AuManil Wins the Austin Startup Fast Pitch Competition at SXSW

BY L.A. LOREK
Founder of Silicon Hills News

The free to play model dominates the multi-billion dollar video game industry.
So a lot of game makers capitalize on that by selling things to players in the game to make money.
AuManil, which creates software to manage the customer relationship market for video games, wants to make sure the game makers capture the most revenue possible.
AuManil won the Austin Startup Fast Pitch competition Saturday afternoon. The Austin Technology Incubator and the Central Texas Angel Network sponsored the event in the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce’s offices at South by Southwest Interactive.
It was a close race said Kyle Cox, director of wireless at the Austin Technology Incubator. He reported that AuManil won with 74 out of a possible 100 points. It was just two points in front of the next competitor, he said.
The other companies presenting included Circle Media, Dejaset, Ridescout and Tenduit.
As the winner of the competition, Bohn received a free entry into a funding cycle for CTAN and a six-month membership into the ATI portfolio.
Five Austin-based startups pitched to a panel of judges including John Stockton with Mayfield Fund, Krishna Srinivasan with Live Oak Venture, Bril Flint, chairman of CTAN and Pat Noonan with Austin Ventures.
“We’re AuManil, CRM for Whales,” Bohn told the panel as the first company to pitch.
Bohn explained that 70 percent of a video game’s revenue comes from whales or big fans, 20 percent from dolphins, moderately engaged fans, and 10 percent from minnows, fans that aren’t that engaged. AuManil’s software targets whales and allows the video game makers to use analytics to cater to their best customers.
“We’re taking game play data and mixing it with predicative and social analytics – acquiring, converting, retaining and migration from game to game to game,” Bohn said.
The company already has four games under management with its first product that targets increasing repeat business from engaged customers.
AuManil is seeking a $500,000 seed round of investment and already has 40 percent committed, Bohn said.
“We bring the measure to unmeasured media,” said Mark Piening of Circle Media. His company focuses on measuring brand engagement at events.
“We want to help brands understand what audiences want,” he said. It has created a software program that includes an “audience intelligence dashboard” that gives brands insights into consumer engagement.
Matt Peterson, founder and CEO of Dejaset, pitched his music app for bands to produce and sell live performances of songs to consumers. Dejaset is capturing more than 100 live performances in the next 10 days at SXSW. With the Dejaset app, bands can make their recordings available instantly for consumers to buy. Dejaset expects to have up to 3,000 artists signed up by this summer. The company takes a 50 percent cut of each song sold and provides a 10 percent cut to the venue hosting the band.
Ridescout aggregates transportation available to consumers in real time, said Jospeh Kopser, the company’s founder.
“Aggregation is the way of the future” Kopser said.
Kayak is focused on airlines and hotels and Ridescout is focused on transportation, Kopser said. It gets real time feeds of availability from pedicabs and other drivers that self report. It does not include services like Sidecar, which are not legally approved by the city of Austin, he said. The app also enables friends to get rides from friends for free, he said.
Lastly, Dave Perry, CEO of Tenduit, pitched the company that makes datacenters “more reliable and more efficient” with its software.
“Data centers suck,” Perry said. They require more energy than the entire airline industry, he said.
But most data centers operate at 50 percent or less of their capacity, Perry said. That’s due to lack of effective tools to manage all the computer servers inside, he said.
“It’s a huge problem and Tenduit is going to be part of that solution that makes that problem go away,” Perry said. The company raised $1.3 million in a seed round from friends and family and is seeking a $3 million Series A funding round to scale up sales and marketing, software development and operations.