Tag: SXSW (Page 4 of 5)
BY SUSAN LAHEY
Special Contributor to Silicon Hills News
From Funf left to right: Nadav Aharony, Alan Gardner, Cody Sumter From Ginger.io: Anmol Madan and Ryan Panchadsaram
Winners included the Funf Project in the News category; Ginger.io in the Health category; Vitzu Technologies in Innovative Web Technologies; Mobile, Condition One; Wemo Media in the Entertainment Technologies category and Thirst Labs in the social category. Brand Yourself won the Bootstrap award.
Winners—who were judged on creativity, viability, product and team–received $4,000, tickets to next year’s SXSW and a Swiss backpack to carry their gear when they return, among other things.
The categories and the local competitors in each category included News Related Technologies–Umbel, Social Media and Social Networking Technologies—Hoot.me and Scene Tap, Mobile Technologies—Toopher and Foreca.st, Innovative Web Technologies, Entertainment Technologies—Tugg Co., and Health Technologies.
Hoot.me and Umbel made it to the finals.
Michael Koetting of Hoot.me had just left the stage 10 minutes before the winners were announced.
“We just feel really privileged, really blessed we made it this far. We’re just waiting to see what happens. Regardless South By’s been an awesome experience for us.”
Of the 600 initial applicants the list was whittled down to 48 that were permitted to pitch in two minutes presentations on Monday. Tuesday, the 18 finalists each had five minutes to present, followed by a question and answer period.
Emcee Brad King, a professor of journalism and Emerging Media Initiative Fellow at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana and former reporter and editor at Wired and MIT’s Technology Review has been at SXSW since its inception and has served four years as an emcee. He’s seen the quality of the Accelerator program improve over the years both in terms of the quality of companies and the caliber of judges who are able to share their expertise with participants.
“The quality of companies is improving as Chris (Valentine) and the group have understood health and innovative technologies and where the different segments are coming from. The three medical companies are amazing…it used to be easy to see that one was better than the others but this time the overall quality was really high.”
Greg Wright with the Houston Technology Center Incubator
“A lot of these founders are so familiar with their technology, their solution, they don’t know how to describe what it is. They’ll tell you it’s cloud based and interactive and mobile and you have to say ‘I have no idea what it is you do,’” Wright said. “The coaches really listen and reflect back ‘It sounds like what you’re doing is….”
“It’s important to make sure they describe what the problem is they’re solving and who has that problem. If we can relate to the problem, it’s often easy to appreciate it….. If it comes across like a marketing pitch we try to make it more authentic.”
Presenters can have several phone calls with their coaches to get ready for the presentation and they were “all over the board” Wright said. Some were bootstrapped, others had up to $5 million in investment funding.
Besides the high quality of companies, there’s a high caliber of judges who can offer deep insights to participants.
“Tim Draper (founder of Draper Fisher Jurvetson) can speak to things as an entrepreneur, as venture capitalist…people like Bob Metcalf (professor of innovation at the University of Texas) can give the panel really good feedback. It’s not ‘You should have a business model, it’s here are the four things that you should do to increase your presence in your industry.”
Months before the event, Houston Tech center got the idea to throw its own accelerator event at SXSW and within weeks of announcing it had nearly 100 participants from as far away as Finland for it’s HATCH accelerator competition. Ironically, Wright said, while it was worried that it hadn’t had time to properly publicize the event, it did manage to get an blurb in the SXSW Interactive calendar with a “read more” link that led only to a notation: #HATCH2012.
Nonetheless the event filled to capacity and beyond. Perhaps, Wright considers, having nothing but the hashtag indicated “If you don’t know about HATCH, you’re clearly not cool enough to be there.”
Wright and King both praised Valentine’s choice to keep all the startup activities in one Startup Village.
“Chris really worked to make the Hilton the epicenter of entrepreneurship. This is the first year and we’re seeing the fruits of that. The Hilton was just swarming with people…I’m imagining the Hilton being the place you book to stay if you’re a startup.”
The advantage to having so many tech startups in one place is multifold. For one thing, conversations can reach a higher level.
“You don’t have to say let me explain this…I don’t have to convince you that the web is important.”
Throughout the sessions, entrepreneurs expressed relief at having so many people who shared their experiences and at being validated in the competition.
As Alan Gardner of Funf put it: “It’s good to know we’re not crazy.”
And Cerealize, a site that allows people to make a customizable box of breakfast cereal, won the 2012 Startup Bus competition, according to this Fox Business News Story.
The Startup Bus Finalists were:
Bumper Crop (Florida)
Happstr (NYC)
Scoringo (Louisiana)
Gourmair (Stanford)
Adventeur (NYC)
Spott (Mexico)
Cerealize (SV)
Curious City (DC)
BY SUSAN LAHEY
Special Contributor to Silicon Hills News
Take the energy of SXSW, multiply it by the energy of thousands of passionate start up founders, compound it by a factor of anxiety at being judged and you’ve got the fourth floor of the Hilton Hotel in down town Austin: Startup Village.
This is the first time SXSW has created a special area just for startups, according to Chris Valentine, event producer for Startup Village and Microsoft Bizspark Accelerator. But once it was proposed, it seemed so obvious. So intuitive.
“The response has been overwhelming. The hallways are just packed with people,” Valentine said. “People keep saying ‘This is a great idea, you guys should have been doing it years ago.’”
SXSW organizers wanted to create a base where startup participants could find programs created just for them—like cofounder speed dating and presentations on creating elevator pitches. The salons include mentoring opportunities for startups. And, Valentine pointed out, accelerator judges are roaming the halls, easily accessible to any entrepreneur. People like Arun Rajan of Zappos, Adam Ostrow of Mashable and Blair Garrou of DFJMercury.
There are startup focused events like The Startup Bus in which participants got on busses in their native towns and had to create a startup between home and Austin, then the teams were judged. Locastartups have the opportunity to mingle with people from startups all over the world. And to see how so many startup communities pale in comparison.
Nick Goggans, co-founder of Umbel, having had a startup in Boston, fell for Austin at an SXSW event three years ago.
“I was inspired by the quality of the companies I met when I was here three years ago for a SXSW event with my Boston startup,” he said. He likes that Austin is central, easily accessible. He also thinks it has an underrated talent pool and a burgeoning angel community. Moreover, the cost of living allows for bootstrapping.
Bill Boebel, former vice president of strategy at Rackspace and advisor to the Capital Factory said he had his first startup in Virginia.
“Austin is a little more balanced than most cities,” he said. “It’s a great family town, too. I love the diversity. It’s a great place to build a company and a family at the same time. If your spouse isn’t into tech, that’s okay.”
Cesar Donofrio, CEO of Making Sense in San Antonio said “We receive a lot of help from local people. There’s a great amount of information. You can talk with people in the same environment so you can validate your experiences. And there are a lot of resources like incubators and accelerators so you get a lot of support.”
He acknowledged that the “Fail faster” that accepts failure on the way to success is stronger here than in other places, such as his native Argentina.
Kevin Callahan, co-founder of MapMyFITNESS, said he and his cofounders love Austin because of the talent pool and also because of the fitness conscious culture here.
Many of the startups present are high tech in nature. But the varieties of startup presentations continue to grow and diversify, Valentine said. Things like food, art, and music all can have technological components and are represented at the event.
Which brings another cool aspect to the SXSW Startup Village. One participant who lives in Russia asked: Why Austin? Why not New York? Paris? Tokyo.
And the answer, Goggans said, is that it happened here. Organically, SXSW Interactive and Startup Village grew out of a culture where there was music and film that blended easily into technology.
“There was a core film and music environment that manifests into technology over time,” Goggans said. “I don’t think that’s something that can just be dropped into a place. It’s organic. It has to do with a multidisciplinary approach…it’s a question of ‘how strong is your creative community?’”
On the fourth floor, it’s very creative.
“Basically different types of event producers’ response was ‘This is finally happening!’” Valentine said of Startup Village. “That’s one of the great things about an idea that’s so easy. It was like ‘Of course.’”
BY SUSAN LAHEY
Special contributor to Silicon Hills News
Startups in Austin may forget how good they’ve got it.
A SXSW panel Sunday called “How to Build Entrepreneurship Communities” explored strategies used by other places—Los Angeles, Omaha Nebraska, New York City—to build communities for startups. In many places, key players don’t know one another or have viable opportunities to mingle and there’s no community culture to foster interaction.
Jeff Slobotski, founder of Silicon Prairie News in Omaha, talked about having tech journalist Sarah Lacy, founder of PandoDaily, give a presentation in town and watching startup owners and venture capitalists sitting feet away from one another at the bar, not recognizing each other.
The solution, panelists said, is multilayered: build a functional mentorship system; create meet ups and events centered on the needs of entrepreneurs; provide avenues for storytelling…telling the story of your business in content such as blogs and publications like Silicon Hills.
Mentorship, panelists said, is a key ingredient. But there’s a right way and wrong way. Just because a person is successful, for example, doesn’t mean he or she is good at helping others become successful, said Mark Nager CEO of
“One of the things we do is educate successful people how to help others and not just let anyone call themselves a mentor.”
And of course, there’s the startup owners responsibility. Nick Seguin, manager of entrepreneurship for the Kauffman Foundation said: “One thing I get really scared about is the entitled entrepreneur,” Seguin said. “Just because you’ve started a company doesn’t mean you’re entitled to someone’s time. You need to engage them in an efficient meaningful way. Mentors aren’t taking anything from us. They need to be engaged.”
Mark Davis, CEO of Kohort which provides tools for organizational management touted the advantages
of a system like TechStar’s which matches mentors and startups in terms of skills and needs. Also, he acknowledged, chemistry has to exist between the two.
The panelists all supported the idea that community must evolve organically from genuine need and interaction. Groups, for example, should solve a need. Any time you can see that the group centers on one personality you can assume it’s doomed.
“You know you’ve succeeded when you have a lot of people coming to your events who don’t know who you are,” Davis said. “If everyone knows it’s the so-and-so person show it’s not sustainable. Not community.”
Nor should the community event focus outside the community.
“We have six events in Iceland,” Nager said. “It’s the local developers and fishermen. We’re not talking about how to do trips to Silicon Valley.”
It helps, he said, to give each volunteer one task: Like throwing four Happy Hours a year, then putting their name on that task—manager of happy hours. That cements accountability and builds social capital.
One audience member suggested that startup advisors be willing to talk more openly about their failures. Again, unlike Austin, not everyone has a “fail faster” mentality. Nagel suggested that would be an excellent topic to hold an event around.
“To me, having mentorship and community events…make you feel like you’re not crazy,” Davis said. “How many of us, when we had an idea, we were working a normal job, people thought you were nuts. When you find there’s a community of folks out there who think like you it’s all about feeling normalish enough to go for it. Safe enough that you’re not going to waste your life. It’s just dealing with the fear.”
BY SUSAN LAHEY
Special Contributor to Silicon Hills News
Richard Garriott, game designer, spaceman, CEO of Portalarium
Garriott is co-vice chairman of Space Adventures which sent him and half a dozen other space tourists up in a Russian craft—NASA will not permit commercial space flights. There’s also the X Prize Foundation which holds multimillion dollar competitions for various aspects of private space research and exploration; SpaceX which develops launch vehicles and spacecraft for NASA with an eye to commercial space travel; Sierra Nevada Corp.’s Dream Catcher spacecraft can carry up to seven crew and cargo to the International Space Station and Bigelow Aerospace is developing space complexes for future space travelers.
Garriott himself, who has tracked mountain gorillas in Rwanda, floated down the Amazon, slept in a tent in the interior of the Antarctic, and been at the bottom of the Atlantic to see the Titanic, has on his bucket list “space diving”–the extra terrestrial version of sky diving–and living on Mars. He bought lunar landers that were left behind, making him the only private holder of real estate on the moon.
In his presentation, he explained how a program like XPrize, offering a billion dollar prizes to organizations that can create infrastructures needed to make Mars habitable, would spread the colonization investment over several different companies and make it financially feasible for humans to become an interplanetary species.
Garriott’s father, Owen Garriott, was an astronaut, as were the neighbors on either side of his house. His mother was an artist who helped Garriott devise complex science projects that made him something of a science fair celebrity. His father came home at night from NASA with technotoys that wouldn’t be introduced to the general market for 20 years—like the photo multiplier tube, a core segment of what is now referred to as night vision.
“So we would take this photo multiplier tube outside at night and follow the neighborhood cats,” Garriott said.
In Garriott’s world, going to space was normal. So when he was told at the age of 12 that his vision problems would keep him from being an astronaut, it was as if he was barred from the fraternity to which his father and all the family’s associates belonged. As it turned out, he was the first person to travel into space after having laser eye surgery and paved the way for other laser surgery patients to become astronauts.
When he was in high school Garriott was introduced to computers when his school bought a teletype computer that no one knew how to use. The school gave him permission to teach himself to use the computer in one hour a day, every school day, for four years. A fan of the book The Lord of the Rings and the game Dungeons and Dragons, Garriott created 28 video games on that computer.
By the time the Apple computer came out in the late 1970s, Garriott was already a veteran game designer. Right out of high school, he had a national distributor publish one of his games. By the time he got to the fourth version of his first game, Ultima 4, he was focused not only on the technology, but on the impact of it.
“As the author, you’re the hero. But most people do whatever they need to do to be powerful and defeat the bad guy waiting for them at the end, even if that’s steal, pillage, plunder. I thought, how can we hold a mirror up to them to inspire them to be more truly heroic. So I made it so the game watches your behavior. It sees whether you give money to the beggar or not. There was one character who was really easy to steal from and most people figured that out pretty easily and stole from her. But later you might need something from one of those characters. And you’d go up and ask for help and the character would say ‘I’d love to help the hero who is here to save us but you are a lying…stealing….”
Garriott remains a game designer—and an eccentric one at that. He wears a silver snake necklace he made when was 11 that is permanently attached to his neck. He has a lock of hair on the back of his head he’s been growing since the 1980s. He used to wear many rings until he married a year ago and his wife, a hedge fund manager, asked him to scale down to her wedding band for the time being. And he paints his toenails a different color every day. Saturday it was beige.
He collects automatons—toys or work of art that move. He has an Austin mansion that has sometimes been called a haunted house. And he’s a magician.
Last year, Garriott cofounded Portalarium, an Austin-based developer and publisher of games for social networks and mobile platforms. The company’s first game is Ultimate Collector Garage Sale.
But he has other passions now as well. One is the environment. He’d always seen himself as an environmentalist and excused his laxness with the usual excuses: it was too difficult to live truly green. It was too expensive.
Seeing the earth from space, however, he could detect the yellowish smoke over the Amazon and the places in Africa where clear cutting and burning was going on. Seeing the peacefulness of the Pacific and the turbulence of the Atlantic, the fissures from tectonic plate activity and the erosion as water poured into the sea, all gave him a sense of how small, actually, and fragile the earth is.
“Suddenly the earth was finite. It was something you could get your hands around.”
So he came home and revamped his lifestyle, adding photovoltaic panels to his home, reducing waste and trading in all his gas guzzling SUVs for more fuel efficient cars.
He’s also passionate about space.
He’s passionate about finding ways to fund his own future journeys, for one thing. On the recent trip he had created a software that warned astronauts when they were approaching spots where they were supposed to take photos. Previously astronauts had to watch out the window and try to visually line up the photo they’d gone up with with the scene below.
He also did work protein crystallization for ExtremoZyme, Inc., a biotechnology company he co-founded with his father. The proteins they used have important cellular functions and are associated with common human diseases. The weightless environment of space helps form superior crystals which researchers on earth to study to learn more about the molecular structure of these proteins for protein engineering and drug design.
But he’s also passionate about bringing other people the opportunity to share in the kinds of adventures he’s been able to experience.
“I’m an explorer,” he said, “but not an explorer like Sir Edmund Hillary who was the first man to climb Mt. Everest. His attitude was, ‘I’m going to climb this and I might make it or I might die but I have to try.’ I have no interest in dying.”
It used to be that one could only explore as Sir Edmund Hillary did or go on a Disney cruise. He wants to offer alternatives. Today, he said, if you want to go space, the bottom of the sea, or to the poles, his business is the place to seek out.
One of his most amazing adventures was visiting the interior of the Antarctic where the air and silence are so complete they seem to distort your understanding. Describing a place where the scouring wind had created what appeared to be a massive frozen wave he said: “How does our world have things like this and we never see them.”
He wants to see disappearing indigenous populations before they completely disappear. He wants to put a stick in lava.
“I have a passion for exploration,” he said, “I have a passion for understanding and I have a passion to create things for others to explore.”
At Rackspace headquarters, a slew of startup bus entrepreneurs pitched their ventures to a panel of celebrity judges Friday morning.
Among the judges, Dave McClure, serial entrepreneur and head of 500 Startups, gave them frank feedback, laced with a lot of F-bombs.
Dozens of entrepreneurs, from startup buses that originated in San Francisco, Boston, Cincinnati, Florida, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Louisiana, Mexico, New York, Stanford University and Washington, D.C., bravely presented their ideas in front of the panel. They spent the last three days traveling first to San Antonio and then to South by Southwest where they will compete in a semi-finals round Saturday and finals on Sunday. The Rackspace event sought to help prepare them.
The startup buses have become an important part of the startup culture surrounding SXSW. But the concept started in March of 2010 as a joke, said Elias Bizannes, its founder. In the last few years, the startup bus has taken on a life of its own. This year’s contingent is the largest ever. A competition was also held in Europe last November, Bizannes said.
“Our focus is more on the people and not the products they build,” Bizannes said. “A lot of people have come out of this and gone on to raise money and start ventures.”
A guy from the New York startup bus last year raised $2 million from venture capitalists recently, he said.
And several of the startup bus entrepreneurs who pitched on Friday sounded like they had good business ideas.
Some guys on the Las Vegas startup bus hatched the idea of providing a print product comprised of all the postings on various social networks a person does in a year called YearInPrint.com It’s sort of like a yearbook of your life on social networks.
The retro futuristic idea got some love from Nicole Glaros, managing director of the TechStars Cloud.
YearinPrint.com has already signed up 100 users and it just launched Friday morning on the bus. That’s pretty impressive, said Robert Scoble, a blogger and Rackspace employee, who moderated the event.
“They actually have a product that works and you can use it,” Scoble said.
McClure told the entrepreneurs to present their ideas clearly in the format of customer, problem and framework.
He also yelled at the audience when the crowd got too loud.
“Hey you, shut the fuck up,” McClure said. “This is actually interesting.”
SimplyApp.com pitched their idea “Pinterest for geeks.”
“Who the hell cares?” asked McClure.
The head of TwoToursandalie.com said he registered AwesomeLobster.com and then pitched his tour service to McClure. McClure was not impressed.
“You bait and switched,” he said. “If you’re going to bait and switch make sure to pitch something awesome.”
McClure said the pitch was “fucking awful” and told the guy to get off the stage and hand the microphone to someone else.
Cerealize.com, a customizable cereal service that delivers the stuff to your door, presented its whimsical idea for cereal creation. It’s interested in getting a foothold in the customizable foods market. In just a few days, they were able to design a logo and launch a webpage.
The personalization includes the cereal box, Scoble said. “My kids could each have their own box of cereal with their picture on it.”
“This is the best idea I’ve heard all day,” said a judge. But he said the company would face a nightmare in sourcing ingredients.
The panel liked the nine-member team of Cerealize.com because they displayed passion and commitment to their product and they made others believe in their success.
GivingLight, an idea from the Washington, D.C. startup bus, presented its neighborhood service to help people for free to receive good Karma.
“What’s the business model?” asked Scoble.
“Corporate sponsors,” said the woman pitching GivingLight.
It’s an awesome idea, but it doesn’t fit the investor model, said Glaros with TechStars. But she said she would donate money to it.
A startup bus group pitching itself as a semester aboard for entrepreneurs got some traction from McClure.
“I kind of like this pitch,” McClure said. “It’s a narrow market but I think this is kind of interesting.”
A woman presented Curiouscities, an alternative lifestyle for adults interested in finding sex sites in different cities focused on fetishes and other stuff.
“How do you get your content?” asked a panel member.
“It’s all in the community,” she said.
“Best pitch today,” said McClure. She covered the customer, problem, target market and provided a solution.
Clrme.com is a crowdsourced reputation site for people.
“A platform for people to tell it like it is,” said the guy pitching it.
A panel judge said the name was awkward and it’s not a word so it’s difficult for people to find and understand. He recommended that they get the .Co website and spell the name out.
Two guys pitched, Taxcast, a site focused on providing tax information to artists and other creatives. They said “We are fucking revolutionizing tax today.”
McClure smiled at that.
McClure said the pitch was good for the first 30 seconds, but he doubted that people needed instant access to information about their taxes and their tax refund.
“I fucking don’t believe it,” he said.
The room became really loud with almost everyone talking at once. Glaros asked everyone to see how quiet they could get the room. It quieted down immediately.
“Punch the person next to you if they talk,” Glaros said.
Several startup bus entrepreneurs wanted to pitch their ideas but only 30 minutes remained. So Glaros came up with the idea to let each team present for 30 seconds and at the end they got a thumbs up or a thumbs down. If the panel liked the idea, the entrepreneur received additional feedback. If not, they had to leave the stage.
First up, PopcornU.com pitched its augmented education site for kids.
“That was clear,” said McClure. “But it kind of sucks.”
PopcornU exited the stage vowing to be back.
A site pitching itself as beer goggles for Twitter got voted off stage.
Open Wallet pitched a site that lets people get money from people nearby using a mobile phone. People broadcast their need and others nearby finance them. With Open Wallet, everybody becomes an ATM. They got a thumbs up.
One of the judges said it’s going to be very easy way to steal money from people. McClure asked if they have any background in fraud prevention.
“There’s a business here somewhere,” McClure said. “It’s peer to peer payday loans.”
Jay Hancock pitched Hancockapp.com, an app that creates simple contracts.
“It’s like having a lawyer in your pocket,” he said. He got a thumbs up from the panel. They liked the idea.
The judges also advised the startups not to put a dash in their domain name.
Wastebits.co created a business to business online platform to connect the creators of garbage with disposal services.
“If this doesn’t exist, it’s really interesting,” Glaros said.
“It’s hot,” said the guy pitching the waste company.
The panel generally liked the waste disposal company idea.
BumperCrop.co from the Florida statup bus pitched an application to connect home-based farmers with consumers. The panel liked the idea.
TimeClutch.com from the Boston startup bus billed itself as a Flipboard like experience that curates social activity around events. It launched today and already has three sponsors for SXSW. The panel asked how it differentiates itself from Storify.com. The app is event focused and automatically curates content on an event. The panel seemed to like that. But the entrepreneurs still had work to do.
“You’ve got to work on the pitch,” McClure said. “It sucks.”
T
he last company to pitch wanted to spread happiness, Happstr.com. It already has had 300 check ins. The idea is to find happy places using a location based app.
“Find your happy place.”
And on that note, the panel wrapped up.
Full Disclosure: Rackspace is a sponsor of SiliconHillsNews.com
Shutterstock Images plans to project SXSW images nightly from 7 p.m. to 1 a.m. onto a 6-story wall at the corner of 5th Street and Colorado in downtown Austin.
People from all over the world can also view the slideshow online at Shutterstock’s Facebook page.
Shutterstock will also have photographers and a mobile photo booth at SXSW.
Shutterstock’s photographers will be “documenting everything from conference panels to food trucks to landscapes, capturing the real Austin, and streaming their photos live to a curation team. Shutterstock has also invited attendees to be a part of the story by tweeting their photos to @Shutterstock with the hashtag #SXSWpix,” according to the company.
“SXSW hosts some of the most imaginative, intelligent, and entrepreneurial people in the tech and creative industries,” Shutterstock CEO Jon Oringer said in a news release. “To be immersed in such an energetic and collaborative environment is truly exciting for us>”
Getaround, a peer to peer car sharing company, officially launched today in Austin.
Just last month, Getaround launched in the greater Portland metropolitan area with a $1.7 million federal grant. The service is now available in four major cities.
“Our goal when we founded Getaround was to empower people to share cars everywhere,” Getaround co-founder and CEO Sam Zaid said in a news statement. “Car sharing requires consumers to think differently and the viability of car sharing hinges on community. Our members like that Getaround connects them with people who share similar community values and interests. With this in mind we’ve carefully selected the markets in which we’ve entered thus far and are proud to be in Austin.”
In addition to announcing its service in Austin, Jessica Scorpio, co-founder and Director of Marketing at Getaround, will be speaking at the city’s SXSW conference. As a part of the “Launching Companies in Regulated Industries” panel, she will highlight ways to combat the variety of issues faced by technology start-ups launching in regulated industries.
