Tag: Slice of Silicon Hills News

Grocery Delivery Service Burpy Featured on a Slice of Silicon Hills

August 28, 2013 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 5 Comments

By ANDREW MOORE
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

Ever wish you could call someone to go grocery shopping for you? Not bring you frozen food in a truck, but actually go to H-E-B or Walmart and pick up what you want as if you were going yourself. Well, if you live in Austin, you can now use Burpy – a grocery delivery service that does exactly that.
Burpy was founded by University of Texas mechanical engineering Senior Aseem Ali. Ali did not have a car for his first few semesters at UT, and had been looking for an alternative way to purchase groceries. Teaming up with four other UT students, Ali launched the company in March of 2013 and has made around 120 deliveries so far. Burpy also participated in UT’s Longhorn Startup program, where the five students were mentored by Sai Ganesh, Dennis Kashkin, Travis McCutcheon.
Users can order food and other items found at grocers such as HEB and Whole Foods directly from Burpy.com. The delivery price varies from $10 to $12 depending on the type of service you select — Burpy can deliver any time between 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. or can be scheduled to deliver at a specific time. Users are also able to upload an entire grocery list if they already know what they need.
In the last three weeks, Burpy has expanded its operation to serve the entire Austin area. It is currently looking to contract additional drivers for specific area codes.

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Want Something? Favor Delivers to Central Austin Residents

July 11, 2013 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 3 Comments

By ANDREW MOORE
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

Ever want something from the store – a sandwich, milk, batteries – but didn’t have time to get it? If you’re in central Austin, you can now use Favor.
Favor is an app based delivery service that gets customers food, drinks, or whatever else they need delivered right to the user’s location. The service is active between the hours of 11 a.m. to midnight Sunday through Wednesday and available until 2 a.m.Thursday through Saturday. Favor has a $5.00 delivery fee plus $2.00 minimum tip on top of whatever you ordered. Customers can order virtually anything as long as they have the local store name and an item description.
Favor serves the central Austin area – as far south as Oltorf and as far north as 55th street. They currently have 12 runners and are still hiring.
Founded by high school friends Zac Maurais and Ben Doherty, Favor started out in San Luis Obispo, Calif. delivering burritos and beer. The startup went though the boost incubator in San Mateo, Calif. where it was eventually funded by venture capitalist Tim Draper. Favor moved its operation to Austin as of June 5 to access a larger customer base. It has seen 2000 downloads in its first month of operations.
Favor is currently looking for a Sencha touch developer to help build more features into their app.

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.

Greenhouse Founders Featured on A Slice of Silicon Hills News

April 12, 2013 / LauraLorek@gmail.com / 4 Comments

Finding Funding for your startup is hard, but Greenhouse is trying to make it easier.
The company is one of several firms taking advantage of the JOBS act of 2012, which relaxes regulations for equity investing and allows individuals to own stock in new startups without being SEC accredited. This means that you, or a friend of yours, can own equity in fledgling startups – as long as you go through a web portal that handles the legal issues.
This is exactly the service that Greenhouse provides. Founders R.C. Rondero de Mosier and Nathan Roach are based in Austin and San Antonio respectively, and hope to create a crowdfunding community in the south Texas area that benefits startups and investors as well as the local economies. With equity crowdfunding, the Greenhouse users will actually own part of the local startups they invest in, creating an incentive to stick with and promote such startups in the future.
“This creates a larger community because you turn your purchasers into advocates, and people are going to be ideally more long term engaged with you,” says Rondero de Mosier.
The JOBS act rules will go into effect as soon as the SEC releases regulations for those rules. Under old rules, only SEC accredited investors could purchase equity in private startup companies – or companies that had not already made an initial public stock offering. Such investors had to be either worth around a million dollars or prove that they made more than $200K annually for several years – a rule which Rondero de Mosier says excluded around 94 percent of Americans from investing in small businesses without public stocks. Once the new rules pass, companies like Greenhouse will open the door for those people by providing a web portal for such investment.
According to Forbes.com, the new rules will allow individuals making less than $100K – most of us – to invest five percent of their annual income in equity crowdfunding. Individuals making more than $100K may invest 10 percent.
Greenhouse is currently in beta, and plans to launch once the SEC rules are fully implemented. Users can sign up for the beta at FundGreenhouse.com.