Capital Factory Celebrates its Sixth Anniversary Kung Fu Geek Style

Capital Factory celebrated its 6th anniversary Friday night with a party at Kung Fu Saloon in downtown Austin.

More than 800 people RSVP’d to attend the event and Capital Factory gave away 400 T-shirts.

Key employees and founders of Capital Factory received giant wooden Jenga blocks with their names engraved on them to commemorate the event.

Capital Factory has come along way since its founding in 2008 by Joshua Baer and a handful of Austin entrepreneurs and investors.

Up until 2012, Capital Factory served as a traditional incubator and accelerator for high-tech startups.

But in May of 2012, Capital Factory evolved into a coworking site as part of the Austin TechLive initiative with the Austin Chamber of Commerce. That’s when Capital Factory began hosting entrepreneurs, companies and others in a 22,000 square foot space on the 16th floor of the Omni building at 701 Brazos Street.

Since then Capital Factory has grown to more than 600 members, 200 companies and funded 40 companies in the last year, Baer said. Capital Factory hosted more than 600 events last year, attended by more than 25,000 people, he said.

Also, President Obama visited Capital Factory in 2013 and met with Baer and several tech startup founders.

This year, Google for Entrepreneurs designed Capital Factory as one of its entrepreneurial “hubs” a network of organizations around the country and world fostering high-tech entrepreneurship.

Capital Factory also recently launched a “device lab” where companies can demo their products and make them available to entrepreneurs and hackers. It also has a video lab that is in beta mode right now, Baer said.

Capital Factory also launched a funding program with Silverton Partners and Floodgate to provide early-stage funding to companies in its incubator program. Companies with $25,000 in support from two Capital Factory mentors will receive another $50,000 in matching funds from Capital Factory’s Fund along with $25,000 each from Silverton and Floodgate for a total of $150,000 in funding.

Capital Factory has 100 companies in its incubator right now and is adding anywhere from five to ten per month, Baer said.

Startups like WP Engine and SpareFoot started at Capital Factory, but they grew too large and moved out.

That’s the idea, Baer said. They’re still part of the network, but once a company gets to 15 employees they need their own space, he said.

“Our goal is to get them to $1 million in annual revenue,” Baer said.