Category: A Slice of Silicon Hills (Page 2 of 3)

Need Startup Cash? Check out the Geekdom Fund in San Antonio

July 2, 2013 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 0 Comments

By ANDREW MOORE
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

Startups aren’t easy. Even if an entrepreneur has a great idea and business plan, jumping into a full time startup just isn’t viable without some financial cushion to get the company off the ground.
This is why Geekdom of San Antonio offers the $25,000 Geekdom Fund, which can be applied for monthly by members of the cooperative workspace. The fund was established in August of 2012 and has been awarded to seven startups as of this month. It is managed by Cole Wollak and Andrea Medina. The fund is financed by a group of private investors associated closely with Rackspace Hosting. Its goal: to create and keep a community of startups in San Antonio.
The Geekdom Fund has six voluntary board members who double as mentors for the startups who apply. Applicants are not only able, but encouraged, to meet with the members one-on-one for individual feedback before addressing the full board. The current board members are Michael Girdley, Pat Condon, Cristal Glangchai, Nick Longo, John Mosher, and Mike Troy.
To apply for the fund, Geekdom members can go to geekdom.com/funding.

Toopher Featured on Slice of Silicon Hills

June 27, 2013 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 0 Comments

By ANDREW MOORE
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

Josh Alexander of Toopher Photo by Andrew Moore

How can your smart phone make your life more secure? Well, Toopher has created a security solution that uses your phone’s location awareness to provide additional authentication when you login to a website or perform a web transaction.
Focused on creating something that’s “cool enough for James Bond but your mom can use it too,” Toopher’s solution lets your phone prove your identity without ever leaving your pocket.
The first time a user logs in with a Toopher enabled authentication process, Toopher will push a notice to your phone’s app telling you who is accessing what website with what device.
Ideally the “who” will be yourself, and once you accept the notice Toopher will remember the users location. It will then perform the authentication automatically from that location every time you do a login. If someone who is not you – an identity thief perhaps – tries to access that website or service later, the Toopher app will again notify you and you can decline the authorization.
Toopher is already live on several websites including Burnbin.com, Firstcutpro.com, and miicard.com. The startup is also close to releasing solutions for several large financial institutions across the country and is creating partnerships with credit card companies, universities, and CRM platforms. While the company is pursuing opportunities for external public website security, it will also craft security solutions for the internal employee networks of large companies. Toopher will be able to officially announce several of its big partnerships in the coming months.
Based in Austin, Toopher was founded by Josh Alexander, Even Grim, Dave Dunham, and Brian Philpott. The company just finished its series A funding round last November and currently has 18 employees.

A Slice of Silicon Hills Talks App Deployment with SocialREST

June 12, 2013 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 0 Comments

By ANDREW MOORE
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

While most iOS app developers want to incorporate social media in on their new apps, the process is easier said than done. Facebook, Twitter and other platforms often have their own code – which developers may or may not be familiar with. That’s where SocialREST comes in.
This four-member Geekdom startup has created a Facebook code library that can greatly reduce the workload of the developer — both in integrating with Facebook and in adding specific Facebook functionalities. When developers put their apps on Facebook through SocialREST’s cloud service, they can use simple code shortcuts to access complex Facebook functions such as searching for friends.
Additionally, SocialREST protects their client’s apps from being affected by changes in the Facebook API. Because the startup acts as a middleman, they can handle all such changes on their end — saving clients the headache of having to go back and re-write code for all their deployed apps.
SocialREST is also putting the finishing touches on their Facebook analytics service. This will give developers a dashboard that shows all their apps’ social interactions and conversion rates – or how often a user downloads the app following a social interaction. The dashboard will also give developers all the information a Facebook login can provide, such as user profile information. According to Selby, this will help developers better plan out their social media strategy for their current app and any additional apps they create.
In the future, SocialREST plans to expand their service to Twitter, Google+, and other social sites.

A Slice of Silicon Hills Interviews Akimbo on Fast Cash

June 5, 2013 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 2 Comments

By ANDREW MOORE
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

What is the fastest way to share money with friends and family? Always carry cash? Use pre-paid cards? With an Akimbo Card account, users can share money with any other Akimbo card holder instantly by using either a mobile app or the Akimbo Website via the internet. Akimbo accounts have both primary users and sub users, making it possible for parents to give “allowance cards” to their kids or employers to transfer funds quickly to secondary employee cards.
Created by CEO Houston Frost, the Akimbo card is a full-fledged Visa debit card used in partnership with Bancorp Banks. Users do not, however, need to access bank services to use the cards and transfer money between cards. In fact, Akimbo can essentially replace a normal bank account for day to day needs.
The Akimbo business model relies on interchange revenue – the small fees paid by banks for card transactions – as well as other fees such as ATM charges. Signing up for an account is free and there are currently no monthly fees, though there may be fees for creating additional sub accounts. Akimbo moved from Austin to San Antonio in February, and is currently located Geekdom of San Antonio. The startup has six full time employees, and around a dozen part time employees – many of which were acquired after moving to Geekdom.
For its next step, Akimbo is in the process of adding an “instant check loading” feature to their cards that will allow users to load the check on their cards within 30 minutes. The feature is now in beta.

Mexican Startup Biovideo Spotlighted on Slice of Silicon Hills News

May 29, 2013 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 3 Comments

By ANDREW MOORE
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

Having a baby is incredibly special, and lots of parents want to capture those first few special moments on camera. But with the stress of having a baby, getting all the best moments on camera can be a difficult task.
Founded in Mexico by Carlos Villaseñor, Biovideo works with hospitals in Texas and Mexico to create a movie documenting all the special, emotional moments of your child’s birth – for free. The service is available in the United States at San Antonio’s Methodist and Baptist health system hospitals. It is also available in Mexico for 90% of the private hospitals in Monterrey, Mexico City and Guadalajara.
Parents can sign up for the service on the Biovideo website. After the patient signs a consent form at the hospital, a Biovideo team will handle the entire video process – editing the video remotely through cloud technology. The video is typically completed within 48 hours of the birth. When the new mother leaves the hospital, she can access video and online web page that lets her share the video with family and friends. They can also order a hard copy.
In fact, the Biovideo business model is directly tied to families sharing their videos. Brands such as Johnson & Johnson, Disney, and Pampers sponsor these videos and gain more visibility each time they are shared. The brands pay out more as vides become more viral. The brands will also follow up with the parents through Biovideo as the child develops.
In the future, Biovideo plans to expand in Texas to Austin, Houston, Dallas, and El Paso. The company already has a team of 70 employees and will be hiring as they expand to more cities. The decision to expand in the U.S. is largely due to larger market of parents — the U.S. has about 4 million births a year — and more opportunities to partner with brands. In Mexico, Biovideo only has access to the 16 percent of the population that can afford private hospitals. According to the Biovideo website, the company has already produced 150,000 videos for U.S. and Mexican families.

A Slice of Silicon Hills Interviews the Amazing JellyBean

May 23, 2013 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 0 Comments

By ANDREW MOORE
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

Has your internet ever gone down? Of course it has. To fix it, you probably had to “power cycle” your modem and router – which essentially means turning them off and on in the right order. Depending on where all the wires connect, this can be a real pain.
The Amazing JellyBean fully automates this process with the press of a single button. Created by former Time Warner Cable technician Jim Pyle, the device plugs into both your modem and router and restarts everything in the correct order to get your internet back up. According to Pyle, 80 percent of all connection problems can be fixed by power cycling the modem and router. Pyle has also completed a Bluetooth compatible prototype with the help of Biplab Pal from India. Using the Bluetooth connectivity, users will be able to activate the JellyBean with their phone without ever leaving their computer.
Pyle is funding the first round of production with a Kickstarter campaign that raised $13,968. This will fund the development of the first of 2000 Amazing JellyBeans, which Pyle will sell by partnering with startup friendly retailers.

Full disclosure: The Amazing JellyBean is an advertiser with Silicon Hills News.

A Slice of Silicon Hills Rocks Out with Rockify

May 17, 2013 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 0 Comments

By ANDREW MOORE
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

Do you like music videos? Do you miss old MTV? If you do, then you’ll probably like Rockify. Created by Joel Korpi, the Rockify platform is designed to present music videos in a better format than other sites on the web. But there’s a twist, Korpi has created a complex algorithm that uses social media to identify what music videos users like — and more importantly – what they will like in the future.
To make this work, users log into Rockify with either Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or yahoo. The Rockify algorithm will then take in all the social data available from the primary user and the user’s friends, family, and connections, to find out what music the user will want to see. The platform also learns what you like as you interact with it. According to Korpi, Rockify can reliably find music that users are guaranteed to enjoy after about 80 hours of use.
Based in Austin, Rockify is taking full advantage of both Austin City Limits and SXSW. The startup is currently in the process of re-launching their ACL specific app and has a channel on its platform dedicated to SXSW. Rockify currently has a library of around 400,000 music videos which are indexed from YouTube, Dailymotion, Vimeo, and many others. It is also hosting exclusive ACL content.
The startup is currently in its second round of funding and is looking for entertainment oriented investors that can help the platform gain traction.

A Slice of Silicon Hills Gets Healthy with Greenling

May 10, 2013 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 0 Comments

Kathryn Hutchison with Greenling, Photo by Andrew Moore

BY ANDREW MOORE
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

Fresh fruits and vegetables are great right? But unfortunately, not everyone has time to go to the store twice a week and get them. Now, thanks to Greenling, you can have fresh healthy food come to you.
Founded in Austin in 2005, Greenling delivers locally produced and organic foods right to your front door. The company operates in Austin, San Antonio, Dallas, and Houston – working with 300 local farmers and food artisans to provide customers more access to that local produce. This enables Greenling to offer certain products that conventional grocery stores like HEB don’t — mostly because large grocers require large volumes of product that only major farming operations can provide. Greenling’s business model allows them to work with a grower of any size and use a network of both small and large farms to meet customer demand. The company is especially supportive of organic produce and has the widest variety of organic items available in each city they serve.
In addition to focusing on convenience, Greenling founder Mason Arnold is also passionate about conservation and sustainability. Greenling makes a special effort to conserve water and fossil fuels in their business practices. By partnering with farmers near their distribution area, using recycled materials as packaging, using energy efficient vehicles, and using specially designing the distribution routes; Greenling reduces the amount of fuel and other resources needed to get fresh produce from the farm to you.
All Greenling orders have free delivery, though there is a $25 minimum on purchases. In addition to fruits and vegetables, Greenling delivers meats, dairy products, bakery items and prepared foods.
Questions? Comments? Want to know who is next on the show? Contact us on twitter: @SiliceofSilicon

Disclosure: Greenling is an advertiser with Silicon Hills News

A Slice of Silicon Hills Features BudgetDoc

May 3, 2013 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 1 Comment

By ANDREW MOORE
Reporter with Silicon Hills News
Do you want a doctor?
Do you want to bypass the hassle of insurance claims and pay cash up front?
Then BudgetDoc wants to make your life easier by creating a network of doctors willing to give discounts to patients that pay cash up front.
Dr. Megan R. Williams Khmelev, Yevgeniy V. Khmelev, Gopinath Khandavalli, and Oliver Jensen founded BudgetDoc.
The site allows users to research doctors and the prices each doctor offers for services, as well as compare doctors and their ratings to find the best healthcare option. Users can also contact physicians though the site if they have any questions on additional prices and services.
The BudgetDoc network already has around 30 healthcare providers including doctors, dentists, chiropractors, and lab services – most of which are located in the San Antonio area. All providers are vetted through the Texas Medical Board. BudgetDoc is free, but requires users to sign up to use the site.

A Slice of Silicon Hills Features Austin-based MakerSquare

April 19, 2013 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 1 Comment

BY ANDREW MOORE
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

Great tech startups need great developers – especially developers that are fluent in the latest coding languages used on the web. Unfortunately, the only way for companies to get such developers is to train them in house, or hope to find someone who has learned them on their own.
This week we talk to MakerSquare – a company created to address this problem by providing a 10-week training course that covers languages and skills that today’s tech companies need.
Based in Austin, MakerSquare has been working with several Austin companies to create a custom developer course. Students that graduate will have all the skills needed to be hired by these companies.
“The point of the course is two sided”, says Education Architect Harsh Patel. “One: To get people who want to get into web development into programming.. ..and Two: It helps companies in Austin find a lot of tech talent that they need. Because a lot of companies need web developer talent right now, but there’s just not enough.”
The intensive 10-week course is largely project based with students working alone, in groups, and with mentors from Austin tech companies. The training includes Ruby on Rails, JavaScript frameworks like jQuery and backbone.js, HTML5, and CSS3.
The first course will start on June 10 and can hold 24 – 28 students. The application process is still open. Applicants who do not make the first course may be placed in subsequent courses. MakerSquare plans to hold the first few courses back to back and hopes to be able to offer them more frequently this fall.
In order to be chosen for the program, applicants must demonstrate both a record of accomplishment and a drive to succeed.
“We look for people who have shown success in something else previously, whether it is technical-related or not,” says Patel.
Upon completion of the course, MakerSquare will help the graduates get internships, apprenticeships, or full time positions in tech companies across the nation. The current list of hiring partners includes uShip, Crushpath, PeopleAdmin, and others.
To apply for the developer training course, join as a hiring partner, or participate as a mentor in the program; go to Makersquare.