Bloomfire has raised $2 million, according to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission regulatory filing.
The Austin-based company closed on $8 million in funding in March from founding partners Austin Ventures and Redpoint Ventures.
The latest funding comes from Silver Creek Ventures, according to TechCrunch.
Since its founding in 2010, Bloomfire, which makes content sharing software for companies, has raised $20 million.
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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.
By Ian Panchèvre
Reporter with Silicon Hills News
With more than 91 percent of smartphone owners taking a mobile photo at least once a month, it’s no secret that as the Internet continues to shift towards mobile, so does consumer photography.
One San Antonio entrepreneur, Jim Drought III, recognized this trend and spotted an opportunity. However, rather than jumping into a noisy market with the next “revolutionary” photo-sharing app, Drought wanted to cater to a growing population of casual, mobile photographers with a printing service.
It was a natural connection for Drought, the owner of Signs of San Antonio, a local print shop, to make.
“We live in an increasingly mobile world and I started to think that we could ship prints anywhere. Instead of being geographically limited to San Antonio, an app could give us a broader reach,” noted Drought.
Moreover, advances in mobile cameras have allowed for higher photo and print quality. For example, the iPhone 4 carries a 5-megapixel rear camera, whereas the iPhone 5 boasts an 8-megapixel rear camera. Looking towards the future, many iPhone speculators predict a 12-megapixel camera on the device’s next generation.
Accordingly, “the resolution is getting larger and larger which translates to larger and larger prints,” explains Drought.
Excited about the prospects of an app that would allow users to order large prints of their mobile photos, Drought was less eager to fork out tens of thousands of dollars for development, or even worse, work with an unreliable contractor.
“I was less inclined to hire someone and more inclined to form a partnership,” continues Drought.
Ye is a junior at Reagan High School. He’s on the swim team, plays piano in the orchestra, competes in academic trivia contests… Oh, and he also makes iPhone apps.
Ye became interested in mobile development at the age of thirteen, when his mother bought an iPod Touch. Ye was fascinated by the apps and, with the help of books and online resources, challenged himself to build a few of them.
Ye’s first app, A+ FlashCards, allows users to create flashcard quizzes for studying. His second app, Easy Typing, offers a larger keyboard to help those that struggle with the size of the iPhone’s native keyboard.
Then tragedy struck.
When Ye was fourteen a major earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown rocked Japan, where Ye lived when he was younger.
“I decided I could help by donating some of the money from my app proceeds to the relief effort,” explains Ye.
After raising nearly $500 for the Red Cross, Ye was dubbed a “software whiz kid” when his generosity caught the attention of the San Antonio Express-News.
A year later, Ye received an unexpected email from Drought.
Drought found the Express-News article and wanted to pitch his concept to Ye, in hopes that the two could form a partnership. Ye was interested and he agreed to a meeting at Signs of San Antonio.
Comically, Ye’s father had to drop his son off at his first business meeting. Ye had just turned sixteen and had not yet received his drivers license.
Shortly thereafter, the two founded Rectangle LLC, which owns Rectangle App and in turn contracts Signs of San Antonio for its printing services.
After months of development, Rectangle for iPhone soft-launched on April 2, 2013.
Rectangle allows users to upload photos from either their iPhone’s camera reel or Instagram. A simple and friendly interface makes it easy for users to then order large prints – ranging from 9”x12” to 24”x32” – or Pictoblocks – acrylic blocks with a photo mounted on the back.
The end result? Your mobile photos are printed on premium, glossy photographic paper and then delivered straight to your home. Unlike other printing-oriented applications, Rectangle specializes in large prints. Moreover, “the entire process for placing an order is done through the app,” notes Ye.
To build Rectangle, Ye had to overcome unfamiliar technical challenges such as file uploading and payment processing.
Ye also baked some nifty intelligence into the app. Rectangle automatically checks the photo’s resolution to guarantee that the prints will be high quality. If your photos were taken on an older iPhone or have been cropped down, the app will restrict the available sizes to print at a sufficient resolution.
Since its initial release, Rectangle has processed more than 100 print orders.
Ye explains that the soft-launch period has allowed Rectangle to test the entire process for “receiving the order, processing, printing and shipping it out.” And with the recent release of version 1.0.2, Rectangle is now ready to actively market the application.
Moving forward, Rectangle plans on releasing a series of updates that will introduce Facebook integration, panoramic prints, and other print options such as decals.
Rectangle is also considering developing an Android app and is exploring potential uses of the technology in corporate settings.
Rectangle is available for free download in the iPhone App store.
Monday marks the 10th anniversary of WordPress, the website hosting software, which has become a popular publishing platform.
WordPress now powers one in seven websites, and 58 percent of all content management systems.
In fact, 66 million websites worldwide use WordPress including Silicon Hills News, TechCrunch, TED and CNN.
Austin and San Antonio WordPress Meetup Groups both plan to host parties on Monday to celebrate the anniversary. ZippyKid in San Antonio and WPEngine in Austin are both dedicated WordPress Hosting startups.
And last weekend, a record crowd of 450 people turned out Saturday to the Austin Baptist Church Campus to attend WordCamp Austin 2013, a fitting location for devotees of the WordPress publishing platform.
Harrison Funk, a professional photographer, volunteered to shoot pictures at WordCamp Austin. Funk served the late Michael Jackson’s personal photographer and has photographed top celebrities and leaders like President Obama and Nelson Mandela.
“This is my first opportunity to connect with Austin and I love it,” Funk said.
He plans to switch his photo site HarrisonFunk.com to the WordPress platform soon.
“I’m learning a lot here,” he said. “I have met the most amazing people here. Brilliant techies and wonderful business people.”
The conference, geared to all levels of WordPress users, has grown from 100 attendees three years ago to 250 last year and 450 this year, said Sandi Chevalier-Batik, one of its organizers. They also held a developers-only conference on Sunday at Capital Factory.
The Austin WordPress Meetup Group, with more than 1,500 members, the seventh largest in the world, organized the WordCamp Austin event, which was run by volunteers. Chevalier-Batik doesn’t think the sold-out Wordcamp Austin event will get much bigger because she doesn’t want it to lose the one on one interaction between the experts and those who need help.
“I think we are so blessed to have so many top level developers who still want to spend time with the newbies,” Chevalier-Batik said. The WordPress Austin community involves people, who have developed top-level skills, giving back to others who are still learning, she said.
Joshua Baer, co-founder of Capital Factory in Austin, is joining 500 Startups’ Geeks on a Plane Tour, which departs June 1st for Asia.
Geeks On a Plane, organized by 500 Startups, puts a whole bunch of powerful tech entrepreneurs on a plane to travel to different countries to learn about their culture and explore new business opportunities.
The trip is an invite-only tour aimed at startups, investors and executives.
“We travel by planes, trains, and automobiles to the most exciting international startup scenes with the sole mission of uniting geeks and exploring cross-border opportunities,” according to Geeks On a Plane. “The result: a lifelong bond with fellow travelers, a wealth of new friends and business contacts in exploding technology markets, and a stronger appreciation for the cultural and economic ties that bind us globally.”
Bear will be travelling with a group to Southeast Asia and will visit Singapore, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur and Thailand.
The program’s goals are to introduce the travelers to other startups, geeks and investors in cities around the world and for everyone to learn about new technology trends and new markets, meet cool people and have fun.
Datical has raised $1 million in financing, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
“Datical, which was founded in 2012, develops database management software. It was launched by local entrepreneurs Robert Reeves, Daniel Nelson and Pete Pickerill. The trio’s previous business, Phurnace Software Inc., was acquired in 2009 by Houston-based BMC Software Inc.” according to the San Antonio Business Journal, which broke the news.
Last July, Datical raised $700,000 according to a story that Lori Hawkins wrote in the Austin American Statesman.
At that time, investors included “Austin Ventures, Mohr Davidow Ventures of Silicon Valley, DFJ Mercury, based in Houston and Austin investor John Hime,” according to the Statesman story.
That might not be as far fetched as it sounds.
NASA has contacted with Systems & Materials Research Corp. to explore using a 3D printer to create diner on space missions.
NASA has awarded a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I contract worth $125,000 to the Austin-based company.
“This food printing technology may result in a phase II study, which still will be several years from being tested on an actual space flight,” according to NASA.
NASA needs a better food supply to attempt a mission to mars, which would require food with a five-year shelf life.
“Additionally, the current space food is selected before astronauts ever leave the ground and crew members don’t have the ability to personalize recipes or really prepare foods themselves,” according to NASA. “Over long duration missions, a variety of acceptable food is critical to ensure crew members continue to eat adequate amounts of food, and consequently, get the nutrients they need to maintain their health and performance.”
The 3-D Printing movement has just begun to take hold in the U.S. as the printers have become cheaper and the technology more precise.
“The 3D printing component will deliver macronutrients (starch, protein, and fat), structure, and texture while the ink jet will deliver micronutrients, flavor, and smell,” according to Systems & Materials Research’s proposal.
By ANDREW MOORE
Reporter with Silicon Hills News
How can a mobile app help small microbreweries become more profitable? After all, the practice of microbrewing today is not fundamentally different from the way monks brewed beer hundreds of years ago.
What has changed, however, is the way the beer is sold and regulated. Brewers are taxed per month on what they produce; not what they sell – something monks didn’t worry about. This means that a brewer must keep track of large amounts of data each month for both tax forms and general quality control. And while Budweiser can pay for expensive accounting software and numerous office staff to address this problem, microbreweries often have just a single accountant and are more or less on their own.
This is where San Antonio startup Monk’s Toolbox comes in. Founded by the small craft beer-loving team of Zac Harris, Jeremy Karney, and Adam Pryor in the 3 Day Startup San Antonio event last November; Monk’s Toolbox is working on a mobile app that largely automates data collection and back-office work for microbreweries. The startup just received the $25,000 Geekdom fund last April, which will allow them to finish building out the first versions of their app. The initial launch is set for May 27 and six brewers across the country are signed up to try it out. The company plans to have the full product on the market by last quarter of 2013.
“They’ve built tools that are more for the accountants and the executives instead of building tools for the brewers,” Technical Monk Jeremy Karney said. “What we want to do is build a tool for the brewer to give them the data that they need just by going through the brewing process.”
The Monk’s Toolbox Brewers app will help microbrewers by storing data for operating procedures, inventory management, and recipe databases. It will also automate the tax process monthly.
“If you are operating a brew house, there are a million things you do besides brewing beer. You are storing stuff, cleaning stuff, fixing stuff,” Chief Monk Zac Harris said. “All that stuff right now is done on pen and paper, and we are trying to put all that into our application.”
Brewer Larry Chase of the Standing Stone Brewery in Ashland, Ore., will be one of the first to test out the product.
“Spreadsheets are great, but when you end up having five spreadsheets – one that tracks your brewing, one that tracks your inventory, one that tracks your usage rates – none of them really combine together very well,” Chase said. “The hope is that someone like Monks Toolbox is going to pull all of that data together in one place and make it accessible.”
Trading out a mobile app for beer stained brewing forms and spreadsheets has several advantages. It keeps all the checklists for standard operating procedures and maintenance procedures in one place, saving the brewer time. The Brewers App will also keep track of inventory and will alert its user if the brewery is running low on ingredients or supplies.
When it comes to the actual brewing process, the app’s updatable recipe database will help brewers stay consistent with flavor. Craft breweries have unique processes that give their beer unique flavor. These processes can be affected by changes in the local temperature and humidity and changes in ingredients used – such as grain from a new supplier. Brewers must compensate for these changes by adjusting their brewing process. Having data on recipe changes in the past can help the brewer stay consistent in the future, but only if that data is accessible.
“Right now I’ve got a clipboard and I’ve got like 100 pages on the clipboard. I have to just kind of flip through them all if I need to reference something I did a couple months ago,” said Brewer Alex Rattray from the Granary in San Antonio, Texas. “It would be easier to reference just one thing where all the information is stored.”
The feature that Monk’s Toolbox touts most, however, is the tax portion. At the end of each month, brewers must fill out both state and federal tax forms. The Brewers app can use all data collected throughout that month to automatically populate these forms in PDF format, saving brewers several hours of accounting work.
“For me this is really a helpful step because I spend probably an average of four hours every month, at least, just filling out tax paperwork,” said Director of Brewing Operations Sebastian Wolfrum from Natty Greene’s Brewing Company in North Carolina. “This data based solution lets you print out a form based on your brew logs and packaging logs. The software essentially combines all this and I think a lot of people who are new could use the help to figure out what goes in the forms and what doesn’t.”
Monk’s Toolbox is working on other ways to help microbrewers as well. One example is the On Tap app, which is currently in its alpha version and in use at The Friendly Spot in San Antonio.
As its name suggests, the application displays what craft beers the bar has on tap at any given time. The monitors around the establishment show each beer’s style, name, brewery, and alcohol content, and can be customized to display additional information. The display can be quickly and easily changed via a laptop in the back.
“Customers in the craft brewing industry want to know where their beer came from,” Harris said. “It’s about the bar and the brewer interacting with the customer, on a level where the customer gets excited about the product.”
According to the National Brewers Association, the craft beer brewing industry increased its production volume by 15 percent in 2012 and is now worth $10.2 Billion in the U.S. There are about 2,347 craft brewers in the nation. Director of Brewing Operations Sebastian Wolfrum, who runs a mid-sized regional operation in North Carolina, believes that keeping up with data is essential to the continued growth of the industry.
“Why Monk’s Toolbox is a very good undertaking is that, making good quality beer over time is really important to this young industry with all these new brewers coming online,” Wolfrum said. “If this project really works well and we all come together with something that is a really nice online tool, it will allow people to make better beer.”
By Ian Panchèvre
Reporter with Silicon Hills News
RocketHub – “the world’s crowdfunding machine” – is one of the fastest growing crowdfunding communities. RocketHub, located in New York, publicly launched in February of 2010. Since then, the platform has supported over 25,000 crowdfunding campaigns and has secured an exciting partnership with A&E called Project Startup.
Meece began by defining crowdfunding as “an event that harnesses networks for funds, awareness, and feedback.” This definition broadens common understanding of crowdfunding beyond simply an alternative form of raising capital.
“The press tends to focus on the funding. But the awareness and feedback can also be really important,” elaborates Meece.
Meece went on to sketch the history of raising money from a crowd. “I like to think of this as a new spin on an old idea,” Meece explained.
By “old idea,” Meece meant, really old idea. Like 16th century old. The funding model for a Renaissance virtuoso – such as Leonardo da Vinci – was pure patronage. “Da Vinci relied on a handful of wealthy patrons to fit the bills so he could make cool stuff.”
Whereas now, through the power of the web, modern entrepreneurs and creatives can “rely on communities to fund their endeavors.”
Fast forward to the 1970s, when NPR and PBS pioneered new fundraising techniques, and we begin to witness a modern conception of crowdfunding take form. The two main takeaways from the grassroots methods of NPR and PBS is that local communities need to be engaged to rally around projects, and the process of requesting funds needs to be personalized to the target audience.

“There is a reason we are seeing this emergence of crowdfunding now,” notes Meece. “And it’s because we are all super connected thanks to social media.”
Nowadays, crowdfunding is so ubiquitous that traditional methods of raising early-stage capital – say, from VCs or Angels – are confronting the real possibility that they will be usurped by the whims of the crowd.
According to GoGetFunding, the number of active crowdfunding projects around the world has exploded from 283 in 2010 to 536 in 2012. Moreover, the estimated volume of funds raised has posted similarly impressive growth: $1.5 Billion in 2011 compared to $5.1 Billion thus far in 2013.
Though exciting, such dramatic growth also has a downside.
Meece observes that “there is a lot of competition just for mindset, just for attention.”
Meece then outlined the three key pillars to successful crowdfunding that the data behind 25,000 campaigns has revealed: Project, Network, and Goods.
First, in order to have a successful crowdfunding campaign, your project has to “grab people’s attention. It has to hook them emotionally.”
Jedi mind trick number one: “The message will travel further if folks really understood not only what you are doing but who you are and why you are doing it.”
Meece supported this claim with a few examples of successful projects that did not blatantly beg for money, but rather, articulated the positive vision motivating their cause (i.e. the “why”) to rally support.
Even though there is an information overload, “emotional scarcity is still out there.”
“If you can change people’s emotional state, you will be rewarded with funding, awareness, and great feedback,” concluded Meece.
The second pillar of successful crowdfunding is the ability to leverage networks. Meece views crowdfunding as an event because “it has event dynamics, it’s driven by social components.” And of course, “people want to go where other people are.”
To successfully leverage a network, it needs width (i.e. the network needs to be large) and it needs depth (i.e. there needs to be influence).
Meece elaborates by explaining that “Crowdfunding takes social capital and converts it into real capital,” when influencers earn the trust of the community. In those cases, support will come not just from your immediate fans (i.e. your first degree of influence) and their friends (i.e. your second degree of influence) but also from complete strangers.
“Nobody wants to be the first one dancing on a dance floor.”
True to form, successful campaigns are authentic and emotionally rich. They earn trust among immediate contacts to build momentum and initial traction. Then they reach a tipping point and the campaign goes viral.
The final pillar of success involves the goods that are offered for financial support.
“The rewards should be good, it should be stuff that people want,” said Meece. After all, people aren’t giving money to a charity. Rather, people are supporting a project in exchange for some sort of reward.
To that extent, Meece encourages prospective crowdfunders to identify different “levels of impact.” Different price points, that correspond with different rewards, enable supporters to commit at a level with which they are comfortable.
A $20 commitment is the most popular price point. Whereas a $75 commitment is the average price point. Rewards that vary by price point need to be creative, interesting, and to a certain extent, tangible.
Meece wrapped up by sharing RocketHub’s new partnership with the television network A&E.
Project Startup is an upcoming A&E series that will feature select crowdfunding partnerships from RocketHub.
Naturally, Meece is delighted with the partnership. Not only does A&E provide great exposure for some of RocketHub’s campaigns, but the network is so committed to RocketHub’s mission that it will also be adding funds to certain projects on top of what is raised from the crowd.
At the end of the talk, Nick Longo, a Geekdom co-founder, shared some promising news. Geekdom is working with RocketHub to explore ways of creating a “Geekdom Hub” to showcase Geekdom startups that pursue crowdfunding through RocketHub.
Disclosure: Geekdom is a sponsor of Silicon Hills News.
By ANDREW MOORE
Reporter with Silicon Hills News
Geekdom of San Antonio Wednesday night held a virtual town hall meeting for the March for Innovation, a movement supporting immigration reform by creating a virtual march on Washington.
The virtual march was a series of online town halls streamed live from New York, Austin, San Antonio, and San Francisco. The cities streamed their town halls in a coordinated consecutive event, with San Antonio going live at 7:15 p.m.
Free Flow Research founder Peter French organized San Antonio’s virtual town hall meeting along with the Silver Fox Studios, located on the 10th floor of the Weston Centre. French was also coordinating with Jeremy Robbins, the director of the Partnership for a New American Economy and senior policy advisor to New York City, Mayor Bloomberg.
Hosted by Talk Now SA’s Chris Duel, the event included guest appearances by Trinity University President Dennis Ahlburg, San Antonio Councilman Diego M. Bernal, a skype chat with Congressman Joaquin Castro and more.
“The March for Innovation itself is built as the largest virtual march on Washington,” said French. “The idea is to leverage the power of social media to send digital waves across the country over a two day period and activate hundreds of thousands of people.”
To become part of the event, Twitter users sounded off with the hashtag #iMarch and Facebook users switched their picture to the iMarch logo to show support. The March for Innovation website is also pushing social media — allowing users to easily tweet, facebook, or call their local representatives in support of immigration reform.
All this comes in the wake of the Senate Judiciary Committee passing immigration reform legislation with a vote of 13-5. Action on the legislation has been led by a bipartisan group of senators called the “gang of eight” including Senators Marco Rubio, R-Fla., John McCain, R-Ariz., Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., Dick Durbin, D-Ill., Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., Michael Bennet, D-Colo. and Bob Menedez, D-N.J. The legislation will finally reach the Senate after June 1, with no opposition from Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
San Antonio leaders such as City Councilman Bernal see this as a positive step for both the country and the city of San Antonio.
“From a city perspective, our job is to make sure that we retain and attract talent,” said Bernal. “Without comprehensive immigration reform we are losing out on lots of opportunity for great folks to be here, work here, live here; and not take jobs as people have said but really create jobs.”
Ramiro A. Cavazos, president of the San Antonio Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, said the current immigration policy actually leads to a loss of talent.
“Unless you are a political exile….or you are leaving a communist country, we are not embracing talented people,” said Cavazos. “You come to a graduate school in this country and you get a degree in innovation and technology, and we ship you back to India or China and then they start companies competing against the U.S. We want to keep the high-tech and low-tech workforce in San Antonio.”
The issue hit closest to home for Parlevel Systems co-founder Walter Teele, who has gone through the long, complex, and uncertain process for immigrant students coming to the United States.
“There are immigrants who are very hungry and very eager to build companies in the U.S. that are creating jobs. And those companies are going to have a high impact on the economy.” said Teele. “So it’s counterproductive to create barriers for these immigrants to create companies in the U.S.”
Teele is all too familiar with the barriers to becoming an immigrant entrepreneur. According to Teele, students wishing to study in the U.S. must first come on a F1 visa. The student must work full time and can only take part time employment offered by the college. After they graduate, a student must pursue a job in his or her field and apply for a OPT, or Optional Practical Training visa, to stay in the country.
This only lasts the student one year. To work in the country longer, immigrants must find a company that will hire them on long term and sponsor them for the H1-B visa process. The H1-B Visas is a nonimmigrant visa that allows companies to hire foreign workers with specialized skills.
After completing this process, there is still a risk that the student immigrant might have to leave the country. If the U.S. receives petitions for more than its annual quota of 85,000 H1-B visas, such in 2013 when it received 124,000, then all of the petitions submitted will go into a lottery process and will be randomly drawn – leaving both the business and the graduating immigrant on the hook for months.
“Even if your application was literally the first in the door, if the lottery goes into effect you don’t know for certain of your application will be chosen,” said French. “The economic crux of this issue is that current economic policy makes us less competitive.”
Fortunately, as a founder of Parlevel Systems who has invested in his startup, Teele may sponsor himself under special visa rules. Teele’s particular type of visa can be renewed indefinitely, but normal H1-B visas last only a maximum of six years. Teele believes that the economy would greatly benefit by creating a system where entrepreneurs can become citizens and continue to contribute.
“If you want to open a company in the U.S. and you are going to create jobs and you can raise money for it, you should be able to stay. Period,” says Teele. “There has to be a path to citizenship for entrepreneurs.”
Currently, however, there is no path to citizenship for Teele. But this is an issue that the new immigration reform bill will hopefully address.
“I do think that the current immigration bill does a decent job for trying to account for some of those things,” said City Councilman Bernal. “It does account for the transition from being foreign born and getting and education to wanting to be a U.S. employee.”
Full disclosure: Geekdom is a sponsor of Silicon Hills News. Silver Fox Studios is also an advertiser with Silicon Hills News. Laura Lorek, founder of Silicon Hills News, supports H1-B Visa expansion and immigration reform.