Category: San Antonio (Page 2 of 62)

At its hometown headquarters in San Antonio, H-E-B is making a big investment to create a state-of-the-art tech center.

H-E-B announced Wednesday it plans to add 500 new jobs in San Antonio and build a 150,000 square-foot, five-story building in downtown San Antonio. The building will have the capacity to eventually house 1,000 employees.

Construction is set to begin next summer with plans to open by the summer of 2022.

The building will accommodate the growth of H-E-B Digital, which includes its product, design, technology and e-commerce teams, according to a news release.

 “Our success starts with our people, who provide exceptional hospitality to deliver world-class shopping and digital experiences,” Craig Boyan, H-E-B President, said in a news release. “We’re committed to hiring more people, adding the necessary skills to become both a better tech company and even stronger brick-and-mortar retailer.”

H-E-B already has more than 1,000 employees in San Antonio on its H-E-B Digital team. And it recently added several hundred more at its Eastside Tech Hub in Austin, which opened in June. Altogether, H-E-B has more than 5,500 employees who are part of its H-E-B Curbside and Home Delivery teams.

“H-E-B continues to have an outsized impact on our community. One of our region’s greatest strengths is our willingness and eagerness to serve others, and H-E-B consistently leads the way in this respect,” Graham Weston, co-founder of Rackspace and Geekdom, said in a news release. “These 1,000 Partners will be digitally innovating from right here in downtown San Antonio, serving Texans everywhere. Another thing we do exceptionally well as a region is to celebrate. Today, we should all celebrate H-E-B. 500 new tech jobs in our community is the type of commitment that sets us on an entirely new path.”

San Antonio-based Lake Flato Architects will design the project, which will be similar to its Eastside Tech Hub with an open floor plan and areas for collaboration throughout, according to a news release.

 “The San Antonio tech center will be become part of the new front door to our Arsenal campus, just as H-E-B Digital is creating a new front door for our customers online and via mobile shopping experiences,” Jag Bath, H-E-B Chief Digital Officer, said in a news release.

 “The H-E-B tech center employing 1,000 people will be a quantum step in making San Antonio a center for technology,” Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff said in a news release.

H-E-B also recently announced plans to launch a trial of driverless cars delivering groceries in the Olmos Park area, a suburb just north of downtown San Antonio.  And the company acquired Favor, an on-demand delivery startup based in Austin, last year, which prompted the expansion there with its Eastside Tech Hub.

Cliently, which moved to San Antonio last July, announced Tuesday that is has received $1 million in venture capital.

Active Capital, a new venture capital firm based in San Antonio and led by Pat Matthews, is the lead investor in the seed stage round of funding. Other investors include Altair.

Spencer Farber, founder and CEO of Cliently, founded the company a few years ago. He saw the need for companies to engage their customers more dynamically while working as director of sales for Pandadoc. And that’s where he got the idea for Cliently, which is an automated sales engagement and lead generation platform.

Cliently also hired Huey Ly, a former senior engineer at Rackspace and Mailgun, with the latest funding, Farber said.

Previously, Cliently, which was based in Myrtle Beach, SC,  received a $200,000 grant from SC Launch when it was accepted into its entrepreneurial program in July of 2017. That’s in addition to a $50,000 grant the company previously received.

Cliently is based at Active Capital’s office, which is also home to Funnel.AI, another Active Capital portfolio company.

Cliently’s sales platform uses personalized emails, videos, and physical mail for sales. It is aimed at small businesses looking to drive more engagement with customers. Cliently allows small businesses to send personalized messages to targeted contacts with ease, Farber said.

“Our whole goal is to find unique ways to engage people,” he said.

At the end of the day, a lot of the small businesses have great products and services, but it’s hard to get in front of customers, Farber said.  Video is shown to engage people at a 25 percent higher rate than written email alone, he said.

Video adds credibility to a small business and starts a relationship with the customer, Farber said.

Cliently also offers postcards, handwritten notes and gift cards to Starbucks or Home Depot or some other targeted retailer that is tailored to the industry and pitch, Farber said.

Cliently has also built integrations into its app for customer relationship management programs like Salesforce, Pipedrive and HubSpot.

Cliently has five full time employees and five contractors. It is looking to hire a full stack developer in San Antonio and some other key positions with the new funding, Farber said.

Vizrt, a broadcast company based in Norway, announced it has acquired San Antonio-based NewTek.

The financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.

Michael Hallen, president and CEO of Vizrt, will lead the company. Vizrt said the acquisition creates the largest company in the broadcast space that is dedicated to enabling IT-based video production.

“Combining our organizations allow us to pursue our joint vision of software-based video production, leveraging the power and flexibility of computing and IT-based systems,” Hallen said in a news release. “The combined business will be very well positioned to deliver turnkey systems that give creative power to any organization that has ambitions of producing content for any output platform.

Andrew Cross, President and Chief Technology Officer of NewTek, will become president of research and development of the combined company.

“Taking advantage of computational software, and network technology to make video more accessible and fun to create has always been NewTek’s mission,” Cross said in a news release. “These changes have revolutionized the way stories are told worldwide, allowing anyone to create and share a show. The tools from our two companies have fueled the video revolution – from kids in classrooms, little league games, and web shows, to the highest levels of broadcasting, news and sports. The combined company represents one of the most disruptive changes for the video industry in decades., however the goal remains the same – to build a new world of IT-based video technology to grow the reach and impact for anyone with a story to share.”

Most of NewTek’s 140 employees are based in San Antonio and some sales staff are based remotely, said Scott Carroll, NewTek spokesman.

The office will remain in San Antonio and the NewTek group will remain in San Antonio, he said..

“We will retain the name and the brand,” Carroll said.

Vizrt and NewTek make complementary products, Carroll said. The acquisition is putting strength with strength, he said.

“Both companies are strong profitable companies and we share a common vision and mission in the products we make for the broadcast industry,” Carroll said.  “We believe the future is going to be based on software and networks.”

Vizrt dominates the high end of the TV graphics industry, Carroll said.

NewTek develops a technology called NDI that allows video to be shared across networks, Carroll said. It represents a massive change in the approach to doing video and eliminates some traditional roadblocks, he said.

“What the acquisition means for San Antonio is we are going to remain in San Antonio and hopefully grow our footprint here,” Carroll said.

“We are very excited,” Carroll said. “The NewTek team is dedicated to leaving a mark on the industry to allow people to make more and better video and to tell their stories.”

Tim Jenison co-founded NewTek, a desktop video graphics software company, in a storefront in downtown Topeka, Kansas in 1985. Its original product was the Video Toaster. He later relocated the company to San Antonio. The company has been privately-held since its inception. Jenison is the sole owner.

NewTek makes innovative products like Lightwave 3D software used for special effects in movies and television shows. And in 2005, NewTek released the Tricaster, which allows people to do live video streaming with the production capabilities of a full studio in a backpack-sized piece of hardware.

NewTek’s customers include the New York Giants, NBA Development League, Fox News, BBC, NHL, Nickelodeon, CBS Radio, ESPN Radio, Fox Sports, MTV, TWiT.TV, USA TODAY, Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and more than 80% of the U.S. Fortune 100.

Vizrt, which is short for Visualization in Real-Time or Visual Artist, is based in Bergen, Norway, and has 600 employees in 30 offices worldwide. Vizrt, founded in 1997, creates content production, management and distribution tools for the digital media industry.  

Vizrt’s customers include CNN, CBS, NBC, Fox, BBC, BSkyB, Sky Sports, Al Jazeera, NDR, ZDF, Star TV, Network 18, Tencent, and many more.

Vizrt, a private company, is owned by Nordic Capital Fund VIII.

Both companies are holding events at the National Association of Broadcasters, known as NAB, conference in Las Vegas on Sunday.

Sponsored post by InnoTech San Antonio

With thousands of IT professionals now working and living in San Antonio, those  making an impact deserve public recognition and InnoTech, the region’s largest IT & innovation technology conference, will recognize and award the best and the brightest in the field of Information Technology on Thursday, April 4, 2019.

 The 6th Annual San Antonio CIO of the Year Award will be presented during the North San Antonio Chamber CIO Luncheon at the Norris Conference Center.  

VIA Metropolitan Transit Vice President of Technology and Innovation Steve Young was selected for his leadership as demonstrated through his innovation, creativity, impact and delivery.

 “I believe Steve showcases the spirit and innovation that San Antonio is striving for and he and his team is making a difference for this growing technology community,” says InnoTech Executive Director Sean Lowery.

InnoTech San Antonio kicks off Wednesday morning at the Norris Conference Center in San Antonio. William Hurley, known as Whurley, is scheduled to give the keynote speech at 8 a.m. on Wednesday.

To register for the conference for free, use the code SHN9C.

This is a sponsored post. InnoTech San Antonio is an advertiser with Silicon Hills News.

FunnelAI, a startup that uses artificial intelligence to generate leads for car dealers, announced Wednesday that it has raised a $1.5 million seed round of financing.

The San Antonio-based startup previously raised $375,000 in pre-seed stage funding and participated in the RealCo Accelerator, based at Geekdom.

San Antonio-based Active Capital, which last month announced it had closed on a $21.5 million fund to invest in early-stage business to business software as a service startups, led the round. Other investors included Geekdom Fund, True, based in London, and angels from San Antonio and Houston.

FunnelAI, which has eight employees in San Antonio and one in Austin, plans to use the funds to hire additional full stack engineers, sales and marketing and customer service employees, said Sri Kamma, CEO of FunnelAI.

RealCo, a business to business focused, long-term accelerator program, recruited FunnelAI to San Antonio from Austin in July of 2017. The startup participated in RealCo’s first accelerator cohort.

Active Capital got to know the founders through RealCo and invested in its pre-seed round about six months ago, said Pat Matthews, CEO and Founder of Active Capital.

“I’ve spent a lot of time with Sri over the last few months,” Matthews said. “It just made a lot of sense for us to be the lead investor.”

FunnelAI shares offices with Active Capital in downtown San Antonio.

“First and foremost, it’s a great founding team. I think they’ve got a big vision. They’ve done an amazing job of staying focused to get the business going. With a lot of entrepreneurs, it’s hard to focus. They’ve got a platform that is beneficial to a number of industries,” Matthews said.

“I love the progress they’ve made,” Matthews said. “They’ve made so much progress on so little capital.”

FunnelAI is a sales and marketing platform that uses artificial intelligence, machine learning, natural language processsing and data to help connect businesses to potential customers.

FunnelAI’s product works for real estate, auto-dealers, financial services, but it’s hyper focused on the auto industry right now,  Kamma said.

The startup harvests data from social media platforms like Reddit and car enthusiast forums looking for prospective customers that might want to buy a new car, used car, service or parts, auto loans, or auto insurance. It then provides the leads to sales managers.

FunnelAI has 78 customers, including  BMW of Austin, Mercedes Benz of Austin, a few dealerships in Louisiana, BMW of Los Angeles, Kamma said.

Active Capital, a San Antonio-based venture capital firm, announced it has raised a $21.5 million fund focused on providing seed stage funding to business to business software companies.

Originally, Pat Matthews, Active Capital’s founder and CEO, set out to raise a $15 million fund, but it was oversubscribed.

“We closed on the fund Dec. 31^st and we’ve made 20 investments so far, really all over the country,” Matthews said.

Active Capital is 100 percent focused on leading seed rounds for business to business, software as a service companies, known as B2B SaaS companies, Matthews said.

In Austin, Active Capital has invested in Pingboard, Servable, Living Security, CloudSnap, and Prosper Ops. And in San Antonio, Active Capital has invested in FunnelAI and SendSpark. Its other investments span from coast to coast and include Agave in San Francisco and PhoneWagon in New York.

“B2B SaaS is the kind of business I’ve been building my whole life,” Matthews said. “I stopped doing stuff outside of my expertise.”

Matthews, a former Rackspace executive, knows the pains entrepreneurs face early on in founding a company. He was a co-founder of Webmail.us, which sold to Rackspace in 2007. He has also invested as an angel investor in more than 50 startup companies.

Matthews is passionate about working with entrepreneurs who are building amazing businesses.

“For the companies we’re investing in it allows them to have one major investor in the seed stage round – as opposed to 15 or 20 investors to put together over time,” Matthews said.

“Pat is one of the rare founders that has built a successful company from scratch, had a great exit, and then had equal success as an executive in a large, fast-growing company,” Graham Weston, co-founder and former chairman of Rackspace, and an investor in Active Capital, said in a news release.  “Pat has a unique ability to relate to founders and really knows how to leverage his experiences to help them through the process of building a great company.  He really has a lot to offer today’s entrepreneur.”

“I’ve been working with Pat since I invested in Webmail in 2005,” Pat Condon, co-founder of Rackspace, board partner and investor in Active Capital, said in a news release. “Pat has an amazing way of connecting with entrepreneurs and I enjoy collaborating with him and the founders we invest in.”

In 1999, Matthews along with Bill Boebel and Kevin Minnick, founded FieldParty.com, which created searchable city event directories. They dropped out of Virginia Tech University just 20 hours short of getting their degrees to work on the business full time. FieldParty.com raised $120,000 in angel money, largely from friends and family, and on March 10, 2000, the website launched – the same day the Nasdaq started crashing when the great Dot Com bubble burst.

They pivoted the business from a dot com to a B2B SaaS company. It was very tough time for the Internet economy overall and for the company, Matthews said.

“I sold books door to door in Southwest Virginia,” Matthews said. “I worked in many different sales jobs.”

Matthews also had to figure out how to manage $100,000 each in credit card debt.

“It really has shaped a lot of what I do today,” Matthews said. “I’m attracted to companies that are capital disciplined. Companies that have made a lot of progress on very little capital. Founders who have got product to market and have generated revenue and raised little capital to date. They are only raising money relative to the size of the opportunity in front of them.”

Matthews’ journey buys him a lot of credibility with founders, he said.

“It allows me to give them tough feedback when needed,” Matthews said.

“I want to use my experience to help them where I can. I really want to invest in great founders and inspiring founders that are building great companies,” Matthews said. “The right investors and the right advisors can really help founders not screw up the company along the way.”

Editor’s note: Active Capital was one of the sponsors of the Silicon Hills News’ recent 2019 Austin Calendar Party and Silicon Hills News is hosting a lunch and learn in Austin with Chris Saum of Active Capital later this month.

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The third annual San Antonio Startup Week is taking place this week at various venues downtown.

Events run Monday through Friday. The sponsors include 80/20 Foundation, Geekdom, USAA and Trinity University.

A full schedule of events can be found on the San Antonio Startup Week website

San Antonio Startup Week features presentations, panels, workshops, and events hosted at Geekdom and other sites around town. The events are free, but registration is required.

Monday’s highlight featured a talk in the morning between Entrepreneur Graham Weston and Taylor Eighmy, president of the University of Texas at San Antonio, moderated by Lorenzo Gomez, on UTSA’s 10-year plan to develop its presence in downtown San Antonio. Weston recently donated $15 million to UTSA to create a School of Data Science and a National Security Collaboration Center downtown.

On Tuesday morning, USAA presents Breakfast of Champions: Leveraging Gender Diversity for Financial Gain at the Geekdom Events Center. The panel features Kerry Rupp, co-founder of True Wealth Ventures, Marina Gavito, Business Development Director with USAA, Cat Dizon, executive director of Alamo Angels, and Robin Laine, co-founder of Transect.

Also on Tuesday, in the afternoon, at 2 p.m. Lorenzo Gomez is interviewing Amy Nelson, Chief Executive Officer at Venture for America at Pinch Boil House & Bia Bar.

On Thursday afternoon at 2 p.m., Leslie Bohl, former TV anchorwoman, is doing a talk on how to reach your audience through the media at Weston Urban Pop Up at 120 E. Houston.

Also on Thursday evening, the Cofounders of Codeup: Michael Girdley, Chris Turner and Jason Straughan will speak with Geekdom Cofounder Nick Longo in a fireside chat at the Geekdom Events Centre.

On Friday, the week’s events culminate in a big party to celebrate Geekdom’s 7th birthday at the Weston Centre starting at 5 p.m. with drinks, food and lots of fun.

OKIN Business Process Services announced Monday plans to establish a U.S. headquarters in San Antonio with more than 1,400 jobs.

“After a two-year site selection journey, we are delighted to announce that our U.S. headquarters will be located in San Antonio, Texas.,” Dan Smith, President, and CEO, OKIN BPS, said in a news release.

The project is pending the approval of local and state incentives including a $6.6 million grant from the Texas Enterprise Fund.

The City of San Antonio is considering an incentive package for OKIN and will bring it to City Council for a vote in November. Bexar County Commissioners Court is also considering an incentive package.

“OKIN BPS choosing San Antonio as its U.S. headquarters is a testament to our city’s globally competitive future,” San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg said in a news release. “We are building the right infrastructure, business-friendly environment, and workforce that is attracting investment from the world’s most sought-after companies.”

OKIN, based in Prague, Czech Republic, provides business process services in the field of Information Technology and telecommunications. The U.S. jobs will support its business networks and include technical support and customer support in several languages.

OKIN BPS plans to invest nearly $23 million in its new U.S. headquarters which will be based at Brooks, a former Air Force Base on San Antonio’s South Side, turned into a business park. Brooks plans to convert two historic buildings into the initial headquarters for OKIN.

“By opening its U.S. headquarters right here in San Antonio, OKIN BPS is undertaking its largest ever expansion effort and building its first office outside of Europe,” Texas Governor Greg Abbott said in a news release.

Graham Weston, one of the co-founders of Rackspace and Geekdom, has donated $15 million to the University of Texas at San Antonio to establish a School of Data Science and a National Security Collaboration Center downtown.

The school is part of UTSA’s 10-year plan to develop its downtown San Antonio campus “as a destination for producing highly skilled professionals in big data and analytics,” according to UTSA.

In addition, UTSA is working with the City of San Antonio and Bexar County for the transfer of land downtown, valued at $13 million, to the university for the new school, a National Security Collaboration Center and the relocation of the UTSA College of Business. All of UTSA’s projects would total $229 million in value.

Already, UT’s system board of regents pledged $70 million for the School of Data Science and National Security Collaboration Center. UTSA is putting up another $5 million and with Weston’s $15 million gift, the university can begin the two construction projects, according to UTSA. The school will be located in the heart of San Antonio’s high tech corridor.

“UTSA is building the best data science program in the world. It will train the smartest students in the field and make them the hottest commodities in the workforce. We hope that as UTSA creates them, the biggest employers in the world will come to downtown San Antonio to recruit their IT workforces,” Weston said in a UTSA post.

“What we are witnessing today is the creation of transformative opportunities for San Antonio for generations to come,” UTSA President Taylor Eighmy, said in a UTSA post. “This convergence of talent, collaboration and innovation will create new jobs and new prosperity while further elevating San Antonio as a powerhouse for cybersecurity, data science and entrepreneurship.”

By LAURA LOREK
Publisher of Silicon Hills News

The founders of Geekdom borrowed the “Serendipitous Collision of Ideas” phrase from Tony Hsieh, founder, and CEO of Zappos, and a catalyst in the Las Vegas technology community, said Lorenzo Gomez, chairman of Geekdom.

Geekdom, founded in 2011, is the catalyst for San Antonio’s technology community downtown. The collaborative co-working center focused on fostering technology startups has nurtured the city’s technology community. And Graham Weston and Nick Longo, founders of Geekdom, visited technology centers around the world to draw ideas from to build Geekdom.

Gomez moderated a fireside chat Monday night at the Geekdom Events Centre with Longo, founder of CoffeeCup Software and Weston, co-founder of Rackspace.

During the hour and half long talk, the three discussed how they built their various ventures and founded Geekdom to be a place where like-minded entrepreneurs could come and launch startups. Geekdom started off on the 11th floor of the Weston building, but now occupies the entire historic Rand Building on Houston Street. It has incubated and spun out several tech startups including Parlevel Systems, Codeup, TrueAbility, Merge VR and others.

The talk is the first in a series of monthly “Collision of Ideas” talks Geekdom plans with various founders.

At Silicon Hills News, we’ve distilled some of the highlights in the form of advice given to tech entrepreneurs from the talk below.

1. ASSEMBLE A GOOD TEAM – With the Rackspace founders, Patrick Condon was the business expert, Dirk Elmendorf was the software expert and Richard Yoo was the hardware expert, Weston said. That combination of skills made for a winning team, he said. Rackspace, founded in 1998, grew to become San Antonio’s largest technology company with more than 6,000 employees.
2. FAKE IT TILL YOU MAKE IT – The three founders wore official uniforms with the Cymitar Network Systems logo on them to their first meeting with Weston and his business partner Morris Miller, the early investors in the company. Those uniforms and the professionalism and confidence displayed by the three young founders gave Weston and Miller the confidence to invest in the company, according to Weston. They wrote the first $500,000 check to invest in the company.
3. MAKE IT EASY – When pitching a new idea it’s critical to explain it in simple terms so that people can understand it and buy into it, Weston said.
4. GET TO KNOW YOUR CUSTOMERS – Condon and Weston visited Longo at CoffeeCup Software, which was an early customer of Rackspace, in Corpus Christi to develop the relationship and learn about what he needed first hand, Longo said.
5. FIND A COMMUNITY – Finding a community of like-minded individuals will help you accomplish your goals and help you with your startup. That’s why Geekdom was created, Weston said. It’s a place to chase your dream and find your team, he said.
6. PIVOTS HAPPEN – A lot of times you think you’re pursuing one idea, you pivot and you’re pursuing another, Weston said.
7. YOU HAVE TO BELIEVE – Fear is the number one thing that stops entrepreneurs, Weston said. You have to believe that your dream can come true for you. It’s hard to do that when all the people sitting around you are skeptical. We wanted Geekdom to help people overcome that fear and take that first step, Weston said.
8. FIRST 15 – The first 15 people who join a startup are critical to its success, Weston said.
9. KNOW WHEN TO QUIT – It’s very hard thing to know when to cut your losses, Weston said. Knowing when to pull the plug is critical. Most entrepreneurs pull the plug when they run out of money, Weston said. Others do it when they lose their passion for the business, he said.
10. TIMING – Timing can make a big difference, said Weston. “But you have to be prepared to seize the moment,” he said. “There are magic moments happening in all of our lives all the time. And it’s very hard to spot them but when you do you need to be prepared to go all in.”
11. FINDING PRODUCT MARKET FIT – Iterate, adapt and change constantly to find product-market fit, Weston said.
12. DO WHATEVER IT TAKES – Longo slept under the counter of his coffee shop to manually process orders for his software as they came in. Be prepared to go “all in,” he said.
13. SALES AND MARKETING ARE CRITICAL – So many entrepreneurs pitch Weston and say that they are selling their product without any sales or marketing personnel and Weston tells them “You’re an idiot.” Sales and marketing are critical to the success of any startup, Weston said. Tech founders need to respect the skills of others that they will need to succeed, he said.
14. WHAT IS YOUR NOBLE CAUSE? – Why does it matter to you and why does it matter to someone else? Longo said. What problem are you trying to solve, Longo said.
15. JUST DO IT – Barriers to starting a business are lower than they have ever been, Weston said. It’s the golden age of entrepreneurship for men and women, he said. With the cloud, starting a business is inexpensive, Weston said. The technology and tools that exist make it much easier than in the past, he said.