Google Names Capital Factory as its Latest Google Tech Hub

By LAURA LOREK
Founder of Silicon Hills News

Austin’s Capital Factory is Google’s latest Tech Hub.

Mayor Lee Leffingwell, donning a pair of Google glasses, made the announcement Tuesday at Capital Factory to more than 150 people from the startup community. He welcomed Google for Entrepreneurs and its partnership with Capital Factory, which is a technology incubator, accelerator and coworking space with more than 600 members and 200 companies.

“The impact goes way beyond Capital Factory,”‘ said Leffingwell.

Capital Factory joins seven other Google Tech Hubs in the U.S. and Canada, which Google announced late last year. The others are in Minneapolis, Chicago, Waterloo, Ontario, Nashville, Durham, Denver and Detroit.

He said the startups at the various Tech Hubs will have opportunities to pitch investors in Silicon Valley at Google for Entrepreneurs Demo Day. Startups at the various tech hubs have already raised more than $150 million and created 1,200 jobs since becoming part of their Google Tech Hub.

The Google Tech Hub members can also work out of any of the eight locations in the network and sites in London and Tel Aviv.

Daniel Navarro with Google for Entrepreneurs showed a video members of the other Google Tech Hubs created to welcome Capital Factory to the network.

The Google Tech Hub partners also work closely with Google’s developer and business groups, said Gerardo A. Interiano, spokesman for Google in Austin. It has about 300 employees at its Austin offices.

Tech hubs provide also “host a range of events, workshops, and provide co-working space for entrepreneurs. Google enables tech hubs by providing them with technical content, business tools, and infrastructure upgrades, so that they can support increasing demand from developers and startups,” according to Google.

Capital Factory has had such a strong partnership with Google for such a long time, said Josh Baer, co-founder and director of Capital Factory.

Capital Factory is also one of 100 sites the City of Austin selected to receive its 1-Gigabit Google Fiber high speed Internet service through its community partnership program. Google announced plans for its high-speed fiber network last year and is the process of installing it and expects to turn the service on in Austin later this year.

In an interview following the announcement, Baer said the announcement is recognition for Capital Factory and Austin as one of the major tech centers in the country. It also means more resources for entrepreneurs at Capital Factory. Its members get access to Google products and Google mentors and developers, he said. And lastly, the financial support Google provides allows Capital Factory to engage more with the community and provide more talks, meetings and events, Baer said. Google is the flagship sponsor of Capital Factory. Other sponsors include Dell, AT&T and Rackspace.

Pristin.io is a Capital Factory company working specifically to create Google glass applications for physicians to use Google Glass in surgery. But all of the startups use Google applications to run their businesses, Baer said.

“The way Google makes a big difference here is it covers a lot of the basics that all startups need,” said Tuscan Knox with Weeva, a story telling startup recently admitted into the Capital Factory incubator program. “There are a lot of services they provide that almost every startup needs.”

Another benefit is having access to Google’s people and expertise, Knox said.

“They have people who are incredibly smart,” he said. “Every startup here is super excited to have Google involved with Capital Factory.”