Tag: Geekdom (Page 8 of 10)

Geekdom Launches Seed Stage Fund for Startups

July 20, 2012 / / 0 Comments

Geekdom is taking a gamble on new technology startups.
The collaborative coworking site today launched the Geekdom Fund, seed stage capital for technology startups in San Antonio.
The fund will provide startup teams with $25,000 equity investments and free office space at the Weston Centre downtown where the Geekdom is based, said Nick Longo, director of Geekdom and one of the fund’s administrators.
The fund provides a big missing piece of the puzzle in San Antonio’s entrepreneurial ecosystem, Longo said.
“Funding is always the point people want to get to,” Longo said.
The money comes from Pat Condon, one of the founders of Rackspace, and other executives at Rackspace and other angel investors, Longo said. The fund seeks to give San Antonio technology entrepreneurs a head start in launching their products into the marketplace.
“You apply with a great idea and a great team,” Longo said. “You have to be a member of Geekdom to apply. If you want to relocate here, we want you.”
Geekdom is a collaborative workspace, which launched late last year and has grown quickly. The site occupies the 11th floor of the Weston Centre and has expanded to the 10th floor and plans to expand to two additional floors in coming months.

Nick Longo, director of Geekdom is also one of the administrators of the Geekdom Fund, a $25,000 per startup seed stage fund.

Geekdom has attracted numerous startups already including Roughneck Graphics, ZippyKid, Grapevine, Embarkly and TrueAbility.
The money allows people to build a website, build an app and quit their job and pursue their startup dream, Longo said. The Geekdom fund has already invested in some startups based at the center including ZippyKid and Embarkly.
“Part of our criteria is you haven’t received funding from somewhere else,” Longo said. “This is seed money.”
To apply, visit the Geekdom site and fill out the application. It also asks startup teams to fill out a lean canvas form and list the people on their team.

Disclosure: Geekdom is a sponsor of Silicon Hills News

Floating Ideas at Central Texas Barcamp at Geekdom

July 7, 2012 / / 1 Comment

A white board plastered with dozens of sticky notes tells part of the story of the first Central Texas Barcamp at Geekdom.
People attending this unconference filled the board with ideas for sessions including ethical hacking, how to create a kick ass page on Facebook for a nonprofit, Creating the Wow: marketing yourself/business on the Internet, Blog tips and tricks and so much more.
An unconference is an event in which the participants put on the show. But the chief organizer behind Central Texas Barcamp is Joey Lopez, a professor of convergent media at the University of Incarnate Word.
“I lived in Austin for 10 years, we had built a creative space there. Back in 2008, I pitched the idea of having a creative space in San Antonio,” Lopez said. “My goal with this conference was to bring together like minded individuals from a diverse background, Chicanas, architects, startups, academics, just everyone from all over Central Texas to talk about the cool, creative things that are going on in their lives.”
More than 120 people signed up for the Barcamp and half of those people showed up, Lopez said. They came from San Antonio, Austin and Houston.
“We’ve got people who have talked at Tedx here. We have people who have talked at Foo Camps, where Barcamp is based off,” Lopez said. Dustin Younse with Dorkbot in Austin is here. So is Brandon Wiley who runs Hackerspace in Austin. And Jennifer Navarrete, who started Barcamps in San Antonio back in 2008, is livestreaming the event.”
The focus of the event was to get people invigorated to have new ideas come out and share them, Lopez said.
“It’s a participatory, collaborative environment and unlike something like Tedx, it’s free,” Lopez said. “The participants are the speakers and the audience.”
The event also brought together Austin and San Antonio’s tech community and creative community.
“I met some people in San Antonio who want to do some civic hacking and one gentleman who is already doing it,” said Chip Rosenthal, who drove from Austin to attend the event. He runs a site, Unicom.com, for people creating software and tools with a civic interest in mind. He did a session on “Hack Your City: Open Government and Data.”
Brandon Wiley drove down from Austin also. He’s a member of Hackerspace in Austin and he consults with startup companies. He has put on several unconferences in Austin. On Saturday, he saw some good talks including one on how to make video games and another on autonomous vehicles.

Joey Lopez, organizer of CTX Barcamp

“To me, the conference is about the hallway conversations as much as the talks,” he said. He met new people and shared ideas between sessions.
Jennifer Navarrete organized the first Barcamp in San Antonio in 2008 and attended the latest one.
“It’s a way to bring together a diverse group of people under one roof,” Navarrete said. That creates a certain kind of “magic” around the principals of Barcamp, which are to learn, share and grow, she said.
Alicia Arenas, who runs Sanera Camp, a business bootcamp in San Antonio, attended the day-long event to learn from others.
“What I love about camp is the informal atmosphere and getting to connect with people,” she said. “Unconferences really reveal the brillance of the people in the room.”
The audience asks questions, shares their own experiences and offers up new ideas, Arenas said.
“You don’t get to go to a regular conference and float ideas, but you can do that here.”

Central Texas Barcamp this Weekend

July 3, 2012 / / 0 Comments

As a technology region, Austin and San Antonio combined have great strengths that rival major tech centers like Silicon Valley.
Austin, known for software, hardware and silicon chips, has also become a vibrant incubator for high tech startups.
San Antonio, home to Rackspace, a Web hosting company, is also a high tech mecca with tons of research and development taking place at Southwest Research Institute, the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research, the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, the University of Texas at San Antonio and now Texas A&M. San Antonio, with its military bases, also has one of the highest concentrations of cyber security workers outside of the Washington, D.C. area.
San Antonio is also working to nurture its high-tech workforce and encourage startup companies.
So what better place to discuss the region’s strengths and how the two communities can help each other out than at a Barcamp, which is a free event in which the participants put on the show.
San Antonio has had several Barcamps and Austin has had several Barcamps. But this is the first time the two communities have joined together at a Barcamp to cross pollinate ideas.
The Central Texas Barcamp takes place this Saturday, July 7 starting at 9 a.m. and running until 5 p.m. at Geekdom at the Weston Centre, 112 Pecan Street in downtown San Antonio. A happy hour will follow the day long camp. It’s not too late to sign up. Register here. Silicon Hills News will be there. I hope you will be too.

Startup Weekend San Antonio at Geekdom

July 3, 2012 / / 1 Comment

In the old days, inventors tinkered in obscurity in their garages, spare bedrooms and basements.
But now that cool collaboration and coworking spaces like Geekdom have arrived on the scene, there’s no need to tinker in private. And if you’ve got a hankering to make something out of nothing, but you’re not into crafting like Martha Stewart or cooking like Gordon Ramsay, then you might want to take a shot at company creation especially if you like to get your hands dirty with coding and graphic design.
And Startup Weekend San Antonio and Geekdom have an opportunity for you to spend a weekend with like-minded individuals, brainstorming ideas, pounding out code and creating a new venture.
I covered the first Startup Weekend in San Antonio organized by Jennifer Navarrete when I worked at the local paper. I hung out with the teams for most of the weekend and I can tell you this is a serious venture. The people who attend this event are passionate about entrepreneurship. And they worked hard all weekend long. Some of the teams pulled all nighters.
The event generally starts out Friday evening with a brainstorming session. The group considers the ideas and votes on the best ones. The teams are formed and then the fun begins. They work the rest of the time to put together business plans, web sites and products and at the end they pitch their companies to venture capitalists and other interested investors.
Alan Torng and Michele Stewart of Austin are organizing the event along with Cristal Glangchai of San Antonio. Rackspace, the Kaufman Foundation and Geekdom are sponsoring it.
The event takes place on Friday, July 20 through Sunday, July 22 at Geekdom, on the 11th floor of the Weston Centre at 112 East Pecan street in downtown San Antonio. The early bird registration prices are done, but you can still snag a ticket for $99 here. This event usually sells out. At the last Startup Weekend Austin, people were submitting videos for a chance to get off the waiting list and get a ticket.

InnoTech San Antonio Spotlights Technology

April 6, 2012 / / 0 Comments

InnoTech San Antonio has grown dramatically since it started five years ago, said Sean Lowery, the event’s executive director.
This year 65 exhibitors showcased their technology on the exhibit floor including Geekdom, a collaborative downtown workspace, Sirius Computer Solutions, a San Antonio-based information technology solutions provider and Nuboso, a startup cloud computing hosting company.
The show also served as a platform for a handful of startup companies to present their companies to potential investors and others interested in technology companies.
The day-long education program also featured dozens of speakers talking about everything from mobile apps to cloud computing and hiring high tech workers.

Forging the TechStars Cloud companies

March 31, 2012 / / 1 Comment

At the Geekdom, twice a week, entrepreneurs behind the 11 TechStars Cloud companies gather to pitch their ventures.

Jason Seats with laptop, Nicole Glaros behind him and Nicholas Longo, Geekdom director , listening to TechStar Cloud pitches

Jason Seats and Nicole Glaros, TechStars Cloud managing directors, critique those pitches along with a handful of others, ranging from interested bystanders to serious angel and venture investors and other TechStar members.
“Jokes are only good if they land,” Seats said at the end of one pitch.
“I was totally wrapped up in the story, which was great,” said Glaros in response to another pitch.
“I want to see more interactions with data and the service,” said Seats.
“It was just a little too dragged out,” Glaros said. “I want you to move through it faster.”
“Maybe you need less of those slides,” Seats said.
The goal is by April 11, the TechStars Demo Day at the Charline McCombs Empire Theatre in downtown San Antonio, that the 11 companies rate at least an eight on a presentation scale that ranges from one to ten. At this session, almost three weeks from Demo Day, most of the companies rank at seven or lower. (Seats takes away a point from those presenters still using notes and almost all of the presenters are still reading from note cards.)

One of the TechStars Cloud entrepreneurs pitching his venture during practice

Since January, this group of startup entrepreneurs have gathered at the Geekdom, a collaborative workspace on the 11th floor of the Weston Centre. All of them relocated here from outside Texas. They came from Portland, Madison, Wisconsin, New York, Boston and other cities. They rented houses and apartments downtown. San Antonio Developers Ed Cross and David Adelman helped them secure housing, Seats said.
Most of the names of the companies are embargoed until Demo Day. But Cloudability, a Portland-based company, has already publicly posted about its involvement in the program. The company, which launched in November of 2011, has created a software platform that allows companies to track their cloud spending online. The company’s software draws from hosting companies’ data. It has more than 1,000 companies from 72 countries signed up to manage nearly $52 million in cloud spending. Cloudability has 10 employees and has already raised $1.2 million in a seed round of funding.
Mat Ellis, the company’s founder, has written about his TechStars incubator experiences on his company’s blog. Cloudability also participated in the Portland Incubator Experiment’s inaugural class.
Cloudability is one of the more mature startups involved in the TechStars Cloud program. Some of the companies are just starting out.
“It’s been a good program,” said Seats, during a recent interview at his office. “I feel like everyone has gotten a lot of value out of it.”
The TechStars program has had its ups and downs. Some people left the program. Other startups completely revamped their companies. But that’s Ok, Seats said.
In fact, the first phase of the program focused on the TechStar members’ ideas and setting up a foundation for their businesses. The TechStars’ 170 mentors hammered the entrepreneurs with questions and poked holes in their business plans.
“You either crumble or adapt,” Seats said. “Good ideas respond positively to that kind of pummeling.”
Seats compared the process to forging metal.
“The first month is about applying enough beatings to see if this is the right direction,” Seats said. “What’s working or what’s not working?”
During the second phase, the companies did mentor “dating” to match up with the right mentors for their business. In the end, each team got between three to six lead mentors, Seats said.
The last phase of the program is all about execution, Seats said. The TechStar Cloud companies spend countless hours programming, working on business fundamentals, marketing and more. They often work until late into the night and on the weekends.
But the TechStar Cloud startup founders have also had some fun. They all went to South by Southwest in Austin in March. They also regularly go to local bars, restaurants and museums together.
But in the final weeks of the program, everyone is focused on nailing their presentation pitches and running their businesses.
“For the majority of these companies, this is their shot,” Seats said.

A Conversation with Geekdom’s Nick Longo on His Entrepreneurial Success

February 11, 2012 / / 1 Comment

By Luke Carrière
Lead Organizer of 3DStartup NYC

In August 1994, Nick Longo founded a coffee house in Corpus Christi, Texas, which became one of the first internet cafes in the world. He created a website for his coffee shop and began designing websites for others in his community. By 1996 it had became so popular that he designed software to help people make their own websites and called it CoffeeCup Software, Inc., a startup that went on to win Shareware Industry Awards Foundation (“SIAF Awards”) for Best Web and Internet Software for six years from 1999-2004. In 2000, Nick founded then spun-off Bluedomino Web Hosting, which hosted over 15,000 websites. Nick is now at Rackspace in San Antonio, Texas as “Chief Rainmaker & Director of Strategic Initiatives.” One of the initiatives he is involved in is a collaborative workspace for entrepreneurs called Geekdom.

How did you recognize the opportunity/research the feasibility of the idea?
That’s a good starting place. That was from being a user first. I think a lot of good ideas come from saying to yourself, “hmm this isn’t done right,” or, “I could do this better.”
So, opportunities seem to be right in our own backyard. We are really good at our hobbies and things we do everyday. For example, I’m a webmaster and I don’t like the tools that are available. The idea comes about to make my own software so life will be easier for me. If I can make my life easier for myself, then it is probably going to make someone else’s life easier too. That is exactly how CoffeeCup was formed. I wanted to make my life easier. I had an intuitive sense at it was going to help others because they must be running into the same problems.

How did you finance your business?
I started with just a Master Card. I bought a $500 computer. I setup the computer in my coffee house and slept on the floor for the first year. I spent 24/7 focusing on creation and distribution of software. I took no financing.

What did you do with initial profits?
I wasn’t concerned with paying myself the first year, except for minimal stuff. When I had to make the first hire, I stockpiled cash because I would need another developer. I used the income I earned early as my bootstrapping money. So, I would “save, save, save,” and then hire to make more software. It was really a bootstrap deal.

How long did it take for your company to become profitable?
Within the first three months I was able to close the coffee house. I paid myself as much as I could, of course, I was keeping it really low. At the end of year one I had already made another two pieces of software.

How did your idea change throughout the process?
Originally I put it out for free. But a few things that changed. First, I had no idea how big the market was going to become. I made an HTML editor and that was all I planned to make. Then, a few months later, I realized there was a lot more opportunity and I need to make more software. My original intent was only making an HTML editor. But by the time I was done there were 35 pieces of software. That was a major shift.

Did you ever think of giving up? If so why?
I’m not a big fan of the “fail” methodology. If I were operating on a “fail fast” mindset, I would have been discouraged at month 3, and at month 6. When you are doing it by yourself, or only one other guy, you have all these aspirations to make a million dollars, and then you realize you can barely pay yourselves. That can be discouraging. I don’t have a “fail” bone. I say to myself, “I am going to ride this out as far as I can for as long as I can before it fails.” When I start something I don’t start believing its going to be successful, I start believing that I don’t want to fail. I always keep this little “fear of failure” thing in my pocket. I don’t worry about it succeeding, I just don’t want to fail. That can be a major driving motivator. Sometimes it’s not healthy. I’m more concerned about paying the rent.

What was your initial role? What is your current role in the company now?
We didn’t use the word “startup.” Starting a new business automatically made me a founder. As business develops and you add more products and there are more revenue and profits which increase the amount of problems like taxes, accountants, insurance and employees. The role shift goes from Founder to CEO, and that is a hard transition to make. Founders have fun: CEO’s not so much. Then it becomes a daily process and a monthly process of watching numbers. Before I sold my business I spent more time during the last half, 5-6 years, hitting refresh and checking revenue and planning marketing and sales, than I did in the first half.

What are the most successful marketing techniques? Guerilla marketing?
Everything I do is guerilla. Try to spend least possible on anything normal. In 11 years I spent approximately $100,000 in total marketing costs. We did a lot of one-on-one marketing to our distributors like CNET and other download sites. We would take those guys out to parties, which was cheaper than paying for advertizing. In return, they would give us way better advertising spots than we could ever afford by being cool with them. I’m a big fan of contests. I’ve given away Super Bowl tickets, a Rolex, a Mercedes: I’m really big on contests. Surprisingly, that is cheaper than having a marketing budget. We would raid conferences, like crashing a wedding. We wouldn’t even buy tickets. We didn’t even look like we should be there. We handed out our software up and down every isle. I’d rather have a developer than spend money on marketing. It did take a lot of tricks to walk through the back door to get to the front door.

What is the worst advice you have ever received and why?
Well, to be honest with you I didn’t really take peoples’ advice. Our culture was a little weird. We used to talk about being in a petri dish. You were either in the petri dish or your not in the petri dish. We didn’t let much in and we didn’t go out of it. We were really making our own rules. I didn’t take much advice.
The best advice I got was to make it shareware and actually sell it and timeout the software. I remember that. It was from one of the founders of download.com. Besides that, we weren’t taking much advice. To me all advice was bad. If we ever heard it, it usually didn’t match what we were doing because the company was very rouge.

You were trailblazing?
If you want to call it that. If our attempts didn’t work it was okay because it was the internet. You could delete it and it goes away and its not a big deal. If you released software and no one bought it you could delete it and move onto the next project. We didn’t invest too much time in any one specific piece f software. We were developing software in really short amounts of time, the epitome of agile development or rapid application development. We would say, “if we add this feature…wait, lets just make it its own piece of software.” Every 2-week and 4-week blocks we were delivering another piece of software.

Which part of your job is actual work opposed to passion?
You’re mostly driven by passion, not by what the outcome will be. If you love what you’re doing you are probably going to get a good result. That doesn’t always have to mean money. Even today, CoffeeCup is pretty well known. We were trying to help people change their lives by using our software so they don’t have to work for the man any more. That made us anti-establishment. That drove our passion. All the people who worked for us were that way.
We didn’t follow any process. The smaller the team, and closer we are together, the more money we can make, and the more we can do what we believe to be the right thing, which was to make software cheap for everyone, so they don’t have to work for the man. If that was the mission, it was passion driven. It means 24/7 hours, but passion doesn’t have to be about hard work if your having fun. If you are having fun, it shouldn’t be work. So, if you find yourself thinking you are working too much it probably means you are losing some of the passion you started with on your first day.

How is the economy effecting your business?
I think that is product driven. During my tenure at CoffeeCup we went through the Dot Com Bubble Burst, and 9/11, and another stock market crash. Those were actually opportunities. When the economy is down people lose their jobs, which means more people want to do their own thing. More entrepreneurs and startups are born when the economy is down. CoffeeCup was there through a lot of the bad, but we made out better because of it.
If everyone has tons of money they will buy the expensive software, regardless of whether it works well or not. We were there for beginners and intermediates. It was perfect in goods times and bad. In bad we did better. That is an awesome market to be in: a business that is recession proof. I would always be looking for that.
There is a big difference between needs and wants. For example we need a car, we want a Mercedes. You are better off selling products or services that people need. “Want businesses” are hurt the most, not the “need businesses.”

What is your advice to future entrepreneurs?
First, find the thing that people need, not what they want. Second, absolutely do the thing that you are passionate about, not the thing that you think is going to make money.
Those are two super super important things. Right when you find the striking balance between those, that is when you will find yourself successful: worrying less about failing but knowing that it is still there.
Don’t drive for success: drive not to fail.

Reprinted with permission from 3DStartupNYC

Movie Night for TechStars Cloud at Geekdom

February 3, 2012 / / 0 Comments

Who knew Microsoft made movies?
Microsoft will screen its new movie on entrepreneurship, Ctrl+Alt+Compete tonight at 6 p.m. at Geekdom, a collaborative workspace in downtown San Antonio.
“Ctrl+Alt+Compete is a new documentary that takes a revealing look at the startup and emerging business scene through the eyes of 5 founders and their teams and tells a story of the passion, fortitude and insanity that is bringing a startup to life,” according to Microsoft.
The first TechStars Cloud program kicked off in San Antonio on Jan. 19 with 11 companies that all moved to the city from outside the state. Jason Seats and Nicole Glaros, managing directors, run the TechStars Cloud program at Geekdom on the 11th floor of the Weston Centre. The three-month incubator and mentoring program ends with a demo day in April.
Microsoft has been at Geekdom all day teaching the TechStars Cloud entrepreneurs about Microsoft Azure, said Nick Longo, director of Geekdom.

TechStars Cloud companies are “like little soft baby chicks”

January 29, 2012 / / 0 Comments

The first TechStars Cloud program kicked off in San Antonio on Jan. 19 with 11 companies that all moved to the city from outside the state.
Jason Seats and Nicole Glaros, managing directors, run the TechStars Cloud program at the Geekdom, a collaborative workplace in downtown San Antonio on the 11th floor of the Weston Centre. The three-month incubator and mentoring program ends with a demo day in April. TechStars are’t revealing the names of the companies involved in the program until Demo Day.
Meanwhile, the folks at Rackspace Hosting did this hilarious video with Seats and Glaros recently.
The video starts off serious, but you have to hang with it until the end.
Glaros has some great comments.
“We do a lot of hazing here at TechStars cloud,” says Glaros. “You have to be top of mind and of body.”
“Somewhere between 90 and 100 percent of these companies are just elaborate money laundering schemes,” Glaros said.
She gives the companies “diapers and wipes” when they walk in the door because they are so young.
Meanwhile, Seats says the companies are like “little soft baby chicks” and that they just want to cuddle them.

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