.
That’s the second phase in choosing the lineup of proposed talks at SXSW 2014. The event’s organizers first ask people to submit ideas, then others vote on the best ones and finally the SXSW folks select the lineup.
I’ve learned that some people don’t enjoy hearing all of the new ideas and proposed panels for Austin’s biggest technology, film and music festival.
In fact, some clever folks have created programs to weed out the tweets and Facebook posts about proposed SXSW panels from their social media streams.
But that’s not how we roll here at Silicon Hills News. We’re all about hearing the latest ideas. They all contribute to the overall ideation process. It’s all about brainstorming and finding inspiration from others.
Frankly, I love the SXSW PanelPicker process. It’s a great data set of ideas and if someone was clever they would find a way to analyze all of those ideas instead of blocking them from their social media feed.
Because I’m not clever enough to create such a tool, I relied upon crowdsourcing to come up with the following list of proposed panels from some of Austin’s high tech innovators. And in no particular order here they are:

Going From a Terrible Idea to a Real Business: Erica Douglass and Parnell Springmeyer, co-founders of MarketVibe, formerly Whoosh Traffic, talk about how to pivot a tech startup and get headed in the right direction. The company is one of the startups in the inaugural Techstars Austin class.
Co-founders Austin: Ricardo D. Sanchez of Co-founders Austin and TheTechMap along with Stefan Brunner and Johan Borge of The TechMap are hosting this panel featuring 10 startups pitching and competing for investors, talent and media recognition.
Top Mistakes Made by Entrepreneurs: Tina Cannon, founder of Napkin Venture, is organizing the panel which looks at common mistakes entrepreneurs make and instructs people on how to avoid them.
How To Spot a Liar with Data: A solo talk proposed by Noah Zandan of Quantified Impressions that uses data analysis to tell if a person is lying.
Young Guns & Science Commercialization: Jonathan Van with Alta Ventures is organizing this talk about global technology commercialization and harnessing student intelligence to solve the world’s big problems in energy, security, health and materials sectors.
From Table to Tech: The Secret Ingredient: Jane Ko of A Taste of Koko leads a discussion on how restaurants can use social media to engage customers and drive sales.
Longhorn Startup Expo: A showcase of University of Texas at Austin Longhorn startups from students and professors introduced by Professor of Innovation Bob Metcalfe. Organized by UT-Austin.
Building Games for Every Platform with HTML5: And speaking of Longhorn Startups, Austin Hallock, founder of Clay.io, has proposed a discussion about using HTML5 for creating games.
Innovation Commerce: Intellectual Property 2.0: A talk about creativity and the power of the imagination in the technology field to tackle some of the world’s big problems to create new value. Organized by Tarzan Sharif. Andrew Sanderson is a speaker.
How Open is Open Data: A panel on the impact of open data and how to find and bring value to the marketplace. Aman Bhandari of Merck will moderate the panel featuring Susan Strausberg, co-founder of 9W Search, Fred Trotter of Not Only Dev and Michael Atkin of Enterprise Data Management Council.
Austin Startup Media Pitch Competition: Susan Lahey with Silicon Hills News is organizing a panel in which startups pitch their companies to reporters. The best pitch gets profiled.
How to Make a Good Impression in 50 Milliseconds: Chris Perez, the founder of CityGram Magazine, a digital publication about Austin available on the iPad, is leading a discussion about good design and how it can attract or repel customers.
Should You Drop Out of School to Start a Company?: Madeline Vu with 3 Day Startup has organized a panel of experts to talk about the pros and cons of dropping out of school to start a company. The panelists include Cam Houser with 3 Day Startup, Phillip Dade with Crimson.com, Michael Gibson with the Thiel Foundation and Professor of Innovation Bob Metcalfe at the University of Texas at Austin.
The Human App Instrument: Sean Killian and Marcus Turner with Atomic Axis are leading this discussion on ways to use fitness data aggregated from people to improve healthcare and overall well being.
How Collaboration Makes the Impossible, Possible: Dmitri Iourovitski with Astrotech is proposing a talk on team building and collaboration for entrepreneurs.
Funded in Austin: Claire England, executive director of RISE, leads a panel discussion with entrepreneurs who have pursued different types of funding in Austin including crowdfunding, angel investment and venture capital.
Austin: Home of the Journey Entrepreneur: Austin’s Bijoy Goswami, with Bootstrap Austin, leads a discussion on entrepreneurial journies and people who are driven by passion in creating their ventures.
The New World of Health Care – A panel discussion proposed by Sandeep Kumar of Tech Ranch Austin on the information age of health care.

And the folks at Rackspace also have penned a post today on nine SXSW panels being proposed by its employees. Check them out here.

And Apogee Results has proposed several panels for SXSW listed here.
And here’s a roundup of Blacks in Technology at SXSW proposed panels.
SXSW Interactive also has a blog post on Startup Austin Programming with various events listed including the Startup Village.

Three Entrepreneurs Recount Their Paths to Being Funded in Austin

March 11, 2013 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 0 Comments

BY L.A. LOREK
Founder of Silicon Hills News

Justin Jensen with Cinetics, Matt Cohen with Onespot, Barry Evans with Calxeda and Claire England, executive director of RISE Austin

Barry Evans, co-founder and CEO of Calxeda, bootstrapped and eventually landed Venture Capital funding after seeking investment from California and Boston for his microchip company.
Justin Jensen, founder and CEO of Cinetics launched two successful Kickstarter campaigns to fund products for his company.
And Matt Cohen, a former partner with G-51 Capital, an early stage investment company in Austin, received angel money to launch OneSpot, an online advertising company.
They all detailed how they got money to back their ventures during a “Funded in Austin” panel in the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce’s Office at South by Southwest on Sunday afternoon.
“We really wanted to explore the entrepreneur’s perspective on fundraising in Austin,” said Claire England, executive director of RISE Global, an entrepreneurial conference in Austin. She moderated the panel.
People packed the room to hear the stories about how to get investors to back an early-stage startup. About a third of them were entrepreneurs, some investors and others interested in the subject, according to an informal survey England took of the room.
At first, England quizzed the panelists about their experiences and then the audience members asked the founders questions about their ventures.
Calxeda, founded in 2008, spent a year bootstrapped, got some strategic investment, Texas Emerging Technology Fund money and angel money and in 2010 closed on a $48 million Venture Capital round, Evans said. Calxeda makes ultra-low power server microchips that use ARM-based processors, which are the same ones used in iPhones and iPads.
Austin in 2008 through 2010 would not invest in early-stage hardware companies, Evans said.
He said he “burned a lot of time double checking that fact” and then went to Silicon Valley, Boston and even the Middle East for investors. The company’s first round of funding came from ARM Holdings, Abu Dhabi-based Advanced Technology Investment Co., Texas Instruments, Battery Ventures, Flybridge Capital Partners and Highland Capital Partners.
Eventually, Austin investors did back the company, Evans said. Last year, the company closed on a $55 million round adding Austin Ventures and Vulcan Capital as investors.
“The breakthrough for us was the help of the ATI (Austin Technology Incubator) we were able to figure out the VCs in the Bay that had investments in Austin,” he said.
Evans made sure to get on their schedule when they were visiting Austin. He also learned Battery Ventures was an early investor in Bazaarvoice, Solarwinds and others in town.
In the beginning, Evans spent 50 percent of his time looking for funding and now it’s about 10 percent to 15 percent, he said.
“You never stop fundraising as a CEO,” he said.
It’s Evans first startup and he learned a lot from the early days of fundraising. He said he developed a tactic early on where he would reach out to a potential investor to meet for coffee to just talk about his big idea. If they said yes, then he would pitch them. If they weren’t a fit, it was OK, because it really wasn’t a formal pitch, he said.
His biggest mistake was trying to raise too little money.
“I was asking for $5 million and ended up getting $48 million,” he said.
It was easier and faster to raise a larger amount and spread out the risk among several VC firms.
“It spoke to the risk that everyone was feeling about this crazy idea,” he said.
Onespot, an advertising company that created a platform to turn online content into ads, raised $1.5 million in angel funding last year.
“Angels invest for slightly different reasons than VCs,” said Cohen, the company’s president and founder. “Typically the main reason why angel investors are investing is that they really want to help out companies.”
Onespot sought out investors that could help the company make connections and give it advice, Cohen said.
“Angel investors have a lot more availability and time to give us than VCs,” Cohen said. “We will almost certainly raise a venture capital round later on.”
He advised the entrepreneurs in the room to continue to develop their minimal viable product and gain traction in their marketplace while seeking funding.
“If you’re not making a lot of progress fundraising, make progress on the product or service and then the actual fundraising processes will go a lot easier,” Cohen said.
It’s also important to find the right investors, he said. The most important thing is to do research on which angel investor is the best fit for your company, he said.
“Angel investors are investing in an individual,” he said. “They are putting their bet on you.”
Angel investing is about cultivating relationships, building a network and getting warm introductions anywhere you can, Cohen said.
At G-51 Capital, Cohen often took recommendations from lawyers that work with startups. Many of the lawyers will defer fees until a company gets funded.
Angel investors have their own vetting processes but they like referrals from lawyers and other trusted sources, he said.
“Angel investment is one of the areas where Austin really shines,” Cohen said.
Most angel investors write checks between $25,000 and $200,000, Cohen said. To be successful angel investors, they need to make between a dozen and three-dozen investments, he said.
“I wound up getting a number of angel investors in Austin and also in New York and California,” he said.
Cohen said he’s looking forward to seeing successful entrepreneurs in Austin giving back.
“The thing that brings capital and resources to a town is success,” he said.
In October of 2011, Cinetics completed a successful fundraising campaign on Kickstarter. The Austin-based startup originally sought to raise $20,000 and ended up with $486,518 from 2,019 backers.
“We were bootstrapped,” said Jensen. “We went to Kickstarter for presales.”
Cinetics created CineSkates “a portable tripod slider system that enables fluid, rolling video without the hassle of bulky camera gear.”
It’s a camera dolly that fits into a backpack for independent filmmakers and hobbyists so they “can get shots without breaking their bank or their back,” Jensen said.
“It was really a product that didn’t require a lot of prototyping and funding,” he said. “We built the first product for under $10,000. We really didn’t need any significant capital.”
Jensen advised entrepreneurs to put as much information as possible on the Kickstarter campaign so that potential funders don’t have to ask a lot of questions.
In January, Cinetics launched a second successful Kickstarter campaign for “CineMoco, a compact motor controlled dolly and slider for video and time-lapse photography.”
The CineMoco campaign more than doubled its goal of raising $50,000. The company ended up raising $113,913 from 283 backers.
When Cinetics started crowdfunding, it was one of the first Austin hardware companies to do so, Jensen said. But now many resources exist for companies seeking crowdfunding. He recommended the Austin Hardware Startup Meetup Group to learn about projects and funding.

It Takes a Startup Village and Chris Valentine Created One for SXSW

March 11, 2013 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 1 Comment

BY SUSAN LAHEY
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

Chris Valentine seems to be everywhere at once in SXSW Startup Village, watching, analyzing, conferencing, counting. One minute he’s in the Hilton’s Grand Ballroom gauging the crowd and seemingly an instant later he’s transported to the Austin Chamber offices (which actually can only be reached by an escalator, an outside door and an elevator).
This is his baby. The Startup Village, which last year was the darling of SXSW Interactive, was an idea he brought to Interactive director Hugh Forrest three years ago. Last year, he introduced Startup Austin—a series of events within the event– to showcase all the reasons Austin is a great city to build to transplant a startup. Ultimately, he’d love for Startup Village to consume an entire block of buildings…like an actual village.
There is a palpable energy in Startup Village. Everyone is hopped up on the possibilities of the new technologies, new companies, new investments. And Valentine shares in all of it.
“I’m so excited by all of it,” he said. “There are so many incredible things happening with technology and I get to work with some of the most amazing, smartest people alive. I was fortunate to find something I am passionate about. I love what I do, I am good at what I do and I’m respected for what I do. ‘Before, I did events but I didn’t specialize. I didn’t have a passion. Now I love to focus on technology.”
He says this despite the fact that managing the Accelerator and Startup Village is fraught with potential failure.
“Because it’s such a large event you don’t get to do what you do at other events, like rehearsals,” Valentine said. “And it’s fluid, things are constantly changing. At other events it’s considered rude if you walk out but because at SXSW it’s actually okay…. The deal with startups—there were 56 at the accelerator this year– is there’s a lot of volatility. We’ve had startups that got acquired, like, two weeks out. Some people run out of money. Some are in acquisition mode and their buyers say ‘We don’t want you to market.’”
Add to that the staffing reality that Valentine works with two professionals, Michelle Murdough—Accelerator assistant– and Maria Alonso—Startup Village assistant—but everyone else on his staff of 50-60 people are volunteers.
And yet, Mudough said, “Perfection is his starting point.” Murdough has worked with Valentine six years on various events including SXSW. She noted his focus on detail, down to making sure each pen on the judge’s table works.
“The smallest thing is something he would obsess over, more than….” she gestures a big picture. “And I’ve been like: Are you kidding me? You really want me to sit and check on every pen? Sure enough, one of them doesn’t work.”
They’ve had their blow ups in all the tension, but over the years they’ve learned to work together when something cranks up the pressure, like today when a pitching team that was supposed to pitch at 3:30 never appeared. Someone had to talk to the judges, the other teams, the emcee and make changes that would all be upended if the team suddenly showed up. Valentine and Murdough spell each other in those moments, taking turns dealing with the circumstance. “He has a huge heart and a tremendous focus on his work,” she said.
Valentine sees SXSW Accelerator and Startup Village as part of the startup ecosystem of the city that has been steadily growing over the past 10 years.
“I love this community,” he said, “the eclecticness, the quality of lifestyle…we have our own identity as far as a tech community. A new wave coming up and we’re different from the other tech communities. SXSW is not your traditional conference and I think people see and appreciate that. It’s so intertwined with the city. More and more the city realizes the value of startups, that they create vibrancies, possibilities.”
Valentine wound up as SXSW Accelerator and Startup Village Producer by a circuitous route. He got his degree in communication and behavioral science. But what he really loved was the arts. When he was a kid he lived part of the time in New York and New Jersey and his parents often took him to the museum. He began volunteering at various arts events just to be around the arts and wound up being asked to run the events. Two years in a row he created a Dancefest with 39 dance companies and 450 dancers over five days.
He was working as a recruiter with Intelquest when he decided to ask the marketing department if he could switch jobs and become their event manager. When he showed the head of marketing his portfolio, they were thrilled.
“People love it when you are passionate and have a lot of energy,” he said. Two years later, he was asked to run events for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and they elevated him to Executive Director. Then he started his own events video and audio company for the Chamber of Commerce and tourism industry, but when the tourism industry slowed down he segued to other jobs. He took on events management for the Busby Foundation for Central Texas for families of patients with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease) which he still does.
When he feels overwhelmed by the pressure at SXSW, he remembers the families he deals with who are dealing with really painful issues and it restores his perspective. “People are dealing with really hard life issues,” he said.
But none of that means he lets anything slide.
“This event is very, very important to Chris,” Murdough said. “This one has his name and reputation on it. This one has to go right.”

DreamIt Ventures Austin’s Inaugural Demo Day Introduces Nine Startups

March 10, 2013 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 3 Comments

BY ANDREW MOORE
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

On the Stage at DreamIt Austin Demo Day -Photography by Samantha Davis

DreamIt Ventures Austin’s inaugural demo day showcased its first crop of startups at an event Saturday.
After 12 weeks of work at Capital Factory in downtown Austin, the nine startups finally took to the stage at the Bullock Texas State History Museum to pitch their companies to potential investors.
DreamIt Ventures is a startup accelerator similar to the TechStars program – helping startups make over a year of progress in just three months. The program is in Philidephia, New York, Austin, and TelAviv, Israel. It has completed 9 classes since its start back in 2008. The DreamIt ventures program offers qualifying startups free office space, a stipend for living expenses, dedicated mentors, legal and accounting services, and access to tons of potential investors. While the program generally lasts 14 weeks, the following nine startups had to be ready in 12 so they could have their demo day at South by Southwest Inactive.
Doccastor
When trying to put together a big tech conference, getting sponsors and investors to provide funding is crucial. But reeling in those sponsors can be tricky, if there is no proof that people will attend. CEO and co-founder Kyle Christian Steel presented a solution to this problem.

Kyle Christian Steele and Himanshu Pagey of Doccaster

Doccastor is designed to help show investors how much buzz their event is getting. It accomplishes this by creating a virtual locker that holds all the information for a given event. When users log into Doccaster with Linkedin and look at the event information, their activity is tracked to show their level of interest. The event creator using Doccastor can then show potential sponsors how many people are checking out the event and considering participating. Any sponsor or user who posts information in the locker can see the basic profile information of any user who viewed their content – giving sponsors valuable feedback and more incentive to participate.
Doccaster also makes it easy for users to find out about what events are happening around them. The service can be logged into with any mobile device, and users can view all related documents as well as contact the event creator. Additionally, users can see any other doccastor events happening in close proximity.
Doccaster has just started a $1 million round.
NewsTastic
Presented by CEO Eric Paradis, NewsTastic was created to link local journalists with paying local jobs. They have created a marketplace where local companies who need an event covered can sponsor journalists and pay them for an article.
“We were able to see firsthand just how outdated and inefficient existing news organizations are,” says Paradis. “NewsTastic has a better approach”.
Companies have several incentives to do this. First, it’s an easy way for them to find a journalist to cover the company’s local event without hiring a PR agency. Second, the company can get its name out by sponsoring coverage of local events that affect potential customers. Any articles written will have the sponsor information visible to readers.
The service is also a way for local freelancers to build a reputation and earn extra cash. Reporters who are able to establish their credentials will automatically get access to paying jobs. New reporters can have access to jobs that don’t pay, but boost their credentials. Successfully completing those assignments will increase their credentials and unlock paying assignments.
NewsTastic has already signed an agreement with Microsoft to cover events at SXSW. They will receive around $150 per story from Microsoft and pass along $100 to the journalists who covered the story.
Newstastic is now opening a funding round of $800,000.
Pincam

Kevin Taehwa Kim of Pincam Austin Demo Day -Photography by Samantha Davis

Pincam was presented by Kevin Kim, who works with an app development team for South Korea-based SK planet. The Pincam app is a video recorder that lets the user “pin”, or mark while recording, their favorite five second highlight segments to later combine into one highlight reel.
“Pincam is the only app that insures users capture the best moments in their special days,” says Kim.
Pincam can do this while recording an original video or can be used to edit a video the user already has on his iOS device. Edited videos can be grouped together into channels for other users to see. The channels can be open to everyone or restricted to a group of contacts such as family and friends. The app also makes it easy to share the video with Gmail, Facebook, or other outlets.
Seer
Presented by Conall Arora, Seer is a web app that congregates all the important data that a user needs access to every day into one location.
Seer is an intelligent desktop that can pull in multiple kinds of files from Gmail, Google Drive, Exchange, Dropbox, Evernote, and Apple desktops. Once the user gives it access to one of these sources, it will pull in and index to one single personalized desktop. That content can then be organized for easy access. When you select any of those files to work on, Seer pulls up a menu of any content related to it such as emails or word documents.
Seer is also in the process of implementing an intelligence component where the program can figure out what information you need to see first each day you wake and turn on your computer. Arora Claims Seer will be even able to prioritize the most important people in your life. By analyzing words or phrases in your content, Seer will bring you information related to your closest contacts before any other information.
Seer will release a beta in April to the first 700 people on their waitlist. The app will be launched in June.
Trendkite
Presented by CEO AJ Bruno, Trendkite is a media monitoring company. It helps companies find out where their PR efforts are best spent by monitoring the web for articles, Facebook messages, and tweets about that company.
“We are helping organizations understand what the world thinks of them, and act accordingly.” says Bruno.
Trendkite gives companies a dashboard that gives them several different metrics for how often their business is referenced and where. They search and scan millions of articles a day. The metrics can be filtered to include only the data a company wants – such as financial articles or press releases. The dashboard can also help target certain information, such as what the press is saying about a company’s CEO. Additionally, Trendkite allows companies to compare themselves to their competitors on different metrics.
The company has as an annual subscription fee for their service. They have already acquired several bigger clients such as Opentack and Gamefly.
Trendkite has just opened a $750,000 round.
FastFig
FastFig does for math what Microsoft Word does for writing. Presented by Brian Peacock, FastFig is intended to help students learn math more efficiently. His team wants students to spend more time on math and less time crunching numbers.
“The students are spending too much time crumpling up pieces of paper because they missed one number, rather than focusing on how to understand and set up the problem.” says CMO Greg Heller-LaBelle.
FastFig intends its product to be used by freshmen and sophomores in college to more quickly crunch numbers after setting up complex equations. They also see it being used by advanced high school students. The processor can do basic math, algebra, and calculus – and it can tell the difference between math and English so that note taking is still easy. The processor is browser based, making it available on almost any device. The math documents are also very easy to share.
FastFig is currently being utilized at the University of Pittsburg as well as a couple high schools. It is starting a $250,000 round of funding which will enable it to put the technology in 30 schools across the country.
Stereotypes

Jason Keck of Stereotypes

Presented by CEO Jason Keck, Stereotypes is trying to make music personal again.
“It’s a group messaging app that lets you have real, two-way conversations with your friends around music,” says Keck.
You can share different music with different groups of friends. The app is designed to push messages with memorable songs to groups of people, letting them somewhat relive memories of listening to the song.
According to Keck, test users stay on the app for an average of 8 minutes and messaged groups have an average of 8 friends. They will take advantage of this by offering the app for free and then using established revenue models such as ads and in-app purchasing. Keck also sees the app being used successfully by different music groups to connect with their fans.
They will open a $500,000 round this summer.
Yevvo
Yevvo is a video sharing app presented by founder Ben Rubin. The company is based in Israel. Yevvo allows its users to share live, raw video from their mobile phones almost instantly. App users just press one button and their phone is a live camera.
Once a Yevvo user is live, any other users linked to him gets an alert that there is a live stream happening and can follow that stream by accepting the alert. The video is not saved – it’s designed to be a one-time opportunity to glance into the life of another user wherever they are.
“The power of video is in the feeling of drama, anticipation, uncertainty. This unfiltered intimacy we have with the audience,” says Rubin.
There is currently a real-time lag of about 7 – 12 seconds, but Yevvo is working to cut that time down. The person serving the live video can see the number of viewers grow in real time and will be able to identify what friends are tuning in.
Yevvo has just finished a closed beta of 300 users. Of the 100 sampled, users spent an average of five minutes using the app each day.
Yevvo is now available for iOS devices in the app store. Rubin claims the app is currently registering 10 users per minute right now.
Planana
Planana is a rewards platform designed to help brands maximize visibility during the events they sponsor by interacting with attendees.
“We turn event attendees into brand advocates,” said presenter and CEO Anna Sergeeva. “And we convert that social momentum into actionable data for brands to use events as a viable way to increase their sales.”
With Planana, a user who signed up to go to a sponsored event is given incentives to reference the sponsor in social media for a reward. By tweeting that they are at a Microsoft event, for instance, a user might receive special seating or a free drink. Users can tweet a default message but can create their own as well. Planana also tracks who attends events and whether their attendance resulted in a conversion – or a purchase of some sort. They can even track some conversions weeks after the event – creating extremely useful analytics for brands.
Planana has been generating revenue for 5 weeks and claims to already be profitable. Six major companies have already signed on. They are starting a round of $500,000 in order to scale up their services and sales team.

Flying High with Interact ATX! (Adventures in Austin, Part 3.2.1)

March 10, 2013 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 0 Comments

BY IAN PANCHEVRE

Wow, wow, wow.
What a whirlwind has #SXSWInteractive been so far! I’m not even half way in and I’ve already had the pleasure of hearing addresses from Bre Pettis (CEO @ MakerBot), Travis Kalanick (CEO @ Uber), Joe Zadeh (Director of Product @ Airbnb), Scott Chacon (Vice President of R&D @ GitHub), Steven Blank (Author of Four Steps to the Epiphany and Startup Owners Manual) Elon Musk (PayPal, SpaceX, Tesla Motors, Solar Cities), and former Vice President, Al Gore.
I’ve also been able to play with some amazing new technologies like 3D Printers at UT’s Cockrell School of Engineering and motion-control software/hardware at Leap Motion’s promotional tent.
Not to mention, I’ve managed to score bunches of free t-shirts and get a few books signed – all while cluttering my pockets with flyers, cards, and stickers from plenty of early-stage startups. Oh, and my phone battery is dead for the what feels like the tenth time in the past two days.
But I wanted to take a brief moment to reflect on some of the amazing people I’ve gotten to know over the weekend. I’m at SXSW solely because of an organization, Interact ATX, that has sponsored badges for a youthful few in hopes of creating a community of entrepreneurial students from around the country.
Interact ATX was founded by Maran Nelson, a current senior at the University of Texas, who has been working with startups for the past few years. Nelson recently spent a summer in New York, where she came to appreciate the exotic appeal that Austin evidently had on the rest of the country.
“I was pleasantly surprised that a bunch of people thought Austin was the coolest city ever. Whenever I told people that I was from Austin, they would go crazy,” explains Nelson.
Nelson continues, “I asked myself, ‘What is the coolest thing that Austin has to offer each year?’ Clearly, I thought about South by Southwest. And then I asked, ‘what can I do to make something happen?’”
Nelson then got to work, reaching out to contacts at various universities as well as potential financial backers. The work, Nelson admits, “was a lot, especially for the first year for something to exist.”
But Nelson didn’t let logistical difficulties hold her back. At first, Nelson was told that having 25 or 40 participants would make the endeavor successful. “I said no, we are doing 100.”
Ultimately, Interact ATX received over 500 applications.
Admitted students represent a wide range of universities, including: MIT, Princeton, Brown, The University of Pennsylvania, Cornell, Columbia, Stanford, Berkeley, Yale(!), Harvard, Rice, and The University of Texas.
Interact ATX sponsors – whose financial contributions subsidized badges, operations, and events – include Andreessen Horowitz, Peter Thiel’s 20 Under 20 Fellowship, Balderdash, Capital Factory, Highland Capital Partners, the Cockrell School of Engineering, Readyforce, Bain Capital Ventures, and many more.
“It’s been a great experience, interacting with like-minded people who are working on projects that are trying to change the world,” comments Param Jaggi, a student at Vanderbilt.
Jaggi has built upon his high school science research – an endeavor which took him all the way to the International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) – to begin commercializing an inexpensive and disposable green technology. Jaggi’s algae-based technology can filter carbon emissions from the exhaust of cars, which contribute to over 25 percent of global carbon admissions.
Thomas Sohmers is another gifted mind. Sohmers, currently working on embedded cluster computing, has cracked the code for retrofitting raw processors from cell phones and tablets to create high performance computers. Sohmers hopes that his technologies will eventually replace current servers and mainframes with more powerful systems that use less power. As a seventeen year-old high school student from Hudson Massachusetts, Sohmers is a finalist competing for $100,000 in seed capital from Peter Thiel’s 20 Under 20 Fellowship.
“It’s been really fun, I feel really honored to be a part of this group,” says Sohmers. “I really like Austin, it’s a lot better than three feet of snow.”
And then, there are the Longhorns.
Albert Rondan, Jeff Mahler, Chris Slaughter, and Dustin Hopper have teamed up with their professor from the University of Texas, Dr. Srirarm Vishwanath, to start Lynx Laboratories, a company which is producing a handheld 3D structural capture camera. For the laymen among us, their device is used like a traditional camera to capture and render objects or rooms in 3D.
“It takes the point and shoot experience of a 2D camera and applies it to a 3D concept,” explains Rondan, as he demoed a 3D image of an Interact Fellow’s face on his computer, using the software to circle around the face in surprising detail. The technology is impressive and is currently looking for funding through a recently launched Kickstarter.
In the words of Nam Chu Hoai, a student at Boston University, “The amount of energy at South By is overwhelming!” Indeed it is.
Fortunately, a select group of young entrepreneurs have each other to rely on as they navigate the brave new world of South by Southwest.
Please stay tuned for the next segment in Adventures in Austin!

Previous segments:
Apparently there’s this conference happening in Austin?? Adventures in Austin, Part 1.0.0

Adventures in Austin, Part 2.0.5: SXSW = big fun and big business.

Subscribe to the Silicon Hills Newsletter

Please Like us on Facebook