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.
Tag: technology (Page 16 of 25)
About 10 years ago, Sino CES started operating in China.
“We realized we couldn’t stop them,” said Gary Shapiro, president and CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association, which puts on the world’s biggest electronics show in January in Las Vegas.
“We couldn’t sue them,” Shapiro said. “So we entered into a partnership with them.”
That’s how a lot of business is done in China, Shapiro told about 100 people attending his morning talk at InnoTech San Antonio Thursday.
Every year, Shapiro travels to China for the show. But a few years ago, an encounter with a Chinese politician, who spoke no English, shook him up so much he decided to write a book. The Chinese politician, in a few simple hand gestures, indicated that China was on the rise with a thumbs up sign and that the United States was on the decline with a thumbs down signal.
“There was some truth to it,” Shapiro said. “We’re not leading innovation the way we should be.”
Shapiro, 55, and his wife had children late in life. He has a four year old and another child on the way. His children make him have a laser-like focus on the future of the country. Last year, he wrote the bestselling book “The Comeback: How Innovation Will Restore the American Dream.”
For years, the United States has feared the rise of various countries like Japan, Korea and Mexico. All of those countries threatened to extinguish the U.S.’s powerhouse economy. But they didn’t, yet China has made a dent in it. But even China is suffering now because of the subprime mortgage crisis in the U.S. market and because of China’s enormous growth, Shapiro said.
Manufacturing jobs have fled the U.S. in favor of cheaper labor in China, and those jobs are not coming back, Shapiro said. In China, a worker might spend all day doing one repetitive task on a manufacturing line.
“Americans are not going to be doing that kind of repetitive work – not with our education,” he said.
That’s why our national strategy should be focused on creating an innovation economy, Shapiro said.
“The thing about innovation is that every new idea challenges something in the past,” he said.
That’s why the U.S. has fewer travel agents, newspaper reporters and plant workers than years ago.
“As Americans we have a culture of doing things better,” Shapiro said.
To encourage innovation, the U.S. school system needs improvement, Shapiro said. Kids need to be taught to ask questions. The teachers that allow students to ask questions and challenge them are the best teachers, Shapiro said.
The U.S. entrepreneurial system also encourages innovation. The U.S. should not punish people for being successful and making money, Shapiro said. Entrepreneurs like Bill Gates, whose estimated net worth is around $60 billion, should be applauded, Shapiro said
“We reward people by letting them get wealthy,” he said. “It encourages the best and the brightest.”
But the focus on innovation has changed since Sept. 11, Shapiro said.
To remedy that, the U.S. also needs to change its immigration policies so that it doesn’t kick out the smartest people in our society who earn advanced degrees in science, engineering, technology and math. The National Science Foundation spends $6 billion a year on research and a lot of that research is done by foreign graduate students attending U.S. universities. Upon graduation, those students must go back to the countries they came from instead of being allowed to stay in the U.S., Shapiro said.
The U.S. also must increase its high bandwidth transmission capabilities to remain competitive, Shapiro said
And the signing of the JOBS Act by President Obama on Thursday was a step in the right direction in making it easier for entrepreneurs to raise money for their businesses through crowd funding.
“Innovation is so important for our country,” Shapiro said. “What’s really important for the future of innovation and technology companies is the health of the U.S. economy.”
Right now, all countries look to the U.S. for innovation, Shapiro said. They all want to emulate the U.S. That’s why he created Innovation-Movement.org to keep the focus on that strategy.
“Every company, every country, every individual needs a strategy,” Shapiro said. “Our strategy should be innovation.”
(InnoTech San Antonio was an advertiser with Silicon Hills News)
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)
It’s time for another technology CEO summit.
For the second year, the Austin Technology Council will host the event on May 17th and May 18th.
More than 100 top level executives participated in last year’s technology summit.
This year’s event will take place over two days is now open for registration to qualifying executives.
“Last year’s turnout was indicative of the industry’s intent on making Austin a tier-one market for technology,” Julie Huls, Austin Technology Council president said in a news statement. “This year’s Summit, like last year, will be focused not just on discussing some of the industry’s challenges, but on what we can do, collectively, to remove those obstacles for faster, more efficient growth.
The summit will take place at the downtown Hilton Hotel and will cost $399 through April 30th and $599 for late registration from May 1 to May 11. Event organizers are also extending invitations to executives in other Texas cities including San Antonio, Dallas and Houston.
The Austin Technology, with more than 6,000 members and friends and 230 member companies, reports that last year’s event led to a focus on high tech employee recruiting and retention and also resulted in a CEO recruiting trip to Silicon Valley.
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.
Famigo announced today that it has closed on $1 million in a seed round of financing led by Silverton Partners, with participation from Zilker Ventures, Liahona Ventures and CapitalFactory.
Founded in 2009, Famigo has created a mobile phone application that lets families find kid-friendly content and restrict access to other mobile phone features on Apple iOS and Android mobile phones as well as the web. Famigo plans to use the financing to expand internationally and to expand its products.
“The mobile explosion has uniquely impacted families: kids are increasingly adept at using new technologies and parents suffer from an enormous responsibility to vet every purchase and experience,” Famigo CEO Q Beck said in a news release. “It doesn’t have to be that way: Famigo helps parents identify quality content, enforce their personal guidelines and better manage the mobile lives of their families. Silverton Partners’ investment validates Famigo’s technology as well as the business opportunity in solving the overwhelming frustration and concern parents feel around mobile technology and the family.”
For more on Famigo, please read this Silicon Hills News profile by Susan Lahey.
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.
Austin-based Kinnser Software announced Monday that it has received a $40 million investment from Insight Venture Partners.
The company plans to use the money to expand its software business and for a national sales and marketing campaign.
“Kinnser provides services to more than 55,000 users working in more than 900 home health agencies and therapy providers nationwide,” according to the company. “Revenue at Kinnser has grown more than 80 percent annually since the company was founded in 2003.”
Kinnser made INC. magazine’s list of the fastest growing private company for 2010 and 2011.
Avnet announced Monday its plans to acquire Ascendant Technology, based in Austin.
Phoenix-based Avnet, an electronics component maker, did not disclose terms of the deal.
Ascendant Technology, an information technology consulting firm, helps businesses create ecommerce, web content management, cloud computing and other solutions. It had revenue of approximately $90 million in 2011.
Founded in 2003, Ascendant Technology has more than 500 employees. The acquisition, pending customary regulatory approval, is expected to close within 45 days.
Avnet’s stock, traded under the symbol AVT on the Nasdaq market, closed up nearly 2.5 percent at $36.83.
Running a technology startup takes perseverance, money, luck, talent and the ability to adapt quickly.
That’s the takeaway from Bill Boebel’s Startup Ignite talk at the Geekdom in San Antonio Friday night.
Boebel, now an angel investor and managing director of Capital Factory in Austin, gave the audience of about 60 people an overview of how he co-founded Webmail.us and later sold it to Rackspace Hosting.
In 1999, Boebel and his friends, Pat Matthews and Kevin Minnick, founded FieldParty.com, which created searchable city event directories. They dropped out of Virginia Tech University just 20 hours short of getting their degrees to work on the business full time. FieldParty.com raised $120,000 in angel money, largely from friends and family, and on March 10, 2000, the website launched – the same day the Nasdaq started crashing when the great Dot Com bubble burst.
“The world changed the day we launched,” Boebel said.
Immediately, potential investors stopped returning calls, he said. “The website was live in three cities: Blacksburg, Charlottesville and Harrisonburg, Virginia.”
That’s when the company changed names to Exedent Technologies and pivoted from searchable directories to creating content management systems for events for newspapers. The company landed 20 customers paying $50 to $100 a month.
Exedent gave away the product for free to the Virginia Tech University newspaper to serve as a reference customer for other newspapers. The problem was “the newspapers didn’t understand the Internet,” Boebel said. “They thought it was a threat to put their content online.”
So Exedent created a general-purpose content management system.
“It was a pretty cool product at the time,” Boebel said.
But Boebel, Matthews and Minnick had $100,000 in credit card debt and the company was running out of money. Exedent laid off its entire workforce except two employees who received minimum wage.
The company pivoted again into a company that would “do anything for a buck” including content management systems, webmail hosting, search engine optimization and website development.
“We would do whatever people would pay us to do,” Boebel said. “With each change we had confidence that this was the right path.”
Then, the money just about ran out and Boebel said he “thought about quitting.”
Matthews took a job selling books door to door. Minnick took a regular job to support his family. They all decided to go back to college and work crazy side jobs to keep the business afloat. They moved the offices into the basement of a townhouse.
In 2002, they got lucky. Spam and viruses started to plague people’s email inboxes on the Internet. The company started heavily promoting its secure email hosting services. Boebel, using his search engine optimization skills, secured the top keywords for “email hosting” and “webmail” on Yahoo.
“Overnight, it started to become clear that the email thing was a thing,” he said.
In yet another pivot, they added a “c” to the company’s name to create Excedent and decided to focus exclusively on email and “build the most kick ass email company.”
“We had only $1,200 in the bank and no credit to draw from and servers to pay,” Boebel said.
Its bill for Server Vault, a hosting service, cost $1,200 a month, he said.
Luckily, the company landed its first major customer and asked for a $50,000 prepayment. That along with $30,000 raised from a private investor and a $50,000 bank loan from a friend, and the company was funded, Boebel said.
They took advantage of the fact that big companies didn’t quite understand that if a company had a professional looking website that they could still be in the basement of a townhouse, Boebel said.
Also, for two years, they paid pennies for search engine keywords that led to “awesome leads” and customers, he said.
At the end of 2002, the company had $250,000 in revenue. Minnick quit his other job and went back to work for the company full time. The next year revenue doubled with 1,200 customers. They ran a lean operation, Boebel said.
“Lean wasn’t cool back then,” he said.
In 2004, they rebranded the company to Webmail.us and focused on the small business market and partnered with Rackspace as a reseller of its services. Webmail.us had more than 500 resellers. It moved its servers from Server Vault to Rackspace. They also moved the company to the Virginia Tech Research Park and switched from a Windows-based system to Linux and open systems. By the end of the year, the company had $1 million in revenue and 4,000 customers and eight employees.
At the end of 2004, the company also raised $500,000 in venture capital from local angels and Pat Condon, a founder of Rackspace.
In 2005, the company had revenue of $2 million, 13,000 customers and 25 employees. Webmail.us was the place work in Blacksburg, VA and the company got its pick of computer science graduates from Virginia Tech University.
Then in February of 2006, Google launched Gmail, Webmail.us’s first real competitive threat, Boebel said.
Despite the threat from Google, business continued to grow. By the end of 2006, Webmail.us had $4 million in revenue and 30,000 customers.
In 2007, Webmail.us was looking to raise $3 million to expand the company’s operations, but it never closed on the round, Boebel said. Instead, Rackspace acquired Webmail.us in September of 2007. That year, the company had made Inc. 500’s list of fastest growing private companies, ranking at number 217.
When Rackspace bought Webmail.us, the company had revenue of $8 million, 72,800 customers and 65 employees.
“By this point, Rackspace was our largest reseller and we were their fifth largest customer,” Boebel said. It was Rackspace’s first acquisition.
“Essentially, we had the autonomy to run the hosted email business inside Rackspace,” Boebel said. Webmail.us moved customer support to San Antonio but continued to grow the Blacksburg offices.
From 2008 to 2010, Boebel worked at Rackspace and continued to double the email hosting revenue annually. He left the company and moved to Austin two years ago.
Austin has a more developed ecosystem for startups than San Antonio, Boebel said. It’s also a great place to raise a family. He is married and has a two-year-old son.
“A lot of things are happening in San Antonio, but not a lot of things are bringing it together,” he said. He said he hoped Geekdom would change that and serve as a catalyst for San Antonio’s technology community.
Today, Boebel acts as an angel investor in several technology startups, primarily based in Austin. His investments include WP Engine, a WordPress web hosting site and InfoChimps, a data management business.
His investment criteria centers on the people behind the startup.
“I’ve just got to really like the team,” Boebel said. “I definitely look for ones where I get along with the team really well.”
At Webmail.us, the founders hired people they liked and wanted to hang out with after work. That’s the same strategy Boebel uses in his investments.
(Rackspace is a sponsor of SiliconHillsNews.com)