Tag: Sparefoot (Page 2 of 2)

BuildASign wins the Startup Olympics Summer Games

June 10, 2012 / / 0 Comments

BuildASign won the first ever Austin Startup Olympics Summer Games.
The company, co-founded by Dan Graham, received a $10,000 prize to donate to its charity of choice.
BuildASign chose Austin Pro Bono, a nonprofit that connects lawyers and other professionals to nonprofit organizations.
“SpareFoot took home the silver this year, earning $5,000 for Kure It Cancer Research. Our charity of choice was founded by a self-storage business operator to support kidney cancer research,” according to the company’s blog post. Adlucent earned the Bronze, finishing in third place. It earned money for Austin Pets Alive.
The other startup teams participating each won $500 to donate to their designated charities. Boundless Network designated Capital Area Food Bank; uShip picked Communities in Schools of Central Texas; Spredfast selected Entrepreneurs Foundation of Central Texas; Mass Relevance selected Austin Children’s Shelter and WhaleShark designated Austin Children’s Museum.
uShip won the Startup Olympics Winter Games held last January at its headquarters.
The Summer Games kicked off shortly after noon on Saturday at the Krieg Softball Complex with the running of the torch by uShip’s Co-Founder Jay Manickam, which Sparefoot’s Co-Founder Chuck Gordon received on a podium. After the singing of the Star Spangled Banner, Gordon released about a dozen white doves to a cheering crowd and announced the official beginning of the games.
Adlucent won the first event, the 400 yard relay followed by BuildASign and uShip.
Altogether, the games consisted of seven events: kickball, tetherball, tug-of-war, basketball, the relay sprint, 400 meter sprint and the advance sprint which consisted of a relay team performing various tasks including dizzy bat, egg and spoon race, sack race and the three legged race.

Geni Glynn with Sparefoot and Summer Games organizer

“These games are a lot more competitive,” said Geni Glynn, spokeswoman with Sparefoot, who helped organize the games. She was comparing the summer games to the winter games which raised $2,300 for charity. This time, a lot more prize money for charity was at stake.
In fact, Sparefoot had rules for its competitors such as no alcohol until after the competition, Glynn said. Sparefoot also had to contend with much larger teams. Sparefoot with 45 employees was the second smallest startup to compete. Mass Relevance with 35 employees was the smallest.
About 300 competitors and their supporters were expected to attend the games, Glynn said. She expected several hundred more for the after party that was held at the field around 6 p.m. at the end of the competition.

Jay Manickam, cofounder of uShip

uShip, the defending champs, did not put any restrictions on its employees, said Manickam. He says the games started off as just a fun idea among some friends, but it quickly took off.
“There’s a groundswell of support and a real interest among the startup teams in giving back to the community through charity and having fun together,” he said.
The games embody the startup culture in Austin of camaraderie, competition, collaboration, hard work and giving back by supporting local charities, Manickam said.
“The ultimate goal is to make this a national competition,” Manickam said. He envisions an annual Startup Olympics competition at South by Southwest with teams from other high-technology regions like Silicon Valley, Boston and New York. He’s already received interest from other regions.

Photo courtesy of Austin Startup Olympics

Austin Ventures, Consero, SVB Financial Group & Silicon Valley Bank, KHRG, Dos Equis and Deep Eddy Vodka sponsored the event. Dos Equis provided 300 cases of beer and Deep Eddy Vodka staff showed up in a classic Volkswagon Bus packed with Deep Eddy Vodka and Sweet Leaf Tea. With temperatures soaring well into the 90s, the refreshments provided many of the athletes with the sustenance they needed to compete.

Austin Startup Olympics Summer Games this Saturday

June 5, 2012 / / 0 Comments


The 2012 Summer Olympic Games will kick off July 27th in London.
But you don’t have to wait that long.
Some of the best geek athletes in Austin will be demonstrating their athletic prowess this Saturday at the Summer Austin Startup Olympics.
(And if it’s anything like the Winter Austin Startup Olympics, held last January at UShip’s headquarters, these Olympics involve prodigious amounts of beer drinking, Tito’s vodka swilling and merry making.)
And it’s all for a good cause.
Each startup chooses a charity and all the money raised to goes to support those charities. Here’s a list of this year’s competitors and their charities.

· Adlucent – Austin Pets Alive
· BuildASign – Austin Pro Bono
· Boundless Network – Capital Area Food Bank
· uShip – Communities in Schools of Central Texas
· Spredfast – Entrepreneurs Foundation of Central Texas
· SpareFoot – Kure It
· Mass Relevance – Livestrong/Lance Armstrong Foundation
· Whaleshark – Austin Children’s Museum

Photos courtesy of Austin Startup Olympics

uShip took the top prize in Austin’s inaugural Startup Olympics competition. BuildASign captured second place and Sparefoot came in third.
The summer games take place at the Krieg Softball Complex at 517 S. Pleasant Valley Road. Opening ceremony starts at noon. Events will last all day.
The summer games include sprints, kickball, basketball, tug-a-war and tetherball.
The after party and awards ceremony starts at 5:30 p.m. and will be held at the Krieg Softball Complex also.

This is a slideshow from the last startup Olympics in the parking lot across from Uship.

Sparefoot teams up with Penske to make moving and storage easy

May 24, 2012 / / 1 Comment

Move it and store it.
Austin-based startup Sparefoot has teamed up with Penske Truck Rental to make it easy for folks to move and store their belongings this Memorial Day weekend.
Sparefoot informs us that this coming Tuesday is known in the business as “Crazy Tuesday” because it’s the unofficial biggest day of the year for the storage industry.
“This collaboration with SpareFoot will make for a more convenient moving experience for our customers,” Don Mikes, Senior Vice President of Rental for Penske Truck Leasing, said in a news release.
SpareFoot is the world’s largest online marketplace for consumers to find and reserve self-storage units, with comparison shopping tools that show real-time availability and exclusive deals.

The importance of play at Austin Startup Olympics

January 22, 2012 / / 0 Comments

Never underestimate the importance in play in the workplace.
People who play together have better collaboration and social skills, according to SocialWare, which produced this info graphic on the Importance of Play in Enterprise.
But the guys at uShip already know that. They got together with seven other startups companies: BuildASign, Mass Relevance, Adlucent, Sparefoot, Spredfast, WhaleShark Media and Boundless Network to participate in the first Startup Olympics. The teams participated in ten activities on Saturday which involved copies amounts of beer and camaraderie. The events included foosball, darts, shuffleboard, pop-a-shot basketball, beerpong, flipacup, ping pong, trivia, connect four and an obstacle course.
In the end, uShip took home the big trophy, followed by BuildASign and Sparefoot. About 200 people participated in the events, which raised lots of money for local charities.

Geek athletes compete at Austin’s Startup Olympics

January 21, 2012 / / 2 Comments

Put Geek athletes into the Google search engine and what do you come up with?
A correction suggestion for Greek Athletes.
So the conclusion must be that Geek athletes are an evolution of the ancient Greek athletes that invented the Olympic Games in 776 BC in Olympia in Greece.
And as part of that evolutionary process, now a team of Austin innovators have created the first Austin Startup Olympics which features Austin’s elite startups Adlucent, Boundless Network, Build-a-Sign, Mass Relevance, SpareFoot, Spredfast, uShip, and WhaleShark Media competing in 10 grueling activities including Ping Pong, Foosball, Darts and Trivia.
The games begin today at 2 p.m. at the uShip headquarters. The event is closed to the public, but an after party to raise money for charity will be held at Club De Ville. “Bands performing at the after-party include The Lemurs and Burgess Meredith. All proceeds from the $10 cover charge will benefit local charities,” according to a news release.
You can also follow today’s action on Twitter.
Proceeds from the event will benefit Austin Children’s Museum, Austin Pets Alive, Austin Pro Bono, Capital Area Food Bank, Communities in Schools of Central Texas, the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Central Texas , Kure It, and Livestrong/Lance Armstrong Foundation. Sponsors for the event include Tito’s Handmade Vodka and Cedar Door.
The Startup Olympic organizers want to challenge other startups, particularly those in Silicon Valley, to come to South by Southwest and compete in the second Startup Olympics. Contact StartupOlympics.org for more information.
“Guys like Eddie the Eagle and the Jamaican Bobsled team were true innovators, giving their particular sports a new twist, a new look that made them legendary,” Shawn Bose of uShip and co-Chair of the Austin Startup Olympics said in a statement.
“You’ll find that same innovation among Austin’s startups – not only among those competing in the event, but citywide,” said Bose. “We’ve brought new ideas to existing industries and businesses. Many of these ideas came about during fierce games of ping pong, beer pong or even Connect Four while squatting at ‘innovative work spaces’ like Crown and Anchor Pub and Mozart’s Coffee Roasters.”

Made In Austin career fair matches technology start-ups with students

November 30, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Local tech start-ups want to keep as much homegrown talent in town as possible.
So they created Made In Austin, a job fair that matches area students with start-ups looking for technology talent.
The first event, featuring 100 tech companies and more than 500 registered students, took place Tuesday night at the AT&T Executive Education and Conference Center downtown.
The 3-hour job fair, which started at 6 p.m., drew a big crowd of students, some guys dressed in suits and ties, others wearing hoodies, jeans and polo shirts and some women in sweater dresses and knee-high boots.
The event organizers banned swag like free T-shirts, stickers and other giveaways. The crowd munched on pizza bagels and brownies and drank ice tea.
Jacqueline Hughes, founder of Austin Start-up Week, organized the event along with Joshua Baer, head of the Capital Factory and OtherInbox. Other organizers included Campus2Careers and other start-up companies. Large companies like American Express, Dell and Rackspace sponsored the tech meet-up.
At the OtherInBox table, Baer, CEO, had already collected several resumes and talked with lots of people. Baer has hired from local universities to fill openings at his start-up in the past. In fact, OtherInBox’s lead product developer started out as an intern when he was a student at St. Edward’s University.
“It’s worked really well for us,” Baer said. “ I love hiring really great experienced people. I also like hiring inexperienced passionate people who I can teach.”
Luke Carriere, who just founded Approachab.ly a few weeks ago at 3 Day Start-up Weekend San Antonio, had a place at a table recruiting Android and iPhone developers, Bluetooth and Near Field Communication specialists. He was also looking for marketers and sales staff.
“I’m looking for business majors who might be able to help me with market research,” Carriere said.
Events like Made In Austin help Carriere network and make connections that eventually help to further his business, he said. At a mobile conference a few weeks ago, he met a guy who has joined him to become technical co-founder of his start-up.
“What’s been amazing is meeting people who want to help you by opening up their rolodexes,” he said.
The event provided an opportunity to recruit young talent, said Ramin Jahedi, CEO and founder of CaniSolutions, restaurant consultants. He runs the start-up FindWaiters.com.
“Our market is just exploding,” Jahedi said. Early on during the evening, he had already collected a few resumes and talked with several people.
Patrick Mizer at SpareFoot also talked to a lot of students and planned to follow up with a few of them following the fair.
“We are looking to hire some young engineering talent,” he said. “We’ve had a lot of success hiring engineers in their last year of college.”
Kevin Chu, a junior majoring in management information systems at the University of Texas, attended the fair to find a Spring internship.
“Start-ups give you the opportunity to learn more,” he said. “They’re small so you can do a variety of jobs.”
Linda Ye, a junior majoring in management information systems, was also looking for a Spring internship with a start-up. She already has a summer internship set up with a large company.
“Austin is a start-up city,” Ye said. “Start-ups tend to be more flexible with hours. They are also able to teach you a lot. Start-ups fit me the best right now.”

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