Tag: startups (Page 5 of 10)

Meritful Wins the Move Your Company to Austin for Free Competition at SXSW

March 8, 2013 / / 1 Comment

BY SUSAN LAHEY
Silicon Hills News Reporter

DSC05804The pitch was: Move your company to Austin for free. Five companies in other parts of the country or the world competed for a $100,000 package that included:
• A $35,000 investment from CTAN.
• Three months rent in a 3 bedroom house from HomeAway.
• Six months of co-working at Capital Factory , server hosting from Rackspace and local groceries from Greenling.
• Moving services from uShip
• Two badges for SXSW 2014
The winner, and welcome to Austin, was a company called Meritful. Meritful is like LinkedIn for college students. Students load their information on the site for free and companies—who are finding the cost of recruiting increasingly prohibitive–can find candidates on the site. Meritful allows students to interact with professionals, share their projects, build a resume and seek advice and direction and allows companies to check out prospective future employees. For companies, the cost is related to their size. A business of up to 100 employees would pay $5,000 annually, which founder and CEO Azarias Reda pointed out is roughly the cost of an intern and significantly less than companies spend recruiting currently.
Meritful will be moving from Ann Arbor, Michigan, where Reda met his cofounders in graduate school. They learned about the competition from Josh Baer of Capital Factory and AngelList and the team drove 20 hours to get to SXSW.
The competition’s runner up was Pictrition, an app that lets consumers keep track of their nutrition just by taking photos of their food and submitting the photo to the Pictrition community rather than logging food items, calories or nutrition points. Pictrition includes competitions, leaderboards and reward coupons from health-oriented companies including Whole Foods. The company takes a percentage of each reward based purchase. The company is also working on corporate wellness programs. Pictrition currently is in Dallas.
Other competitors included Paceable, a CRM and project management tool that works with Gmail, Rock Your Paper, a company from Bangalore, India that wants to be the iTunes store for scholarly papers, saving researchers and institutions such as universities, from having to purchase whole journals, and Inaika.com which provides services to find instructors of all stripes through videos published by the instructors but also allows fans to subscribe to the videos of instructors all over the world they find inspirational.
Judges for the competition include Jason Cohen of WPEngine: Bril Flint, chairman and Rick Timmins, Director of CTAN; and Bill Boebel, formerly of RackSpace and now an angel investor and managing director of Capital Factory.

Kirpeep’s SXSW Swag Challenge Featured on A Slice of Silicon Hills

March 8, 2013 / / 0 Comments

c6766a5f-1d99-4582-a5df-afa3325716fd_61 Kirpeep’s Leticia Barrientos, vice president of outreach, talks with Slice of Silicon Hills Host Andrew Moore about the startup’s plans for South by Southwest this weekend.
The company, based at Geekdom, is having a swag challenge at SXSW. More than 5,000 people signed up for the challenge, which quickly sold out, Barrientos said. They have established a waitlist. To find out more, the startup will based at Free Lunch Friday’s Rig at SXSW at 604 East 7th Street in Austin.
Kirpeep is an online marketplace that allows people to exchange, buy or sell goods and services. For more on the company, please read this profile on the company.

Disclosure: Kirpeep is an advertiser with Silicon Hills News. And Geekdom is a sponsor.

Dejaset Featured on A Slice of Silicon Hills

March 1, 2013 / / 0 Comments

0703be48-b48d-4ec7-8920-961f0694894c_366Matt Peterson, founder and CEO of Dejaset, a music technology company in Austin, dropped into the Silver Fox Studios today to chat with Slice of Silicon Hills News Host Andrew Moore.
Dejaset allows bands to capture recordings of live performances and sell them immediately to fans. Peterson has created an application for the bands to record their content and another one for consumers to buy the songs.
The company, based at the Austin Technology Incubator, raised $750,000 in seed stage capital last year. They’re preparing for a big rollout of its service at South by Southwest next week.

Cospace in North Austin Shuts Down and Pivots Its Business

January 23, 2013 / / 0 Comments

imgres-6Cospace, one of Austin’s original and popular coworking spaces, shut down last week.
The site, located at Highway 183 and Lamar in North Austin, is working with TechRanch, a nearby tech incubator and coworking site, to relocate its members.
While the physical space is gone, the Cospace brand continues to live on and serve entrepreneurs and professionals nationally through a coworking search engine that also provides economic and real estate information.
“In July 2012, partners affiliated with the workspace
launched the Cospace online site to index and promote every work environment; connecting skilled professionals with the right place to work,” according to a news release.
“I am very proud of the positive impact Cospace coworking has had in the startup community,” Kirtus Dixon, Managing Partner of BlindOx LLC, owner/operator of the Cospace coworking space, said in a news statement. “I will be eternally grateful for all of our customers and colleagues, some of who gave of themselves without any expectation of return. It’s been a great run.”
“Collaborative, accessible work spaces are one of the keys to innovation and working through a cospace should be an option to anyone,” James Weddle, head of Cospace Ventures, the management and holding company for the Cospace brand, said in a statement. “We are proud to continue to support the coworking movement through our web service. I am particularly excited about the role the web service, Cospace.co, can play in helping students, entrepreneurs, skilled professionals, and even cities, bring innovation to market.”
In the past few months, this new, virtual Cospace has grown to serve over 1,000 spaces throughout the country and is connecting nearly 100,000 professionals each month with the ideal work space.
“We’ve mapped over 50 work environments in Austin alone and the insight, from doing that, to Austin’s future as an entrepreneurial community
is tremendous,” Paul O’Brien, Co-founder and developer of the Cospace.co web service, which will be developed further in a new entity, said in a statement. “Cospace.co has helped thousands of skilled professionals, teams, and startups find the right work environment in Austin while working
closely with stake holders invested in the economic development of Austin and surrounding cities to understand how and where to invest
further in creating environments that will foster innovation, help employ Austin, enable success for entrepreneurs.”
The classes and education programs Cospace formerly operated are being acquired by Brainco; a school of advertising, interactive studies, and design, recently relocated from Minneapolis to Austin. Brainco will be further developing and serving such popular classes in Ruby on Rails, iOS app development, WordPress, and other skills through spaces throughout Austin.

Crowdfunding Set to Transform How Startups Raise Money

January 8, 2013 / / 2 Comments

imgres-1Congress passed a law last year that allows startup companies to raise money directly from investors through online crowdfunding portals.
The only problem is the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has not yet released rules to tell the crowdfunding industry how to do that. It’s part of the nitty-gritty details of the Jumpstart Our Business Startups, known as JOBS Act, that are still being hashed out even after President Obama signed the bill into law last April.
Today at the Omni Hotel in downtown Austin, a group of about 250 people are meeting for the first ever Crowdfund Texas Conference to learn about this emerging industry.
“We did this in hopes of really bringing together the Texas startup community to spark a crowdfunding movement in Texas,” said Chris Camillo, an angel investor and filmmaker.
The day-long event features a variety of speakers talking about everything from crowdfunding regulations to how to succeed at crowdfunding. Startup Texas, a member of the Startup America Partnership and the Crowdfunding Professional Association are sponsoring the conference.
At the event, Camillo, who is producing “Crowd of Angels” is conducting interviews for the documentary which is set to debut at the Crowdfunding Professional Association convention in October.
During a morning panel on “Crowdfunding Investing Insiders: State of the Industry,” Scott Purcell, founder of crowdfunding platform Artic Island, said that crowdfunding was the “perfect storm” to change the world.
“It will change everything, and it’s going to be a lot of fun,” Purcell said.
D.J. Paul, formerly cofounder and chief strategy officer of Crowdfunder, agreed.
“It has the potential to be incredibly transformative,” Paul said.
The panelists estimated that the SEC might take from six months to nine months to release rules for crowdfunding that will let the practice begin in the United States.
“It’s really about politics now and I think there’s some movement,” said Maurice Lopes, cofounder and CEO of EarlyShares, a crowdfunding portal based in Miami.
The SEC has a lot of other regulatory issues to deal with, Paul said.
“An entire industry is being created by this legislation,” he said. “It’s a new asset class. No additional monies were allocated by Congress to create this new asset class. It’s appropriate to be frustrated. It’s also appropriate to understand the other issues the SEC is dealing with right now.”
No one knows how many new crowdfunding portals will be created.
Lopes with Early Shares estimates there will be hundreds of different service providers but few funding portals.
“What most people don’t’ realize is this is not a Web business. This is a financial industry,” Lopes said. “This is a heavily regulated business.”
Early Shares has spent $500,000 in legal fees and in house counsel for compliance issues in the last year, Lopes said.
“I don’t think there are hundreds of players in this space with that kind of money,” he said.
There are going to be more than 10 but there aren’t going to be as many as people think, said Purcell.
“It’s pretty few and far between to find people that understand both worlds and can put this together,” Purcell said.
Purcell estimated that there might be as many as 50 to 100 crowdfunding portals but that they’ll go through a period of rapid consolidation and get down to two or three national players in a few years.
An estimated 1,500 to 2,000 jobs have already been created by the new legislation, Lopes said. His company employs 20 people.
“It’s already working for what it was intended,” Lopes said.

TechStars Cloud for a Day at Geekdom

November 3, 2012 / / 3 Comments

Jason Seats, managing director of TechStars Cloud, leads the TechStars for a Day program at Geekdom.

Dozens of technology entrepreneurs spent Saturday at Geekdom learning about the TechStars Cloud program.
“We help awesome founders build great companies,” said Jason Seats, managing director of the TechStars Cloud.
The program has become a launching pad for technology startups with five TechStars programs around the country in Boulder, Boston, Seattle, New York and San Antonio. TechStars Cloud focuses on companies that build infrastructure products for the Internet as well as consumer applications accessible on the Web.
“Deep down there is some altruism,” Seats said. “We like to build stuff that matters. It’s not about making the most money.”
But the TechStars companies collectively have raised $265 million and 185 companies with 1,200 employees.
Last year’s TechStars Cloud class raised $15 million including $2.5 million from local investors in a fund headed up by John Mosher.
The TechStars Cloud is a three-month technology incubator that takes place every January at Geekdom, a co-working and collaborative space at the Weston Centre in downtown San Antonio. The first TechStars Cloud took place last January and featured 11 teams that came from all over the country. This year’s program kicks off on Jan. 14 and will be housed on the newly renovated 10th floor of the Weston Centre. The deadline to apply is Sunday at midnight.
The application process is highly competitive, Seats said.
Each team receives $18,000 in cash and $100,000 in debt financing. In exchange, TechStars takes a 6 percent stake in the company.
For that investment, the companies get mentorship from successful entrepreneurs, investment, access to a vast network of entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and other resources, and perks valued at $200,000, Seats said.
During the three-month program, the teams overhaul business models and craft products while they fine-tune their company story and pitch.
Ryan Shank and Vincent Wong, co-founders of

Ryan Shank and Vincent Wong, co-founders of MHelpDesk

MHelpDesk, which provides service management software to repair companies online, flew in from Reston, Virginia, for the TechStars for a Day program.
“We’re interested in the mentorship and network aspects of the program,” Wong said.
“We’re looking for mentors to take the company to the next level – to take the company to the masses,” Shank said.
Dustin Larimer, co-founder of a team chat application, applied for the program. He volunteered as a TechStars HackStar for the last class and he’s seen the benefit the teams receive from the program firsthand.
“I got to see the transformation in them,” Larimer said. “The quality that comes out of that crystalizes a line of clarity that you couldn’t find on your own.”
Throughout the day, the applicants listened to a series of speakers that talked about their mistakes, how to raise money and how to run their businesses effectively.

Dirk Elmendorf, co-founder of Rackspace and Trucking Office

Dirk Elmendorf, co-founder of Rackspace who now runs a business accounting software startup called Trucking Office, shared his experience.
“We all think we’re great at marketing,” Elmendorf said. “We’re all wrong.”
Finding, hiring and retaining the best employees is one of the most important parts of running a startup company, he said. Sales and marketing people are essential, he said. But he didn’t always think that way.
“Original model was no salespeople,” Elmendorf said. “Ok, that model doesn’t work.”
His latest startup, Trucking Office, has since hired a few sales people.
Startups should also focus on having cash in the bank, Elmendorf said.
“Depending on the business model you pick, you might always be fundraising.”
Startups need to also focus on customer acquisition costs.
“These are essential things to do the business,” he said.
When someone asked Elmendorf how he focused on the trucking industry, he said his team originally wanted to supply accounting software to all small businesses. But they found the trucking niche and that’s where they are focused because it’s a large and important market.
“I never thought I would be excited about doing accounting software for truckers,” he said.
But he is. The software helps independent truckers do their jobs better and fight big conglomerates, he said.

Austin Chamber’s New A-List of Startups to Watch

November 1, 2012 / / 0 Comments

Stacy Zoern, CEO of Community Cars, Inc., runs a car manufacturing business out of Pflugerville.
But that’s not the most remarkable part. Zoern, who uses a wheelchair to get around, wanted to find a car that would provide independence to wheelchair users.
Online, she found the Kenguru, an electric smart car. Only problem was the company ran out of money and shut down operations. So she raised $1.4 million and partnered with the company and they moved the defunct car operations from Hungary to Texas and began manufacturing the bright yellow smart cars in 2010.
That innovative and entrepreneurial spirit earned Zoern’s Community Cars Inc. a spot on the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce’s A-List, which recognized this week 28 innovative technology startups.
Zoern’s is the only car company to make the list.
The list is meant to shine a spotlight on some of the region’s most innovative technology startups that are seeking funding. To compile the list, the chamber’s tech partnership sought input from investors.
“Austin is rich with innovative startups that are primed for growth and simply need exposure and, most importantly, capital, to transform potential into reality,” Susan Davenport, senior vice president of Global Technology Strategies for the Austin Chamber, said in a news release.
Silicon Hills News has done profiles of several companies on the list including InfoChimps, BlackLocus, Calxeda, MapMyFitness, MassRelevance and Gazzang.

This slideshare contains screen grabs of the homepages of the 28 companies that made the Austin Chamber’s list for 2012.

SXSW Branches Out to Las Vegas

October 23, 2012 / / 1 Comment

Like countless pioneers, the quintessential Austin technology, music and film conference, South by Southwest ventures West.
SXSW announced Tuesday that it plans to host SXSW V2V in Las Vegas next August 11th to 14th at The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas. The show will focus on entrepreneurial innovation. The four day event seeks to bring together startup companies and entrepreneurs with venture capitalists and mentors. The schedule can be found here.
Badges to attend the show are on sale now at the early bird rate of $695 through Dec. 14th and the prices go up from there with a walk up rate of $1,050.
The show will select some of its speakers and presentations from those submitted through its SXSW Panel Picker process. But SXSW V2V is also accepting new applications to speak through March 29th. The event is also seeking mentors and coaches.
The SXSW Las Vegas conference also features V2Venture, a two day pitch event focused on innovative startups. That program will begin accepting applications in January.
“With the growth and popularity of the startup-related programming across the SXSW family of events, it is clear that there is enough momentum to create a wholly unique and independent event focused on entrepreneurs,” SXSW V2V Producer Christine Auten said in a news release. “SXSW V2V will follow the same general strategy we have followed with other SXSW experiences. It is about turning creative ideas into reality — bringing visionaries to Vegas.”
“Las Vegas is repositioning itself as a hub for innovators and digital creatives. We are excited about all the new energy in this city. This is the perfect place for this small, offshoot event to find its voice and grow as the Las Vegas tech scene emerges onto the national scene,” SXSW Interactive director Hugh Forrest said in a news release. He visited Las Vegas and spoke to the technology community there last summer.

Co-founder meetup tonight at Capital Factory in Austin

July 30, 2012 / / 0 Comments

One of the keys to a successful high tech startup is the team backing the venture.
And solo-entrepreneurs can find it difficult finding a technical cofounder in central Texas where people with technical skills are in high demand. Other startup founders are looking for partners with different skills such as marketing, sales and business development.
A couple of events have arisen to help entrepreneurs find like-minded people who share their passion and are looking for a partner to spearhead their startup.
Tonight, a co-founder meetup will take place at Capital Factory and it’s full. More than 100 people, including a wait list of eight people, have signed up to pitch their company or simply network with other entrepreneurs. OnTechies, Capital Factory and HomeAway sponsor the event. Ricardo Sanchez organizes and runs the meetup.

The companies pitching tonight include:
• Amalgamii
• Escapaide
• GroupWink
• Taskbox
• Zaplings
• Eye in The Sky
• Eborhood
• Hobby Local
• MeatHeadz
• Pinfuse

And if you didn’t sign up in time to attend this co-founder meetup, Damon Clinkscales plans to host another FounderDating session on August 15. The last one was in May. You must apply to attend FounderDating. The organizers seek to get a balanced group made up of half engineering talent.

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