Tag: technology (Page 4 of 25)

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.

Dell’s Ingrid Vanderveldt on Six Trends Shaping Entrepreneurs in 2014

January 13, 2014 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 2 Comments

By INGRID VANDERVELDT
Dell’s Entrepreneur in Residence
Special Contribution to Silicon Hills News

We’re seeing more entrepreneurial activity in the U.S. than ever before – a result of factors including low cost of entry for startups, increased availability of funding for early-stage startups, and valuations for successful startups hitting an all-time high. With the New Year upon us, it’s the time we all start thinking about how this year will be different than last and what trends will have the largest impact on the entrepreneurial community in 2014. Some of my top predictions are as follows:

1. Social media space continues to grow ever-crowded. While not a new trend, social media has fully matured as a channel, with 73 percent of adults in the U.S. using at least one platform and 42 percent using multiple social networking sites. Every company needs a comprehensive, customer-driven marketing and communications strategy, and in 2014, that means knowing where your customers are and finding ways to have meaningful and personalized interactions. Over the last year, Pinterest became wildly popular among women and surpassed Twitter in total users, while new applications such as Snapchat stole attention from Facebook among the teen market.
Although the decline in Facebook usage among teens may be over-hyped, the truth is that all users, teens and adults alike, are using multiple platforms to suit their needs – LinkedIn for professional networking, Pinterest for social bookmarking, Instagram for photo-sharing, etc. With so many platforms, it’s important to have a strategy that doesn’t put all your eggs in one basket. Pay attention to demographics and make sure you are where your customers are. Entrepreneurs should also look to leverage their own personal and professional social networking activities to build their brand while integrating social across their enterprise. Also, consider taking a page out of Dell’s book by leveraging the passion, talent and networks of your employees by starting an employee advocacy program.

2. Marrying profits with purpose. Launching and maintaining a successful business is no longer just about the bottom line. We’re seeing more and more companies building sustainability and a vision beyond profits into their cultures from day one, and attracting customers and top talent in the process. Tesla may be a car company but its vision is to “expedite the move from a mine-and-burn hydrocarbon economy towards a solar electric economy.” Warby Parker may sell fashionable eyewear, but the B Corp aspires to “do good in the world” for its “employees, customers, community and the environment.”
I joined Dell because I believe in its vision of technology powering human potential. Supporting entrepreneurs and empowering women in business are key tenets to who Dell is as a company. Just one example of this is the Pay it Forward initiative Dell launched last year, setting a goal to track support for one million women entrepreneurs by the end of 2015.

3. It’s no longer a question of Silicon Valley or Silicon Alley. While the Valley is still seen as the epicenter of the startup universe by many, opportunity is becoming more geographically dispersed than ever before. Cities including Austin, Tennessee, Denver, New Orleans, and Detroit are all cultivating their own startup ecosystems and the number of startups founded outside of traditional entrepreneurship hubs is growing significantly. This trend is being supported by large national initiatives such as Google’s Tech Hubs and the White House’s Startup America Partnership, along with local efforts by cities across the U.S.
For entrepreneurs, the hunt for financing and top talent may make the Bay Area appear attractive but think twice before jumping on flight and heading straight to Sand Hill Road. Not only are there benefits to being a big fish in a small pond, but the competitive advantage of regional economies should also be a factor in your decision-making process. Silicon Valley may still be the right place for you if you’re in enterprise technology, as might New York City if you’re launching a media-focused startup, but know your industry and do your research as new hotbeds of innovation are emerging worldwide, and it may be easier to break through the clutter and get noticed in a less saturated market.

4. Alternative forms of payment and digital currency move into the mainstream. PayPal launched in 1999 as the first mainstream online money transfer service, creating new opportunities for merchants and entrepreneurs on the web. 10 years later, Square’s card reader made it exceptionally easy for just about anyone to accept physical credit cards at their point of sale. In 2013, a formerly obscure cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, took to the mainstream evolving into a multi-billion dollar ecosystem recognized by hedge funds and Congress. With Bitcoin BitPay processing over $100,000,000 in transactions, Bitcoins were used to purchase spots on Virgin Galactic flights to space, Lamborghinis, and OKCupid credits.
These alternate forms of payment are offering businesses a compelling way to expand their customer base, reduce per transaction costs and improve user experience. With the pace of innovation in financial transactions increasing and the desire for frictionless transactions on the rise, startups, especially those involved in e-commerce, will need to familiarize themselves with alternative currencies and payment methods. While accepting mobile payments or embracing digital currency may not be the right fit for your business, 2014 might be the right time to figure out your policy and ensure you’re taking the appropriate security measures if you do decide to try out new technology.

5. It’s time to think twice before you IPO. The nimbleness and passion that got your startup where it is today can be difficult to sustain under the watchful eyes of shareholders. Going public has been shown to zap innovation and foster short-term thinking by measuring success in quarterly earnings rather than taking the long-view.
If there’s a lesson to be learned from Michael Dell’s battle to bring Dell private in 2013, it’s that stockholders require an intense focus on short-term gains, which can sometimes be counterproductive to the long-term viability of a company. Entrepreneurs thinking about going public should take note. Will fewer companies go public in 2014 than in previous years? Probably not, but they should definitely weigh the pros and cons more carefully.

6. Women are rising to the top. Not a new trend, but, in 2014, I believe the rate at which women are taking leadership positions and “owning their potential” is going to grow at rates we can’t even fathom. For example, just yesterday it was announced that the first female law firm just opened in Saudi Arabia – something that would’ve been unheard of just 12 months ago!
With public/private partnerships such as Dell’s work with the UN Foundation, we are now in a position to create change for women on a global scale and this year we’ll continue to see increased collaboration between governments, international organizations, the private sector, and individual stakeholders to positively impact female entrepreneurship worldwide.

Ingrid Vanderveldt is an entrepreneur, investor and media personality connecting entrepreneurs to corporations. Ingrid is leveraging her business, policy and media initiatives to “Empower a Billion Women by 2020” to help provide women with tools, technology & resources. As Dell’s first Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR), Ingrid serves as the bridge from the “outside, in” connecting the entrepreneur community to the expansive resources the Fortune 50 company. Ingrid created and oversees the $100M Dell Innovators Credit Fund and The Dell Center for Entrepreneurs. In 2012, Ingrid helped architect The Federal EIR Bill with Senator Mary Landreau (LA) and Representative Mike Honda (CA), and is currently working on legislation with State Senators to bring out a State-wide EIR bill in 2013. She is also the co-founder of The Billionaire Girls Club, is a Dell Women’s Entrepreneur Network Member and serves on the UN Foundation Global Entrepreneurs Council.

Volusion Completes $35 Million in Debt Financing

January 13, 2014 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 0 Comments

Volusion announced the completion of $35 million in debt financing to expand its ecommerce software and services.
The Austin-based company secured the line of credit from Silicon Valley Bank. The company plans to use the money to further develop its software platform and to hire product, support, sales, marketing and IT workers.
The company decided to finance its growth through debt financing instead of venture capital or private equity to retain ownership. It plans to file an initial public offering in the future.
“As Volusion continues to grow and power some of the most successful merchants’ online presence, we believe this new financing will give the team the flexibility it needs to tackle its goals in 2014 and beyond,” Blake English, managing director for Silicon Valley Bank in Austin, said in a news release.
Volusion, founded in 2009, currently has more than 400 employees.
The company has “aggressive expansion plans” for its products targeted at the small to medium sized business market, according to Clay Oliver, CEO of Volusion.

Austin Startup Games to Showcase Entrepreneurial Athletes

January 10, 2014 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 1 Comment

By LAURA LOREK
Founder of Silicon Hills News

It’s less than a month to go until the 2014 Olympic Winter Games in Sochi kicks off.
But if you can’t wait that long and you can’t travel to Russia, there’s a solution much closer in Austin.
It’s the Austin Startup 2014 Winter Games! The event begins at 1 p.m. at the Austin Music Hall on Jan. 25th. Tickets cost $10 to attend.
The Austin Startup Games are like the Olympics for nerds. A bunch of startups will come together to compete in Ping-Pong, foosball, darts, shuffleboard, flip cup, beer pong, giant Connect4, Pop-A-Shot and trivia. And if past games are any indication, these athletes will also imbibe a lot of beer and other refreshments.
The Austin Startup Games started in 2012 by entrepreneurs from eight startup companies. The goal is to give back to the community and have fun doing it. All of the money raised gets donated to local charities.
The Austin Startup Games has since doubled in size with 16 startups competing in the winter games. Those startups are Adlucent, Adometry, Boundless Network, Build a Sign, Capital Factory, Chaotic Moon, CSID, Headspring, Living Direct, Map My Fitness, Main Street Hub, Mass Relevance, SpareFoot, Spiceworks, Spredfast and uShip.
Also, the CEOs of those startups will compete in the final event of the game, which is a surprise and it will not be revealed until the games begin. Last year, the surprise event was a mechanical bull.

Yellow Cab Austin Updates Hail A Cab App

January 6, 2014 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 0 Comments

With all kinds of competition to give people rides around Austin from Uber and on-demand ride-sharing startups like Lyft and SideCar, Yellow Cab Austin is keeping pace with the technological changes.
The company announced last month the release of its Hail A Cab app, version 3.0., which includes a mobile payment system for Austin taxis.
Yellow Cab Austin originally launched its app in July of 2012. Since then, the app has been downloaded more than 400,000 times.
The company has reported that taxi wait times have decreased by 27 percent since it released its app.
The app now allows customers to pay with their mobile phones and it also allows them to rate their experiences with Yellow Cab Austin.
“We’re always looking for ways to improve the customer experience, and the HAIL A CAB app is a core driver of that mission,” Ed Kargbo, President of Yellow Cab Austin, said in a news release. “Allowing for mobile payments and encouraging direct feedback will help us continue to provide a safe and efficient way for Austinites and visitors to travel around our city.”
For more information, visit the Hail A Cab app website.

Innovator’s Insights: Spotlight on Scott Harmon, CEO of Noesis Energy

December 20, 2013 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 1 Comment

By GREGORY WISE
Special Contributor to Silicon Hills News

Scott Harmon, CEO of Noesis Energy

Noesis Energy founder and CEO Scott Harmon didn’t set-out to be a serial entrepreneur, but having now started and grown no fewer than four Austin tech companies the title seems to fit.

As part of the leadership team at Tivoli Systems, the poster-child for Austin tech-business success, Harmon helped guide the company to a 1995 IPO and $750 million acquisition by IBM. Not long after, he co-founded Motive, where as president and CEO he led another IPO and grew the company to $100 million in revenue. After leaving Motive, Harmon became CEO of AlterPoint, leading that company to a strategic acquisition.

Today, he seems completely in his element as CEO of venture-backed Noesis Energy, a position he’s held since February 2011. “We’re heavily focused on the opportunity to save $50 million in energy that’s wasted in commercial buildings every year,” Harmon says. “We want to help people reduce that waste.”

Think of Noesis as a match-making service, Harmon says. “We connect building engineers, facility managers, real estate managers, real estate portfolio owners, building owners – anyone who owns a building and pays an energy bill – to energy saving technologies.” Put another way, Harmon jokes, “we’re a dating website for energy efficiency.”

According to Harmon, about a third of Noesis’ customers are public sector institutions, primarily state agencies and municipalities, with the other two-thirds being private-sector. But in both cases the customers’ goal is the same, to reduce spending. Often customers will come to Noesis with a specific energy-saving goal in-place.

“Many businesses will set an annual energy reduction target and it’s usually about five percent,” said Harmon. “Customers look for guidance, counsel and solutions from Noesis. We want to be a trusted partner to the customer. People aren’t confident in sourcing directly from the vendors.

“There are 8,000 companies in the US that sell technology related to energy consumption or efficiency. Talk to their VP’s of Sales and they will commonly say, ‘our technology is too complicated and we’d love a better way to get our technologies into the market.’”

When it comes to acting as a partner, Noesis puts its money where its mouth is. The company makes money as a percentage of customers’ energy savings. The more successful Noesis is at helping a customer reduce energy expenses, the greater the revenue potential.

Executive Q&A with Scott Harmon

Q. What does a “typical” day look like for you?

A. As one of the founders I wanted a scenario where it was possible to work from home. We’d all seen Office Space (Mike Judge’s 1999 workplace satire) enough; we were tired of the cube race. Today I split my time almost evenly between working at the office, from home and on the road. It’s made the lifestyle of this industry better for me; much better than being in an office from 7:00AM to 7:00PM then seeing your family only after that. I embrace a more flexible and connected way of working. I think if you want to kind of keep doing it (working in the start-up/early stage environment) you have to achieve some balance.

Q. What part of your job gives you the most satisfaction?

A. I’m still a technology geek. I graduated from Iowa State, where I went on a wrestling scholarship, earning a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science. I like the building process and interacting with people who build things. The whole process of building has always given me a big charge. I love to build things.

Q. What are the qualities that make someone good at your job?

A. Competitiveness. I’m competitive. I think competition brings out the best in people. It tells you what you’re good at. Tells you what you’re not good at. It’s invigorating.

Q. What the most difficult part of your job?

A. I think for me it’s always wishing you could go bigger and faster. In a perfect world you could have the scale of a larger company with the nimbleness of a start-up.

Q. What experience, or experiences, best prepared you for your job?

A. The way I grew-up in Iowa. I grew-up 50 miles from the Field of Dreams cornfield. It was a very rural, very-Midwestern upbringing. That, wrestling, and majoring in Computer Sciences all prepared me.

Q. Why do you choose to live and work in Central Texas, as opposed to other tech-centric parts of the country?

A. It has the best blend of the various lifestyles. You’ve got the tech community, it’s affordable, and it’s a good place to raise a family. Honestly, I don’t think there’s even a close second. If you want to do the “All-Tech” thing, go to Silicon Valley, but you’ll be back.

Q. Outside of your current position, what’s your dream job and why?

A. It would be another start-up.

Q. What’s the best advice you’ve ever gotten?

A. Always know what can kill your business versus what can only hurt you. As a CEO I feel a really strong sense of personal responsibility and care for the people who work for me. It’s really heavy, in a good way, it’s a big motivation.

Q. Who is your role model?

A. Bob Metcalfe. He is about great technology first. Bob is a great example.

Q. What’s the first electronic gadget you remember owning?

A. A cell phone. The cell phone collapsed distances more than anything that came before it.

Q. What’s the one piece of technology you couldn’t live without?

A. My laptop. It’s still the most productive thing I have. The laptop crushes the tablet, iPhone, any other piece of media I have. It’s far and away my favorite.

Q. What do you think is the most important technology in-use today?

A. Search is the most important; it’s how anybody can know anything. That’s huge. The personal cost of search approaches zero, yet you can know anything. You can know the biology of your cancer if you’re a cancer patient, for example.

Q. What do you think is the most underrated technology in use today?

A. Meters, all types of meters. Meters are going everywhere. Google Traffic has individuals metering the distance they’ve traveled in a certain amount of time, establishing traffic patterns. Energy meters are measuring energy at points in time. The interval for energy metering used to be a month. A Meter Reader would come around and read total consumption and peak consumption. Now energy is read every five minutes. This is the flip side of analytics.

And I think peer-to-peer connectivity is underrated; we’re just beginning to see the power of crowds. Noesis is a strong peer-to-peer example. People in the Noesis community advise each other on energy efficiency. I was just reading about peer-to-peer funding. A cool company called LendingClub that allows people to lend to other people. There’s Airbnb and others. The power of people to deal directly with each other. That scale, that enormity, is pretty fascinating.

Q. What do you think is the most overrated technology in use today?

A. The concept of the Smart Home is the most overrated. There’s no such thing as a Smart Home! And do you really want webcams throughout your house? That’s horrifying on so many different levels!

Gregory Wise, vice president with Weber Shandwick

Gregory Wise is an Austin-based marketing and communications professional with the PR firm Weber Shandwick. He can be reached at Gregory Wise
Editor’s Note: Gregory Wise will write the Innovator’s Insights column for Silicon Hills News on accomplished technology experts in Austin. To be considered for the column, please contact him at Gregory Wise.

Randi Zuckerberg Navigates the “dot complicated” World

December 14, 2013 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 0 Comments

By LAURA LOREK
Founder of Silicon Hills News

Moria Forbes, publisher of Forbes Woman, interviewing Randi Zuckerberg, author of dot complicated: Untangling Our Wired Lives

Randi Zuckerberg navigated the early years of social media at Facebook and remembers a pivotal moment while working on the 2008 election.
“We obviously were drinking the Kool-Aid of social media in Silicon Valley,” Zuckerberg said.
But she was shocked at how the presidential campaigns weren’t using Facebook and social media. She remembers calling the McCain staff and the Clinton staff and begging them to use Facebook and social media. But it was the Obama campaign that got onboard early and they did so without Facebook even reaching out to them. The Obama campaign’s site on Facebook contributed a significant part to that election, Zuckerberg said.
“For Facebook, people stopped thinking of it as just a college site and really starting thinking of it as a meaningful platform for political change,” she said.
From there, Zuckerberg started specializing in global politics, elections and media partnerships at Facebook.
At Dell World, Moira Forbes, publisher of ForbesWoman, interviewed Zuckerberg, now CEO of Zuckerberg Media, during a Thursday afternoon session. Zuckerberg is a former marketing executive at Facebook and author of dot complicated, a book on navigating the online world.

Zuckerberg launched her own media company

Zuckerberg got her start as a journalist working at Forbes on Fox.
Several years later, she launched her media company at Facebook, which held hack-a-thons every few months at its headquarters. People stayed up all night long and the only rule was that they had to work on a passion project outside their day jobs. And one of Zuckerberg’s passion projects was to start a television network inside Facebook. They had hundreds of millions of people using the platform at that time. She wanted to reach that audience with her own television show.
At one of the hack-a-thons, she launched her show from inside a broom closet at Facebook. She turned on a camera and began broadcasting live online. For the first show, she had six viewers and two of them were her parents.
About a week later, representatives from Singer and Songwriter Katy Perry contacted her and said Perry wanted to be on her Facebook television show.
“Then I had to pretend it was an actual television show,” Zuckerberg said.
During the next few months, she had so many celebrities and people who appeared on the television show that it showed her the power of social media and live content.
“So when President Obama asked if he could come on this Facebook television show and talk to all of America, I thought this is the moment and this is what I clearly love to do,” Zuckerberg said.
That’s when she quit her job at Facebook and launched her own media company. And she was pregnant, but she knew what she wanted to do and she wanted to take a big risk. She sold her house and put all her assets into the new company.

Navigating the dot complicated life

Forbes then asked Zuckerberg what dot complicated meant to her and why she decided to write the book.
“Ask any random person on the street if they’ve had a “dot complicated” moment recently, you don’t even have to describe what that means, and they’ll probably say yes, let me tell you about it,” Zuckerberg said.
It might be about posting something inappropriate or someone else posting something objectionable online, she said. Mobile devices have become pervasive in our lives and they have changed every aspect of it, from finding love to parenting, Zuckerberg said.
“I have a very complicated relationship with technology, if I have this very complicated relationship, surely millions of people around the world do too. They feel like their lives are a bit overwhelmed and maybe they can learn or laugh at my story and maybe we can navigate this world together,” she said.
Zuckerberg detailed many of the most dot complicated moments of her life in the book in hopes that people can learn from them.
For example, she recounted a time when she was playing with her six month old son, she was also answering emails and texting. Then she noticed her son pick up the remote control and act like he was text messaging on it.
That’s when she realized she needed to manage her relationship with technology so she wouldn’t teach her son that technology was competing for her time with him.

The quest for privacy in an increasing transparent online world

Forbes said Zuckerberg wrote a lot about privacy in her book. She asked Zuckerberg how she managed to maintain her personal privacy and keep it separate from her public persona.
Zuckerberg recounted that last Christmas she was with her family and they were all standing around the kitchen table texting on different devices and she took a picture. She posted it to her friends on Facebook. A few hours later she saw it on a bunch of tech blogs. One of her friends had leaked the photo. She was disappointed. She knew that she shouldn’t post anything online, if she wasn’t comfortable with it going viral, but she didn’t think her friends would betray her trust.
“In our real lives, we have three levels of privacy – we have things that are super private for us and our spouses, things that are super public like announcing a new career move, but most of our life, the vast majority, lives in the middle, it’s personal,” Zuckerberg said.
“But online you really only get private and public, you lose personal and we live so much of our lives in there,” she said.
In the book, she wrote about how to get that back and what happens when a person loses that.

Being a leader in a world filled with social media

Photo courtesy of Zuckerberg Media

Zuckerberg also discussed the different generations of management in the workforce. Older workers tend to be more conservative and don’t share as much and millennial workers feel comfortable sharing their lives online, Forbes said. But now more than ever, being authentic is increasingly important to building a following, to getting people inspired by your mission and to becoming an effective leader, Forbes said.
The professional and personal identities have been blended, Zuckerberg said. Companies need to provide social media training to their employees when they hire them, she said.
Millennials want to be posting all the time, Zuckerberg said
“It’s better to arm them with things that they should be posting about rather than letting their imaginations run wild,” she said.
Today, every single employee is an ambassador for your brand, Forbes said.
And every company is a media company, Zuckerberg said.
That can be quite a challenge, Zuckerberg said. She’s had some awkward conversations with people about things that they’ve posted that she never thought she would have to have.
“People have freedom of speech,” she said. “You can’t tell them don’t post things on Twitter, nor would you want to govern who they are. That’s why you hired them in the first place.”
But data does show that it makes you more likeable if you share personal things online and Facebook friend your boss, Zuckerberg said.

Etiquette lessons learned along the way

Forbes asked Zuckerberg about the toughest online social etiquette lesson she had to learn.
Zuckerberg recounted a time when she and her friends couldn’t get into a bar in New York because they didn’t look cool enough.
“I desperately wanted to be so cool even though I was a Silicon Valley geek and we got rejected from this really cool bar. It sucked,” she said.
Twitter had just launched as a platform. She took out her mobile phone and she tweeted wouldn’t it be bad if that bouncer’s Facebook profile went down.
“Wow, really bad thing to say, very irresponsible and the tech press really took me to storm about that,” Zuckerberg said. “It was ironic because I had been spending the last few years educating celebrities, politicians and business leaders about how all of our voices travel faster and farther than ever thanks to this megaphone of social media. But what I hadn’t realized, I hadn’t stepped back and thought, gosh, I have a megaphone too. All of us are sort of mini-celebrities in this world. All of us could go viral at any moment.”
Everyone needs to be very vigilant about their reputations and how they manage social media, Zuckerberg said.

Unplugging from technology

Forbes asked Zuckerberg about managing the constant flow of technology and doing “digital detoxes,” in which people disconnect from their devices.
People are connecting around the clock and people must set boundaries on their own personal time.
“Set some firm rules,” Zuckerberg said. “The more you start setting those rules, the more you’ll train the people around you to respect those times too.”
She has a rule in her house: no tech in the bedroom.
She also said studies show that people who don’t connect with technology whether it’s Facebook, their mobile phone, texts, email, voicemail, first thing in the morning, are happier. She said it’s best to manage the technology and not let it manage your life. She avoids her mobile phone for the first 40 minutes of every day.
“All devices have a curfew in our house for that reason,” she said. “You need that moment of clarity and unplugging in your day.”

The New Dell is More Entrepreneurial and Innovative

December 12, 2013 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 0 Comments

By LAURA LOREK
Founder of Silicon Hills News

At Dell World, Michael Dell unveiled his new, private innovative and entrepreneurial technology company.
The Round Rock-based company, which employs about 14,000 people in Central Texas, no longer has to adhere to the demands of the public stock market.
As a result, Dell said the company can invest in new startups and take a long term view on innovation.
Earlier this year, Dell took the company private in a $25 billion buyout deal which left him with a 75 percent ownership stake. Silver Lake Partners controls the rest.
And the “world’s largest startup” kicked off its new outlook by announcing a $300 million Dell Ventures fund, which will invest in early to growth stage companies. Already, Dell has invested in 14 companies. It expects to invest $60 million within the next three to five years.
Dell also announced new partnerships with Dropbox, Google, Microsoft Azure, Accenture and Red Hat OpenStack to develop new products for the Cloud.
Dell is not abandoning its hardware business, Dell said, during a press conference following his keynote talk at Dell World. This is the third year Dell has hosted Dell World, but its first time as a private company. About 6,000 people are attending the three day conference, which ends Friday at the Austin Convention Center.
During his morning keynote address, Dell outlined the company’s strategy as a private company. It’s a lot like the strategy he has outlined since 2008 when the company began acquiring software and other businesses to complement its technology and expand its services and solutions business.
“We’re disrupting and democratizing software, services and solutions, the way we did PCs and servers.” Dell said. “And we’ve seen the power of technology to enfranchise and empower people. And today the forces of cloud, mobility, social, big data, security are creating a new model for technology, in fact, a new model for society.”
“They’re the foundation of the modern infrastructure, the highways, the bridges, the telephone lines, the airports of the 21st Century,” Dell said. “Connecting and networking our world. And now we’re going to do what Dell does best. We’re going to innovate and make the technology behind these forces more accessible, more affordable, easier to own, easier to capture value from and easier to operate.”
Dell will focus on helping entrepreneurial ventures launch and expand, along with small businesses, and it also will focus on improving and supporting large enterprises. The company also plans to collaborate more and focus on the global economy.
Dell has been pursuing this vision with a consistent strategy for the last five years. It has invested $13 billion to diversify its business and to offer more software, services and cloud solutions to its customers. Dell has doubled its solutions business from $10 billion to $20 billion.
As a private company, Dell can accelerate its strategy and take a longer-term view of innovation.
Dell announced two new programs focused on innovation at Dell World.
The first program is an internal or organic innovation program through the Dell research division focused on disruptive technology, Dell said. It has a long-range focus of five to ten years out, Dell said. It will also collaborate with leading research institutions to harvest the latest technology.
The second announcement is the $300 million Dell Venture Fund focused on early to growth stage companies in core technology areas. Dell plans to make investments in its four core business groups: end user computing, enterprise solutions, software and services.
“At Dell our commitment to innovation has never been greater,” Dell said.
Despite all the changes, Dell is also still committed to its hardware business of PCs, tablets and servers.
The server is becoming the center of the data center and Dell plans to be number one in market share worldwide, Dell said.
“We’re in it to win it,” he said.
Beyond that, Dell has dramatically expanded its capabilities in storage, networking and security.
“The real innovation comes when you combine these together,” Dell said.
At the heart of Dell’s new initiatives is the cloud.
“The cloud is the new model for tech,” Dell said. “At Dell, we’re making sure you’re positioned to be in a Cloud-based world.”
Dell also announced a new partnership with Red Hat to co-engineer products for Openstack, the free cloud-based architecture.

Dell Partners to offer Dropbox for Business on Dell’s Cloud

December 12, 2013 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 3 Comments

Wonder why Dropbox expanded to Austin and opened an office here earlier this year?
One big reason could be Dell.
Dell and Dropbox announced a partnership Thursday at Dell World to create Dropbox for Business using the Cloud. Dell, which went public earlier this year, is hosting Dell World at the Austin Convention Center through Friday. The company is moving to become more entrepreneurial.
The customers that are succeeding are taking advantage of technology, said Michael Dell, CEO of Dell.
“The combination of Dell and Dropbox provides a great solution for customers,” Dell said.
Dell’s strategic partnership with Dropbox will help its commercial customers access data anywhere at anytime. That will help customers become more productive and promote greater file sharing and collaboration among remote workers.
“Dropbox is one of the most innovative and fastest growing start-ups and the most popular solution of its kind,” said Brett Hansen, executive director, end user computing software at Dell. “Now through Dell’s global sales team, Dropbox and Dell can help organizations of all sizes embrace consumerization of IT while protecting company data.”
Dell now offers Dropbox for Business plus Dell Data Protection Cloud, part of the Dell Data Protection solutions portfolio, to let employees use their favorite cloud storage application at work.
“Dropbox has always been about giving people a simple, elegant way to access their most important digital stuff, and today Dropbox is used in over 4 million businesses because it’s easy to use, easy to deploy and offers a secure, centralized location for company data,” said Marc Leibowitz, global vice president of partnerships, Dropbox. “
More than 200 million people and 4 million businesses including BCBG, Kayak, National Geographic and Rockstar Energy use Dropbox and 1 billion files are uploaded to Dropbox every 24 hours.

Q &A with Claire England on Her New Role Promoting Startups at Tech Ranch Austin

December 5, 2013 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 0 Comments

Claire England earlier this year at RISE Austin, photo by Laura Lorek.

Claire England, former executive director RISE Austin, has joined Tech Ranch Austin.
While England has resigned the full-time executive director role at RISE Austin, she will continue to work with the organization in an advisory role and is leading the planning of next year’s conference.
In her new role at Tech Ranch Austin, England will serve as managing director of global expansion and new initiatives. She will also be working with South by Southwest Interactive on engaging international startups for SXSW Interactive 2014.
In addition, England has also volunteered as the Austin Chair for Startup America, a position formerly held by the late Scott Robinson.
She will also volunteer to join the advisory board for the new Austin Global Shapers Hub, a program of the World Economic Forum. James Bilodeau is the founding curator.
“I’m VERY excited about all of this and looking forward to having an even bigger impact on our entrepreneur ecosystem!,” England wrote in an email announcing her new roles.
Upon hearing the news, Silicon Hills News jotted down a few questions to ask England via email about the Austin entrepreneurial ecosystem which she has had an active role in promoting.

Q. Why did you decide to join Tech Ranch Austin?

A. Every organization experiences growth and internal strengthening; Tech Ranch is poised for significant growth and has been strengthening and expanding its core programs to serve entrepreneurs and startups at every level. Now we are developing strong relationships with startup communities in Asia and South America, resulting in new impact on Austin’s startup community. Founder Kevin Koym created a great vision for the future of entrepreneurial activities at Tech Ranch, and he has complemented his skills by adding Managing Partner Sandeep Kumar earlier this year. Sandeep’s strengths as a serial entrepreneur with a focus on strategy and execution are helping accelerate Tech Ranch, as great co-founders and co-leaders do. I joined Tech Ranch because I see the huge potential for what the organization can help startups accomplish, and I bring another set of skills to the organization that complements the existing leadership.

Q. What are Austin’s greatest strengths when it comes to entrepreneurship?

A. I strongly believe our greatest strength with regards to entrepreneurship is our collaborative community. Further, the focus in Austin is not on valuation but on value. The pressure is a little different here than in more “go-go” markets, which means entrepreneurs have more time to explore ideas and market viability fully. Nevertheless, once a company is formed, speed of plan implementation and customer acceptance remain crucial. Austin and Central Texas offer all the core resources that a new company needs, from talented people to test markets for prototypes, products, services, etc; to affordable work space options; to programs that support their work.

Q. What problems do you see that need to be fixed?

A. Investment needs to be expanded — early and later stage options — both in terms of sheer numbers, but also helping investors become more comfortable investing in a wider variety of markets, so that significant investments aren’t focused on just a few sectors. And this isn’t limited to growing our community’s investment capacity; it’s also important that we position Austin’s startups as attractive for outside investment.
Our startups continue to need top developer talent and opportunities for partnership. The more our business and civic communities can do to support startups, the better it is for Austin as a whole. Startups and small business are driving the new economy, and they need our help.
Conversely, our startups should get involved in helping make Austin great, as much as they can. From helping solve our transportation challenges to initiating creative solutions for our wicked world problems by investing time and energy in social innovation and our nonprofit community, there is plenty to be done.

Q. How is Austin viewed in the global economy?

A. Austin is predominantly defined internationally by music and SXSW (and increasingly Formula 1), which means it’s seen as a creative, talented, and fun city. Of course, Austin consistently ranks high on most national and international top 10 lists, but we cannot rest on our laurels. For Austin to be truly great and to really compete in the global economy, we have to take our business community and our infrastructure to the next level. That will require a great deal of collaboration and hard work, but it will absolutely be worth it.
For example, Tech Ranch already has partnerships in Singapore and in Chile, and SXSW brings in startups from all over the world. Both organizations have the opportunity to create significant impact in Austin through their international relationships, and I’m thrilled to be working in this arena. Austin is also poised to be a technology gateway to Latin America, and startup partnerships are beginning to emerge between the two regions.

Q. Anything else you would like to add or make a point of that we haven’t asked you about?

A. My predecessor with Startup Texas/Startup America, Scott Robinson, had a huge vision for Austin, as big as his heart and his strength of personality. He was a dear friend to me and many in the startup and tech communities and is sorely missed. We have a lot of work to do to carry on his vision. My personal goal in all of my work and volunteer commitments is to help make Austin both the best city and the best entrepreneur ecosystem in the world. We need everyone in our community contributing and collaborating to help make that possible.

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