Category: Austin (Page 48 of 317)

Silverton Partners, based in Austin, announced this week that it has closed on Fund VI at $144 million, its largest fund to date.

The venture capital firm, founded in 2006, focuses on early-stage companies and just in the last two years, its seed-funded startups have exited for a combined $3.2 billion, according to the firm. Those exits include Sailpoint, Ping Identity, TrendKite, Favor, WPEngine, and SpareFoot.

In 2018, Silverton closed on Fund V at $108 million.

Silverton plans to invest the latest fund primarily in Texas. It has recently funded startups in New York, Southern California and Utah. The firm has also established its first Opportunity Fund for up to eight investments in later-stage funding rounds for existing portfolio companies

“Texas remains one of the nation’s most interesting and fastest-growing tech markets, with Austin leading the way,” Silverton General Partner Morgan Flager said in a news release.

Silverton Partners includes General Partner Kip McClanahan, Mike Dodd, and Flager. The firm has also added Tina Dai as a Principal from First Round Capital. And Silverton Partners promoted Roger Chen, whose previous experience was with Genacast Ventures, to partner; and Alyssa Dadoly, formerly VP Finance, to Chief Financial Officer.

Flager also answered the following questions about the latest fund via email.

Q. How difficult was it to raise the fund during the COVID-19 Pandemic?

Flager: “COVID-19 definitely added additional complexity to the final close. However, the vast majority of the capital was committed prior to the pandemic hitting the US and came from our existing limited partners who have supported us for a number of years. We are thankful for their continued support and belief in Silverton. We were also fortunate to add several new LP’s as well and finish with Silverton Partners VI oversubscribed.”

Q. Why did you create the Opportunity Fund? Why is there a need for it?

Flager: “We have been fortunate over time to be early investors in a number of successful companies. Many have gone on to raise large growth financings that are beyond the scope of our early-stage funds. The Opportunity Fund gives us the capability to continue to support our most successful companies, while not diluting the strategy and focus of our flagship, early-stage funds which have historically produced great returns for our investors.”

How many companies do you expect to invest in with Fund VI?

Flager: “We expect to have 20-25 portfolio companies in SPVI.” 

Q. Are there particular industries you plan to invest in?

Flager: “Our most active investment areas include B2B software, consumer internet and mobile. We’ve targeted these industries since the inception of the firm and have had a number of high-profile outcomes — including several successful IPO’s (Sailpoint, Ping Identity and Convio). More recently, we’ve invested in a small number of digitally native brands. Billie, which agreed to be purchased by Proter & Gamble earlier this year, is our first successful outcome in this category. We have also invested in a handful of fintech businesses, including Self Financial and The Zebra, which have shown tremendous promise.”

Q. About 70 to 75 percent of the capital is targeted at investments inside Texas, why do you look to invest locally?

Flager: “We believe we can add more value to our portfolio companies as a local partner. One of the biggest success factors for startups is the team they are able to attract. As a result of Silverton being the most active investor in the state of Texas, we have unparalleled relationships with the talent pool in this market and can leverage that to provide Silverton companies with an advantage. In addition, we believe having an extremely collaborative relationship with our founders leads to better outcomes. Being in the same geography as most of our investments makes collaboration with the entrepreneurs we back easier and more personal. Finally, we believe Texas represents a high potential, high growth tech ecosystem which merits dedicated attention. In 2019, Texas ranked fourth in terms of total venture dollars invested in the U.S.”

Q. Austin has been criticized in the past for not having enough funding for its size and the volume of deals that are here, do you still think that is true?

Flager: “This is always an interesting debate. One thing is certain — there is more capital available in Austin than ever before, from a larger number of capital providers than ever before. I personally feel that there is enough capital available in Austin to produce a volume of high profile outcomes, across a variety of different tech sectors. If Austin makes good on that opportunity, returns for investors in Austin will be exceptional and more capital will flow into this ecosystem — making it stronger.  No one wants that to happen more than Silverton.”

Q. How is the COVID-19 Pandemic going to change Austin’s startup ecosystem?

Flager: “Overall, the uncertainty surrounding COVID-19 is going to create headwinds for most start-ups. Unfortunately, some businesses that are directly affected may not see the other side of this crisis. Those that do, will likely emerge stronger as capital continues to flock to the winners and talent follows. Austin is now strong and diverse; this ecosystem will remain an exciting place to do business and invest. As we go through this pandemic, I think Austin will be viewed as one of the most attractive places to start a new business in the country.”

Q. Anything else you would like to add or make a point of?

Flager: “Silverton has made some of its most attractive investments during economic downturns. We are actively looking to partner with entrepreneurs who view this crisis as an opportunity to create a better future and move the world forward.”  

Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced Monday plans to allow Texas’ stay at home order, which closed businesses and required Texans to limit social contact to prevent the spread of COVID-19 during the pandemic, to expire on Thursday.

Governor Abbot also announced a new order allowing retailers, restaurants, movie theaters, and malls to reopen Friday at 25 percent capacity.

“It’s hard to get rid of this virus because it’s so contagious,” Abbott said during a press conference televised online Monday. “We’re not going to just open up and hope for the best.”

Texas has put measures in place for containing the virus and keeping Texans safe, Abbott said.

Capacity for businesses will increase to 50 percent on May 18th if Texas does not see a spike in COVID-19 cases, Abbott said.

For now, barbershops, hair and nail salons, gyms, and bars will remain closed, Abbott said.

In addition, there is no statewide mandate for people to wear masks even though some of the state’s largest cities and counties have enacted such ordinances. Gov. Abbott said his order supersedes all local orders and no one will be fined for not wearing a mask, he said.

Re-opening Texas businesses must occur in phases, Abbott said.

“We don’t want to reopen only to close down again,” he said.

The most important element of Phase 1 is protecting Texas’ most vulnerable population, which is people over 65, Abbott said. People 65 and over account for 20 percent of the positive COVID-19 tests in Texas. However, 76 percent of the deaths that have occurred were to people 65 and over.

“The bottom line is this – the more we do to protect our vulnerable population, the safer we can open business in Texas,” Abbott said.

Texas has 25,297 cases of people testing positive for COVID-19 and 663 deaths and 11,170 people have recovered from the disease, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services. Travis County has 1,412 cases of COVID-19 and 39 deaths and 344 people have recovered, according to the City of Austin. Bexar County has 1,254 cases of COVID-19 and 43 deaths, according to the San Antonio Metropolitan Health District.

The new order allows businesses to reopen, but it does not require them to do so, Abbott said. If a business owner feels unsafe and does not want to reopen, there is no requirement to reopen, he said.

In addition to business, Texas’ museums and libraries can reopen under the 25 percent capacity rule starting Friday, Abbott said. This is permission to reopen and not a requirement, he said.

“A lot of business is done by sole proprietors – they can safely return to work now,” he said.

In addition, churches and places of worship can expand their capacity even more as long as they adhere to safe distancing practices, Abbott said.

Outdoor sports are also allowed but they are limited to four participants playing together and require certain social distancing practices, Abbott said. That allows for activities like golf and tennis, he said.

In addition, doctors, nurses, dentists, and all licensed healthcare workers can return to work, Abbott said.

Throughout the COVID-19 lockdown, Texas has allowed farmers and ranches, grocery stores, pharmacies, banks, gas stations, construction workers, real estate offices, and other essential businesses to operate. They have put social distancing requirements and hygiene practices into place that have kept those workplaces safe, Abbott said. Texas is looking at their practices as a guideline for reopening even more businesses safely, he said.

Even in low population counties, COVID-19 can spread very rapidly, Abbott said. But he is allowing Texas counties with five or fewer cases of COVID-19 to increase their business capacity to operate to 50 percent on Friday.

As far as barbershops, hair and nail salons, bars and gyms reopening, Texas is working with members of the business sector to open as soon as possible hopefully by mid-May, he said.  

Texas is also working to expand access to childcare services so Texans can return to work, Abbott said.

In addition, Texas is developing a contact tracing application that will be deployed statewide, Abbott said. It will employ a team of 4,000 contact tracers that will trace each new case of COVID-19 and inform others that person may have come into contact with to get tested. That will help to “box in the expansion of COVID-19,” Abbott said. That effort will be bolstered by an increase in testing with the goal of conducting 25,000 tests per day, he said.

To reopen the Texas economy, Texans must commit to continuing to practice safe distancing, Abbott said. And the state must rely on doctors and data to inform its actions, he said. Texas must also focus on protecting the most vulnerable to COVID-19, he said

Lastly, entrepreneurs drive the Texas economy and they must be unleashed to restore and revive the economy, Abbott said.

“We are Texans, we got this,” he said.

The Governor’s Strike Force to Reopen Texas report can be found here.

H-E-B and Favor Delivery this week introduced a new service that allows customers to have grocery essentials delivered in two hours or less.

The new service is available at every H-E-B, Central Market, and Jose V’s stores in Texas.

The Favor Express Delivery is in addition to H-E-B Curbside and Home Delivery.

The Favor Express Delivery service allows customers to choose up to 25 items from a selected list of groceries and essentials. All deliveries will be placed on a customer’s doorstep and customers will receive a notification when their order has been delivered.

“This new service is another way H-E-B and Favor are working together to respond to unprecedented demand during this crisis to get Texans the essentials they need, when they need them,” Jag Bath, H-E-B Chief Digital Officer and Favor CEO, said in a news release. “We continue increasing H-E-B Curbside and Home Delivery availability for customers who want to place orders in advance for same day, next day or later — and now, with Express Delivery, Texans can get two-hour delivery on up to 25 items when they need an immediate option.”

The service is available every day from 11 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. via the Favor app or favordelivery.com. For a limited time, Express Delivery includes a $4.98 two-hour delivery fee (regularly $9.95) and $10 tip, which goes entirely to the Runner who will personally shop and deliver items.

The H-E-B and Favor Senior Support Program provides seniors (60+) with delivery of groceries and essentials via its website from 11 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. or by phone 1-833-397-0080, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Texas retail stores are now able to offer curbside service to customers under Governor Greg Abbott’s executive order that took effect on Friday.

And startup entrepreneurs are coming up with tech solutions to make it easier for local retailers to sell and deliver their products safely during the COVID-19 pandemic.

To help retailers out, Austin entrepreneur Sterling Smith, founder of Sandbox Commerce, has a solution to take orders and payment through a mobile app that also handles push notifications to coordinate order pickup.

Sandbox Commerce, founded in 2017, sells a software package add-on to Shopify and BigCommerce retailers that allows those customers to easily build a mobile app within 10 minutes using drag and drop software. The app then takes anywhere from a few days to 10 days to be approved for sale in Google and Apple app stores.

“During COVID-19, we’ve seen a big influx of retail customers looking to modernize,” Smith said.

About a month ago, Sandbox Commerce started working on a curbside solution for retailers to handle sales from customers.

In the past, curbside pickup is something that has been restricted to big retailers that have big budgets, Smith said.  For a lot of traditional retailers and brands, this was on the backburner and the pandemic has forced it to the front, he said.

HEB, the San Antonio-based grocery store chain, began offering curbside delivery in 2016 at select stores. It has become a popular service, especially during the pandemic when people are trying to minimize their contact with others and practice social distancing.

Sandbox Commerce has been running a pilot program with a clothing store on Second Street in downtown Austin.

The curbside pickup option on the Sandbox Commerce mobile app will help level the playing field for smaller retailers. But it is also a good option for brands like Yeti that don’t traditionally offer curbside pickup, Smith said.

“These brands that make millions of dollars every year still don’t have an option like this,” he said. “The vast majority of the retail industry does not have solutions like this.”

Sandbox Commerce is offering retail customers a free trial for the first 90 days and then packages start at $99 a month, Smith said.

A lot of small retailers and brands have no idea how to engage with customers right now, Smith said.

FSG Smart Buildings, a division of Facility Solutions Group, on Friday announced the launch of Curb-to-Car, an app to help facilitate and make curbside delivery easy for any store, warehouse, or restaurant.

Set up only takes a few minutes and the on-boarding process is simple, said Justin McCullough, chief innovation and product officer at Facility Solutions Group, which created the app.

Once a business is registered, they can create an account and enter their locations and print their customer check-in Uniform Resource Locator, known as a URL, or web address.

The Curb to Car service acts as a sophisticated ticket number holder in a bakery or a smart beeper system in a restaurant. When a customer gets to a retail site, they see a sign for the custom URL to check-in. They can use their smartphone to go to the website and check-in by providing their name, make, and model of car and any comments. The app then shows the customer on a screen and the retailer is able to track information like how long ago the customer checked in and where they are in the queue. It allows the retailers to keep up to date with all new arrivals.

The Curb to Car app charges $1 a month per location to retailers.

Travis County and Austin City leaders launched a central Texas task force Thursday aimed at safely re-opening businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic.

There is no return to business as usual, said Travis County Judge Sarah Eckhardt.

“This will require adapting,” she said.

Eckhardt spoke during a Thursday morning online press conference coordinated by the Austin Chamber of Commerce, which is spearheading the regional task force. It will provide a “knowledgeable perspective on when and how businesses might be able to adapt and function in a COVID-19 world,” according to a news release.

The task force is made up of small and large businesses in different industries, business membership organizations, and community groups focused on transportation, public health, and safety.

“The work of this task force is to honor public health priorities and focus on how to thoughtfully and safely reopen our regional economy,” according to the news release. The task force members will “evaluate and account for specific needs by industry sector, evaluate the preparedness level of businesses to safeguard public health requirements and best practices, and monitor public health outcomes to determine whether adjustments need to be made and provide feedback to policymakers.”

To date, the greater Austin region has reduced its COVID-19 infection rate by 90 percent, Eckhardt said. “That has kept us within our current hospital capacity,” she said.

“We have not peaked yet,” she said.

Texas has 21,702 cases of people testing positive for COVID-19 and 554 fatalities and 7,341 people have recovered from the disease, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services. Travis County has 1,263 cases of COVID-19 and 28 deaths and 344 people have recovered, according to the City of Austin.

Projections for the COVID-19 disease, based on computer-generated models from the University of Texas at Austin, show that there is a 64 percent chance Texas has already peaked in the number of deaths from the disease. That chance increases to 89 percent within a week and 96 percent within two weeks.

The UT model also shows COVID-19 mortality projections for the U.S. with a 99 percent chance that the peak has occurred. But that doesn’t mean people are safe. Until there is a vaccine for COVID-19, effective treatment and herd immunity, another spike in infections and deaths could occur, Eckhardt said.

In the U.S. there are 843,981 confirmed cases of people with COVID-19 and 46,859 deaths from the disease, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. Worldwide, the number of COVID-19 cases is 2.6 million and 185,494 deaths.

Governor Greg Abbott on April 17^th announced the formation of a Strike Force to Reopen Texas.  His executive orders call for “selective activities and services that pose minimal to no threat of spreading COVID-19 are allowed to reopen using a “retail-to-go” model” beginning Friday, April 24th. He also loosened certain restrictions on surgeries allowing for healthcare facilities to perform elective surgeries. Gov. Abbott is expected to make more announcements on re-opening the Texas economy on Monday, April 27th.

While deaths from COVID-19 have been reduced because of social distancing, the concern is over not doing anything too drastic like re-opening all businesses at once that might lead to a spike in new cases of COVID-19 and overwhelm area hospitals, said Mayor Steve Adler.

“We have a community that has stepped forward in a selfless way to make everyone safe,” Adler said.

Effective April 13th, Mayor Adler ordered all Austin residents to continue to stay home and shelter in place and to wear a face mask while going out in public until May 8^th.  Travis County issued a similar mandate and other Texas cities like San Antonio and Bexar County have similar orders. The face masks have been shown effective in helping to contain the community spread of the COVID-19 disease.

The regional task force to reopen the economy is being led by Laura Huffman, who just joined the Austin Chamber of Commerce as president and CEO this week. Huffman said she will work with the Governor’s task force members to coordinate how best to move forward to safely re-open the regional economy.

There is a huge need to increase testing for COVID-19 in the U.S., Texas, and in Travis County,  Eckhardt said. Travis County has tested about 6 out of every 1,000 residents since the beginning of the pandemic which is pretty good, she said. But the county needs 8 times that testing capacity to track and contain the spread of COVID-19, Eckhardt said.

The near-term goal is to test 2,000 to 3,000 Travis County residents per week, Eckhardt said. To do that the county has launched a free web-based platform to help residents get a free assessment and free test for COVID-19, she said. The platform will then provide people with their test results and allow them to inform others that they have come into contact with so that they can be tested, she said.

“As we open commerce, we open up the probabilities of infection,” Eckhardt said.

The greater Austin region has a lot more testing capacity coming on, Mayor Adler said. He is striving to provide 5,000 tests per week, he said. Adler has also worked with Everlywell, an Austin-based startup that originally announced plans to provide consumer at-home COVID-19 testing, but has since allocated its testing supplies to healthcare facilities and hospitals.

A big concern about re-opening the economy is about moving too quickly. Travis County cannot go below an 80 percent reduction rate in COVID-19 cases, Eckhardt said. Herd immunity locally would mean thousands of deaths in Travis County, she said.

Mayor Adler said no one knows yet when all of the jobs lost due to the COVID-19 pandemic will return.

The Perryman Group, an economic development analytical firm, projects 64,900 job losses for 2020 for the Austin-Round Rock-Georgetown metropolitan area or almost a 6 percent decline. But the firm projects more than 56,000 jobs added to the area in 2021, up 5 percent.

When asked during a question and answer session with reporters about the difference between Governor Abbott’s task force and Austin regional task force, city leaders said the governor’s task force doesn’t have a lot of representation from local government or small businesses.

Even after the governor announces his rules for the state, communities will be making their own choices as well, Mayor Adler said. And individuals will be making their own choices, he said.

The regional task force will provide written recommendations to city and county leaders by May 8^th, Huffman said. The task force will emphasize transparency in all of its actions, she said.

“We don’t want anything to run interference with the individual companies’ ability to innovate,” she said.

The following is a list of task force members, led by the Austin Chamber of Commerce, to reopen the regional economy:

Tamara Atkinson – Workforce Solutions

Mason Ayer – Kerbey Lane Café/United Way Board Chair

Jason Ball – Round Rock Chamber

Dianne Bangle – Real Estate Council of Austin

Marina Bhargava – Greater Austin Asian Chamber

Veronica Briseño – City of Austin

Joseph Cajas, III – The Cajas Digital Agency/Greater Austin Hispanic Chamber Board Chair

Peter Cesaro – GDHM/Real Estate Council of Austin Board Chair

Derrick Chubbs – Capital Area Food Bank

Randy Clarke – Capital Metro

Beth Corbett – Central Texas Food Bank

Spencer Cronk – City of Austin

Scott Davidson – Code 4 Event Management

Craig Enoch – Enoch Kever/Austin Chamber of Commerce Board Chair

Mark Escott – Interim Health Authority

David Evans – Integral Care

Gary Farmer – Heritage Title Company/Opportunity Austin Board Chair

Tamara Fields – Accenture

Michele Glaze – Samsung Austin Semiconductor

Tina Grider-Cannon – Austin LGBT Chamber

Amber Gunst – Austin Technology Council

Sandy Guzman – AARO

Jeremy Hendricks – LiUNA

John Howard – Dell Technologies

David Jabour – Twin Liquors

Jason Kelley – IBM

Kyle Kerrigan – Upbring Innovation Labs/Austin Young Chamber Board Chair

Rick Levy – Texas AFL-CIO

Mark McClain – SailPoint/Austin Technology Council Board Chair

Editor’s note: This article has been updated and corrected the date for which “retail to go” will be available in Texas. It is Friday, April 24th.

It’s a good time to be in the disinfectant and cleaning products business.

Curtis Eggemeyer, CEO of Lemi Shine, has seen demand for Lemi Shine, multi-surface antibacterial cleaner, disinfectant wipes, liquid dish soap and laundry detergent, skyrocket in sales since March.

“This isn’t something you can plan for,” Eggemeyer said. “Our demand is off the charts.”

Eggemeyer participated in a SKU Town Hall meeting on Coping with COVID-19: Amazon and D2C (Direct to Consumer), which was broadcast online at noon on Wednesday. It’s one in a series of online broadcasts SKU Accelerator has done since the Pandemic lockdown began in March. SKU Accelerator, based in Austin, works with consumer packaged goods companies, helping them to scale their businesses, launch new products, do marketing and sales, and attract investment. Kirstin Ross, managing director for SKU, led the discussion.

Austin-based Envirocon Technologies, doing business as Lemi Shine, has been making non-toxic cleaning products since 2007. It has 26 employees and more than $35 million in annual revenue, according to the company.

Lemi Shine bills itself as the “Better for You” household cleaning products brand. The active ingredient in its products is citric acid, which cleans grease and grime and also kills 99 percent of all bacteria.

In March, Lemi Shine saw a 50 percent increase in sales of its products and that is a trend that is going to continue, Eggemeyer said. It saw a 350 percent increase for disinfectant in March alone, he said. Lemi Shine sells 90 percent of its products through brick and mortar retailers with the rest of its online sales coming from Amazon. Its Amazon sales have increased 270 percent, he said.

The cleaning products industry overall is $59 billion industry in the U.S. with $16 billion of that in retail sales, and the industry accounts for 64,800 jobs, according to the American Cleaning Institute.

In March, H-E-B and other retailers saw consumers buying cleaning products with disinfectant properties as soon as they put them on the shelves. H-E-B placed limits on purchasing the cleaning products. Amazon has been sold out of most household disinfecting products.

Lemi Shine has faced some supply chain challenges with getting packaging from plastics makers, Eggemeyer said. But it is working to get products to its existing retail partners as quickly as possible, he said.

Puracy, an Austin-based maker of non-toxic, plant-based cleaning and personal care products, has seen a huge increase in the demand for its hand sanitizers and other products, said Sean Busch, one of its founders. Puracy, founded in 2014, sells its products online through its website and Amazon and through select retailers like Target.

Amazon has prioritized the shipment of many products to essential items only during the pandemic, said Carolyn Lowe, CEO of ROI Swift, an Austin-based digital marketing firm focused on retailers. Amazon also is not accepting any new retailers or products during this time, she said. A lot of the brands ROI Swift works with had four weeks of inventory at Amazon’s distribution centers at the time of the lockdown and they have fared well during these difficult times, she said.

Puracy is making alcohol-based hand sanitizers that are being produced at a distillery, Busch said. He’s also looking at expanding Puracy’s line of products to include surface disinfectants, he said.

Puracy has been bullish on direct to consumer and e-commerce sales in general since it launched, Busch said. The pandemic has accelerated the adoption of online shopping by consumers and he expects that to continue, he said.

Editor’s note: this article has been updated to provide the latest employee count and revenue figures for Lemi Shine.

Airbrake, which makes software that tracks errors in web apps, announced this week it has raised $11 million in funding.

The company, founded in 2010, is based in San Francisco but has a large presence and office in Austin.

Austin-based Elsewhere Partners led the financing round. Airbrake has an interesting history. Exceptional bought Airbrake and merged operations in 2012. Then the company was acquired by San Antonio-based Rackspace in March of 2013 and the spun out of Rackspace as an independent company in 2015.

“Airbrake grew rapidly and profitably under the product-focused leadership of Joe Godfrey,” Nick Stoffregen, Vice President at Elsewhere Partners, said in a news release. “The company created a product that developers love, and Airbrake has grown organically as a result, without dedicated sales and marketing teams.”

Airbrake recently added several executives to its staff including Shelley Perry, executive chairman, Treb Ryan, CEO, Eric Anderson, CTO, Chad Savoy, CRO, and Joe Godfrey as CPO.

“We’re excited to continue nurturing the strong relationships Airbrake has built with customers in the developer community,” Ryan, CEO of Airbrake, said in a news release. “Once dev teams try Airbrake, they uncover real-world errors across the entire solution that they never knew existed,” Ryan said. 

“Airbrake is a textbook example of the success of product-led growth,” Perry, Executive Chairman of Airbrake, said in a news release. “This investment allows Airbrake to focus on value-led growth, which includes increasing customer feedback, building community, and investing in partnerships within the CI/CD ecosystem,” Perry said. 

Airbrake makes application monitoring service software that alerts developers when it finds an error in the code. The program can provide real-time feedback that allows developers to improve the software quickly. Airbrake has thousands of customers including Netflix, Twitch, Salesforce, TED and Adobe.

SourceDay, which makes supply chain management software, announced on Tuesday that it has raised $12.5 million in venture capital funding.

The Austin-based startup, founded in 2013, has raised $23.3 million to date. The company’s latest Series B round of funding was led by Baird Capital with participation from existing investors Silverton Partners, ATX Ventures and Draper Associates.

SourceDay is filling a need for manufacturers and distributors that depend on supply chain management software now more than ever because of the impacts of the COVID-19 global pandemic.

“As businesses face unprecedented times, they are seeking faster answers to bigger challenges,” Joanna Arras, Principal at Baird Capital and SourceDay’s newest board member said in a news release. “More than ever, companies need resilient and agile supply chains. Poor supply chain visibility and inefficient collaboration will be crippling during this time of rapidly shifting demand. Baird Capital is proud to invest in SourceDay to help companies face these challenges head-on.” 

SourceDay has more than 6,000 global manufacturers as customers. The latest funding will “enhance SourceDay’s ability to help its customers mitigate supply chain risk as the pandemic continues to play out and prepare for when the eventual rebound hits,” according to a news release.

SourceDay expects to use the funds from this round on product development and marketing.  

“The COVID-19 pandemic is exposing the ways that outdated supply chain practices make manufacturers vulnerable,” Tom Kieley, CEO, SourceDay, said in a news release. “I’m excited to add Baird Capital to our team of investors. Baird’s experience with leading SaaS companies and its relationships across the manufacturing sector will help SourceDay achieve our mission to make companies less vulnerable to current supply chain disruptions and to all kinds of shifts in demand.”

Last year, SourceDay landed thousands of new customers. The company also doubled in size to more than 50 employees.

The show isn’t going on after all.

On Friday, City of Austin officials held a press conference and announced the cancellation of SXSW and SXSW.EDU, set to take place next week.

“We are devastated to share this news with you. “The show must go on” is in our DNA, and this is the first time in 34 years that the March event will not take place,” according to a statement from SXSW. “We are now working through the ramifications of this unprecedented situation.”

Earlier in the week, City Officials said the show would go on. But on Friday, Mayor Steve Adler, Travis County officials and a health advisory board, decided to cancel the event amid growing concerns about the spread of the Coronavirus.

“We are exploring options to reschedule the event and are working to provide a virtual SXSW online experience as soon as possible for 2020 participants, starting with SXSW EDU,” according to a SXSW statement. “For our registrants, clients, and participants we will be in touch as soon as possible and will publish an FAQ.”

SXSW is a huge event for Austin. Last year, SXSW attracted 417,400 people to Austin including participation from more than 100 countries. It also had an impact on the Austin economy of $355.9 million, according to SXSW.

And even before the SXSW cancellation, several tech companies announced plans to withdraw from various panels, keynote talks, parties and other events. 

There are no confirmed cases of the Coronavirus in Austin. But Texas now has five cases of people testing positive for the Coronavirus in the Houston area. The cases are among a group that travelled overseas together.

San Antonio also had some people who tested positive for the Coronavirus that were evacuated from China and from a cruise ship off the coast of Japan to Lackland Air Force Base. They were being held in quarantine.

The ripple effect of SXSW being cancelled will be felt throughout the local economy in hotels, restaurants, bars and stores.

“I’m not surprised SXSW was cancelled but I’m worried about the local restaurants that needed the revenue,” said Tony Tovar, head of community for Sana Benefits, an Austin-based healthcare startup. “I asked all of my coworkers to support their neighborhood restaurants, bars, coffeeshops, etc.”

Earlier in the week, Joshua Baer announced Capital Factory would not be hosting its Austin Startup Crawl, an annual ritual involving hordes of people visiting various tech centers around town. He also said Capital Factory cancelled Capital Factory House at SXSW and would not be hosting activities at its offices as it originally planned.

“Safety is our top priority,” Baer wrote in a post on Medium. “There is no hesitation about this decision after reviewing all of the available information and speaking at length with all of our team, our members, our partners, and our advisors.”

Ben Lamm, co-founder, and CEO of Hypergiant, also announced Friday that it was no longer hosting three days of special events focused on the space industry and artificial intelligence at its headquarters downtown.